Sticky late summer day hardly seems like the right time to crank up the New Year’s celebration.
But that’s just what about 150 members of central Ohio’s Ethiopian community and their friends did yesterday as they observed Enkutatash, the Ethiopian New Year for 2001, at Rosemore Middle School in Whitehall.
Yes, you read that right.
Ethiopia, a county of 78 million people in eastern Africa, goes by the ancient Julian calendar, not the Gregorian calendar. On the Julian calendar (named for Julius Caesar), New Year’s Day is Sept. 11.
It is about seven years behind Gregorian reckoning, making this year really 2001.
Seleshi Asfaw, who directs Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services, grinned ear to ear yesterday as he clapped his hands to a program of dancing and singing in Amharic, the native language of his country.
“I am just so happy to see this happen today,” said Asfaw, who has lived in Columbus for 10 years.
For the past four years, he has worked as executive director of the nonprofit agency that works with central Ohio’s Ethiopian population, estimated at about 20,000.
“It is the first public appearance to celebrate Ethiopian New Year,” Asfaw said. “We hope this will build a bridge to the community.”
Children, many dressed in native costumes, chased each other in the school gym while their parents and friends talked and ate traditional Ethiopian dishes spread out on injera, a spongy flatbread.
Later, grownups and children made room for dancing.
One of the highlights was the “coffee ceremony,” an ancient tradition still practiced today in most Ethiopian homes. It is the keystone of social and cultural life, a ceremony that can last an hour or more, blending business, politics, family, friendship and gossip over cups of strong coffee, backed by the smell of incense.
“It is the central piece of our culture,” Asfaw explained. “There is a religious element to it, too, as we believe there is both a visible and invisible world and this helps you see the invisible world.”
Ethiopia Sidamo, a type of coffee familiar to Starbucks customers, is used for the ceremony. A coffee pot and incense burners are placed on a mat on the floor.
The coffee beans as washed, roasted, ground and boiled. There are three servings — Abol, Tonna and Bereka — each said to accompany a transformation of the spirit.
The New Year’s celebration was special to Paige Chapman-Layland of Worthington, a board member of Ethiopian Orphan Relief Inc.
Chapman-Layland and her husband, Albert, adopted Meklit, now 22 months, when she was an infant.
The couple said they are keeping Meklit’s Ethiopian heritage in mind.
“You have to be very thoughtful about that,” Chapman-Layland said. She said about 1,000 orphaned Ethiopians will be adopted in the U.S. this year.
Ethiopians in Seattle rejoiced last year as they ushered in the new millennium on the Ethiopian calendar.
This week, they said goodbye to 2000 and embraced 2001. Thursday marked New Year’s Day on the Ethiopian Orthodox calendar and a celebration is planned for this weekend.
The Ethiopian Orthodox calendar is based on the old Coptic and Roman calendars and falls almost eight years behind Western calendars. About half of Ethiopia’s 80 million people are Orthodox Christian.
On Sunday, the Northgate Community Center, will host a free New Year’s event starting at 3 p.m. There will be food, cultural dancing and a fashion show. The event was partially paid for with money from the Seattle Neighborhood Matching Funds, said Wubeshet Assefa, chairman of the Ethiopian Educational Cultural and Sport Center.
Assefa, who lives with his wife, Mekdes Bekele, and has three children, helped organize last year’s millennium celebration and was interviewed by the P-I.
He fled Ethiopia 27 years ago as a political refugee and moved to Dallas before settling in Seattle on Labor Day in 1990.
He sees the celebration as a chance to unite all Ethiopians and to pass on traditions to the younger generations.
“On the New Year, we have hope. And, hopefully, we will have peace and the economy will come around,” he said.
“This is the beginning of a new century. There is a lot of excitement, although people are not as excited as they were a year ago. But we look forward to a great century. I’ve had a very good and wonderful year,” said Ezra Teshome, a community leader who helped get the church built.
Teshome heads next month to Ethiopia on one of his many humanitarian trips to provide polio vaccinations.
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– Information provided by staff reporter SScott Gutierrez.
