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By Charlie Scudder
Report from Fort Worth.
The thick, brown liquid had been fermenting in the jar for 3 days, which meant it was time for Fatean Gojela to prepare it for Orthodox Easter. With her granddaughter Ava by her side, she poured it slowly through a thin mesh bag. .
“Patience, Mom,” he told Ava, showing her how to extract the liquid from a paste-like mixture of grains and herbs.
Gojela, 65, learned how to make suwe, a beer-like drink in the Tigrinya language, from his mother who grew up in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. (Today she lives in Fort Worth, where she works as a housekeeper in hospitals. )
The drink is basically made for special events in Eritrea and Ethiopia, where Amharic speakers call it tella. In the United States, members of the Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora return home for celebrations such as weddings, graduations and baptisms.
Recipes for this thick, cloudy, smoky drink vary by family and tradition, but they all use dark malted barley doughs. Knowledge is passed down from mother to daughter, and Mrs. Gojela now includes her 7-year-old granddaughter; Men are not usually involved in the making of tella.
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