The Edible Gardens of Ethiopia: An Ethnographic Journey into Beauty and Hunger 0816541159, 9780816541157

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The Edible Gardens of Ethiopia

b i o d i v e r s i t y

i n

Virginia D. Nazarea, Series Editor

s m a l l

s p a c e s

VA L E N T I NA P E V E R I

An Ethnographic Journey into Beauty and Hunger

The Edible Gardens of Ethiopia

The University of Arizona Press www.uapress.arizona.edu

© 2020 by The Arizona Board of Regents All rights reserved. Published 2020

ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-4115-7 (paper) Cover design by Leigh McDonald Cover photos by Valentina Peveri

Typeset by Leigh McDonald in Adobe Caslon Pro 10/14 and Aldus LT (display) The writing of this book was entirely supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation [Hunt Postdoctoral

Fellowship, Grant Number 9503]. Publication was made possible by the financial support of The American University of Rome (AUR).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Peveri, Valentina, 1978– author.

Title: The edible gardens of Ethiopia : an ethnographic journey into beauty and hunger / Valentina Peveri.

Description: Tucson : University of Arizona Press, 2020. | Series: Biodiversity in small spaces | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020015445 | ISBN 9780816541157 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Ensete—Ethiopia. | Hadiya (African people)—Ethnobotany—Ethiopia. | Kitchen gardens—Ethiopia.

Classification: LCC SB317.E58 P48 2020 | DDC 635.0963—dc23 LC record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov/​2020015445 Printed in the United States of America

♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Grazie (Acknowledgments) Prologue. Plotting the Ensete Garden

vii ix 3

PA RT I . T H E P O L I T I C S O F P L A N T S

1.

The Riddle of Beauty: Aesthetics in Agriculture

19

2.

Seeds of Empire and Unruly Creatures

40

PA RT I I . V E G E TA L L OV E

3.

The Secret Life of a Root Tuber Crop

63

4.

Gendered Communities

88

5.

Deep Roots

116

PA RT I I I . A P P E T I T E A N D AV E R S I O N

6.

Shape-Shifting Cuisine: A Trickster in the Kitchen

139

7.

The Hungry Plate

170

Epilogue. Abundant Futures: A Perennial Plant’s Eye View

197

VI

Hadiyya Glossary Notes References Index

CONTEN TS

213 219 235 247

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 1. Typical Hadiyya house featuring a large and welcoming front yard 21 2. Gravestone 27 3. Herbs and medicinal plants collected in one of the home gardens 37 4. Woman potter at the local market 38 5. Ensete-­based meal 44 6. Illustration of Musa Ensete 62 7. Artisan women at a local exhibition 71 8. Polycultural garden 75 9. Waasa sold in the local market 80 10. Harvest time 96 11. Ensete pit 98 12. Breastfeeding in the ensete garden 100 13. Scraping of ensete leaves 101 14. Ensete working party 102 15. Enjam buuro147 16. Newborn calf 148 17. Partition of an ox 150 18. Naakk’aro’o152 19. Hadiyya taste chart 174

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I L L USTR ATI ONS

20. Chart at the end of the journey into the ensete garden 21. Adanech braiding grass

199 211

Map 1.

Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Regional State showing administrative zones and special woredas (districts)

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GRAZIE (Acknowledgments)

T

chapters of this book took shape during a summer season spent in a Boston neighborhood, only a short walk from the Arnold Arboretum. Every morning before reaching the library at the Boston University African Studies Center, soon after dawn, I would go for a run through the woods. On July 14, 2018, I took a steep rocky path off the beaten track, trudged up to the top, and heard the sound of rapid movement coming from behind a pile of stone and wood. I rested, breathless. A majestic deer stepped forward, also bewildered, and simply stood. We stared at each other for what seemed to me like an eternity. The spell broke when I decided to run away, tripped, and fell to the ground. When I turned back he or she had vanished. Only later during the writing process did I realize what the details of our wordless communication had actually meant; but I knew that the deer was my Gemini spirit animal, and therefore immediately felt that he or she was another me—or me looking into the abyss of my Self. I developed most of the confidence in my authorial voice after this encounter, and I could more clearly see what the essential, still nameless, message of this book should be. The spirit animal has since incarnated and manifested itself in more human forms. I am deeply grateful to James C. McCann, who has watched over this project long before anyone could think of it as having the potential to become a book. He has nurtured my imagination and devoted hours on end to reading and commenting on the draft chapters; but especially, he has provided an H E CORE

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immersive flux of storytelling around emerging ideas that stretched my imagination even further, down into the abyss and back to the written page—always encouraging me to “think like an octopus.” Grazie, Professore, for all those adventurous detours. Nothing of what is written in these pages would be the same had it not been for the immense love of language, words, detail, and philosophy of my friend and guardian angel Rob Edwards, who generously handed to me the practical tools to speak the nameless message of the book in English, and then escorted me every step of the way into the underground of Wonderland—into the painful magic of crafting ideas through words (and the other way round). Funding was critical to the development of this project. The seed of it was planted during a research stay at the African Studies Center of Boston University in 2015–16, which received support from the U.S.-Italy Fulbright Commission. I have fond memories of my time spent at the African Studies Library and of the technical and human support from its staff members—Beth Restrick, Gabeyehu (Gabe) Adugna, and Rachel Dwyer. Afterward, the project was boosted by a Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship, which the Wenner-Gren Foundation awarded me in fall 2017. In particular, I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers who urged me in the infancy of the project to experiment energetically with turning the successful proposal into a book, and to cling to an intimate and evocative approach to the subject matter. Finally, I would like to thank The American University of Rome (AUR), which contributed financial support for the publication. Specifically, I want to say mille grazie to the Director of the Master in Food Studies, Maria Grazia Quieti, who first of all offered me kindness and moreover a safe, yet critical and challenging, space to think and thrive at a time when I felt I did not belong anymore. I owe great debts to the University of Arizona Press. My wholehearted thanks go to Allyson Carter and Virginia Nazarea for their unbridled enthusiasm in embracing this project from its inception and for all their sterling work in the metamorphosis from manuscript to book. Over the years, the work of Virginia has profoundly inspired my growth path as an anthropologist. However, only recently have I come to appreciate the wider intersubjective pattern behind her articles and books—her vision of building connections that ramify beyond strictly academic boundaries, through a collaborative model that indeed makes “community” in diverse, empathic, and affective ways. I am grateful and honored to be now a part of the expanding synergies she has set in motion aimed at being and creating together.

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The Boston neighborhood from where I would depart for interspecies adventures in the woods is Roslindale. The house of Jennifer Rugg became home to me. Around her vegetable garden and kitchen counter (and to a lesser degree the chicken coop) a flow of comfort food and time, summer drinks or winter cakes, and (almost entirely feminine) forms of co-being and co-creation have flourished and were fed daily into the writing process. At the heart of Jennifer’s community I found another Jennifer (Moller) whose life and art has since inspired ceaseless reflections on natural interconnectedness, beauty, and hope at the edge of extinction. Other friends, who are indeed family, have accompanied me along the path and helped me to look into the intricacies of vegetal love (in writing) and the abyss of human love (in the vagaries of life). Like me, this book has mushroomed in deadly spaces, resisted, and is reborn at last as a celebration of the senses. Like the farmers I worked with, now more than ever I know that an idea of beauty that excludes the possibility of suffering and vulnerability is a very thin one. The friends who facilitated my awakening and the completion of the book are Paola Pettenati, Federica Bianchi, Luca Menta, Mariasanta Villa, Gianni Ferrari, Giovanna Capponi, Noemi Perrotta, Sara Cuzzolin, and Duccio Gasparri. To all of them, un grazie di cuore. And to B.—for Big Trouble, fight, pandemic love, bella ciao, and blah blah blah. The female and male farmers of robust constitution who opened to me the doors of their homes, gardens, and vast untapped knowledge deserve far more than acknowledgment, which is sadly all I have available at this point. With them I laughed, cried, laid on matresses and blankets to talk, and shared meals. With them I hope to be able in the near future to read and discuss parts of the book, and plan for other stories to be co-written. The Edible Gardens of Ethiopia is dedicated to my beloved parents, Clara and Flavio, and to my grandmother Palmira. Even if probably they did not wish to, they have greatly contributed to making me into what Prof. McCann once labeled as “a country girl.” Grazie, mamma e papà. Ciao, nonna.

The Edible Gardens of Ethiopia

PROLOGUE

Plotting the Ensete Garden For one thing it would take a long while: my name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time saying anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to. — J . R . R . TO L K I E N , T H E T WO TOW E R S

Dramatis Personae

I

book were a fairy tale, we could look at its structure by following the character theory of Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp. The simplest narrative elements would be a plant called ensete, a people (and a place) called Hadiyya, and myself the anthropologist. The hero is the plant. The narrative will unfold through the interconnected biographies of these characters. F THIS

T H E

P L A N T

Imagine a banana tree, tall and evergreen, with red midribs, whose fruit is inedible. In reality, what you are visualizing is not a tree, because it has no trunk, so it would be better to consider it a herb. Despite the close resemblance, what you have imagined is not even a banana tree, but a relative of it within the Musa family.

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Commonly known as Ethiopian banana, or false banana, ensete [Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman] is a large perennial plant made of tightly overlapping layers that open up in majestic paddle-shaped leaves. The Latin epithet ventricosum in its scientific name derives from ventriculus, meaning “belly.” The belly on which the plant sits, at its growing point with an extension underground, contains the bulk of the starchy substance that people transform into food through labor, skills, and the art of fermentation. A green, vegetal belly to fill the human belly is an image of communicating vessels that will be useful, as the story unfolds, to flesh out the idea of the plant as having human traits and of the humans caring for it as resembling the plant. The cultivation of ensete in Ethiopia is reported to be ten thousand years old (Ehret 1979, 175). Yet ensete is not widely known as a food plant outside of its country of origin. Ignorance or neglect of this plant, however, is also and very much a phenomenon internal to the country. This invisibility, at both international and national levels, clashes with the evidence that eighteen to twenty million people, 20 percent of the total population of the country, depend on this plant either as a staple food or as an emergency crop in case of famine. These populations have never starved, even during the tragic droughts of the 1970s and 1980s (Negash and Niehof 2004). This virtuous plant could easily function as an entry point into the debate on food security and food sovereignty. I could have focused on its humanitarian role, especially if we consider how people born after 1984 still today are prone to associate Ethiopia with famine, emaciated and crying children, mothers with shrunken breasts, and (usually white) aid workers. Because of its low profile yet high socioeconomic value, I could have chosen to make ensete play the role of the antagonist—only one of thousands scattered across the globe—of an agriculture of scale, one that is export driven and chemically intensive. More specifically, I could have presented it as a rival character of another botanical character, maize, which is rather cherished by technocrats and national institutions. Had I chosen to privilege this key to analysis, ensete would have led the narrative to incorporate the familiar critiques of the pitfalls of agricultural development, of monocropping, and of commodity production. But I decided to address this line of analysis obliquely, by translating, chapter after chapter, the Ethiopian farmers’ vision of agriculture and sustainability. Another potentially rich ramification lies in the use of a political-ecology framework. With an emphasis on the politics of plants and the politics of food, ensete takes on the nuance of a plant of resistance, through which local farmers

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voice their claims for social inclusion and representation in the national picture. A political story of ensete, with the plant seen as a site for small rituals of resistance and minor acts of opposition to external forces, either national, international, or corporate, should be embedded into a fine analysis of power relations. In that kind of story local farmers would be heard expressing their anxiety over agrarian change, the degraded environment, and shrinking biodiversity brought about by the one-directional search for productivity and yield. But farmers also smile while struggling to resist; and they eat—however meager an outsider would consider that meal—even when food stocks are dwindling. All these threads—abundance and scarcity, joy and anguish, and the decadence of a once-beautiful landscape—are woven into the narrative of the book. However, none of them, alone, fully represents its true genesis and scope. The raison d’être of this book is ensete and my rendering of it as a fullyfledged ethnographic subject. Plants are ideal ethnographic subjects insofar as there is no life form that translates the sense of what is local in all of its physical nuances better than a plant does. In light of the French principle of terroir, according to which it is a combination of biophysical and cultural elements that produce place-based tastes and flavors, we would concede that plants and any other living being should look and taste precisely like the environment in which they are found. Through the colors and vibrancy of plants, we may have a feeling of the particular kind of air, light, water, and soil they filter, refract, absorb, and then release back into the environment. Plants also involve sociality, an aspect to which a major part of this book will be devoted. In the setting of a rural, farmed landscape like the one I will shortly walk the reader through, nature is by no means mute or passive. It is rather a partner, willing or unwilling, cooperative or demanding, in the co-production of a skillfully crafted environment. Given that it is usually the point of view of humans that is portrayed in the books written by humans themselves, in this narrative I will take particular care to foreshadow, to the best of my ability, the standpoint of the plant. This book aims at drawing a portrait rather than a still life of ensete and of its human companions. The angle through which I look at the landscape and foodscape of ensete owes greatly to the topic of plant intelligence as it has been addressed in scholarly writing and news publications in recent years. With increasing regularity analogies are being drawn between human brains and plant roots. Several authors are promulgating the idea that plants communicate and interact with one another, and with other kinds of beings, in sophisticated and unexpected ways (Dodinet 2016; Mancuso and Viola 2015; Pollan 2001). According to this

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perspective, human and nonhuman beings co-produce niches marked by relatedness, exchange, and signification. In this book I will not venture into the emerging field of plant neurobiology, but I ask the reader to keep this theoretical turn in mind while I describe how certain types of plants can be powerful subjects exhibiting the ability to influence human society in profound ways. Equally, I have learned much from the rising articulation in social sciences of a “multispecies perspective.”1 The phrase has been used to overthrow the anthropocentric ignorance about nature in an attempt to replace it with an understanding of home, family, species, ecosystem, and cosmology in the alternative terms of cohabitation and symbiosis (Haraway 2015; Kirksey and Helmreich 2010). The multispecies movement undertakes to deconstruct the basic utilitarian relationship that humans have entertained with nonhuman species. Instead of humans being placed like monarchs at the top of the hierarchy, what a multispecies sensitivity suggests is the recognition of the multiplicity of beings—all of them having life, rights, voice, even emotions, and perhaps consciousness. Nonhumans should be granted an extension of democracy. This is especially true for the realm of herbality, which philosophers have historically relegated to the sidelines of the cognitive field when comparing it to animality. We still live in an anthropocentric, and to a lesser degree zoocentric, world. Are we capable and willing to touch a plant and listen to it with respect and affect, in search of connection and empathy? Can we think of a vegetal or mineral substance with care? Have we ever seriously considered if a plant does or does not suffer? In reality, a completely refurbished vocabulary would be needed should we want to foster a phenomenological dialogue with forests, animals, insects, pollinators, fungi, bacteria, and other (equally cultured) subjects that have traditionally been framed as humble and emotionless objects of our human observation and action. Although I remain captured by this seductive literature on the possible forms of dialogue between species, I hesitate to define this book, as it was originally conceived, as being an experiment in plant ethnography.2 In the end, I could not clarify to myself what this kind of ethnography should look like. Plants do communicate; but can they speak in any way that is comprehensible to humans? What form could interviewing a plant take? How could we achieve the goal of representing the plant’s perspective without the medium of voice and language? Do flowers speak? Is there a language for flowers? And for ensete? In the words of A. Tsing, “We only know more-than-human socialities through human knowledge practices, including practices of living. We identify other species’ ways of life through working engagements, through thought projects,

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and through their inclusion in our technology-enhanced experimental designs. The practical arrangements through which we know them shape what other species are to us. We’ll never have the chance to become plants. That is, indeed, a limitation” (2013, 34). As I could not solve these dilemmas, I have determined to draw liberally on some of this inspiring vocabulary in order to let ensete take shape and move across the chapters as a fully cultural subject—one that feels; breathes; sends out coded messages; has individual appearance, sensibility, charisma, and taste; stands straight; grows; cries; and dies. I will overcome my weakness in creating a more equal ethnographic encounter by offering a detailed, perceptual rendering of ensete, which is in turn the result of a personal, long meditation on its form of life. By accounting for this intelligent plant I have not arrived at a new topic. There is a notable anthropological precedent, as lost and forgotten as the subject it describes: the social and cultural history of ensete written by W. A. Shack and his wife in the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, articles are written, and perhaps books will be written, on ensete cultures for what they can say and offer to inform agricultural policies for sustainable development or to find solutions to environmental damage. Although I have absorbed insights from both visions, here I propose a slightly different perspective. T H A T

P L A C E

B E H I N D

T H E

H O U S E

In the language of the people who cooperated with me in the field, the root word for “collecting for oneself ” is feer-; the term for “buttock,” feero, comes from the same root. This apparently awkward connection discloses its full meaning if we consider a third term, feero’o, which indicates the buttocks of the house, or “the place behind the house.” The language seems to hint that the back of the house is a place of subsistence for the family, one where people collect things for themselves. What could a person find by walking to the back of a house in southwestern Ethiopia? Is there something valuable that people collect? Who collects? For whom? The answer to the first question, in Hadiyya, is duubbo (garden). A plant of which some parts are edible is called duubaana. Gardens do not contain flowers and ornamental plants, but edible plants. Although edible, these gardens are equally valued for their aesthetic qualities. It is women who collect from edible gardens, mostly for the well-being, physical and spiritual nourishment, and culinary enjoyment of their families. The micro world of ensete thus signifies an exercise in reading through the gendered plots of agriculture.

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If I use a political-ecology approach, it is mainly to grasp the political, ecological, and economic complexity of a “simple” edible garden—the kind that can still be found in traditional and small-scale farming, small places on a human and plant scale, where the sense of things is more familiar and less alien than, say, in homogenous landscapes or large-scale farms. Although I remain aware that the case I discuss can be considered relatively minor compared to other agricultural activities or, in general, to other scales of analysis, I do not hesitate in staking my claim to return to gardens, to a sector that someone may be inclined, mistakenly, to label as “traditional.” In my long and intensive exposure to this ensete culture I have slowly realized that ensete fosters an alimentary experience laden with geopolitical power. This has in turn triggered a reflection upon what messages plants—different in nature, history, and personality—can teach about the intricate context of agri-cultural politics in Ethiopia. My hope is that this narrative will be of inspiration for the sociopolitical analysis of people and plants at large. T H E

P E O P L E

Three plants have characterized the diverse Ethiopian landscape: t’eff [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] in the northern highlands; ensete in the South; and the dyad corn/sorghum in the eastern and western areas (Rahmato 1995, 23; Westphal 1975). Growing different plants always means, somehow, to cultivate different forms of humanity. The place where I observed the communities of ensete and people is Hadiyyaland, part of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR), about one hundred miles southwest of Addis Ababa. The region is inhabited by more than eighty ethnic groups and is overwhelmingly rural. The Hadiyya zone lies within an altitude range of 1,900 to 2,700 meters above sea level. According to the National Population and Housing Census conducted in 2007, these areas record mean annual rainfall of 900–1400 millimeters and temperatures between 13 °C and 23 °C. The rainfall distribution is bimodal, with the major rainy season between May and the end of September and a short rainy season from January to April. More than 90 percent of the Hadiyya population depends on agriculture for subsistence. The Hadiyya relationship with ensete is not unique. The ensete cultures in southwestern Ethiopia constitute a constellation made of various regional types, with each people and place in turn characterized by a certain degree of

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Map of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Regional State (SNNPRS) showing administrative zones and special woredas (districts). Source: http://www.ethiodemographyandhealth.org/SNNPR.html.

MAP 1.

distinctiveness in their approach to the cultivation, care, and transformation of the plant into food products. The purpose and setting of ensete may slightly vary—in terms of age, height and density, or mixture of other plants and species living in the same environment, and with flexible patterns in the ways in which people develop farming knowledge and invest in biodiversity. However, the similarities found within the ensete belt weave and diffuse local differences into a palpable family resemblance. The Hadiyya have always been a heterogeneous group both linguistically and culturally because of their past marked by movement, exchange, intermarriage, mixing and borrowing, assimilation and turbulence. From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries they were a significant political entity. When their territory was shattered, mainly by the Oromo expansion, the Hadiyya started moving westward, often practicing a pastoral lifestyle. The subgroups of Leemo and Sooro, which were fierce rivals in the struggle for land, settled in their present

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areas mainly around 1780–1815. The Hadiyya learned how to cultivate ensete from neighbors in the areas where they progressively settled. The territory of those neighbors was known to be a place where people could survive, due to ensete cultivation, in times of need. Around 1870 the Christian kingdom of Shoa started to expand its territory southward. At that time the Hadiyya people were Muslim. When King Menelik II became emperor in 1889, the pressure on the southern states of Ethiopia escalated into occupation. Between 1889 and 1893 the Hadiyya groups of Leemo, Shaashoogo, and Sooro were defeated. The period up to the Italian invasion of 1935 was characterized by a consolidation of Amhara rule in the region, which was nonetheless mainly challenged by the opposition from the Hadiyya (Braukämper 1984, 2002, 2012). The wars with, and pressure from, the Christian North, the expansion of the Oromo people, and various clashes with other ethnic groups have pushed the Hadiyya people to make themselves at home in the small territory they now inhabit. Hadiyya, along with Gurage, Kambata, and Sidama, is one of the densely populated farming areas in the middle of southern Ethiopia. The National Population and Housing Census, which began in 2017 and was subsequently postponed, provisionally estimated the Hadiyya population at 1,478,880. With an area of about 3,593 square kilometers, Hadiyya has a population density of about 411 people per square kilometer. At times, this demographic pressure led people to seek employment elsewhere—for example, in the sugarcane plantations in the Awash valley. Over time, cattle breeding decreased in favor of cultivation of land. In Hadiyya a community—defined as a small group living and interacting side by side in a specific locality and sharing a morally significant history—is usually made of clans (sulla), which are divided into lineages (moollo) and sublineages or houses (mine). Each of them is overseen by its respective head (daannuwwa). The farmers generally live in village communities. Although I will embrace the long-term trajectory of Hadiyya and touch upon their diverse seasons of life, my interest in them here is primarily in the modes in which they have come to inhabit the land. Agricultural landscapes can be read as the result not of human intrusion upon nature but rather of a dialectical relationship—at times conflicting, at times harmonious—between human and other-than-human players. Working with the land involves control but also connection through cultivation. The most relevant point of this exploration into the Hadiyya landscape is that it will show how certain forms of agriculture contain an appreciation of aspects beyond productivity and profitability; namely, they contain an aesthetic and ethical vision of the land, crops, community, and

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society at large. I imaginatively position myself in the recent tradition of philosophers, geographers, landscape researchers, and artists who are fostering a rich and critical understanding of aesthetics “to include visual and surface qualities but to reach significantly beyond them to bodily and sensuous experience, imagination, emotion and knowledge” (Brady 2006, 2). This positioning will distance my narrative from the common concept of the aesthetic as being distinct from the functional or utilitarian. The Hadiyya farmers encounter their landscape by immersing themselves in it—hands, feet, and mouths—through both calculation and affection. W H E R E

T H E

P L A N T

T H E

H O M E

A N D

P E O P L E

M E E T :

G A R D E N

The people inhabiting the Hadiyya zone call themselves hadíjji manna. In the local language (belonging to the Cushitic cluster) manna means “men,” lommanna identifies “the elders,” while meento refers to “women.” Apparently, Hadiyya is no country for women. Language can be misleading, though. In my investigation of the Hadiyya case, I will use a close-up lens to capture a complex corner of the agri-cultural landscape: the home garden. Here is where ensete sits. Home gardens are so small, inconspicuous, and characterized by mixture and ambiguity that they have, in fact, frequently eluded the attention of foreign-born or foreign-trained researchers and development planners. The home garden is also where we will see and get closer, even intimate, to those Hadiyya women who are concealed in the definition of the Hadiyya people— hadíjji manna, a congregation of great men. The case of Hadiyya home gardens as being pervaded by a particular feminine touch is not an isolated one. On a global scale, the relation between women and plants seems to have originally thrived in home gardens. Home gardening is the use of an area around the residence where various herbs, fruits, and vegetables can be grown year-round for household consumption together with some livestock. Garden layouts vary throughout geographical locations and cultural settings, with patterns distinguished by unique constellations of plant species. What can nevertheless be considered as a constant is that cultivated areas located “inside” or on the edge of settlements are perceived as intimately belonging to the homestead, while cultivated areas located “outside” the homestead are defined as fields. The outside is the place where men are publicly expected to be seen and to perform, while inside spaces are commonly

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perceived as the domain and outlet for women’s creativity (Henshall Momsen 2007, 154). Comparative studies have shown that home gardens average between 0.1 and 0.5 hectares (Veteto and Skarbø 2009, 77). In many cultural contexts homestead production fits with women’s livelihood strategies as it requires very little land and cash, and women can flexibly allocate time to the garden without necessarily moving beyond the homestead (Howard 2006, 179). Development scholars, ethnobotanists, and ecologists have identified home gardens as important sites for the maintenance of plant biodiversity and alternately as “repositories,” “sanctuaries,” or even “medicine cabinets” (Howard 2006, 167). Home gardens have been praised for preserving both biodiversity and agricultural wisdom, with women elevated to the role of custodians of the world’s genetic resources and champions in fostering sustainable forms of living and farming (Howard 2003b, 7–8). My approach embraces these threads but also aims at remaining true to the vivid experience of the textures, smells, sounds, and colors of the ensete garden. Through ethnographic practice my eye has been trained to look at the ensete garden as an organic work of art whose beauty I could experience up close and intimately, and which I will therefore try to render through a multisensorial language. The ensete garden is also a micro space wherein, concomitantly, agricultural work is done in cooperation and communion: an environment alive with activity—between humans and between species. This book is dedicated to “the aesthetics of the everyday” (Cooper 2015), and especially to the aesthetics entangled in food and gardening. Beauty in itself and for the deeply social meanings it discloses will not be a mere subtheme in my story. Undramatic as it may seem, the real subject of this book is the simple beauty and ecological vitality of an ensete garden. T H E

E T H N O G R A P H E R

Evidence contained in this book is based on ethnographic fieldwork in the southern region of Ethiopia. Since 2004 I have been conducting research in the Hadiyya zone, paying annual visits of several months each year up until March 2015. During those months I have tried hard to learn the fundamentals of the Hadiyya language, but in the meantime the intensive fieldwork had to be carried out with the help of young, educated Hadiyya women acting as interpreters from the Hadiyya or Amharic languages to English. The work has required daily presence in the field for long periods, as well as interviews with

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representatives of community elders, municipal administrators, development agents, and district agricultural officials. However, the greater bulk of this book is mainly dedicated to oral accounts, by Hadiyya farmers, of the agricultural practices associated with ensete. With them I spent the most time, and it was my observations on their lives that I recorded in greater depth. Over the years I have run across or deliberately looked for other actors to be brought into, and to enrich, my ethnographic picture well beyond village homes and gardens. Those actors were students whom I met at cafes, street corners, or restaurants; government workers; agricultural extension officers; and professors and research assistants at Addis Ababa University. I will make sympathetic use of these diverging views; however, the bias of this book cannot help but deliberately rest upon the obliterated and rarely recorded voices of peripheral farmers (both male and female, including members of older as well as of succeeding generations), rather than middle- and upper-class subjects.3 I will give priority to the empirical data I have co-produced with Hadiyya farmers because it is through the specific case study of ensete as experienced in Hadiyya that I have started reflecting upon the broader role of ethnographic methods in agricultural research and environmental policy. Critical agrarian studies—in the tradition of P. Richards (1985), J. C. Scott (1998), and J. D. van der Ploeg (2009)—have repeatedly urged anthropologists to put culture back into the environment and to cultivate a taste for practice-oriented approaches. It has also been argued that researchers interested in environmental and food anthropology should ground their work on observation and experimentation, working closely with farmers and learning from them through a labor of love and curiosity (Uphoff 2012, 265). What I have learned from the ethnography I conducted in Hadiyya, and which I will now offer to the reader in a polished form, is due to months of cohabitation and has arisen from sharing everyday activities with female and male farmers. I have relied on techniques such as participant and floating observation and informal and open interviews. But most of the best insights collected were obtained through participating in kitchen-table talk or overhearing gossip or looking at forms of micro interaction; working with women on their daily household chores and agricultural activities, including work in their ensete home gardens; supplemented by conversations with husbands and male kin in an attempt to balance women-only samples. I also actively employed what elsewhere would be called “wasted time,” but not in anthropology: walking around or visiting people without direct purpose, as well as attending seemingly

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endless coffee times or ensete processing sessions. The results of a two-hour interview with a woman are different from those of daily chats while being a woman yourself and living in her house for several months (see Pfeiffer and Butz 2005, 259). I benefited from, and am still deeply grateful for, having had a chance to listen to these women’s narratives over an extended period, constantly reflecting on recursive patterns and plots, inconsistencies, and fabrications. Reciprocity dominated my relationship with Hadiyya women, with an intimacy that encouraged private revelations from them relating to their material and spiritual experience of being. I considered emotions and bodily language as an integral part of the research experience. That most of the information is filtered through my own emotions, reactions, and overall personal journey should not be interpreted as an extravagant whim or an attempt at shaping some sort of autoethnographic account. On the contrary, it is a critical stance that places itself in the wake of scholarship that has intentionally pursued sensory and experiential approaches to the anthropological artisanal work. Much inspiration, since the years of my Ph.D. research, has been drawn from the theoretical framework, methodology (in between “positivism and poetry”), and experimental writing of V. D. Nazarea (2005; 2006). Ethnography cannot help but be an “interested” practice made of a concretion of actions that cause labor of the mind as well as of the body itself: encountering the bodies of collaborators at work in the field, sharing with them time and space, and discovery through testing and tasting. Moments of despair and euphoria both contribute to shape the kind and depth of data the ethnographer is able and willing to collect and afterward to reveal during formal talks or on the written page. “The anthropologist,” V. Nazarea warns detached observers, “is always telling a story [ . . . ]—making sense of other people’s realities and visions, and, in the process, shedding light on one’s own” (2014, 7). This tradition, born in ethnoecology and biodiversity studies, has in turn pollinated new (transnational and diasporic) spaces and subjects at the hands of scholars who feel no shame in indulging in narratives full of verse, hope, personal and collective memories, and nostalgia. This is the case with the affectively intense prose of M. Anastario (2019, 54–69), who discusses mnemonic practices packed in parcels—heavy with pain, loss, return, and comfort—delivered by couriers to rural Salvadoran migrants in the United States. Not coincidentally, the most intense (verbal and bodily) reactions are triggered in these displaced rural people by bites of traditional food and the recall of gardening for subsistence.

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I had the privilege of being nurtured by my host families from the very beginning with the main products of the ensete plant. The concept (and methodology) of culinary intimacy was a deliberate choice for a grounded, not grand, theory. Eating is one of the basic things that anthropologists do in the field and one of the major ways of interacting with their hosts. The more and deeper I acquired a taste for ensete, for raw milk, and for local porridges, the faster this learning-through-eating gained me a high level of trust in the local community. It was through commensality—eating at the same table, from the same plate, and especially the same food—that I could open a window into the agrarian and spiritual world of this village community. Based on the visceral experiences I had in the field, both joyful and painful, my anthropological quest will accordingly and deliberately linger over taste, the farmers’ search for beauty and happiness, and the nature of their interactions with the environment—characteristics that rank high in local value systems and are connected in complex ways to the well-being of people, but are neglected dimensions in scholarly research and in project interventions. This narrative begins with an immersion into the multisensorial world of the small farming community in which I have worked and lived, accompanied by a discussion of how and why (edible) plants may come to be considered as an aesthetic experience in and of itself (chapter 1). What place the ensete form of gardening (and indeed way of life) has in the Ethiopian mosaic of landscapes and within the national food system is discussed in historical perspective in chapter 2, where the ensete-cultivating Hadiyya emerge as an example of politics from below and as a stance of indigenous resilience. A full portrait of the plant, and how the plant itself nurtures those who strive to keep it alive, is provided in chapter 3. In chapter 4 this intimate and reciprocal relationship is further explored and takes on a gendered inclination in retracing the networks of freedom and solidarity where plants and women intermingle and luxuriantly thrive. The threads disseminated throughout the plot are retrieved in chapter 5 with a reflection on the perenniality and rootiness of ensete, the illegibility of diversified gardens, and a reasserted need for beauty. Chapter 6 moves the observation from the plot to the pot and provides a socioecological and political reading of Hadiyya ingredients, recipes, and tastes—the bounty of which dissolves, making way for a dark story kneaded with disease, hunger, and wicked forms of scientific knowledge (chapter 7). In the book’s epilogue, ensete will return us to where everything began: a dream of verdant beauty.

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The Riddle of Beauty Aesthetics in Agriculture

The Many Shades of Green

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character in my ethnographic journey, the first in order of appearance and for intellectual affection, is what has been defined in historical and anthropological literature as the “tree against hunger” because of its resilience and long shelf life as a fermented food during times of famine. My fascination with Ethiopian farmers began in November 2004, when I first came into contact with the southwestern landscape. I fell in love first and foremost with ensete and only later with those kinds of humans who have taken root around it—and whose form of humanity and sociality has certainly been molded by the plant itself. This was reinforced through months of cohabitation when, by sharing with them (and I mean with plants and humans alike) everyday activities, I had to slowly learn the ingredients and recipes, cooking techniques, spices, and patterns of production, as well as the subtle political statements underlying these concrete objects and apparently banal situations. The same government officials who introduced me to the village community where I was planning to conduct my research suggested that the Hadiyya people shared similarities with the plant they had only recently learned to cultivate: disguised under several, concentric layers; penetrable only through patient work of peeling off and coring in depth; and somehow, like the plant, constituted of an insubstantial nature. Contemporary Hadiyya society is characterized by a predominant commitment to agricultural activities, especially the growing of HE MAIN

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ensete, as well as the breeding of domestic animals. As we shall see later while weaving this narrative, when we meet our central character three-dimensionally, one of the characteristics of this plant is not immediately visible to the naked eye. The internal structure of ensete is made of a number of layers, rather similar to that of an onion. At the very core of the ensete plant there is no trunk and no heart. On my first trip from Addis Ababa to Hadiyya I could see through the windows of the bus how the scenery was in fact dominated by the voluminous, dark-green ensete—thinner and sparser spots in the town of Butajira, more persistent from Silt’e Gurage, then again fading away in Warabe, and finally resurging around the Hadiyya settlements of Fonko, Bellessa, and Ambichu, where the peculiar green shade of ensete visibly branched out into the homestead surroundings. Yet this greenery, so apparent at a distance, became paradoxically more elusive when I walked into the village and moved closer to the domestic compounds. Each house overlooks a large, airy space made of a slightly different, less solid green, which I erroneously started calling “the garden.” Frequently punctuated by small animals; embellished with old trees or ornamental flowers brought from the nearest town by wealthy and respected families; treeless, dusty, and filled with working tools in less privileged ones—this space is indeed the public face of the domestic unit. The bigger the front yard, the more established and prosperous is the owner; here is where people meet to celebrate, to resolve disputes, and to exchange information. Then a visitor would be forced to enter a multifunctional room where neighbors and friends are usually welcomed during the day: a round space with little furniture, many seats, and a radio if people can afford it. Here the visitor would be entertained in words by old and young male members, and through silent gestures of caring by old and young women. Those women would prepare coffee and small foods (curs) above a charcoal fire and move around relentlessly to serve guests. This is the area I initially, and erroneously, called “the kitchen.” In 2005 Bakkalech was a woman in her late thirties, the second wife of a traditional judge (daanna), and the mother of seven children.1 The privileged status of the family had great influence on her behavior. She rarely traveled anywhere as a matter of routine, and then only to attend weddings or funerals. As with most rich women, she enjoyed restricted mobility—a luxury that poorer women can ill-afford and at the same time a cultural ideal that only the financially affluent men aspire to for their women to achieve, as it would reflect positively on their image as good earners and, hence, on their masculinity. The property of

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Bakkalech and her husband represents the quintessential form of the Hadiyya construction of space, with invisible yet palpable boundaries of what is locally perceived as the inside and the outside spheres. Three round houses create the perimeter of human sociality, distributed as follows: the first opens up as a big mouth onto the public lane, has inside walls decorated with religious scenes, and can accommodate guests for short visits or more formal gatherings; at the back of it lies another medium-sized room that functions as sleeping quarters; and beside that a third one, small and smoky, where Bakkalech and her children would frequently disappear. These three houses constitute an imaginary triangle. Every morning I was welcomed by her husband in elegant, fashionable dress on the doorstep of the ample room with painted murals. He would invite my research assistant and me to sit, and then he would discreetly close the door to the backyard to prevent us from entering the small room, full of women, smoke, and food. Glued for hours to my chair in this scentless parlor, from the corner of my eye I could see Bakkalech, who seemed to vanish behind the scenes and reemerge, as if in a wave-like movement, with coffee, more comfortable stools,

Typical Hadiyya house featuring a large and welcoming front yard. Photograph by the author. FIGURE 1.

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or fresh milk. There was no time for any exchange of words between us, only a mute dynamic wherein she would feed me as if walking the lines of the imaginary triangle. When I decided to follow her, leaving her husband alone in the large room, I eventually found the kitchen I had looked for: with fire (ghiira), cooking tools, onion peel on the ground, smells and smoke, burning wood, and mattresses made from the fibers of ensete to sit or relax on. No adult male would ever be seen entering into the real kitchen where food is prepared. Around this architectural triangle there is another natural perimeter, which encircles the tiny universe of women and children. It is this extra protective layer that captured first my eye, then my imagination, and finally drew me to consistently elaborate upon what was the real subject of my ethnographic quest. The process of anthropological discovery is at times serendipitous. “Clifford Geertz’s (1973) cockfight story of running from the police and ending up, with other fugitives, having tea in someone’s garden is exemplary: We learn social forms by being thrown into surprising situations. Fieldwork ‘immersion’ works because we are forced to enter other ways of life—that is, to become social—before we have any idea what we are learning” (Tsing 2013, 31).2 I started my fieldwork with the intention of collecting data on gender roles, norms, and expectations among women in a rural area of Ethiopia. Before embarking on this journey, I immersed myself in pertinent gender studies and felt great discomfort when encountering concepts such as oppression, subordination, violence, patriarchy, and empowerment, which were frequently drawn (or they appeared to me as such) from a particularly Western way of framing gender inequality in other cultures. Therefore I knew that I needed to employ caution in my approach. Ethnographic practice was indeed my coming of age in learning how to embrace the richness of patterns in which gender relations create and re-create themselves. By directly observing and doing things in the field, I could physically experience the real-life worlds where women articulate and voice their positions. The host women of my study would equally get bored and embarrassed when asked to sit idly at home and discuss issues of marriage, reproduction, and sexuality. Unsurprisingly, they were unable to grasp the feminist vocabulary I strove hard to translate into our conversations. Most importantly, I had to realize that these women spent the majority and more enjoyable part of their time in the garden behind the kitchen, where they would tend small and large plants, animals, and family and friendship bonds. That was indeed their set purpose in our co-constructed research, and this is how I was imperceptibly drawn—like in the case of the Geertz couple—into having coffee in (or at the margins of ) someone’s garden.

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I had already noticed and walked through those green spaces but not seen them in any depth for months. I did not label them as “gardens” until a long time after. I had not been trained to expect any culture of gardening in a country where narratives about food are typically related to concepts of scarcity and hunger. There is in fact a well-known international narrative on famine in Ethiopia, frequently recalled as the story of a persistent failure attributed to poverty, recurrent drought, and soil and land degradation. The story is typically backed up by a pervasive rhetoric of Ethiopia as a recipient of constant food aid and the epitome of starvation. This biased perception remains particularly ingrained in Western portrayals of the country and disproportionately prolific in media images of global hunger as well as media-based humanitarian campaigns. In the course of my fieldwork among the Hadiyya I developed a deeply skeptical attitude toward this narrative. Contrary to any stereotypical depiction of African landscapes as being parched and desolate, one of the most impressive characteristics of ensete-growing areas is the flourishing, luxuriant vegetation. There is no explicit mention of the ensete garden in my early field notes; but I can clearly remember the “feeling” of it, the roots and leaves exuding their full flavor and the brightly sparkling dark green, through which I can recall all the details I did not think important enough to write down. Over time I have learned techniques to re-see, see better, and see beyond the apparently banal physicality of the ensete garden as a space. But at that time, the word that would describe it—beautiful—seemed too ordinary and unscientific to frame the plant intellectually. Yet beauty and greenery are indeed the interrelated concepts that Hadiyya farmers, both female and male, frequently evoked when referring to ensete. “Look how green is our land in southern Ethiopia,” they said to me. “It would be better to not send our children to school, but just sit here in the village and cultivate the land. We have never thought of leaving this place. We are farmers. We cannot live without land.”3 Old Sakaallo pensively contemplated the rectangular house, with its tin roof, that his son had recently built. He welcomed the new shape of it, now populating a compound of round buildings, but insisted that the son must also keep the traditional one (huk mine)—a thatched round hut with a conical roof, built of timber plastered with mud and cow dung—in order not to forget his own culture. He explained how the life of trees infiltrates and keeps vibrating within the daily life of humans: “I have my land here in the village, with beautiful trees. So I advised my son to build a traditional house for one of his children with the wood from those trees.”4

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The ensete materials do indeed move well beyond the perimeters of the backyard garden. Every part of ensete is used: to cover roofs and walls and to make containers, ropes, mats (jibba), bags, and sieves. Its strong fibers (aanch’a), of a brilliant white, are an item of barter; dried stems (hofe) fuel the fireplace. The green and moist leaves help preserve the tenderness of ensete-fermented paste and maintain the low temperature for cheese. Fresh leaves are used as serving dishes, as protective covering inside the pits (bare) where ensete is fermented, or to pave the ground where it is processed; to wrap ensete pulp, honey, tobacco, butter, crops, and also, in the past, newborn babies; to pack and carry goods to local markets; as fodder for animals; to treat fractures and problems related to childbirth, or for abortion. In the past, mothers were used to carrying around newborns wrapped in a big ensete leaf; still now, women clean the face and dirty hands of their children with a fresh ensete leaf. During a home birth, women sent for me to come and sit with them in the kitchen.5 The small dark room was overheated after several hours of strong sweating and breathing. In accordance to tradition, the woman in labor was considered as being unclean and vulnerable to evil spirits. After giving birth, she was offered fresh milk, and her head was scrubbed with fresh butter and then shrouded in an ensete fresh leaf as a special treatment to greet the first son after five daughters. Newborn infants are usually wrapped in soft, porous, and protective ensete fibers immediately after birth to prevent exposure to cold air. From field to table, the Hadiyya world started speaking to me in colors rather than words. What would later become the most dense meaning in my ethnographic explorations—that of beauty in the field and on the plate—was initially a concept that farmers would rarely define through language but rather unfold in the salient spectrum of green, white, and red. As is the case in several Ethiopian contexts, the major source of the color lexicon is the natural environment, with the word for “green” typically taken from the words for leaf, cabbage, and grass. Among pastoralist communities colors are mostly perceived and designated based on the observation of animal life, whereas agriculturalists shape their visual vocabulary on their observation of, and interaction with, plants (Leyew 2016, 83). White is the color of clarity, fortune, peaceful coexistence, and success. Choosing to slaughter a white ox to celebrate the festival of Mäsqäl,6 at the end of the heavy rains, would be a good omen for the agricultural season ahead; conversely, people refrain from drinking the milk or eating the raw meat of a gray or dark-colored animal. Livestock—and cattle in particular—have been

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a dominant element in Hadiyya concepts of value. Like many other African livestock-keepers, they are able to differentiate dozens of domestic animals according to their colors. Ellawwa is the color (black with large white surfaces) of bulls that are often preferred to others in breeding, and gadaalla (between pink and brown) is one of the colors that herdsmen like to number among their heifers (Braukämper and Mishago 1999, 36). Red is the color produced by several locally known herbs when boiled or squeezed to prepare curative drinks and baths; the brighter the red, the more efficacious the remedy will be. The red color characterizes the wubeta ritual bath of women following childbirth, occurring after four days in the case of a female baby, five days for males. Women (mainly from family or kinship groups) walk along the Batena River warbling with a shrill noise,7 pick the flowers and leaves of wubeta8 and other sweet-smelling, healing herbs,9 and boil them. The leaves are soaked in a large bucket; then the mother steps into the still-scalding water and bends over the aromatic steam. The other women cleanse her body thoroughly for the first time after she has given birth. The newborn baby is also anointed with the same flavored water with the addition of unclarified, white butter to protect and fortify. The purifying water has a tint between red and brown. There is no rinsing, and for several days the mother and baby will keep the coat of wubeta on their skin to diffuse their physical and emotional vulnerability. The bath is usually followed by a meal made of another plant of choice, most frequently Artemisia abyssinica, which is deemed useful to restore the blood and other fluids the woman has lost through childbirth and to cleanse her womb.10 Again, the leaves are boiled for several hours, and the resulting blood-red liquid is mixed with a large amount of “white white” butter and given to the mother as a drink or further cooked with the addition of barley flour, as a porridge. Healing (white) foods containing butter, yogurt, and cheese are often given to the woman. Red substances play an equally central role during the transitional period of pregnancy and childbirth, and they hold an innate healing power in most circumstances of everyday life (influenza, sore throat, or sunstroke). Colors are also primary indicators in the estimation of ingredients and dishes. When asked to rank the criteria for assessing a good quality dish, most women list color (hagarà) in the first place, then taste (te’nna), and finally smell (fosha). The most cherished foods are identified by specific and solid colors: the iconic Hadiyya dish, which comes in the form of ensete porridge and is indeed a concretion of past and present times, stands out for being “white white”

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(k’adaalla); and raw, finely minced meat for its “red red” (kashara) appearance. Colors are not only a marker of aesthetic beauty but a way of discriminating between what is “good” (clean, healthy, scrupulously cooked) and what is “bad” (dirty, corrupted, carelessly cooked). According to local ethnomedical principles, when a plant can turn, through manipulation, from green to red, that is evidence of its strong therapeutic potential. Ethnobotanical knowledge, medicine, and cuisine are realms that easily encroach upon one another. Local medicine exploits the same everyday materials that are used for cooking; its ingredients therefore dissipate into kitchen pots and jars or are found in several intercropped patches behind the house. Such powerful ingredients are ubiquitous, yet not everybody would be able to detect them under the surface of the obvious, under the banality of the domestic. Men may have some approximate knowledge of these medicinal plants, but it is generally in the hands of women to transform them through their work, using practical wisdom. Their ability to forge vegetal materials emerges throughout the kitchen garden, where medicinal plants are intermixed with ensete, other crops, condiments, and culinary plants. Green (shano’o in the Hadiyya language) is the predominant theme in the immediate vicinity of the house. Mishaamo (male) and Mishaame (female) are names given to children and indicate what is verdant, leafy, and fruitful. “Misha” is one of the districts of the Hadiyya zone, and its name recalls the semantic roots of fertility, hinting at what is fruitful and productive; interestingly, it is the place where ensete has been cultivated more extensively and for the longest time. In Hoommachcho, a town in the nearby Gibe district, I had the opportunity to meet Ersado Eyore, the old and revered owner of an ancient ensete garden that had been passed down over many generations. A few steps from his house, wholly immersed in a lush vegetation of thick green, I noticed a richly illustrated gravestone recounting the life and work of his father. The figure was that of an ensete plant, painted in green on a yellow background, with a few red finishing touches. In areas where ensete is cultivated, at different levels of intensity, farmers are used to repeating that it is a “good thing” (MacEntee et al. 2013). In Hadiyya the word that describes the value of ensete is danaamo: “good,” a simple yet powerful term that in certain contexts, and when referred to certain subjects such as ensete, takes on the concomitant significance of “beautiful” and “attractive.” The dominant meaning I was looking for was wrapped up in the farmers’ apparently simple words; I simply had to extract it. Little by little I had to take the issue

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FIGURE 2.

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Gravestone. Photograph by the author.

of beauty seriously: What do farmers imply whenever they speak of a beautiful ensete garden? Shall I interpret it as a common phrase or rather reflect on beauty as composed of complementary and inseparable layers of signification— from its aesthetic, to its ethical, agronomic, and even philosophical components? In this way, the scope of my research has progressively focused on what could

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be defined as agricultural aesthetics. My attempt to solve the riddle of beauty has materialized in the process of deciphering what a beautiful ensete garden is to Ethiopian farmers. In a quote commonly attributed to surrealist icon Salvador Dalí, it is argued that beauty will be edible, or it will no longer be. Ensete-cultivating people would most certainly agree.

