Holy week in Ethiopia.

I was fortunate enough, returning from Lalibella, to have been able to catch a flight 2 days early. I enjoyed my stay there, but found the small place well visited in two days. Perhaps it was simply being alone and realizing that I had only one week left in Ethiopia that put a burr in my spur.
Arriving back in Addis Ababa, I was well welcomed, both by my boss, who would leave the next day for the US, and by his and my friend Rick Hodes, the American Jewish Doctor who I had visited every Friday for Shabbat. It being Passover, I joined Rick and almost 50 other travelers, Jews and gentiles alike, to commemorate the passing of the jewish people out of Egypt with a Seder Meal. I have attended two seders before, but it was nice to participate in a personal one, even if all of ricks adopted children are either orthodox or muslim. One of the disadvantages to having such a diverse crowd, with no homogenous experience of Passover, the ritual was not equally carried out. When some read it was rushed, while others seemed to enjoy the more liturgical aspects of Passover. All the same, the food was, as always, great at Ricks house.
This seemed quite an appropriate way to begin my holy week
My days passed quite quickly between Passover and easter Sunday. I used some days to study and record. I had a chance to interview the liturgical expert and overall perceptive French scholar, who certainly gave a critical view of the situation in Ethiopia.
I also celebrated my 23rd birthday. It being holy week, most of the priests around the house were quite busy, and most of the belly dancing halls were closed. This did not keep me, however, from celebrating. I started by heading off to dinner with Fr. Phillip. We visited a nice Armenian restaurant where I filled myself solely with appetizers. Following this, I taxied to the other side of town to the German brew house and met with some friends to enjoy these fine products of the brewers.
My birthday was on Wednesday. Starting Thursday, I began the longest weekend of church of my life. The Ge’ez equivalent of holy week translates literally into the week of pain. While this is referring to the pain and suffering of Christ, ideally one shares in this pain with Christ. Often, starting on holy Thursday, people will begin a true feast, not eating or drinking anything until Easter mass has ended.
On Thursday I attended an orthodox church at Kidest Gabriel. Unlike a catholic service, where 12 people are selected to symbolize the congregation for the feet washing, here, everyone’s feet are washed. This is quite a feat, as perhaps over 1000 feet are washed. It is quite an experience to be in church surrounded by 500 men and women, all wrapped in white cloth, worshiping, chanting and bowing in sync. Preceding the washing of the feet were many different readings from the bible and extra biblical texts. Then, the priest blessed the water and giant drums were taken throughout the crowd and with vine leaves, mass feet washing takes place. The vine leaves are used to connect the institution of the eucharist to the serving action of the washing of the feet. Because these are blessed by the priests, they are considered sacred objects and often are collected by women. After about 2-3 hours of preparation and finally feet washing, we started the mass. A mass in Ethiopia lasts roughly for 3 hours. Believe you me, I thought that after 6 hours of church that I had just plain had enough. Little did I know what I was in store for.
Good Friday.
I spent my good Friday with a friend at a catholic church. This is an Ethiopian rite catholic church, so many of the rituals and liturgies bear a strong resemblance to the orthodox liturgy. I arrived at church at 9 that morning. Good Friday is the day in which we commemorate the death of jesus. Often in the USA we do a stations of the cross service to bring us closer to the sufferings of jesus. In Ethiopia you suffer. We did about 4 sets of 50 prostrations, while praying Kyrie Eliason, which means, Lord have mercy. Interspersing these different sets are progressively readings from the 4 different passion narratives. I was fasting for the day. I thought that would be an issue, but we spent 8 hours within the church, so one did not even have time to think about food.

I finally left church at about 5:30PM. I headed over to ricks for my last Shabbat dinner. Upon arriving, and smelling the soup, I decided to enjoy my cross religious experiment. Shabbat, of course, means Sabbath. The Sabbath as we understand starts on Saturday. The same is true for the jews, but their Saturday starts with sundown. Well, according to jewish standards, my fast ended, and I got to enjoy one final cup of soup with the Hodes family (Rick and his 10 adopted sons) as well as some med student friends of mine volunteering at the Mother Theresa clinic.

