Party like it's 1999, because it is!

This entry is a little late but I thought I’d share it with you anyway. You see Ethiopia, besides being the only African country not colonized by the Europeans in the 19th century, also has its own church, the Ethiopian Orthodox faith, and its own calendar. There are thirteen months in a year (the thirteenth has 5 days; 6 in a leap year) and New Years Day is 11 September. Having their own calendar they also never switched to the Gregorian one we use and so are 7 years behind us. Thus it was that we were able to celebrate 1999 all over again.

The Sheraton Hotel in hosts a very big party rumoured to cost its owner $10 million every year - a bit obscene in a country as poor as Ethiopia, but the owner, the Sheik, also gives many millions to charities here every year. We all bought tickets and headed to the hotel to see what was in store. There were seven or eight bands on the bill; all but two were Ethiopian acts. The first non-Ethiopian was Pap Smurf and his Blues band. He is an American from Washington DC who moved to Addis about 20 years ago and has become a fixture on the jazz scene here. The other act, and the main draw for those so inclined, was Ja Rule, the rapper. Now I don’t know if you ever saw the episode of Happy Days where Fonzie jumps the shark (it was in one of the last seasons). Well since then the term “jumping the shark” has come to mean hitting the bottom of the barrel. Well I think old Ja was in mid-flight over a Great White, when he came down in Addis.

The room was packed and the sounds of Ethiopian music filled the air. If you have never heard Ethiopian music it is very danceable but as none of us understood the lyrics the songs all begin to sound the same. Apparently two of the acts that night were the Celine Dion and Gordon Lightfoot of Ethiopian music. They had been lured back to Addis from the States where they both now live, with pots of cash.

There was an all-you-could-eat Ethiopian buffet with all the favourite dishes including sides of raw beef – kitfo is the name of that particular delicacy. There were also all manner of liquid beverages to entertain the palate and cloud the mind. When the press of the crowd became a little too much most of our group migrate to the back of the room, which held the 6000 or so guests. At midnight a 40-minute fireworks display burst over the hotel that was quite spectacular. We made our way home about one-ish and rose the next day to attend a New Year’s luncheon hosted by the mother of one of our drivers. That made it three days in a row of Ethiopian food; I now am an expert. Tamrat, our driver’s, mother had worked for the Canadian Embassy in Addis for 35 years and is fluently tri-lingual (Amharic, English and French). Two of her daughters live in Canada, in Toronto and St Catherines, though Tamrat was educated in East Germany and the Soviet Union and so speaks no French, but German and Russian.

We ended our New Year’s celebration and went home to rest. Next year is the year 2000 in Ethiopia so they are already talking about how the Julian Millennium will be welcomed. I wonder if anyone will resurrect the Y2K scare?