Geech Village

Our host heating up the coffee

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On our approach to Geech Camp in the Simen Mountains the five of us (Chris, Becs, Pioline, Tache (guide) and Elefachew) were invited into a villagers home to share coffee with them.

On first entering the large round wooden hut my eyes took a while to adjust to the darkness despite it still being bright and sunny at 4pm GMT. We sat on small sacks on the dirt floor around a fire with the villager and her three small children. Her family totalled eight but the husband and three other children were working in the fields. If she is lucky she has to choose 1 or 2 of her children to go to school. Around 35% of village children receive primary education.

As I looked around the hut and chickens pecked at my feet I began to get a sense of how the home was laid out. The family slept in one big bed suspended halfway up the hut and the farm animals slept beneath them to provide them warmth. The rest of the hut was devoted to storage space apart from an area to grind and crush barley for the making of injera (bread).

Grinding grain for Injera

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We were soon all savouring the aroma of coffee as the famous Ethiopian coffee ceremony began and the roasting of the beans was wafted under our noses. As part of the ceremony coffee is offered and poured three times.

As Pioline cradled a little boy (aged 2) who was under nourished and flies swarmed where we sat it would have been easy to feel saddened or sickened by their plight as we often are by the one-dimensional images that are transmitted through our TV screens. Instead, what was over riding was the sense of sharing and companionship, the quiet dignity with which the coffee and injera was prepared and shared whilst we chatted about daily life.