Two things never to do in Ethiopia

We met two Peace Corps volunteers who were staying in our hotel in Axum.  Christine and Joel were in the middle of their training and had come to visit the town they would be living in for the next two years when their training was over.  They would each be teaching in a secondary school and they were very excited about the prospect of it.  Peace Corp volunteers are given an intensive 4 month training including language training as part of their two year posting.

During their training, they were told that there were two things that they must avoid; Kitfo and travelling at night on buses.  Unfortunately we received this good advice too late!  We had already experienced a very dodgy situation on our night bus ride and I had ordered Kitfor for Martin off the menu in our hotel in Gondar.

Kitfor was number 1 on the menu and when I asked the waiter “What is Kitfor?” he said “Lamb chopped”.  He missed out the bit that said it was actually raw.  When we saw it we thought it was meat in tomato sauce but after tasting it (we both did – you know how we like to share everything!) we thought that perhaps it wasn’t quite cooked.  So we sent it back and it didn’t look much different when it arrived back on our plate.  Once more we tasted it and on careful chewing we decided that it was definitely raw meat and that it probably wasn’t the best kind of thing to eat as new arrivals to the African continent.

Kitfo to be avoided at all costs 

When we told Dawit (our host and owner of the school) he said that we will need to take some kind of parasite killer as we may find that in six months time we will find a huge tapeworm resident inside our digestive system.