Happy New Year!

Yesterday morning we were woken up at 6 am by the sounds of people running, shouting, ululating and banging on drums outside our compound fence. It was very dark
still and I could hear thunder rumbling so I knew the clouds were hiding the sunrise. I groggily crawled out from under my mosquito net to put on some socks and
shoes and find out what on earth was going on. I joined Abebe and Abebech and Grace who had also emerged from their tukuls and Amos our watchman came over to laugh
at our reactions and tell us that the Mabaan are celebrating the new year! It was the first we had heard about it! Apparently the celebrations move from village to
village over the next few days--yesterday it was in G., today it's here, tomorrow it goes to N. etc.

In any case, Grace and I got in on the celebrations just outside our gate, at the home of Joseph, one of our watchmen and a church elder, his wife Mary and their 5
children. These children are quickly becoming very dear to Grace and I. Two of them are around the same ages as my nieces and nephews and their baby brother is one
of the cutest ever! They pop in to see us often when their father is at our gate. Recently, I started going out to their house on occasional afternoons so Mary can
show me how to cook Mabaan food! Last week I got to practice stirring the "chilku" sauce made of some type of dark green leaves with a special wooden stick that you
twirl in your hands to mix the sauce and make it kind of frothy. Mary also tried to show me how to make "kisra", the flat, pancake-like bread made of sorghum and
maize flour. Both the chilku and kisra are real staple foods for the Mabaan and the kisra takes literally hours to prepare. The sorghum and maize need to be
pounded and mixed with water and then a fire is lit with a big square piece of metal heated on top. The batter is then poured neatly one cup at a time onto the metal slab and smeared very thin and cooked for about a minute. The Mabaan ladies make a big tub of batter each time to feed many people so it takes a long time to get through it all. Mary's kids enjoyed laughing at my attempts to swirl the chilku and howled with glee as I made the kisra way too thick and burnt my fingertips trying to pull it off the slab before it burnt. After 2 attempts, I gave the cup back to their mother so I wouldn't ruin their dinner!

So yesterday I spent another afternoon there and this time the family was cooking pork. The Mabaan kill pigs for this occasion and relatives appear from all over to help eat them. Mary was again cooking a huge number of kisra with the help of several other neighbor ladies. The men were cooking chunks of pork under a tree and the kids would bring some over for the ladies and kids to snack on while they cooked. Grace and I enjoyed playing with the kids and trying to talk to them in Mabaan as we watched what the ladies were doing. Mary prepared a delicious, spicy tomato and onion sauce with some of the pork and in the late afternoon we were treated to that with the kisra and thoroughly enjoyed it. I've never eaten so much pig in one day in my life, that's for sure! As the pork was cooking, groups of happy, singing Mabaans would emerge from the bush and pass from the men to the ladies with loud greetings. It was fun to be a part of this!