Edible Landscapes Flowers—or lack thereof—can be a significant element in organizing the environment. “In Africa,” J. Goody writes, “flowers are remarkable for their absence” (1993, 22). The British anthropologist linked the use of flowers to the rise of advanced systems of agriculture, the growth of social stratification, and the spread of luxury goods. Cultures of flowers develop where civilizations are sophisticated and urbanized because flower cultivation, the author claims, is a luxury for most subsistence agricultural areas. The history he traced therefore celebrates the luxuriance of aesthetic horticulture in Europe and Asia and inevitably leads to the trenchant statement that there is no culture of flowers in Africa. The index of his work The Culture of Flowers speaks eloquently: under the heading of “gardens” there are several subtopics spanning thousands of years and most of the world (in ancient Egypt; in Mesopotamia; in ancient Greece and Rome; in medieval, Renaissance, nineteenth-century, and contemporary Europe; in New England; in China; in India; in Indonesia; in South America; in Islamic traditions; in monastic traditions; in childhood), whereas under the heading “Africa” only one topic is indicated (absence of flowers in). There is no room for women or indeed feminine domains within J. Goody’s wide-ranging study of flowers in their cultural manifestations, symbolic use, and economic importance. According to J. Goody’s argument, in subsistence societies, and particularly among African peoples, flowers do not belong to what is deemed essential for living a good life, but are rather regarded as a foretaste of the fruit or the tree, and removing them would be considered a waste. African farmers are not willing to talk about flowers, and accordingly they do not indulge in frivolous, decorative activities. They work hard to domesticate the landscape, and they do so through utilitarian, goal-oriented practices. This way, they transform the landscape into something edible. Becoming edible, the landscape ceases to be a work of art—one to look at for purely aesthetic purposes. J. Goody only briefly turns

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to sub-Saharan Africa to describe how little cultural centrality has been given to flowers compared to Eurasian cultures. What he found through his own observations in Africa is a profound lack of interest in natural beauty and a focus on talking about and representing human beings and animals at the expense of “less animate nature” (1993, 15). In ancient Egypt and in Mesopotamia there are abundant instances of plants that speak, while in Africa it is largely animals that inhabit myths and tales. J. Goody relates the African refusal to see flowers as things in themselves to several ecological and material factors, not the least of which are the ghosts of hunger and famine gloomily lingering on the continent (see Pollan 2001, 66–67). Although he never actually coined the phrase itself, his approach leaves the reader with a lasting impression of “African clorophobia.” That flowers most frequently appear where there is enough economic surplus to support gardening for pleasure may sound like an attractively intuitive argument at first. But after a while one begins to wonder about the assumption inherent in J. Goody’s whole line of reasoning: that only flowers equate with beauty, and not “the leaves, bark and roots of trees and plants” (1993, 14) that farming cultures so largely praise. In questioning this assumption, another related, compelling issue comes to the fore: Where does the vision of beauty as being in contradiction with edibility come from? In Western sensibilities plants have a long tradition of igniting the imagination through visual engagement. To begin with, botanical science is rooted in ocularcentric tendencies—that is, in an epistemological bias that ranks vision higher than any other sense, and wherein cognitive authority is given to the perceptual appreciation of nature from panoramic distances. Drawings and paintings in botanical journals provide details and a less flat image of plants, and they contribute to the shaping of an artistic approach to the natural world. In fine arts, the panorama was created as an artistic genre at the intersection of mapping and painting the land as an object; in this way, nature is tantamount to a dead scene. Also, consider how a middle-class standard house would conventionally consist of a well-designed architecture, a solid perimeter fence, a wrought-iron gate, a guard dog, and an orderly and prettified mise-en-scène of the natural world wherein floral decoration is on display in the front yard and a vegetable garden sits in the backyard. What is aesthetically pleasant should be offered to the public gaze; what is for sustenance should not be included in the realm of beauty and is therefore concealed and symbolically removed. The prototype of the middle-class residence and the inclination toward pictorial beauty at large hover around the pages of J. Goody’s book, and they are explicitly

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evoked when the author draws a neat divide between utilitarian forms of horticulture and properly aesthetic gardening (1993, 4). His theory seems to deny the lower classes any capacity for cultural influence on the creative process of artistic forms. This has probably become an implicit assumption in many of the current garden studies.11 Several pre-Darwinian conceptions of nature rested upon the assumption that humans and nonhumans were separated by substantial differences, leading to the conclusion that only humans were capable of exhibiting virtue, mindfulness, goodwill, and so on. This paradigm of human biological, psychological, and moral superiority over nature has mostly gone unchallenged until recently. In the tradition of Kant and Descartes, mainstream Western approaches to aesthetics have often entailed a work of detached contemplation, devoid of bodily experiences, with only spare traces of continuity and relatedness between the human observer and the natural world. Within this worldview, human beings and plants are conceived as occupying radically different domains; “not only are plants non-sentient organisms that exist in the natural world and which are a resource available for human use, subject to human intentionality via cultivation and breeding, but it is human intervention in plants via domestication that has itself marked a monumental moment in the history of human civilization” (Degnen 2009, 164). The idea of plants as “just” plants sits on the assumption that plants can be looked at by more intelligent observers (they are objects of sight); can be beautified through a work of pen and pencil (they are objects of art and literature); can be classified and talked about in scientific discourse; or are simply ignored as irrelevant (Ryan 2011, 223). In this master narrative, aesthetic appreciation of the natural environment is achieved through the sense of sight and through the mind rather than by the more bodily senses (taste, smell, sound, and touch) or by physically engaging with plants in contexts of close proximity such as gardens. Plants come to be appreciated as relevant objects if they possess high scenic quality; conversely, they drop away or would never capture the attention because of their low scenic quality. In either case, they never reach the status of living beings, of subjects whose history is worth recounting. In this master narrative, scant or no details are provided of what the body of the observer (the human being) and what the body of the observed (the plant) are like; and only sporadically are we told what kind of feelings—joy, fear, resentment, gratitude, consolation, nostalgia— this encounter has generated in both participants, human and plant. Yet other narratives, based on different and more holistic approaches to beauty, can be

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fostered if plants are thought of as living, and moreover sentient, beings. A more intimate and corporeal description of plants begins with the realization that plants are in fact not only “seen” but also eaten, tasted, smelled, touched, heard, desired, and felt; that plants change; that they are mirrored in seeds and flowers as promise of edibility; and that they grow, may fall ill, and die. A multisensory aesthetics of flora positions itself “viscerally in the guts and sinews, not distantly in a landscape vista” (Ryan 2011, 223). According to these alternative canons of beauty, the natural world can be experienced in bodily affective terms—not “out there,” but in close proximity, and not as an isolated and rarefied moment of pleasure, but as part of the general experience of the everyday world. On the basis of these eco-aesthetic reflections it is plausible to argue for an aesthetics of pragmatism, one that is rooted in the reciprocal and active relationship between humans and plants, as opposed to a model of viewership as described above. The former is particularly suited to facilitating an appreciation of beauty in farming societies (Ryan 2011, 235). Forms of dedicated engagement with the natural world have indeed been documented as characteristic of several small-scale farming communities. While the academic landscape aesthetic relies on the eye, an aesthetics of work as dynamically experienced by farmers is indeed shaped by the hand. The hand has to be necessarily close to the cultivated field; through proximity, farmers have developed an appreciation of their land, but this has been grossly under- and misrepresented within the scholarly paradigm of vision and scenery. Since detachment and a non-utilitarian attitude towards landscape form the basis of philosophical and arts aesthetics, the people on the land necessarily

had the role of the counterpoint. They were thought of as being utilitarian, either scared by nature or enduring and stubborn in their struggle to gain a living from the fields; in brief, considered to be blind to beauty. [ . . . ] The

bourgeois aesthetics of the rural landscape, being the result of sight- seeing, short stays, and purchasing power, creates a quite different kind of space from

year-round farming practices and activities: stepping, touching, digging, hitting, carrying, swinging, tearing, pulling, pushing, toeing, breaking, killing, slaughtering. (Winkler 2005, 3)

To grasp what comprises rural people’s aesthetics we can now turn to empirical research and look at some isolated attempts to conceptualize the otherwisemute aesthetics of farmers. It is worth noting, however, that most of these

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already-scattered instances speak of European farmers, whereas much less is known about how farmers in the Global South talk about their farms and gardens. An aesthetics of agricultural work, which privileges the sensuous discrimination of fine differences, was pioneeringly heralded in B. Malinowski’s Coral Gardens and Their Magic (1965a, 1965b—originally published in 1935), a rarely studied and yet powerful book that committed to provide a detailed account of the fabric of gardening in small-scale agriculture in the Trobriand Islands, Papua New Guinea. Largely renowned for his anthropological legacy of the participant observation method, of sensational Kula rites, and of the sailing, trading, witchcraft, and titillating “sexual life of savages,” in this work B. Malinowski revealed how those savages were in the first place not headhunters or bloodthirsty warriors, but simple gardeners who poured themselves heart and soul into mundane practices of working the land, sharing the harvest, and making the food. Being a gardener is what makes the essential Trobriander, “who digs with pleasure and collects with pride, to whom accumulated food gives the sense of safety and pleasure in achievement, to whom the rich foliage of yam-vines or taro leaves is a direct expression of beauty” (1965a, 10). In the preface, the portrait of this male subject is sketched in terms of spatial composition, shades of color, and joy. He experiences a mysterious joy in delving into the earth, in turning it up, plant-

ing the seed, watching the plant grow, mature, and yield the desired harvest. If you want to know him, you must meet him in his yam gardens, among his palm groves or on his taro fields. You must see him digging his black or brown

soil among the white outcrops of dead coral and building the fence, which surrounds his garden with a ‘magical wall’ of prismatic structures and triangular supports. You must follow him when, in the cool of the day, he watches the seed rise and develop within the precincts of the ‘magical wall’, which at first gleams

like gold among the green of the new growth and then shows bronzed or grey under the rich garlands of yam foliage. (1965a, xix)

Turning those gardens into edible landscapes requires physical work, mainly performed through collective cooperative systems, but also nonutilitarian practices such as the use of magical techniques. In Trobriand society gardens represent a model of organizing work and phrasing beauty that is very distant from the scientific model of farming, where the individual farmer is driven by

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economic interests alone. Gardens are a work of art in which technical means and aesthetic dimensions intertwine. They sustain a high density of population, contain a great deal of resource variety, and represent a solid foundation of wealth. At the same time, much effort is invested in them for purely aesthetic purposes, all for the sheer joy of doing it. This inclination is typically expressed in producing more than is strictly required, in storing more than they can eat, and in surrounding the crop cultivation with acts of care that are not all necessary for palatability—such as keeping gardens tidy and clean, building solid fences, or performing magical ceremonies in the garden (1965a, 8). The beauty of agricultural work in the Trobriand Islands described by B. Malinowski clearly resonates with an aesthetics of pragmatism contrary to disinterested contemplation. Now, if we look at documented voices of European farmers, we find a different approach to land—less gardening, but nevertheless a distinct form of aesthetic pleasure experienced in farming. The first source is a farmer in the Domleschg valley in the Central Grisons, Switzerland (Winkler 2005, 5–8). He describes mowing with a scythe as nice work, meaning well-accomplished work or, more specifically, proper or clean work. The perception is of a highly technical activity (or choreography) done in an elegant way in order to make the hard work seem easy. Excellent skills are needed for turning an agricultural activity into a matter of style. The difficulty of the task, including coordinating every single movement in the sequence, is part of the beauty—of the land and of the work itself. The time spent in the field, moments of looking around and listening to the sound of the landscape, smelling the fragrance of the grass, but also the toll of suffering in making and remaking the environment at every seasonal change: all this plays a vital part in a participatory mode of engaging with the cultivated land. The second case revolves around the strong preference of German and Scottish farmers (respectively in Hessen and Aberdeenshire) for arable landscapes that are clean, orderly, and tidy—and, therefore, in their own perception and appreciation, more efficient and productive (Burton 2012). For them, a tidy farmland is highly ranked, for it makes visible and readable, even from a distance, the skills and knowledge of farmers. Overlapping or underlapping in sowing would be taken as a sign of sloppiness inscribed on the land for others to see, and a good reason for social ridicule. The crop color at the field scale would signal the healthiness of the land and the efficiency of farmers in the maintenance of the farm. Among other features, it is the regularity of furrow depth and the

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straightness of lines that render the landscape visually enjoyable. The aesthetics of fields matters in economic terms because the wrong shape or color may signal that mistakes were made in plowing, drilling, sowing, weeding, or fertilizing; but it also becomes a symbol of social position, thereby determining who will be acknowledged as a good farmer by the peer group. Regularity in the field fosters a good reputation. A German farmer recounts his commitment to evenness as follows: “When I drill at night then sometimes it happens that I fail to drill straight lines. It annoys me for the rest of the year. Really it annoys me for the rest of the year. I have one field of 8 ha that I drilled partly in the dark because I thought that if it rained I wouldn’t be able to get on the field. And I got the last 3 ha a little crooked. I’m really looking forward to combining this field because then I won’t have to see the crooked lines any longer” (Burton 2012, 59). These cases from Trobriand Islands, Switzerland, Germany, and Scotland hint at the existence of a wide variety of farming cultures—or, as I will refer to them in the rest of this book, “agri-cultures”—rooted in different practices and in turn generating different belief systems as well as divergent canons of beauty. The criteria for assessing the value of the landscape may be dramatically diverse, but nonetheless there is a clue to the idea of beauty in each of them. In all these cases, what is beautiful to the eye is so precisely because it has been achieved by working with hands, and it promises to sit well in the stomach. In local terms safety, prosperity, abundance, and culinary enjoyment are all anticipated qualities that generate the feeling of what is beautiful. Among the Hadiyya people of southwestern Ethiopia, love is believed to grow in the stomach. Women go around clutching their bellies when their hearts are broken. “You are tight deep in my stomach” is their most intimate expression of love. One of them would welcome my morning visits by exclaiming godabo (stomach) agissomo (I will put you inside): because if you love a person, she explained, you would like to put them into your stomach and, metaphorically, eat them up. Mixed as it is with material and immaterial elements, there is something in this concept of edible beauty that cannot be accounted for by sheer economic necessity. While predominantly acquired through sight, the aesthetic experience of landscape can be facilitated and moderated by other sensory inputs. As I have discussed above, aesthetic experiences are fundamentally triggered by affective (emotion-based) processes. Some contexts elicit aesthetic experiences that have traditionally been called “scenic beauty,” while others elicit aesthetic experiences in terms of perceived care, attachment, and sense of identity. Agricultural landscapes epitomize an aesthetic of care that is rooted

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in the continuous, long-term, bodily engagement of humans in maintaining or changing the landscape. It may be that for farmers flowers are good for nothing. But in the kind of popular landscape aesthetics that we are describing here, the notion of utility is anything but detachment and lack of interest. The person who is disinterested in flowers may well be the one who can more perceptively sense the land in all of its changing qualities, and who is willing to read the landscape’s constitutive elements not only in terms of attractive patterns and colors, nor as mere productive ends or consumables, but as social gestures of neighborly consideration. To know when a field is ripe for sowing or harvesting demands the ability to judge many factors and to weigh them against one another as well as against the experience of previous years: the color and smell of the earth or the crops, how the grains feel between the fingers, and how the crops sound when moved by the wind. The topic of engaged participation has been explored in past studies and framed alternatively as art of place (van der Ploeg 1993), cultivation as performance (P. Richards 1993), or dwelling perspective (Ingold 2000). More recent studies verge on such related topics as the “skilled vision” (Grasseni 2004), “professional sensitivity” (Winkler 2005), and “aesthetic know-how” (von Bonsdorff 2005) of farmers and others working closely with the land, plants, and animals. Despite such influential voices, however, aesthetic considerations play only a modest role in contemporary debates about agricultural policy and practice. How nice a paddy field or an ensete garden looks and smells can seem trivial in comparison to evaluating goals of increasing yield, reducing costs, and raising incomes. Some would argue that aesthetics has little if anything to do with the ecology of landscapes. Interestingly, the narratives I have collected during my work with Hadiyya farmers in the ensete belt support the assumption that aesthetics has indeed a lot to do with ecological concerns, as well as with ecosystem and community well-being. Those narratives also open up to the idea that useful and unspectacular plants, despite the lack of glorious flowering, are indeed beautiful—for the glory of an ensete garden resides in the many shades of green of its foliage. The farmers I met, contrary to J. Goody’s claims about his West African informants, were not reluctant to speak the language of aesthetics through discrimination and appreciation. Furthermore, those assertions of beauty shape and inform their practical skills and the decisions they make—for example, which plants and vegetables are rotated

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and intercropped, how they are tended, which kind of cattle are bought, the style in which men plow and fertilize or the women maintain gardens, and the ways in which both organize several overlapping farming routines. The beauty of their homes, of their gardens, of their produce, and of their animals gives great satisfaction to many of them.

Fiitaame J. Goody digs further into the African floral gap by asserting that “the absence of flowers in Africa is reinforced by the relative lack of attention paid to perfumes, or to smell in general, and possibly by the limited vocabulary for colours” (1993, 14). He once said, in an interview about his life and career (Goody 2002), that reading stars or talking to trees would not generate the same knowledge achieved by reading books or looking deeply at scholarly sources and written records. According to him, pen and pencil still make a difference between people who have and those who do not have the “technology of intellect.” He would have been certainly impressed had he made it to the sleepy, undistinguished village of my ethnographic endeavor. Shita would soon become a maternal friend in the field. A vigorous woman in her early forties when we first met, she was conducting an active life beyond the village perimeter playing a role as preacher at the evangelical church and as political activist in the local opposition party. Witty and strong-willed, Shita would plait her hair into two symmetrical braids contrary to the more elaborate and traditional hairstyle of other women. With her and her mother, Wodetu, the most respected midwife in the area, I learned about serious things in a playful and humorous manner. I can recall breaking into laughter every time our eyes met, even during the thanksgiving prayers before eating. They were the first women to show me their backyard gardens; we would walk in, pick up twigs and leaves, then go back to the kitchen to examine each of the herbs and spices— What do they smell like? What do they look like? What if I rub the leaf with my fingers? What is its name in folk taxonomy? After the first of these joint walks, I wrote in my notebook that I had entered a scented garden. Days later I made the discovery that the Amharic name “Shita” means in fact “scent” and, to add to my wonder, that the Amharic name of my young research assistant at that time, Lemlem, literally means “fertile fertile” and thus, in a broader sense, “to flourish” or “to bloom.” In clear contrast to J. Goody’s portrayal of African

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Herbs and medicinal plants collected in one of the home gardens. Photograph by the author.

FIGURE 3.

cultures as scentless and colorless, all the clues within my small ethnographic world echoed a chromatic and sensory language. After weeks of fieldwork the women would still refer to me by the expression “the foreigner.” Apparently, they were disinterested in learning about my personal and family background or about the specifics of my research. None of them asked me for my name. I strove hard to read their steady silence as a rhetorical strategy to stay in control of our budding relationship, by actively setting the mood and timing for my character to emerge in the plot of the story. However, without being called by name, I felt neglected and disembodied. One day at the end of November 2005, while I was sitting in the kitchen of a neighbor with a group of women, Shita joined us and announced that she had found my new name, like the one girls acquire at puberty and that lasts until they get married and give birth.12 Names, Shita explained, are not to be given arbitrarily; they have to be pondered, as they carry special meanings. Hadiyya personal names express social, economic, and political circumstances accompanying the birth of a child; at the same time, name givers express their wishes and emotions through personal names (Arficio 1973, 134).13 My new name was

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Woman potter (in green dress) at the local market. Photograph by the

author.

Fiitaame from the Hadiyya term fiita, “flowers,” because, women said, “you have made an appearance here in our homes in October, a month which is called Fiite in Hadiyya, the time when most plants flower. You have made us happy as if we had looked at a flower. If a pregnant woman looks at beautiful flowers, she will give birth to a beautiful baby.” Flowers may not be worthy things in

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themselves, nor play a significant role in ordinary life, yet they are once again evoked at the knotted intersection of pleasure and benefit, of beauty (in both people and plants) and goodness.14 I heard destiny and promise in that name. The name giving was only the starting point of a phytomorphic model that would unfold and materialize in the years to come. The word phytomorphic seems especially fitting to describe a research trajectory that has progressively been shaped by a plant and has focused on the relationship of vegetal elements with human life. Deriving from the Greek words phytón, meaning “plant,” and morphos, meaning “shape,” the term brought into dialogue my personal background in classical studies with the Hadiyya cosmology. The terms have astonishingly similar semantic roots for the vegetal world. From the ancient Greek terms physis (nature) and phytón (plant), to the related Hadiyya term fiita (flowers), a sequence of green connections started punctuating my fieldwork. At every step throughout this trajectory I talked to farmers and gardeners to learn from them why and how they were farming and gardening, paying attention to everyday life in the gardens and the experience of it by the gardeners, and taking pains to collect life histories of these gardeners in order to understand what a garden actually is, what is the user’s perspective of it, and which kind of social environment gardening for food and for beauty generates. Now, every time I leaf through my photographs, I sense the green quality of most of them—the ensete foliage, the fluorescent green dress with yellow flowers of a woman selling vegetables in the market, the faded green walls of some urban houses. I have learned to appreciate this quality during fieldwork, when I found myself constantly surrounded by a particular shade of green I had never encountered before. For me, the world of the ensete-cultivating people has always remained inherently green.

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Seeds of Empire and Unruly Creatures Smells Like Ensete

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policies of Ethiopian elites have assiduously aimed at political centralization and cultural assimilation, centrifugal tendencies have nevertheless mushroomed in the peripheries, weakening the project of nation-building. The control of the Ethiopian state has historically been associated with the “Abyssinian” (Amhara/Tigrayan) sociopolitical culture, one rooted in a strict hierarchical understanding of society that has left an enduring legacy in shaping the dominant trends of contemporary Ethiopia (Levine 1965). National integration has remained for the country a vexed issue. According to certain interpretations of the phenomenon, animosity within borders has been fueled by the elites in the North, reluctant to share political power with peripheries to any meaningful extent. Some scholars have gone so far as to argue that the modern Ethiopian state, through its leadership, has attempted to construct itself using the ideological foundations of Semitic ancestry, Orthodox Christianity, and Amhara-Tigrayan political culture and that successive state leaders have maintained this kind of order through authoritarian structures and a state’s iron fist when necessary (Markakis 2011; Vaughan and Tronvoll 2003). The casual conversations and group discussions I had with students in the capital city have absorbed the most toxic parts of the coreperiphery debate; they are in fact permeated by the clichés that the core areas unrelentingly produce with regard to the societies and cultures in the periphery, and the periphery to the core. HILE THE

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Once settled in the capital city, and irrespective of their places of origin, students are inclined to claim that Addis Ababa is emblematic of the entire country. In the words of most city dwellers—and despite the fact they may have never experienced the reality they talk about—rural areas are hastily summarized as being an unfortunate combination of dust, unpaved roads, mud, and lack of books and transportation. A violinist from a well-off family took me around to see the symbols of what, in his perception, was hypertypical Ethiopia: the zoo— where the emperor’s lions are exhibited: two or three exhausted animals, unable to roar, but huge enough to catch the attention of children—and the Sheraton Hotel, immersed in luxury and popular among wealthy foreigners. I heard the violinist and his family, most of whom were masters in traditional Ethiopian music, along with government officials whom I would soon encounter in the Hadiyya countryside, express a dream that Addis Ababa should become, in every corner, like the five-star hotel or be transformed into an extension of Churchill Road (which, along with the Bole area, is one of the main tourist retail centers). While in the presence of a heterogeneous public, and especially in front of urban residents, those who come from the countryside rarely dare to delve into the issue of their origins, in an attempt to cover up the lower status of their own social identity. Peripheral players feed the debate with morsels of attraction for, as well as rejection of, the hegemonic cultures. Youths who have come from the southern areas to seize the opportunity of higher education at the core are keen to adopt socially valuable patterns of behavior, distinct from what they have learned at home, which is now perceived with an intense sense of shame. Youths who daydream about the “center” from a remote town in rural areas would more often indulge in speeches filled with resentment. For example, two Hadiyya teachers in their thirties who, at the time of our meetings, were wishing to take a leap into the urban space and then ended up winning the longed-for DV Lottery, expressed “how technology, infrastructure, and American-style democracy would help to overcome unemployment.”1 The younger sister of one of them and a talented law student at Addis Ababa University, elegant in manners and a self-taught polyglot, was spending the summer break in Hosaa’na (the Hadiyya zonal capital)2 with her extended family. She laid down on the sofa after we had returned from several hours of fieldwork and was quickly surrounded by her mother, aunts, and sisters. She was meticulous in explaining to me the reasons for which she felt integrally

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Hadiyya, and yet she would never marry a boy of rural origins whom we both knew and were gossiping about. She clarified: I suspect he has not grown up in the town but rather in the countryside; in other

words, he is not modern. One of my cousins was his high school classmate; they

are all the same—they only gang up with people from rural areas and not with others. He always speaks the Hadiyya language, not Amharic. He does not

like to dress up in Western clothing. You have known my brother, right? Well, he is super modern and understands many more things because he has grown

up in the town. You can sense it all. Those who were born in the countryside

have a hopeless sense of humor; if they say something to make you laugh, they would most likely make you cry! They make jokes around the ensete plant or the ensete dough, but for us from the town it is boring for we know nothing about those things. We from the town make jokes on cars and Hollywood

movies, so to speak. Those from the town choose light-colored clothes, sport shoes, high-quality stuff. Rural people may strive hard, yet their background

would still affect them; they can change but never to a satisfactory standard. If

you go to the restaurant with a man who was born in Hosaa’na, he will certainly show you more respect—for example, he would pull out your chair. But rural guys are not aware of these table manners. They care more about what others

could say than about the girl’s feelings [ . . . ]. They hate the perfumes we wrap ourselves up in. At school, when they smelled something good, or a girl walked past who had sprayed herself in Western fashion, they were used to unleashing

their contempt by spitting on the ground. You know, they have grown up soaked in the smell of butter and ensete dough, to the extent that they cannot tolerate pleasant odors anymore.3

The sarcastic reference of this young woman to the ensete plant and dough, its cultivation and bad smell, is not only a powerful way of phrasing the urbanrural divide; it also points at profound sedimented structures of subordination, governance, and domination that have been operating between a perceived North and a perceived South, the core and the periphery. The divisiveness of the core-periphery issue has affected the political landscape of Ethiopia with variable intensity since the ascension to the throne of Emperor Menelik II in 1889. Instead of mapping the legacy of this division in formal terms, here I investigate the mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion created by an unequal distribution of power and resources through the lens of agricultural practices and of food habits and preferences. In the Ethiopian context there is in fact a

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long tradition of using food as a battlefield to express primordial divisions and antipathy between groups and communities. In the past, this attitude was mainly expressed by associating different levels of “purity” or “impurity” with specific foodstuffs; it was usually the conquered or the immigrant who was thought to have confused ethnic origins and transgressive food habits. All over southern Ethiopia, clans showed a sharp tendency to differentiate themselves from the others, not only by means of genealogical and socioeconomic criteria, but also on the basis of food avoidance. These rules may refer to domestic or wild animals, to specific colors of a single animal, to certain parts of its body, or, occasionally, to plants. The lack of compliance with some kind of avoidance was the everyday idiom through which different groups denigrated one another (Braukämper 1984). Similar examples abound in the Ethiopian context; they punctuate the scale from innocuous skirmishes about what is “edible” or “inedible,” through derogative stereotyping of the cuisine of different groups to demarcate and highlight the boundaries between one another, to cases of gastronomic racism that are embedded in agricultural and nutrition policies. In present times, the discourse about food habits still functions in the perspective of distinction: as a sensitive idiom for understanding the ideas of what people conceive to be human and nonhuman, and for categorizing what is “right” and what is “wrong.” Ways of handling the offering of food—what type of food is for whom—appear to be a constant concern in the Hadiyya zone where I conducted my fieldwork; and most of everyday life is in fact articulated around food to be prepared, special meals to welcome guests or to feast, food to be exchanged with other families, and meetings and conversations marked by the consumption of food and coffee. Shita used to say that in Ethiopia you make friends if you start eating together. But I discovered later that there was much more to it, and it did not simply involve eating any kind of food. Old Lopiso helped me better understand when, ten years after my first visit, he introduced me to a guest: “She belongs to us,” he said. “She is like a daughter because she has eaten our food.” A considerable part of that food came from the ensete plant. The fact that commensality—eating together—and appreciation of other people’s food habits function as powerful tools for generating knowledge and intimacy was later confirmed during my first encounter with Leta and her family. A big plate covered with ensete leaves and showcasing ensete bread, cabbage, and berbere4 (barbaro’o in Hadiyya) welcomed my visit—to my great delight. Leta’s daughter explained that they had asked around for information from the other women to ascertain whether or not I would enjoy the meal. “As

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Ensete-based meal. Photograph by the author.

far as I was concerned,” she added, “I felt ashamed to even think of serving you ensete food; but Elsabet reassured me saying that you love us and thus you would eat whatever we offered you.” I had, in fact, gradually developed a certain taste for ensete. Therefore, even from the very beginning of this food adventure, it was painful for me to listen to witty jokes about its lack of culinary appeal. What was the source of the stigma as expressed by certain critics in terms of lack of modernity, lack of good manners, and bad smell? Was it the plant itself ? The lifestyle of the people who tended the plant? The fact that both the plant and its caretakers were rural subjects? Indeed, what kind of plants can become a subject of admonitory speeches and sarcasm?

Grain Love The narratives I recorded in Hadiyya can be alternatively read as exquisitely gastronomical or profoundly political. Frequently, these interpretations line up and commingle. In taking an explicit political angle to food systems and, more

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broadly, to the production and consumption relationships within the country, I opt for framing the neglect of the south-central peoples, of their modes of cultivation and culinary traditions, as a minor variation within the ongoing debate about centers and peripheries. Until the 1980s much had been written about Semitic populations in the North, those professing the Christian Orthodox religion and equipped with centuries-old monarchic institutions. Far less data had been available about lowland peripheries in the South, which consisted of independent tribes, chiefdoms, and empires. The Hadiyya were part of this illiterate, non-Christian melting pot of peoples. This wide belt was considered no-man’s-land at the end of the nineteenth century, when the imperial troops of Menelik II tried to subjugate the peoples in a massive show of force of the center over the periphery (Haberland 1964; Makki 2014, 89). Some parts of the periphery adjusted to the alien rule, some others responded, and some are still resisting in various forms. In the southwestern highlands, as reported by A. Orent for the Kafa, “the most significant cultural impact, which was partly caused by these invasions, was felt in the change-over from hoe cultivation to plow agriculture” (1979, 187). The central court required a greater amount of tribute than in the past in the form of grain, which could only be achieved by relying upon the high yield provided by the plow technique. Moreover, cereals unlike root crops could easily be counted and stored. This transition involved a shift from perennial to annual crops, and from root crops (yam, taro, ensete) to cereals. In a dichotomy exemplified by ensete bread and the products from t’eff grain, there is no doubt that ensete bread “was never given to a monarch” (Orent 1979, 191).5 Such a shift in cropping systems contains indeed the seed of the fatal love affair of Ethiopian elites with grains. The trend of replacing certain plants with grains has been a political ecological subtrack operating for a long time in Ethiopian agricultural policies, as well as in the concomitant creation of food citizenship. Old and new grains have been used as building blocks in conforming local tastes to progressive, international standards. In stirring a national dish, from cultivation in the field to concoction in the pot, a particular regional distinction was slowly being conflated within the national sense of identity. The foundational event in this regard is the spectacular feast organized in 1887 by Queen Taytu Bitul, wife of Menelik II, to consecrate the new church of Entoto Mariam in the recently founded capital Addis Ababa (McCann 2009, 65–67). While her husband Menelik was marching into the South with fire and sword, Queen Taytu orchestrated a parallel national menu through an amalgam

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of regional identities and cultural traditions: rarefied butter and spices were used in special mixtures to titillate the senses; injera (t’eff sourdough flatbread) was baked, to be paired with wet (stews) from cattle and sheep gathered from several parts of the newly created empire and to be tempered by honey wine (tej). A shared culinary heritage was established, whose core elements were for the most part generated within ox-plow cereal-farming systems—namely, a diverse repertoire of annual crops including grains, legumes, and oil seeds. This diet would later consolidate itself as the national food repertoire and eventually be consecrated as Ethiopian cuisine tout court at the end of the twentieth century. In Ethiopia, food became edible nation branding (McCann 2009, 78–79). In this operation of putting on stage an inclusive national cuisine, one category was loudly absent: the nongrain element, the poor man’s daily diet of other reaches of the empire, foods marked by strong sour taste and offensive smell. Certain local products, even indigenous to the country, have never been coded as Ethiopian comestibles. While popular and scientific discourse insists on the recognizability of culinary “Ethiopianness,” from an anthropological perspective it is clear that in Ethiopia not all subjects have historically been granted the same ability to articulate a national sense of belonging via food. Marginal groups (and their peripheral stomachs) have been “invited” into the nation as long as they comply with highland Ethiopian standards (see Abbink 2017, 137–39). Edible roots and tubers have long been staple foods and a cherished component of the meal for many tropical and temperate hunter-gatherers as well as most agriculturalists. However, the general trend globally has been marked by the preference of elites for grains. With the notable exceptions of potato and cassava, which are receiving increasing attention as a source of food energy for small farmers, other less-known root and tuber crops have witnessed a steady fall. This fact is apparent in the Ethiopian case if we read carefully through the most recent national nutrition guidelines ratified and disseminated by the government, which reinforce certain approved trends in relation to food policy, while at the same time silencing diverse and possibly conflicting alternatives that still exist in the country both in terms of agrarian and dietary patterns. In the National Nutrition Programme 2013–2015 there is no mention of tuber or root crops, let alone of ensete.6 As in the past, policy designers believe that the expansion of cereals would allow rapid increase in food production and improve the quality of nutrition and family income; subsistence root crops, on the contrary, are still thought of as being poor in nutrition, less productive, and less responsive to fertilizer applications.

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In an economy still deeply rooted in an agricultural base, and moreover embedded in a solid network of small subsistence farms, the nexus between food production, food consumption, and the environment presents itself with primordial intensity. The imperial couple set the paradigm of a two-pronged strategy to promote change and progress, with Menelik II diverting agricultural production toward new ends, and Taytu forging the standard of a new diet and citizen. The trend of enforced agrarian change marching in tandem with longterm dietary transition would become a permanent feature of the agri-cultural politics in Ethiopia. The competing beliefs and discourses about change and continuity held in Ethiopia by different agents can be more clearly detected by looking at the history and meaning of different plants. Plants are not only botanical characters to be looked at but subjects to think with politically.

Ensete: The Unloved Other The Ethiopian ecology and culinary landscape reached far beyond the northern plateau that appeared on Taytu’s table. The regional variations that were sacrificed during the royal banquet in order to please the taste and political imagination of a new urban culture did in fact proliferate in ordinary foods eaten at home and in dishes developed in local communities. The ensete plant and its food products are the most prominent unloved others in this play of gastropolitical discrimination. Contrary to other regional specialties that were drawn into the control of the central government, ensete food was never consumed at the center of the kingdom. The history of ensete has been punctuated by contrasting feelings and perceptions in those who happened to approach the subject or to be physically in what they would call an ensete plantation (not a garden). According to R. Pankhurst (1996), an isolated reference to ensete can be found in the royal chronicles of the late sixteenth century; otherwise, the plant passed virtually unnoticed in Ethiopian historical literature. In addition, there is the evidence of two seventeenth-century Portuguese Jesuits, Manoel de Almeida and Jerónimo Lobo, both of whom expressed great enthusiasm for the plant. Almeida observed how the plant was laden with a peculiar cultural identity and how it was capable of inducing coherent culinary styles that stood in open contrast with the classical system revolving around injera and doro wet (a thick stew of chicken, egg, and shallot laced with a spice mixture). Those groups who

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cultivated ensete, and whose diet was basically centered on the rubbery ensete bread, were among the most resistant to sliding into the dominant culture. Almeida remarked on the impressive size of the plant, such that two men may have difficulty physically embracing some of its exemplars; he also praised the edibility of every part of it, either sliced and boiled or crumbled and ground; and finally, he mentioned the durability of the processed materials over time (R. Pankhurst 1996, 48). But it was Lobo who was the first to hand down a diligent and sympathetic narrative about ensete, in words that were destined to last for centuries and to be recalled by admirers and detractors alike. The modulation of his account around “beauty” creates a sort of prototypical imprinting for scholars who would later dig into ensete farming. Among the notable trees that grow there is one native and peculiar to that place

called ensete, unlike any tree found in our lands. Its leaves, however, are so large, both in width and length, that two of them are more than enough to cover a

man from head to foot if both are hung one under the other from his neck. This plant is admirably profitable to man, for there is no part of it which is not used advantageously in his service. In addition to the fact that a small number of its leaves furnish and carpet a house with its sprightly green colour, it also

serves pleasingly as clean plates when one wants to eat rustically with much freshness, cleanliness, and delicacy. After it is dry, it is woven and they make

from it a certain flax, from which they weave not only rope similar to that made of hemp but also various tapestries of different colours. From the branches or

stems in which the leaves are set they make an extremely fine, white, pure flour, than which there is no finer milled anywhere. When it is eaten with milk, for

only milk does it have its full flavour, it is a very delicious and delightful food. The trunk and roots serve as something like turnips or potatoes, although more

substantial since they are as thick as any man. Travellers provide themselves with this food which, previously cooked, lasts them for several days. When

cooked it resembles the flesh of our turnips, so that they have come to call this plant “tree of the poor,” even though wealthy people avail themselves of it as a

delicacy, or “tree against hunger,” since anyone who has one of these trees is not in fear of hunger. (cit. in Da Costa 1984, 245)

This long and accurate account already contained the core ingredients of a thorough cultural study of the plant: productivity and usefulness as

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characteristics that enhance, rather than prevent, aesthetic enjoyment; the role of sustenance in human life due to ensete’s sturdiness and durability, which we could reframe as food security; the enchantment of a Western observer for the plant’s conspicuous appearance and elegance—wide and long leaves, the green color of the outer parts, and the white color of the inner fibers and pulp; and finally, the full gastronomic value of its foods. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Scottish explorer J. Bruce would retrace the steps of the Jesuit Father and, much like J. Lobo, would reassert the economic and cultural relevance of the plant. He devoted six pages and two engravings in celebration of it. Ensete, he writes, is a herbaceous plant that resembles the leaf of banana and has in fact been mistaken for such; it grows in swamps and marshes and comes to great perfection with heat and moisture. Ensete is not only edible but holistically “good,” in the sense of several qualities encroaching upon each other. “When boiled, it has the taste of the best new wheat-bread not perfectly baked [ . . . ]. When you make use of the Ensete for eating, you cut it immediately above the small detached roots, and perhaps a foot or two higher, as the plant is of age. You strip the green from the upper part till it becomes white; when soft, like a turnip well boiled, if ate with milk or butter, it is the best of all food, wholesome, nourishing, and easily digested” (Bruce 1804, 152). In his account the green and the white fill the ambience from the so-called plantation to the kitchen; milk and butter, themselves white, are suggested as combinations to enhance the flavor of the bread; and the focus is decidedly placed more on cooked dishes than on expert procedures to turn the plant into food. J. Lobo (and later, J. Bruce) did much to unveil the unusual and rare character of ensete foods, as well as the deep-laid desire of wealthy people for this delicacy.7 However, despite his efforts, the stigma of such a diet as being a cuisine of poverty, of subsistence, and to merely avert famine would prevail in subsequent appraisals. Contrasting observations about the Kaffa people were made around 1880 by A. K. Bulatowicz. The fact that he was an officer marching to the South as a member of Menelik’s armies, pervaded with the mission of defeating and forcibly incorporating local populations, might have conditioned his merciless outlook of this peripheral diet. Ensete, he argues, stood alone as a last resort in a landscape wrecked by war and dereliction; people drank a lot of coffee to fill their bellies, with the supplement of root vegetables and the ensete bread, which “is not very nutritious, it does not taste good (sour) and it has an unpleasant smell” (cit. in McCann 2009, 89). The marker of smell would persist over time

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and resurface in the jokes of an educated Hadiyya woman daydreaming about future husbands. The history of ensete has for the most part been narrated from the point of view of powerful observers who in fact “observed,” from a distance and through pen and pencil (the “technology of intellect” so dearly advocated by J. Goody), rather than engaging in an empirical relationship with the plant. In this stereotypical mode of representation about the ensete-eaters, the vilification of rural (food) habits coexisted with occasional attempts of the wealthy classes to appropriate the cosmetic side of ensete. They would praise its exterior beauty while relegating the same local farming communities, who envisage in the plant a more complex concretion of beauty and goodness, to invisibility. The cultivation of ensete for non-consumption purposes in the North has typically taken the form of reducing the plant to the status of an ornamental object meant to beautify the houses of the upper classes (R. Pankhurst 1996, 51). This version of beauty—one in which beauty is detached from ecological concerns and from cultural life—has also become a choice in luxury restaurants, both at home and in the global Ethiopian diaspora, which would serve a combination of foods that were once considered modest and for poor peoples’ survival only (McCann 2009, 98–99). Ensete has always been approached by wealthy people and urban dwellers with a paradoxical mixture of attraction and repulsion.8 Its main products have nowadays acquired some popularity in capital-city restaurants, especially among foreigners, as ethno-foods for titillating the exotic tastes of “modern” consumers.9 However, the rediscovery of poor people’s foods has rarely generated any broader curiosity for the plant; nor has it led to any structural attempt to spotlight the environmentally and economically sustainable qualities of ensete or to market it in ways that can actually benefit local farmers. The story of how the rising middle class has cynically appropriated the end products of the plant was evoked several times by Hadiyya women who live in the countryside and cultivate ensete firsthand. “The strength of ensete,” Elsabet once said to me, “is like the strength and spirit of sacrifice of us women who cultivate it; the ensete bread has value over any other product and cannot be traded for anything else. Just think how odd it is, the ensete products from Hadiyya are sold in Mercato.10 Those people are rich and would never set foot in one of our gardens, but they still need to extract ensete from rural areas.”11 Contrary to accounts characterized by a detached contemplation of the plant, or inspired by the passing vagaries of exotic seekers, social anthropologist W. A. Shack and his wife, psychologist D. Shack, have offered the most

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holistic, ethnographically deep study of the plant. Their study brims over with the counter-memories of farmers, with the taste, color, and texture of valuable primary sources—that is, with the narratives of local actors. Since the early 1960s, the Shack couple embarked on a fascinating exploration of how ensete played a vital role in the economic and social life among the Gurage of Ethiopia, and how the plant was in fact able to shape these people’s behavior toward food scarcity, to provoke hunger anxiety and spirit possession, and to inform ritual (W. Shack 1966; D. Shack 1969). At that time, the Gurage were an industrious and enterprising people. The intensive cultivation of ensete permitted the concentration of large communities in compact and permanent villages. Well-planned techniques of cultivation and systematic storage of ensete food made it possible for the Gurage to live well above subsistence level. The pattern of gardening was dominated by the ensete plant but also accommodated a variety of other crops (such as barley, wheat, maize, oil seeds, peas, beans, potatoes, cabbages, coffee, and khat), which they would profitably trade in capital and provincial towns.12 A peaceful and cooperative work ethic had developed based on solidarity, hard work, but also a spirit of competition. Their system of values appeared to the Shacks unusual within the Ethiopian scenario. Eager to achieve and prone to succeeding, the Gurage conducted an orderly and frugal existence at home while aggressively exploiting external networks and resources or engaging in labor migration. They started to migrate on a seasonal basis shortly after they were reduced to the status of tribute-payers by the northern imperial forces. Tribute and taxation were made payable only in grains such as barley, t’eff, wheat, and peas, with no resort to the staple subsistence crop ensete, which had minimal exchange value. Wheat and t’eff were not traditional Gurage products, so they had to fulfill what was required of them through migrant labor and military service in the imperial armies in order to generate the necessary cash and later buy grains. The Gurage experienced, and started feeling an attraction for, the advantages of urban life, and over time they developed a keen inclination to adjust to new and different settings. The Gurage migration patterns have certainly shaped modern Addis Ababa, other provincial towns, and beyond. Initially, they were manual laborers and petty traders. “Known for their national and international migrating trends, the Gurage are considered to be a highly mobile and adaptive people. An Amharic joke claims: ‘Guragena Land-Rover Yamaydersubet Yalem’ (there is no place where the Gurage and the Land-Rover does not reach)” (Worku 2000, 43). However, an equally striking aspect in this history of

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extraversion whereby the Gurage were induced to leave their land, their villages, and their homes is that, at least in the early period, they did so temporarily, with a spirit of sacrifice, but only for the sake of plowing back those profits into their rural agricultural ventures. They never completely left ensete behind.13 Ensete horticulture assured a steady source of food supply. People would consume small amounts of the precious pulp in their daily life along with supplementary foodstuffs, and they would keep large surpluses in safe storage for times to come. Hunger and famine were unknown in Gurage history. The solid ethnography of the Shacks represented my literary encounter with the hardy ensete. I determined that I would meet the plant in person. I started wondering what it would feel like living with an almost-inexhaustible food supply that also served for barter; for feastings; for displaying generosity, power, and prestige; and for emergencies when other crops suffered damage. I was intrigued by people who were widely open to the opportunities that modernity could offer while, at the same time, holding on to a plant within the closed confines of their homes and gardens—moreover, a plant that was associated with the values of kinship and neighborliness. I had to ask myself why, and behind the back of whom, their love for ensete was practiced as an act of secrecy. According to the Shacks’ seminal work, the eating behavior of the Gurage and their attachment to a plant that can be stored underground and consumed sparingly have been molded by persistent political conditions, among which “the political expansion of the powerful Amhara kingdoms from the seventeenth century onwards.” The Gurage developed a vision of the world “as being threatening, hostile, and fraught with insecurity” (W. Shack 1971, 40). The ensete secret reserve was apparently the most comforting antidote to fear and suspicion. “The storage of large quantities of ensete in deep earth-pits, and the deliberate hiding of the exact locations of the storage pits (by covering over the openings with garden refuse), are cultural practices which have been exacerbated by the historical dangers of destruction. For in the past, after the most devastating plundering and raiding of villages for slaves and cattle, the ensete-food buried deep in the earth eluded the pillage of hostile raiders, to be recovered later by survivors once the threat of danger had passed” (W. Shack 1971, 40). After reading about the Gurage ensete culture, I decided to pick up from where the Shacks left off and to observe the case of a neighboring community, the Hadiyya, in light of the perspective the two scholars had indicated: that food possesses not only taste, aroma, and texture but also historical meaning and political fragrance.

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History of Combat In October 2004 my research was established in the Hadiyya zone. I was on a reconnaissance mission to map the density of ensete, locate the districts, and talk to potential host families when, on our way from one village community to another, we stopped at a cemetery. Colorful illustrated gravestones recounted another piece of the story: distinguished old men who rode large and exquisitely harnessed horses (ganniccho); snapshots of combat and hunting; the killing of animals. My travel guide commented with pride and a light touch of nostalgia that “this is what is left of the Hadiyya past, when they shone in bravery and belligerency, and were able to hold off lions. It was because of the dispersal of wild animals that the Hadiyya slowly lowered their guard and were led to shift to agriculture.” Was he referring to a remote or to a recent past? At what point did lions disappear? The young man was insinuating that a new tile had to be set in place if I wanted to retrace the relation between the Hadiyya and ensete. The Hadiyya were also known by the name of Gudeella, which in the past had been used by groups of Semitic origin as an epithet to describe their degree of ferocity (Braukämper 2012, 5; Arficio 1973, 132–33). The Hadiyya were despised as searchers of land and scattered vagabonds (Braukämper 2012, 285–317). The Gurage referred to the subgroup Leemo, where I was eventually hosted for the conducting of my research, with the term Wokuonteb (savages), and the Wollamo called them Maräqo (Arabs) (Braukämper and Mishago 1999, 16). In the last chapter of the text Kebra Negast (the “Glory of Kings” of Ethiopia), the Hadiyya are recognized as hereditary enemies of the Christian Empire (Haberland 1964, 236). Accounts from Arab historians confirm that Hadiyya had become a tributary of the Christian Empire in the fourteenth century; they were obliged to furnish military auxiliaries and started paying taxes for their cattle, but throughout the following century they repeatedly fought to retain their independence. Since the beginning of the seventeenth century their loyalty to the empire was merely lip service. Even the relations with their closest neighbors, the Kambata, were marked by open conflict. The tensions grew when the Kambata kingdom, around 1810, and the Christian kingdom of Shoa, around 1870, began to expand. Ethiopian rulers made frequent incursions into the South with the aim of subjugating and Christianizing the populations and spreading Amharic culture. Natural events that occurred between 1887 and 1893 contributed to the sapping of the claims to autonomy of southern populations. An outbreak of rinderpest among the cattle and shortly afterward a smallpox

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epidemic resulted in starvation, loss of cattle and human life, and a trail of battles over land, interethnic conflicts, and steadily increasing population pressure. To Hadiyya people, for whom livestock represented not only an economic resource but a vital part of their code of ethics and values, the loss of their herds was tantamount to societal meltdown. Unable to exchange animal products for vegetable food with the neighboring farming communities, and with no other commercial products to trade at their disposal, they saw their food supply becoming more and more precarious and eventually had to find in the cultivation of food plants a means of alleviating hunger and uncertainty. They progressively came to perceive horticulture as imperative in order to survive (Braukämper 2012, 271–81). The Hadiyya groups were defeated between 1889 and 1894. The burden of the new imperial order must have seemed particularly alien and oppressive to the Hadiyya, who were at that time mainly committed to herding and breeding cattle and only minimally engaged in crop production (mostly barley) through the exploitation of sufficient areas to feed their families. The adoption of plow agriculture and of annual grains has not been smooth and uncontested everywhere. But although the Hadiyya were less adaptable to the cerealization process, over time they had to realize how untenable it was to reconcile a state of guerrilla warfare with the achievements of food security and well-being; as a result, they progressively stopped raiding and slid into a form of sedentary agriculture, adopted from neighboring communities such as the Gurage and Kambata, in order to pay taxes easily and to squeeze some benefits from being under state control. The Hadiyya have always juggled such membership, moving back and forth between surrender and recalcitrance. The period up to the Italian invasion was characterized by a consolidation of imperial rules, even if this takeover was greatly opposed by the Hadiyya (Braukämper 2012, 334–53). Later in the 1950s the Hadiyya’s intermittent participation in the dominant culture took on a religious inflection, with a large number of people initially converting to Orthodox Christianity, which bore the stamp of the conquerors. By then the Hadiyya were mostly Fandaano, an autochthonous religion blended with Muslim elements.14 But again, in an act of unspoken protest, since the 1970s they have enthusiastically turned to Neo-Pentecostal churches.15 Yet the terrain where this oppositional attitude against national institutions has unfolded more dramatically is the arena of party politics and policy-making. Since the military campaigns of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, many

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southerners have shared a strong antipathy toward the system of their conquerors. What was imagined at the core in terms of nation-building, ethnic formation, and state rule was instead experienced from the margins as an act of oppressive and colonialist expansion (Braukämper and Mishago 1999, 22). At the time of the flawed elections of 2000, a young Hadiyya man explained the progressive setting-up of a grassroots political resistance in the following way: “If they start fighting, the Hadiyya people will bring their ancient weapons from their huts—swords and spears—and fight back. This is the result of the accumulation of many, many years of suppression. The Hadiyya were suppressed during the Haile Sellassie and the Derg regimes, and the EPRDF [Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front] continues the same practice” (Tronvoll 2002, 169). Even today, most Ethiopians condemn the Hadiyya’s proverbial indomitability, describing them as having a reluctance to obedience and as being averse to school participation and to any type of education dictated from the outside. It is no coincidence that these images of hostility in some way bring to mind their ancient ferocity. The Hadiyya portray themselves as a group proud of their history, and whose self-esteem was further ignited by the threat of subjugation from external conquerors. Old Hadiyya men interviewed during my fieldwork, and the youth to a lesser extent, vividly relate to a tradition that is identified with value concepts of cleverness, strength, courage, honor, and warlike capability. In the past, men achieved social promotion and mobility by producing offspring, by owning cattle and fine horses, and through success in open combat or insidious ambush, including killing wild animals and male adversaries. In addition to an elevated social status, the male “hero” (gitanna) was bestowed conspicuous funeral rites and gravestones, of the type that I had encountered in my wanderings over the districts of the Hadiyya zone. Those gravestones are rich texts to read; interestingly, they contain what would appear in the first instance as highly colliding chapters in Hadiyya history: horses and lions on the one side, and the ensete plant on the other. If we had to summarize the traditional pattern of Hadiyya culture into an ideal abstraction, we would refer to cattle-breeding as the backbone, complemented by sporadic barley cultivation; these two scaffolding components underlay a relatively egalitarian society where men would climb the social ladder by way of killing and fighting. However, this pattern existed, with variations, only until around 1880, when the Hadiyya social fabric was suppressed by the conquering forces of the Christian Empire; at that point, the already-initiated transition

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from a nomadic existence to sedentary farming underwent a sudden acceleration (Braukämper 2012, 19–24). Within the Leemo subgroup, intense intermarriages and strong bonds of friendship with the horticulturalist Gurage facilitated first the transition from dominating nomadic to agropastoralist, and then from this mixed model to a decidedly placid sedentary lifestyle (Braukämper 2012, 198). Lions disappeared; this is the image, loaded with otherwise-unspeakable emotions, that the Hadiyya use to condense a long-term history of freedom, subjugation, and compromise. More of an evocative metaphor than a mere fact in regional history, I have always interpreted this image as a culturally acceptable way for Hadiyya people to grieve the death of their pastoralist expression of life. Most people whom the Hadiyya were fiercely fighting against on the battlefield were highly contemptuous of ensete and believed that it was an inferior type of food that caused weakness. Because of this feminizing prejudice—and presumably also because of the considerable technical know-how demanded for its cultivation—the Hadiyya had been reluctant to incorporate ensete into their cultural system. Men, in particular, needed to distance themselves from ensete and from the antiheroic implications of becoming, as the plant requires, a caring gardener. Yet, at the same time, they realized that the high-yielding plant would stabilize their sometimes-precarious food supply. It must have been painful to brandish hoes in the stillness of the ensete garden for people who had developed over the centuries a reputation for being warriors, ritually potent healers, and rainmakers. But the men found ways to keep the passion for the breeding of livestock alive; it was indeed the women who overcame the prejudice of weakness and exposed themselves body and soul to the ensete micro environment and its influences, letting the men embrace new forms of virile prowess. From an anthropological perspective, it is highly significant that the Hadiyya love affair with ensete was not a nostalgic tale about a traditional, idyllic niche that has a deep history. It is indeed a story of a people who have been until recently on the move, and who have skillfully learned how to adjust to changing environments and circumstances, making a virtue out of necessity. What is then the logic of place-making (and how does a sense of belonging develop) for people whose move was forcibly blocked? I suggest that it is by means of a spirit of improvisation and an artful political discourse that the Hadiyya have cleverly cruised through the nationalizing logic of the Ethiopian state and created parallel and unofficial paths into the interstices of the edifice. Masters of multimodality, mavericks yet remaining faithful to themselves, they have made the

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best of available resources to navigate between tradition and a new bureaucratic national setting. As is true for many other groups deemed resistant to progress and a threat to the state, the Hadiyya have adopted a flexible and pluralistic ethos. We will see how such ethos has informed not only their political and religious attitudes but also their foodways and agricultural practices. There might be a grain of truth in claiming that the Hadiyya have learned much from ensete’s personality. As a good ensete plant would do, they wrap themselves in successive layers of protection.

A Garden of Their Own Food-security specialists and the media have alternately described Ethiopia as a place where famine and epidemics have occurred cyclically; as a recipient of constant food aid and the subject of international campaigns that have transformed it into the epitome of famine; as the center of prodigious plant genetic diversity; and recently as the African country most heavily affected by the phenomena of land, water, and resource grabbing (Lavers 2012; Makki 2014). Ethiopia is a paradoxical country, whose paradoxical political economy can be read through the history of its diverse plants and landscapes. Starting with the post-1960 Green Revolution, and through increasingly radical changes, in the late twentieth century the Ethiopian agrarian economy has transformed itself toward the positive acceptance of new crops (particularly maize), urbanization, and the pressure put on small farming communities to embrace new seeds, inputs, materials, and methods. In an effort to curb the challenges facing the agricultural sector and achieve faster agricultural growth and food security, in 1993 the government adopted an Agricultural Development-Led Industrialization (ADLI) strategy, which outlined a move away from traditional subsistence agriculture and toward specialization and market-based agricultural production. In 2005 the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) and the Other Food Security Programs (OFSPs) were introduced. The Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP)—the latest produced in the series of the current government’s development endeavors and now in phase II (2015–2020)—continues the emphasis on commercialization of agriculture (Adem 2012). This modernizing approach calls for expanded investment in roads and telecommunications—which would in turn create new opportunities for industrial production and modern services—and in technologies for agriculture

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that aim at increasing productivity, including improved seeds, extension services, and the use of chemical fertilizers (Alemu 2011). It is widely proclaimed that this may require a greater role for the private sector (Dorosh and Rashid 2013). Such an approach has gained a central place in a number of key policy documents, most notably the government’s Food Security Strategy. This document has become the template for the development of regional strategies and for discussion with donors (Keeley and Scoones 2000, 95–96). It invokes ostensibly technical interventions to reordering rural social spaces and livelihoods and typically translates into an aggressively top-down attitude toward extension services. The document that exhaustively recapitulates this agrarian and nutritional turn in food policy is the Government of Ethiopia’s National Nutrition Programme 2013–2015. The end point of a long trajectory, the National Programme marks a consolidated shift in food policy from food-based solutions toward food fortification. National guidelines say much about nutritional deficits and less about self-sufficiency in food production, or about local wisdom in reinforcing food security, or about the advantage of combining new and different dishes with ecologically rooted and vital food cultures. The food-security discourse of the Ethiopian government takes its shape from the parameters of a green revolutionary agenda and rests upon the belief that a growth economy, with policies geared toward an intensified commodity production, is the only path to community well-being. In this institutional narrative, food cultures that function in ways other than commodity systems are considered antagonistic or inefficient. Smaller farms that cannot compete, or that do not want to conform to mechanization and input intensification, are excluded from a national program that marches forward to capitalist development and cash-crop monocultures (Alemu 2011; Keeley and Scoones 2000; Makki 2014). The nationalization of the Ethiopian state over the last century and a half has nevertheless coexisted with a dissonant subtheme: the resistance and vitality of local cultures (see Abbink 2017, 121–22). Away from the center, agricultural performances and communities of taste change at the hands of ghost farmers and ghost cooks who, in their private sideboards, kitchens, and gardens, preserve memories of Ethiopia, re-create or manipulate the past, and actively transform the meaning of (food) citizenship. In Hadiyya, as in many regions of southern Ethiopia, the search for channels to express a sense of opposition to the dominant structures of power has become a search for resurgent cultural identities. The opposition of the margins to corporate and

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imperial forces has been sustained not through spectacular protest, or organized forms of dissent, but by pragmatically fostering local, alternative agrarian systems based on self-sufficiency and cooperation. The places where such dissonant histories—loaded with gendered and intergenerational distinctions, regional varieties, and contrasting memories—can be more crisply heard are home gardens. Most studies of agrobiodiversity within home gardens have highlighted the importance of such micro landscapes in the maintenance of folk vegetal materials but also, concurrently, in the retention of agri-cultural and culinary identity. Through gardening, dispossessed rural people, immigrants, and socially dominated groups activate and maintain a sense of community, setting the group apart from social environments that are perceived as hostile. Gardening also enables these gardeners to reclaim a social identity that the surrounding milieu denies them (Carney and Rosomoff 2009, 123–38; Veteto and Skarbø 2009, 78). Gardeners bring order to the chaos of their own world by creating distinctive places that contrast vividly with the dominant environment. The ensete garden is one such place where plants speak on behalf of humans who have no other possibility of expressing claims through articulated speech. In the Hadiyya context overt competition would be considered inappropriate, and conflict is therefore manifested through figurative language. Often encrypted messages refer to food preferences and to ensete gardens as spaces for survival and intimacy, where people enjoy the privilege of being at a certain distance from official power and its inherent perils.16 Slowly over time, even in the community where I had already spent several months of fieldwork, the topic of party politics and political power dynamics began to infiltrate into my daily conversations with the women. In a context where direct talk about politics is not common, and where farmers have learned the hard way how to fine-tune silence and irony to avert retaliation, these acts of confidentiality became a cherished yet bittersweet gift that I had to accept and reflect upon. Their deliberate choice to share painful memories and to expose themselves to risk calls into question the stereotypical view of peripheral farmers as “living in the dark,” as a young government officer once told me—that is, literally without electricity and symbolically buried deep in ignorance. Farmers, both female and male, indeed voice alternative truths to those validated in institutional loci of power. Farmers suffer the consequences of politics; they make bold statements, fear for their lives, and take refuge in corners where big leaves metaphorically shield them from violence.

