Picnic Eritrean Style

Last Saturday was the day of a picnic which I was invited to, along with another VSO colleague, at quite short notice.

The destination was the Filfil camp ground situated in Eritrea's small area of rainforest halfway up the great rift valley escarpment at the top of which Asmara sits.

The large cooking pots being loaded onto the bus together with gas cylinder and burner offered a clue that this was going to be a picnic with a difference, the stop at the livestock market just before leaving Asmara provided confirmation.

The ride to the camp ground was initially across the high plains along the Keren road followed by the hairpins on the descent of the escarpment, through a layer of cloud, towards the Eritrean lowlands. The road itself is quite amazing, very well maintained with crash barriers in strategic places, and little used - but still providing many kilometres of fear and excitement.

At the camp ground I was quite surprised to find six other buses and several other picnics in full swing (meaning loud Eritrean music blasting out from music systems) not quite an idyll but interesting nonetheless.

So now we come to the preparation of the main ingredient and, in writing this, I am very aware that I am looking through the eyes of someone whose meat is usually pre-cut, sanitised and shrink-wrapped and that, to my Eritrean, colleagues, it is just the normal way things are done.

It turned out that we had brought two goats with us and that they weren't going to be invited to join in the dancing later ... pretty much all the guys participated in the steps involved in the killing, stringing up, skinning and butchering of lunch (apart from me although I was invited to observe closely and to take photographs with the assurance that I would be wielding a knife next time).

The meal was, of course, delicious consisting of various stews served with injera (flat sourdough bread, a local staple) and it was later shared with a number of people who just seemed to appear from the woods, it was accompanied by beer and wine and followed by an Eritrean coffee ceremony and dancing in a circle Eritrean style (lots of shoulder movement), which continued in the bus on the way home round the hairpin bends!

So it was a day of firsts for me – I'd never seen an animal killed before, I'd never been at a picnic quite like it ... oh, and I'd never seen a baby camel before (from the bus while travelling through the lowlands).