Editor-in-chief Jakki Phillips narrates her adventures through Lalibela, Gondar and Oromia
The honey wine arrives not in a glass but a large conical flask, the type I remember from school chemistry experiments. This is my first—and last—encounter with tej, a sickly sweet and incredibly strong mead that flows freely across Ethiopia. My drinking den is Torpedo (Toprido Tejbet), an unexpected find in the dusty backstreets of Lalibela, one of the African nation’s holiest towns.
It’s getting late and despite a looming 6am start to explore the region’s famous underground churches, I’m watching a man in a military-style suit and flat cap playing what looks like a one-stringed lute. There are howls of laughter as he moves from table to table poking fun at the drinkers with improvised songs.
He’s singing in Amharic, the country’s official language, so when he arrives at our table, my guide, Bereket, translates. “He says you have cheeks like oranges.” I suggest he might mean peaches, but Bereket shakes his head. “Nope, the ones they make breakfast juice out of.”
It could be worse, I think, but then the dancers appear—a squad of lithe young men and women who spy the battalion of empty flasks on our table and identify me as an easy target. The women whoop wildly as I’m lassoed around the waist with a beaded belt and herded onto the dancefloor. Bereket tells me it’s customary to tip your favourite dance partner by sticking a 10-birr note (worth less than one US dollar) to their forehead. I press a crumpled bill to the moist brow of one particularly fierce shoulder-shaking, head-waggling woman before beating a retreat to get some sleep.
The dawn wake-up call comes all too soon, but this is Ethiopia—the birthplace of coffee—so we follow the aroma of roasting beans to the nearest jebena bet (a tin-roofed hut where coffee is served) and settle on the grass-strewn floor to watch the time-honoured ritual of grinding, brewing and pouring, then knock back a much-needed jolt of caffeine mixed with sugar—not the less palatable local favourites, salt or butter.