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During the last elections in 2005 it was a time full of chal-

lenges. The competition between parties was very harsh.

VALENTINA : Whom HADIYYA WOMAN: VALENTINA:

did you vote for? Meles Zenawi.17

I do not believe you.

HADIYYA WOMAN:

If we said that our vote goes to Beyene, they would kill us.18

They would use all their power, and we are afraid of it. Even Beyene would not be able to protect us. It is like an insect biting you all over the body. The ruling

party is precisely like that. Last year, just before the election time, I was not

afraid to say around that I would vote for Beyene, but those of the government came to my house and said: “If you do not stop talking, we will cut out your

tongue.” Since then I have remained silent. I have heard of a lot of people who died for this reason, including many youths at the university. VALENTINA:

So, did you eventually go to the polls?

HADIYYA WOMAN:

No, I did not vote for anybody. I sat here in the ensete gar-

den, and thought about my ensete plants. It was too dangerous to go and vote after the warning I had received.19

In the ensete gardens I heard the voices of useful plants and charismatic small farmers. People spoke in guarded words, and plants, who are not mute, communicated beyond the words. A subtext emerged of quiet resentment—a history of creative living on the edge. Present-day Hadiyya create their affective geographies of belonging, bargain their search for rights, and make room in the present for their fighting ancestors, not in the ballot box nor on the battlefield, but in the ensete garden and around the fireplace.

II VE GE TAL LOV E

FIGURE 6. Illustration of Musa Ensete. Source: http://www.plantillustrations.org/ ILLUSTRATIONS_HD_/182774.jpg.

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The Secret Life of a Root Tuber Crop Anything beautiful should be given a name, do you not agree? — TA N T WA N E N G , T H E G A R D E N O F E V E N I N G M I S T S

Ensete: A Multilayered Portrait

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H E E N S E T E form of life distinguishes itself from both the grain-based plow culture practiced in the northern highlands and from the pastoralist economies in the far South and West (W. Shack 1963, 72; Smeds 1955). The plow is unsuitable to the horticulture of ensete; across the ensete belt, on the contrary, the hoe (or digging stick) is the dominant technological tool. J. Bruce (1804) was one of the first external observers, at the end of the eighteenth century, to point to the cultivation of ensete as being a distinct ecological phenomenon of southwestern Ethiopia. Ensete is not grown for food in any other region on the African continent. Yet Ethiopians have cultivated ensete, a cousin of the banana tree, for thousands of years (Ehret 1979, 175–76) and have converted its stalk, roots, and leaves into food, medicine, decoration, and more. The by-products of ensete serve utilitarian and practical needs—for house construction, for fuel, and for utensils. Ensete leaves, and fibers extracted from the leaf-stems, are important items of barter and trade. Both ensete and banana are tree-like, giant, herbaceous plants; but ensete, unlike the banana, is a long-lived monocarpic perennial. The word monocarpic derives from the Greek words monos, meaning “single,” and karpos, meaning “fruit.” Monocarpic plants die after flowering, although it may take several years to reach the flowering stage. They are in fact divided into annuals, biennials,

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and perennials. Perennials may take many years to flower as the length of the vegetative period can be highly variable. Much of agriculture today centers on annual plantings and harvestings of a

single species over an extended area. Think of the wheat fields of Kansas with

a single variety of wheat filling acre upon acre of the landscape. Perennials, as

opposed to annuals, produce flowers and seeds more than once in their lifetime. In practical terms, perennials do not have to be planted annually. Perennial is a term usually applied to herbaceous plants or small shrubs rather than large shrubs or trees, but, in the strict sense used here, it applies to all plants that

flower and produce seeds more than once. In some definitions, perennials are

plants that last three or more seasons. For our purpose here, the longer, the better. (Dewar 2007, 1–2)

Ensete only flowers once during its final stage at around the age of ten years and bears fruits (k’alima) that humans do not consider edible, not even in times of scarcity; this is a trait that has nonetheless led some observers to call it the “false banana tree.” If not harvested in the year following the appearance of flowers and fruits, ensete gradually changes into fibrous wood and eventually collapses. “The ensete plants,” explained the group of women gathered in the garden of a neighbor, “can be processed when they have reached at least the age of three, or when they have flowered, usually at the age of four. The flowering time varies from area to area and depends on the soil; if the soil is rich in minerals, the plant will take less time to blossom. If you do not process the plant that has blossomed, it will dry up and die.”1 Certain exemplars of ensete that H. Smeds (1955, 16) saw in eastern Sidama between November 1953 and June 1954 would occasionally reach eight meters in height, although ten meters had been reported as quite common, with exceptional individuals up to thirteen meters. Based on my experience among the Hadiyya, I have never encountered ensete above six meters. The part of the plant that is used for human consumption is the enlarged pseudo-stem and underground corm, with a circumference of up to 2.5 meters at maturity, which then swells over time with carbohydrates. It is from this bulbous part that the sought-after starch is collected and stored for between four and eight years, even up to ten, depending on the altitude. Despite the immediate resemblance to a gargantuan celery, and the exoticism of the bent leaves and their color, the plain bulb, which might seem so

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unattractive to a Western eye, is in fact the beating heart of the plant—not its flowers or fruit. Because of this big corm, the cultivation of ensete can be equated to that of roots and tubers. However, the difference lies in the time element because ensete is slow to grow and requires humans to employ considerably more patience and care than they would with any other root and tuber. Moreover, the stem and leaf sheaths also contain starch and have to be decorticated by strenuous manual labor to separate the starch from the fibers. The starchy pulp obtained from its different parts is not immediately ready to eat. Farmers pulverize the corm, squeeze the leaf sheaths, and then mix and wrap the resulting pulp with several layers of ensete leaves as prefermentation procedures. This living material is stored safely behind the house in deep earthpits to mature, with periodic remixing and kneading until it is considered to be properly fermented. At that point, the pits are lined with leaf sheaths, which have to be renewed every three months for, as Bakkalech argues, “the smell of the pulp would otherwise become bad.” The fermentation process helps soften the fibrous parts and makes the food more palatable. People may occasionally consume these products immediately after harvest, especially in cases of dire need dictated by scarcity, but fermentation of ensete pulp for several months up to one year, and sometimes longer, is the norm. The methods of ensete cultivation, the procedures of fermentation of the starchy pulp, and the preparation of ensete foods differ among the ensete-cultivating communities of Ethiopia. All of them, however, maintain a clear belief that wild ensete has a separate nature from the cultivated one, to the extent of perceiving them as being two different species (Shigeta 1990, 84–86). This is similar, for example, to the case of the sago palm in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. Sago thrives in the wild and can reproduce itself prolifically without human intervention. Certain exemplars, however, have been tamed over time to live in communion with humans and provide for their subsistence. Humans have intentionally selected them. Those sago individuals that have been brought closer to home have become sensitive to human intervention to the extent of requiring constant horticultural attention: “By aborting its flowering process, killing some of its suckers and fostering others, diverting its vital substance from the course of natural reproduction—in short, by controlling its wild fertility—humans have brought this piece of nature into the cultural domain, there to enjoy nourishment from it” (Tuzin 1992, 112). Domestication is a form of relationship between humans and other-than-humans—not a state of existence, but a process of getting to know and to love each other (Pollan 2001, xvi; Shigeta 1996, 233–35).

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What markedly characterizes the cultivated ensete is its great variety in shape, size, color, and, accordingly, a certain taste of its edible parts, which slightly varies from area to area (Shigeta 1996). Some kinds are easy to discern, while others are so subtlely different that even the ensete grower has to make a closer examination to determine which kind of ensete it belongs to. Basically, this diversity can be summarized under the following categories: there is the common ensete plant; the red ensete plant, which is said to have medicinal value (particularly as an abortifacient); and wild ensete, which local farmers consider poisonous and sometimes refer to as the devil’s ensete.2 The varieties of ensete, of which more than two hundred have been documented in the southwestern belt, all have their proper names; differences in name are related to differences in the utilization of a variety. There are cases when people plant what they consider as important varieties closer to the house and give them more attention. This plant nomenclature is further complicated by the fact that farmers transplant ensete several times during its life cycle, which spans from three to twelve years. While the wild populations propagate naturally through seeds, domestic ensete is propagated by means of shoots, which are excised close to the roots of a grown plant and buried into wellmanured plant beds, where they will remain for a year. Farmers carry out propagation during the rainy season, usually from March to April. Out of one plant between one hundred and two hundred shoots may be obtained if it is manured periodically.3 Farmers transplant shoots as they develop.4 This is why ensete is locally categorized into various stages of growth based on the age, size, and perceived gender of each plant.5 The plant has different names throughout its life cycle, from the sprouting to the full-grown stage. Heavy labor is needed during the time when the shoots are growing and are moved to different parts of the garden. Once a plant has passed beyond the tender age, it can be increasingly left to itself, but still it needs regular tending such as weeding and manuring. The last name, achieved in its final position where it will reach its full size, will become its collective name. Only when the plants are transferred to their final position are they considered as mature plants. As in the case of the waiting time before consumption of the fermented pulp, it is equally rare that farmers decide to dig out ensete plants before they are at least five years old. Acting otherwise and thus preventing the plant from reaching its full growth would signify, and publicly disclose, that the household is short of food; premature harvesting of ensete “is forced on peasants by serious poverty and food insecurity—households simply cannot wait out the

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full maturation cycle” (Rahmato 1995, 33). Moreover, as W. A. Shack observed decades ago in the Gurage communities (1963, 74), and which is still the case today for Hadiyya, the height and girth that plants reach mark status. Contrary to an aesthetics based on contemplation at a safe distance, through the eye and none of the other senses, “an aesthetics of the hand does not necessarily have to leave out toil and suffering to create joyful experience” (Winkler 2005, 9). In a healthy and monumental ensete plant, farmers contemplate the work of their hands, the duration of their continual relationship with that particular exemplar, and the beauty of it as a form of reward and consolation. Both cultivating ensete and preparing food from its flour are a labor of endurance, pain, and quiet anticipation. For the Hadiyya, who were progressively brought by external circumstances to embrace a sedentary mode of life, the relationship with ensete may have started as a burden; but afterward it could not have developed arbitrarily. When developed, it must have created a sense of pride and superiority in those who adopted it. While cereal-growers or pastoralists despise the value of ensete food—especially for being stored in the soil, thus acquiring the veneer of a dirty and rotten substance—ensetecultivating farmers speak with contempt of peoples who have not been able, or have refused, to learn how to take good care of ensete gardens, and they sometimes refer to detractors or unskilled farmers as being lazy. To them, cultivating ensete is a burden of love. At first encounter, the Hadiyya were probably attracted by ensete as a security crop when other crops fail; but as time went on they have realized that the advantages of ensete surpass the threshold of mere survival. For example, the art of preservation and long storage of ensete dough by using the fermentation process, with little or no loss for long periods of time (from a minimum of two weeks up to ten years), gives stability to the economic system insofar as households receive a mechanism to modulate consumption during food shortages. Hadiyya, like the majority of ensete-cultivating people, have also observed from neighboring communities and then experimented firsthand that, if the soil is properly tilled and manured, ensete gives a higher and more dependable yield than any other crop, including cereals (Rahmato 1995, 28). This is witnessed by the demographic profile of ensete areas that, numbering not uncommonly 250 to 500 people per square mile, are the most densely populated in the country. In such areas, the average limits of agrarian carrying capacity have been exceeded (Smeds 1955, 34–35). The ensete-planting culture can therefore support a greater population than a seed-planting one.

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Strikingly dense are also the typical settlements in ensete-populated communities. Ensete gardens are circular-shaped and closely fenced. Ensete requires relatively little land; one acre suffices to supply all the ensete food for an average family, thus leaving land available for growing other crops. In between one homestead and another, each encircled by the ring of towering ensete, larger surfaces of land open up that can be devoted to the cultivation of grains, legumes, and tubers in addition to ensete. This settlement pattern, marked by the density of population and vegetation, has developed for most peoples in the Southwest as the optimal answer to the region’s chronic scarcity of arable land, an issue that has historically led to many conflicts (Braukämper 2012; Hamer 1986; W. Shack 1963). The kebele (the smallest administrative unit) where I conducted my research consists of around seven hundred households, with an average of one hectare of land to each homestead. That ensete needs little space is a powerful ecological factor able to shape livelihoods and values of the whole family farm and community. Claiming little space for itself, ensete allows in fact more space for other forms of cultivation, which grow together in a mixed farming system, and for the grazing of cattle. As we have seen in previous chapters, cattle (laro) are generally considered by the Hadiyya, even after the induced conversion to sedentary agriculture, as the most valuable property and are therefore held in high regard.6 The higher esteem of the farmers when compared to the herdsmen is a rather unusual phenomenon in southern Ethiopia, for the pastoral populations normally look down with contempt upon agriculturalists. Yet the Hadiyya case helps debunk the inadequacy of the dichotomy between sedentary and pastoral. The Hadiyya were once nomadic herders and now are both agriculturalists and cattle-keepers. They speak with unresolved sorrow of the times when they were darba’a—a Hadiyya term that can be summarized as “pastoralist” but literally means “wandering with cattle through grassland,” thus vividly recalling the image of their physical relatedness to their animals. This is the account of an old Hadiyya man: In the past the Hadiyya walked along with their cattle. They slept under the stars and did not need either houses or land. There was a great deal of violence

and conflict though, especially with the Kambata and other neighboring com-

munities. Nowadays the mindset has changed and people long for land; the

population has increased and this has strongly influenced their lifestyle. The youth, in particular, enjoy the current lifestyle.7

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Ensete provided room for accommodating cattle, and subsequently other crops and crop combinations, during a time of forced choice. An Amharic poem “handed down for many generations” equally refers to the vital connection between these apparently disparate components (the majestic plant and the beloved cattle) within the ensete pattern when it tells that ensete “came from the Garden of Eden, is grown on manure, and is eaten with meat and milk” (Siegenthaler 1971, 12). Another legend recounts how the monk Zena Markos, who is credited with introducing Christianity into the area in the thirteenth century, owned a cow during the time he was living among the Gurage people. One day the monk decided to travel to another province; before he left, he asked one of his loyal Gurage friends to take care of his cow. Some time after, the cow fell sick. The person who had been entrusted with keeping the animal found himself in a dilemma: Should he slaughter the cow before it died, or keep it alive as sick as it was in order to show loyalty to the monk? Finally, he decided to bury the cow alive. The monk returned from his journey and was told about the fate of the cow. When he went to visit the burial site of his cow, he saw a freshly green, thornless, and strange plant growing out of it. He thought that this plant was a gift from God and called it “ensete.” He instructed the Gurage people to use this new plant as a food. Since then, according to the legend, ensete became the staple food of the Gurage people.8 How sensual it is for the argument of this book that the ensete plant is thought to have grown from the body of a cow—one that, moreover, was buried alive—to the extent that we can poetically imagine the ensete roots absorbing the lifeblood of the animal and injecting that combination of animal-vegetal energy into food for humans. Not only did ensete harmonize with cattle, but there was in fact more that Hadiyya managed to relocate around the plant: their ritual potency. In the past their reputation as healers was established based on a special expertise in treating the urinary tract of slaves who had been castrated by order of the Ethiopian emperor. They were renowned not only for having above-average medical knowledge, but also (especially the subgroup Leemo) as rainmakers and powerful magicians (Braukämper 2012, 193–94). As elsewhere among other ensete-cultivating groups, the organization and division of labor that is required to process the plant have, until recently, been surrounded by a complex of ritual practices and supernatural beliefs. This supernatural aura may well have influenced the choices in determining, for example, soil fertility and the allocation of land.

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A remarkable feature spans across southwestern Ethiopia—namely, that marginalized minorities of craftworkers such as potters, tanners, weavers, woodworkers, and blacksmiths, in contrast to the majority among whom they live, are still today totally excluded from planting ensete for fear that they will contaminate the soil. Further support for this peculiar cultural trait is found in Hadiyya where potters (fuga’a), and in general those not belonging to the farming majority (batano, artisans), are denied the privilege of landownership, and therefore of physically interacting with plants and crops of any kind. Only once during my fieldwork, in January 2006, did I see women potters, at the farthest edge of the garden, helping the women farmers smash the ensete corm. I was told by the owner of the garden, “We let them do this simply because this is a stage that does not require staying close to the proper ensete pulp, and they in fact do not enter into any physical contact with it nor do they touch it with their hands or feet.” When I spoke to one of those potters, she repeated the same story from a different and yet complementary perspective: “I was born here, in Hadiyya, but we are not equal to the Hadiyya people. I do the work of pottery, not the work of ensete.”9 Ensete was looked upon in the past as a plant possessing magical qualities (Smeds 1955, 26). Ritually prepared ensete food had an important role in life cycle events such as birth, circumcision, marriage, and death. Among the Gurage, “seeds from the false banana fruit are used in divination, and roots of special ensete plants, secreted and guarded as a personal amulet, are used in concoctions for curing social and ritual illnesses. At principal feasts ensete serves as a form of tribute from subjects to their political and religious heads” (W. Shack 1963, 74). Decades ago, the Hadiyya folk religion Fandaano made intensive use of offerings to ancestors and the placing of votive ensete food as a gift at holy trees to appease evil spirits. Laden with remnants of an Islamic past, the Hadiyya ancestors of three previous generations underwent prolonged fasting and were used to venerating natural elements (such as trees and bushes but also rivers) to which they would pay tribute by pouring food onto the earth or the running water. Old Summoro once told me the story of his father, Lemma, who brought an orphan boy—who was living in his house and whom he had adopted and raised like his own son—to a nearby place called Foamo. The boy started kicking the trunk of a big and respected tree, ignoring Lemma, who begged him to stop. The boy was shaken by a violent crisis under the tree. That same night he died.

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FIGURE 7.

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Artisan women at a local exhibition. Photograph by the author.

In the words of a Hadiyya woman a strong relationship emerges between the plant world in general, the ensete food plant in particular, and the well-being of humans and trees alike: The Fandaano practitioners would order people to venerate trees. At that time

people believed that trees would love people who offered them food. It was the

Fandaano practitioners who mediated between the language of trees and that of people. The food which was offered to trees was atakana, a special ensete porridge; bilambilo, which is made of ensete dough, pumpkin, cabbage, and

butter; bullo (chuko in Amharic), which is barley powder mixed with distilled

butter; and also cheese and cabbage accompanied by ensete bread. In all these preparations you must use large amounts of butter.10

Cheese, butter, and ensete bread were the foods specifically fed to the Fandaano priests, and through their bodies to the spirits, during the possession ceremonies. Another woman, who was rumored to have indulged in Fandaano practices until recently, added lively detail to a plot widely shared among all elderly

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women. Of special interest for this discussion is the reference to reciprocal feeding between species, with plants and humans sipping vital substances from each other. There was an impressive tree on the way to the village of Gabo. The Fandaano would go to that place and sit under the canopy of the tree. They sprinkled the blood of slaughtered animals at the bottom of the tree, and in turn savored resin from the trunk. The Hadiyya of this area were also used to bringing the best part

of what they had cooked—cheese, butter, and the ensete bread—on a specific

tract of the Batena River called Foamo, where the course of it created a waterfall. The butter would melt and slowly percolate into, and thus feed, the river.11

This sense of communion of the local populations with the natural environment would soon be labeled as animism by Protestant missionaries coming from the United States. Anglo-American missionaries officially settled in the Kambata/Hadiyya area in 1929, thriving at first as an underground movement and, from their debut, representing themselves as the civilizers of a pagan world. A phase of massive proselytism was started by evangelical Protestant churches in the Hadiyya area in 1977 (see Grenstedt 2000). According to one of my informants, the Hadiyya people have abandoned many local customs, including the use of leather clothing and performing folk songs and dance, for two reasons: church (“the struggle against Satan”) and school. Efforts to purge traditional ways of life and beliefs, especially from multifarious and intensely practiced possession cults each associated with specific dietary protocols, were not exclusive to the Pentecostal movement but were rather sustained by other powerful agents such as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and socialist officials and activists during the Derg. All of them, each driven by their own motivations, aimed at fighting the evil forces “of the past” found in clustered rural areas by loosening long-held bonds within local communities, their gift-giving ethos, and their collective and place-based understanding of the life cycle. A new sense started insinuating itself into daily interactions of what prosperity and (individual) success should be. Although uneven across contexts and frequently resisted by local populations through acts of disobedience, this transformation unfolded as a progressive broadening of clan-based identities toward the aspiration, especially felt by young generations, to enter a national and even international or cosmopolitan network of information and opportunities.

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In Hadiyya religious fanaticism was rare, and cases were recorded of individuals who converted from one religion to another several times and with impressive ease and aplomb (Braukämper 1997, 324)—a historical fact that once again confirms their attitude of adopting new layers of identity in order to blend into the fissures of power dynamics, conflicts, and ethnic animosity. However, my Hadiyya hosts were unanimous in recalling the arrival of charismatic Christianity and, concomitant to that, the abrupt eradication of the spirits, of the instruments used in possession cults, and, most urgently, of any food exchange between humans and plants.12 I was told that the children of a powerful Fandaano man had eventually overcome his resistance to embrace Protestantism by going to the river and, under the trees, eating up the votive offerings. “Can you not see,” they screamed repeatedly in their father’s face, “that there is no reason to fear those spirits? Can you not see that nothing happens to us and we are still alive?” As conversions to the new creed increased, the missionaries promptly dismantled the drums used to induce profound trance and smashed the bowls where spirits were fed. Nowadays, after the arrival of the Pentecostal movements and the establishment of several charismatic churches throughout the area, most of the traditional features of the Hadiyya culture have been disposed of, and little supernatural aura has remained in the ensete garden, at least officially. Or is it rather that the communion with trees, and with the spirits who inhabit them, has remained— but in disguise? What if the magic and air of secrecy of ensete could be read in terms of the food security it silently provides, of the rich indigenous knowledge that has flourished around it, of the promise of a sustainable future made in a whisper, and of the quiet revolution of those who more lovingly tend it?

Mix, Match, Love The definition given by W. A. Shack of ensete cultivation as a “monoculture” (1963, 73), which echoed the same assertion of H. Smeds in relation to the Sidama group (1955, 15), may have been appropriate for those specific groups or for those bygone days; but it is not what I experienced in Hadiyya from 2004 to 2015. There, as in most areas within the ensete belt, the plant was in fact outstandingly characterized by openness rather than by a unitary self-identity. Historically, different patterns can be numbered under the broad category of “ensete cultivation” according to the degree of reliance on the plant as a staple

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food; the degree varies depending on the environment and on economic and cultural considerations (Brandt 1997, 844–45; Gascon 1994; Spring 1996, 1997; Westphal 1975). There are areas—for example, Sidama and Gurage—where ensete has been intensively cultivated, thus representing the almost-exclusive crop in the garden and food at the table, and in turn generating a landscape of dense vegetation and equally dense human population. In other areas—Gamo, Wolayta, Ari, and Hadiyya—ensete still plays a major role in the agricultural and food system but is also productively combined with other crops (cereals and tubers). Cattle are regarded as vital to keep the system in motion not only for the manure required to enrich the ensete plot but also to plow the few open fields devoted to cereal cultivation (Rahmato 1995, 30–31). The density of plant and human settlements remains a remarkable feature of the landscape. Further down this scale of intensity we find a pattern (such as among the southwestern Oromo) in which ensete and tubers are of lesser importance compared to grains; here the plow is used more than the hoe, and ensete plays a real role purely as a backup crop in case of failure of the cereal harvest. The cattle are used for pulling plows or carts, and only minimally taken into consideration as producers of garden fertilizer. At the bottom of the scale we observe people, such as the Sheko of the Southwest, who give priority to roots and tubers other than ensete, then to cereals, and only marginally to ensete. In this type of crop rotation cattle are not regarded as essential, ensete foods simplify into quick and uncomplicated preparations, and the whole human-plant-animal fabric loosens to the extent of vanishing into a landscape of low-density population and scattered settlements. Here I focus on the upper part of this eco-cultural constellation wherein most of the groups have a vital interest in the cultivation of ensete with other forms of labor of secondary importance to them. The Hadiyya are one such case where ensete is tantamount to the sustenance of life and yet does not stand alone, appearing instead side by side with other crops, whether tubers or grains. Hadiyya gardens contain ensete plants of various ages and sizes. Although the farmers are ready to admit that only a few of those varieties will provide an abundant and qualitatively satisfying harvest, they nonetheless love keeping such a large spectrum of ensete. Moreover, ensete grows among different vegetables, herbs, and seeds, because ensete growers in general, and the Hadiyya in particular, have traditionally engaged in wide-ranging, and very subtle, combinations of livelihood activities. Subsistence farmers have known for generations that planting ensete alongside a diverse range of crops would provide different nutrients and would help offset the boredom of eating the same food

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FIGURE 8.

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Polycultural garden. Photograph by the author.

every day. Some of those additional crops—including cereals, legumes, other root crops, fruit trees, and stimulants—can occasionally be sold at the market. Farmers would also partially engage in off-farm work, in trade, and in foraging for wild foods and seasonings. They have noticed that the soil is richer with ensete or legumes mixed in. They assert that this crop diversity lessens their risk of starvation because if one crop fails, they have another to fall back on. Most importantly, different intercropping patterns are complemented and reinforced by cattle, which supply the necessary proteins in their diet.13 In turn, the manure produced by the animals is spread among the ensete plants to assist their growth. The major axis of differentiation in choosing to embrace ensete with acute or rather bland commitment seems to be the economic wealth of family farms, with different segments of the population relying on ensete differently. In Hadiyya farmers classify themselves into three categories: low-income (but’iccho), mid-income (lambeancho) and high-income (goddaancho). Shita explained that but’iccho is comprised of poverty in terms of being “mentally poor” and lacking willpower (for example, drunkards and those who have no plans for the future), but also and foremost in terms of being “materially poor”—which, according

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to a shared view in the community, means those “who have no land and no animals, and therefore work for others like slaves.”14 Most farmers would define themselves as being lambeancho. Gennet and Tegabu, a young couple with four children, were indicated by their neighbors as being goddaancho. Their status within the community was symbolically expressed by a new large rectangular house, with a “modern” tin roof, which was under construction at the time of my visits. Gennet looked at it with a satisfied expression and anticipated that the remaining two grass houses would soon be destroyed and replaced. They possessed one horse, two donkeys, two oxen, two cows, one calf, two sheep, and five chickens. Along with the high number of animals, other variables contributed to their general reputation of being high-income. They had a good deal of land, which in turn determined their opportunity to grow cereals that have market value and could earn them cash. Finally, the young age of their children, with none of them attending the university, allowed the family to save additionally because, until high school, all the required materials are provided by the public system. Farmers Gennet and Tegabu confirmed, in fact, that “we sell grains in the market so that we can get cash and pay for the education of our children.”15 However, the most affluent family was that of the traditional judge (daanna) of the community. His property spanned more than five hectares. When I asked his wife to list their assets she suddenly blushed and shied away. The hierarchy created by the possession of material goods was unknown in herding and seminomadic times; and nowadays the reluctance has remained in most Hadiyya when it comes to counting and measuring values, such as wealth, that should be achieved through memorable and honorable actions and not by doing business in the city or navigating connections with the party in power. The woman whispered to me only approximate quantities to curb her embarrassment about the topic: “around” ten head of cattle, “around” three horses . . . Then she refused to continue any further.16 In the case of both families, a directly proportional relation exists between land and cash: more land means the possibility of increasing the production of grains that, from the dawn of modern imperial Ethiopia, have market value and can be easily sold to generate money. Other families who have little land are forced to sell what they value the most—that is, cattle—in order to send their children to university. Those homesteads that have more resources—or more specifically, that have cash income through off-farm work or because more land allows them to invest more in cereals—would generally opt to rely less on

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ensete, or even to push the plant aside. In contrast, cashless families would dive wholeheartedly into ensete cultivation. However, these cases represent artificial extremes within a more fluid decision-making process. Farmers make choices to cultivate a certain volume of ensete based on environmental factors—for example, whether they occupy areas situated at lower or higher altitudes (Smeds 1955, 21–22). Cultural influences due to intermixing or bonds of friendship with neighbors may also play a role in their decision, insofar as they learn from other farmers the benefits of privileging grains at the expense of ensete, or the other way around. As I have anticipated while sketching a portrait of ensete, low-income families may not be able to afford to wait the several years an ensete plant would take to reach its full maturity, and sometimes they have to cut ensete at an earlier stage because they lack food. But these were exceptions during my stay in Hadiyya. The general sentiment I developed toward the intensity of ensete cultivation is that the gradient of wealth in a purely economic sense cannot account for the complexity of farmers’ own feelings toward the plant. A mixed attitude when reflecting upon work in agriculture—one comprised of practical sense and aspiration— was expressed by Wolloro, who had in fact recently decided to take some time off from his own farm to work part-time as guardian in the nearest town. “This way,” he explained, “I am not forced to cultivate more of those crops, like cereals, that can be sold in the market. We sell as little as we can, sometimes one of the small animals [not cattle], because of the salary I am paid in Waachamo. Well, if I could choose . . . I would prefer to work full-time as a farmer. Being a farmer can make you sick and shorten your life, it is tough work, but farming is also what mainly contributes to the well-being of your family.”17 In this slice of conversation it is apparent how Wolloro perceives a certain degree of antagonism between wealth (in a purely material sense) and wellbeing (as a broader and more inclusive concept). On another occasion his wife, Adanech, hit the same nerve but in more explicit and fierce terms. She chose and pondered the words. It seems to me that you white people are more unfortunate than we are, and

in more difficulty. We are capable of doing everything we need with our own hands. We have ensete but we also have t’eff. We can make clothes and weave

baskets from natural materials, if necessary. We make the mattresses on which we sleep from ensete fibers. We find everything we need in close proximity to our homes. So, all in all, what you white people call “wealth” means to me having

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food rather than having money. And in fact we do not have much money but we

have plenty of food. For you, on the contrary, wealth means to possess money, cars, houses; a wealthy family can afford to introduce new and different foods

every now and then; wealth is also when a person can afford to use means of transportation other than walking. But when you feel hungry you white people must go to the supermarket and buy everything you need from there, even a piece of lettuce.18

That point of clarity that none of my hosts had ever reached before steered my way of thinking about subsistence farming and sustainability toward a more radical stance. From 2004 to 2015 I could see my Hadiyya host families carefully stagger the planting times so that plants mature and are available throughout different seasons, sometimes coordinating with kin and neighbors in order to maximize access through sharing. Adanech was correct in depicting the garden as a living pantry that provides fresh produce on a daily basis. From a survey I conducted in 2014 among fifteen families it is apparent that market shopping-lists include only a few household items that are not produced at home, such as lentils (mishira), shallots (sunkurta), cooking oil, coffee, sugar, salt, soap, kerosene, and, only occasionally, pasta. Women typically go to the market two or three times a week (in the village of Gabo on Wednesdays and Sundays for small shopping or in the big town of Waachamo on Saturdays for more choice). In the garden, ensete plants tower above and watch over spices, Ethiopian collard greens (shaana), and potatoes (dinniccha). When potatoes are harvested, in November, collard greens come into season and take their place. Beyond the garden, in the open fields, they cultivate wheat (arasa), beans (baak’ela), and less frequently barley (so’o); the wealthier families also grow t’eff (t’aafe’e), which others would instead buy from outside. They start preparing the land for grains in June; they plow it five times, and during the final stage, at the beginning of August, they sow. December is harvest time: first beans, then wheat, and finally t’eff. The piece of land where they had grown grains will thus be allowed to stand and rest. In January, on another piece of land, they sow maize that will be harvested between mid-August and the end of September; maize will then be replaced by chickpeas (gite’e). Significantly, there is no Hadiyya term for maize, which is called after the Shoan term bokk’olla—a fact that signals how farmers consider the crop as coming from, or belonging to, a different order of things.19 More affluent families, who have additional land available, would add other crops to the mix: onions, collard greens, carrots, small

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chili peppers (pale, red, and strong), and big chili peppers (from green to dark red, and milder in taste). The consumption of meat is very rare among most families; farmers find valuable surrogates in collard greens, potatoes, lentils, beetroot, and other vegetables according to the season. A couple of families also possessed khat (Catha edulis), which is harvested in November and sold in the market, and others had tried to add coffee and sugarcane (shonkoora); all these items are considered cash crops. One family had only recently started planting avocado and apple trees, equally destined for the market. Araggash recalled that “the small business of fruit was initiated when a foreign NGO brought to these districts, and to a few selected families, the first trees along with a special kind of grass to feed cattle and a new variety of potato. They said that all these introductions were aimed at improving our standard of living and the overall well-being of the family.” But after a while, instead of keeping the avocados and apples for family consumption (raw or cooked, as they were taught by the NGO members), farmers started selling them in the market because “although they may be of some benefit to the kids, adults do not like the fruit taste; apples are so terribly sour.”20 Most conversations with farmers about their practice of mixing and matching—that is, about the polycultural form of their farming—presented a recurrent plot element whereby they would make a list first of items grown to be taken “outside” the community (to local markets and shops) and then of those to be kept for the “inside” (for family consumption). Wheat, barley, beans, peas, potatoes, and sugarcane are in large part destined for the market; the food products and fibers of ensete are in large part kept inside, but they also travel to the nearest villages and towns according to availability; t’eff, small amounts of barley, maize, most of the cabbage production, and a small quantity of potatoes are kept inside the home. These crops are perceived not only as “internal” or “external” but also in gendered terms as belonging to men or to women, both when they grow in the plot and when they are ready to travel. The men do the plowing and care for the cattle on the range; the women do the hoe cultivation and milk the cows. Men sell cereals in the market, and women do the same with ensete products. Ensete belongs to women in a very physical and geographical sense as the plant benefits from being close to the home and therefore from receiving from the home the large quantities of manure and labor it requires. The manure is in fact not collected from pasture grounds but from the houses, where the animals are kept during the night in separate partitions. Farm families divide

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Waasa sold in the local market. Photograph by the author.

their traditional houses into a living room for family members and the rest for domestic animals; a living room can be used as bedroom and kitchen at the same time. Every morning women collect the dung in baskets and carry it out to dung heaps inside the garden.

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As is the case with other ensete-cultivating groups, Hadiyya farms are usually divided into gardens and fields. Gardens immediately surround the house, whereas fields are beyond the gardens or even a few miles away. A patchwork of various cultivated crops spreads from women’s gardens to men’s fields. However, as a Gurage proverb suggests, “the back section of the house is more important than any other part of the house” (Leslau 1982, 251). People hide precious things in home gardens—things that should be kept secret and in fact remain invisible or nonmeasurable to outsiders. There, farmers experiment on plant diversity and species combination.

Creative Gardening Small-scale farmers are inclined to create forms of agricultural patchwork in order to facilitate a range of objectives—and they oftentimes have to manage such objectives independently of scientific innovations that focus on high yield and marketability. Which plant resources are preferred by farmers, and for which reasons, is a crucial issue that policy and extension practices should (but still do not) reflect. The overall diversity found in Ethiopian small-scale farming is the means through which food and livelihood security is achieved (Shigeta 1990, 90–91; B. Tsegaye and Berg 2007, 219–20). Flexibility and improvisational skills are much needed in a country that is characterized by different agroecologies within a single district, where technologies do not travel far and quick-fix solutions do not perform well (Cohen and Lemma 2010, 493; McCann 2007, 80). At the same time, the diversity found in small plots and gardens—not only in Hadiyya or in ensete-growing areas, but in small-scale family farming across the country—is intimately intertwined with values that go beyond the mere calculation of economic benefits. Several studies have indicated that local varieties in Ethiopia, across a range of crops, not only are the product of farmer selection for adaptation to specific environments or soil types (Dea and Scoones 2003, 467–70; Corbeels et al. 2000, 14–15) but also possess interpersonal, symbolic, and hedonic value within the community or the household unit (Cavatassi et al. 2011; Cavatassi et al. 2012; Edwards et al. 2010, 271; Nelson 2013, 60; Yelemtu 2014, 132–36). As has been noted in the case of an ensete-cultivating group in southwestern Ethiopia,

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The Ari place primary importance on the characteristics which are not directly related to practical use. These characteristics are mainly morphological, related

to the outer appearance of ensete plants. Boster [1984] refers to those char-

acteristics relating to outer appearance as “perceptual distinctiveness” [ . . . ]. There exists a diversity of landraces, and the people preserve even minor landraces with no apparent practical use, giving each of them specific vernacular

landrace names. By doing so, the Ari, though unintentionally, prevent ensete

from decreasing in either genetic diversity or number of landraces. Their means

of recognition also ensures the introduction into the cultivated population of new variation found in the wild population [ . . . ]. Such human practices have the effect of “diversifying selection”. The main driving force for diversifying

selection is human observation, discrimination of various plant characteristics

and naming. I would like to propose here the concept of “cognitive selection” to describe such behaviour. By contrast, “utilitarian selection” reflects human behaviour which decreases variation in the long run. (Shigeta 1996, 262–63)

Within the nested ensete system, humans, plants, and animals all collaborate to render the landscape functional and edible. Each subject becomes part of a larger design that in many ways resembles the ideal pursued by the global movement toward permaculture: self-generating, closed-loop systems where energy cycles are captured and recycled within the system itself, leading to overall system growth, productivity, and health. In a closed system, the waste of one process becomes the energy to create another. Compost is the ideal example of this aspect of permaculture design where no waste is created and no resources are imported. By farming and growing in ways that minimize input of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and that instead promote system resilience, permaculture aims to generate food security. Ensete can be considered as one of these sustainable, resilient cultures that are built upon perennial food production. The backbone of the ensete system is in fact represented by human-ensetecattle interactions: the Hadiyya eat the low-protein parts of ensete, and cattle eat the high-protein parts; the Hadiyya get protein from dairy; the Hadiyya fertilize ensete with cattle manure. But other species are involved in the active and strategic work of creating overall well-being. Horses are a means of transportation, especially of cereals to local markets, and a symbol of status for Hadiyya men; their manure is mixed with mud and t’eff residues to coat the house

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structure. Oxen are used to plow, and their manure is recycled into the ensete garden. Cows give manure, milk, and, from the processing of the milk, the highly cherished cheese and butter. While they give birth, farmers praise them for increasing the herd; when they stop giving birth, they are fattened up to be sold in the market. Women were unanimous in asserting that cattle manure must be spread over the garden so that the plant can “thicken up.” Hadiyya would never kill oxen and cows for food, even if they are old and useless, as “we would never be happy to eat our own cattle; we do not kill our animals because we love them.”21 One morning in March 2014 I entered the house of Adanech while she was milking the cows. She put her finger to her lips, and for a long time we sat in absolute silence, which was every now and then interrupted by the lowing of the cow. When she finished she explained that “you have to keep quiet in order not to disturb the animal during this operation.” The approach to certain animals—and, as we shall see later, to certain plants—is pervaded by everyday acts of thinking and engaging with them caringly, with a mixture of practical labor and affection. This is particularly the case of cattle and horses, which have always ranked high in the Hadiyya hierarchy of values, but not of other animals that are perceived and treated in more utilitarian terms. Donkeys (halliccho) are only good for pulling the cart and carrying heavy loads—for example, water and cereals. Chickens are kept for eggs, then fattened up and sold in the market to buy coffee and salt in return—or “in case a guest from outside comes,” as Elsabet once suggested, “I will slaughter one to make doro wet.”22 Sheep are sometimes kept for food but more frequently follow the market fate of chickens. One may happen to encounter a few ragged cats loitering around the house in search for mice. Ensete does not stand alone, therefore. Beings like ensete, for whom relationship with other agents is crucial in order to be healthy and productive, “are not dead scenes but living entities forming communities with other life forms capable of alterity and becoming” (Ryan 2011, 227). Farming with both the hoe and the plow, combined with livestock breeding and fueled by the synergy between men and women, produces mixtures that Hadiyya farmers consider highly productive. Were we able to merge with ensete’s leaves and roots, we would see the future of food in terms of complementarity and mingling. I was told by a woman farmer that “life in the garden is like life at large: the creature who remains alone, and does not commingle, is doomed to pass away unrecorded.”

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Charismatic Beings It has surely not escaped the attention of the reader that the bulk of fresh insights into the life of ensete come from women. Although men and boys were eager to escort me into the backyard gardens, while their wives and mothers were quietly doing their housework, and although the male front made several hesitant attempts at explaining about the plant, I quickly realized that women were the only ones capable of providing firsthand accounts on the subject. Women in several parts of Africa are significantly involved in subsistence agriculture and specifically in orchestrating perennial crop systems—for example, with garden eggs,23 native potatoes, okra, shea, pigeon pea, moringa, and ensete (National Research Council 2006). In consideration of the strenuous labor that women perform in the processing, cooking, and selling of its products, ensete can rightfully be described as a woman’s crop (MacEntee et al. 2013; Rahmato 1995). For Hadiyya men the cultivation of food plants was simply a necessity in order to alleviate starvation and merely survive; therefore, from a historical perspective, we can confidently argue that ensete has never really belonged to men (Braukämper 2012, 202). As we have seen along the path we have walked so far, ensete requires little land as well as a location close to the house. It is in small dedicated plots that ensete can unfold its extended growing cycle, while simultaneously building up soil fertility for its own growth. Proximity to the house ensures easy transportation of manure for fertilization to the garden and of ensete products from the garden to the kitchen. Most of women’s activities—such as food preparation, child-rearing, and entertaining guests—are already located at or near the house, so that ensete, grown around the homestead, naturally enters into the daily acts of care provided by women. Yet women’s activities, based on traditional knowledge and ethnobotanical expertise, may remain clouded or poorly reported unless one decides, as I did, to be physically in the garden with them.24 When sitting to talk or when looking around the garden in the company of women, I could confidently raise questions about the taste of certain parts of the plant or about the strength of sunshine and the interior moisture of the ensete grove; I could listen to them complaining about the burden of ensete work or expressing gratification for watching certain exemplars grow. As a young anthropologist, I discovered over time that my fieldwork progressed better when I picked up the tools they used to process the plant and imitated their movements. As has been demonstrated in recent ethnographic research

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on gardens (Pitt 2015), the conversation flows organically when questions are raised in the moment and on the spot. The tactile nature of gardening together not only helped build a reciprocal relationship, but it gave women a way to explain their motivations, and it gave the plant a center stage that normally it would not occupy. Ensete is in fact a crop particularly hard to read for those who contemplate it from outside, and this adds a further layer of illegibility when one attempts to translate the peripheral vision of agriculture and sustainability of the women who take care of this plant. Research on women ensete farmers places itself at the margins of the margins, because of the qualities of both these women and this plant. Ensete gardens offer a visual order and stimulate forms of social communication that may escape a culturally blind visitor and yet are anything but marginal and uninteresting for farmers and gardeners. Certain types of plants (namely, perennials) can be powerful subjects exhibiting the ability to influence human society in profound and, of utmost interest to our argument, in gendered ways. First, ensete makes place. Ensete cultivation stimulates an ecological pattern that provides its cultivators with a distinctive social milieu. They generally live in village communities where homesteads are within shouting distance, each surrounded by edible ensete gardens. In the ensete areas large cultivated fields are rarely seen; closely clustered villages predominate. These small, densely settled, kin-group villages stand in contrast to open farms of the plow-culture economy of the North where the land is mainly arable, the population is sparse, and village settlements are widely separated. Big ensete—umbriferous if one stands in close proximity and bright green when seen from a distance—engages in niche-construction, and humans recognize it as a being that profoundly shapes human lives. Second, ensete makes community. Ensete-cultivating people are prone to emphasize kinship because of the closer, more immediate ties maintained with their kin. Moreover, the people who cultivate it have developed a character for meticulousness and cooperation with one another. Not only does ensete refuse to stand alone, but it also calls for people to gather together and share energies for maintaining the health and productivity of plant communities. Most ensetecultivating communities have developed an intuition for the survival value of communal enterprises in cultivating the plant as well as in other activities such as the building of houses. Hardy and resilient is the plant, and so too are the humans living with it: industrious, tough-minded, and not afraid of the hard work and suffering it may cause.

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The deep meaning of ensete as a staple subsistence crop—how intensively and caringly it was cultivated, and how this mode of production had shaped distinctive cultural traits—was described by W. Leslau for the Gurage. One of his informants said to him that ensete was the source of all the several foods they ate (bread, porridge, and juice); it was the fiber and the rope, the tray where they served ensete food, and the wrap for butter and cheese. Special exemplars (probably the red ones) were treatments for various medical conditions in both humans and cattle. The Gurage informant also mentioned a form of beauty directly related to flowers, because it is with the flower of ensete that children are amused. “Indeed,” the Gurage concluded, “it is the äsät [ensete] that is the soul of the Gurage” (Leslau 1982, xii). This is a beautiful way to summarize how ensete is able to dominate the modes of thought of people who live in its shadow, and how it moulds their livelihood. I recorded the same ubiquity reigning in the Hadiyya domestic space: fresh ensete leaves and midribs to pour ground roasted coffee into the coffee pot, dried leaves to seal jars and to wrap butter, fibers used as towels. The first time I asked for the toilet, Tekekel rapidly guided me across the ensete grove, then stopped and pointed to a squatting shelter only partially concealed between big ensete plants; she said: “We do not have a separate room called bathroom, we do everything in the ensete garden.”25 Third, ensete is a plant with personality and charisma. In popular perception, charismatic or remarkable subjects are those animals that have special appeal to humans. Humans would selectively funnel emotional and conservational energies through emblematic species such as big mammals (and not others) because of their size, color, or humanlike resemblance. On the contrary, plants in general are considered much less charismatic than animals, and therefore less likely to earn the attention and sympathy of humans.26 This way, plants do not usually trigger human efforts toward their appreciation and well-being (Ogden et al. 2013; van Dooren and Bird Rose 2012). Characteristics deemed attractive in plants, as is the case with animals, are typically the size of the plant (giants are preferred over dwarfs); the presence of flowers and their size and brightness; and uniqueness (that is, a distinct and easily identifiable shape able to catch the human eye). Plants that are iconic and typical of certain landscapes would garner praise from biologists and the wider audience alike, as well as stimulate the generosity of potential donors toward their preservation. Ensete has size and distinctiveness but not market value nor the favor of national and international audiences. From what I have learned through my ethnography, the charisma of ensete is of a very different kind to that we have

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just discussed. Its charisma is established not on the basis of external parameters but rather in the way local people interact with the plant, and how these people value its agri-cultural and aesthetic characteristics. Interestingly, the same undisplayed charisma is found in ensete and in its human female companions. In what follows I will discuss the symbiotic relationship of ensete-cultivating women farmers with the perennial plant. Humble subjects may indeed hide surprising secrets.

4

Gendered Communities A large rose-tree stood near the entrance of the garden: the roses growing on it were white, but there were three gardeners at it, busily painting them red. — L E W I S C A R RO L L , A L I C E I N WO N D E R L A N D

T

gardeners in Alice in Wonderland paint the white roses red tells much about the meaning of horticulture as being a labor of creativity and re-creation—or better, “a form of alchemy, a quasi-magical system for transforming seeds and soil and water and sunlight into things of value” (Pollan 2001, 64). Who is controlling what—whether the gardeners their garden, or the garden its caretakers—is in the eye of the beholder. “That May afternoon,” M. Pollan writes, “the garden suddenly appeared before me in a whole new light, the manifold delights it offered to the eye and nose and tongue no longer quite so innocent or passive. All these plants, which I’d always regarded as the objects of my desire, were also, I realized, subjects, acting on me, getting me to do things for them they couldn’t do for themselves” (2001, xv). A rose or an ensete plant are never just a rose or an ensete plant in the garden. They are the result of a relationship cradled by desire and intention. In either direction, gardening is an act of co-evolution, survival, and perfecting of design. H AT T H E

The Gift of Women I never quite figured out when the ordinary day of a Hadiyya woman precisely starts, not even during the weeks I lived in the village and spent the nights, on

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rotating shifts, at home with my hosts. I always slept in too late in the morning to capture the woman’s awakening; or was it she who woke up incredibly early, most certainly the first among humans and domestic animals? Lying indolently on my jibba, I would sometimes keep my eyes closed for a while and pretend to be still in a deep sleep. I nestled in the light sounds and shadows of people who whispered around me, while striving internally to grasp some of their minimal verbal interactions. I would be gently brought back to wakefulness by the hypnotic and musical sound of the grinding of pestles and mortars. I would smell the aroma of the freshly roasted coffee and finally emerge from the mattress and blankets to make my debut by attempting a few words of greeting in Hadiyya—a colorful piece of comedy that was usually welcomed by fits of laughter and hand-clapping. Around 6:30 the women had already cleaned up the house, ground the coffee, milked the cows, and sent them out for grazing. Later in the morning, after having served coffee and food to the family, and washed and stored the cooking utensils, they would put time aside for visits—for example, to another family in cases of bereavement, to attend prayer sessions and other activities at one of the local Protestant churches, or to walk to the local market for shopping. Funerals were nonetheless the most frequently invoked reason, and apparently the most accredited within the family, when the women wanted to travel around undisturbed. However, according to my informal investigations, the number of funerals claimed by the women and the actual number of those who had passed away never perfectly matched. One woman explained: “It is not advisable for a good woman to talk a lot; she should work much and talk little. However, it is considered as praiseworthy when she goes out for a visit and she moves around with a purpose—for example, if a neighbor is sick, if someone died, or if another woman is giving birth. Bad behavior is when she leaves the house without a purpose, just to sit at another woman’s place and talk. Certain women lie to their husbands and make up false reasons to leave their place and do bad things.”1 Back home after the visiting period, the women would clean out the livestock enclosure and devote themselves to an afternoon schedule punctuated by caring for children and occasional guests, preparing lunch, washing utensils and clothes by hand, planning for dinner as well as for other coffee interludes, until the night would finally swallow up the day. Day after day this is the bare skeleton, but not the beating heart, of women’s activities. The garden as a whole, the animals, and specifically the work around ensete fill in the gaps and indeed represent the connective backdrop of this predominantly subsistence lifestyle. One woman explained:

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Here in our area the qualities to be considered a good woman are as follows: being available to receive guests in a proper manner, which means that all the

required utensils and materials have to be in the kitchen; being skilled in preparing food, which she has learned from her mother and older women; taking care of her children and husband and cooking every meal for them. She has

to devote special care to the garden. Ensete is a necessity so it is considered an

integral part of family life. A good woman works on ensete, goes to the market, sells its food products, and keeps that money for herself.2

It is the women who fertilize and weed the garden and who carry out harvesting and post-harvesting activities such as the fermenting and processing of ensete. The women show no hesitation in asserting their bond to the staple crop. In January 2006, when I sat taking notes in the garden of Bakkalech during harvest time, in the midst of an entirely female working group, one old mother said: “The men do not know anything about this kind of work; if necessary, they can help us a bit by digging the pits but no more than that. The men know how to be farmers [i.e., how to handle different types of grains]. All this thing about ensete, well, that is not their gift.” On the other side of the mirror we find men who brazenly refuse to intrude on the ensete garden, as “men dislike the smell of ensete, and do not even want to touch the plant.”3 This prelude contains the seeds of what I will discuss in this chapter: First, a meaningful and conscious division of labor that both female and male subjects share and even encourage. Second, a sense of awareness in both of the expertise of women in the garden and of their contribution to farm life as a whole. Third, the physical nature of labor around the plant as a force that is able to shape a specific, and rather unconventional, form of womanhood. I have anticipated the first element previously in this story, both with reference to comparative case studies in literature and by introducing the reader to the gendered nature of crops that are mixed and rotated in Hadiyya households. Cereals are most commonly found in open fields as they grow much better on land prepared by oxen. That kind of crop is mainly planted, tended, and harvested by men. Women rarely work in open fields. Women, at least officially, never plow and thus cannot grow cereals on their own, although they may be engaged in the harvesting of green maize. That in fact is an interesting point to highlight as it indicates that maize, at least in the initial stage, is perceived as a crop belonging half to the field (to men) and half to the garden (to women). Maize is a botanical character to keep in mind as it will play a major role later in

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the development of our argument. Accordingly, women not only take part in the harvesting of crops that have been planted near the house but are responsible for the monarch in the garden (ensete). In contrast to Gurage men who have traditionally shared with women a great deal of labor around ensete, and would not refrain from cutting and handing the big leaves over to women for decortication, Hadiyya men leave that heavy work to women and, unless explicitly requested, would not help in the garden. “For most of the time,” said Elsabet, “women look after the ensete plant (weesa) and extract ensete pulp (waasa) from it. Generally speaking, men do not enter into any stage of processing ensete. They are not used to such work and they do not like the smell of ensete. And to be frank, we women would be disappointed if they wanted to be part of that because it is not man’s work.”4 There are other activities that are perceived by both female and male subjects as pertaining only to women. A man should ideally avoid stepping into the “real” kitchen where food is prepared and cooked and avoid sipping his coffee in there. Only under extraordinary circumstances—for example, if his wife is sick or pregnant—would a man be seen to enter the corral and collect manure with his hands, then carry it out to the back of the house. This coordinated interplay was summarized by Adanech in a solid statement: “The man brings in things from outside (cash and grain harvest) while the woman dwells and cooks inside; this is our way of living.”5 However, this “discrimination” by gender is intended in its pristine meaning as an ability to make fine distinctions. The Greek root of the word, kríno, originally contains no hint of prejudice but means a voluntary act of separating and deciding—which is still mirrored in the Hadiyya division of labor wherein both men and women feel equally engaged, each on the basis of different skills, in contributing to the overall economic prosperity of the farm unit. Shita evoked this gender complementarity as follows: The wife knows that her husband is a farmer and does not have a salary; he can provide some cash depending on the time of the year and on the kind of offfarm activities he may have a chance to take part in. This is why women in rural

areas tend not to ask men for money. And what for, after all? In our garden we

have waasa and bu’o [different types of ensete pulp]. Moreover, if women need

cash, they can sell a certain amount of ensete products, as well as little quantities of cereals, (barley, wheat, and t’eff ) in the local market. With what they earn they can then buy coffee and salt, or other things that are not in the garden.6

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In subsistence-oriented economies, gender complementarity takes subtle and productive nuances, sometimes very different from the traditional division of labor as imagined by outsiders.7 Women’s unobtrusive home gardens complement men’s work in open fields. Given the value attached to women’s productive contributions, which local actors deem essential to the household, I have never considered the complementary division of tasks agreed by the conjugal pair, and the parallel responsibilities they bear in sustaining the household, as merging into the strictures of any patriarchal construction. In the ensete belt women experience little to no restrictions on their physical mobility and participate extensively in household decision-making. Husbands, brothers, and neighbors recognize their skills and ask women for advice and guidance. For most Hadiyya women ensete is crucial to the definition and expression of their role and status.8 The beauty of an ensete garden—which is assessed according to its size, its careful maintenance, the tone of healthy green of its foliage, and the variety of plants it contains—is frequently recalled in everyday conversations to describe the prosperity of a household and the polished attitude of the woman farmer who is in charge of it. Women are praised for the beauty of the ensete garden, and such tribute benefits the good name and social status of the whole family. In the past, it was said of a prominent, wise, and powerful man that “he belongs to a lineage possessing many weesa [ensete] pits,” or that he “has weesa with sufficient young plants and saddles decorated with ereera [small white cowries used for buttons and various decorations] and hanging inflorescence [lots of ripe weesa plants]” (Braukämper and Mishago 1999, 42–44). However, the relationship of women with gardens cannot be reduced to only raising the pride of the family. Women take pleasure in tending gardens; and this is, at least in part, a matter of very personal, not collective, mental satisfaction and of an intimate approach to that particular physical space. What may seem to the occasional observer as a garden that emanates natural and somehow informal beauty is in reality a landscape that has been carefully crafted by women. Women in the ensete garden are indeed like the gardeners of the masterpiece of Lewis Carroll: half painters, half scientists, whose technical skills and sensitivity amalgamate to create a charming, as well as economically viable, environment. Women are the actors who have the richest practical and theoretical knowledge of ensete. They are scientists insofar as they experiment like scientists. This is not diminished by the fact that they frequently use forms of calculation and experimentation other than those informed by Western standards; it rather means that their local expertise is not available in written texts

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and should be therefore comprehended in a tangible form (P. Richards 1993; Shigeta 1990; van der Ploeg 1993). The skills of these women are seldom verbally expressed or attributed importance outside their own communities, and rarely feature in development studies on small farming. The skills women enact in the garden flow through, and leave traces in, their bodies, which in fact carry memories of that physical labor in the form of scars, strain, exhaustion, and habits of moving and sitting.

