My cooking skills are not world-renowned. My Abesha cooking skills are even worse.

However, in a pinch, I can fake it enough with some American substitutes that the hubby doesn’t seem to mind (too much) because it sort of makes him think I am trying.

1. Kitfo and injera: Taco Bell meat and flour tortillas. OK, clearly, this is only for the the 3-year old. But, desperate times call for desperate measures, especially if you are newly home from Ethiopia and have no idea how to make the child eat something besides bananas and bread.
2. Ethiopian Dabbo: Boboli pizza crust. Not really close, but the shape is correct. Plus, I live near a Brownberry outlet, so the price is right also.
3. Mit’mita sauce: Frank’s hot sauce.  The hubby said it was close.  I wasn’t even trying to trick him on this one.
4. Sambusas: Lentils cooked with onion and curry powder, deep fried in wonton wrappers. Asiaopian actually.  I said it was fake Abesha cooking. I admitted that from the start! 
5. Shiro wat: refried beans with berbere powder. OK, this was a trick to get the 3-year old to eat the refried beans. It really doesn’t taste the same at all, but it is pretty much the same color and sorta the same consistency. Plus, the rest of my cooking is so crap that he doesn’t really know what good food is.
6. Roasted peas (the kind you get from the girls selling them on the side of the road): roasted peas in a bag. You can get them in the nut section of some supermarkets or in Asian food stores.
7. Doro wat: OK. This one I actually start cooking the right way. But, I don’t like skin and bones so I just throw in some semi-shredded cooked chicken breast. Also, a trick with the hardboiled eggs is to prick them all over with a pin before you drop them into the sauce. That way the sauce/berbere-ness is absorbed further into the egg. You can serve it with fresh Italian (or Portuguese-style) bread that is sorta like the ET bread you get at the shops (if you don’t have an injera source).
8. Popcorn:  Egads.  You have to make the popcorn in a pot with oil on the stove.  No microwave popcorn.

Remember:  If you are Ethiopian or looking for authentic Ethiopian food, do NOT use these suggestions.  And, do NOT ever think this is real Ethiopian cooking. 

And, if you are Ethiopian and thinking that I’m insulting your culture, I am not.  My cooking is awful all around.  You don’t even want to know how I make Chinese or Italian food.  My American food barely even passes for American.

Let me know if you’ve come across some other substitutes that might work.  Remember, we live in a community without a lot of food options.

I was just digging through some CDs, looking for files for work.

I found the dubbed DVDs from my trips to Ethiopia.   Sitting back, comfortable in my life, watching those videos is totally different than when I first watched them when we got back.

To the parents of kids who were in the Addis center at the end of May/early June 2006:

Your kids are a riot!  I could take a lesson every day on the joy they exuded.  Just looking at the video makes me feel their (sometimes wet or sweaty) loving hugs.  You are stinkin’ lucky people, parents!!

To the parents of those 4-6 year old boys that were in the Hossana center in May/June 2006:

Your kids crack me up.  I almost peed my pants watching them stick out their tongues at the camera lens. 

To the parents of the school-aged kids in Addis in October 2006:

Your kids are the reason I married my husband.  I wasn’t sure about what I was getting into, but then when I saw how carefree and full of life he was when playing with your kids, I decided he was A-OK.  Tell them I send apologies for him having problems sharing the ball with them.  I don’t think he really meant to be so competitive in soccer against some of your kids.  Then again, if they hadn’t been so good at soccer, he wouldn’t have had to be so defensive!!

This website has a really nice, detailed image of Addis Ababa.  It gives a preview into the road structures and building configurations.

http://www.itt.com/news/resources/addis_ababa_october5_2007_wv1dg.jpg 

If you open the picture with an internet browser instead of saving to your computer and opening with an photo editor, be sure to click on the icon that allows you to view the picture at full size.  The detail is quite good.

Last time I was in Ethiopia, all I could say was Selam, Ciao and Amsegenalehu. I decided to be a little more considerate and learn more Amharic this time. These are the phrases I learned. I’m pretty sure they are correct. If not, it’s close enough to probably get people to understand you.  Just don’t put up your home up as collateral on wager that these words are exactly correct.

Also, Amharic has different letters. So, the words are written phonetically here. If you see Amharic words written differently with Roman letters, it’s just however the speaker sounds out the words.  So, I wrote the word only phonetically.  It probably will not match with how you will see it written other places.  Example: I wrote “Eh-MY-ay” for mother.  However, if you see it written down in other places, it will probably be written emaye.

