A new bakery and new friends

I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the church service I attended at the Anglican "cathedral" this morning. Normally, there is an awful keyboard player and obscure hymns sung. But today, they just had a little percussion section, and a really nice choir leading some really nice songs. Who would have thought that "When the Saints Go Marching In" could actually be worshipful?!

On the way home from church, I stopped at an Eritrean bakery that I found last week. Unfortunately, "baani yellen", which means "no bread". Their generator was broken, so there was no bread available. Oh well, at least I got to greet the folks there in Tigrinya and have a little chat with them.

Since I couldn't get my bread at that place, I decided to try to find a new bakery someone had told me about the other day. Fortunately, it's right on the main road, right where I thought it should be. And they had a lot of bread, and it's amazing. Nice crusty rolls - like mini-baguettes. Yum yum. I couldn't quite tell where the bakery owners were from, but for sure they weren't from around here. They were speaking Arabic with an awful lot of pharyngeals (um, if you're not a linguist, never mind what a pharyngeal is :) ), unlike the local folks.

After eating some bread for lunch, Jackie and I set off to have coffee with a new Eritrean family that I met at the grocery store a little while ago. It was such a nice time with them. While we waited for the rest of the family to come home, Jackie and I got to sit in the shop and watch Martha Stewart on satellite TV. She was making a pomegranate and banana pavlova. Yum yum. But not something that we'll be doing around here any time soon.

Once the rest of the family arrived, we were ushered back through the store room to the family's living area. There, we were served shiro and bani (bread). In fact, it was the exact same bread that we had just eaten for lunch. So I asked if it was from the same bakery - and lo and behold, it was from the same bakery, which, funnily enough, is owned by... Eritreans! (Which would explain the pharyngeals. Next time I'll go practice my own pharyngeals with them :) )

I really enjoyed the Shiro, and afterwards, we got to have the whole coffee ceremony. It was so nice to sit in a local home, stuffing my face with amazing food and washing it all down with strong, sweet coffee. I was really happy that the family didn't go all out and cook a big feast, but instead just served us an "every day" sort of meal, which is my favorite dish, anyways!

We sat and chatted about Eritrean politics, about Asmara, about what we love about that place. I loved it. I'm still feeling all excited about happy about the wonderful afternoon that I had... or maybe it's just the three shots of syrupy sweet espresso that's coursing through my veins...