Saturday
We started our easter service on Saturday. We arrived at 9 PM, back at St. Gabriels. I had borrowed from the spiritians a Gabi, which are the white cloths that the men wrap around their entire body for the church service. The mass itself does not start until midnight, but given the solemnity of the occasion, it would be impossible to get a seat inside arriving any time earlier. Fr Emmanuel and Fr Phillip are known in this church, so upon arrival, we, the only four non-ethiopians in the church, were led to front of the church to sit in the raised floor portion just before the holy of the holies. This is quite an honor. Indeed, one of our group, a female comboni from italy, having entered into the women’s side, and not being there when we were invited up, decided not to join us. She was not forbidden to because she was a woman, however, for surrounding us were nuns and elderly women. They clearly came prepared, for they had pillow in hand, and sometime into the service they set it onto the floor and fell asleep.
Ethiopian orthodox traditionally don’t kneel when they pray. They pray either standing or in prostration. We saw another young deacon in prostration before an icon. He never arose from this prostration and at some point he fell to his side in what we sometimes call vertical meditation, or more colloquially, sleep.
Front and center of the church, over 30 priests were gathered. Each parish may have this number commonly available, as each church service itself requires at least 3 priests. On this day the mass would be celebrated on two altars. What we would call diocesan priests, have to be married, in fact. They do not want any “loose guns” out there, so the option is to either be a monk-priest or a married priest. Once a priest marries, however, he cannot not have any other wife. Should his wife dies, then he takes vows from the bishop to be a celibate man.
As the mass had not yet begun, these priests were performing the daily office of prayer. This is not a solemn chant as one might find in the latin church, and indeed, they were heralding easter. The prayer itself was intoned with drums and sisturn as around 20 priests (split into groups of 10) would do a form of dance leading forwards and backwards. Not having heard drums in the orthodox church these past 40 days due to lent, the prayer evoked in me the feelings of joy as the beat of the drum seeped into my own prayer. Raised above the rest, I was positioned perfectly to see these event and to record them. The entire congregation became involved as well, clapping as the beats of the drums syncopated. This dancing and praying went on for nearly 3 hours. Indeed, the priests were so involved in it, that when the other priests started to say the mass, interrupting them, they went right on praying the Kidan. There was a mini liturgical struggle, as 3 priests and a microphone tried to intiate a mass over the voices of 30 singing priests. As the service began, the lights were switched off and a flame was passed from person to person on their candles. To see hundreds of people all dressed in white, all carrying these candles, singing together, was quite a sight. The mass itself proceded quite normally (as I could tell, for I do not understand Ge’ez and our expert had to leave to say mass in a catholic parish). At the end of the church service, we also had an opportunity to witness something unique as the priests gathered to sing again. This was a time only for experts, though. As a few of the skilled priests whispered impomtu poems into the ears of one of the talented singing priests, he would incoporate these poetical lines into his own song. We, being exhausted, deemed to leave before all of these proceedings were finished, for it being 3 am and we having attended church for the past 6 evening hours we almost ready to fall where we stood. We finally returned home around 4 am and Fr. Phillip brought out for us some Brie and Sausage from France to help continue the joyous celebration of easter.
I don’t think I will ever forget this easter celebration.

The next day, easter Sunday, I made my way to the catholic service. It was a striking comparison, attending the English church service, which was somehow without a choir this service. There was no one to lead in the songs and only the entrance hymn was familiar to me. As the priest entered, no one was singing. I, feeling that music is an important part of my church experience, raised my voice and led us in the song. By time everyone had joined in, my hands were shaking. Public singing in front of a church is not my forte, my only experience with it being with the inmates at Oregon Penn, who, though being a captive audience, are also quite forgiving. When the next song was to come, everyone looked at me, but I hadn’t had the daftest idea of how the melody went. Eventually one of the choir members went to the front and tried to lead us accapella, and it went fine for a song or two. This was really not the way to celebrate the most important feast of the year. It quite surprised me, for this church was meant to serve the entire international community. Who dropped the ball? That church service, however, signaled the end of my stay in Ethiopia. That evening I caught dinner at a friends house and the next morning, I was on a plane to Egypt.