Harvest Time Nowhere else can those skills and knowledge be better observed than in the ensete garden during the time of harvest. The activities that each woman conducts daily around ensete converge periodically into sessions of increased intensity and rhythm, which are marked by cooperation and a thrill of excitement. The time of ensete processing is a combination of hard work, joking, laughing, talking, and eating and drinking together. Women fine-tune their actions to the swelling and drying rhythm of ensete. The harvest of ensete typically spans October to February. From August through September women can harvest ensete, but the plant will not have reached its full potential. November to January is unanimously considered the optimum window to obtain the best quantity and highest quality of ensete pulp. This is because, women commonly argue, “the plant has lost by then some of its liquid part due to the dry season.” They explain that the product that you obtain from ensete in February, just before the short rains come and thus after several months of dry season, is good only to feed the cattle; afterward it will further “contract” and “dry out.” The plant has exhausted the water and humidity accumulated during the big rains and gets ready, like a sponge, to store new reserves of moisture. In some circumstances minor harvesting may be conducted in March—for example, when rains are late and the family is running out of food for lack of other crops. Or if disease—notably, ensete bacterial wilt—has started damaging the plants, then the women would intervene to save whatever can be saved. Generally, though, the ensete pulp extracted beyond the February threshold does not offer much in terms of quantity and quality and will then be used for animal feed or added in small amounts to the already-fermenting pulp. A notable exception is recorded in August, when only a few plants are harvested to

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be specifically devoted to celebrating the festival of Mäsqäl. But apart from this celebration, marked by an outpouring of lavishness and carnivalesque upheaval, families are used to relying upon, and stretching as much as they can, the ensete reserve from the previous year. They might have to face a certain degree of food shortage between harvests, which wealthy families could temper by buying from the market and the rest by tightening their belts. The more ensete pulp is saved from past years, the larger will the variety of seasoned ensete be in the garden— with pits containing pulp from a few months up to two years old. Eventually, however much each family has collected, the big harvest arrives. For the harvesting of ensete a household recruits several women from the community who will gather to perform this highly engaging task. They carry out work collectively and through a generational division of labor, in small groups where little and adolescent girls learn through the processes of observing, asking questions, and mimicking the actions of elderly women. Those groups are frequently formed by women who maintain bonds of friendship or kinship along a female line. The workshop, staged in the garden, consists of a roof of ensete leaves to provide shade to the workers. The harvest procedures are typically controlled by an elderly woman who wanders around prodding women and ensuring that each step is done correctly. The few embarrassed boys who happen to pass through or lounge around the garden are addressed by imperious orders and taunted into contributing in some way. The supervising woman also collects and distributes the bamboo sticks used to scrape the big leaves. The women’s working group will move each day, typically over a period of a week, to a different household. They may uproot fifteen to twenty plants at each place, an amount that is usually sufficient for the family for one year’s consumption. When the ensete plant is mature and ready to be dug out, all the external leaves and dried parts are cut, and the remaining inner structure of the plant— similar at that point to a polished, shiny white column—is thoroughly cleaned; then the roots are cut off from the base, paying attention not to separate the underground corm from the pseudostem. With some light shaking back and forth and a final, vigorous push, the plant falls. This is the point beyond which no exception is made to the presence in the garden of men or craftworkers. Under no circumstances would local norms allow them to touch the tools and substance of ensete, which are handled exclusively by women. The decortication of leaf sheaths takes place close to the fermentation site. The process of separating the edible parts from the fiber is the most laborious

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task. Each woman cuts the upper pseudostem beneath the leaf and strips off the leaf sheath starting from the base by using a special knife. The leaf sheaths are then taken to the place where women separate the fleshy edible parts from the fibers. The women sit on a large stone, the scraping board in front of them, and lay a piece of ensete stalk against it. Keeping the plank steady with a high-lifted foot, they start scraping by holding the bamboo stick in both hands and moving it up and down on the leaf. As the work progresses, the fibers of the stripped sheath are cut and thrown aside. Each woman lowers the sheath and strips a new part of it, and so on, until the whole leaf sheath is finished. The innermost part of the trunk in older plants is a true stem without any fiber, and thus she is only required to smash that into pieces with a small wooden club. Back where the plant was uprooted, other women smash the corm into small pieces with a wooden tool that has a number of teeth at its end; this is especially done by girls who have not enough experience in other segments of the food processing. Once this is done, a hole is dug in the ground, up to 1.5 meters long and 3 meters wide, and its walls and bottom are covered with large ensete leaves. Green and tender leaves, laden with moisture, are selected to line the hole; hard and robust leaves create a lid to close it up. The fleshy part, which in the meantime has been separated from the fibers, is now squeezed several times, by foot and by hand, at the edge of the pit. From this squeezing operation two different products emerge: solid waasa and watery bu’o. Nothing is added to bu’o, which, in about three hours, congeals and is carefully separated into its own pit. The fine pieces of bulb and roots are added to the pit of waasa, along with yeast to facilitate the fermentation process. Being devoid of fibers and other impurities, bu’o is universally considered to be the best product of ensete. When full, the holes are covered with ensete leaves.9 The yeast used in Hadiyya, similar to that used by Kambata and Gurage, is made from the ensete root. The lower part of the corm is prepared as food (ha’miccho), while its upper part is removed, with only a few incisions made on its surface, and serves as gamaama (yeast). The pulp of a rotten banana is inserted into the cuts. The upper root is then covered with what remains of ensete after processing—broken leaves, midribs, thin fibers, residual pulp, and some water resulting from decortication—and is wrapped in an ensete leaf. Gamaama requires a longer time to activate when compared to other kinds of fermentation agents. It is rested for three weeks to one month in the same cavity from which it is extracted, with ensete leaves to protect and moisten the precious material. At that point the corm will have produced a reddish-brown

FIGURE 10.

Harvest time. Photographs by the author.

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rind, which is carefully removed. The starter is ready to be mixed with the ensete pulp in the pits. The mixture of waasa and gamaama takes the name of insaara. After a few weeks the women will remove the covering leaves. The pit is dug again, and the ensete pulp is crushed with bare feet, in order to aerate it and add further ferments. It is covered for the second time, leaving the pulp to rest for several months. Then, once again, the women open up the pit and, with the help of wooden tools, chop the pulp and remove the remaining fibers. At this point the pulp will be moved to a new pit and covered with clean and thoroughly dried ensete bark. Whenever they need to, the women take a requisite amount of ensete dough and use it for baking. A laid-back conversation with a woman is frequently interrupted by her smoothly sliding away into the garden. She would say that she is going to bring food—not from far away, as the site of production and storage of ensete lies a few steps from where she was sitting. She would then reappear with the right amount of pulp to be squeezed, chopped in small pieces to eliminate the remaining fibers, mixed with water, and finally left to rest and breathe until dinner. The first time I decided to follow Gennet on one of these rapid stage exits, she said to me that she had wanted me to follow her for a long time, so that she could show me “how everything is done from the garden to the kitchen.”10 The image of the outdoor pantry seems indeed appropriate. In October 2005 I met Bakkalech during harvest time in her garden. Holding the wooden toothed tool and pounding vigorously on the corm, while covered from head to toe by gamaama, she made a point of saying that “the work on ensete is utterly tiresome and requires a great deal of physical strength.” Sometimes this work produces such profound effects on the body that it is perceived of as threatening the reproductive capacities of women. Another woman, who had experienced two consecutive miscarriages by fall 2005, clearly traced a connection between the draining work in the garden and the exhaustion of procreative energies: “No, I am not planning to have other children because the recent losses left me debilitated. I am too busy, especially with my ensete, to continue giving birth. It was the work in the ensete garden that caused the miscarriages, so I had to come to a final decision: either having more children or working full-time in the garden.” As a matter of principle, and unless it is strictly necessary, older women advise everyone to prevent pregnant women and newborns from entering the inner part of the ensete garden. Be it an old wives’ tale reminiscent of the magic in the ensete garden, or a worldly concern about the physical consequences of the heavy work on the plant, this rule is nonetheless rarely followed. During the week of intense ensete harvest, new mothers take

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Ensete pit. Photograph by the author.

breaks of a few minutes to breastfeed their newborns, who are carried around the garden, frequently screaming at the top of their lungs, by older children. The work on ensete takes a lot from, but also gives a lot back to, women; however, it is not a mere exchange of physical strength for food product. The plant calls for actions that would shape, over time, women’s bodies and movements.

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The unconventional positions required during processing ensete act in the longterm as a liberating force. We can better appreciate this nuance from the words of old Wodetu, who was always fastidious in defending her Amhara origin and therefore, by contrast, her inability to conform to a certain kind of womanhood. The first time I came here to the village as the wife of Summoro and I saw the

other women working on ensete, I was amazed at how they raised their naked legs high without any shame and concern. They would cover their pubic region

with an ensete leaf and carry on laughing, talking to each other, and scraping. I immediately thought that it would be better to turn right around and be back

home with my family. It was difficult, even unacceptable, for me to learn this kind of work. The other women kept saying: “Poor thing, she is Amhara, she

does not even know where to begin.” Then, a long time after, I came to terms with this reality and started to work on ensete. But still now, well, for me it is

impossible to raise my legs the way they do, and I prefer to pay other women to do this work.11

A retired Hadiyya teacher living in Waachamo, exquisitely cultured and passionate about the history of his group, helped me put into clearer focus the idea expressed by Wodetu: that the secretive nature of ensete brings into being and adds energy and resources to a certain way of being a woman—equally secretive, strategical, and silently effective. The actions of Hadiyya women, he asserted, may be read in terms of scope of action and manipulative skills that are not easily found in grain-oriented communities. The term yakko’ote’e indicates the woman whom other people talk about behind

her back; the woman who has raised perplexity for her behavior, and who is

gossip-worthy. There may be some gender imbalance in labeling her as such, especially because there is no similar expression used for a man. Yet, if we look at the other side of the picture, we realize that Hadiyya women make

mistakes because they can make choices and because they are more free than

other women. After marriage the Amhara women shave their heads, wear large

clothes, and always walk in front of their husbands. The Hadiyya women walk beside or behind their husbands.12

From the Hadiyya perspective, the woman who walks in front of her husband remains under his eye, while the woman who follows behind walks unleashed.

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FIGURE 12.

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Breastfeeding in the ensete garden. Photograph by the author.

The ingenuity of women becomes apparent also in times of hardship—for example when their husbands move to faraway places, temporarily or for long periods, in search of paid work. I heard stories of women who were left behind, with several children of school age, to manage the house and the farm. They recounted how it was necessary to engage with renewed intensity in small

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businesses by collecting garden produce (primarily ensete) and selling it in different local markets. They had to plow and care for the fields in addition to the garden. Other people would then whisper: “She is a woman, how can she manage to make money and send her children to school without a husband?” A certain robust constitution of Hadiyya women emerges from this succinct portrait. It is no coincidence that women’s working groups at the time of harvest have been defined in the same terms as those employed for ensete’s positive qualities: resilient, tenacious, covertly resistant to shocks and risks, and able to provide women with a reliable and mutual support (Rahmato 1995). As in other instances found in literature, processing parties are events of “communality and congeniality” in which women gain prestige as hard workers and food providers (Howard 2006, 175). The harvesting activities, together with the exchange and barter of raw or processed ensete materials, contribute across seasons to reinvigorate community feeling. Through donation and reciprocal obligation, women control the distribution of garden foods outside the family and create networks of alliances between households. It is remarkable to note that several of the various events that are celebrated publicly—such as birth,

FIGURE 13.

Scraping of ensete leaves. Photograph by the author.

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FIGURE 14.

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Ensete working party. Photograph by the author.

circumcision, marriage, death, or religious festivals—always involve a certain use of garden produce. Ensete facilitates mutuality as a way of living. But not all the networks of exchange and sharing are official and out in the open. As we will see in what follows, women’s maneuvers often replace protocols that men formally establish and could, but do not, uphold.

Box of Wonders In many respects the ensete garden appears and acts as a box of wonders. It is in fact where women disappear when they do not want to be found—by other family members, by neighbors, and by anthropologists. It contains part of their feminine identity that cannot be displayed elsewhere. Although Hadiyya women are utterly prudish and reluctant to discuss sex, nevertheless through patience and endurance I managed to collect a rich body of narratives around the topic. Their stories changed over time, and there were differences between women’s accounts, with ever floating and conflicting versions from each woman. They have a genius for whispering and gossiping; sometimes they

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deliberately lie. Each of them in turn warned me against the others, saying that “the women have in their mouths not one but two or more tongues.” In order to discover the truth I had to use a recursive technique, like an inquisitor: asking the same thing to at least three informants, and then analyzing the versions to the bare bones. It slowly became very apparent that Hadiyya women have lots of sex and usually with great satisfaction. With their husbands they cannot show they are having pleasure, as culturally it is expected that women stay cool and detached; but with lovers, in the garden, they may indulge more deeply in touching and kissing. This behavior is reminiscent of the traditional way in which Hadiyya adolescents came of age in the past—a tradition made of joyful exploration of sexuality that was eventually eradicated by the widespread dissemination of evangelical churches and schooling. Among traditional Hadiyya songs there is one called sunkkancha or sunkkimma, literally “kissing.” The song was accompanied by a performance that usually took place outdoors during marriage ceremonies. Dancing began at dusk. Adolescents, wrapped in handmade cotton shawls, would choose for themselves the darkest spot. If a boy was attracted to a girl, he would chase after her and strive to take her aside while everyone else, around them, surrendered to rhythm and euphoria. The girl, although equally attracted to him, was expected to publicly react to the proactive attitude flaunted by the seducer with an act of refusal. The girl would decline the invitation, or pretend not to have heard it, shutting herself up in a disdainful silence, which at the same time would humiliate the boy and amuse the audience. At that point, the boy would interrupt the skirmish by dragging her out of the dancing party and into the bush where, behind a tree, he would then kiss her. It was not gentle and soft kissing, but biting the sides of her tongue and lips with the same intensity as that of his desire, and trying to hurt her and leave physical signs that would officially establish their love affair and make it visible to the peer group. Then the young couple would rejoin the dancing party, split up, and resume the collective dancing as if nothing had happened. From then onward, they would always dance together, whispering sweet and provocative words into each other’s ears. A mother was used to keeping an eye on a daughter who had gone away to fetch wood or water; if she stayed in the bush too long, she would serve her food with much berbere (hot spicing); if the girl refused to eat, the mother would know that her lips were swollen after too much kissing. The relationship between the dancing partners could last for a while and even lead to more intense sexual exploration. Yet—contrary to a Western sensitivity that perceives love as being .

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based on free choice and possibly leading to marriage—the dancing partners were prohibited from getting married. Youth is the time of play; coming of age is the time for marriage, based on emotional economy, devoid of chaotic forms of sexuality, and devoted to building wealth and a good name for the family. Youth is the time of kissing without restraint in the wild; marriage is the time of kissing within domestic walls, if at all. The wife is especially the one who is not supposed to indulge in sweet-talk or provoke erotic games. This way of loving each other before and outside of marriage—like other cultural habits that have been fought against by Protestant missionaries, the government, and movements of female emancipation alike—is no longer practiced. Nowadays, however, a cloud of secrecy for women’s transgressions against their expected composure seems to be provided by the thick canopy of ensete—be it in cases of adultery, of more common idle talk and furtive collaborations with friends when women take real pleasure in revealing secrets to their community of female gossips, or of washing their naked bodies at dusk. Contrary to the house, where they should be able to display etiquette and discipline, the ensete garden is the metaphorical secret box where women of any age sharpen personal initiative and express a desire for intimacy. The ensete garden is a box of wondrous secrets in a more prosaic sense. The ensete garden is a pantry, and the woman is the keeper of the pantry. She has the discretion to decide the number of storage pits per landholding, which are spaced between the rows of ensete plants; and such a decision is determined by the consumption needs of the household. If the woman is able to keep the food intake at an optimal level for subsistence, fewer storage pits are needed and a greater portion of scarce arable land can be thus placed under cultivation for growing vegetables and even cash crops such as coffee and khat. Having nearabsolute control in rationing the food, women have to be judicious in making ensete last for a year, until the big harvest. Women are adept at learning how to do more with less, and then at steering the entire family toward a mindset of frugal consumption. When there is no peace and agreement between the wife and the husband it is because, people typically say, “that woman has not been able to manage the available resources; after each harvest she sells most of it in the market, or they eat everything up too quickly so that, after a while, they run out of food.”13 It is rare that women benefit from the help of other women in administering the food supply and in cooking, except when they are pregnant; and even so, it depends upon the financial capacity to hire an assistant. In normal times women

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are responsible for preparing every meal all year round. Their role in handling food involves planning and provisioning—from and beyond the ensete pantry. Even if men spend more time in the town than their female counterparts, they never bring back food items from their travels. People subsist on what is available at home or by bartering and exchanging ensete pulp and vegetables with other families. The places that complement the garden economy are mainly local markets and, to a lesser extent, small town shops where women buy sugar and soap, which otherwise are deemed too expensive and out of their reach. When they decide it is time to go shopping, they prepare food for the family the day before, as the expedition requires a four-hour roundtrip to Waachamo and a two-hour roundtrip to Gabo. Shopping for food is faster than shopping for clothes and shoes; the choice, in either case, takes time and is assessed according to price and quality. Women do not need to consult their husbands about what and how much to buy; but they need cash to pay with. Considering that most men are full-time farmers, and that even in the event that they have cash they would hardly hand it to women, where does the cash used by women in the market come from? “She takes cereals that are available at home, sells a certain amount in the market, then she will buy what she needs.”14 This statement, made by one woman and quickly echoed by the others, opens doors of understanding into networks of mutuality that are generated in the ensete garden but afterward spread around, beyond the home and the immediate family. Women take command of selling ensete food products in the market, and no man ever intrudes on this decision-making process—a fact that is easily agreed upon by everyone in the village. Young spouses who, according to experienced women, are still shy and afraid of their husbands would usually discuss with them every other issue of domestic economy, but not the selling of ensete products. As a general rule, women are only allowed to sell small amounts of grains that men cultivate—especially wheat and fava beans. This is because cereals have market value and women, in principle and in the expectations of the community, need only a little money to buy salt, coffee, and minor items. As the sale of cereals is the greatest source of cash, and since cereals do not belong to women, this may be thought of as limiting women’s ability to earn cash. But rules have their exceptions, and wise wives know them all—rules and counterrules, shortcuts and prevarications. Women sell a large variety of things: all products derived from ensete, plus some amounts of men’s cereals, butter, and cheese. “Some amounts” means that

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they can take at times more than is allowed or strictly necessary from men’s reserves of grain. Wives and children are sometimes caught “stealing” grain and other items, which they take to market in order to generate money for buying dresses, shoes, and other materials for personal use. This manipulative behavior is facilitated by the existence of separate boxes inside the house where husbands and wives store their valuables—and with them, their respective secrets and relative freedom. The box is a real object but also a powerful symbol of women’s autonomy.15 A woman who has no personal box is said to have no secrets. Of a woman who has secrets it is said still today that “she would put them in the large pot,” of the kind people use to brew mildly alcoholic beverages or to store cereals. Sometimes the wife can cheat her husband. She may do that because the husband does not provide enough for the sustenance of the family, in which case she would steal to buy additional food or clothes for her children. Or she

may have something else in mind. Consider, for example, the case of butter, which the woman keeps in the kitchen, in her own box. In that box the woman

accommodates butter, cheese, milk, her clothes, and those of her children . . . and whatever else she wants. The man does not know either the exact place or the exact quantity of it. She may decide to use that butter only sparingly for cooking, so that she can sell up to half of it in the market and earn money that

nobody else would be aware of. In the Hadiyya culture it would be considered

as a great shame for a man to look into and rummage through the woman’s box. In turn, the woman cannot touch the man’s box, where he usually keeps knives and agricultural utensils, sometimes a radio or written materials. The woman

and the man lock their own boxes. This habit was begun in the past, and it is still true for Hadiyya and Gurage alike. Before the arrival of technologies and

thus before real boxes were available, wealthy women were used to preparing a big hole in the kitchen; they placed a big pot in it, which was covered first with

a layer of grass or jibba and lastly with the grinding stone. The hole was dug

in the farthest and darkest corner of the room, possibly behind a screen. Or, alternatively, women simply stored things in the cooking pots hung all over the kitchen walls. Those pots contained women’s secrets. This way, the man would

never know; she is the only one who knows. Men have never made holes; they

rather wrap their working tools in clothes or blankets, tie them with strong rope, and put them high on the shelf to prevent kids from getting hurt. The secrets of men mainly consist of metal materials; they may also have a second box with

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clothes and money. They cannot handle food at all. It would be shameful for them if they were caught preserving edible things in a secret place.16

What we can expect to find in a woman’s box is not blatant proof or luxury items but a lump of butter and cheese or a handful of coffee beans— unspectacular trophies that she accumulates by taking from what should be entirely destined for family consumption. The division of labor out in the fields and gardens, at the time of production, generates gendered spaces of knowledge and room for maneuver. It also translates into differential patterns of consumption. Men may exceptionally escape the routine of eating at home, under the eye of their wives, by eating out—in town stalls on market days or on special occasions. Women, on the other hand, smuggle or redirect resources from inside the system into forms of sociality and exchange that make community: one that is comprised of women who eat together. This parallel system is built one piece at a time, so small are the pieces that the whole picture can hardly be seen. However, women’s actions cannot be reduced to sporadic pilfering but rather disclose a collective and purposeful set of actions. Through calculation and planning, women seize resources that men would not easily concede. This model of sharing and gaining among women is exemplified by the rotating system called wijjo, which applies either to milk (ad’ wijjo) or to butter (buur’ wijjo). The terms indicate the amount of milk or butter that is collected by each woman on rotation and shared within a group of other women. This system, the women claim, is not a recent one but started at the time of their grandmothers. Two kinds of wijjo can be performed: a small one (hoff ’ wijjo) comprised of six to ten women and a big one (iddira wijjo) comprised of twelve to thirty women. The official reason for which it is practiced is to widen availability of milk and butter for special occasions (engagement parties, weddings, extended family reunions, the festival of Mäsqäl) or in case guests come to visit at short notice. The cumulative amount of milk and butter is in fact alternately entrusted to each woman in order to overcome the problem of the low quantity that can be produced daily at home. Because of wijjo every woman can temporarily avail herself of a large amount of dairy produce at once, and she can use it at her discretion for cooking (officially) or, as suggested in the testimony above, should she have “something else in mind.” The women discuss and decide with their female companions the rotation timeline and the quantity to be exchanged, so that for several days one woman will be supplied by all the other members.

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Women would never be able to have enough supply of milk on a daily basis to make butter and cheese, as in the meantime milk would become sour and unusable. Through wijjo they collect the required quantity for making butter and cheese in only three days. People within the community argue that the money women earn from small businesses in the market, as well as the surpluses set in motion by wijjo, are without doubt channeled to family consumption and well-being. That is generally true, but with a discreet margin of leaks and breaches. Over the transition from hand to hand, from container to container, something may spill out. By tacit agreement and established practice, certainly not by accident, the women indulge in acts of overt dissent against their husbands. They can decide not to keep what is collected through wijjo for the family and rather sell it, in part or entirely, in the market. “This is why,” a woman said to me, “men do not trust their wives and are always afraid of them. There are families where the man and the woman do not discuss things overtly, and this creates a climate of suspicion.”17 Each woman has developed a slightly different technique to bend the rules. She may, for example, eke out the use of butter for family meals, or fabricate the existence of a ceremony (preferably a funeral) in a nearby village, therefore protesting that the whole ball of butter should be donated to the bereaved. In reality, she would keep it apart for other business to be arranged in the days to come. When women were asked to elaborate on this practice of mixed rationing and purloining, they used a canonical narrative schema based on the phrase “this is not about me, of course, but refers to the other women,” whereby that particular spokeswoman has certainly never indulged in such abuses while other women “steal, sell, hide.” The literature on gender in Africa provides several examples of women who, from their own point of view, show a deliberate preference for blood ties rather than conjugal ones. Their sense of belonging and identity goes far beyond the axis of wife-husband, which is, if anything, load-bearing only in the Euro-American nuclear family model (Cornwall 2005; Lamphere 2005; Oyewumi 2000). A distortion in reading female priorities through the coital and conjugal lens has been imported from outside and filtered by the prism of development.18 Kibbenesh spoke on behalf of most women in the village community when she said that “it is common and well-known that the wife strives hard to save food and other things from her husband’s house and move them to her own family of origin. She is at home, alone, most of the time. She learns how to steal behind the husband’s back.”19 This narrative contains a potential for subversion against, and derision of,

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the male player. Such everyday resistance is exercised piecemeal, inside the kitchen and the garden, frequently with more than a hint of playfulness. There is a commonly used expression that summarizes the elusive and strategical conduct of women: laobei’ssa (something covered) issetaamo (she makes): “she does things in a way that he could never be aware of.” Women’s actions, played between formal compliance and potential revolt, culminate in a carnivallike, outwitting event: a shared meal from what they have collected. They gather, without the knowledge of the men, at the place of one of the women within the group who performs wijjo or processes ensete, and they cook and eat together. Hadiyya women speak of this form of entertainment as one of their purest moments of joy; while urban women, they argue, go in search of lovers, women farmers enjoy eating the food that has been taken away from the (supposedly) most powerful. Men do not know or, more probably, they do know, are opposed to the activity, and yet withhold comment. Both female and male subjects are aware of their co-dependence. As one woman explained, “In our area women are used to having a lot of secrets and to not sharing them; men do not punish them, even when they discover what they do, because they know that they could not survive without their wives.”20 It is through different channels, all revolving around gardening, producing, or consuming food, that women build relationships. They have the working group to process ensete but also a sharing agreement, wijjo, to circulate milk and butter. The female work parties organized for ensete are called either geja (literally “giving a hand”), when the women share bonds of kinship, or glasena, which is when a woman asks a close friend to organize a group of other women, whom she knows well and trusts, to work in her garden. They explained this second arrangement to me by pointing at it “as a good way to make new friends because, after working closely for a week, our relationship will grow strong.”21 No payment is due, but the owner of the garden must provide good food and drink; otherwise, the women who have been summoned would raise a complaint with the middle-woman. If the owner serves tasty food, she will earn, along with new friends, the fame of being an excellent cook, as the women working in her garden will be impressed by the meal, and later talk of it in laudatory terms in their respective communities. There is a difference between geja and glasena only for the hosting woman, not

for the group of working women. During geja the women would not expect that

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butter and cheese are available and the owner of the garden will prepare what

she can. On the contrary, under the glasena arrangement everything has to be

available. This is why glasena is a risky thing, because the hostess must know long in advance that she will be able to prepare good-quality and tasty food. The

cook gauges their reaction on the spot, judging by the look of their faces while

they are eating. If they laugh, play, and dance little or much, that is another clue to the appreciation of the meal. Days after the event someone will come to the

owner’s house and bring her the exact words, either of approval or complaint, expressed by the working group with regard to her hospitality.22

There is also a third, quite rare arrangement that goes under the name bitmanna and that only wealthy women resort to. In this case the owner of the garden pays other women, neither biological kin nor friends, in cash to process her own plants. She may do so, for example, because she is busy with other chores around the home; or because she is old and sick and would not be able to reciprocate by working in another woman’s garden as required by geja; or because her garden contains a huge number of plants; or because, like in the case of Wodetu, she does not like to harvest ensete. The networks of women differ substantially from those of men; they take an extended time to grow and mature. Male parties, on the other hand, typically gather for the day and quickly dissolve. Men generally work together but do not engage in long-term sharing. There are two kinds of working parties. Geja includes a number of men who agree to perform certain tasks in the field (such as plowing, sowing, and harvesting grains) or around the homestead (such as building, fencing, and fixing). The men’s working group moves each day, typically over a period of a week, to a different household; the owner of the house decides which tasks are to be performed throughout the day. A second work party is called dawwa; in this case a man asks a number of volunteers to come and help, for one day only, at his homestead, and the host house provides them with refreshment. There are also mixed-gender and intermediate forms of support and reciprocity, seera, which function by collecting monthly fees on a family basis rather than an individual one. This self-help institution, with a structure made up of a chairperson, a secretary, a treasurer, and the participant families, works at the neighborhood level to provide support to members in times of hardship. For example, it intervenes in case of disease, should a person require transfer to the nearest hospital. At funerals each family gives a certain amount of cash

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to the bereaved along with a bundle of wood to fuel the hearth for the two months of mourning to come. The female members of seera also cooperate in the preparation of food for the numerous guests on the occasion of weddings and funerals. The practicalities of life are at the core of creating seera; however, people assert that with seera, alongside meeting basic needs, people also forge relationships. In this collective approach to work and life the element of utmost significance is that, from the perspective of women, “a form of prolonged giving and receiving among men does not exist.”23 Bakkalech adds a further nuance, one pointing directly at the value and pleasure of commensality for women, when she explains that “men may know someone in the town who invites them time to time to dine out. But they cannot eat together at home as we do, among women, because they do not know how to prepare food.”24 Within the Hadiyya cultural landscape the ensete garden is a rich source of social interactions, encounters, meanings, and exchanges between genders and generations. The dedication to the cultivation, processing, and consumption of ensete generates the same features that, in other societies, characterize the relationship of women with cassava. These features lead to a moral ideal of conviviality and can be described as “including peacefulness, high morale and high affectivity, a metaphysics of human and non-human inter-connectedness, a stress on kinship, good gift-sharing, work relations, and dialogue, a propensity for the informal and performative as against the formal and institutional, and an intense ethical and aesthetic valuing of sociable sociality” (Overing and Passes 2000, xiii-xiv). It is worth noting, however, that the ensete garden is of greater significance to women than to men. It is there that the women may occasionally make love with their lovers. On a daily basis, they wash their bodies, get dressed, and braid their hair while hiding behind fulsome ensete. They spend time in the ordinary actions of harvesting and storing ensete. They take care of cattle, who are interconnected to ensete plants; the plants and animals nourish each other. Moreover, cattle provide the dairy products that are at the very core of womanly forms of sharing; in this way, the women become part of the flow of resources between plants and animals. The women make money from ensete, which is culturally acceptable; but they also have enough self-confidence, gained as food producers and food processors, to erode other amounts from plots and pots that are beyond their jurisdiction. They eat together from what they have saved and stolen. They engage with kin and friends but also envisage working

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arrangements that would offer them the possibility of weaving friendship with women from other communities.

Who Are the Farmers, Anyway? The scenario of ensete farming is one wherein the interaction between women and the natural world creates a landscape that is both beautiful and productive. This reality stands in contrast to the consolidated invisibility of women farmers in the public and policy arenas. In most areas of Ethiopia the gender division of labor follows accepted norms that tend to simplistically define farming knowledge and skills (i.e., productive activities) as the domain of men, and reproductive activities and the domestic sphere as the territory of women. This bias determines in turn what scholarship and development deem appropriate to women and men in terms of ablebodiedness, the tools they can handle or master, and the spaces they are socially allowed to inhabit (Gella and Tadele 2014, 8). Assumptions on the part of the national government, community leaders, and development policy-makers are usually that farmers are male because “men are the providers.” In most Ethiopian local languages the word farmer is, by default, associated with “he.” The notion is that women are weak farmers if farmers at all. Also, production is cursorily equated to the task of plowing, but prevalent cultural taboos endure against women plowing using oxen, especially in grain-growing areas, regardless of their land-ownership status. This gendered restriction on women plowing is usually justified by referring to issues of “honor” and women’s physical ability (Alesina et al. 2013; H. Pankhurst 1992, 75–101). As a result of this biased approach women have only rarely had the opportunity to talk openly about their contribution to production, or their understanding of food security. Women’s contributions to farming are not just qualitatively but quantitatively invisible; the role they play in the different stages of agriculture, in other production and income-generating activities, is downplayed; and their gender-specific environmental expertise goes unrecorded in most agricultural research programs. The Ethiopian case is mirrored in other studies that document how the role of women in agriculture is overlooked by masculine views of the world (Carney and Elias 2006; Ferguson 1994, 546–47; Gunewardena 2010, 374–77; Sachs and Patel-Campillo 2014). In this regard, the case of ensete challenges us to think about who are the most relevant subjects to listen and talk to, and who can speak

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for whom. Perceiving and recognizing women as farmers is a matter of vision and scale. It is in fact when we scale down from the top of official policies to the farm, then the field, and finally the plot level that we start to distinguish women on the scene. That part of the farm scene is typically a home garden (Veteto and Skarbø 2009, 76–77). A vision from the ground up discloses those women, otherwise barely visible to the naked eye, who “have traditionally carried out much of the biodiversity field conservation activities. Women are thus a key source of knowledge about on-farm seed conservation, cultivation, and local crop-based gastronomy in their respective communities” (Altieri et al. 2011, 4). The other side of the agricultural enterprise has a woman’s face, is often no bigger than a few square meters, and has been bursting, for a long time unrecorded, with highdensity diversity of crops, crop varieties, and fruit, vegetable, and spice species. Explorations on the multifaceted relations between women and plants—or, more comprehensively, between gender and biodiversity—have become intense in the last few years in an attempt to overcome the topic’s fragmentation and lack of visibility still prominent in the “agriculture and development” literature. A wide-ranging coverage of the vital role played by women farmers around the world is provided by the collected papers of Women & Plants. Gender Relations in Biodiversity Management and Conservation (Howard 2003a). Other studies have in the meantime peppered the field and built upon a growing body of key concepts and tools. Within this constantly expanding vocabulary, a connection has emerged across disciplines and geographies—namely, a connection between biological diversity and cultural diversity. Women farmers preserve diversity in the plot, making it proliferate through their daily activities, especially in conducting garden experiments. Women exchange and barter diversity by bringing in and mixing materials from various sources—neighbors, friends, relatives, or markets. Through these same, mainly informal networks they also save and exchange seed (B. Tsegaye 1997, 223–25). Women exchange information and share experiences through labor groups or on their way to and from the market places, water sources, and the fetching of firewood. Their expertise has legs and can travel far and wide. Through women’s legs, hands, and mouths diversity reverberates from the plot to the pot to the whole social fabric. Agrobiodiversity thrives and is most resilient on the margins (see Eyzaguirre and Linares 2004; Nazarea 2006, 320; Nazarea et al. 2013, 5). Consider the case of the ensete home garden, where people and plants occupy what has progressively been defined by more central others as “the margins.” Hadiyya people subsist on

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a plant that rules over a cohort of other crops, and that has never attracted public appreciation and engagement. Those communities of humans and nonhumans cannot stop feeding on each other both literally and metaphorically. This sense of communion and reciprocity with plants informed the Fandaano practices, as I discussed previously, and can also be retraced by looking at Hadiyya culinary patterns, as we shall see later. Gender counts in how these subjects inhabit the margins, so that women would most likely care for forgotten, un-iconic crops, which in turn become feminine because they belong to women. Conversely, studies of dominant, charismatic, or more readily available and obvious subjects (say, men farmers and masculine crops or forms of cultivation) can result in the under-representation of the level of diversity of a given community, in agriculture and in social life at large. Significantly, a bias of this kind is present in the most comprehensive account of the Hadiyya. U. Braukämper advocates the legitimacy of selecting old men as knowledgeable informants because “the old men were responsible for political decisions, they held key official positions, and were the most competent guardians of tradition.” He laconically adds: “Women, who traditionally took hardly any active part in political decision-making, were only used as informants concerning their particular domains of life and those who practiced certain handicraft professions” (2012, 33). This sentence is perplexing. It is hard to imagine what those “particular domains” could be that the author so clearly associates with women in his internal ruminations but never explicitly details in more than five hundred pages. The author mentions ensete sporadically; and yet the landscape he evokes is significantly devoid of any gender connotation. Even seasoned scholars, influenced by their own gardening traditions, may fail to “see,” let alone appreciate, the layered structure of women-plant communities.25 I consider and define the women of my case study as farmers, not horticulturalists or gardeners, for several reasons. In the Western world gardens, even vegetable gardens, are traditionally perceived as places inhabited by flowers, ornamental plants, or edible but still “minor” resources. This is not the case with the ensete farming system, where women manage valuable staple crops. Hadiyya women grow ensete in controlled and well-regulated spaces, which are socially constructed and bioculturally diverse. They hold a solid place within the farm as creators not only in the kitchen but also, as producers of food, in the backyard’s small and densely populated plot. They may define their expertise as a “gift” distinct from what men usually do—that is, plain farming—but in reality, they fertilize, weed, and carry out harvesting and postharvesting activities. They handle

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the tools to process ensete and let the work on ensete shape their own bodies. They raise their naked legs high and walk behind their husbands. They share, sell in the market, and create alliances. They participate in decision-making with their male companions directly or by stealing and hiding. Although men may appear to be in control of decision-making, they usually consult their wives, and women have a stronger influence on the outcome than is publicly portrayed. The term gardener would convey a milder image of the role of Hadiyya women within the living organism of the farm, where agriculture is indeed practiced as “part of the wider performance of social life” (P. Richards 1993, 72). It is from the outpost of home gardens in southwestern Ethiopia that I deliberately choose to call these women farmers.

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Deep Roots The farms and the scanty flowers in front yards and in tin cans and buckets looked like the people. Trees and plants always look like the people they live with, somehow — Z O R A N E A L E H U R S TO N , S E R A P H O N T H E S U WA N E E

Poetry of Perennials

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of ensete gardens stands in sharp contrast to the popular image of Ethiopia as a hungry country that constantly requires massive infusions of charity to keep its citizens from starvation. At the beginning of my personal and professional journey deep into the lush green of the ensete belt, I felt no intellectual urgency to overcome the childlike enchantment for what seemed to my naive eyes an idyllic, economically stable, and biodiverse paradise. For some time I decided not to venture into any finely detailed exploration of what perennial root and tuber crops are, how they differ from annual seed staples, and what the implications of this dichotomy are for human social organization. To explain ensete to myself I kept using the metaphor of “Lembas bread” or “Waybread” found in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings—a mythical food made by the Elves, shaped into thin cakes, nutritious and filling, which stays fresh for months and is perfect sustenance for Hobbits on any kind of epic quest. The metaphor, although highly impressionistic, worked well for a while. But over time I realized that ensete was not unique in its agri-cultural value. Lowintensity cultivation practices characteristic of ensete mirror those for other so-called minor crops. So, instead of referring to Lembas bread, I have thus started framing ensete through the broad category of orphan or underutilized H E N E T WO R K

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crops, which includes a set of crops that are simple and cost-effective for poorer countries, and are not traded around the world. These crops receive little or no attention from research networks (Adenle et al. 2012), though they play an important role in regional food security (A. Tsegaye and Struik 2002). Ensete also perfectly fits into the category of on-farm crops with famine-food components, which means that it functions as an emergency food during times when environmental vicissitudes and other adverse events disrupt the normal gardening cycle. These plants are few, are likely to be perennial garden crops, and, significantly, are tended by women. There is enormous diversity among the types of perennial plants and their patterns of aging. Some are evergreen, while others die in the fall to reappear in the spring. In botanical terms, a plant is considered perennial if it grows for three seasons or more. Some last only a few years, others for decades or even hundreds of years. When a perennial lives only a few years, perenniality is achieved by allocating an important part of its energy to the production of a great number of stolons (also called clonal propagation); this strong reproductive effort becomes essential for achieving potential immortality. Because of their special root system, perennial plants present obvious ecological advantages over annual crops—for example, the good protection they offer against soil degradation, or their lower demand for soil nutrients. Perenniation—the integration of trees and perennials into fields inhabited by other food crops—has recently emerged as a key strategy in improving land (Glover et al. 2012). Perennials in fact require little or no fertilizer and add nitrogen to the soil.1 Slow-growing, long-lived plants take less from the land to grow and give back to the land during their life cycle. Fast-growing, short-lived plants eat much and leave sooner. The poetry of perennial crops has gradually increased in intensity and taken shape in my consciousness and writing as being deeply interconnected with the concepts of women farmers and of beauty in the garden. We shall now consider a few verses in this vegetal poetry. Perennial food crops come back to full life, although very slowly. Annuals play a much shorter game and leave only temporary traces in the landscape. For farm households diversification is a more effective and dependable strategy than intensification, and in fact smallholders value the mixing and matching of various crops on their land. However, the Hadiyya farmers have a clear perception of how the presence of ensete within such a synergetic system makes a real difference in creating a sense of pervasive internal security: “Here in our area farmers always declare themselves to be less skillful and smart than farmers in

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the North, who are able to combine their crops in the field with a large variety of vegetables. But deep down they gloat on the idea that it is ensete, not any other crop, that will save them from drought and famine.”2 This attitude is in line with a classical account of ensete farming among the Wolayta: “The diet is supplemented by maize, pulses, tubers, vegetables, dairy products, and occasionally meat. Nevertheless, culturally and psychologically, it is the number of ensete plants available to the household and their stages of maturity that will determine the household’s decision regarding crop diversification and crop-mix in each particular season” (Rahmato 1995, 28). Once established in the garden, a perennial food plant gives years of pleasure (beauty) and of harvest (food security). The two nuances, aesthetic and utilitarian, are not distinct in the perception of those who live with and around perennials. For them, it is the perennial plant that creates the tone and texture of the household, not the annuals, which disappear soon after coming. Significantly, as we have discussed earlier, the cycle of annuals is in the hands of men, whose working groups and forms of sharing behave much like the crops they cultivate—quickly and repeatedly. In contrast, women’s forms of sociality develop slowly, quietly, underground. As both a matter of fact rooted in everyday practices, and as a powerful metaphor of gender roles and social life, men move at ground level, for all to see. They do not dig holes and do not bury secrets in pots, unlike women. Women, much like ensete, conduct a partially secret, and partially illegible, underground life. Trees and plants indeed look like the people they live with. The persistent beauty of perennials, and of resilient humans, lies in what is not immediately visible. The food value of ensete lies in its deep roots. In the Gurage folk wisdom it is said that the root of ensete alone, even without considering the other edible parts on the surface, will bring to people better days—that is, food security and abundance (Leslau 1982, 223). Perennial plants have particular roots that are more resistant to environmental stress and easily adaptable to their habitat compared to annuals. Roots are essential for nutrient and water uptake, the growth of shoots and reproduction, respiration, and many other functions. What we observe above the ground is sustained by underground intricate root populations that relentlessly search for food and drink and store them to survive in times of environmental stress. Acting as underground perceptive organs, roots provide the plant with enormous plasticity and potential for adaptation to the environment (Dewar 2007, 6). The root storage system provides safety for the resumption of growth when environmental

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constraints, such as water or nutrient availability, have passed. The populations subsisting on ensete have never starved, even during the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. According to eyewitness reports, only the edges of the older leaves and the sheath surrounding the inner leaves were affected during the drought years, and once the rains returned the plants resumed growing as if nothing had occurred—an important trait in perennial plants that scientists call “dormancy.” The deeper the roots, the stronger the survival capacity. With annuals the typical dynamic is that of a constant remaking of the cultivated land whereby the work of farmers has to be redone every season. The same does not occur with perennials. Ensete does not require a very extensive piece of land and can be grown on the same soil year after year without a loss in quality and quantity. Indeed, ensete thrives on the kind of soil profile achieved after long-term use through several cycles of ensete growing. Ensete has persisted through droughts and floods by storing water in its bulbous stalk; it has shielded the soil from erosion with its long-lasting roots; and it has rendered the land rich in nitrogen, water, and humidity because it thrives when fertilized by cattle manure and not by chemical inputs. With the exception of extreme circumstances—for example, ensete bacterial wilt—gardens remain in the same place at least throughout the lifespan of a particular household, approximately thirty years, or even for several generations. Curious lives do these plants exhibit. They flower just once, and then grow old and die, at times in resonance with the life cycle of humans. These plants and these people literally live together; and, as in most long-lasting loving relationships, somehow they come to look like each other. The longue durée of ensete cultivation has several implications, but here I want to retrieve two threads: one has to do with a sense of security, the other with affect (or, if you prefer, love). First, ensete calls for long-term, preferably permanent, land tenure; insecurity would make people reluctant to enter into an extended cycle of investment, wait, anticipation, and abundant but delayed return (Fujimoto 2011, 111). Ensete enhances the quality of the soil but also provides a gateway to land tenure security (Sandford and Sandford 1994). Plants, specifically perennials, are planted by those who want to stay, who claim land to show to others a continuous use of the resources and a lasting commitment to the place. Planting trees is one of the most effective ways of exercising control over land while defining who those planting people are and who they plan to be in the foreseeable future—in the eyes of both neighboring communities and more external (regional and

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national) agents. Only those who own or control land are able to grow ensete; this is why craftworkers, who are denied the privilege of landownership, are not able to grow it. This becomes an even more sensitive issue for women, who acquire land not by inheritance but through marriage. Control over the ensete garden further secures women’s rootedness into their husbands’ land. Hadiyya women are cut off from their families of origin to bring new life to other soils, and they do so by being transplanted, much like ensete plants are, across male territories. Secure access to an ensete garden close to the house is access to the most reliable source of food, even if the total size of landholding is quite small. More control over the household’s food supply means that women’s inclination, preference, or affect toward certain plant materials may result in intra-household negotiation and even joint decision-making between husband and wife. Second, the reality of living in constant association with the same plant year after year creates a niche marked by physical proximity as well as interaction, relatedness, exchange, and signification. Because of the constant horticultural attention required to look after them, plants cease to be mere and anonymous vegetal material but become something close to “individuals.” We need only look at the propagation of ensete by means of shoots, which was already described by H. Smeds as a method through which “the life of the individual [a particular exemplar of ensete plant] is extended ad infinitum, and the grower can thus deliberately choose the properties he wants the plant to have, being sure they will be conserved” (1955, 21). The plant propagation by its own cuttings means that gardens, through human assistance and interference in the plant life cycle, will be inhabited by different generations of the same plant material. Humans render gardens intentionally, so that “the cultivar is already the outcome of attention, of people’s actions” (Strathern 2017, 30). In Hadiyya, the young ensete shoots are subsequently manured, coddled, transplanted, and given a name. During my research in Hadiyya, women were used to joking about these protracted acts of care by saying that most of them know the age and name of ensete plants better than those of their own children.3 But the most powerful statement was expressed by farmers by directly pointing to the framing of ensete as a human being who, if hurt in the stem, exhales a wailing sound. This belief takes us back centuries, to the testimony of Jerónimo Lobo: “When the tree is cut, it makes such grievous and humanlike moans that it gives the Abyssinians occasion to say: ‘We are going to kill an ensete’ instead of saying ‘We are going to cut it down’, because of the way the tree appears to be affected by the blows they give it” (cit. in Da Costa 1984, 246).

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Another belief rooted in Hadiyya narratives speaks of the sensitive humanlike nature of the perennial plant—one according to which the ensete leaves, used to wrap the dough for baking bread (buya), should never be thrown into the fire, or it will cause the death of the whole ensete grove. The same precaution was taken decades ago among the Gurage, according to which if the ensete leaves used in the making of bread burn in the fire, hunger will soon enter the house (Leslau 1982, 275).

Rooted and Rotten A complexity of social, political, economic, and ritual practices has developed around the cultivation of ensete, which stands in this regard as a special case in Africa. Significantly, the same can be found for yam- and taro-planting cultures in Micronesia and New Guinea (W. Shack 1963, 73). The highest common denominator among these three botanical characters is perenniality. For all of them, the high value within their local communities is contrasted with the low value they hold in most programs for food-crop improvement, where indeed the characteristic of perenniality has been neglected or removed through selection for yield. As a result, over time, the role of perennials in food production has diminished: “Using perennials, however, has been virtually absent from modern experiments in agriculture primarily because the goal in agriculture has generally been to achieve high yield and everyone knows that annuals put their energy into producing seeds while perennials put their energy into producing roots and rhizomes” (Dewar 2007, 20). The perenniality of ensete, yam, taro, cassava, and sweet potato accords with another element of equal importance in defining their plant identity: their rooty nature.4 According to W. A. Shack’s pioneering investigation, this element was indeed at the root of the stigma that grain-cultivating people in Ethiopia had developed toward hoe cultivators and pastoralist groups, “because their staple diet is said to be the ‘roots of trees,’ which these Ethiopians consider unfit for human consumption” (1966, 35). Most tropical root and tuber crops present a third remarkable characteristic beside being perennial and rooty: they are typically processed into foods and beverages through fermentation. The process of fermenting foods evokes a stable condition of things: “Fire spreads, destroying whatever lies in its path, and its path is unpredictable. Fermentation is not so dramatic. It bubbles rather than

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burns, and its transformative mode is gentle and slow. Steady, too. Fermentation is a force that cannot be stopped. It recycles life, renews hope, and goes on and on” (Katz 2016, 166). Fermentation plays different roles in food processing; for instance, it enriches the human diet by developing a wide variety of flavors, aromas, and textures; it helps preserve substantial amounts of foods; and it decreases cooking times and fuel requirements (Katz 2016, 5–8). Roots and tubers are in fact highly perishable, and fermentation makes them last longer while improving their palatability and textural quality. It is also worth noting that fermentation is, by nature, an artisanal, alchemical, low-tech process. It is no coincidence, therefore, that on a global scale the disappearance of fermented foods has historically been connected to the centralization and industrialization of the food supply, to the detriment of small farms and local economies. In framing fermentation techniques as an ancient, vital, and complex form of preservation, S. Mintz writes: “In a world in which the powerless must struggle to survive, such humble tools can become hugely valuable. [ . . . ] Like all other forms of preservation, fermentation can soften the handicaps of calendar, season and locale. Unlike some other types of preservation, it adds its ability to widen the range of taste. Most importantly, it can dramatically improve the nutritional value of the product, at the same time increasing its reliability as human food. It can also make possible other economies, such as in time and fuel” (2011, 28). Once extracted and processed, the ensete pulp returns from whence it came (underground) for fermentation, which somehow accounts for a double degree of “rootiness.”5 Outsiders are erroneously prone to equate the substance resulting from long-term and carefully monitored fermentation with repulsive color and smell. In contrast, for local consumers the longer the ensete pulp is kept underground fermenting, the riper and tastier it becomes. This trajectory from rooted to (allegedly) rotten has greatly contributed to the stigmatization of ensete as a “poor” food outside the area of origin and current cultivation. There are traits of root and tuber crops that may have had a considerable impact on the development of human societies—including the forms of settlement, economy, diet, and social organization. Those traits carry particular weight in shaping human-plant interactions. Compared to grain-based farming, root and tuber cultivation is ecologically and spatially conservative and durable, leading to overall environmental sustainability. These crops are adapted to poor soils and water stress with little use of purchased input; and in fact, fertilizers and pesticides are seldom applied to root crops (with the important exception of potatoes). Moreover, they possess an indeterminate harvest period. Roots and

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tubers are not easy to store and transport. By nature they stay; grow in the same place year after year, yielding a large package of carbohydrates; and never travel. As a consequence, useful tuber plants “foster a more generalised subsistence base and labor orientation as well as decentralised human populations and power structures” (Hildebrand 2010, 277). Tropical root and tuber crops are particularly adapted to small farm production where, becoming part of a complex multiple cropping, they fulfill a dual purpose: home consumption, as they are mainly used for the preparation of local dishes, and limited market sale. However, given that roots and tubers are generally intercropped and live in association with a variety of other crops, yield calculations are not as representative as they are for maize or beans—a factor that has certainly contributed to rendering the life of roots and tubers cloaked with secrecy and invisibility. While highly productive, roots and tubers are also specialized and risky. The inner weakness of an otherwise robust interspecies cooperation was noticed decades ago in Wolayta: “The system is made up of a chain of delicately linked activities, but the anchor, as it were, which holds the system together and gives it resiliency is ensete cultivation. A serious damage to ensete will disturb the system and may lead to catastrophic consequences” (Rahmato 1995, 31). The trigger for the chain of collapses that Wolayta people experienced in 1984–85 was not drought, harvest shortfalls, loss of livestock, or the resulting famine, but the destruction of the ensete stock—of whole groves and clones—by bacterial wilt.