All R sounds should be rolled. There are also other sounds that are not the same as in English. For instance, tenkahra or terths. The T sound is made by putting your tongue between your top and bottom front teeth and saying “T”. Don’t put the tongue behind your top teeth and say T like we do in English. (And make sure you still roll the R!) The K in Katell or Kai is a very hard K. It starts way back in your throat and sort of sound like you’re trying to get a hairball out. The best thing is to get someone to demonstrate the sound for you. 

I tried to write phonetically, but I may have missed a few words.  In general,

• AH is pronounced like AH
• A is short a.
• AY is long a.
• EE is long e.
• E (or EH) is short e
• I is long I
• IH is short i.
• O  (or OH) is long o.
• OU is like in ouch.
• U (or OO)  is ooo.
• G is a hard G.
• EW is eh followed by the consonant W sound (not oo).
• R is rolled R (like in Spanish)
• ñ is the Spanish N or like the French gn sound or ny (consonant Y) in English
• OE is kind of like the U sound in PUT (or the oo sound in HOOF if you pronounce it the Wisconsin way).
• SS just to emphasize the soft S sound.  (Just because otherwise I might’ve read it with the hard S sound).
• Y as a vowel by itself will be the long I sound otherwise it is the consonant Y
• If a word ends with EHU (like Ewedehalehu), slur the eh and oo sounds together.  They are not distinct syllables.
• There are different words/word endings sometimes depending if you are talking to a male, female, plural or formal (important person).I also found some vocabulary at the AAI website. I didn’t retype those words here.Get ready to Learn Amharic (my ferengi version of Amharic, anyway).  If there are other words and/or phrases you’d like to add to my mini Amharic-English Dictionary/Phrase Page, add your request to the comments section.  You can be anonymous if you wish.The right-hand column may have M, F or Pl listed.  This indicates the version you should use based on who you are speaking to (not yourself).Words in blue were added most recently.Also, if you go to this entry, there is a file of words that are typically used in the photo albums sent to the children (mom, dad, brother, sister, dog, house, etc.).  The downloadable/printable file has the words in English and Amharic.  The Amharic is written phonetically with Roman letters and with Amharic letters so the non-English speaking  staff at your child’s Ethiopian care center/orphanage will be able to talk to your child about the photos). 

My entries were added in no particular order so some of them may be hard to find. Here’s a list of the entries/topics.

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My reviews of some of the books I’ve read are given below. I’m no literary scholar. I don’t want to have to concentrate too hard when I read a book at home. Keep that in mind when you determine the value of my reviews. And, these are all MY opinions. Generally the books have gotten positive reviews from others (otherwise I wouldn’t have read them in the first place).

Fafi’s Sheep by Netsanet Kidnemariam. A children’s book. It was OK. It took an awfully long time to get through the book and the life lessons that seems to be, “listen to your mother!” I think because it took so long and wandered, it lost its potency. Recommended after you finish the others.

Held at a Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia by Rebecca Haile – The author immigrated to America as a child and the story is of her return to Ethiopia for the first time twenty-five years later. She does a great job of incorporating a lot of different things into the story. She gives historical information (political and religious), her life as an Ethiopian child in Minnesota, her life as an Ethiopian child in the American School in Addis, the contrast between her father the historian/academic and her uncle the engineer/road builder. I think one of the most impactful aspects of the book is what seems to be the conflict within herself about being an Ethiopian returning to her home and having been in America for so long that she is sometimes a Ferengi in her home country. I think the reason I like this is because this resonates so greatly with me about fears, concerns, and hopes of how it will be for my son to return to Ethiopia as an adult and/or teenager. Really recommended.

Love in the Driest Season by Neely Tucker – A couple’s process of adopting a child from Zimbabwe. I enjoyed this book. It was a quite easy read. I had a lot of “oh yeah” type of moments from my time in Zimbabwe…from mannerisms to references to geographical features. It also had the side benefit of making me appreciate the ease of an Ethiopian adoption. Recommended.

Silly Mammo by Gebregeorgis Yohannes. A children’s book. I hated it. Not recommended.

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu – An Ethiopian immigrant’s experience in America. I don’t understand why this book got good reviews. Usually I read