ERITREA!

Oh man, where to start!  Eritrea is beautiful, the people are beautiful, the country is beautiful, the rich culture is beautiful!  We visited during the rainy season so it was very very green and lush!  Green, beautiful, Africa.  Eritrea is located on the horn of Africa, directly west of Yemen.  It is nestled on the Red Sea between Sudan, Ethiopia, and Djibouti.  It has had a long history of Colonization including the Turks, Italians, Brits, Ethiopians and now it has been free since 1994.  The most common languages are Tgrinya and Arabic.  There are 9 different tribes all of which are very different in culture (dance, clothes, living styles, everything) and physical features.  July in Eritrea is the high season for travel.  Families come back to their homeland to visit loved ones and kids are out of school.  Also July like I said is when the country is at it's most beautiful greenness.  Asmara the capital, is at about 7500 ft elevation so it was actually pretty cool during the day.  We did have a couple of days of rain which I was so excited about!  How I miss Portland's green wetness!  During the summer there is a huge culture festival with foods, dances from every tribe, traditional houses set up, camels, a big plane, a train to ride, traditional brides dressed up and hidden in the houses, and meat hanging around.     

The ladies I went with are from Eritrea so we spent time visiting their families around the country.  It was such a treat to be in a county like this with people from there, I felt like I got the insiders glance!  Eritrea is not a free country.  As lovely and free as it seems on the surface, the people are not free to leave.  Only women over the age of 45 can leave, and only if they get special permission from the government.  The men can never leave.  They try to escape, leaving Eritrea and fleeing to Sudan, however, if they are caught it is almost certain death.  There was a billboard in the main area of Asmara we passed where only last year they would hang pictures and stories of people who tried to escape and who were subsequently killed as a result.  These pictures were meant to hang in warning and notification.  A cousin had attempted escape but had been caught and was lucky to go to jail, which is essentially compulsory military duty in the worst areas.  He had just been released for a break a few days before we arrived to Eritrea.  When Eritrea was a colony of Ethiopia many people escaped, and it wasn't as harshly punished as it is now.  This is how Nebila and Amal's parents left Eritrea during the 70s.  The normal route was walking out of Eritrea into Sudan where they would get refugee status.  After a few months both families immigrated into Saudi Arabia.  There was family already in Saudi.  But people living in Saudi Arabia as a foreigner have very few rights, they will never become citizens etc.  So when the girls were 7 their parents moved to London so they would have more opportunities (education, freedoms, etc).

So today if a man in Eritrea is not employed, in school, or a professional cyclist he will be forced into the military.  Yes, there are a lot of professional cyclists in the country.  It seems this is their main sport, we must have seen a handful of races (including international racers) in the short week and a half we were there!  The people go crazy to watch the races!  And everyone commutes by bike!  I love it!  It reminded me of Portland, I think by the end Nebila and Amal were tired of me pointing out the bikes and stopping to take pictures of piles of bikes!  But anyways, the funny thing is, to go to school you have to be in the military.  After high school they go to essentially basic training for a year.  And then about 40% of the people pass basic training and then they get to go to university.  I believe they get to have a say as to what they study.  We went to Nebila's cousin's, Khadija, graduation from College, she is going to be a teacher.  She is from Asmara and her father was a university professor of English.  Khadija doesn't get to choose where she will work, the military will tell her where to live and teach, which could be on the other side of the country.

At the graduation ceremony Khadija was treated like royalty, she was paraded around a decked out tent for everyone to see.  There was traditional food served and traditional dancing, women, men, and children all danced together.  The whole event was videotaped!  I don't know why but I thought that was hilarious!  A really great experience, now I know how to dance Eritrean style, it's all in the shoulders!

Another interesting thing about the military is they kind of own everything.  So you could have property in Eritrea but the military could decide that your property is a good spot for military to stay while they pass through and they could just do that and you would have to move out of your house.  Didn't they do this in the USA during the Revolutionary or Civil war?  Anyways in a similar way Nebila's aunt has a house where there are only two other homes and the government wants those houses to go away and the people to move so they can put a big hotel or something in it's place, since these homes are right by big open land that wasn't developed.  But Nebila's aunt does not want to move, she and her family could be placed anywhere in the country.

