By: Entina

My immediate family is very sane. We are a wonderful and close group unlike many I see today. My parents were always and still are supportive and affectionate towards each other and to their children. We got along very well growing up and barring few incidents of "yanin lebsesh yitweChi new?" or "ayeee, minew Tsegurishin ednih batanChebaririew", they are actually pretty cool.

My extended family is a whole different dish of CHeCHebsa. I have five Agotoch, three akistoch, three Hati-no and two Akotat. No, those are not new types of yoga, it is actually what they insist on being called.

It would be easier to just say seven uncles and six aunts but we are a special family. See, a long, long time ago, in a land far, far away, two idealistic young people met and married and two families have locked horns ever since.

Much to the disappointment of the families, my parents (gasp!) followed their hearts and forgot to ‘zer masQoTer’ or give which side of an invisible line their ancestors came from (such supreme importance!). They fell in love and got married and have stayed married for 35 years. I guess it didn’t matter as much back then, but now that my siblings and I have become Kilis, any sort of occasion that brings our extended family together has become, hmm, shall we say, more interesting?

To their credit, they are all extremely nice to us kids. They are also nice to our parents. Supposedly, my parents are different. "Ay kematomin" or "ke enesu liyu tSebay" they say. They act nothing like the people my aunts and uncles have so many problems with. Not like THOSE Ethiopians, not like THOSE Eritreans. These two, they are special.

They say it without a hint of irony. Then they sit on opposite sides of the room. A very uncomfortable silence prevails until one group, one by one, moves to another room and my akist says THEY are so hateful, they can’t even stand to be in the same room, meleyet yamrachewal. Next door I see my Ako is saying the exact same thing in a different language. In the meantime, my dad winks at my mom across the room and, for a second, she meshkormerms like a new bride after all these years. It never fails that one of the people in the room witnesses this exchange and smiles to themselves as my mom pretends she didn’t see the wink and calls everyone into the dining room.

Then we all bow our heads to pray to E’gziabher and then sit to pass the injera around the table as everyone discusses with their respective groups how the food makes them homesick.