I was sitting outside on the back steps the next afternoon. The family was going about their day. One woman was washing clothes over by the water tank. Another was spreading out red peppers to dry in the sun. The brown and white cat sauntered past and I called out to it. “Demet demet demet,” I crooned, demet being Amharic for cat. My first few attempts in the early days had met with rejection, but now the cat came over when I called. The family was delighted each time and couldn’t get over the sight of me petting the cat. To them it was just another one of those crazy things that ferenji did.

Three of the waitresses appeared in the doorway of one of the broken down buildings in the back and called out to me. I wasn’t sure what they wanted, but I guessed and hoped that they were calling me over to join them in their daily coffee ceremony, the bunna enfelal.

I let the cat go and walked across the yard. The doorway they were standing in was the furthest door on the left of a long, low structure that stretched all the way across the back yard. It was one story high and falling apart. The walls were made of a crude wooden framework filled in with a mud and straw mixture. The roof was made of corrugated tin sheets placed on top of some long branches that were hammered in place. Some thin strips of corrugated tin had been placed on the bottom of the wall along the ground to prevent mice and rats from gnawing their way through and getting inside. The mud and straw had been whitewashed once, but it had mostly faded, leaving just some patches of white here and there towards the top where it was more protected from the rain. All the doors were different sizes and shapes having been gathered over the years from various places. They had all been repaired dozens of times especially along the bottom where they’d been continually kicked to force them open and closed in their ill-fitting frames.

Up until that point I’d had no idea that this was where the waitresses lived. It was a single room with one bed against the far wall where they all slept. On the right hand wall there were a couple of small tables covered in packages and duffle bags and plastic bags filled with clothes and other personal possessions. It gave the impression that they had just moved in and hadn’t unpacked, but the reality was that there was no place else to put anything. No dressers or shelves or even clothes hangers. The floor was cement and the mud and straw walls had been wallpapered with old newspaper. It had gone yellow a long time ago and had been torn and ripped in many places. On the floor they had a complete coffee set, a little bit smaller but in every way identical to the one that the family used.

These three waitresses were an unusual piece of the Tiru Gondar family. They seemed set apart and till that day I’d learned nothing about them. Even when Zebachew drew me the family tree and listed all the employees of the hotel he left them off the list. I think it was because they were considered more temporary than anyone else. Later on I was to meet quite a few of these waitresses around the highlands and they all seemed to be separate. They’d generally come from somewhere else in the country. There was usually a reason for them to have left home and gone to their first waitressing job. They knew the owner of the restaurant/hotel or they had a relative in the town. But after that they migrated from town to town and job to job, carrying their meagre belongings in a rude collection of plastic bags and beat up duffel bags. Most were also inhouse prostitutes though this was a carefully guarded secret that they tried to keep from their ferenji guest.

The three of them had come to the Tiru Gondar only three weeks earlier. Before that they’d been working at another hotel in Addis. Before that they’d come from someplace in the countryside, but I couldn’t figure out where. Two of them, Sahay and Tegust, were sisters and looked a lot alike. Sahay was 21 years old and had a round, pleasant face. She had been pointed out to me by several people saying that she had a pretty face. Tegust was 25 and had three thick blue lines tattooed on her face starting just under her lip and going over her chin. She was the bravest of the three and made a point of teasing me from time to time. The third waitress was named Mebet. She had a quiet, shy and withdrawn air. Her face was longer and thinner than the two sisters. Her hair was done up in braids, not quite dreadlocks, but it had a dreadlocky effect.

They bought their coffee beans in a piece of paper wrapped up expertly in a cone shape. It cost twenty five cents they said and was exactly the right amount for one coffee ceremony. The sugar also came in a handmade cone. One cone of sugar cost ten cents.

Sahay wrapped a thin gauzy length of material, which she called a ‘gabi’, around her head and body and took charge of the coffee ceremony. The coffee beans snapped and popped loudly as they roasted. She had to stir them quickly and constantly with a spoon so that they didn’t burn. A thick smoke filled with the aroma of coffee rose from the pan. Sahay blew on the pan to send the smoke wafting around me. I realized that this was when you were supposed to appreciate the aroma, not when you actually get the cup of coffee. I got that wrong the other day.

As we waited for the coffee to brew Tegust and Mebet continued to talk with me using the Amharic phrasebook that I had. It was a slow and frustrating process. There were so many questions I wanted to ask, so many things I wanted to learn about them, but we continually ran up against the language barrier. We could only talk about the simplest of things and even then I could never be sure of the answers I got. There was simply too much room for misunderstanding.

Each of them had some pictures and they got those out to show them to me. I was quite excited when they mentioned the pictures because I thought I would be able to see more of their lives, their families and where they came from. But I was disappointed. 95% of the pictures were only of themselves. Picture after picture of themselves posing in front of trees, in gardens, by waterfalls and streams. They had no pictures of their families, of relatives, or of their homes – nobody but themselves.

By the time the third cup of coffee had been prepared and drunk a long time had passed and I was totally worn out by the effort involved in this exercise in cross-cultural communication. My head ached from the struggle with the language barrier. My back ached from sitting for so long. My eyes were sore from the smoke and the kerosene and when I stepped outside I was blinded by the bright sun. Sahay, Tegust and Mebet looked just as tired and I don’t think they were unhappy to see me finally go. For them it was their first time to host someone from another culture and I think they were surprised at how much work it actually was.

Tags: Ethiopia Bike Trip, Tiru Gondar