Illegible Gardens In my line of analysis through perennial crops vis-à-vis annual crops, through roots and tubers vis-à-vis grains, a more general distinction has progressively emerged: that between so-called horticulture (gardens) and so-called agriculture (fields). Gardens and fields, although interconnected, shape divergent social realities, which are asymmetrical in a gender and political sense.6 Due to their scale and nature, gardens fail to fit into the standards of replicability and legibility. The pivotal theme of legibility was originally developed by J. C. Scott in Seeing Like a State (1998). The concept refers to a state’s attempt to make society legible. This has been typically achieved by geographical concentration of the population and the use of high-value forms of cultivation, in order to minimize the cost of governing the area as well as the transaction costs required to

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appropriate labor and produce. Grain crops have long been integrated into the modern market system and made legible to the state. This means that a percentage of crop production is extracted from farmers in the form of rents; taxes; costs of milling, transporting, and irrigation; and market middlemen. In many developing countries this extraction has increased over the past decades through Green Revolution development projects, which have introduced productive but costly packages of high-yielding varieties of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Drawing on lessons from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, I. Scoones and J. Thompson (2011) highlight the concerted efforts of policy and scientific circles in recent years to herald the launch of a new Green Revolution in sub-Saharan Africa; such initiatives share a theory of change that may be described as “market-led technology adoption.” Government-sponsored programs are increasingly built around a governance model of public-private partnerships that involves the private sector, philanthropy, and donor agencies and that advocates a shift toward “creative” or “green” capitalism in the agricultural sector in the Global South (Patel et al. 2015, 22). If we use the prism of legibility, a previously unseen map begins to surface: one in which certain areas of Ethiopia are more visible from an economic and demographic viewpoint, while others remain less visible and thus less governable. The commercial sector is legible to the state; the subsistence sector is not. Fields, where grains and cash crops are cultivated (by men), are more legible than home gardens, which are tended by women and whose produce is mainly retained for family consumption. The plow, which is a potent male symbol, is more legible than hoe cultivation (Alesina et al. 2013; Gella and Tadele 2014). Grain crops, like anything grown for cash, strongly identify with men. This is the sector of the small farm economy where rural households take the risk of experimenting with newly introduced, high-yielding varieties in an attempt to better their socioeconomic position by producing, at least in part, for the market. However, a small farm may only take risks in the field if another sector (the garden) ensures the survival of the whole organism. Fields and gardens are part of a single, integrated system wherein the household splits into both a sector that takes risks and is legible to the state and a sector that monitors subsistence and is not legible. An exclusive focus on agricultural production, typically measured in yield, may cause women to fade away into invisibility and illegibility. From this perspective, life in the garden provides an alternative entry point into the lives, feelings, concerns, and unofficial networks of rural women. Yet, at present, the daily labor invested by women in the house and in the

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garden—with plants and with livestock, and made of emotional as well as practical components—does not effectively appear in government statistics. Local farming remains invisible because of the model of nature that prevails in agricultural and development standards: one that looks at nature as a mute and passive object to be exploited through extraction and that turns nature “into a fetishized and commodifiable resource” (Makki 2014, 94). In certain cases the invisibility of small farming is also due to the very nature of those garden crops that form part of the flexible farming bricolage in rural households—crops that remain undercounted or not measurable at all. For past and emergent elites, cereals have been easier to appropriate from farmers than roots and tubers. Plants that produce edible roots, tubers, or other underground organs are generally grown and consumed on small farms. Information gathered at the regional or country levels is likely to underestimate, or not to grasp at all, the socioeconomic aspects of their production and consumption. Ensete is one such case whereby the calculation of plants per hectare cannot be standardized, especially over time. Ensete is in fact a flexible-harvest crop, which can be held in reserve for five to ten years, and which households have the option to utilize at any time after maturity (Borrell et al. 2019, 760). Moreover, ensete is vegetatively propagated by using suckers, not seeds; thus, like other root tuber crops, it is “likely to remain beyond the proprietary control of agricultural capital; it is virtually impossible to wrest control of the plant’s reproduction from the farmer” (Stone 2002, 617).7 The landscape dominated by ensete (and swarmed over by women) has eluded the clarity and visibility required for model development schemes. This is one of the crucial reasons why ensete has not been subject to research interests, investment, and funding when compared to cereals and cash crops. In Ethiopia policy-makers, scientists, and plant breeders have periodically turned to high-yielding crops (preferably grains such as wheat and maize) to address the problem of food security, instead of committing themselves to exploring the potential of perennial crops and subsistence foods. The state’s agricultural programs and policies have pursued productivity over categories such as taste and experience by privileging cereals over uncountable crops. “Seeing like a state” (or like most external agents such as NGOs, developers, and donors) has implied in several instances simplification and measurability (Temudo 2011, 319). The underlying tendency informing international standards, which are intended to improve the livelihood and nutritional base of local populations, has been to reduce crop and food heterogeneity to numerical classifications. These

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classifications include yield in the field, nutrients and biomarkers expressed by numerical indicators, quantities of calories and body mass, and food quantity over all other qualities (Ilcan and Phillips 2003; Lappé et al. 2013; Sanabria and Yates-Doerr 2015). These parameters have left little or no room for indicators that are culturally relevant—that is, indicators that are generated from within local communities, emerge from local people’s frames of reference, further build upon local expertise, and are considered meaningful by people in those specific communities (Nazarea et al. 1998). Numbers and indicators are blind to local patterns of relatedness to the environment and incapable of recording or explaining local responses to agricultural innovation and dietary change. I deliberately avoid framing what I have learned in the ensete garden in terms of indexes and indicators—that is, in terms of yet another kind of legibility. Revolutionary moments may open up in the garden that are pregnant with possibilities, but they cannot be recounted in numbers. They have to be shared in person or described through storytelling. Through my ethnography I have tried to explore, at a slow pace and by necessity on a tiny scale, the other side of the legibility conundrum by asking myself: What would seeing like a farmer, or seeing like a root tuber perennial plant, look like?

Seeing Like an Ensete Farmer In questioning Hadiyya people about their lives on the farm, it became apparent to me that programmers and developers, who present themselves as bearers of an expert scientific worldview, only rarely include the standpoint of small farmers in the research and policy process itself. In Ethiopia the relationship between farmers and state has typically been mediated through local officials and perceived by the people as intrusive, unbalanced, and extractive (Alemu 2011; Berhanu and Poulton 2014). Top-down approaches to agricultural extension and natural-resource management have led somehow to tenuous relationships between agricultural extension agents and farmers, for “extension communication is mostly one-way, with agents transferring knowledge to farmers; there is little effort to marry new agricultural research and development to farmers’ own knowledge, or to learn what kinds of services farmers would like to receive” (Cohen and Lemma 2010, 484). While the preferences of farmers in general receive very limited attention, female farmers receive even less attention (Buchy and Basaznew 2005;

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H. Pankhurst 1992). Agricultural extension services still do not attach equal importance to providing services to female farmers or women on farms. Typically extension workers approach male farmers, individually or in groups, on their farms when they make field visits. The only extension service linked with rural women is training; however, training for women focuses on their reproductive and community roles (child care, sanitation and hygiene, health, family planning)—not on developing their farming skills (Buchy and Basaznew 2005, 244–45; Cohen and Lemma 2010, 485–89). Local agents, in implementing national policies, advise (male) farmers to “modernize”—for example, by growing hybrid varieties and applying fertilizer. The rural population appears to agricultural agents to be unskilled and powerless, thus requiring teaching and information from trained advisors. It is through extension agents that the state claims a right to save communities from their own agricultural “malpractices.” Significantly, what these agents of progress examine is the field, not the garden. What is cultivated in the garden is neglected in agricultural training institutions as if the garden were not part of the farm at all. The logic that exemplifies this masculine and muscular approach to farming is that of the “model farmer.” Extension services for agricultural development work through “model” or “progressive” farmers, who tend to be better off and male (Cohen and Lemma 2010, 484). Following on from conversations with both men and women of my Hadiyya host families, “models” are male farmers who can guarantee enough food for their families, on the assumption that women are not farmers and that ensete does not provide food. Model farmers have a good number of cattle and of donkeys for transportation, as well as a decent house to receive guests. In order to fulfill these requirements, models are necessarily those who have more land and cultivate different crops; but only cereals, vegetable, and fruit crops count for this kind of assessment, and not the overflowing diversity of tiny home gardens where ensete is cultivated. When the use of home gardens is promoted, it is done to enhance the production of crops such as garlic, onions, tomatoes, and maize. All the varieties distributed by extension agents are improved, or, in the words of a farmer in his late forties, “those which are modern, not natural, to be treated with fertilizers.”8 In Hadiyya agrochemicals are in fact commonly applied to the fields where cereals and cash crops are grown and not in the home gardens. Several farmers—the husband and the wife frequently in agreement— decide nevertheless to avoid fertilizers because, they argue, the quality of nonfertilized crops is higher, they are good for human and animal health, and their

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taste is better. Agricultural agents come to visit and check on the status of the farm three times a year. They do not spend time with less affluent (and less “progressive”) farmers, who are instead advised to learn from models. If rooty ensete is unread, grains are squeezed by new hybrid or improved varieties to be more efficient. The impulse toward making small farms legible returns in the disputed issue of how to plant countable things. Farmers are taught by agricultural experts to plant in rows (bohe’e) rather than according to traditional broadcasting (binacha) in order to achieve more in both quantity and quality. From an exogenous perspective the practice of planting in rows brings tidiness into the chaos generated by the variety of crops and by local “irrational” practices of farmers—practices that visibly contradict the spatial order of scientific farming. An old farmer once said to me: “People who come from the city know how to speak and possess the theory. When farmers are convened for a meeting, they go and sit and listen quietly. Then they walk back home and, if they do not agree with what they were taught, they will continue to live as before. It is their heads, not other people’s words, that guide their actions.”9 Hadiyya farmers have tried the new method of planting in rows, have talked to each other, and have determined that they have lost in yield. “We are ready to do battle with the agricultural office,” they said. “We do not want to accept this modern method, because it has proved to produce far less than expected.” When it is about crops grown in the garden, farmers rank taste higher than any other quality; when it is about grains, yield counts more.10 A woman farmer describes who the models are, how they were selected, and for which purpose. Her tale was haunted by a sense of oppression, felt and suffered by many families in the area.11 The model farmer is chosen by the ruling party. One becomes a model when he accepts the techniques of cultivation fostered by the government. This is

true not only in the field but also inside the house; for example, they want us to build a wall in order to keep cattle separate within the domestic sphere. But

mostly the training has to do with the method you plant cereals, in rows instead

of broadcasting. Or it is about drilling wells and using water for irrigation. Sometimes they bring here different kinds of vegetables and explain in detail to farmers how to cultivate them; at the demonstration trials they deliver all

the required materials, sometimes very expensive ones, for cultivating the new crops. They do that just for the sake of showing off. In all these cases, they call

it “technology.” They say that the ultimate goal is to improve the living standard

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of rural families. Certain points of the training are good. Others are bad for us. Yet, as a matter of fact, it is the model farmers who receive money and oxen, sometimes a radio; they get rewards and privileges. Model farmers are chosen on the basis of their political affiliation.12

Development in agriculture is thus ingrained in concepts of progress (“they come to improve our working culture”); of control (“they come later to check out what we have achieved”); and of patronization (“they come later to provide further guidance”).13 Several testimonies confirm that model farmers receive small amounts of money or other incentives to introduce new crops or agricultural techniques. Working for money inside the community, especially on land and with plants, was unknown until recently. People would typically earn money from off-farm activities and bring it back to the family. In contrast, working groups based on rotation, exchange, and bartering—and formed across families, neighbors and friends—have been the norm in these small farms when it is about cultivating plants for food. The abundance produced through selfsufficiency is what Adanech described in terms of well-being, not wealth, and is built independently of external provisions. A proverb in Hadiyya describes the concept as follows: hagaghimm’ hečhin jorá, “expectation will destroy people’s lives.” But in the meantime the implementation of technologies and materials for cultivating annual grains is slowly changing the balance between the two souls of the farm—the garden and the field—and with them, the balance of knowledge and power between women and men. Whenever the farm shifts from a subsistence mode to a semicommercial one, men come to the fore as gardens become progressively marginal, shrink in size, and lose character (Howard 2006, 171–74; Veteto and Skarbø 2009, 74–75; Voeks 2007, 8; Wooten 2003). The depreciation of specific diets and crops entails that those who produce and procure such foods, the majority of whom are women, are dragged down into the same lower status assigned to indigenous crops and food patterns and are bound under the common stigma of backwardness and poverty (Howard 2006, 176). In Ethiopia the particularly tenuous engagement between women and state (H. Pankhurst 1992, 38–49) can be read as just another version of an aggressively top-down attitude to reordering rural social spaces and livelihoods. J. C. Scott (1998) demonstrates that certain forms of autonomy come from invisibility. This line of thinking suggests a possible reading of home gardens as self-contained spaces of sovereignty. After all—as I have asked myself several

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times during fieldwork—do gardeners want to be seen by the state and in the society at large? Agricultural experts and technocrats who come from distant centers to visit the farms and to dictate rules for improvement are increasingly perceived by Hadiyya farmers with disquiet. While certain parts of the farm are turned into more governable spaces in the name of progress and productivity, Hadiyya retain a tiny bit of it for producing and consuming food on the margins of market economies. Many annual crops require external inputs to be productive and thus provide incentives for private-sector involvement, whereas perennial crops generally require less or no planting material or other inputs from outside. This way, farmers keep a part of the landscape beautiful and gastronomically enjoyable on their own terms. For Hadiyya, cultivating and eating ensete is their space of comfort, a physical and mental activity that defines a part of who they are. Edible gardens are clearly intended to function outside of the centralized system of control, helping families to develop frugal habits of their own choosing.

Beware Nostalgia, yet Search for Beauty Having deep roots does not exclude change, either in plants or in people. Plants, like humans, commingle, change and exchange, grow old, and die. As I anticipated at the beginning of this chapter, I had to overcome the marvel for ensete as a unique miracle plant and replace that emotion with a wellgrounded investigation. I initially moved toward a broader scope when I started to see that the political ecology of ensete agriculture could offer a strategic entry point into the extended family of perennials. A proximity to perennials opened up a reflection upon their potential for becoming active components of a foodsecure national landscape. Perennials also contained the seeds (or shall I say the roots?) of reflection upon women farmers in subsistence-oriented societies. This reflection, in turn, triggered a reconsideration of how ecological combinations that include perennials quietly turn a farm-centric view of agriculture upside down to make room for alternative spaces (home gardens) that are fraught with femininity and sensory (or tasteful) qualities. Fourteen years after my first fieldwork visit I am still absorbed in the process of reconstructing the textured history embedded in the ensete landscape. That history is made of relations between genders and generations who cooperate in gardens and fields. It has also seen, however, the introduction

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of technological changes and of new crops; it has been dramatically affected by the use of money and the arrival of desirable goods perceived as heralding modernity; it is crowded with evangelical missionaries and in constant creative tension with the nation-state. As much as I wanted to, these nuances could not be fully rendered in one book. Therefore, I am only evoking them on the sidelines of what I wish to bring to the attention of the reader based on the duration and quality of my ethnography: the question of what a beautiful ensete garden is to Ethiopian farmers. Changes and disruptions notwithstanding, I wanted to craft a story where the reader can have a real sense of how the goals and values of subsistence producers may at times differ from those of people who produce for cash, just as they differ from the philosophy of intervention of development planners. However, both the farmers and I are deeply conscious that dynamics internal to the community, as well as broader social relations and economic forces, shape and constrain certain forms of farming, taste, and food practices. Life within these family farms is not idyllic. It contains, as everywhere and for everyone, a degree of uncertainty, suffering, and conflict. One axis of differentiation lies in the generational position (when you were born and to whom). While women in their forties and above continue to invest considerable time and effort in their gardens, many younger women are developing a more problematic relationship with the idea of nurturing ensete their whole life. For some of them, the work on ensete is becoming tedious and of no value. Girls are caught in the dilemma of complying with the traditional ideal of a “good woman”—for whom the garden represents a daily space of care and engagement—and meeting the demands of a market economy with its attendant expectations and values. High-school-age girls still participate in the harvesting and cooking of ensete; but they also dream of pursuing university studies and building a career in nearby cities. Our conversations revealed that they retain great respect for older women’s dedication to agriculture, to botanical knowledge, and to midwifery; and yet they find themselves less able to be, or to become, devoted ensete experts. The second axis cuts across generations and is represented by money. With increasing pressures a need for cash has taken root to pay for a greater variety of goods and services such as health care, medicines, and education. Old and young couples are faced with the necessity (sometimes the open desire) of gaining money through waged labor, the most cited reason for which is to pay to send their children to school. This typically takes the form of men looking for

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a part-time job in the nearest town. Wolloro and Adanech are examples of this arrangement. He leaves twice a week in the morning, and stays overnight at his workplace in Waachamo, for a total of three working days a week. He defines himself as “half farmer and half not.”14 When, as in this case, the family is not particularly affluent, the women, strongly supported by male and female children, are temporarily responsible for managing the household, cooking, caring for the animals, and supervising some of the agricultural tasks both in the field and in the garden. The women have therefore to modulate carefully the time and energy they devote to each space on the farm. Different is the case of wealthy families, where the couple can pay other men to plow the fields while women are left to manage the household. One woman clarified to me with undisguised pride that her husband was not a farmer and worked instead full-time as a government official in Waachamo. His affiliation with the ruling party—other farmers murmured—had gained him a good job, and with it, over time, impressive wealth and emancipation from the farm. She explained that her husband’s salary allowed them to build a new house in the town where he lives during the week, along with some of their children who attend school there. With money in cash from the man’s salary and from producing a good amount of cereals for sale in the market, they pay for their children’s school fees and materials and can afford the luxury of buying more and different foods in the market. The woman talked with a sense of contentment about this pattern of livelihood whereby a salary from outside complements the work on the farm. “Money allows us to pay for school, university, and transportation; and all of this is in view of a better life. If children will get a good job, they will not come back to the village; they will keep doing as we have started doing: let other people cultivate their land and receive part of the grain harvest in return.”15 In her narrative there was no mention of ensete and of her work in the garden. Other women were less optimistic in considering that education is in reality hardly a safe bet, only one among others that families try when rolling the dice; certain children will be admitted to the university, but even so, there is no guarantee that they will get a good job; others fail at some point of their journey and come back to the village to be farmers. This type of mixed economy characterized by a pronounced inclination of the household toward an extraversion of resources was practiced at the time of my last visit ( January to March 2015) only by two families out of the fifteen whom I used to work with in close association. At present neither Hadiyya farmers nor I can make any sharp prediction as to if, and how, these experiments

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in between subsistence and the market will contribute to the community wellbeing in rural areas. In other neighboring groups the transition from an intense dedication to ensete to more intermixed forms began decades ago. The Gurage and Sidama provide perfect examples of the tiptoed entry into more inclusive national and economic scenarios. In the years following their incorporation in 1888 into the wider Ethiopian context, the Gurage have been encouraging the migration of their children, both male and female, to various towns, especially Addis Ababa. Known for their national and international migrating trends, the Gurage are considered to be a highly mobile and adaptive people (Worku 2000, 49–53). In Sidama it was primarily coffee, gradually becoming a cash crop, that changed things. People moved out of their traditional self-sufficiency and into the market system and, concomitantly, into the national economic and social infrastructure. Once their economies were partially extraverted, different forms of cooperation with the central government gained strength. In Hadiyya an increased interest in making money has arisen more recently and was primarily fueled by the arrival from the United States of the first Protestant missionaries. Money has progressively stopped being just money that could be used for specific and limited purposes, but has rather become a polyhedral concept that is good for evoking, and broadly exploiting, the subtext of personal success and promotion of the self. The rhetoric used by Protestant priests while spreading the evangelical message has covered the lion’s share of bending the traditional family-centered ethics toward forms of self-interested conduct. Their intense preaching—which I was exposed to during Sunday services, at organized prayer sessions, and in private houses—revolves around a persistent search for personal accomplishment and full happiness. This is having a massive and disruptive impact on people like the Hadiyya who have traditionally oscillated with a spirit of improvisation between attachment to, and rebellion against, consecrated places and values. How the ingredient of Protestantism will amalgamate within the Hadiyya’s already fractured sense of belonging is still to be seen. But a seed of transformation has been planted, especially in the younger generation who are literally ready to die in the pursuit of a successful life. Between 2010 and 2015, concomitant to an unrelenting deterioration of ensete gardens caused by bacterial wilt, the attempt at diversifying beyond the farm boundaries brought the first Hadiyya youth to foreign countries—South Africa for men, United Arab Emirates and Lebanon for women. These were still exceptional cases at that time, with the community devoid of detailed information

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about the destiny of their beloved ones, and incapable of rationalizing the mixture of feelings they were experiencing—fear, awe, anticipation. The journeys of men to reach the coveted destination were surrounded by gloomy premonitions. Organized by unscrupulous brokers, these marches would conduct the aspirants across several countries, through makeshift means and partly on foot in order to sneak over the borders, and finally lead them to start a retail business and become what I would interpret to be a merchant, but their relatives optimistically called a “businessman.” During my fieldwork I never heard that this search for success had materialized for these men in the form they and their families had expected. It was far more frequent to hear that a family had received news of someone who did not make it as a result of exhaustion or being murdered on his way to success. Staring at me without blinking, Adanech said firmly and under her breath: “When someone dies on his journey to South Africa, the community leaders work to repatriate the corpse. In the meantime, friends and neighbors arrange everything for the funeral in a separate house, including the food for the ceremony. The bad news will be delivered to the relatives only the night before the funeral.”16 Two of Bakkalech’s daughters were abroad, one in Dubai and one in Beirut. I saw sadness in her eyes, despite her large smiling face, when she admitted to having no clues about the destiny of the former. Of the latter, however, she could speak vividly. The picture contains a painful decision, residues of modernity, nostalgia, and much reflection on food: “She was forced to go to Beirut by her husband, three years ago. We had to accept the decision of her husband’s family. They have built a huge tin-roofed house with the money she has sent back to them so far. She is a handmaid and she cooks. She told me that in Beirut people eat rice, pasta, and packaged foods. She has got used to these foreign foods but has also gained a lot of weight because of this new diet. She misses so much the milk, meat, and ensete bread. She feels nostalgia for home cooking.”17 The medium of food, as a space for exposure to the unknown and for remembrance of the familiar, provides a significant angle to monitor a farming community who straddles new forms of being in the world. While ensete may have decreased in certain gardens, the taste of its pulp persists in the mouth of those who have been used to it since childhood; the taste for ensete, as is the case with most fermented foods, is an acquired one that tends to be strong and pronounced. I will return to this point in what follows and will explore culinary themes and variations to offer the reader a sensory and tactile rendering of how Hadiyya imagine the future while basking in the warmth of past memories. In what follows nothing will be forgotten of what makes life diverse and complicated in this village community—for example, the fact that the settlement

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retains its qualities of green and peacefulness because it lies in a sheltered area a half-hour walk from the main pot-holed road. There people walk by the side of the road, engulfed by the dust raised by donkey-drawn carts and by trucks packed to the brim with passengers. Hoards of children call out for plastic containers, pens, and money. In the village only a few families have demolished the old houses and replaced them with large rectangular ones. In all families, though, the clay pots traditionally used for carrying water have been replaced with plastic jerry cans, which lighten the load but often end up as trash. The same is happening in the kitchen, where cheap Chinese plastic dinnerware lives alongside earthenware, the latter being still the favorite option when cooking for special guests and when preparing iconic Hadiyya dishes. After an hourand-a-half walk from Waachamo you can finally turn right, with the voices of screaming children begging for money lost in the refreshing air of ensete gardens, and slow down the pace, breathe, and even sit for a while in the shade. Eventually people become visible in the landscape—going about their work in the fields, in gardens, and on the pathways around the village. Scenes of seasonal life in the village are vivid in my memory and written down in my notebooks with a wealth of detail. In my understanding, the beauty of these scenes is not diminished by the fact that this is, nonetheless, a society in transition.

Need for Beauty I remain conscious that an approach to farming revolving around the concept of beauty may be seen as fostering inappropriate nostalgia and a small-scale anti-technology bias. However, it is not. This is not a miniature image of an enchanted rural society, nor an anthropologist’s ruminations about the good rural life in olden times. This is the life of villagers who have so far been pursuing a way of living based on ensete farming and livestock herding, although inroads of modernity are becoming increasingly evident. The changes they are experiencing in their everyday lives are not by definition good or bad; the questions rather are: Who takes advantage of new opportunities? Do men and women, the young and the old, equally participate in the benefits of modernization? What new resources, both material and symbolic, are brought in, and what are being lost in the meantime? Or, to rephrase the same concerns in other terms, “what hope could there possibly be for the countless other creatures who are less visible, less beautiful, less a part of our cultural lives? What of the unloved others, the ones who are disregarded, or who may be lost through negligence?

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What of the disliked and actively vilified others, those who may be specifically targeted for death?” (Rose and van Dooren 2011, 1). My choice is to keep a steady gaze on those who have been out of focus in the national and international picture and to explore what we can learn from these small, humble, robust characters. There is much to learn, in terms of both agricultural practices and food patterns, from small farmers’ daily choices in a subsistence society. Nevertheless, it is still quite rare to find a mention of gastronomy or culinary practices in relation to farming communities, even more so when it comes to the Global South. Categories such as taste—or more specifically, qualitative and subjective traits like olfaction, feel, and imagery—have been deserted by breeding projects and agricultural research. This gap could be detrimental to local livelihoods and food security. What I suggest here is that people need beauty as they need bread, not only to be happy but also to be productive. Landscapes that produce important benefits are in fact unlikely to be cherished by humans, or to last, if they are undistinguished or aesthetically unattractive. People feel more attraction toward the spectacle of varied landscapes (intricate gardens, or a field patchwork of colors and textures) than toward blandscapes (such as endless hectares on which a single crop, like maize, is monotonously grown). Some sectors of the agricultural industry condemn workers to ugly work that imposes purely human criteria, and whose relationship to other species is warped (Cooper 2015). The case of ensete is made here to highlight the synergies of a landscape that is ecologically and culturally sustainable, while at the same time delivering positive aesthetic experiences. Who is speaking for whom when it comes to food practices and landscape reflections in farming communities? Are the voices of small farmers allowed to be heard and to inform public debates on sustainability and food justice? Should not a debate on food security also include vernacular views of what beauty looks, smells, and tastes like? To read into the aesthetics and politics of Hadiyya farmers’ foodways I will now offer a sample of ingredients, dishes, combinations of tastes, and meals as prepared and shared in the lived experience of family farms. I will keep in mind the subjects who have started new ventures in nearby towns; those who are striving to uproot themselves from the ensete garden in order to thrive in new landscapes; those who, for various reasons, have moved away from the farm in search of different versions of beauty. I must nonetheless be true to the genesis of this narrative, which was in fact conceived and sketched in the gardens and kitchens of those who had decided to stay, or could not leave.

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Shape-Shifting Cuisine A Trickster in the Kitchen

D

first fieldwork stay in 2004, a few weeks after I had introduced myself to the community, my research assistant heard the trenchant rumor of Hadiyya women, which suggested that my attendance at their daily activities in inhospitable places, along with the boredom and the smoke from the fireplace, would kill me softly. They further insisted that I was too weak to adjust to the rhythm of their lives, and they added with great selfconfidence that in the kitchen I would find nothing of interest to write down in my notebook. Years later I still love to open those notebooks and make sure that the smell of smoke has not completely vanished. In the end I spent hours and days in their kitchens. Here follows the story of how I came to learn what I learned about appetite and hunger from Hadiyya farmers. U R I N G MY

Rural Gastronomy In 2013 I embarked upon long and intense fieldwork whose aim was to collect as much data as possible on local ingredients and recipes. My wild adventures in eating and drinking according to local habits contained a reaction to the underlying belief, shared by institutional observers and the wider audience alike, that smallholders in Ethiopia—and in Africa at large—are trapped within the

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dynamics of starvation and hunger or, at least, within a daily need for food. Hungry people, it is broadly assumed, require food—any kind of food. In this scenario the issue of interest becomes food quantity, not the examination of food preferences—an argument that may inadvertently lead one to believe that the privilege of food choice is present only in prosperous, industrialized countries. And in fact, the scholarly attention to foodways of Africans typically ignites at the occurrence of disasters, dramatic crises, and single catastrophic events. What the majority of accounts capture is not the day or the season, not the presence but rather the absence of food. These accounts omit a vital part of the story: what farmers choose to eat on a daily basis or what they miss in case of food shortages (Mandala 2003, 287). Apart from a few delectable exceptions (Harris 1998; McCann 2009), Africa is still today perceived as being the missing course in the global banquet of food and drink. To date, and to my knowledge, the only other firsthand account of cooking and eating in the ensete garden is that of W. A. and D. Shack for western Gurage ([1977] 2009). Through labor-intensive fieldwork I wanted to rephrase the high-sounding mantra of hunger into the more realistic pattern of seasonal fluctuations in scarcity and plenty. Armed with trust in the ethnographic method, I wanted the prospective reader to reflect upon the capacity of common people to create value from limited resources. By locating myself at the smallest scale of analysis—that of ingredients drawn from home gardens, and meals prepared and shared by ordinary people—I wanted the reader to sense and anticipate what is missing in other accounts: that is, the equally present seasons of plenty, the feasting, and the indigenous notions of want and culinary pleasure. As a discoverer of a rural cuisine that had never been recorded before, I wanted to conduct a tasteful ethnography in a nation deemed as hungry.1 At that point, I decided to absorb the object of my intellectual appreciation (the ensete plant and the garden produce) viscerally. Contrary to any rash assumption of an ensete-based diet as being gastronomically stagnant, what I have registered through my ethnographic lens—by using several tools and methodologies—is a cuisine far more colorful and vivid than most outsiders know of or acknowledge. However, it must be noted that this realization emerged at a slow pace, as a sort of acquired taste for local cuisine, and after an initial and clear impression of culinary monotony. The Hadiyya seem to constantly look for, and highly praise, repetition and redundancy, whether in their technical small-scale agricultural choices or in their cuisine. The richness of their cuisine does not rest on a bounty of ingredients

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and combinations, but rather on a recurrent combination of a few ingredients that are manipulated with great subtlety and surprising variety. This trend, which I would later conceive of as simplicity rather than banality or monotony, was confirmed by the findings of the food diaries that I decided to distribute to a few families. Every family was asked to identify each member of the household and their age, education, and occupation. Written instructions, translated into the local language, were provided by me and my research assistant to explain in simple words the scope of the survey. One person in each family was responsible for annotating, on a given template, what members ate and drank every day from October 24 to 31, individually or collectively, morning to evening, and even during the night. They were advised to fill in the form just after they had eaten or drunk, without overlooking “minor” items (including coffee, water, and sugar). Meals taken outside the home had to be reported as well. I felt less hopeful about being able to collect valuable information of the quantities actually consumed. Here I will only discuss the most interesting reports. The diary of Shita is rich and detailed, but not in terms of what I expected— that is, not in terms of “variety” or “eating the rainbow,” to use a phrase increasingly popular in cosmopolitan circles and which evokes a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables. Across different meals and days, the same combinations emerged: coffee paired with roasted grains or with boiled fresh beans and peas; injera combined with vegetable stews; maize or wheat bread to fill the belly of the children (rarely of the adults); ensete bread combined with collard greens or with cheese; less frequently atakana and other, less special, kinds of ensete porridge. Udurgufo (wheat and maize steamed balls) was consumed once. All the combinations with ensete were usually consumed in the evening, when all the members gather at home and eat together. Coffee sprinkled with milk or with butter is considered food and makes up for a full meal. My scholarly interest in their food habits triggered a reflection in Shita, who left a note for me at the end of their diary. It said: “Fiitaame, we are surprised by this food diary. Our husbands encouraged us to cook good/important foods because of it. Fiitaame, please continue in this way; be strong and God be with you.” The note made me realize that what I perceived as “monotonous” had in fact been livened up, upon her husband’s request, by special preparations. In Leta’s diary the same combinations emerged. Her daughter-in-law also annotated the number of coffee cups drunk by each member, which is further evidence of how coffee accompanied by snacks counts by local standards as a

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meal. One night they had ensete bread with collard greens and meat; ensete bread with cheese on a second dinner; and a traditional ensete-based dish called bilambilo a third time. Frequently they skipped lunch. Interestingly, chili peppers and other spice mixtures are separately annotated as being an integral part of the meal. The wealthy status of Gennet’s family is signaled by the consumption of injera and stew in the morning; by the use of eggs for lunch; by the presence, although sporadic, of candies, biscuits, bananas, soft drinks, and sugarcane for children; by the replacement of coffee with tea in the morning; by the use, three times a week, of pasta and once a week of rice for breakfast; by the appearance on their table of potatoes, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Udurgufo was consumed once. Accordingly, the consumption of ensete bread with cheese, of homemade yogurt, and of ensete porridge decreases. Again, spice mixtures and butter are listed as being an integral part of the meal. The diary of Elsabet presented the same ingredients in slightly different combinations. She left a note for me, saying: “Thank you very much, everything is good. We want your feedback and comments on our weaknesses and strengths.” I have since realized that I have no grand recommendations to offer her. Instead, I will share what I have learned from these food diaries, and from subsequent food tasting and common meals with the same families, about gastronomy in rural Hadiyya. In English the term gastronomy refers to the practice or art of choosing, cooking, and eating good food. The term also describes the cooking of a particular region. It is only a recent twist in our imagination—due to much exposure to the media, which bombard us with cooking shows and food porn—that has transformed gastronomy into something exclusively in the hands of chefs and cooks. However, “haute cuisine” as expressed in restaurants or ethnic eateries remains but one aspect of culinary history. Originally, the word goes beyond cooking to encompass the study of cultures and the way they interact with food. Here I speak of gastronomy as an angle to shed light on the relationship between humans, food, and the world they live in. Hadiyya gastronomy thus has complete and full existence, but similar to other rural subsistence-oriented communities, it rests on a pattern of simplicity and frugality, wherein frugality does not at all relate to concepts of scarcity and hunger. Here we are dealing with people who nurture a strong attachment to traditional staple foods and with the daily and unspectacular preparations of (female) cooks who solve practical issues by self-rationing and conserving

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resources through lean seasons. It has been argued that “human beings are remarkably conservative in their food habits and are typically reluctant to try new foods and to abandon old, familiar ones” (Rozin and Rozin 2007, 35). This fact fails to capture the imagination of readers or consumers in wealthy pockets of the developed world. Hadiyya is one of those no-frills cuisines that fly under the radar of wider public attention and appreciation. In Hadiyya people eat with pleasure but never talk about the pleasure of eating. Eating is something you do—never alone, but as an utterly inclusive activity that brings together members of the same and sometimes of different households. However, it is not something you discuss in words. When I started the gastronomic phase of my fieldwork and shared with the women my purpose of collecting local recipes, the group was pervaded by a thrill of exuberance. We decided to organize it as a form of show cooking, each time at a different house, with one woman preparing a dish that she would consider worth recording in my ethnographic cookbook. The mere prospect of cooking and eating together opened to me all the doors that had been closed up to that point. Upon my arrival in the morning I would pass through the public face of the house and walk directly to the women’s quarters at the rear; after a while, a rumor spread among the hosting families that “Valentina loves staying in the kitchen, not in other places of the house.” In moving from one house to another I was now advised not to go down alleyways in plain sight but rather to cut across the gardens and those interstitial spaces, nestled between the houses, that I had never seen before. “Then you turn right to the plot of herbs of Araggash,” they would instruct me, “then left, and finally straight on passing by the huge and hidden plantation of khat of Wodetu.” I felt like Alice in Wonderland during those explorations of shortcuts. Women felt like real cooks for the first time, being observed with interest and interviewed with overflowing curiosity. However, our show-cooking sessions were not so rich in words as they were in gesture and action. When I asked Tekekel, the most refined and graceful of my Hadiyya cooks, where her culinary wisdom came from, she looked at her hands (anga), turning them over and over, and said: “Anghissa” (“it all depends on your hands”). In a simple cuisine there are no secret ingredients; basic ingredients are the same for everyone, as seen in food diaries; what varies is the experience acquired “by hands” and the wisdom of using the right proportions in balancing quantities and flavors. There is not a separate place where the cook can secretly mix and blend or add a dash of unknown. Hearths, typically located inside houses, are the focal point of family life. The fire in the hearth feeds and nurtures humans;

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it also helps remove the bad smell of animal excrement and to flavor the meat that on special occasions is hung up to dry. It is therefore kept lit throughout the day until late in the night. There are no additional appliances; it is the same burning fire where different foods and drinks are cooked, at alternate times, according to the intensity of the flame. Food consumption also follows a pattern of diffusion throughout the day rather than at proper and punctual meal times. The distinctions between breakfast, lunch, and dinner are neither as clearly defined nor as rigid in Hadiyya as they are in Western countries. I was told that “here in rural areas we never eat at regular hours; we simply eat whenever food is available.” In the Hadiyya language there is no specific expression to indicate lunch; they use the term hurbaata, which has the concomitant meanings of “food,” “meal,” and “crop”— because in a subsistence-oriented society what you cultivate in the field and the garden is also, ideally, what you will find on your plate. Under this umbrella term two variants are comprised: kora kora hurbaata, literally “simple simple food,” and mul’hurbaat’issa, “major meals.” What Westerners would usually frame as breakfast and lunch are in fact replaced in Hadiyya by snacking upon several cups of coffee. In the words of Adanech, which would be confirmed years later by the information reflected in the food diaries, simple food is by definition grains, not ensete: “For what you define as lunch we only eat cereals, either roasted or boiled, and coffee. Can you not see that the real mother of all children is the coffee pot? They always linger around it, and in fact it is the coffee pot that feeds them.”2 The main effort of cooks goes into building a complete and satisfying evening meal, with available ingredients turned into sauces or stews, and revolving around ensete bread or ensete porridge as the main components of the meal. The same pattern was found among western Gurage, particularly in wealthy families, for whom “it is a status symbol to eat daily from Ensete fronds at the evening meal” (W. Shack and D. Shack [1977] 2009, 68). Achieving what in Hadiyya is considered “good food” is extremely laborious; a woman can be busy for the largest part of the day preparing the food required for a medium-sized household. According to most women, personal skills in cooking are made up of two main elements: deep knowledge of the ingredients being used, and extreme tidiness of the tools and the overall cooking space. By handling food and being responsible for feeding not only family members but also guests who intermittently arrive, women are the interface between the inside and the outside world. Their skills (or lack thereof ) will tell people not only about the care they put into cooking, but also about the burden of love

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they have given in tending plants in the garden and selecting other ingredients in the market. “As not all (male) farmers obtain the same harvest despite their effort,” Tekekel once pointed out to me, “likewise not all women obtain the same results in the kitchen.”3 It takes discipline in concentration to actually bring into focus the articulate relationship of women with food. Such a relationship in fact makes up the most significant part of their daily occupations, from the garden to the kitchen. At the same time, it is one that unfolds through repetitive and unspectacular processes. Their actions have no clear direction and are not confined to “cooking” only, but to a more organic effort at processing everything before it reaches the edible state (Mandala 2003, 291). Among the many factors that may have contributed to the lack of interest in African cookery we should consider, for example, that most Africanist researchers until recently were male. They might have been disinterested in women’s agricultural expertise, cooking technologies, and culinary skills, or might have had less access to kitchens because of their gender. As I had the possibility of entering the kitchens, and of spending a great deal of idle time and joint cooking with women, here I create room for sharing the results of that collaborative effort. I do so by providing a reading of iconic recipes that contain a layered story.4 At one level, the story is an exquisite culinary one and recounts literally how ingredients are sourced (in the field, in the garden, in the market) and stirred into the pot. This side of the story aims at translating to non-African readers, who may have never tasted food prepared in an Ethiopian farming household, the meaning and familiar taste of local foods cultivated in what we have defined previously as the outdoor pantry. Those foods have visceral culinary value because in agrarian societies most food is not purchased but typically concocted on a daily basis. People mainly subsist on locally cultivated staples, by carefully planning year-round agricultural labor—men in the field, women in the garden. Farmers are physically, intimately involved in the precarious process of cultivation and harvest. In these societies, the highly valued foods in terms of consistency, reliability, and symbolic meaning are most likely the ones that are known and trusted locally (see A. Richards [1930] 1995, 47). The Hadiyya farmers, both female and male, have always described certain foods to me using the narrative concepts of warmth, energy, sense of repletion, and culinary pleasure—while other foods are perceived as simply feeding, or good to stave off hunger, but unable to generate any dimension of satisfaction, either in the belly or in social relationships. Through the recipes provided in this chapter, which

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I have co-produced with local cooks, I will single out those combinations of taste, texture, and flavor that the Hadiyya perceive as nourishing their body as well as their soul. On a second level, those recipes can be read as a commentary in which the voices of farmers are more distinctly raised to express their anxiety over agrarian and social changes; in which cooks concoct memories of their ancestors and other kin; and in which both farmers and cooks ultimately forge their own temporary space of sovereignty. Food controversies open up an understory that—as we shall see as we cook together—is about culinary identity and participation in the banquet of foods recognized as “national.” The story is based on a glossary whose terms have at the same time agri-cultural and gastronomic meaning. The plot follows three paths: melancholy (with an emotional inclination toward the past); sense of comfort (found in scattered experiences in the present); and playfulness (in linking together the known and the traditional with the new and the unfamiliar).

Melancholy Food not only takes on a nostalgic significance through the experience of migration or diaspora (see Anastario 2019), but it can trigger a nostalgic idealization of the past also for those who remain. Indeed it is a cultural and critical praxis through which people put on stage and digest certain kinds of change—in their living standards, in their traditional food preferences, in their perception of beauty, and by extension in their relationship as human beings with the natural world at large. The Hadiyya could be defined as melancholic farmers. In the recent past they were in fact agropastoralists rather than simply farmers; and over time they have continued to crave for the diet of their ancestors. Meat (preferably raw), milk, and butter function as reminders of the pastoralist life they have never stopped dreaming of. Sensual, commemorative statements about the pastoralist component of the Hadiyya biography emerge in particular through the process of the making, melting, and spicing of butter and through the portioning and distribution of a slaughtered ox. At the end of the nineteenth century, an explorer described the Hadiyya subgroup Leemo (here referred to by the corrupted ethnonym “Tufte”) by saying: “I do not know the rivers of Tufte. I have only seen this country from afar. It is a highland full of cattle, horses and

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donkeys, and one does not cultivate cereals, but the Tufte exchange them for butter” (cit. in Braukämper 2012, 203). Butter holds a central place in Hadiyya culture; the extensive use of butter stands as a remnant of their cherished past and as the jelling agent of food and identity. People assert that butter gives strength, has a good taste, and makes the skin and hair smooth and shiny. As with all the foods they cherish, butter is good to eat but also makes people strong and beautiful. They distinguish between enjam buuro, butter mixed with white and black cumin and a mixture of spices, which is used for cooking; and ad’ buuro, the fresh, unclarified butter, which is used to smooth hair, to treat wounds and muscular strains, to massage, to give blessings, to scrub and—it is believed—to fortify newborn babies by introducing into their nose some melted butter every three days, until the age of ten.5 This last type is not used for cooking because “it tastes like water.” They make butter at home; the process is called ad’ ghimmishimma—literally “shaking the milk.” In the past, “in our ancestors’ day,” a traditional jug made of grass (occho) was used for churning milk, which Hadiyya would make waterproof by washing it with fresh animal blood and adding ash and a kind of aromatic wood.6 Nowadays the pot to shake milk takes the name of ad’ boosa; the pot to

FIGURE 15.

Enjam buuro. Photograph by the author.

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boil milk is called ojgota. The milk is shaken once, then left to rest, and again shaken the day after. There is no fixed time, only the sound of the milk and, in a while, of the more solid matter, to signal the transformation. Iibbado is delicious full-cream milk. When iibbado cools down and thickens it is called gi’iina (yogurt). Then you shake it and you get buuro (butter) and a new liquid, called gi’iima, which you warm up in ojgota on a low heat. At this point you get a solid called salalo (cheese) and a liquid that is uggaata (buttermilk). If the milk comes from two different cows, the process will take longer. Hadiyya employ traditional, clay pots when they prepare milk and butter for household consumption; for guests coming from neighboring or urban areas they use cheap metal cookware made in China, which speeds up the process but does not release the peculiar flavor of terracotta. For Hadiyya raw meat has a good taste if you add a lot of melted butter to it; and the same is true for coffee. For them, food without butter is not food at all. When a cow is giving birth, people are used to addressing the family members of that household by the phrase ado aghissonna: “may you drink a lot of milk!” Another saying, heard less publicly but equally circulated especially among women, is that the woman who is lucky and wealthy enough could even

FIGURE 16.

Newborn calf. Photograph by the author.

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anoint her own vagina with butter. The process of using every single component of milk in order to obtain enough butter for family consumption is utterly laborious. Of course, no woman, under normal circumstances, would ever dare waste such a cherished substance. The saying thus expresses the paradox and fantasy of having plenty of butter, which is a very rare occurrence these days. Cattle (laro), and especially oxen (mirgo’o), are the most treasured animals. Cattle signal prosperity and prestige, and they always enter into marriage transactions. An ox is usually slaughtered for special celebrations—for example, funerals—to publicly showcase the family’s wealth and good name. Beef is preferred over the meat of chickens and sheep, in ordinary as well as extraordinary times. The procedure of portioning a cow is highly detailed and delicate. Certain parts go to the elders (for example, the upper parts of legs); others to women who have just given birth (otherwise it is believed that the baby will develop a scar on its body) or to newly circumcised pre-adolescents; while lungs, the large and small intestines, the lower parts of legs, and the head (apart from the tongue) are given to the poorest or the low-caste artisans. Usually only men eat the hump, which is marbled red and “as tender as butter,” either raw while they are portioning the animal or quickly warmed up with a pinch of salt. The Mäsqäl festival, at the end of September, is when the art of slaughtering and portioning reaches its most refined degree. The preparations for the feast can last as long as two months before the event takes place; and the anticipation is so feverish that once I heard an old man, who had lost his son years before, describing his sorrow by saying that “the poor guy was not even able to join us for celebrating Mäsqäl.”7 This is a celebration that people anticipate year after year, and which they use as a marker to describe the timeline and social life within the community. It generally takes on a meaning of rebirth—from prosaically redecorating the house for the feast to the more compelling imperative of resolving conflicts in the family and between families prior to that date. Before the Protestant missionaries prohibited the ritual and “pagan” sides of the feast, young boys and girls would march along the village alleys, stop by every house to grab some special food, dance, and sing, “We have passed the old one, the new year is coming!” Wondimu explains this process of renewal by referring to the agricultural calendar, and specifically to the pre-harvest period that runs from the end of the rains until the fall harvest: “This is a tradition that comes from a long time ago and which marks the passage from the old to the new year. July and August are dark months when farmers work hard in the fields. We in fact call August

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nahase, ‘the last month’; it is like a wild beast. Then September fights back darkness by bringing new light.”8 The darkness evoked by Wondimu is both real and metaphorical. In a two-pattern of seasons, one wet and one dry, August is sodden with persistent rain; it is also the lean season when families practice some self-rationing of diets as part of a strategy of conserving dwindling resources. The process should not be confused with hunger or destitution, but calls indeed for a better understanding of “the ingenuity of rationing and resilience, and the ironic combinations of feasting and fasting that are almost everywhere evident to one who lives there [in Africa]” (Messer and Shipton 2002, 230–31). During the darkness of August, farmers foretaste the food and feeling of the big feast. The cattle that Hadiyya eat for Mäsqäl or on any other special occasion are bought in the market. They never eat their own cattle. Hadiyya often repeat that “they sleep with us, they eat next to us; we love cattle as our own children.” A head of cattle is usually bought by several families, related through male kin, who decide to share labor and meat. The wealthier person shares with one other family only, while the poorer enters into an arrangement with five or even more families. The animal is traditionally slaughtered in the house of the eldest male. At the time of killing the elders pray, give blessings to all present,

FIGURE 17.

Partition of an ox. Photograph by the author.

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and taste a few bites of raw meat. They love to eat liver just after it has been extracted from the animal, still warm and pulsating; people say that “it helps to build good blood.” The skills and confidence of elders in handling the cuts of meat are complemented by the greater physical strength of young men. Women, children, and occasional guests sit in a circle around the slaughtering arena. As there are no measuring instruments, each single cut is commented upon individually and assigned to the recipient after careful narrative evaluation. Once the animal has been cut into the correct parts, the meat is handed to women for food preparation. The best joints of meat (that is, red and thick meat, tender and low in fat, which people describe as “neat and clean”) are set apart to be eaten raw for the next three days. Raw meat takes two forms: sulso when it is finely minced, and kurt when it is chopped into big pieces.9 These dishes match perfectly with a relish called naakk’aro’o, characterized by a glossy and shining orange to red color. Red—as the reader may remember from past chapters—is one of the nuances that beauty takes on in the local universe of meaning. S UL S O A ND KURT

Raw meat dishes are typically consumed in huge quantities during the cele-

bration of Mäsqäl. The lean parts—or, in the words of Hadiyya cooks, “red red” cuts of meat—are selected. The red color (kashara) and thickness (gheej) denote

the high quality of the meat and ensure that it is properly cut. One woman explained to me that “you love those parts just by looking at them, because of

their color.” Finely minced (in the case of sulso) or chopped (for kurt), the meat is then flavored with a large amount of melted spiced butter, salt, and a hot spice

mixture (mitmità), without which “you cannot even start eating it” or “it is not food.” Meat alone is perceived to have no taste at all.

NA A KK ’A RO’O

Relish made of hot spice mixture (but less than mitmità), boiled ginger and

garlic, salt, and melted spiced butter. It is prepared to complement raw meat dishes as it is believed to mitigate stomach pain after hearty meals.

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Naakk’aro’o. Photograph by the author.

The parts with bones are boiled on the fourth day in order to prevent them taking on a bad smell and are consumed in a couple of days; the rest is cut into long strips, seasoned with spices and salt, and hung up to dry. When cooked, meat typically marries with a garden produce, collard greens. S HA A N’ MA RA A ND M IK ’ SHA A NA

Meat (mara) without bones and selected for its fatty cuts (di’ra) is boiled, then

chopped into small pieces. Boiled meat is then sautéed with butter if available or alternatively oil and with shallots, salt, hot-spice mixture, and previously boiled

and finely chopped Ethiopian collard greens (shaana). While boiling, a fresh

leaf of ensete is inserted between the pot and the lid to preserve moisture. Mik’ shaana follows the same procedure as with shaan’ mara, but here meaty bones (mik’e) are cooked and mixed with Ethiopian collard greens.

