Washington Post, June 30, 2008:

Twenty thousand soccer fans are expected in the Washington area this week to watch teams of Ethiopians from the United States and Canada compete. The annual tournament has become one of the largest gatherings of Ethiopians outside their homeland.

This year RFK Stadium is the venue, and hotel rooms throughout the region, including 600 at Prince George's National Harbor, have been booked. Ethiopian-owned businesses have been making last-minute upgrades and hiring extra staff. Several in the District plan extended hours or have gotten temporary liquor licenses. A block party is planned Sunday along Ninth Street NW between U and T, an area that is home to many Ethiopian businesses, one day after the games end.

...

Census figures show that about 31,000 Ethiopian immigrants -- or about one-fifth of all those in the United States -- live in the Washington area, though the Ethiopian Embassy says the local number is much higher.

From the number of Ethiopian restaurants, specialty stores and signs in the metro area, I could easily believe that the number of Ethiopian immigrants is far larger than 31,000. The census is almost 10 years old now, and between increased immigration, births and growth of children and presumed movement here of Ethiopian immigrants from other parts of the country, I could easily believe the number is 4-5 times the census number. It seems that every other coffee shop employee I encounter is likely Ethiopian by their names, and there are Ethiopian shops seemingly everywhere. Downtown Silver Spring, Takoma DC side, Takoma Maryland side, Adams Morgan, U Street, the 9th Street little "Addis Ababa" and elsewhere one can find signs written in the unmistakable Amharic/Ge'ez script.

This blog has posted about Ethiopian culture before and will continue to do so. I am looking forward to visiting an Ethiopian restaurant, ideally one on Wednesday or Friday when vegetarian meals are more stressed due to the dietary laws and fasting rules of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, to which about 2/3 of Ethiopians belong. No disrespect intended, but I may not be a fan of "kitfo," which is raw beef served at the end of some meals as a sort of dessert (most Westerners do not take to it, from what I have read.)

I don't know why Ethiopia fascinates me. Maybe it's because it has successfully maintained its own very distinct culture despite an unbelievable onslaught of challenges this past 100 years: invasion, occupation, coup d'etat, communism, mass murder, famine, war with its neighbor/former province Eritrea. It maintains its own calendar (7 years off of the Gregorian calendar), its own idiosyncratic time zone (where the day starts at "midnight" around sun-up), its own distinct religious practices and traditions, its own writing system despite pressure to adopt both the Roman alphabet and the Arabic script of its Muslim minority and neighbors.

I hope I can find a way to travel to Addis Ababa someday, to visit the monolith churches of Lalibela, to see and hear the music of that country and to taste (a vegetarian-leaning subset of) Ethiopian cuisine. There is enough cultural wealth, if not cash wealth, in the country to justify a tourist trade similar to that of Eqypt.