A group of the "professional" class, takes a weekly walk through the hills of Entoto, as part of a relaxation / exercise regimen. Overheard from one of the kids in the forest picking Craro and tending kebtoc: "Inantema deltuwacihu 'WALK'achihun tbelalachihu!!"

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Ethiopian Airlines employee loses her ID card, and goes to report it as lost to the EAL Security office. Overheard from one of the "officers": "iNa ko awqex indeTalxiw dersenbetal!!"

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A short runt of a kid rides a crowded Anbesa bus. He is reading a thick English book as the crowd sways around him. A "baltEt" asks : "Wiy, yenE lj, lemehonu snteNa kfl neh?"

Kid answers: "AsreNa"

Woman (to kid): "Gobez!!"

Woman (to friend next to her): "Ayyyyi! Ay yelj neger!!"

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Sucking on her lips in an extended "MmmmTssss!?" at the sight of the red-eyed, kossassa, CHebrara young Ethiopian woman huddling against the cold in the Detroit bus-stop, the newly arrived Grandmother wrestled two quarters away from her teenage grandson and dropped them, consolingly, into the cup the young woman was holding with both hands. Imagine Gigi's surprise when, while she was daydreaming about that evening's reggae concert, the plop! plop! of the flying quarters splashed hot Starbucks coffee all over her operating room scrubs.

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He barely acknowledges the woman at her car window, child on one hip, her hand held out. He initially turns up the Arias by Cecelia Bartoli that he'd just received from the States; when that doesn't work, he turns to scowl at her emaciated face and presses the button on the automatic window. Her pleas are smoothly drowned out into blissful silence.

As he starts up his motor, he remembers to turn at the next light to pick up some meat for his dog.

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A progressive father explains, from across the coffee table, to a precocious pre-teen son: "What do you call the female shint meshNa in English?" he quizzes. Son replies, confidently, and raises his bunna siny to his lips. "When a man's shint meshNa goes into the woman's shint MeshNa...", the father goes on to explain... At the same time, a visibly troubled ye bet serateNa sat on a low stool a few away from the father and son. She shifted her gaze from the rekebot to the jebena from the jebena down to the guzguwaz joniyya. The lecture on reproductive cycles drifted on with complete oblivion to the discomforted serateNa. After the 10^th mention of the amharic word for shint meshNa, she blurted, with a blush crossing her Qey dama face, "ere iTan feet yihE aywerram ebakwo!!" With that, she shot out of the stool, and hurried to the kitchen carrying the jebena...

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