If you are walking down the path in Ethiopia, and you meet a stranger going the opposite direction, you spend at least 15 to 20 minutes in a friendly chat about anything and everything that comes to mind.
If you and your family are putting on a family luncheon, and you have a few friends and relatives over as guests, any stranger who happens to be walking by and sees your get-together, is traditionally automatically welcome to join your festivities and share in your meal.
If all the peoples of the world had this kind of friendly 'greeting' among themselves, the whole world would be a much better place to live in.
That's very interesting. I didn't know Ethiopians are so nice.
I've always found it fascinating how the Japanese greet. I was once traveling by train and and a Japanese woman sat in my compartment. After a while she stood up and started bowing, so I stood up and asked if she needs help with her luggage, thinking that she wanted to leave, but she was just going to the toilet. Every time she wanted to leave the compartment she'd bow to each of us and we didn't know if she'd be back from that journey or not.
In my country it's customary to greet people who you know and the one's you're about to interact with. We usually don't greet strangers, unless we want to ask them something.