Each cut, be it low or high in fat, naturally lean or oily, requires a different treatment; certain parts should be eaten raw to maximize the enjoyment of flavor and texture, while others must be cooked. However, the final result in

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both cases has to achieve the standard of tenderness (kachaalla) that, as we shall see later, is one of the qualities that Hadiyya privilege in any kind of food. Also, people recognize that wood has become scarce nowadays, with men forced to sell huge amounts of it in the market to earn cash in order to pay for annual land taxes, for Mäsqäl and other celebrations in the community, and for school and other family expenses. This is having a large effect on the choice of cooking utensils, with cooks increasingly replacing clay pots with metal pans, which are optimal in saving energy and wood but absorb the fat too quickly and dry up the food itself. Metal pans, however, are not used for Mäsqäl, when families have striven hard to collect a bounty of high-quality ingredients. In that case, clay pots are revived as they help maintain the greasiness of food. Along with butter and meat, another animal product is charged with nostalgia for the past as herders—that is, dairy produce. Salalo (cottage cheese with salt, butter, and three secret spices) matches perfectly with ensete bread. The best cooks know how to store homemade cheese by wrapping it in fresh leaves of ensete and leaves of another local aromatic tree that would give the final product a slightly smoky flavor. Cheese in combination with chopped collard greens offers a culinary translation of the white and green, which account for other major components of the Hadiyya concept of beauty. S HA A N’ S A L A L O

Cheese (salalo) served with Ethiopian collard greens (shaana) that are finely

chopped, boiled with no salt but a mixture of preferred spices, drained, and then flavored with butter. The two ingredients are leveled off in the same bowl

or plate but kept distinct in order to let the white and the green clearly emerge, then sprinkled with melted butter to create a yellowish, luminescent patina

on the surface. Colors and shapes result in even higher definition when the

different components are assembled over a fresh, brilliant green ensete leaf. According to Tekekel, a master in dairy practices, the secret for a perfect shaan’ salalo rests on removing excess water from both cheese and leaves.

When asked to reflect on the changes that have taken place and turned their semi-nomadic past into a sedentary farming present, the Hadiyya recount the story as an expansion of choice but not necessarily of happiness and well-being. Inevitable as it was, and at times embraced voluntarily, the loss of simplicity is frequently recalled by adult members of the community in nostalgic terms. The

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diet of a few decades ago was comprised of even less than what is contained in the food diaries: butter, milk, meat, and ensete. Hadiyya had already started cultivating cereals at that time, but these were entirely sold in the market to buy cattle and therefore to increase the capacity of the farm to produce food of value (butter, milk, and cheese). Ensete porridge was prepared by using milk, which was abundant in every family, and not water. The number of livestock was impressive when compared to the present. “If we had enough quantity of milk,” I was told by several women, “the diet of the past would still be preferable; but we do not.” The population in fact increased, and conversely the grazing land shrank. According to the local point of view, this competition between humans and cattle over land use has been the source of periodical food shortages. This is the point in time when different cereals and new crops (including vegetables and fruit) entered the farm: first, to complement a semi-pastoral diet that, alone, could not sustain a growing population, and second, to meet the expectations of a new generation who, aspiring to modern standards of living, “wants to eat different things and would never be content with ensete and milk only.” Moreover, in the present, there is an increasing concern that the consumption of raw meat may cause infection and disease. “In the past,” people argue, “animals ate different kinds of leaves and herbs, so their meat and milk was a sort of medicine; but nowadays when animals fall sick they are treated like humans and given drugs; you can also die by eating raw meat.”10 A realization of what had been lost—especially abundant livestock and independence—was already present in the testimonies collected by historian U. Braukämper: Already at the beginning of the 1970s in the densely populated zones of the

sub-province Kämbata, for example, the inhabitants evidently realized that the natural resources, particularly wood, were increasingly dwindling. They com-

plained about the growing scarcity of livestock, which was said to result in a diminished quality of nutrition, and about a progressive lack of arable land due

to an uncontrolled increase in population. “At my father’s time in this region we

were strong, because we drank a lot of milk, and there was much pasture land and dense bush around,” was the explanation frequently given in the areas of the Arsi, Allaaba and Hadiyya proper. (2012, 375)

In this food transition the Hadiyya have become skilled in the art of resource optimization. Ensete has become an essential part of their system.

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The food of value, which they carefully retain for household consumption, is represented by combining cattle breeding with ensete. The diet based on carbohydrates provided by ensete has in fact entered into strict synergy with products of animal and dairy origin. The dish that best summarizes this blend of nostalgia for the pastoralist diet and positive acceptance of ensete is the much-valued atakana. ATA KA NA

The iconic dish in Hadiyya culture—difficult to prepare, sign of plenty, respect,

and dignity—is made from the most valuable part of the ensete plant, bu’o. This part of the ensete pulp is whiter in older plants. In terms of color, women describe it as “white white,” the whitest of the dishes within their culinary

universe. Only bu’o of very high quality—that is, brilliant white—must be used, otherwise “it is not appealing to the eye when you are about to start eating.” Bu’o

is ground into thin flour, carefully sifted to remove impurities, toasted on a large

griddle while avoiding any hint of burning, soaked in water, left to stand for

a couple of hours for the water to be absorbed, and smoothed once again. The

cook must observe cleanliness and be meticulous at each step of the preparation. If something goes wrong in the process, atakana would turn out brownish and

expose the woman to public embarrassment. No one would ever eat a spoonful of corrupted atakana. Out of the fire, milk is stirred in, then spiced butter and

cottage cheese in lavish quantities, herbs, shallots, and salt. In the words of its consumers, “It tastes good if it has a lot of butter.” In anticipation of grand cel-

ebrations marked by the consumption of raw meat, people start “preparing their stomachs” after months of a lack of protein by eating atakana, which is thought to soften the stomach and create a protective layer around it.

The value of atakana is summarized in the phrase “clean and good.” As the reader has learned in the chapter devoted to solving the riddle of beauty, the term “good” (danaamo) to Hadiyya means at the same time “beautiful” and “attractive.” The value of this culinary experience is further emphasized by the practice of blessing ad’ buuro at the end of the meal and slathering it in copious quantities on the heads of the dining companions. The Hadiyya say that atakana “has always been with us.” This is not the historical truth of when and how they adopted ensete cultivation; but it is certainly a sign that ensete products have been fully incorporated into their cosmological and culinary system.

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Deep within their gardens and kitchens, Hadiyya have struggled to reassemble a fragmented history into an inclusive narrative. The ensete system has entered into synergy with, and expanded upon, Hadiyya improvisational capacities—precisely because of the plant’s own virtue of accommodating new crops and animals by keeping options open.

Comfort Ensete is prepared in a variety of ways. The main products of the ensete plant are waasa, bu’o, and ha’miccho.11 Whereas ha’miccho is immediately cooked by steaming or boiling, the starchy fermented paste of waasa and bu’o, after the elaborate process of extracting pulp from the leaf sheaths that we have observed during harvest time, is either steamed or baked—waasa in the form of unleavened bread, bu’o as porridge or gruel. The consistency of the ensete fibrous pulp, when ready for cooking, is similar to that of mashed unripened yams. To grasp the culinary, political, and ecological richness of this rural cuisine we should keep in mind a pattern of culinary simplicity that has proven to be recurrent on the African continent over time, where a core staple (in the form of porridge or bread) constitutes the foundation of a meal, is consumed in tandem with a variety of fringe foods (sauces, soups, stews), and is peppered by the use of different condiments (Messer 2009, 55). The staple provides the dominant theme, while the side dishes bring into the composition regional, local, seasonal, or personal variations. Not only does ensete function as a core staple, but it is also one of a bulky and starchy nature. Non-Africans may have difficulty distinguishing nuances in textures and flavors of African starchy staples, subtleties readily discernible and appreciated by native consumers. The concept of starch is vital in grasping what a proper and filling meal is to African consumers. However, the cooked starch cannot stand alone, and in fact it usually calls for additions and accompaniments that would temper its smoothness, grittiness, blandness, or dryness. Contrary to the definition typically provided by outsiders of ensete as a plant only good for avoiding famine and guaranteeing basic survival, ensete growers and consumers speak of the different products of ensete in terms of smell, texture, and taste, hinting at a kind of nourishment that has little to do with mere nutrients or survival strategies. Their approach to a “perfect meal” goes far beyond the framing of ensete produce to fill the belly or keep people

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alive, but rather inclines toward other ways of affectively and sensually experiencing food. The way meals look and taste in Hadiyya self-sufficient farms can be rendered in the first place by detailing the preparation techniques of the ensete bread—a fermented food incredibly similar to the Elven bread (Lembas), which Frodo and Sam had to parcel out so frugally: “Eat little at a time, and only at need. For these things are given to serve you when all else fails. The cakes will keep sweet for many many days, if they are unbroken and left in their leafwrappings, as we have brought them. One will keep a traveller on his feet for a day of long labour, even if he be one of the tall Men of Minas Tirith” (Tolkien 1984, 390).12 Ethiopians from other areas of the country and foreigners unaccustomed to a starchy fermented diet may be quite sensitive to the smell and taste of ensete, and they may experience difficulty in digesting it. For a long time I had been under the impression that I had acquired a full and refined taste for ensete bread, but years later I found out that most of the locally perceived characteristics (such as texture and visual appeal) had in fact eluded my culinary sensitivity. In 2014 the women eventually decided to share with me three different bread recipes. Being involved at every stage from production through preparation to consumption, Hadiyya women are guided by a wide range of criteria in selecting the plant to be harvested (by size, sex, and age) and in manufacturing the ensete pulp. As in the ensete garden at the time of harvesting, so in the kitchen men keep away from the ensete substance as “it would be a great shame to see a man handling ensete.” This taboo against men being too intimately involved with ensete reveals a part of the Hadiyya story—one in which crops are gendered. And in fact barley, whose cultivation in their remote past was perceived as complementing herding activities, is still today believed to make men sexually strong, especially when mixed with butter, while ensete was adopted by women in their allotments during the transition to sedentarism, and as such it remains feminine by nature. In turning ensete into palatable products, the quality of the ingredients is a prerequisite for the perfect dish; but the amount of labor that women spend in the garden to grow, tend, process, and transform the plant is just as important. As documented in other African farming societies, “preparation of the simple meal is lengthy and laborious” (Spittler 1999, 33). The post-fermentation steps require several hours of preparation of the material before it can be cooked; every step is essential as it will greatly affect the taste of the final dish.

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There is a common pattern to follow. First, women extract small batches of fermented pulp that is buried in the earth. A sour odor permeates the garden area, especially when the pits are opened; such a smell is just a foretaste of the tangy twist of long-fermented ensete. Second, they wrap each batch separately in fine threads of ensete fibers (aanch’a) and leave them to dehydrate for a few days. Then, they remove scraps and impurities by repeated kneading and chopping with a knife, grate the resulting paste with a stone mortar, mix it with water, and shape it into a round cake with a diameter of forty to fifty centimeters and a thickness of two to three centimeters. The paste, wrapped in fresh ensete leaves, will finally be baked on a flat and large griddle over a medium fire for about an hour. The woman is very attentive in constantly turning it over so that it bakes evenly. The bread will remain fresh for more than a week and will constitute a substantial meal for all the family members. The perfect meal in terms of Hadiyya standards should always include the comforting taste of ensete bread—the food that is perhaps the most closely associated with family life, and the one that is most purely the product of women’s labor. Variations in the quality of bread occur depending on how mature (dried) or young (fresh) the pulp is; whether fibers are kept in, chopped into small pieces, or completely removed; whether or not it requires soaking in water; and finally whether the resulting taste will be strong or weak, the texture soft or resistant, and the color of the crumbs verging on either brownish or glossy white. The basic flavor of the bread may be varied with the addition of seasoning. Most people simply mix up the old and young pulp available in the pits to make an ordinary ensete bread (murako waasa), while only prosperous families can afford the luxury of preparing and cooking different kinds of bread by age and color, particularly on special occasions. MUR A KO WA A S A

A way of preparing the ensete bread in which the extracted pulp, being fresh

and young, is squeezed and directly shaped into a round loaf without soaking it in water. The fibrous part is chopped into small pieces yet can still be felt in the

texture. Less refined and slightly hard to digest compared to anshako waasa, it is the obvious choice for most villagers because nothing in this version is discarded and the fibers increase the sense of fullness after meals.

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A NS HA KO WA A S A

A way of preparing the ensete bread in which the extracted pulp, being quite

mature and therefore dried, is squeezed and then soaked in water. The taste of

well-seasoned ensete is said to be especially powerful and the texture appealing, even to urban dwellers, as fibers have softened and dissolved over time. Adanech

shows a strong preference for this type of bread whose taste she describes in terms of “cleanliness” and “smoothness.” She asserts that the taste of seasoned

ensete is distinctive. This is the kind of bread that she gives to her husband as a packed lunch when he goes to work in the nearby town.

TA FÀ

Ensete bread prepared for special celebrations. The core and whiter (kadaalla)

parts of the plant, including the corm (ha’miccho), are set aside and separated from the external and upper leaves. The white pulp will be stored and left to ferment in

a separate pit. It is a fresh product, only a few months old, completely devoid of fibers and treasured for its glossy, milky color. The speciality of this bread—how it is sparingly consumed and offered to the most distinguished guests—became apparent when Araggash handed a piece of it to me and said: “This is the farenj

of all ensete products.”13 People in the village do not like this kind of preparation

that implies a great deal of ensete waste (i.e., watery parts and fibers). It is basically prepared to attract the sight and whet the appetite of urban dwellers.

The bread can be eaten alone. But in an ideal scenario, with plenty of everyday choice, ensete food would require a tremendous amount of butter and meat to go with it. The most obvious compromise is nowadays to pair it with different sauces, most typically hot, spicy vegetable ones. Collard greens, prepared as described below, are the most appreciated match in Hadiyya, followed by stewed potatoes, and less frequently by sauces with chickpeas or lentils.14 CHOOBA A RO’O

For preparing this dish you would need two tools called gonga and anegaka; the

former is a wooden board used for chopping (be it ensete pulp or vegetables),

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and the latter is a wooden grip for hand protection. Once finely chopped, Ethi-

opian collard greens are boiled with no salt but a mixture of preferred spices,

then drained and flavored with butter. This dish is to be eaten with ensete bread.

In addition, a richer food can be made from ensete plants in the form of porridge. The value held nowadays by bu’ muccho is conferred by the extensive use of bu’o and butter, and the dish was further enhanced in the past by replacing hot water with milk. B U’ M UC CHO

Porridge (muccho) from the most refined and whiter parts of ensete pulp (bu’o). Bu’o is ground into thin flour, carefully sifted to remove fibers and impurities, toasted on a large griddle with constant stirring, soaked in water, and left to

stand in order to absorb the liquid. Salt and a hot mix of spices (mitmità), herbs, shallots, and melted spiced butter are added. A pumpkin (dabaak’ula) is peeled and chopped into small pieces, and the tender leaves of Ethiopian collard greens

(shaana) are ground to powder; they are both mixed together with the ensete

flour and left to simmer. The cooking pot is sealed with fresh ensete leaves. The

resulting porridge is thicker than atakana in order to allow the consumer to roll it into small balls. It does not call for side dishes.

A second, iconic rendering of the ensete porridge goes by the name bilambilo, here presented in the version that Leta put on stage for a cooking session at her home. B IL A MB IL O

Leta, an expert in preparing this traditional, “cultural” dish, explains that bilambilo is for women only. Men would never try it for fear of losing their strength. The ensete pulp (waasa) is thoroughly squeezed and chopped into pieces without

removing the fibers. Collard greens are chopped less finely than in the choobaaro’o variant. A pumpkin (dabaak’ula) is also peeled and chopped into small pieces. A

green ensete leaf is laid at the bottom of a special pot (called haracho), which is then placed on the fire. A small amount of water, collard greens, pumpkin, a pinch

of salt, waasa, spiced butter, and a hot mixture of spices are all added in sequence. The pot is sealed on the top with fresh ensete leaves.

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Such porridge was among the special offerings made to appease the spirits of the Fandaano religion, and it was usually placed at the foot of trees and on the banks of rivers. God and the spirits would come and eat everything up, Hadiyya say. Interestingly, God ordered humans to prepare only certain foods: ensete bread, cottage cheese, and collard greens. The house of the Fandaano priest, where prayer and trance performances were held, was paved indoors and outdoors with giant ensete leaves. People would sit on the green carpet and share with God atakana and bilambilo; spirits were addressed by the priest and the elders by inviting them to sit and eat together. The Fandaano god had food preferences that, as we shall see later in detail, duplicated those of the Hadiyya worshippers. In the words of people who took active part in worship, “God did not like injera and doro wet.” It is worth remembering how these particular foods are indeed the culinary backbone of the classical diet in the northern plateau. During these moments of sacred commensality men, women, and spirits all indulged in foods, such as bilambilo, that are nowadays considered only for women. I have no evidence-based explanation for the progressive feminization of this kind of ensete porridge, a fact that keeps challenging the gastronomic picture I want to draw of the Hadiyya history of appetites and aversions. However, as a suggestion, the reader should think of bilambilo as being the first food of choice for a cohort of spirits that have been brutally swept away by the expansion of Protestantism, and since then associated with a “shameful” past of animism, possession cults, and darkness. People would never invoke those powerful spirits overtly in the present; but perhaps, someone whispered to me, they still fluctuate hidden in plain sight. If these spirits have chosen to hang on to the space in between the kitchen and the ensete garden, women would certainly be the ones to sit in their company for most of the time. Perhaps, they eat bilambilo together.

Playfulness Ensete gardens are key sites of remembrance, but they are also a nursery for renewal. Sometimes people praise old favorites for the comfort they bring in alleviating the cognitive and emotional load associated with change. Other times, however, the soothing function of long-time favorites is overshadowed by the desire to embrace novelty by seeking variety and thus experiencing a more dynamic environment. What is local thus lives side by side with what comes

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from outside. By “local” I do not mean to invoke any tiny bounded community, but rather refer to acts through which people struggle to position themselves within particular contexts. The question of what is local is a matter of intense and ongoing negotiation. When, back in fall 2005, I entered the guest hall of Tekekel’s house—while I was perching on the three-legged stool in quivering anticipation of the possibility of the woman sneaking out of the nearby kitchen—I noticed that the walls unfolding in front of me were completely covered by newspaper clippings. I first thought that it could be a device to embellish the ambience and to turn the usually dark-brown appearance of the traditional house, made of mud and dung, into a vibrant patchwork of colors. “They may have retrieved these materials during visits to the town,” I ruminated, “or kids may have brought them back from school.” I stared at the wall; illustrations decidedly outnumbered words. Then I rose to examine them closer. It was not a random patchwork but in fact a coherent subject stated and restated in several variants: fat cows, at least twice the size of those inhabiting the village; miniature food sculptures of nouvelle cuisine; fluorescent pink salmon in tiny fluorescent green spinach baskets; lime and coriander chicken; and other elaborate creations of the latest world-class chefs. What was the significance of that proliferation of ingredients and traditions, most of them exotic or unknown in the area, moreover in the house of a woman widely lauded as being an excellent cook of local dishes? Tekekel found me there, wide-eyed in front of the wall. She burst into laughter and explained in amusement: “These photographs function like an appetizer; sometimes they whet the appetite, sometimes they even fulfill the desire for food. When food is not abundant you can always look at them and satisfy your appetite.”15 The reaction of Tekekel has typified for a long time the general attitude of Hadiyya in coping with novelty: one that is jocular and playful, based on parody and mimicry, and aimed at incorporating and repurposing the new so that it can peacefully sit within the universe of local culinary techniques and appetites. The Hadiyya people taste modernity wittily but in small bites—be it novelty in cuisine or innovation at large. In the process of making new ingredients palatable and local, they also bring forward a more general discourse on the nation-building project, whose foundation lies in the idea that certain cuisines are “good” while others are “bad.” How, when, and for whom Hadiyya prepare food is a language through which they refer to, and rephrase, the national idiom of modernity.

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Following on from the creation of contemporary Ethiopia set forth by the imperial couple at the end of the nineteenth century, Ethiopian foods emerged on the international stage as a recognized cuisine by the late twentieth century. The core elements of Ethiopia’s “classic” cuisine mainly, if not exclusively, come from the northern landscape: injera; wet (the signature dish being here doro wet); a combination of split or powdered legumes (commonly shiro, a peppery pea-flour sauce); meat (like tebs, grilled meat); and collard greens. The subtle theme that runs through this range of spices, colors, and pungent combinations is injera, the flat bread made from t’eff and the ubiquitous foundation of every meal. If we analyze the Hadiyya attitude of selecting and combining ingredients in their daily diet, we realize that for them conformity at face value has gone hand in hand with a bold assertion of independence. Despite the ongoing hybridization of food brought from nearby areas or from urban and national markets, often driven by specific agrarian and nutrition policies, the Hadiyya can be considered as a case of resistance through food preferences. Instead of deliberately refusing to introduce innovation into their diet, and in order to defend their food and political preferences, the Hadiyya have successfully learned to suavely domesticate some of the new ingredients. They are selective in their appropriation of things that they consider national, alien, or unknown; but they are also systematic in harmonizing new foods by adding common spices to re-create familiar sensory characteristics, by adulterating “authentic” recipes, and by merging together the traditional and the modern according to a pre-existing aesthetic. Let us then peep through their kitchen curtains. The Hadiyya food system has changed over time and under circumstances such as war, conquest, the search for food security, and the resulting transition from a pastoral to an agricultural diet. The iconic elements of this multilayered identity can be isolated in the hierarchical structure that I have outlined in this chapter. The first degree of a sense of belonging, what is perceived as being “true food,” is represented by the food of their ancestors. Although this food is lost or drastically diminished, it is surrounded by nostalgic tales of how it tastes good, gives strength, nourishes, and heals. The top of this taste pyramid is made of spiced butter, fresh unboiled milk, cottage cheese, and ground raw meat sautéed in butter. Older generations largely availed themselves of this pastoral diet, along with fresh animal blood (t’iiga) sometimes mixed with raw milk. The

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former breeder, who has lost his herd, has now become a melancholic farmer, who still treats cows, and particularly oxen, with profound deference and fondness. Still today Hadiyya praise cattle over sheep and poultry. However, the foodways of pastoralism, for Hadiyya as for other groups, have never leapt into the national cuisine. The second degree of belonging, what is perceived as being “food of value,” is represented by pairing ensete produce with cattle breeding. In this culinary architecture ensete works pretty much as the national bread (injera). While details around it can change, according to season and availability, ensete remains the linchpin of a satisfying experience. When meat and cheese are less abundant, other ingredients move into the composition of the meal, particularly collard greens. When butter and spices are less available, salt comes in handy. Cooking oil is cheaper and perceived as foreign, but increasingly preferred by the younger generation; it can enter into the preparation of vegetables (especially the more exotic carrots and tomatoes) but will never be employed in so-called cultural foods, such as cheese or raw meat, which must be paired with butter and ensete bread. Further down the Hadiyya pyramid of taste we encounter the first degree of strangeness represented by the “food for guests” category. These foods, highly representative but perceived as non-nutritious, are mainly comprised of ingredients and recipes that have come from the northern highlands. The Hadiyya have added to their cultivation new crops, especially cereals, because, as they typically claim, “grazing land is scarce, and population has enormously increased.” They prefer, however, to keep ensete foods for themselves and to sell grains in the market. In rural Hadiyya injera is prepared only when guests from other areas or towns are present; in such cases it is actually made of t’eff, according to the authentic recipe; but if it is to be consumed at home, they unceremoniously adulterate the dough by adding rice, sorghum, wheat, or maize flour. And in fact the Hadiyya version of the national bread, with which I experimented a few times to great disappointment, has a lumpy texture and even sometimes big holes; a thick, unrefined shape; and reddish color. The same logic is at work in relation to animals: sheep (gherecho), chicken (antaba’a), and rooster (argucho), as well as eggs (k’uunk’a), are destined for guests and the market. Hadiyya cooks conform to the national standard twice a year (for Christmas and Easter), when the iconic doro wet becomes a depressing second-choice substitute in anticipation of the more popular Mäsqäl, when they feast on a slaughtered ox. If compelled to cook low-quality meat due to lack of resources, they strive

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nevertheless to re-create the classic combination of flavors by adding a disproportionate amount of shallots, oil, garlic, and berbere—which results not so much in a fair rendering but rather in a caricature of the northern taste. They usually define the national culinary flag, doro wet, which has made the Ethiopian cuisine well-known all over the world, as “a small thing to cook”: simple to achieve and insignificant in terms of culinary enjoyment. Hadiyya make clear that “this is not cultural; it comes from the Amhara people and urban areas.”16 Someone also mentioned the role played by Protestant churches in the area in fostering an expansion of their culinary realm: “They gave us a cookbook so that we could learn how to prepare other kinds of bread, injera, macaroni, and doro wet—in brief, various dishes from northern Ethiopia and from abroad. Before that we in the rural areas had no idea of all this variety of foods and dishes.”17 In her account of her life as one of the several wives of a Fandaano priest, one woman evoked a powerful image of what happened when they converted to Protestantism. “We lost everything which was connected to the cult after the conversion,” she said. “The missionaries came and cleared the house of every tool and piece of equipment. All the necklaces were thrown in the river. The richly decorated dress of my husband was moved to a local church for exhibition.” Protestant priests decided to respond to animism by filling the river not with food offerings but with the broken pieces of the same cult that had venerated the river. The relics of a powerful and respected Fandaano were exhibited in the nearby church, while he was still alive, to function for other new converts as a constant reminder of a dead belief system. But the most ironic and brutal move was destined for the big drum used in trance rituals: “The missionaries removed the cover and started using it to stir in t’eff flour and water and make injera.”18 At the bottom of the pyramid lies what local people perceive as carrying a second degree of strangeness: the “white man’s food.” According to my hosts, spaghetti and macaroni as well as fruits and rice do not feed par excellence and have no salt and no taste. Despite the efforts of the state policies to endorse and disseminate, especially through schools and nutrition extension programs, a Westernized rhetoric on the virtues of “variety,” these foods have not gained ground inside the Hadiyya kitchen. The villagers have learned at formal meetings, from urban educated instructors, that foreign imported foods are good for breaking up the monotony of a limited rural diet. Nevertheless, the farmer’s taste for a so-called modern diet appears not to perfectly align with that of the policy-makers. Pasta and rice are not for family consumption or ordinary times but, once again, conceived as an extravagance to please the unfamiliar guest

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and as a sort of food-dropping to impress the outsider. This practice could be read as a local way of serving a fake semblance of modernity in a fashionable choreography—to which, not surprisingly, they refer by using the French word buffet. They treat these foods with an additional degree of precaution in comparison to northern Ethiopian dishes, the latter being after all only slightly less strange than the former. In an average family spaghetti and macaroni are eaten a couple of times per year, and they are domesticated by soaking them into the more familiar foodscape of shallots, oil, salt, chili pepper or turmeric, and possibly tomatoes. The strangeness of these foods is proved by the local habit of treating pasta as a form of stew (wet), a side dish that requires being eaten with equally strange puffy, Western-style bread (ambasha) or injera. When I asked the Hadiyya women if they had ever tried to add butter to pasta as a condiment, their reaction was one of pure horror: “For goodness sake,” they replied with indignation, “why should we fritter away the most valuable of our food?”19 That is, of course, butter. It is therefore no coincidence that macaroni and spaghetti are sold in the local weekly market on a stall where packs of cigarettes, soap, and other chinoiserie are piled in a jumble. The way I have seen my hosts flavor coffee over ten years of research encapsulates the four degrees in this hierarchy of taste and sense of belonging: with butter in the first place; milk if butter is not available; salt in poor families; and plenty of sugar, which has become in the eyes of Ethiopians a sign of wealth and high social status, for the foreign guest.

The End of the Play Changes on the plate, and of tone in talking about food, have escalated quickly. A rhetoric centered on variety started to percolate into daily conversation, and it became a buzzword in around 2014. Certain Hadiyya women, who had never used such a vocabulary before, claimed that “mixing different ingredients together is good in nutritional terms”; young boys blamed the rural diet for being “without rules and unbalanced”; and children broadcasted to their parents the urgent need for variety. When asked to itemize the specific nature of this request, I heard for the first time people reciting a memorized list comprised of pasta, rice, fruit juices, eggs, and high-quality t’eff for making injera. Vegetables that were once described in terms of color and texture are now praised for containing vitamins. In a further imaginary twist, the children of my Ethiopian

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foster mother Shita went so far as to equate the standard of a “high-quality” diet with that of an “expensive” diet, and to assert that wealthy people have got whiter skin because they can afford to eat good food.20 My enthusiasm in learning how to cook and relish ensete, in its variable sauce-pairings, was not in tune with the feelings of younger generations whose sense of anxiety and discontent toward the traditional diet, and toward ensete as a poor man’s food, had relentlessly grown. Nor was my enthusiasm in tune with the palpable and unfaltering lack of interest in ensete from the government and development agencies, who have consistently failed to include in their nutrition and agricultural policies any appreciation of ensete food culture as a prized regional variation, or as a local flavor to be preserved and disseminated. These populations, and especially the youth, have been fed with a cumbersome sense of stigma and moral shame. Claiming that they had wide experience of the nearby towns and cities, young males were especially vocal in bringing to our conversations their own perspective on how shameful it is to be “rural” in urban settings. They would refer to differences in the way their male urban counterparts dress and take care of personal hygiene. For them, the word quality denotes being urban—also and foremost in relation to food consumption. Younger generations, following on from their teachers’ recommendations on the globalized value of variety, are now striving hard to educate their parents and grandparents about the benefits of a modern diet. Older women were used to responding to their children and grandchildren with a playful attitude; they would listen to them in compliance and nod in agreement, in the tacit conviction that once left alone in the garden and the kitchen they will continue to live as before. Until recently, they did not consider the foods advocated by their kids to constitute a proper meal. Rice, pasta, or bread other than from ensete do not nourish, because they are not embedded in the semantic and practical activities that constitute significant Hadiyya life. Rice and fruits were given to children, and maize kernels to chickens. During the early years of my research, women never cooked maize, in any form and for any occasion. Children were encouraged by their parents to feed the chickens with maize cobs. Yet change was underway. A dish was served to me for the first time during the last fieldwork in 2015, and it was introduced by Gennet as being a typical Hadiyya recipe. To me, these giant dumplings made of wheat and maize, which I had never recorded in past culinary adventures, were just a bland remedy to fill the belly. She replied to my

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visible discomfort by later explaining that “it is not the ingredients that make this dish ‘Hadiyya’ but the fact that the balls are wrapped in ensete leaves and are boiled, which is our preferred cooking technique as it renders the food utterly soft. And yes, nowadays we prepare it more frequently than in the past because the ensete disease has decreased the availability of waasa.”21 That afternoon udurgufo was served to me with hot, and excessively sugary, mint tea. I thought with tenderness of the attempt of Gennet to please my foreign palate. I realized that she had thought of me as a distinguished guest. But I was also filled with a profound sense of sadness and defeat. UD UR G UF O

A dough is made by mixing sourdough starter, water, wheat and maize flour, a selection of spices, and a pinch of salt. Apple-sized balls are shaped and wrapped in fresh ensete leaves. Water is put into a clay pot where small sticks

have been placed to avoid the balls hitting the bottom while boiling. The boiling time is over an hour, after which the balls are left to rest for a while.

Araggash once in 2005 asked me if I was able to roast the fresh cobs on the fire, and what purpose maize flour would serve in cooking. I found her curiosity odd and did not ask where the idea of maize recipes came from, or how this idea had been created and implemented from (supposedly) national guidelines, through extension services and school programs, to finally reach out to rural households. I had confidence that the flexible ethos of Hadiyya farmers in managing their agricultural practices as well as in foodways could be once again successful in playing with new opportunities. Maize, I thought, and the modernity it brings into the garden, will be easily digested. But I was wrong. This is a part of the story that only later would take shape in my consciousness with clarity and at an accelerated pace. I knew that the parable of dietary change could be measured by looking at maize when the Hadiyya diet had already changed. Ten years after Araggash had posed that question, maize appeared at almost every meal and had acquired great prominence. Its greater market value was still counter-balanced by the extent to which ensete persists as an important cultural food. Disease, however—notably a bacterial wilt that attacks all ensete varieties—has progressively made ensete a less reliable crop than it used to be. The social and economic resources that Hadiyya gave to

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me profusely—hospitality, protection, and unbounded garden produce—have changed in quantity and quality over time, and dramatically. In a culture where laughter is the way people express love and commitment, the playfulness of farmers has finally given way to sorrow and a distinct feeling of hunger. The plant I have learned to contemplate in its evergreen beauty, to touch and to taste, and to frame in humanistic modes beyond necessity and survival, is slowly dying.

7

The Hungry Plate

Map of Tastes, Pre-Hunger

D

URING THE time when the Hadiyya rode their horses and wandered with

their cattle through grassland, they felt decidedly wealthy and happy; by the time they moved out of pastoralism, settled, and started cultivating ensete, they perceived themselves as less free but more food-secure and wealthy, although in a different form. Their pastoral consciousness has remained awake—in their unwavering love for cattle, or in the idea of what soul food should be. Taste holds a singular and powerful place in memory; it can be a trigger of bodily recollection, a source of both yearning and solace. Yet human ecologies change and adapt, and ensete slowly came to win the heart of Hadiyya by spreading in the garden and setting the tone of their daily life and diet. They learned about ensete through trial and error. It seemed indeed a change for the better, in the long term. Until recently no one in Hadiyya has claimed to be hungry or has recalled past periods of hunger. In the tradition of other ensete-cultivating communities, the Hadiyya have learned how to make good use of their environment in order to achieve a simple but efficient economy. Within their productive bricolage no single piece—be it a useful plant, a talented farmer, or a treasured animal— will be successful if it stands alone. The family farm, with its fields and garden,

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is not the place for solitary crops or self-determined heroes to sit enthroned. However, farmers interpret ensete as a vital part of that bricolage. It is because of ensete cultivation, they assert, that famine and impoverishment have been unknown in their recent history. It is ensete that has enabled them to survive the seasons of drought and heavy rain that have occasionally threatened the economic life of many Ethiopians living in the northern plateau. This faith in ensete is corroborated by the records of people compelled to seek refuge or food with the Hadiyya. In March 2008 I was witness to a prolonged lack of rain, which in turn determined a lack of food in several areas of southwestern Ethiopia. A few families in Hadiyya started harvesting ensete, despite being the wrong season for harvest, not so much because food was lacking but because the bacterial wilt had attacked those single plants. Yet, in most homes, people simply carried on with the usual routine of ensete bread and vegetable accompaniments—except that every element was served in carefully reduced, Lilliputian quantities. The large family of Wodetu was unanimous, and seraphic, in declaring that “we are not going to starve because here, unlike the North, we have ensete.” I was in the kitchen of Wodetu, curled up in a blanket in front of the fire, when the niece of her husband stepped in and asked for some waasa to take back home. She came from the district of Shaashoogo, where the ensete epidemic was said to have first originated and the resulting famine had quickly killed several people of every age.1 “We are Muslim,” she explained to me, “and we also cultivate khat. We have chewed khat for some time to keep hunger pangs at bay; but now khat is finished as well.” Other voices in the community described the 2008 drought and resulting famine as being “worse than that of 1984–85 because back then you could still buy something in the market, but today the hike in food prices makes everything too expensive.”2 Asked why all the casualties were recorded in the district of Shaashoogo, people showed no hesitation: “Because in that area they have no ensete.” For two years, between 2007 and 2008, people from Leemo sent food aid in the form of ensete pulp, on the backs of donkeys, to the Shaashoogo district, where people had devoted themselves to intensive cultivation of sorghum and maize. “Maize is for Shaashoogo what ensete is for Leemo,” I was told in the village. In Shaashoogo the local agricultural office decided, a few generations ago, to test improved varieties of maize for the first time. But sometimes excessive rain, and sometimes lack of it, frequently caused maize to fail. A long history of economic survival amid events of this type has given rise to the general notion of self-sufficiency of the people who cultivate ensete.

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What more durably struck my sensitivity, and later affected my personal relationship with food, is the pattern of frugal consumption, careful conservation of resources, and minimal production of waste in the cycle of activities conducted in and around the farm. Traditionally these communities have not been dependent upon Western food aid or national goods and services to maintain their economy. Different families have a supply of ensete and other stored goods that vary in volume and composition. Generally, this supply would not, at any time and even in wealthy families, seem abundant to a Western consumer. It is nonetheless enough in the local perception of abundance and scarcity. For a long time the farmer’s prediction was proved to be correct. What I have learned from my ethnography with the Hadiyya farmers—that hunger, in most cases, is a matter of modulation and negotiation—has been documented for other rural communities in Africa: “Hunger, strictly speaking, is a subjective sensation, not a biological condition [ . . . ]. It can be voluntarily entered into or embraced [ . . . ] the familial self-rationing of diets and some resulting hunger and thinning seem to be voluntarily accepted as part of a strategy of conserving resources through lean seasons—a process that can merge into, and easily be confused with, true destitution” (Messer and Shipton 2002, 231). The Hadiyya farmers are used to stoically enduring periods of food scarcity, which they have never, until recently at least, phrased as “hunger.” There was a saying recorded in Gurage by W. Leslau: “If one eats as much as one is hungry for, (one is called) voracious / if one talks as much as one is anguished, (one is called) a big talker” (1982, 229). Moderation in behavior parallels that of appetite; Gurage people believe that one should not eat so much as to satisfy hunger. In a masterful study of spiritual practices among the Gurage, W. A. Shack raises the conundrum of a society that presents elaborate food-producing techniques, whose life thrives in a fertile environment and rests on an abundant food supply, and whose members, notwithstanding, display a pattern of sparing consumption of the staple ensete as well as of supplementary foodstuffs. The anthropologist beautifully formulates this paradox as follows: “Men deprive themselves daily of the very same ensete-food which they have laboriously produced in abundance. Symbolically, they gluttonously feed the earth, as it were, by storing ensete deep in the ground, while their cupboards remain perpetually bare” (1971, 39). With the exception of Mäsqäl and other festive occasions, when people feel entitled to break the cultural norms and eat to the point of glut, the daily food etiquette is such that “the consumption of ensete is restricted to the minimal level required for subsistence, seldom varying from slight handfuls, to

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nibbles, to hardly any” (1971, 32). The Gurage consider overeating to be an act of vulgarity; as “there should always remain some ensete even after the most meagre serving has been passed round” (1971, 33). A voluntary inclination toward self-denial prevents them from experiencing the daily satisfaction of hunger. Hunger becomes a form of learned behavior. They nurse hunger as a viper in their bosom. They train themselves in hunger bit by bit. They live by making some room for daily hunger in their belly in the hope that it will function as an antidote in case of sweeping hunger. As perplexing as it may appear to those who hold a firm view of Africa as being a starving continent, this is not an isolated instance of people who prefer having food safely hidden in the garden or in storage more than consuming it gluttonously. Before becoming hungry and tasteless, the Hadiyya plate had hosted resources limited in number but composed according to a flowery architecture of taste. I have argued in the previous chapter that the template for these food combinations may appear simple, but the realization is complex and demanding, especially if we account for the whole trajectory from field to table. The process of cooking begins in the garden and includes the demanding operation of transforming the pulp into food all the way from the pit to the plate. The skills to render ensete palatable unfold days before the pulp enters the kitchen. In the kitchen, the process of transformation and refinement continues. In fact, “what seems a monotonous repetition of flavourings may well be an illusion of the outsider [ . . . ]. A closer look at actual culinary practice reveals a rich and subtle variation of flavouring from dish to dish and from meal to meal” (Rozin and Rozin 2007, 40). I will linger for a while over the richness of this taste scenario, with its flavor principles, before describing how the Hadiyya plate has lost its flavor. I will begin with an apparently banal observation, something I had not realized until I spent many nights with my host families in the village, and therefore could take part in evening meals. Women cook in the dark, including the roasting of the coffee. The feeble flames of the hearth only illuminate a radius of a few feet, leaving the rest of the room and its nocturnal dwelling creatures no longer visible. First Wondimu surfaces, half a body; then the hands of Wodetu quickly enter the ring of fire to arrange the dry twigs and branches; all around I can hear the children running and playing, the cows murmuring, a wooden box being opened—by whom? and for what? In the dark the sense of sight is diminished, and so the cook sniffs, pinches, squeezes, presses, and even listens to the food. I discovered that food crackles louder in the dark than in the light

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of day; it mumbles while simmering; and when it is ready, people taste it with their nose, fingers, and ears before it even reaches the tongue. This tactile approach to food is reflected in the ways most women would decide on its quality: color, taste, but also smell. The color is important but can also be a misleading clue; by an astute use of crimson or mustard-colored spices technical mistakes can easily be disguised—the burning of butter or shallots, the over-roasting of barley, or white atakana that is otherwise unsavory. In terms of taste it is spices, including salt, that transform food into “real” food; in the words of Tekekel, “Without spices you cannot even say that it is food at all.”3 Meat, butter, cheese, even ensete pulp: nothing would be considered food if not properly spiced. The lack of salt and spices is tantamount to having no taste. Every edible thing is considered “raw” or “unripe” (k’ak’uulla) until spices (enja) are added to confer special taste and a distinctive smell. Several herbs can be used both as a medicine and for cooking. There is a progression of terms to express appreciation for food: people would say teoko, “it has taste,” if the taste is good without being exceptional; teissoko, “it has more taste,” if they can detect the use of a few spices; and teisancho, “it has even more taste,” if spices have been accurately used in quality and quantity. The Hadiyya scale of taste can be visualized as in figure 19. Spices are the central element in giving taste. In the category of salty we basically find every kind of fully edible and enjoyable food: atakana, bu’ muccho, bilambilo, sulso, salalo, shaana, stews (such as doro or vegetable wet), and many more. The sour taste (karakalla) takes its name from the realm of medicinal plants (karara); as we have seen in chapter 1, sour denotes therapeutic power. When things get close to rancid, like milk, or undergo a long fermentation, like ensete pulp, they somehow acquire a sour nuance: strong but acceptable in the mouth, still healing and disturbingly pleasant. Bitter, on the other hand, denotes something that has already gone beyond its FIGURE 19. Hadiyya taste chart.

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time of use and enjoyability—that is, something completely rotten. Interestingly, papaya and apples are said to belong to this category. Sweet—represented by sugar, sugarcane, and honey—is the disharmonic note in the Hadiyya gastronomic melody. Sweet is the other (tasteless) side of what is salty. Appreciated by foreigners and urban dwellers, sweet is indeed for Hadiyya farmers the denial of taste. The word for sweet is te’alla, which in Hadiyya also means “expensive.” In 2014 one kilogram of sugar cost five times one kilogram of salt. Among cooking techniques, boiling is preferred because it makes food achieve what Hadiyya praise over any other characteristic: tenderness (kachaalla). When food is baked or roasted it becomes tough and dry (gogaalla) or crisp and hard to chew (k’ott’aalla). Baking is perceived as characterizing the northern dishes, while Hadiyya share with the Gurage and Kambata an inclination to boil, and therefore soften, food. Roasted grains are good to fill the gaps between one real meal and another and to keep the children quiet throughout the day, but they do not confer any strength or energy; on the contrary, “when you eat a tender food you grow strong.” Every time I was served food that my hosts would consider valuable, the invitation to taste it was always the same: “Eat it up, kachaalla!” (It’s very soft! Enjoy it!) The Hadiyya foods are by definition soft; those of foreigners are hard. With finely ground, pounded, or chopped foods the cooking time decreases and the digestion process is facilitated. To grasp the sublime in Hadiyya cuisine one has to imagine a soft and smooth substance whose viscosity is further enhanced by the lubricant power of butter and milk. Playful as Hadiyya are in practicing new techniques in the plot and new combinations in the pot, and though they are opportunistic rather than conservative, there is a botanical character that they have failed to consider and appreciate—one that they have striven to integrate into their composite agricultural patchwork and to harmonize within the existing architecture of taste, but so far unsuccessfully. As has been documented in several instances, “African farmers (and cooks) are very ready to try new techniques. Like other farmers, they only reject them when they find that they are unsuited to their crops, land or circumstances” (McNee 2003, 167). The story of maize in Hadiyya, and of the dramatic nutritional transition it has triggered, must first be recounted by momentarily leaving the kitchen and walking back to the garden.

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Disease and Hunger: The Farmer’s View In 2012 a severe bacterial wilt disease that attacks all ensete varieties broke out with unprecedented virulence. The lethal wilt of ensete was not, in itself, something new to farmers and scientists alike, even in Hadiyya (Brandt et al. 1997; Braukämper 2012, 328–74). But if in the past it was found only sporadically in the gardens, in recent years it has evolved exponentially to the extent of becoming of great concern in many areas of the country. An indigenous Ethiopian disease, it has, since the early 2000s, spread steadily across East and Central Africa. The first to leave a written account of this plague was E. Castellani in 1939; this was followed by a study of D. Yirgou and J. F. Bradbury (1968), which indicated that only ensete and banana were found to be susceptible to the pathogen. In 1985 D. Ashagari observed how the ensete wilt was becoming a serious problem in all the main ensete-growing regions. Nowadays the scientific literature on the ensete bacterial wilt abounds, to the point that there is no room here for a detailed mention of every single study. Most of this literature arises from a concerted effort of global research-for-development organizations and local partners. The life of the plant is assessed and evaluated starting from the occurrence of the disease. Such a body of work focuses on the disease transmission, on the efficacy of selected botanicals or insecticides against the infection, on quarantine measures, on analysis of ensete clones, on prevention and mitigation. Little or nothing is recounted of ensete life before the pathological event, including its deep, quasi-human relationship with people, or how those local communities think and act as a result of their loss. This humanistic side of the story begs to be integrated into the grand picture of the fall of ensete. In this section I will first listen to the multiple voices of Hadiyya farmers and then ask what difference, if any, their voice could make in the scientific debate and in agricultural research programs as a whole. The destructive disease is caused by the bacterium Xanthomonas campestris pv. Musacearum (Xcm) and leads to complete wilting of the crop. Although caused by a bacterium and not a virus, in local vernacular the farmers call it by the misleading yet humanizing term alooyya (“ensete flu”). Alooyya first damaged a few gardens in the nearby village of Dubancho, around the fall of 2010; then, for the first time since they had cultivated the plant, the disease entered their village. Farmers said it was caused “by an insect that cannot be seen with the naked eye.” They observed that it spreads from the top of the plant down into the roots until the whole plant collapses. The symptoms appear quickly, overnight; the disease

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kills the plant within weeks after the first symptoms. In the Leemo district one third of ensete was initially affected by the disease. Since the first accounts mentioned above, experts have held the view that the bacterial wilt is mainly transmitted through infected farm tools, through infected planting material, by repeated transplanting that damages the corm and roots, from animals fed with infected plants, and possibly from insects feeding on the foliage. In order to keep it under control, farmers were therefore recommended to destroy the infected plants and to sterilize knives and cultivating tools. When the disease was still restricted to a few plants, farmers would plant a herbal medicine (which they call bobanka) mixed with ash around the infected plant, without uprooting it, and ensete would quickly recover. “This is a method we have learned from our grandfathers,” said Adanech. Over time and with the disease becoming epidemic, however, this strategy proved useless. When I resumed my fieldwork in 2012, Lopiso welcomed me into his house by asking if I had brought any remedy for the ensete flu. I had not, nor had the experts they had consulted in the meantime. Farmers told me they had “spoken aloud several times to the government,” with no answer. They first tried to buy some “medicine,” but none worked. So, in an act of desperation and protest, they brought the infected plants from their gardens to the nearest town, to the front of the agricultural office, and started shouting: “A doctor knows if the thing inside a woman’s stomach is male or female; why did it turn out so difficult to collect an ensete plant, cut it open, and understand how to cure it?” The only advice in response to their complaints was the standard scientific instruction used for the past thirty years: go home, uproot the infected plants, and be careful not to employ the same contaminated knives. In the fall of 2013, the lethal wilt had devastated most of the ensete gardens in the Hadiyya zone. The collective outcry of farmers to urge a remedy went unheard; in the meantime, the epidemic affecting ensete has spread widely. While waiting for a solution, and convinced that the government promises a lot but does very little, they decided to hedge their bets by replacing the perennial plant with other crops. Ayalech, whose family was already striving to break free from ensete cultivation long before the epidemic, explained that “the government has not yet been successful in finding a remedy; however, they have taught us how to plant other crops in place of ensete in order to prevent drought, hunger and poverty.”4 When ensete is lost, first potatoes and barley are planted in its place, and then maize, which the agricultural officials have warmly supported by saying it invigorates the soil and, moreover, can be sold in the market.

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At the beginning of my ethnographic experience in 2004 maize was only a small part of this multicrop farming system. It appeared as a spring crop in gardens, and it was treated more as a snack than as a staple (see McCann 2007, 78). Farmers were initially attracted by the role that maize could play in their agronomic bricolage. They have incorporated maize as both a crop to feed the household in case of food shortage and as a crop that could be sold in national markets to great advantage. They thought they could have a good harvest of maize every year, while ensete is labor-demanding and now vulnerable to disease. Maize is a quick-maturing crop that could be eaten after only a few months and requires much less labor than perennial crops. But farmers quickly came to realize that maize has rendered them vulnerable and market dependent. Maize yields are in fact higher only under high pest control. Farmers are given maize seeds from the local kebele; they have noted that certain varieties are particularly productive but require careful land preparation and an intensive use of herbicides. The price of improved seeds is high, and most farmers prefer to buy them from other farmers at a lower price, or to save a few cobs so that it can be replanted the next year—an exchange that the kebele strives to prevent by warning that saving seeds from year to year would bastardize and render the plant less productive. But some farmers have begun to be skeptical about the insistent discourse on boosting productivity: “I think that those from the kebele lie when they talk about high yield. I have tried both, and sometimes the local varieties give a better harvest. How could they know? They have never done research here, in our climate, on our soil.” The same man asserted that farmers are not forced to opt for the improved varieties; however, the development agents would come and check, dishing out free advice only to those who have adopted the modern varieties: “They observe and discuss the timing and quality of the farmer’s harvest, how he has conducted weeding management, his planting methods. Those who have not adopted are left alone. The agents bring to the stubborn farmers the example of the virtuous farmers. And even if they provided advice to less progressive farmers, what for? All remedies (i.e., fertilizers and pesticides) are paid services.”5 The transition toward maize, punctuated by light and shadow, is recounted by the son of one of my hostesses, a well-informed and smart farmer in his thirties. In the early 2000s the kebele development agents came to teach the farmers

about new crops and agricultural techniques. They said that ensete was not enough for us. They said that maize was a good food for humans and animals

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alike as it is packed with carbohydrates. That is the time when we first started

planting maize. Before that time the weather was not suitable, maize grew small, and we would give it to animals; but over time the weather has become hotter

due to deforestation, and therefore more suitable to maize. We first planted maize by broadcasting, not in rows; it was part of a larger scheme of crop rota-

tion with cereals and legumes. In order to have good harvests we were advised

to start using fertilizers for all crops. But in 2012 the production of maize began its decline because the extension agents had distributed a variety that proved to

be unsuitable to the climate of this area. The germination is hardly successful

in improved varieties of maize; sometimes they just stay dormant. Moreover, usually they test a certain variety in one area only, and then they sell it all over the country, without taking into consideration the variability of the soil and

climate. I heard from folks in the kebele that the improved varieties of wheat

and maize come from Canada and Australia. That was the point when farmers decided they would recover and replant the old local varieties.

The critical assessment of this young farmer is complementary to the more appreciative words of another woman farmer. The improved varieties of maize are cultivated in open fields as they require to

be planted in rows on more land and by using chemical fertilizers. If you want

the maize to be highly productive, you need to leave enough space between rows and between plants. Local varieties are planted in the garden, around the house, because they thrive with compost and the soil in the garden is particularly fertile; we eat local maize before it reaches maturity because it has a good

taste. Sometimes, though, the improved varieties are so heavily fertilized that

they grow too tall and fall down. It was the ruling party (EPRDF) that started the business of improved varieties—not only for maize but for barley and wheat as well. They were right. Farmers do not want to eat ensete only. These other crops will help farmers make a lot of money and become rich. You know, life has

changed. We need to pay for the education of our children, for transportation and other consumer goods; therefore, we need cash.

