Amazingly,the Getus live only two hours by car from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's Westernized capital. No running water, no plumbing, no gas, no electricity--the only hints of urbanization are the high-voltage lines that run through the valley behind the family's homestead on their way from a hydroelectric project to Addis.
Everyone in the family, immediate and extended, was wonderfully generous to me despite their economic hardship. At least three times a day, my guide and I were called into one of the manure-plastered homes for rounds of sweetened or salted coffee and fried grain. Nor was their generosity solely limited to foreigners. One night while I was having grain and coffee with Getu and Zenebu we heard a call from the darkness. A lone traveler had failed to reach his destination by nightfall and was seeking a place to sleep. Getu welcomed the "sunset guest," as they are called in Ethiopia, and the family shared its coffee, grain, and firelight.
It was slack season during my stay with the Getus, so the men did little work in the fields, except for Shamalis, the orphaned relative living in the brother's cook house, who tended each family's animals. The women do not have a slack season, though. They kept fetching water, cooking meals, cleaning the corrals, fashioning dung into patties used as fuel--all the while eating after the men, drinking their coffee after the men, and so on. When my cup ran dry of coffee or tea, the men would call for a woman to refill it, even when the pot was directly in front of them.
Nonetheless, what surprised me most during my stay was Getu's message for the world. This man, who sometimes goes hungry, passionately wished for peace to spread throughout his war-torn country and the world. From the remote highlands of a struggling nation where one would assume people to be focused only on their own very pressing concerns, Getu told me that only peace everywhere would enable everyone everywhere to share in life's bounty.
