Star light, star bright
Lalibela, Ethiopia
I AM EATING dinner with Beki, a driver for a tour company in Lalibela, Ethiopia. Beki is eager to introduce me to a local dish, tibs. “You will like it,” he assures me. “It is a favorite of Westerners.”
The restaurant is very unassuming from the outside. Corrugated metal, cinderblock and a hand-lettered sign that I had overlooked during my three days here in Lalibela hide a charming interior. Beautiful curtains of traditional cloth hang from the windows, small wooden tables and stools covered in hand-loomed fabric circle the room. A musician is playing a crude stringed instrument as a woman in traditional dress shimmies her shoulders and sings alongside him.
The room is entirely lit by candlelight, for tonight there is a blackout. Ethiopia sells electricity to the Sudan at the expense of the Ethiopian people who accept these periodic blackouts with a shrug. The candles add to the delight of this little restaurant.
The server comes over to Beki. A rapid exchange of Amharic ensues and Beki tells me tonight the evening special is quiche. “Quiche,” I say, nodding. “I’ll have the quiche.” I can tell he has never heard of this dish and I don’t think the server is too familiar with it either. He orders quiche for me and tibs for himself.
The quiche arrives. It is huge, the size of a pizza. It tastes very salty, and I’m not sure what the other ingredients are, mushrooms, meat, who knows? Beki offers me some of his tibs, eaten with the hands. I have a hard time making a neat little package, rolling the meat in injera bread and shoving it in my mouth. Beki wants to feed me, in the Ethiopian way. I am glad I gave him a squirt of hand sanitizer when we sat down.
The meat is very gristly, the orange horseradish sauce way too spicy and tears come to my eyes. Injera bread tastes spongy and fermented. I chew a little bit, wishing I could spit it out. Rocks on pancakes, that is what this dinner reminds me of. I swallow gamely and smile. Beki enthusiastically eats the rest of the tibs.
Afterward, Beki and I go for a drive in the tour company’s Land Cruiser. Beki’s clients, elderly British tourists, chose this big vehicle for its smooth ride. They flew to Addis Ababa this morning, and Beki will drive the Land Cruiser back to Addis tomorrow. I think Beki likes the approving glances he gets driving around town in it.
We get out of the car and look down the hillside to the town. It is very peaceful and quite dark. There is no ambient light at all, just the flicker of a few fires and an occasional flashlight. I look up above my head and am instantly, utterly transfixed, gazing at something I have never seen before, and will probably never see again.
The ink black sky is filled with stars. It looks like snow falling! I have never seen such a sight. I see the bright glow of planets, constellations, the Milky Way glinting like a carpet of white diamonds. I gasp in awe. I can’t get enough of this beautiful night sky. It is so impossibly black and the stars are so numerous and so amazingly bright!
Beki laughs at my reaction. He sees this all the time.