Contentment

It's a crisp Saturday night in Addis Ababa, I'm sitting across from my *Habesha in Avanti, a plush Italian restaurant near Bole Bridge, sipping on red wine and having just ordered dessert.  My tummy feels contentedness and my heart bursting at it's seams.

I look deep into my Habesha's beautiful big brown eyes, feeling stupidly happy and wonder-FULL and spontaneously blurt out for the first time in my 31 years of life "I feel content". 

My Habesha (Ethiopian)

Alongside the fact I was living in Ethiopia, a country that I love, I was lucky enough to keep up my passion of dance through - teaching Zumba, breakdancing (b-girling) and writing monthly dance articles for an Ethiopian magazine.  I had acquired my own humble abode in a quaint one-bedroom guesthouse adjoined to an Ethiopian family's house in their tiny compound in Gerji Subcity - a family I thoroughly enjoyed the company of and with whom I enjoyed the simplicities of everyday Ethiopian life such as drinking *buna 2-3 times daily, practising my amharic and even Eskista dancing! Also giving me immense pleasure was riding the blue public taxi-vans around Addis, meeting like-minded people everyday in beautiful serotonin-giving sunshine-filled days.  

I was not making near enough money in my Zumba work to make ends meet yet my heart and soul felt a deep profound peace I had never experienced before.  






Ethiopia has So. Much. Beauty.

I feel extremely blessed and fortunate to have found my spiritual home in Ethiopia and cultured a life that feeds my soul and nurtures my spirit.  

I wait in hungry anticipation of returning next year in 2016 to resume my Ethiopian journey.

What feeds your soul?   

*Habesha = the name given to Ethiopian locals in Amharic (the national Ethiopian language)
*buna = coffee in amharic