In Eritrea there is a traditional Coffee Ceremony.  This was one of my many favorite parts.  It's really a great time to sit and chat and drink really delicious coffee!  So it starts with raw coffee beans which are roasted over a fire of coals.  The woman will sit on a low seat fanning the flame continuously.  When the beans are roasted she pours them out onto what looks like a woven hot pad and walks around the room so everyone can take in the scent of freshly roasted coffee beans and praise her for a job well done.  Then she crushes them by hand in a wooded cylinder, kind of mortar and pestle style.  The beans are often mixed with ground ginger which gives it a nice zing of a flavor.  The grounds are put into a clay pot with a wide bottom and a narrow top and heated over the flame the woman is still continuously fanning.  The coffee is poured out slowly through reeds that are stuffed into the neck of the coffee pot into small coffee cups with a healthy spoonful of sugar in the bottom.  It is very strong and sweet.  It is always passed out first to the man of the house, then other men, then the women (or age ranking can come into play as well).  After the first round there is still grounds left in the coffee pot and more water is added, this goes through for a total of three rounds of coffee.  Also the woman will cook popcorn for a snack to go along with the coffee, a lovely pairing!  This entire coffee ceremony takes 1.5-2 hours.  It is really relaxing and nice to sit around drinking coffee and chatting!

While on the topic of food and drink, Njera is one of the main traditional foods.  So we ate this a lot!  YES!  This is the soft flat spongy bread where food is placed on top of it, meats in sauce or salads, and you eat with your hands!  again YES!  I wanted Njera for every meal!  It was so good :)  The njera had a slightly different taste compared to Ethiopian, in Eritrea they put some lemon on it, a slightly sharp bitterness that mixes very well with the food.  Many people we ate with were so surprised by how well I ate with my hands!  Yay!  It's my favorite!  And for breakfast they had this spicy dumpling meal that was delicious!  Spicy dumplings, fresh mango smoothie, and coffee in the morning!  Really what more could you ask for! 

We traveled out of Asmara to see the countryside as well.  We went to Mendefera to see an uncle and Nebila's grandmother who lives in a far away village.  The rides out to the country were so beautiful!  Rolling hills, green, interesting African trees.  There are apparently many species of plant life that only exist in this part of the world!  How exciting!  As we left Asmara we went a little lower in altitude so it warmed up a bit, which was nice.  Really everywhere we went we randomly ran into Nebila's family, some didn't know she was in town, but they would spot her and come running, we were spotted on the streets in Asmara, Mendefera, one spotted us the day we arrived and departed from the airport!  We stayed with an uncle like I said in Mendefera, he is a big man in town - owner of the water factory, gas station, and coffee shop!  In this town we took a walk around to check it out and take pictures.  The kids called "China" at me as we walked by.  The uncle told us a few Chinese architects had come to town a while ago to build in Mendefera, these are presumably the only foreigners the children have seen and probably thought the word for foreigner was "China"...or they think I look Chinese, who knows.  But in Asmara people thought I was Italian (Italy colonized Eritrea for a while as I said).  I'm so exotic looking, haha! Woah!

I had a visa for Eritrea that was issued while I was in Riyadh before I left.  However, in order to leave the city of Asmara you have to get special permission from the Ministry of Interior.  So to travel around the country we had to say specific days we wanted to go to specific cities.  A travel agent set this up for us once we got to Eritrea.  It was a bit confusing, but interesting.  Also the taxi driver that took us to Mendefera needed special permission to take foreigners out of the city.  On one outing the date was written in the form wrong and we were stopped at the check point for about an hour just outside of the town we were trying to get to.  The military guy at the check point had to call his commanding officer to check if it was ok for us to proceed into Keren.  The guy driving us was nice enough to work it all out for us, and while we were waiting a dude on a camel strolled by, oh la la la, just a normal day in Eritrea! 

I obviously have loads to say about this trip, it was amazing in so many ways!  Thank you Nebila and Amal and your wonderful families for sharing your beautiful country with me!