I asked her if her family had become rich in the meantime. She blushed with embarrassment and said: “No, for now we have only lost ensete.”6 The presence of maize, in the garden and in the kitchen, has quickly transformed the everyday life of Hadiyya. Until recently farmers were used to selling

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most of the cereals in the market. Since ensete has always been directed toward (and voluntarily preserved for) household consumption, they were used to selling cereals to get cash; yet, if ensete is going to disappear, they will have no other choice than to use cereals both for their families and the market. This dependence on maize prevents them from breaking the vicious cycle, even though the consequences are easily predictable. Farmers know that maize should be planted in open fields; but now that ensete is lost, that empty space in the garden provides the immediately available and attractive option of an incredibly rich soil where maize grows fast and gives high yield. Poor farmers, or those who have very little land, have no other choice than to move improved varieties of maize, hungry for nutrients, to their gardens. They do so, their neighbors suggest, “because they have hungry mouths to feed.” Maize is now growing in the vicinity of their houses, on the same nutrient-rich soil that for decades has been fertilized by cattle manure; it depletes nitrogen, water, and humidity from the land. Diseases in annual crops threaten only the current year’s harvest, whereas diseases such as bacterial wilt in a perennial crop threaten the harvest for several years. This means that Hadiyya farmers will have to wait a number of years (at least three) before starting a new cycle of ensete cultivation, and several more years for the plant to be harvested (ideally around seven or eight for optimum yield and quality of product). Many years, therefore, will be needed to restore their gardens to past standards of security and beauty—that is, to a point where they contain plants at all stages of growth, old and young, male and female, which can provide a variety of food products as well as many diverse shades of green. With hope, and without much choice, the Hadiyya will replant ensete and wait. For now they must rely on a diet comprised of maize, wheat, some legumes, collard greens, and potatoes. More a taste of necessity than of choice, maize does not suit local tastes and sometimes is not even edible according to local standards.7 In February 2015, in the village community where I worked, there were only a few plants of ensete still resisting the epidemic, and there was no or only minimal pulp left in the fermentation pits. At that time ensete products were rapidly becoming a commodity purchased at the market at exorbitant prices. An ethnographic walk that I conducted with my research assistant at the Saturday market in Waachamo revealed that the price of ensete pulp had risen from 2.5 to 50 birr for a handful of waasa and to 100 birr for the same amount of bu’o, not even enough to make one piece of bread. The few women selling ensete pulp at

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an increased price had bought it from other women farmers in high-altitude areas, where the plant was still present. Buyers walked around the stalls in an atmosphere of consternation. A bag of collard greens, which would be enough for a full family meal, only cost 3 birr.8 Most Hadiyya farmers have repeatedly expressed to me their frustration for having lost ensete. When most of their old gardens had already gone, they used to say: “[Now that we have lost ensete] in case of drought only God, not ensete, will save us.” And again: “If ensete dies, we are going to die too.” Lately they have started to use more cynical language to articulate their community demands; a woman farmer explained that “the poor do not know how to live without ensete, while the wealthy do not care as they can buy everything in cash in the market. Ensete is like God: the father of the poorest.” Another woman farmer pointed to the fact that “those who complained about the burden of labor in cultivating ensete were the same who had not enough skills to do such work: lazy farmers, in fact, who could only obtain black [i.e., not white, bad quality] waasa.”9 According to older farmers in different areas of ensete cultivation, ensete is the life of the people, a sign of household beauty, a symbol of respect for the family, and a marker of social status. In other areas of southwestern Ethiopia where ensete and maize have become complementary staples, farmers typically claim that ensete is the primary crop, even when they produce more maize than ensete (Quinlan et al. 2015, 331–32). From a local point of view important foods are ones that provide energy and satisfy taste but also nurture a sense of social coherence and belonging. A good food is an identity-builder that enables growth physiologically and emotionally. For the Hadiyya farmers, maize means hunger. For the first time since 2004 I heard the word sibaaro, “hunger,” while talking to an old Hadiyya woman. She explained: “When we had cattle and ensete there was no trace of hunger. During the famine of 1984–85 no one died in this area; we were weak and sick, but we did not die.” Another woman remarked that cereals do not give the same sense of fullness as ensete: “T’eff does not stay long in your stomach; when my kids ate ensete for lunch, with some coffee or a bunch of collard greens, their appetite was satiated; but now, with injera, they chase after me and beg for food after only a few hours.” Bakkalech remarked: “I cannot prepare good food from wheat and maize as they cannot make my children’s stomach full.” Adanech spared a thought for the animals, “which now eat only straw, not ensete, and risk dying.”10

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Farmers’ knowledge has not been exploited by scientists as a potential source of insight into the disease. If the farmers’ voices had been recorded, perhaps a meaningful correlation—and even causal relationship—would have emerged between the bacterial wilt and the presence of maize. In a conversation recorded in October 2013 one farmer cautiously expressed those concerns, deeply shared inside the community in a chain of whispers, as follows: “The only thing I know is that when you get a good harvest of maize, then there is a loss of ensete. I suppose there must be a correlation in this particular mix of crops. According to my experience ensete has never shown any problem with other crops, only with maize. The epidemic always arises in the ensete plant which is closer to maize.” Another farmer wondered if “it is from the maize flower that a sort of dust [pollen] arises and attacks the ensete plant; what I know for sure is that the ensete flu got worse after the arrival of maize.” A young couple added that “our grandfathers had already noted that mixing maize with ensete will cause great damage.” Others observed that the only areas where ensete was resisting the epidemic were those at high altitude where maize had never been grown. The dark connection made by the Hadiyya farmers between the two crops may well be the result of a time of despair, and it may have further fueled my imagination simply because at a certain point I felt bored by eating roasted maize kernels.11 It is not the scope of this book to determine if maize is guilty or innocent, or to provide scientific evidence for the role maize may have played in the diminishment of ensete. The scope of my narrative, from the beginning of this story, has been to speak for a plant and for rural peripheries that have been increasingly marginalized and pushed closer to disappearance by the advance of farming modernization. In places where indigenous knowledge is so sharply gendered, innovations, if not properly screened, may inadvertently upset the delicate balance of power and cooperation between men and women in the farming sector, widen gender inequalities, create new vectors of oppression, or disrupt age-old patterns of social interaction among women. The reader has certainly noticed that, with the ensete disease and the rise of old and new grains, a male farmer subject has returned to encroach upon the scene. In the ensete garden women were the first subjects to feel the loss deeply. One woman recalled the time, before losing her best exemplars, when everyone in the market would recognize the high quality of her bu’o and buy it in great quantity. Others regretted that they were once able to take away some additional amount of waasa to sell and make money, while “with cereals that is impossible because everything is measurable and visible, and cereals belong to men.” Most

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women lamented the increasing number of young people abandoning the village in search of better fortunes outside agriculture—a fact that further decreases the intergenerational exchange of knowledge, as well as the authoritative role of women as gatherers, herbalists, farmers, plant breeders and custodians, and cooks. The disease has drastically reduced the possibility of cooking and sharing traditional foods; as a result, one woman argued, “the new generations separate themselves from their own culture.” A five-year-old-girl sat in the kitchen of Tekekel while outside a working party was processing and rescuing the last remaining healthy ensete plants. She spoke to me in words, simple and cogent as only children can do, in a way that showed no disjunction between working in the garden and eating from the garden: “When I was little I ate waasa but now I ask for it and they would not prepare any. When I grow up I will join the women and do the same work they are doing right now in the garden.”12 Who can predict if her vision will prove right or wrong?

Disease and Hunger: The Expert View The ruinous disease and decline of ensete cannot be understood without taking into consideration the concurrent, stealthy rise of hybrid maize. Scientists have failed to find any genes of resistance against ensete bacterial wilt after more than thirty years of research (Ssekiwoko et al. 2010). It is no coincidence, I believe, that hesitation to support ensete crop development among policy planners is inversely proportional to their devotion to hybrid maize. In Ethiopia fortified varieties of maize have been increasingly tested and disseminated by “philanthrocapitalist” actors (Brooks 2014; Scoones and Thompson 2011, 4–5; Smale et al. 2013). The success of maize in Ethiopia, as in other developing countries, has been fueled by a mixture of national policies and the flow of resources from the international community (governments, donors, and seed companies). Let us look at the case of the Water-Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project, a five-year public-private partnership led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and Monsanto, with substantial support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Brooks 2014, 22). The project is testing drought-tolerant maize in several African countries with the goal of expanding what relevant stakeholders define in their reports as an “agriculture without choice,” where low agricultural growth, delay in adopting chemical fertilizers, rapid population growth, and weak foreign-exchange

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earnings all allegedly combine to threaten household food security.13 While the general trend in policy has been to promote improved varieties in general— both open-pollinated varieties (OPV), which can be saved and replanted from one season to the next, and hybrid varieties—in reality there has been a silent switch from OPVs to hybrids as the programs have evolved. The WEMA maize varieties are hybrids, which means that farmers need to purchase new seed each year. Given that the project targets smallholders who are known to habitually save and exchange seed, this implies for them a significant additional cost. The promotion of hybrid seeds and chemical fertilizers are drawing farmers into new forms of debt and vulnerability. Improved varieties of maize are in fact typically bred for specific characteristics, with minimal variability and higher yield potential; they lack drought, pest, and disease tolerance; and they are poorly adapted for long-term storage, unless chemically treated. In Ethiopia, with its extreme local variations in ecology, climate, soil, and farming techniques, the use of improved crops that show minimal genetic variability does not help much, unless complemented with locally adapted varieties (Makki 2014, 95–97). It was the spring of 2014 when I started investigating the reception and consumption of hybrids in the Hadiyya zone. At that time I ran across a blog that was promoted by the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc., also referred to as PotashCorp. The blog is not active anymore as the company has in the meantime merged with Calgary-based Agrium to form Nutrien, in a transaction that closed on January 1, 2018. The name of the blog—Allana Potash Blog: Ethiopia’s Agri-Scape from the Ground Up—promised much in that it seemed to embrace the farmers’ view. In reality, though, things were slightly different. The Canadian company is currently, as it was in the past, the world’s largest potash (potassium chloride) producer and the third largest producer of nitrogen and phosphate, three primary crop nutrients used to produce fertilizers. Along with mining projects in the Danakil depression around Ethiopia’s Dallol area, the company had another mission in the country, only apparently dissociated from the former: that of contributing to its food security. On their website they claimed to be able to do that by supplying raw materials to help the agroindustry sector, thus generating foreign currency according to the need of the market. For them, food security was related to innovative fertilizer, or to crops that needed to be treated with large amounts of it. They had no doubt about the pivotal role of technology—of course, the technology they could provide— for getting a bumper harvest. At some point Allana Potash committed itself toward annual financial assistance to the government of Ethiopia’s Agricultural

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Transformation Agency (ATA) to support its countrywide program of on-farm fertilizer demonstration trials.14 I spent weeks sifting through their website and blog and critically interpreting the relevant points of their mining as well as dietary objectives. In this section I will be quoting sources that up until March 2016 were freely available. At some point after this time these materials, and all the references to projects conducted in Ethiopia, were removed.15 The reader must therefore rely for the most part on my personal notes to grasp the point of view of these Canadian developers; or they can directly conduct a search using the keywords “Potash for Growth Program in Ethiopia” to find some tenuous semblance of what these projects were about and of the confident rhetoric used to disseminate best practices and “humanitarian crops” among farmers. The former PotashCorp defined the Ethiopian economy on its website as “rapidly shifting from subsistence to export oriented agricultural/industrial” and considered it a “rising economic powerhouse” where progressive technologies and improving infrastructure had to be urgently introduced. It was the PotashCorp, through its social media strategy, that unexpectedly revived the connection between the destiny of ensete and that of maize. In an article released on their blog on October 21, 2013—“Ensete and Food Security”—the areas of ensete cultivation were erroneously dismissed as being “food insecure.” I read that article in pure bewilderment. Ensete-cultivating populations had not been food insecure until recently; if they had become so, how did it happen? The article did not address the issue straightforwardly, but instead took pains to lament considerable confusion about the yield potential of ensete and the impossibility of identifying a formula for its estimation. Ensete production, they realized, varies greatly from plot to plot and from area to area, with puzzling fluctuations in yield per plant, in time to reach maturity and eventually harvest time, and in plant spacing due to intermittent harvesting. The PotashCorp consultant, who surveyed precisely the same districts where I had been conducting my fieldwork, was unable to standardize the calculation of plants per hectare because of the very nature of uncountable ensete—half in plain sight and half hidden in home gardens that remain illegible to bureaucrats and nonhumanistic experts. In the projections of PotashCorp, the crop that would instead ensure the poor a brighter future was maize. This related point was clearly made in an article released on the same blog a few weeks later, on November 1, 2013—“New Highland Maize Varieties Boosting Production in Hadiyya Zone.” The article

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contained a generic reference to improved varieties of crops that could yield a better product and that at the same time were environmentally friendly; then, the focus immediately shifted to high-yielding maize varieties that the Ambo Plant Protection Research Centre had recently introduced to the Hadiyya zone, in the districts of Leemo and Misha. Comments about the AMH 851 Gibat variety verged on a sort of spiritual faith in progress, depicting in a paternalistic fashion the happiness of farmers “of having such a high yielding highland maize variety on their farmlands where maize was not priority crop, and maize production was thought to be hopeless.” A “fascinating” yield increase would be achieved with the necessary technical help and follow-up of agricultural experts, in conjunction with field visits aimed at winning the resistance of those farmers who had shown no interest in using technology, and thereby encouraging them to change their attitude. I tried in vain to picture in my head this image of happiness, composed of PotashCorp planners in the act of collecting the enthusiastic reaction of Hadiyya farmers for having adopted the AMH 851 Gibat maize variety. I had in fact listened to another, completely different story from those same farmers—fleshand-blood farmers, not those inhabiting propaganda blogs. Now that maize has been incorporated into fields that are permanently modified by inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, people desperately crave to revert to older, less marketoriented crops like ensete, and they would thus choose storability, taste, and texture of their indigenous crop above yield. Unfortunately, the farmer’s taste for fermented waasa appears strongly at odds with that of the policy-makers. The voice of the food lobby has not relented in its sponsorship of maize as a “progressive” crop. However, the narrative in the PotashCorp blog was right in evoking the network of knowledge and power through which farmers would be mobilized for development. Maize has seeped into the texture of Hadiyya life and diet by a combination of promotion and pressure from development agents in rural areas, who in turn replicate the national guidelines in pursuing food security through plants with universal application. Beyond the national level, and even beyond the Ethiopian case, a global trend can be recognized of certain crops gaining the confidence of high-profile institutions and progressively becoming the bridgehead of Green Revolution–style intensification. That revolution, more than forty years old, started with faith in high-yield varieties of wheat and rice, combined with the use of fertilizers to enrich soil; but along the way it gained the reputation of having failed to empower the truly poor despite having

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increased food production. More productivity does not necessarily mean less hunger or more empowerment for the smallholders (Messer 2001; Poppy et al. 2014; Young 2004, 13). High-tech solutions may be a good fit with marketled development strategies and an ideal way to involve the corporate sector in public-private partnerships. But they also have real potential to divert attention away from the deeper factors that underpin food insecurity and poverty. People may have no access to food that they consider safe and nourishing; they may consider new technologies ineffective or culturally inappropriate; they may feel excluded, as ordinary citizens, from the policy discussion. Each of these factors can make people, at some point, hungry (see Kimura 2013). I first learned what a new Green Revolution for sub-Saharan Africa looks like not by immersing myself in scholarly literature, but by observing the work and deciphering the discourses of agricultural extension agents on the ground. The following information is based on formal and informal conversations I had in 2015 with a team of experts from the Agricultural Office (Department of Extension) of the Leemo district. With them I also spent half a day observing trials and demonstrations that took place in the area where I was conducting my fieldwork. The agricultural experts sent from the kebele provide training on various subjects; the dominant theme, however, is how best to cultivate cereals and, among them, especially maize and wheat because they enable farmers to achieve “productivity.” The goal of the training is “to make them capable of getting higher yields from their land.” A senior agent highlighted the centrality of spreading technology among those farmers who are reluctant to accept it. Technology, according to him, is basically comprised of contour bands to control soil erosion; row planting instead of broadcasting; adoption of improved varieties (of maize and wheat); and appropriate use of fertilizers. He summarized the hardship of spreading technology as follows: “There are farmers who are stubborn, those who are in the middle, and the model farmers—that is, those who embrace our teaching and are modern. Some farmers make fun of the development agents (DA). Well, farmers are not like us”—which resounded as a sibylline wink at the farmers’ lack of education and expertise in environmental and agricultural matters.16 As our conversations were taking place only a few steps from those home gardens that I had known for years, and where I saw ensete thrive and die, I raised the issue of ensete disease. The development agents assured me that scientists had started conducting trials at Waachamo University, in connection with

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the Areka Research Station of Awassa Agricultural Research Center (ARC); yet the process was punctuated by “technical difficulties” and hence would take longer to achieve conclusive results. When urged to provide more accurate details, in search of a simple explanation they inadvertently produced the most persuasive explanation: “For alooyya there is no remedy because it affects only southern Ethiopia, not other areas of the country.” The development agents were regurgitating an official speech given in 2011 by the then prime minister Meles Zenawi at the grand opening of Waachamo University. As soon as he came, the Hadiyya farmers asked questions about the disease. He promised that research would be conducted in all the laboratories of the country and, if necessary, abroad. Then, in a Machiavellian turn, he advised them to remain aware that the issue was not, after all, a matter of national significance. The same rhetoric has in the meantime been scaled up to inform the actions of the international characters moving behind the Ethiopian scene. In January 2015 I interviewed several scientists at the headquarters of CIMMYT in Addis Ababa. When I asked one of the agricultural economists why CIMMYT had never considered exploring the potential for ensete agriculture as an enduring component of a food-secure national landscape, he asked in turn: “How many people eat ensete?” I said, “Twenty million or so.” He concluded: “That is right, but none of them live in the United States or in Canada, where the funds for our research come from.” It would be fair to conclude this chapter by offering a final recipe featuring maize, the botanical character that has finally come to inhabit the garden and to replenish the Hadiyya plate. But the Hadiyya cooks have not yet come up with a creative culinary invention with regard to maize. Someone else is elaborating new recipes for their benefit within the contours of a project funded by the Canadian government and implemented in Ethiopia by CIMMYT and Sasakawa-Global 2000: the Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia (NuME).17 The project aims at disseminating several varieties of Quality Protein Maize (QPM) that were identified by the Ethiopian government and the private sector as having the potential to address the nutritional needs of the poor. Research on biofortified varieties of maize began at the Mexico-based CIMMYT in the 1960s, providing the foundation for the Quality Protein Maize (QPM) program that has continued from the 1970s to the present day. “Accounts of the trajectory of QPM research reveal repeated cycles of optimism inspired by each new ‘breakthrough,’ only to be tempered by field results that were insufficiently conclusive to justify either full endorsement or closure [ . . . ]. Today, QPM is grown extensively in

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East Africa, although the extent to which this is due to its nutritional qualities is uncertain” (Brooks and Johnson-Beebout 2012, 88). Ghana experienced an accelerated widespread adoption of QPM after it was introduced in 1989; the variety Obatumpa, developed in 1992, has since been widely grown in many African countries and has led the way to the “distribution of the new generation of maize, in what is likely to become a world-wide effort to promote the role of maize as humankind’s principal food” (McCann 2007, 53). The actual marketability of QPM maize in Ethiopia and its actual rate of adoption among farmers—whether farmers are willing to pay more for quality protein maize over conventionally grown maize, and whether there is a rising consumer preference for QPM varieties—remain highly disputed issues that I am not qualified to discuss here in any depth. However, the story I recall of the NuME project retains value for what it tells of the mindset and dreams of certain developers for whom, in the words of J. C. McCann, “maize and grain has always been on their brains.”18 This particular project makes apparent the disconnection (or lack of co-management) between “experts” and farmers; it is indeed a story in which a certain form of science emerges that aims at developing policy by capturing the incentives provided by international donors and that in doing so sets certain research priorities (Scoones and Thompson 2011, 17). The case of QPM maize is only a small yet alarming chapter within “the overarching structures of professional science” that gained ground in the late 1940s and is marked by “the lack of interest in or attention to local knowledge and conditions” and by “the emergence of ‘experts’ trained more formally in the sciences of agriculture and medicine” (McCann 2007, 138). I had a full immersion into the twists and turns of this project when in March 2015 I attended its three-day “Annual Project Planning and Performance Review” held at the CIMMYT headquarters in Addis Ababa. Development agents, government officials, scientists, and representatives of seed companies were present. Experts debated how farmers still preferred old crops and crop varieties instead of “high-value maize that can be exported to other countries” because “they seldom take into consideration the market value and quantity of production.” Not one word was said about the socioeconomic context or the existing agricultural practices and culinary habits of the project sites where pilot studies were conducted. Among the dissemination strategies to persuade farmers of the value of maize in the plot and in the pot, a book in English but translated into different local languages was being developed in the spring of 2015. This training manual would include ten “traditional” Ethiopian recipes

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(such as maize porridge, injera, boiled maize, and the like) that could be created by replacing other grains (such as t’eff ) with maize. It was intended to collect the cumulative insights from field days and food demonstrations that had been held in several areas of the country, mostly in Amhara and Tigray, whereby farmers were encouraged to taste QPM-based dishes usually arranged in a buffet format. Women were said to be the ones who especially enjoyed these maize tasting sessions. “Now that we have created the demand for certain varieties,” one expert concluded in his PowerPoint presentation, “we need to produce and supply the seed.” The demand-and-supply conundrum appeared in fact throughout the workshop as one of the thorniest issues as seed producers are often reluctant to supply materials in the face of uncertain demand for new, unknown varieties. During the coffee break I had an informal conversation with the nutritionist who was in charge of conducting the training of women in the field. I asked about the reception of these maize varieties among farmers. She replied that “the dissemination of fortified varieties is difficult among the urban population, but incredibly easy in the countryside because the poor typically eat whatever they happen to cultivate.” I could not stay silent; the crux of the problem has since remained the same and still haunts me while writing down this story: “Have smallholders indeed chosen to grow what they wanted to grow?” She left without answering. I have evoked the chiaroscuro profile of the NuME case not as a stance against science in general, and not even against agricultural modernization as being inherently evil or perverted by corporate interests. On the contrary, I have raised the case to advocate a separation between good science—which should be hungry for knowledge from the ground up—and the (ab)use that certain actors make of it by failing to take into consideration all the factors that make up for the complexity of any specific agroecology. Some of those factors go beyond the industrial rationality that tries to frame the human-plant interactions purely in quantitative and factual terms. We have had an experience of these other neglected factors—of their strength in shaping local life and vision—in the garden.

Whose Crops? Certain agents of change may define African agriculture as a venture “without choice.” If so, and against the backdrop of my ethnographic experience, I ask: Who or what has contributed to the reduction of choice?

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An ethnographic counter to the high-modernist approach to agriculture draws attention to the fact that “the question throughout Africa is not just how to ensure that Africans produce more food (far less, how to get more food to Africa), but how to help ensure that people in Africa have the means to acquire food and other necessities by their own chosen means” (Messer and Shipton 2002, 240–41). Famines and food shortages are often the outcome of persistent vulnerabilities, resulting from historical processes that limit the options of households. Rather than being an episode or an ephemeral crisis, famine can be better understood as a sequential process that accelerates destitution of a society’s most vulnerable groups to the point where their livelihood systems become untenable (Baro and Deubel 2006, 522). People experience hunger in degrees or stages. Villagers in Sudan distinguish a “famine that kills” from a range of other food crises experienced at the household level that may cause hunger and destitution but do not necessarily lead to death (de Waal 2005). Acute food shortages are never just about food. Famines are about poverty and powerlessness (Shipton 1990, 356). Springing from a personal sense of responsibility to answer the frantic pleas of my host families to save their dying ensete, this long journey through gardens opens up to broader reflection. An interpretation of this story can be suggested that goes beyond the single case of ensete, or of ensete being replaced by maize in southern Ethiopia—one that may apply widely and rests upon another cogent question: Who is dictating the research agenda in developing countries, and which powerful others are patterning the perspectives of agriculture and of development at large? As with many other indigenous crops, ensete is not easily marketable and has low potential for being transformed into a ready-made commodity. This might account for the relative lack of research and investment in it—especially in times when the age-old advantages of ensete as a food-security crop are being rapidly dissipated by disease. If asked about the reason for the delay or neglect in finding a remedy to the ensete wilt, policy-makers would most likely state that ensete breeding programs are bulky and lengthy, calling for screening of tens of thousands of seedlings and often requiring up to ten years for an improved variety to reach the farmer. Some Hadiyya farmers, for their part, tread carefully but with determination in their suspicion that a long-term, unspoken calculation may lie behind the government’s prevarication toward their requests—whereby national authorities would ultimately attempt to shape their agricultural choices by promoting approved forms of eating, of market participation, and of sociality.

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Anthropologists working on hunger and food security in Africa, after long exposure to “expert” narratives of the kind we have explored so far, have offered an alternative hypothesis that is more in line with the farmer’s sentiment: “Agricultural and food-related interventions from Europe and North America have tended to focus on crops and animals of interest to people in those parts of the world. Maize (corn), wheat, and rice have received far more attention until recently than indigenous African staples like sorghum and millet, let alone cowpeas or cocoyams” (Messer and Shipton 2002, 238). Modern agricultural systems promote the cultivation of a very limited number of crop species. This selective attention has relegated most indigenous crops to the status of neglected and underutilized species. Staple foods of the wealthy world have undergone sophisticated breeding programs to improve their yields and the convenience of harvesting them. But poor countries often have other staples, and these have not usually been subject to such research interests, investment, and funding. And even though it might be possible to improve underutilized crops significantly through breeding and agronomic research, the question remains: Is there a collective will and focus to achieve this? There are scientists who hold views much more closely aligned to those expressed by farmers. In March 2015 I met Endashaw Bekele, professor of genetics at the Department of Biology at Addis Ababa University and a founding member of the Ethiopian Plant Genetic Resources Center (now Biodiversity Institute). Our conversation was inspirational. He described Ethiopia as the cradle of plant domestication and biodiversity, marked by an ecological variability that would indeed provide the ideal setting to test the resilience and performance of different crops and crop varieties. He had no hesitation in arguing that food security rests on diverse crops and, with them, on diverse cultures. “A limited number of crops and cultures will lead to biological and cultural extinction,” he said—a point that will certainly remind the reader of the Hadiyya strong belief that “life in the garden is like life at large: the creature who remains alone, and does not commingle, is doomed to pass away unrecorded.” Farmers are scientists and experiment like scientists. This is not diminished by the fact that they frequently use forms of experimentation other than those informed by Western standards; it rather means that their expertise is not available in written texts and is not purely measurable by numbers and metrics. Their knowledge of the land should rather be grasped by experts in alternative ways—for example, by observing and discussing with farmers on their farms while they plow, dig,

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make fences, prune, talk to trees, mourn a plant, or in any other performance of their crafts(wo)manship. Yet, in reality, the voice of marginal farmers rarely informs the debate. In this way, the “expert” view rarely reflects on what their inclination toward variety portfolios in their fields and home gardens may tell about the intricate relationship between biological and cultural diversity. High-profile research is allocated from external agencies to maize and other grains, not to indigenous cultivars. Agricultural research in the public sector has been declining over the years; thus, little investment has gone into developing crops for low-income families. With the national government incapable or unwilling to take direct responsibility for its own plant heritage, most of the funds for agricultural research come from outside the country. No funds would mean no research; and when substantial funds come in, sponsors have already determined where they should be steered: plants of their interest, which can bring back to donors some sort of reward—a glutenfree grain for the North American market, or starch to produce medicines, paper, glue, and fibers. Should local plants ever be targeted, that would be because of their medicinal or commercial value—not so much at home but abroad. How cynical, and devoid of intimate love for the richness of vegetal life, to realize that ensete may become appealing to funding entities only if framed and promoted in terms of biomass, biofuel, fibers, and other prospective (economic) values—not as food, not for the age-structured and gendered knowledge it has contributed in developing, not even for its resilience and adaptive value, and much less as an art of women or as a form of collective beauty. When it made its debut in Ethiopia, maize appealed to the poorer proportion of consumers, as well as holding an “attraction for ambitious governments enamored of large-scale projects” (McCann 2007, 205). Small farmers may initially experiment with new crops to make money, while relying upon other, familiar crops to feed the family. Some institutional subjects may foresee in this transition an opportunity to end people’s dependency on traditional forms of agriculture and diet, as well as a form of advancement in merging tiny, cluttered gardens into larger, efficient, and controllable fields. Grains would naturally become the dominant crop and the male farmer the champion in boosting modernity on the farm. There are historical cases of hunger becoming an opportunity for reordering the society. The autonomy of a food-secure farmer can be turned into the dependency of a poor farmer who cannot grow food nor buy it. Gardens can make way for cleared land. Direct parallels can be drawn between what is happening in Hadiyya with ensete and the scenario of one of the most

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archetypal of the famines that were recorded in European history: the potato blight and the Great Famine that struck Ireland in 1845–50. One priest reported that he had traveled from Cork to Dublin and seen the fields blooming luxuriantly; on his return, however, he “beheld with sorrow

one wide waste of putrefying vegetation. In many places the wretched people

were seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands and wailing bitterly the destruction that had left them foodless.” That fall, threequarters of the crops were destroyed. The price of food rose astronomically, and

in a few areas, food could hardly be found at all. Instead, people ate nettles and weeds, blackberries and roots, seaweed and limpets, dogs and rats. They boiled

cabbage leaves. They forced down the diseased and rotting potatoes. They ate carrion. They ate grass. They ate the hard unprocessed corn given out by the

British government, which one official noted was about as useful as a ration of sand. (Russell 2005, 224)

We know this narrative plot already, in every recurrent detail: the rapid decay of a once-luxuriant landscape, putrefaction of plants, and lack of cherished food replaced by cheap bunches of cabbage and unpalatable maize, or by eating in desperation whatever is left. Set in a different historical time and in a different place, we must nonetheless listen to the same story of agrarian change and hunger, hardship, and suffering at the borders. We still live in the same bizarre world where it is small farmers—paradoxically those self-sufficient and subsistenceoriented, and especially women farmers in their wrecked edible gardens—who first and always starve. The tragedy of the ensete flu is not only a tale about a particular form of science that commits (and dissipates) its own potential onto the global scale. Nor is it simply a tale that leads to the complaint that if scientists had solved the conundrum of this blight, ensete would have opened complex and unexplored solutions to hunger. But it is also and foremost a tale about the failures of science in being deaf to local traditions that are based on little or no divisiveness between nature and culture—and, eventually, of science remaining blind to beauty. I can still hear Bakkalech, sitting in front of me, with her usual composure and elegance made of few, well-considered words. She reflected on her sick ensete plants and wove the story back to the opening riddle of beauty: “Rural people love ensete because it is green all year round. It is not only food that our village has lost. It is indeed a major loss of beauty.”19

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After Fieldwork Since my last field visit in March 2015 Ethiopia has undergone profound political changes that will likely affect the identity politics through which local communities conceive of, and determine how to stage, their distinct histories and claims. The new prime minister Abiy Ahmed has established a fast pace of liberal reforms that span from human rights to free expression, through the release of thousands of political dissidents, the ending of the state of war with Eritrea, and the unprecedented appointment of women to half of ministerial posts. However, the same wind of change has not infiltrated the paradigm of agricultural development and economic policies at large, which continue to harness a productivist framework in both rhetoric and practice. The prime minister’s address to the 2019 World Economic Forum—spoken in technocratic language of removing red tape for business, strengthening the power of the private sector, and opening markets as a remedy to poverty and inequality—was applauded by global financial elites.20 While the urban middle-class base may strongly identify with these cosmopolitan aspirations of setting a path toward free-market capitalism and increasing the role of foreign investors, rural civil society risks once again being squeezed by the political oscillation between “development without democracy” and “democracy without development.” This institutional refurbished approach to the commodification of rural capital was made further apparent in August 2019, when the prime minister visited the agricultural commercialization wheat cluster of the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) in Arsi Zone (Oromia Region). The agricultural commercialization clusters (ACC) bring together groups of geographically adjacent farmers to cultivate high-value crops with the scope of increasing the production, productivity, and incomes of smallholders. What is only rarely reported, though, is that “in the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples’ Regional State (SNNPRS) of Ethiopia, home gardens are the prevalent land use system covering about 576,000 ha, which is 31% of the region’s cultivable land” (Mellisse et al. 2018, 1580). In a country where agriculture is dominated by small subsistence farms, a perplexing incongruity exists of why ensete and other players of the home gardening system remain marginal or absent in the policy debate on rural revitalization and welfare, or on sustainability of the food system. The promotion of big ideas for change and of large-scale projects, based on the classical parameters of yield increase and profitability, rests indeed in avoiding “subsistence thinking.”

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Although the appreciation of garden crops is impervious to agricultural policy, the interest in the role and function of ensete as a food crop, and even a more holistic appreciation of the ensete culture economy, is now growing especially in scientific literature.21 That same literature, however, confirms that still relatively little is known about the biology and ecology of ensete, the timeline of its domestication, or the reasons for which farmers maintain an exceptionally high number of varieties or use a myriad of vernacular names to identify its clones. Equally, a national assessment of areas of ensete diversity, as well as nationally and internationally secure germplasm collections, are lacking. So far little has been empirically evaluated of the consolidated cultural practices employed by farmers in, for example, ensete transplanting, rhizome preparation, treatments for pests and diseases, or the choice of companion plants to assist its growth (see Borrell et al. 2019). The ensete bacterial wilt disease is now acknowledged as the most threatening short-term obstacle to the ensete production system in the country, one that—along with urban expansion, the development of infrastructure, land constraints, and changing diets—is causing a shift from food to cash-crop production over time, at a different intensity in different areas. Work is in progress to develop ensete varieties that are resistant to bacterial wilt. In the meantime, disease outbreaks will still occur. But farmers and social scientists alike know that while certain things at the edges of the family farm are dramatically changing, other core components in the deep zones are more resiliently sustained and reproduced. The beating, subterranean heart of the farm—the ensete garden—has in fact not essentially changed over decades. While scholars debate and write about the rise and fall of ensete, and despite the vagaries of ethnographic fieldwork with its gaps in timing and knowledge, those farmers have probably already started replanting preserved cuttings with hope and in quiet anticipation. A quote from Carl Jung comes to mind as a potent revelation about perennial plants’ resistance and self-healing capacity: “What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.”

EPILOGUE

Abundant Futures A Perennial Plant’s Eye View Let those who work on farms, including vegetable gardens, produce more — E X C E R P T F RO M A T R A D I T I O N A L P O E T I C S O N G O F H A D I Y YA

T

that this book has pursued of the life and decline of a perennial plant has been guided by a theoretical interest in the concepts of food security, biocultural diversity, and sustainability. These topics have ramifications from ecology to agronomy, from economics to politics. However, instead of naming and discussing the different approaches to current environmental dilemmas and delving into their ideological tensions, my approach has been to tackle such broad questions by intersecting them with categories that have emerged from my original fieldwork. Theory remains grounded in the data I collected through human, and other-than-human, contact. I have therefore moved from cold theory to the warmth of ethnographic detail, specifically to sites of creativity that are vital to marginal players with their versatile knowledge: the household, the home garden, and the kitchen. These places served as the platform to detail the physiological and social life of the plant, but also to observe how traditional farmers’ knowledge unfolds in innovative rather than stagnant ways, as well as to focus on patterns of sociality pervaded by strong values and collective forms of labor and bonding. The categories of orphan crops, gendered knowledge, and beauty were intended to add H E E X P LO R AT I O N

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layers of local texture and flavor to the ongoing debate about contrasting visions of agricultural modernity and food futures. The human-plant ecology that I have described functions as a dense yet limited case study, one pregnant with possibilities and, at the same time, wrapped in prolonged engagement and persistent observation. I began from the assumption that subjectivity (rooted in experience and emotion) should be seen as a crucial and positive component of humanistic research and not rejected as unscientific. Another assumption was that the flow of life does not come to us—namely, social scientists and readers with different backgrounds as well as farmers— like a mathematical problem but more like a story. I opted for a certain kind of storytelling as a strategy to bridge different languages, traditions, and cosmologies, and to highlight how the case of ensete among the Hadiyya can speak powerfully to the sensitivity of a reader unaware of these particular characters. Someone may take the angle from which I have chosen to tell this story as an inherent bias of the anthropologist for the people and places she has chosen to immerse herself in, or as a mere regional prejudice. However, it is not. It is in fact a selective perspective of which I remain conscious and which I have made explicit since the prologue to this book, when the anthropologist (myself ) was discussed as one of the dramatis personae—not the hero, but still a spirited presence. By acknowledging what I have explored in depth and with enchantment, I have also acknowledged what I had to neglect or downplay, including other ancient and forgotten crops in Ethiopia and elsewhere; other relevant instances of sustainable and resistant agriculture within or outside the country; and other works of art, created from living substances and local inventiveness, scattered among farming communities worldwide. I have no doubt that an equally partial yet deep story could be written about a different plant, people, and place. But the truth is that I was indeed the ethnographer who received the gift of working, temporarily living, and eating in the ensete garden. So, a more productive question is rather this: What are the messages that this particular case study articulates and leaves to the reader as a durable legacy for further reflection and good practice? What is the contribution of this exploration of the ensete garden for anthropological theory and social science at large? Is there something that I achieved through intimate and collaborative ethnography that may also be significant in revising mainstream approaches to food policy? We can also frame the issue in more local and colorful terms, close to the participants’ perspective. In Ethiopia there is a common saying that, when an old person dies, it is comparable to a library being destroyed. What

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would then be lost in the case of an ancient plant, and mode of gardening, being destroyed? I will articulate the content of the messages from ensete into four ramifications: the value of subsistence; the role of women farmers; the idea and practice of beauty; and the sense of hope emanating from a simple garden. FIGURE 20. Chart at the end of the journey into the ensete garden.

Subsistence

Subsistence is a concept that brims with meaning for those who strive for it. For local communities selfsufficiency (and with it an orientation toward subsistence) does not necessarily imply the “irrational” retention of backward practices but rather a means of conservation of limited or ephemeral resources in more or less harsh environments. Most importantly, subsistence producers typically do not compartmentalize their lives as readily as policy-makers and implementers; on the contrary, they adopt, adapt, and live in agroecological perspectives that bring together humans and nonhumans, environment, science, politics, and farm. My priority here has been to make room for the value system of those particular farmers, their nostalgia for the past and imagination of the future, their work on the land, and their food. I gave farmers a voice whereby they frequently framed their performances not only in terms of production but also of social coherence, cultural values and attitudes, happiness, and interactions with the environment. Yet, in an epoch of aggressive commodity marketing on a global scale, the existence, let alone the value, of subsistence-oriented communities frequently goes unrecorded. Priority is given to those who move, geographically or metaphorically, within the interconnected and hybridized food landscape, while a resounding silence enshrouds those who, by choice or under duress, still hold to their places of origin, are not forced to change through migration or cultural disruption, and struggle to retain their familiar tastes and flavorings. The keen interest of certain communities in devoting at least a part of their farm to selfsufficient production—with some variable degree of commitment to production

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for profit or to nonagricultural activities—is hard to understand for people who live in societies where food production is separated from food consumption. However, it should be acknowledged that the long journey of food from farm to table is only a recent development in the history of humans. The agricultural policy agenda in Ethiopia has mainly focused on implementing a model based on conventional science, which aims at finding the “best” variety rather than encouraging diversity in the field. This particular version of science thinks simplistically in creating agricultural products able to function in artificially uniform environments while promoting common dietary standards at the global level. Modernity knocks at the door of small farmers in a combined package of food and development. Ethiopia is a case in point of this trend, which has been documented elsewhere in developing countries and celebrated by its advocates as a form of “enlightened capitalism” (Patel et al. 2015, 23; Scoones and Thompson 2011). In a similar vein, the bulk of development literature typically envisions a transition from mostly subsistence farming to high-value commercial farming. The broadly shared assumption is that subsistence is tantamount to poverty and, as a consequence, to a lack of success and empowerment of poor farmers who, therefore, require an integrated suite of services to grow cash crops and break out of subsistence production. This basic assumption goes hand in hand with one according to which collecting the multiple voices of farmers or understanding their rationale for crop and food choices will not contribute to strengthening food security. The case presented here suggests a contrasting idea: that farmers are indeed scientists of their own ecosystems, having acquired extensive knowledge of a small segment of the natural world through care and experience, through exploitation of different resources by mixing plants in ways that are advantageous, and by trading and sharing with neighboring communities. Increasingly other cases are documented in the literature of communities around the world who maintain minor crops and local cultivars despite the extensive dissemination of improved varieties; increasingly scholars investigate which ecological, social, and cultural requirements are likely to determine farmers’ preferences and selection criteria in their cropping strategies and food practices (Altieri et al. 2011; Di Falco et al. 2010). Well-designed programs may fail because of their incompatibility with the cultural context. The literature on development is riddled with examples of unintended consequences and failed adoption of technologies, all characterized by the indifference of implementers to the reality of the farmers and their own desires, or by the reluctance of

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institutions to assess the long-term impact of certain programs on individual households, the wider community, and the environment (Cafer et al. 2015, 70– 71; Messer and Shipton 2002, 240; Snyder and Cullen 2014, 24). The inclination of farmers toward variety rather than monocropping, in their fields and home gardens, offers a robust challenge to current paradigms of food aid and food security. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), an estimated 8.4 million people in Ethiopia will require humanitarian assistance in 2020.1 Ethiopia has traditionally been framed by the United Nations as being a hotspot where “hunger” is persistent and severe, and which can be used as a test case for the development of specific action plans. And yet Ethiopia is the same country where farmers who cultivate ensete are left without answers about the destiny of the plant. Where green and resilient instances such as ensete farming have not been promoted to meet present and future challenges of food security. Where farmers, specifically in subsistence agriculture, have not been granted the right to make decisions on what crops and cropping methods to have available. Those communities who have never been hungry are now starting to wait for food aid and subsidies from the government. The theory and practice of subsistence shakes a lethargic understanding of hunger. Who defines what hunger is?2 While the rhetoric used by the market and the nation-state overflows with a sense of urgency whenever they address issues of food security and healthy eating, ethnographic inquiry takes time to reveal that perceptions and attitudes toward food—and even hunger—are much more than an expression of nutritional deprivation (Edkins 2000; Lappé et al. 2013; Messer and Shipton 2002; Shipton 1990). Anthropological research has demonstrated that hunger is locally defined not so much by the absence of food in general but of certain specific foodstuffs that are highly valued in ritual and everyday life and highly cherished insofar as they are the result of reciprocity and exchange or relate to life enhancement. Not everything edible is considered food, and certain substances might be considered inedible because of their social nature. In times of hunger, as well as in ordinary times, people focus less on actual starvation than on cultural survival (De Boeck 1994, 265–67; A. Richards [1930] 1995, 47). The case of Hadiyya shows how the food system works in times of crisis, with people living through periods of hunger. The social and “selective” hunger of Hadiyya farmers—for whom only ensete (and not maize) gives enough warmth, energy, sense of repletion, and culinary pleasure—indicates that a meaningful discussion of hunger cannot be restricted to what adequate food is, or to the virtues and promises of food

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variety. Who and what is to blame for hunger, politically and economically? When and how do people go hungry? Hunger cannot be isolated from the broader power relations, which in turn inform and sustain the agro-food system. Hunger can be the end product of the same political economy that aims at remedying hunger in the first place. Social hunger is the missing ingredient in the grand narrative of modernization and development. Better captured by the phrase “cultural food security,” social hunger can be defined as the claim of people to be able to achieve food security in ways that they consider personally dignifying, culturally acceptable, and socially fit to build a sense of collective and individual belonging. Belonging is central for cultural food security and for cultural renewal (Rocha and Simone Liberato 2013). For several groups in southwestern Ethiopia, ensete can be described as a cultural keystone species, an edible plant that plays a pivotal role in the cuisine and food culture of a society (Powell et al. 2015, 546). Until the intensification of the wilt disease, ensete for Hadiyya farmers in addition to being a delicious food also contained atmosphere, aroma, taste, the memory of their grandfathers, the garden, the family, and home. Through their overlapping discussions of the land, the soil, the weather, the plants, and the animals, Hadiyya farmers make a point about edible things not only being consumption objects but also mediating people’s perception of, and engagement with, the ideas of nature, technology, and progress. When Hadiyya farmers talk about the food of the past, the present, and the future, they express a culinary as well as a political voice—one that is articulated in implicit, secret codes that the ethnographer is responsible for translating. When they talk about ensete, its greenery and grace and taste, they talk about the fragility of subsistence. In their discourses about food scarcity they voice wider claims for social inclusion and representation in the national picture. For most of their interlocutors (politicians, bureaucrats, agricultural experts), small and subsistence-oriented farming is a form of life that exists only subliminally and that is destined to be squeezed into more efficient economic forms, or even shifted to food production for the market. The controversies about the value of subsistence disclose how competing foodways and notions of well-being flow into the vision of what nation and modernity should be. For these farmers, the seemingly naive act of caring about the ensete garden becomes a political and subversive statement indicating that beneath the Ethiopian national landscape still lies a Hadiyya one, along with possibly many other alternative agrarian spaces that have still to be mapped and fully appreciated.

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We need novelty in the ways we look at the black box of subsistence. Subsistence is indeed a realm where ideas of democracy, active citizenship, and cultural belonging, along with the relationship humans have with the natural world, intermingle. So, rather than dismiss the concept as being limited or overly romantic, we should rather reconsider the many nuances of subsistence as a repository of evergreen and avant-garde insights into the foreseeable future (see P. Richards 1993, 70). The message of ensete about subsistence leaves us a set of questions about the potential benefits of (apparently) simple choices: the benefits of eating less, if not of intermittent fasting; the benefits of a calorie-restricted diet that triggers survival modes and responses that may successfully build on sustainability in the long term; the benefits of constant vigilance, as consumers if not as producers of our own food, regarding the attempts by institutional subjects to establish new social and food orders of which people lack control and awareness.

Women Farmers Men and women express different attachments to certain plants because they live in somewhat different resource worlds; or, to put it another way, the nature known by women is quite different from that known by men (Pfeiffer and Butz 2005; Voeks 2007, 16). Distinctions between crops planted by men and those planted by women are oftentimes so clearly perceived to the extent that people believe that crops themselves have a gender. In several rural communities it has been found that there are some crops that only men can plant and tend, some that only women can plant and tend, and a third category that both men and women can cultivate (Carr 2008; Wencélius et al. 2016). This leads to a pattern of distinct gender contributions to the food economy that can be streamlined as follows. Men’s production requires large amounts of land, sometimes external labor and frequently purchased inputs and resources; it takes on lucrative cash crops and is mainly directed toward sale in the market. On the other side, women’s plots contain a smaller number of plants but overall a higher level of diversity; the quantities produced are low-volume but more varied and are oriented toward family consumption (Henshall Momsen 2007, 156; Pfeiffer and Butz 2005, 248–50; Sachs and Patel-Campillo 2014, 402). What is grown in home gardens is typically what local people prefer to eat and which forms part of their culinary tradition. Women act within the

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contours of subsistence, self-reliance, and self-sufficiency and are guided in their experimentation and selection praxis by a wide range of criteria, such as agroecological adaptation, “yield in the pot” (swelling capacity during cooking), “yield in the belly” (length of digestion time), taste, culinary uses, and postharvest characteristics. On the other hand, the knowledge, priorities, and needs of male farmers seem to be commanded by marketability, clearly quantifiable outputs, and productivity or “yield on the field” (Oakley and Henshall Momsen 2005, 203–5; Temudo 2011, 317). The case of ensete culture fills a deep hole in the available literature on gender in agriculture. In fact most sources focus on women who forage for and gather wild food plants, or cultivate fruits, vegetables, and condiments in home gardens. Women of the ensete belt manage not only “minor resources” (Howard 2003b, 3) but also and especially a major staple crop—and indeed an economically valuable one (Carney and Elias 2006, 247). The network of ensete gardens stands out in sharp contrast with widely accepted gender norms existing elsewhere in the country. It also barely fits into frameworks, recurrent in development discourse, that loudly advocate the strengthening of women’s socioeconomic position, gender equality, and empowerment. I would feel very awkward calling for women’s empowerment in places where women fiercely taught me about boxes of wonder and other subtle forms of power. The narratives I collected from Hadiyya women about marriage, reproduction, work, and domestic economy reveal their power beyond misperceived passivity. Women gain autonomy and prestige “on the field,” not in special moments, but through negotiation and by way of ordinary items like small pieces of land, and garden and animal produce. They are active and resourceful, albeit silent, agents. Gender inequalities are certainly implicated in processes leading to biological erosion and cultural loss (Howard 2003b, 2). But in certain cases, like with ensete, gender blindness lies first and foremost in governments that have focused on cereals and have constantly worked against promoting the production of root and tuber crops in places where people depend on these foods. Equally gender blind are research stations and seed companies that have maintained a bias against “poor (wo)man’s food” crops and have striven, on the contrary, to produce improved varieties only. In Ethiopia agricultural programs and policies have failed to accept the fact that people rely upon a range of cereal and noncereal crops to meet their physiological, mental, and cultural requirements. One of the women farmers I lived and worked with used to say that “with ensete twelve different foods can be prepared; one fermentation pit is enough for the family and is better than all the cereals you can store in the barn.” Ignoring this

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reliance upon and affection for the perennial plant represents a serious weakness in general, and specifically a refusal to recognize the structural importance of women farmers’ contribution to subsistence, food security, and the resilience of the whole agroecosystem (Ferguson 1994; Howard 2003a). Research on home gardens as spaces distinct from, yet strictly connected to, open fields allows the researcher to specifically capture the point of view of women farmers. They are skilled and flexible in their gardening strategies. They exert influence over the micro food production system. They play a unique role in solving food problems. They create meaningful and playful landscapes, filled with jokes and laughter. At the same time, their values, priorities, and needs challenge wide-ranging discourses that are enforced socially and politically, both in agriculture and in development programs. The point of view of the women farmers we have met in the ensete garden goes beyond the economic (calculable) to contemplate the social dimensions of food systems (such as taste, experience, coherence, and equality). Policy prescriptions currently being crafted increasingly rely on quantifiable metrics (Ilcan and Phillips 2003). I have argued, however, that much of what makes these communities distinct is not purely measurable by numbers. The message from ensete about women farmers is one that calls for attention to the many unnamed women, living and working in communities all over the world, who are expert and inventive cooks, who produce knowledge, forge relationships, and actively contribute to food production and culinary delight. These women do not need to be rescued or empowered, but to be sustained in their quiet and unspectacular revolutions. For policy-makers, it is a matter of valuing the potential of regional variations embedded in local production and of patiently reading through the social, economic, and nutritional characteristics of forgotten crops. For the reader, it is a message about learning to think slow and small. Slow down the pace, and you will feel the artistic, unquantifiable touch of women in the garden and in the kitchen. Eat a chunk of ensete bread, and you will realize that it smells of a particular woman’s personal engagement in production, the environmental diversity of her plot or garden, and the social climate surrounding her working and affective relationships.

Beauty Developing a narrative, and nurturing an imagination, of beauty in the places of my ethnography is indeed an act of appreciation for the complexity of life in family farming. No Arcadian myths of a golden age should be evoked for

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traditional family farms that have often been, and remain, places of hardship and suffering. The ensete plant has an inherent retentive power over people—it makes them stay and wait several months and years before they can harvest the fruits of their own labor. Some of them, especially the young, feel imprisoned rather than skilled or rewarded by the plant within this extremely delayed return system. The romance of such ways of life is tainted by the realistic recognition of pain and stagnation. Yet, from the beginning to the end of my dialogue with Hadiyya people, a certain perception of beauty was always recalled—during times of plenty and of scarcity, while mourning a dead plant or breaking ensete bread. Laughing at hardship was their way of sharing a general vision of life as being inevitably hard and, at the same time, beautiful. Work is hard, but it shapes the poise and thinness of the body. People are proud of the strength and expertise they develop through working on the farm, and they laugh at the fatness of the others as if it were an admission of moral weakness. In local ethics and aesthetics, cravings or instinctive desires are a reversal of the usual composure that a good person should express. Emptying out and cleaning the stomach periodically are synonyms for well-being, purity, and physical-moral strength; accordingly, food should be handled, in everyday life, with rationality. In ensete-cultivating areas an ethics of self-control prevails in the way people settle conflicts, express emotions, or eat. Work is hard, but it brings both family and community together in planning, planting, and harvesting, with genders and generations entering into one another’s lives. Managing agricultural tasks requires an effort that becomes purpose; work, therefore, is also a good thing. The farming year sees fluctuations toward less food, to which people adjust with a sense of calm. Limited and restrained needs may indeed be the secret ingredient that renders the anticipated festivals and food celebrations, sometimes punctuated by exaggerated food behaviors, more tasteful. Work is hard, but it produces a landscape that people find rewarding to witness and live in, where the economic return is inseparable from acts of crafts(wo) manship and care for living things. There is a risk of misplaced nostalgia in discussing beauty; however, in this book I have chosen the trope of beauty (from the farmer’s point of view) to display the cultural role of beauty at large. When I was halfway through the writing of the book, and still uncertain about the validity of an aesthetic approach to the subject, someone brought to my attention the work of an Ethiopian artist, Elizabeth H. Wold, by giving me

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the catalogue of the exhibition she had held at the Modern Art Museum of Addis Ababa in the spring of 2017.3 The exhibition sought inspiration from an indigenous plant through which concepts of memory, femininity, production of knowledge, and nature are raised in layers—mimicking the layered structure of the plant itself. This search was intended to explore the meaning, particularly for an Ethiopian woman, of sustaining herself and being independent. Not surprisingly, that plant was ensete. Its fibrous leaves, stems, and stalks are transformed by women into objects that are functional and beautiful. Women do so by developing a habit of work and perfection, which for them is also a matter of pride and selfworth. The lines between art and artifact become blurred. Art lives in kitchens and households, in everyday objects and motifs, not only in the museum. In an animation work presented at the exhibition, water drops spill inversely and come back to the leaf. For the artist, this form of contemplation started with the lotus leaf. In her words: This leaf has the ability to naturally cleanse herself. Through this leaf, I saw the

rain droplets fall on the surface of the leaf. Instead of droplets dropping onto

the leaf, I saw the ball-like structure of the droplet roll across the leaf. Back and forth, left and right, the wind and gravitational forces often changing its form

of movement. And through this motion, all the dirt in the leaf cascades onto

the ground. I got excited from watching this passage of motion. For a brief moment, I wanted to be the leaf, to share her destiny [ . . . ]. I saw the green and dry leaves of the koba [ensete], simultaneously and gracefully seated on the trunk from my studio window. I saw it in the present. I thought of the wisdom of the lotus leaf. And I began to work.4

The artist deconstructs and reconstructs ensete into its primary elements— its malleable shape, changing color, calm rhythm, intricate patterns and textures. Ensete is used and thought of as living art. From her insatiable query, ensete emerges as a living being that, even after decomposition, is capable of pointing to a green path of hope and becoming. My work involved the gathering, touching, stirring, untangling, tangling, peel-

ing, tearing and organizing of the dry trunk of the ensete. As I did this, I heard strange sounds emerging from the shredding and joining of the plant. Sounds

like “hay” and “ho” that abruptly appeared and dissolved from the plant mes-

merized me. I came to see and hear what I have never heard and seen. I felt its

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physicality and its coarseness, simultaneously with its suaveness. It stunned me

as it bemused me. There is nothing that you throw out from ensete. Everything is used and reused; the sound “ho” can mean food and “hay” can mean presence and survival, “ho” can again be a house machine and a bed.

I ideally align my written work to the art of Elizabeth H. Wold—being experiments with the plant through different media, both of which claim a radical departure. As Westerners, perhaps we need to diversify our narratives about the future, to challenge singular and narrow visions of it that are “so easily captured by elite forms of expertise and business interests” (Scoones and Thompson 2011, 17). Ensete was the medium of my own personal commitment to, and vision of, the subverting power of green beauty.

