Sweat Elite in Ethiopia – It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas (Day 5)
With the majority of Ethiopians being orthodox Christians, and the whole country adhering to a completely different calendar to the rest of the world (it is 2011 here, if you don’t believe me Google it!), Christmas isn’t celebrated until the 7th of January on the Gregorian calendar. What luck! Experiencing the festivities was such a unique opportunity!
Our Christmas morning started with a 6km threshold run before breakfast. In the field next to Bekele’s track there is a gravel loop just under 1km. Quite uneven and not exactly flat, the circuit provides a challenging course for fast running, lots of athletes do their interval work here. There were quite a few athletes doing track prior to the Christmas celebrations (or as part of them?). One who captured our attention was a young woman running some very fast 300m reps. We got chatting with her coach and discovered it was Habitam Alemu, a young talent having already run a 1:56 800m at only twenty-one. As we chatted with her coach she finished a couple more speedy 300s, concluding the session with a quick vomit. Preparation for indoor season was in full flight.
As we returned to the hotel the staff were finishing the setup for the Christmas party, to which we were of course welcomed. They all had goat and injera (we stuck to papaya and bananas) followed by freshly roasted coffee, washed down with some 10am beers. Hadgu came out to Sululta to join us for the morning; Matt and I had an hour each suffering in the hardest hands in Addis Ababa. Following the massages we headed into Addis for some more celebrations. Matt had spent a few hours at the track with Mersh Asrat, coach to Kenenisa Bekele (5,000m/10,000 WR holder – currently injured) and Yenew Alamirew (12:48 5km – 12th fastest athlete in history). Coach Mersha invited us to join him with his family and some of his athletes for Christmas celebrations in his family home.
Mersha arrived at the Simien Hotel in Addis with one of his friends, meeting us for some coffee before we went back to his house. Blood stains from the cow he had spent the morning butchering still adorned his Nike tracksuit pants. Mersha discussed with us some of the training his athletes had recently been doing, as well as his negotiations with different universities to start working on a PhD based on his work with athletes.
We all bundled into Coach’s car for the quick trip back to his family home, a compound which has been separated into multiple living spaces for different relatives. We entered the living room, where we were greeted by three Greek athletes that have been training with Mersha for the past month. A round of home-brew barley beer was poured and within minutes more food was brought out for all of us. Many Ethiopians follow the Orthodox tradition of ‘fasting’ (essentially following a vegan diet – no meat, dairy or eggs) for forty days prior to Christmas, hence Christmas celebrations appear to be somewhat of a meat festival. Goat and injera was followed by hunks of raw beef that they dip in a butter and chilli sauce.
Yenew was smashing through huge blocks of raw flesh, Mersha brought out bottles of areki, a clear alcohol which the Greeks said they were familiar with because it was very similar to ouzo. Ethiopian hospitality is rivalled by few cultures that I have experienced and Mersha and his family were incessantly bringing us new things to try, constantly topping up our glasses to the brim. Several hours of this went by in a haze, caffeine mixing with the variety of alcohols we were sampling and causing the evening to drift by in a heady blur. Eventually Mersha directed us all to the local bar, where all the drinks were on him. In this setting Coach Mersha was such a fun-loving guy who was so genial, the only time he got serious was when Matt tried to buy a round of beers and Mersha had to sternly tell Matt to sit down!
The bar was full of men chanting to Ethiopian holiday music, groups rising from their stools when a particularly upbeat section of a song came on and thrusting their shoulders back in the manner of traditional Oromo dance. It was a unique spectacle. Everyone was very curious about the Faranji presence, and loved it when we were up and dancing with them. In one of the quieter moments we were speaking with Mersha and he insisted that this kind of cutting loose was an essential part of being an athlete; important for relaxing, staying in a good headspace and avoiding boredom. Coach was leading by example, boisterously chanting and dancing and making sure our drinks were topped up the whole time.
The most amazing part of the evening was when the power cut out in the bar. At home patrons would be vacating immediately to make their way to the next venue, but here the party only became rowdier. Mersha and another of the older men started leading a chant, people started wooping and whistling and dancing. Such a crazy time.
Eventually people started to trickle out of the bar and move on, we decided to call it a night and jumped in a taxi with Hadgu, back over the range to Sululta. As the car wound up the mountain we got a great view of the hills of Addis lit up in all their nocturnal glory. It has already been quite evident to us that one of the big advantages of training here in Sululta (as opposed to other high-altitude training locations like Iten, Kenya) is the proximity to Addis Ababa (the trip home took only 20 minutes with no traffic) and the range of facilities (malls, international airport etc.) and activities (concerts, nightlife, nice restaurants, cultural events etc.) that are on offer there.
Our Ethiopian Christmas was such a great experience, it was so surreal to spend it with such a preeminent figure in Ethiopian running and be recipients of such generous hospitality. Our stay has just been getting better and better.
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