House Sharing: Frugal Ethiopians

We are in the portion of our journey where we moved out of our residential hotel room (another story, another post) and have been house sharing for a couple of weeks. In other words, as they move out, we are moving in. They are our family friends and recent immigrants from Ethiopia. The experience has been enlightening on layers of levels; however I wanted to focus on one aspect of it for this post.

Frugal living for us is LIFE for most of the rest of world.

Sometimes it feels foolish, America's recent 'discovery' or 'revisiting'of simple living and frugality. I guess we were riding the 'World's #1 Superpower' Express which just ran out of gas. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has been moving along with life as usual; struggling it out day to day. Are there advantages to wealth? Sure, so long as its sustainable. Loss of vital knowledge is another level of poverty and I'm feeling particularly keen to regain it.

Through observation, what they've shown me is that living on less is a system of values that is also cultural. Some examples of which are:

* they dress simply and feel no need to keep up with the latest fashions
* they eat simply, do not buy packaged foods, cook rice, pasta, a large variety of simple tastey vegetables, lentils and the occasional meat. meal times are eaten together, often a platter of injera bread and always with a simple salad. They do not snack a lot and if so, it's usually fruit. They do not enjoy eating out at restaurants.

* they drink simply, coffee and water are the basics, although there are the occasional sodas.

* they live simply, while they do have cable tv and cell phones, most of their entertainment revolves around spending time with each other (even if watching a tv show), lots of chatting, visiting other friends, eating homecooked meals with friends, and lots of time at church.

That's it. That's life and they are very happy, very kind, very decent people. No debt. No interesting in living beyond their means. My kind of folks.