Estranged People

Their Kitchens

When I went into the dwellings of the Bete Israel I saw a number of things that almost  all of them had for in their “kitchen” area; two burners, one gas and one coal, a tea pot in which to boil water, a clay coffee pot in which to steep coffee, a small pan with lid that “whet” is cooked and stored in,  a cabinet, a plastic coffee tray that holds small coffee cups, several large , lidded plastic buckets for storing (and catching when it rains) water, a large plastic bowl and cup for washing of hands, and 2 ingera baskets, one for fermenting dough and one for baked ingera.
 
This is a typical “kitchen area”. In the middle are the two “stoves” that everyone has, a gas burner and a coal burner, on top of the coal burner is the  “whet” pan, staying warm for the next meal.  A little to the left is the tea pot, used for morning and afternoon tea snack. Behind the burners is a typical cabinet and to the left of that is an ingera basket with ingera dough fermenting in it.  To the right of the cabinet is an ingera basket with ready to eat ingera in it. The Pringles can was where they stored the coffee in this home.
 
The diet of the Bete Israel is very simple. It consists of  mainly “ingera”, “whet” and tea. My topic next week will describe these in a little more detail.
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