Hope Neither Hadiyya farmers nor I can make any clear prediction about the destiny of ensete—whether it will be restored to its original predominant role or it will learn to thrive side by side with maize or it will die and fade away from collective memory. As is the case with other rhizomatic or tuber plants whose food material is stored underground, and even though it is greatly prized by local producers and consumers, it is likely that ensete will not be able to compete in the long run with cereals and other less labor-intensive crops. In the past the trend was that of grain being more suitable than ensete for delivery to the king’s court. Now the king is the global market. In many regions of Africa, agriculture is rapidly marching to become part of global trends in commodity production, which in turn requires reliable and timely delivery to developed world markets. Overall investment has increasingly included international stakeholders in national and regional efforts to change the focus of agriculture from local farming cultures toward commodity production and exports. Alternative agricultural initiatives are absorbed into corporate institutions, both materially and symbolically; the pace of this shift is faster than any attempt to document such alternatives through labor and time-intensive studies. Yet, at present, “Africa has approximately 33 million small farms, representing 80% of all farms in the region. The majority of African farmers (many of them women) are smallholders, with two thirds of all farms below 2 ha and 90% of farms below 10 ha. Most small farmers practice ‘low-resource’

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agriculture producing the majority of grains, almost all root, tuber and plantain crops, and the majority of legumes consumed in the region” (Altieri et al. 2011, 3; cf. Scoones and Thompson 2011, 1). Now more than ever—in a context where rural peripheries are either structurally exploited or are becoming irrelevant—there is a need for new scholarship to develop a strong appetite for collecting empirical evidence and conducting collaborative work with African producers and consumers. The local can contain surprises and inspire new paths of research. Information and insights at the local scale are required to document and support the determination of certain communities to maintain their particular way of relating to place and their ideas of the human in relation to the environment. From this perspective, the last remaining gardens may contain a creative opportunity for, and a message of, regeneration. Home gardens and ordinary kitchens are the grounds where African people have prepared, preserved, cooked, and continuously experimented with crops, crop varieties, and foods. A focus on such interstitial spaces can be a revolutionary move in enhancing our understanding of what a single plant can teach us about belonging and living. The land where ensete is cultivated counts today as one of the most valuable farming areas of Ethiopia. The ensete gardens not only meet particular agricultural needs but also have historical value, for they have been continuously managed for decades or even centuries. In and around an entity like the ensete garden it becomes apparent that resources are limited and should be used by humans with awareness and flexibility. In the circular exchange of plant, animal, and human resources that takes place in a simple garden, nothing is wasted. A set of practices, rich with knowledge, has developed around ensete that are worth recollecting, not just for their “traditional value,” but also because they reveal in the present how certain methods of horticulture can indeed be ecologically appropriate and highly productive. In the ensete garden, the degradation of natural environments is as much an aesthetic as a moral concern. If nature is allowed, it re-creates and replenishes itself. But there are limits to natural regeneration; in the world’s oceans and lakes those limits are usually called “dead zones” and refer to low-oxygen areas. There is not yet an equally univocal phrase to capture what a dead zone on land could be. From the vantage point of a small garden, the future looks very much like an environmental fact. The challenge is to find and follow traces of hope in already blasted landscapes (Kirksey et al. 2013). For all the bounty of information and clues to resilience and sustainability it contains, there is nothing straightforward about a simple, edible, and beautiful

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garden. Farming systems incorporating perennials are complex and may contain “seeds of another agricultural revolution,” with Africa being “the region that could most use the promise of perennial polycultures” as “there are many elements already in place to make that promise a reality. Only lacking is greater recognition of the role that perennials could play and the will to include them in the future of agriculture” (Dewar 2007, 29). The characteristic of perenniality has been neglected compared to selection for yield, and perennial agriculture has progressively become an orphan concept in current agricultural research. I wanted this book to speak on behalf of a perennial plant. Beyond public powers and grand landscape designs, against the possibility of extinction, and despite its own decomposition, this plant whispers a message of hope. It is not a hope that the past can be simplistically restored; rather, it is a hope that the future can be reseeded in an original form. Ensete whispers that erosion and loss of beauty can be resisted and continue to be challenged by localized responses. What is striking but often glossed over is that, wherever they were and in what-

ever circumstances they found themselves, the farmers had held on to some of

their seeds and seed exchange networks in the face of agricultural extension, expanding markets, civil strife, and natural disasters. Although, for the most

part, they welcomed external assistance, they had their own cultural and biological reserves to draw from. From our point of view, the greatest tragedy would be

to wipe out all the tracks—all pockets of diversity, and trails of memory—that enable people to get back in place (Nazarea et al. 2013, 5).

The landscape of ensete functions in this regard like a “dreamscape”; it helps cultivate an imagination of novel possibilities other than “development.” Finding hope in fact requires humans to be conservationists more than developers. To feel committed to save old-grown ecologies and allow people and plants to pass their wisdom onto the next generation of young humans and trees. To reinforce, rather than simplify, the diversity of a forest or a home garden. As instances of complex systems, both forests and home gardens have enormous capacity to self-heal and to recover rapidly. It is the force of life and strength of primary forms—the beauty of simple things—that Adanech wanted to conjure up in the purest image of seeding. Here are her words, which become the closing I have chosen for this book: not a prediction, not a recommendation, but a figure of hope in living form. An abundant future may well lie in the potential for small actions.

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Sire’e indicates both seed and sperm, the lifeblood of humans and crops. It all

begins from the simplest element. It is like the baskets you saw me weaving: you cannot use tools, you simply braid grass and straw and fibers with your

hands. It all begins from the one and the simple. The same happens with the most internal and softest part of the ensete plant. We cut the heart of the plant in little pieces; we dig a hole in the ground and add manure; we wrap those

little pieces in ensete leaves and let them ferment for a few days; then we move

those fermented pieces deep into the hole and cover them carefully. After three months, you will see over a hundred seedlings popping up from there. It was

one before, then it multiplies. The same happens with sorghum and other plants. The same happens to humans. It all begins from simple things.5

FIGURE 21.

Adanech braiding grass. Photograph by the author.

HADIY YA GLOSSARY

AANCH’A ABUULL–(VERB) ABUULLA ABUULLANCHO AD’ BOOSA AD’ BUURO AD’ GIMMISHIMMA AD’ WIJJO ADO AGHISSONNA ALOOYYA ANGA ANGEJJA ANGO’O ANTABA’A ARASA ARGUCHO ATAKANA

BAADO BAAK’ELA BAGADO

ensete fibers plow farm farmer pot to shake milk fresh, white butter the act of shaking milk sharing milk “drinking a lot of milk” bacterial disease of the ensete plant hand participation aid chickens wheat rooster special ensete porridge, the iconic dish in Hadiyya culture revenge beans spear

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BARBARO’O BARE BATANO BITT’IRA BOBA BOKK’OLLA (AMHARIC) BONK’A

BORODIMMA BU’O

BURAMMO BUSHAALLA BUT’ICCHO BUUR’ WIJJO BUYA CHAAJITE CHUMA CURS DAANNUWWA DABAAK’ULA DANAAMO DARBA’A

DAWWA DI’RA DINNICCHA DUUBAANA DUUBBO ENJA ENJAM BUURO FANDAANO FEER–(VERB) FEERO FEERO’O FELLA’A FIIJJA

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mixture of hot spices pit for ensete artisans traditional large clay plate bad smell maize inner, whiter part of the ensete bread (by extension, good/well prepared) belief/veneration the whiter and more refined part of ensete fermented pulp pit for special ensete cheap low-income farmers sharing butter ensete leaves to wrap ensete bread talk to each other intestine small food (mainly served with coffee) traditional judges pumpkin beautiful/good/nice pastoralist (“wandering with cattle through grassland”) communal labor fat potatoes plant whose fruit is edible garden spices spiced butter traditional religion collect for oneself buttock a place behind a house goats plant

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FIIJJO’O FIITA FOSHA FUGA’A GAMAAMA GANNICCHO GEJA GHEEJA GHERECHO GHIIRA GI’IINA GITANNA GITE’E GODABO GODD–(VERB) GODDAANCHO GOGAALLA GONGA /ANEGAKA HA’MICCHO ’

HADI IJJI MANNA HALLICCHO HANAK’ALA HOFE HUK MINE HURBAATA IIBBADO IRANNA JIBBA JORA K’ADAAL’ MECHO K’ADAALLA K’AK’UULLA K’ALIMA

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215

seedling flower smell potters yeast made of ensete horse working group (“giving someone a hand”) thick sheep fire yogurt hero chickpeas stomach/belly be rich high-income farmers tough/dry tools for chopping (ensete pulp and vegetables) edible part of the ensete corm Hadiyya people donkey roasted barley mixed with butter dried leaves of ensete grass house food/meal/crop fresh milk woman who has just given birth ensete mat bad/ugly/aggressive/unpleasant inner, whiter part of the ensete plant white unripe/not well cooked fruit of ensete that indicates the plant’s final stage of growth medicinal plants foolish wise/clever

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K’OT’ARA K’OTT’AALLA K’UUNK’A KACHAALLA KARARALLA KASHAR WEESA KASHARA KEMAMA KIIRIMMA KORA KORA HURBAATA KORANA KOROSHO’O KURT LARO LEALLA LEMBEANCHO LOMMANNA MAARA MANNA MEENTO MEERA MIK’E MIRGO’O MISHA MISHIRA MUK’UREEDA MUL’HURBAAT’ISSA MURO OCCHO

OJGOTA QORICHA SAAYYA SALALO SEERA SETA MOSA SETANCHO /HABUSICHO

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strong/courageous hard eggs weak/soft sour red ensete plant red herbs traditional religious pratictioners simple simple food clay pot used for melting butter cereal bread raw meat (small bites) cattle cooked mid-income farmers old people meat men women market bone/marrow oxen fruit/seed/product/result lentils cooking stick major meals kidney traditional jug made of grass and used for churning milk pot to boil milk wooden containers (for transportation) cows cottage cheese “regulation/law” (self-help local institution) food that women eat to recover strength powerful local spirits

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SHAANA

SHANO’O SHEET’AANA SHIMO SHISHALLA SHONKOORA SHUKKAARA DINNITCHA SIBAAR–(VERB) SIBAARO SIRE’E SO’O SOKIDAMO SOOMMANO SULSO SUNKURTA SUUT’O T’AAFE’E T’IIGA T’UMMA T’UMMATO TE’AALLA TE’ALLA TE’NNA TE’OHANNE TIMAATIMA TUMA UGGAATA WAA’A WAASA WECHETA WEESA WIJJO WUBETA

217

Ethiopian collard greens (Brassica oleracea var. acephala) green Satan/evil spirit boiled wheat with beans or chickpeas bitter sugarcane sweet potatoes be hungry hunger seed barley salty fasting raw meat (minced) onion Hagenia abyssinica (Bruce) J.F. Gmel. t’eff blood peace greetings expensive/delicious sweet taste it tastes good tomatoes garlic buttermilk God ensete fermented pulp (also ensete bread) traditional pot filled up with butter ensete plant sharing system ritual bath of the woman after childbirth

NOTES

Prologue 1.

2. 3.

Among the major protagonists of this debate, the first who triggered a critical reflection on the anthropocentric nature of the Western modernist thought are P. Descola, B. Latour, T. Ingold, and E. Viveiros de Castro. The radical rethinking of human exceptionalism has since been brought forward by scholars such as D. Haraway, J. Hartigan, S. Helmreich, E. Kirksey, E. Kohn, D. Bird Rose, A. Tsing, T. van Dooren, and many others. For the same kind of dilemma, and another instance of making “a case for the continued relevance of anthropocentric analysis” in tackling long-term human-plant connections, see Archambault (2016, 248). This overt focus on peripheral actors, and the honesty in my data, might be of benefit in fostering a dialogue between perspectives, especially if we consider that the more numerous elite-centered accounts only rarely state their high-profile angle (Vaughan and Tronvoll 2003, 24).

Chapter 1 1. 2.

The semantic area of daannomma indicates someone who is responsible and/or generous. C. Geertz recounts to have witnessed, with his wife, a cockfight in Bali. Being a highly popular yet illegal practice, the sudden appearance of the police caused everyone attending it, including the Geertz couple, to run away at breakneck speed. They ended up following another fugitive, entering his family compound, rapidly

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7. 8. 9.

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sitting at a table hastily arranged for the farce, and pretending to have sipped tea and discussed things for the whole afternoon. After weeks of observation during which the residents of the village ignored him and his wife, this act of solidarity opened to the “intruders” the doors to the community. Choral conversation held on October 5, 2005. Conversation held on March 6, 2009. The event took place early in the morning on March 11, 2009. Mäsqäl is the festival that marks the beginning of the new year according to the calendar of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The return to lively human activity after the rains, with a note on the origin of the festival’s name, is reported by W. A. Shack for the neighboring Gurage society: “According to tradition, the cycle from wet to dry is not fully complete until the mäsqäl flower (Coreopsis negriana) blooms across the plateau. Symbolically, the flowering of the mäsqäl marks the end of the rains; it coincides with the beginning of a new year in the Gurage calendar, the first month being Yədar (September), and it sets in motion a new cycle of social and economic events” (1966, 33). Ilillaato in Hadiyya. The so-called ululation is made by women as a sign of joy or congratulation for a pleasant event, during formal or informal ceremonies, and sometimes to help tone down loud quarrels. Sphaeranthus nubicus is commonly found in fields, but it is also cultivated in gardens. Its flowers are pale red. Over the years I have started collecting the ethnobotanical profiles of local species and compiling a list of each with both their scientific and their vernacular names. However, the process is made difficult by the strong belief of practitioners that disclosing the name of medicinal plants would compromise the efficacy of the medicine. The names of such plants, and where they can be found, are usually kept secret. It is worth noting that the term secret originates from the Latin secretum (“secreted”) and later succus (“juice”). In Medieval and Renaissance Europe it was in fact by squeezing the roots and leaves of certain medicinal plants that pigments could be extracted and used by alchemists and amanuenses to write about botany and pharmacopeia; this body of knowledge would be transmitted to restricted circles only. Artemisia sp. L. compositae (wormwood). An aromatic, gray, silky-hairy plant with pale flower heads. It is a small shrub growing abundantly around almost every dwelling. Given its fragrance, it is used both as a local perfume and as insecticide. “Women use the crushed leaves as a perfume. A small sachet is made from false banana [ensete] fibers, and then crushed upper leaves of the ariti [Amharic name] are tied into the small container. These sachets are placed under the beds or concealed in the women’s clothing” (Siegenthaler 1971, 5). The juice of crushed leaves can be mixed with water, or the fresh leaves can be chewed in order to relieve stomach pain. The name “artemisia” is derived from Artemis, the goddess who helped women during childbirth. This is indeed a quite paradoxical assumption, considering where the “flower” name comes from: “It appears in English c. 1200 with several variations: flour, flur, flor,

NOTES TO PAG ES 3 7– 4 5

12.

13. 14.

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floer, floyer, flowre, taken from the old French flour, which was itself derived from Latin flos. In English, the word flower was actually separated from flour only in the fourteenth century” (Dodinet 2016, 155). Until the 1970s the Hadiyya practiced a traditional ceremony of name bestowal. The ceremony used to take place every year, and in addition to bestowing bynames, young girls and boys were trained for future married life. The bestowal of these unofficial names was performed in the spring when grain is abundant and the fields are green. However, the majority of the people who have taken part in my research do not bear typical Hadiyya but rather Amharic-based names. Since the advent of Christianity in the region in the 1930s, biblical names have also become common. The entry on aesthetic thought in The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought highlights that good and beauty are traditionally interchangeable concepts in a unifying model whereby the same flow of vital energy saturates spirits and ancestors, animals and plants, as well as inanimate objects. Outward beauty is not considered beauty at all if lacking an intimate conjunction with the underflowing, pervasive life force. Beauty must have substance, meaning, ethos, and function. Several proverbs point to this multilayered conceptualization: “The Nande of the Kivu region of Congo say vuvuya vunahera—‘outward beauty is ephemeral’; ovuvuya si mutima— ‘beauty is not the heart’ [ . . . ]. The Kundu of Cameroon say that ‘beauty is an empty calabash’ [ . . . ]. Aesthetic beauty is linked to morality among the Yoruba. They believe that the highest form of beauty or ewa in humans is a good moral character, or iwa rere. The preference for a beauty or ewa that is moral or inner is reflected in the Yoruba aphorism, Iwa l’ewa, meaning ‘good moral character is beauty’” (Abiola and Jeyifo 2010, 19).

Chapter 2 1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

Frantic statements of this nature equally characterize the discourses surrounding progress, boredom, and migration of unemployed young men in Jimma, southwestern Ethiopia (Mains 2007, 669). In this context the rise of the U.S. Diversity Visa (DV) Lottery should be understood as a means of experiencing change or progress. In administrative documents this biblical name has replaced the former one, Waachamo, which is nonetheless extensively used by locals. Waachamo means “surplus wealth.” Conversation held on November 14, 2005. Hot-spice blend made of chilies, shallots, garlic, ginger, and other condiments (such as fenugreek, cardamom, black cumin, fennel, and coriander) that may be combined in various proportions. Injera is the thin, round, spongy flatbread prepared by fermenting batter made from t’eff flour and cooking it on a griddle. It originates from the North but nowadays is widespread throughout the country.

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See Government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, National Nutrition Programme 2013–2015, accessed April 26, 2020, https://extranet.who .int/nutrition/gina/sites/default/files/ETH%202013%20National%20Nutrition %20Programme.pdf. H. Smeds provides a rich collection of other travelers’ accounts (1955, 3–5). Harris, the English ambassador to King Sahle Selassie of Shoa, wrote in the 1840s on the ensete: “Towering above the enclosures of the lofty villages [it] imparts an aspect not properly belonging to the landscape, and strangely contrasting with many alpine associates.” The Italian explorer Barbieri crossed the Gurage area at the end of the nineteenth century and wrote: “Questa pianta è una vera manna pei Guraghi: collo ’Nsete si fa il pane, la radice lessa é superiore alla nostra patata e le fibre delle foglie, dopo spogliate dalla cellulosa (mi pare), servono per farne corde, stuoje, sacchi, ecc.” Another Italian, passing through the same area in the same period, wrote: “Ci trovammo nell’ultimo lembo del paese dei Guraghi, popolo industre e intelligente. S’incontravano di quando in quando grandi boschi di Musa ’Nsete, disposti a filoni, coi viali puliti, con una graziosa casina nel centro del bosco [ . . . ]. Pare il soggiorno della pace! Ogni casa ha il suo orto ove si coltiva tabacco, cavoli, una specie di patata e poi sempre splendidi boschi di Muse.” H. Scott visited the country twice in 1926–27 and 1948–49, and he described his encounter with ensete as follows: “After the bleak landscapes of central Shoa, and the monotony of the acacia-bush, the immediate surroundings of Soddo looked very beautiful. The close cultivation, the hedges of euphorbia round enclosures near the town, and the plantations of enseté-trees (Ensete edulis), with the hot bright sunshine glinting from their burnished leaves in the crystal-clear atmosphere between the October thunderstorms, all contributed to an impression of richness and fertility.” The taste of ensete and the opposite reactions it fuels may remind the reader of other paradoxical foods across cultures—such as the foul-smelling durian, stinky tofu, certain canned fermented fish, or sour-milk cheese. The special issue of Food, Culture & Society (2017) entitled Less Palatable, Still Valuable: Taste, Agrobiodiversity, and Culinary Heritage collects case studies of people across the world who commit themselves to cultivating and eating food plants that are perceived to be socioculturally and affectively important, even if the resulting taste on the plate may be described as bland, monotonous, or unappealing. It is also worth noting that ensete has, over the centuries, inspired such a wonder in foreign explorers and travelers that in 1853 it was finally brought to Europe and has, since then, spread over a large part of the world as a popular ornamental plant (Smeds 1955, 15). The largest open-air market in Addis Ababa and, by some tour-guide accounts, the biggest in Africa. Conversation held on October 19, 2005.

NOTES TO PAG ES 5 1– 5 9

12. 13. 14.

15.

16.

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Khat: Catha edulis Forssk. celastraceae, a mild stimulant widely grown as a cash crop and consumed especially by Muslims and increasingly by young men throughout urban Ethiopia who habitually chew its young, tender shoots. The same attitude was reported for Wolayta: “Temporary or oscillatory migration, which is what we have here (and in Kambata as well), is not an escape from ensete agriculture but rather a means of reinforcing it” (Rahmato 1995, 36). The Hadiyya history can be read at many levels as a symbiosis of autochthonous African elements with a thin substratum of Muslim Arab influences. Fandaano refers to their traditional way of life and in particular to a syncretistic religion characterized by a supreme being called Waa’a, the ritual observation of fasting times (soommano), and possession cults (Braukämper and Mishago 1999, 26–29). Votive gifts placed at holy trees were common until recently. From a chromatic perspective, it is worth recalling that the Hadiyya fondness for greenery may as well be rooted in the same background—for the Islamic paradise is believed to be green, not sky blue as in the Christian belief system. Pentecostal and charismatic movements are on the rise in Ethiopia and account for much of the explosive Protestant growth in this predominantly Orthodox country. Such transnational networks pose new challenges to the nation-state, which has traditionally held the exclusive over those material and immaterial resources—such as exposure to the global world, public identity, education, progress, prosperity, and renewal—that are so important in African societies. Pentecostal movements are increasingly exploiting African faith markets by competing with the nation-state and offering alternative routes to modernity, as well as medical services and educational opportunities for those who convert to their religion. Scholars have not hesitated to define the political situation as it has been experienced in Hadiyya in terms of repression and widespread suffering. At the elections of 2000 the vote of the Hadiyya electorate went to the opposition party (HNDO, Hadiyya National Democratic Organization). The event was enthusiastically greeted by foreign observers as a turning point in the democratization process in Ethiopia: for the first time since 1991, and only in this area, a nonaligned party challenged the Tigrayan hegemony (EPRDF), which was confirmed in other parts of the country by violence and unveiled intimidations. The post-election repression ended in a bloodbath of the Hadiyya. In rural areas increased supervisory control was entrusted to public officers and was exercised through blackmail and pressure that aimed at having tangible effects on farmers’ lives—for example, by threatening that they would lose access to fertilizer, credit, or other agricultural services if they voted for an opposition party. After the reaction against the ruling party, through acts of head-on public resistance, the Hadiyya were punished with imprisonment and reprisals. The situation has suffered further regression since the controversial elections of May 2005 (Pausewang 2002; Tronvoll 2002).

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At the time of this conversation Meles Zenawi (1955–2012) was Ethiopia’s prime minister. From 1985, he was the chairman of the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF) and the head of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Since 1991, Meles presided over the consolidation of state power and regional influence, often by force. A professor of biology at Addis Ababa University, Beyene Petros has been a major opposition political figure since 1995. Leader of the Hadiyya Nation Democratic Organization (HNDO), one of the many ethnic groups opposed to the EPRDF, he is currently serving as chairman for the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Forum (Medrek). Conversation with a woman, whose name I shall keep secret, while sitting in her ensete garden on January 23, 2007.

Chapter 3 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Choral conversation held on October 26, 2005. In Hadiyya the corm (ha’miccho) of the red ensete plant (kashar weesa) is given to oxen when they have a retained placenta. Wodetu, the oldest midwife in the village, added that pregnant women must carefully avoid eating any part of the red ensete plant unless they are intentionally aiming at abortion. In addition to its curative value, a red ensete plant placed at the edges of the garden is believed to act as a shield against bad influences. Red ensete is rare and considered a completely different plant from regular ensete. It does not propagate by stem cuttings and thus cannot be reproduced easily. Anyone who happens to have one of these plants in the garden is usually not keen on sharing its substances with other farmers. “This method of propagation is old, described already by the Portuguese travelers of the sixteenth century” (Smeds 1955, 20). In Hadiyya the local names to identify the different ensete transplanting stages are dubo (first stage), simma (second stage), ero (third stage), and waasa (fourth stage, which corresponds to the permanent position in the garden). For a comparison with the stages of growth of ensete in Kafa, see A. Orent (1979, 191). The broad category laro is comprised of saayya (cows) and mirgo’o (oxen). Conversation held on February 14, 2014. Apocryphal story that circulates especially in Gurage communities, both at home and in the diaspora. Conversation held on January 18, 2006. Conversation held on November 26, 2005. Conversation held on March 16, 2009. The belief that certain natural elements act as collectors of supernatural energy is still prevalent. Evil spirits are thought to lurk in rivers and trees. Standing in close

NOTES TO PAG ES 75– 86

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

23.

24.

25. 26.

225

proximity to rivers or forested areas, especially around midday when spirits are more powerful and thus prone to possess people, should be carefully avoided. As opposed to monoculture (the planting of a single species plant on a given plot of land), polyculture is one in which more than one species is planted on the same plot in a given year. Polyculture can take the form of sequential cropping (which overlaps in space but not in time) and intercropping (which overlaps in time and space). “Polycultures in some parts of the world can easily reach 30 and more species on a given plot of land. Polycultures technically include even noncrop elements such as trees (which are perennials), and nonplant elements such as livestock and fish” (Dewar 2007, 2). Conversation held on January 28, 2014. Conversation held on February 3, 2014. Conversation held on March 9, 2014. Conversation held on January 25, 2014. Conversation held on March 9, 2014. The variety of terminology surrounding the arrival and appropriation of maize tells about the place of origin of “the stranger,” trade routes and points of entry, agents of introduction, as well as about farmers’ local responses to it. For a detailed discussion of the naming of maize on the African continent and specifically in Ethiopia, see J. C. McCann (2007, 23–38, 77–91). Conversation held on January 28, 2014. Conversation held on March 18, 2008. Conversation held on February 3, 2014. It has been noted that in ensetecultivating areas domestic animals constitute an important part of the economy, “but not fowl, the keeping of which in Ethiopia is a specialty of the Amharas” (Smeds 1955, 32). Garden egg is an important crop indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa. It is a small, white fruit with a teardrop or roundish shape that is valued for its bitter taste and spongy texture. It can be stored for up to three months by letting it dry—a useful characteristic in the tropics given the lack of refrigeration in most rural areas. There are notable exceptions to gender and garden blindness with regard to Africa; see, for example, M. Leach (1994) for a “micro political economy of gendered resource use” and Frausin et al. (2014) who tackle ecological knowledge and agricultural practices in West Africa as being highly differentiated by gender. Conversation held on October 17, 2005. The charisma of plants and the skilled intervention of people around them (“the hand of man”) are clearly depicted in a classical documentary that explores deforestation in Guinea (West Africa) by contrasting the dominant misinterpretation of farming activities as being careless, irrational, and vandalistic. See Second Nature: Building Forests in West Africa’s Savannas, directed by Graham Maughan, Cyrus Productions, 1996, film.

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Chapter 4 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Conversation held on March 31, 2009. Conversation held on March 31, 2009. Conversation held on January 18, 2006. Conversation held on October 19, 2005. Conversation held on February 13, 2008. Conversation held on November 29, 2005. Cf. S. L. Heckler (2004) for the same dynamic among the Piaroa of Venezuela and P. Sillitoe (2010) for the Wola of the New Guinea Highlands. The quiet pride and philosophical importance placed in women’s garden activities has been described in relation to the process of cassava cultivation, another starchy root, in Amazonian societies. “At the time of my fieldwork, Laura was one of the community’s most prominent women. [ . . . ] She was highly regarded by other members of the community. I was often told that Laura was one of the most knowledgeable local informants on plants, both wild and cultivated, that her gardens were large, and that she worked hard and was therefore adiu isahu or a ‘good woman’. [ . . . ] Laura’s pride in her garden and the recognition of her skill and hard work by other men and women stems from the fact that gardening is a reflection of a woman’s moral status. While the primary public display of achievement for men is hunting, the chief source of pride for women are the gardens that they work and their ability to provide steady, safe, and abundant food for their families” (Heckler 2004, 246). Similar accounts with local variations are found in previous literature on ensete. Cf. Brandt et al. (1997) for a general overview of the ensete farming system; Fujimoto (2011) for Malo; MacEntee et al. (2013) for the Jimma Zone; Olmstead (1974) for Gamu Gofa; Rahmato (1995) for Wolayta; Shack (1966) for Gurage; Smeds (1955) for Sidama; Spring (1997) for a comparative appraisal of Gurage, Hadiyya, and Sidama. The process of extracting pulp from ensete is very similar to that of producing flour from sago palm. Sago palm (Metroxylon sagu Rottb.) is a carbohydrate resource and, like banana and taro, has long been cultivated throughout the Malaku province of Indonesia, Irian Jaya, and Papua New Guinea as a source of starch. A monocarpic plant, it produces a large terminal inflorescence after growing for six to fifteen years (Tuzin 1992, 106). Conversation held on October 13, 2005. Conversation held on March 9, 2009. Conversation held on April 16, 2009. Conversation held on April 3, 2008. Conversation held on January 14, 2014. The same purposeful and gender-laden use of boxes has been described among Oyo-Yoruba women in Nigeria: “For many obìnrin [wives], the greatest form of accumulation was to acquire a large aso (wardrobe of cloth) for their own personal

NOTES TO PAG ES 107– 122

16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

227

use and later for their anafemale offspring. There were particular styles of expensive woven cloth that a properly situated ìyá [mother] had to have in her ìtélè àpótí (bottom box)” (Oyewumi 1997, 56). Conversation held on March 31, 2009. Conversation held on March 31, 2009. “Men as husbands or lovers are largely absent in much of women’s everyday lives and interactions in Ado [far Southwestern corner of Nigeria]; and, as many of my women acquaintances and friends assured me, men are often the least of their problems. The phrase ‘facing my children and my work’ is one I heard used often when women talked about their intimate relationships with their husbands, years into a marriage. The feeling was less that these men were actively misusing or otherwise oppressing them, than they were vaguely useless, and not really giving them much of anything—be it love or money” (Cornwall 2007, 160–61). Conversation held on March 16, 2009. Conversation held on March 31, 2009. Conversation held on April 1, 2009. Conversation held on April 1, 2009. Conversation held on April 1, 2009. Conversation held on April 1, 2009. This blindness does not exclusively apply to the ensete garden, as is apparent in the following example, where the Asian mixed (and supposedly disordered) gardening tradition of Bangladesh is evoked: “For example, one day while walking through a rural village, a colleague with many years of experience as an extension worker and planner remarked, ‘So, where are the gardens? I don’t see any gardens here’. When shown the small patches of vegetables and a few individual gourd plants growing over the fences and roofs of the household, he expressed surprise at his inability to ‘see’ these ‘invisible’ homegardens” (Wilson 2003, 213).

Chapter 5 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

See “Perennial Crops for Food Security: Proceedings of the FAO Expert Workshop, August 28–30, 2013, Rome Italy,” accessed August 10, 2018, http://www.fao .org/3/a-i3495e.pdf. Conversation held on March 18, 2008. For an overview of kinship metaphors used by people when referring to their relationship with roots and tubers, see Strathern (2017, 30). For an overview of the special properties and “suggestiveness” of rhizomes in Papua New Guinea, including fresh ethnographic insights and a review of past literature, see Strathern (2017). A bacteriological study has revealed that ensete fermentation is a type of lactic-acid fermentation (Fujimoto 2011, 107).

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8. 9. 10.

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13. 14. 15.

N OTES TO PAG ES 12 3–132

For a comparative case study of a dual economy strategy in Indonesian Borneo, whereby a family relies on both monetized crops and subsistence farming to meet extra-local and local needs, see Dove (2011). Vegetatively propagated plants are less likely to be patented, and farmers cannot be prohibited from planting, replanting, giving, or even selling ensete cuttings. In contrast, the replanting of seed crops is easier to block by the use of hybrids or genetic use-restriction technologies. Conversation held on October 30, 2013. Conversation held on March 6, 2009. The same dynamic was found in a study of two rural villages in Bangladesh. Men and women farmers were asked about the use of, and preferences for, improved and local crop varieties of rice, minor field crops, and home garden fruits and vegetables. Farmers usually select folk-crop varieties for home consumption based on culinary tastes and preferences, and modern varieties for sale in the market. Improved varieties are cultivated for their high yields, and local varieties for taste and culinary uses. The most important characteristic looked for overall was taste. This was true in every category except improved-variety rice, where yield was the determining factor (Oakley and Henshall Momsen 2005). I privilege here the Hadiyya angle of observation; however, the same entanglement of local politics, development brokerage, and farmers’ participation in rural development has been reported in several other areas of the country—for example, in Tigray (Segers et al. 2009) and in South Wollo (Adem 2012). Group discussions and individual interviews conducted with farmers in the southern region and in Shoa, Oromia, provided solid evidence of farmers’ distrust toward the agents of the Ministry of Agriculture: “In different places, essentially the same experience with extension agents emerged: peasants do not want to consult the extension agents because they have experienced a pattern in which these agents establish a command structure. Peasants are coerced and forced to do the practical work. Peasants resent deeply that the planning is taken over completely by the experts, and that it interferes with their cultivation cycle and agricultural practice” (Pausewang 2002, 89–90). Conversation held on October 28, 2013. In 2009 I started noticing with increased frequency that the internal walls of certain houses were covered by certificates of vaccination and pamphlets for a healthy diet. Kibbenesh and her husband explained that “the government has instructed us how to keep the house clean and taught about other good practices” (conversation held on March 16, 2009). The program was initiated by the local health center in collaboration with one of the Protestant churches. Those good practices are disseminated in various communities by certain individuals (the “promoters”) who are selected and trained by the government. Some pages of the manuals they are asked to read were put on display in the guest room. Conversation held on January 28, 2014. Conversation held on January 25, 2014. Conversation held on February 11, 2014.

NOTES TO PAG ES 13 4 – 15 4

16. 17.

229

Conversation held on January 26, 2014. Conversation held on March 3, 2014.

Chapter 6 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

Tasteful ethnography makes use of sensory and sensuous descriptions in order to unveil what food means beyond the immediate experience of cooking and eating, and how food ultimately speaks about cultural practices. “In tasteful fieldwork anthropologists would not only investigate kinship, exchange, and symbolism, but would also describe with literary vividness the smells, tastes, and textures of the land, the people, and the food. [ . . . ] This recording of the complexities of the individual’s social experience lends texture to the landscape of the fieldworker’s notes. In this way, seemingly insignificant incidents such as being served bad sauce become as important as sitting with a nameless informant and recording genealogies” (Stoller and Olkes 1986, 347–48). The nature of knowledge that is produced by incorporating nonvisual elements (such as taste and sound) in research and writing varies greatly from that achieved through detached observations. Conversation held on March 6, 2009. Conversation held on March 31, 2009. Everywhere recipes are not fixed texts but rough suggestions—even more so in a context where deep knowledge is transmitted orally, through performance, and somehow secretly. A recipe of Ethiopian spiced unclarified butter (nit’ir qibe in Amharic) is provided by J. B. Harris (1998, 135); another version is available in W. Shack and D. Shack ([1977] 2009, 72). Of a similar nature is the clay pot, sealed with ensete leaves and decorated with cowrie shells, called wecheta. Described to me as quintessentially Hadiyya, wecheta represents a special gift and stands for respect and love. It is filled with materials of a relevant symbolic nature such as spiced butter and barley, and it is usually offered to brides, postpartum women, and the elderly. I was given a richly refilled wecheta as a gift at the end of my fieldwork in 2005; the empty pot has sat on my writing desk since, and, when opened, still emanates a smoky fragrance of butter. Conversation held on October 5, 2005. Conversation held on January 28, 2014. A recipe of Ethiopian minced meat (kitfo in Amharic), although slightly cooked (leb leb in Amharic), is provided by J. B. Harris with the opening statement: “Clearly, this is not a recipe for those who are concerned about the E. coli bacteria and the quality of their beef, but if you know your butcher and you usually eat your steak rare or raw in defiance of the USDA dietary guidelines, you might want to try this” (1998, 259). Conversation held on January 28, 2014.

23 0

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12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

N OTES TO PAG ES 156 –18 0

The first is a fermented starchy mixture of pulverized corm, decorticated pseudostems, and squeezed leaf-sheath pulp. The second consists of a small amount of water-insoluble starchy product, in the form of white powder, that may be separated from waasa during processing by squeezing and decanting the liquid. The third is the fleshy inner portion of the ensete corm. In Ethiopia it is well-known that marathon runners, before any race, eat ensete bread because it is an energetic and slow-digesting food. The secret of these highland champions resides in their diet, which typically includes little or no meat, lots of vegetables, and fermented bread (be it injera or waasa). This hypocaloric diet builds up thin and resilient bodies appropriate for long-lasting physical performance. Farenj is an Amharic term, very popular in Ethiopia, used to collectively indicate foreigners (especially white people) regardless of their gender and country of origin. Conversation held on October 5, 2005. A recipe of Ethiopian collard greens (ye’abesha gomen in Amharic) is provided by J. B. Harris (1998, 195); another version is available in W. Shack and D. Shack ([1977] 2009, 72). Conversation held on October 17, 2005. Conversation held on February 3, 2014. Conversation held on November 26, 2005. Conversation held on February 16, 2014. Choral conversation held on October 26, 2005. Conversation held on January 28, 2014. Conversation held on February 14, 2015.

Chapter 7 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

The Hadiyya zone is comprised of eleven districts: Anleemo, Duuna, East Badawaacho, Gibe, Gombora, Hosaana/Waachamo (the zone capital), Leemo (where I conducted my research), Misha, Shaashoogo, Sooro, and West Badawaacho. Conversation held on March 20, 2008. Conversation held on February 3, 2014. Conversation held on February 7, 2015. Conversation held on February 22, 2015. Both conversations took place on February 7, 2015. This decrease in dietary biodiversity causes even greater concern considering that “maize monocultures are [ . . . ] extremely vulnerable to environmental shocks, especially drought, but even in the best of times a maize based diet may impoverish the bodies of those who depend too heavily on it for food, and over the long haul such a diet can result in deficiency diseases such as pellagra (a disease caused by vitamin deficiency) and kwashiorkor (a disease caused by protein deficiency)” (McCann 2007, 7).

NOTES TO PAG ES 181– 188

8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

2 31

Ethiopian currency (1 birr = 0.036 US dollar in November 2018). Elsabet provides additional comparative data for February 2014: in the market of Waachamo 1 kg of bu’o was sold for 36 birr; 1 kg of t’eff for 18 birr; 1 kg of wheat or barley for 8–8.5 birr; and 1 kg of maize for 7–7.5 birr. Conversations held on various dates in February 2015. Conversations held on various dates in February 2015. Maybe. Or maybe not, if we take into consideration that since 1970 molecular analyses have revealed that Xanthomonas campestris pathovar musacearum (Xcm) is more closely related to the species Xanthomonas vasicola. Scientists at the University of Exeter in the UK have argued that it should be considered as a new pathovar of that species, along with pathovar holcicola (Xvh), which is pathogenic to sorghum, and pathovar vasculorum (Xvv), which is pathogenic to sugarcane and maize. Preliminary studies indicate that neither Xvh nor Xvv are pathogenic on banana, while Xcm is pathogenic on both banana and maize, suggesting that a Xvv strain may have made the jump to a new banana host (Ssekiwoko et al. 2010). This means that there is at least one possibility, still to be explored, that the pathogenic agent on maize at a certain point may have colonized a new host. That host seems to the farmers, and to a handful of scientists, to be ensete. Conversations held on February 6, 2015. See “TELA Maize Project – Protecting Maize Against Drought and Insect Damage,” AATF, accessed April 30, 2020, https://www.aatf-africa.org/aatf_projects/tela -maize/; “Water-Efficient Maize for Africa,” Monsanto, accessed November 15, 2018, https://monsanto.com/company/outreach/water-efficient-maize-africa/; and Thomas A. Lumpkin and Janice Armstrong, “Staple Crops, Smallholder Farmers and Multinationals: The ‘Water-Efficient Maize for Africa’ Project” (paper prepared for the Crawford Fund for Agricultural Research, Parliament House, Canberra, Australia, October 27–28, 2009), accessed November 15, 2018, https:// ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/125195/files/Lumpkin2009.pdf. There is still a remaining online source summarizing the scope of this partnership: “Canadian Company Seeks Bountiful Harvest from a Scorching Barren Desert,” Financial Post, April 7, 2014, accessed November 15, 2018, https:// business .financialpost.com/business-trends/canadian-company-seeks-bountiful-harvest -from-a-scorching-barren-desert. The reader will encounter phrases such as “Allana Potash becomes part of the solution in solving the African hunger crisis”; and “the continent is facing hunger pains almost everywhere you look,” due to “a combination of conflict, outdated farming and irrigation techniques, erosion, degradation of soil quality resulting in low yields and trade barriers.” A number of screenshots of the materials referred to here have been archived and are currently stored in my personal e-library. Conversation held on February 2, 2015. See “NuME: Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia,” CIMMYT, accessed November 15, 2018, https://nume.cimmyt.org/. The Sasakawa Global 2000 extension strategy was initiated in Ethiopia in 1993 by the Sasakawa Africa Association and the

23 2

18.

19. 20. 21.

N OTES TO PAG ES 189–2 0 1

Global 2000 of the Carter Center. The late Ryoichi Sasakawa, founder and former chairman of The Nippon Foundation, contacted Dr. Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, and former US president Jimmy Carter, to seek a sustainable solution to Africa’s food security problems. The program has been a major proponent of high-external-input technologies (HEIT). It has provided credit, inputs, and extension assistance to participants willing to establish half-hectare demonstration plots on their own land. In Ethiopia, former prime minister Meles Zenawi took a personal interest in SG, and the Ministry of Agriculture used these principles as the model for its New Extension Program (NEP) to promote HEIT for maize, t’eff, sorghum, and pulses (see Adem 2012, 101–2). J. C. McCann, personal communication, November 24, 2018. The reader should refer to his book Maize and Grace: Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop 1500– 2000 (2007) for the most accurate and compelling social history of the propagation of maize throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Conversation held on February 25, 2015. “PM Abiy Invites Investors to Come to Ethiopia in Davos Speech,” Ethiopian Embassy, January 24, 2019, accessed December 5, 2019, https://ethiopianembassy .be/2019/01/24/pm-abiy-invites-investors-to-come-to-ethiopia-in-davos-speech/. For the most updated research programs, see Ensete Knowledge Base, accessed December 5, 2019, http://www.enset-project.org/; Global Musa Genomics Consortium, accessed December 5, 2019, http://www.musagenomics.org/; and the work conducted by Bioversity International (a CGIAR Research Centre) especially by Guy Blomme, Bioversity International, accessed December 5, 2019, https://www .bioversityinternational.org/about-us/who-we-are/staff-bios/single-details-bios/ blomme-guy/.

Epilogue 1.

2.

See “Food Assistance Fact Sheet: Ethiopia,” USAID, accessed December 31, 2018, https://www.usaid.gov/ethiopia/food-assistance; and “WFP 2020 Global Hotspots Report,” World Food Programme, accessed April 30, 2020, https://www .wfp.org/news/world-food-programme-forecasts-global-hunger-hotspots-new -decade-dawns. Agricultural statistics use national-level food balance sheets that are not very helpful at the community and landscape scales. Moreover, “they do not account for foodstuffs that are not traded commercially, or more traditional crops or wild foods within the agro-ecosystems and fields. For example, in South Africa, [it was] reported that 30% of the value of all edible plants harvested from homestead plots and gardens came from non-conventional or wild species. A good example of this in Zomba District, Malawi, is a vegetable dish made from wild-harvested orchid tubers, locally known as Chikande” (Poppy et al. 2014, 8). When available, “the data

NOTES TO PAG ES 207– 211

3. 4.

5.

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that do exist for underutilized crops, wild and traditional foods, are not always of a high standard” (Powell et al. 2015, 544). See Elizabeth Wold Studio, accessed December 31, 2018, http://elizabethwoldstudio .com/. All quotes are from the catalogue for the “Erasen Be Ras” exhibition at the Modern Art Museum: Gebre Kristos Desta Center, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, April 21 to May 21, 2017, found on the website of the Elizabeth Wold Studio, accessed December 31, 2018, http://elizabethwoldstudio.com/wp-content/ uploads/2017/05/Elizabeth-H-Wold.pdf. Conversation held on March 11, 2009.

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INDEX

abundance: and scarcity, in the local perception, 5, 118, 129, 171–73 aesthetic(s): approaches to the landscape, 7, 10–12, 26–36, 48–49, 67, 118, 136, 206–208 agrarian (and dietary) change: in the southwestern highlands of Ethiopia, 5, 44–47, 57–59, 146, 163, 168–69, 194 agri-cultural/agricultural: politics, 47; development, 57–58, 195; extension, 126–30; policy, 195, 200 agrobiodiversity: on the margins, 58–59, 113–14, 130 agropastoralism: Hadiyya transition to, 53–57, 68–69, 146–47, 153–55 Alice in Wonderland: gardeners in, 88; author feeling like, 143 annual: compared to perennial, 64, 116–17, 123, 129–30, 180; transition from perennial to annual, 45–46, 54. See also agrarian (and dietary) change appetite: and hunger, in the local perception, 172–73, 181 architecture of taste: in Hadiyya cuisine, 163–66, 173, 175

art: gardens as a work of, 12, 32–33, 207; of slaughtering and portioning, 146, 149–51 avant-garde: quality of subsistence, 203 bacterial wilt, 123, 168, 171, 175–77, 180–83, 196. See also Xanthomonas campestris pv. musacearum beauty: canons of, in farming cultures, 28–36, 135–36; in/of the ensete garden, 12, 23–28, 38–39, 48–50, 67, 86, 92, 118, 180–81, 194, 205–206 belonging: sense of, via food, 46, 56–57, 60, 163–66, 181, 202–203 box of wonders: ensete as, 102–107 bricolage/patchwork (in farming), 81, 125, 170–71, 175, 177 Bruce, James, 49, 63 butter making, 146–49 cattle: in the Hadiyya value system, 24–25, 54–56, 146–47, 149–51, 164, 170; in the ensete system, 68–69, 74–75, 82–83, 111 cereals: legibility/countability of, 123–26; in Hadiyya farming, 128

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charisma/charismatic: of plants, 86–87; Christianity, 72–73 Christian kingdom: expansion into the South, 10, 53–54 collective dancing: in Hadiyya, 103–104 color lexicon: in Hadiyya, 24–26; green, 19–24, 26, 38–39, 48–49, 153, 194; red, 24–26, 151; white, 24–25, 49, 153, 155 comfort (ensete food), 130, 156–61 commensality, 15, 43–44, 111, 161 conservation (of resources), 171–72, 199 cooking and eating in the ensete garden, 140–43 cooperation: work ethic, based on, 85; during harvest time, 93–102 core staple: in relation to fringe foods, 156 core-periphery, 40–42, 54–55 corm: processing of, 65, 94–97 culinary: intimacy, 15; monotony, 140–41, 173 cultural food security, 202 culture of flowers (in Africa), 28–29 custodians: women farmers as, 12, 182 dairy produce: in wijjo (rotating/sharing system), 107–108, 111; in Hadiyya cuisine, 153–55 detached contemplation: in Western approaches to aesthetics, 30–31; of the ensete plant, 50 division of labor: in farming, 90–92, 94, 107, 112 dreamscape: ensete landscape as, 210 emotions: in ethnographic research, 14, 198 ensete: belt, 8–9, 45, 63, 66, 204; bread, recipes of, 156–60; cultivation, patterns of, 73–74; disease, see bacterial wilt; fibers, 24, 95–97, 158–60, 193; flu, 176–77; porridge, 25, 144, 154, 160–61; processing, see harvest time; diet based on, 140–41 Ethiopian cuisine, 45–47, 163–65 ethnographic subject: the plant as, 5 extension services, 57–58, 126–27, 165, 168, 187

I NDEX

familiar taste, 134, 142–43, 145, 199 famine, 4, 23, 29, 49, 52, 57, 117–18, 123, 171, 181, 190–94 Fandaano, 54, 70–73, 161, 165 farmers and state: relationship between, 56–59, 126–30 fermentation: of root and tuber crops 65, 94–95, 121–22 food aid: dependence upon, 23, 57, 171–72, 201 food diaries, 141–42 food for guests: in Hadiyya cuisine, 164–65 food of value: in Hadiyya cuisine, 154–55, 164 food security: strategies in Ethiopia, 57–58, 125–26, 183–86, 191–92, 200–202 fortified/improved varieties (of maize): in southern Ethiopia, 127–28, 171, 178–80, 183–86, 187, 190 fringe foods: see core staple frugality: pattern of, 104, 130, 142–43, 171–72 gardeners: compared to farmers and pastoralists, 56, 92, 112–15; in the Trobriand Islands, 32–33 gastronomy: in relation to farming communities, 113, 136, 142–43 gender blindness: in agricultural policies, 204–205 gender complementarity: see division of labor gendered: nature of crops, 79, 90–91, 157, 203–204 good thing: ensete as, 26 good woman: traditional ideal of, 89–90, 131 grains: in relation to roots and tubers, 45–46, 51, 54, 74, 76–77, 90, 105, 123–25, 128–29, 144, 164, 192 harvest time: in the ensete garden, 93–102 healing herbs, 25. See also medicinal plants history of ensete, 7, 47–52 home gardening: definition, 11–12, 59, 129–30, 195, 203–205

I NDEX

249

hybrid maize: see fortified/improved varieties

outdoor/living pantry: home garden as, 78, 97, 104–105, 145

illegibility/invisibility: of home gardens, 81, 85, 112, 118, 123–26, 129–30, 185

pastoral(ist) lifestyle (and diet), 24, 56, 68, 121, 146, 154–55, 163–64, 170 perennial/perenniality/perenniation, 45, 63–64, 82, 84, 116–19, 121, 130, 180, 210 perfect meal: according to Hadiyya standards, 156–58 (plant) biodiversity: in home gardens, 12, 113, 192 playfulness: in the plot and in the pot, 36, 146, 161–62, 167, 175 plow: agriculture in relation to hoe cultivation, 45–46, 54, 63, 74, 83, 85, 90, 101; as male symbol, 124 polyculture: See mixing and matching PotashCorp (Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc.), 184–86 pride: in gardening, 32, 67, 92, 207 Protestantism: in Hadiyya, 54, 72–73, 104, 133, 149, 161, 165. See also charismatic Christianity

land tenure: in ensete areas, 119–20 Leemo: subgroup, 9–10, 53, 56, 69, 146–47, 171, 176, 185, 187 living art: ensete garden as, 12, 207 Lobo, Jerónimo, 47–49, 120 local varieties: in the local perception, 81–82, 178–79 maize: in the Hadiyya garden and kitchen, 78, 90, 125, 127, 167–68, 171, 177–90 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 32–33 Mäsqäl festival, 24, 94, 107, 149–51, 153, 164, 172 medicinal plants, 26, 66, 174. See also healing herbs melancholic farmers: Hadiyya as, 146–47, 164 Menelik II, 10, 42, 45, 47 minor/neglected/orphan/underutilized crops, 116–17, 192, 200 mixing and matching, 68, 75, 78–79, 83, 117–18, 210 model/progressive farmer: the logic of, 127–29, 178, 187 national cuisine: See Ethiopian cuisine National Nutrition Programme 2013–2015, 46, 58 nation-building: See core-periphery new Green Revolution for sub-Saharan Africa, 124, 187 Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia (NuME), 188–90 open fields: in relation to home gardens, 11–12, 78, 81, 90, 92, 101, 107, 123–24, 179, 192–93, 205 open-pollinated varieties (OPV), 183

Quality Protein Maize (QPM), 188–89. See also Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia (NuME) raw meat: as cultural food, 24, 26, 146, 148–52, 154–55, 163–64 resilience/resistance: of the plant and the people, 4–5, 19, 55, 58–59, 82, 85, 101, 109, 118, 163, 196 root/roots and tubers: ensete as a root tuber crop, 65; in relation to fermentation, 95, 121; in shaping human-plant interactions, 122–23; neglect of, in relation to grains, 45–46, 49, 116, 125, 204, 208; root system of perennial plants, 117–18 rotten: perception of ensete foods as, 67, 121–22 scale of taste: in Hadiyya, 174

25 0

secrecy: around/of ensete, 52, 73, 81, 99, 104, 118, 123 self-rationing: of diets, 104, 108, 142–43, 150, 172, 206 Shack, William A. and Dorothy, 7, 50–52, 73, 140, 172 shoots: (vegetative) propagation by, 66, 117, 120, 125 smell: of ensete, 42, 44, 46, 49, 65, 90–91, 122, 157–58 social hunger: See cultural food security sovereignty: Hadiyya home gardens and kitchens as spaces of, 129–30, 146 spices: role of, in Hadiyya cuisine, 174 staple (food): reliance on, 4, 51, 69, 73–74, 86, 114, 121, 142, 156, 172, 204 starch: of ensete foods, 4, 64–65, 156–57 stigma: toward the ensete diet/plant, 44, 49, 121–22, 129, 167 stomach: emptying out of, 206; as a site of love, 34 sunkkancha/sunkkimma (kissing), 103–104 Tolkien, J. R. R., 3, 116, 157 tree against hunger: definition of ensete as, 19, 48 true food: in Hadiyya cuisine, 163–64

I NDEX

unloved other: ensete as, 47 utilitarian: approach to certain animals in Hadiyya, 83; in relation to aesthetics, 11, 28–31, 118 variety of foods: rhetoric on, 141, 165–67 Water-Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), 183 well-being: notions of, in the local perception, 15, 71, 77–79, 129, 153–54, 202, 206 white man’s food: in Hadiyya cuisine, 165–66 Wold, Elizabeth H., 206–208 women-plant communities, 11, 113–14 working group/party, 90, 94, 99, 101, 109–112, 118, 129, 182–83, 205 Xanthomonas campestris pv. Musacearum (Xcm), 176. See also ensete flu yield: high-yielding crops for food security, 124–126, 195, 204; high-yielding maize in Hadiyya, 178–80, 183–86; compared to perenniality, 35, 45, 121, 210; of root tuber crops, 56, 67, 123–24, 128, 185

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Valentina Peveri is a food anthropologist with experience in the fields of environment and development. She held a Fulbright and visiting scholar appointment at Boston University. She serves as an adjunct professor at The American University of Rome (AUR) and as an international consultant.