Ethiopia Traditional Foods

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SNAPSHOTS FROM OMO VALLEY TRIBES IN ETHIOPIA

The small boy was running alongside me. He was about five years old, with skin the color of a cacao bean and a wide smile extended across his face. He held my hand, running ahead and then behind me, cheer­fully trying to communicate with me as we entered his vil­lage. “Teacher, teacher,” he repeated as he playfully tugged at my shirt. “How sweet,” I thought. “He considers me a teacher.” But then it dawned on me. He wasn’t calling me “teacher”; he was actually saying “T-shirt, t-shirt!” He wanted my shirt.

I am fascinated by ancient cultures and traditional health ways. I travel to visit indigenous groups and learn from those who are still keeping their wise traditions alive. My encounter with the young boy of the Daasanach tribe in the Omo Valley this past summer reminded me that as much as I am curious about traditional ways, there are many who are similarly intrigued by our “modern” Western ways and are ready to adopt whatever we export.

EXPORTING WESTERN VALUES

This juxtaposition was brought home to me in my conversation with our guide, Muluye Tsegaw, in the Ethiopian Omo Valley. Mary Ruddick, my fellow traveler and researcher (featured on Wise Traditions podcast episodes 318,¹ 400² and 455³ and author of articles in other issues of this journal about the Batwa pygmies of Uganda⁴ and the Kazakh eagle hunters of Western Mongolia⁵), had shaped the itinerary and found Muluye to lead us to the various tribes in the region.

Our first dinner with him included typical Ethiopian fare: tibs (small pieces of goat meat or beef), avocado, eggs and injera⁶ (the spongy fermented bread that comes with almost every dish in Ethiopia). It was delicious. Over the course of the meal, Muluye began telling us about the history of Ethiopia and his heart for his country. Life was not easy there, he explained. There were conflicts between the tribes and the government and constant clashes between tribes.

He told us about his own initiative of rais­ing money for children to go to school and to provide them with basic school supplies. When he asked me to contribute to his work, it gave me pause. I felt so strange because I supposed that most Americans would be impressed by this kind of effort and would be eager to support it. Education is critical for success, as most Ameri­cans would define it. So, why was I hesitating to get behind this?

I believe in part that it had to do with the words shared with me by Ole Sanku, a hundred-year-old Maasai elder I met in 2015.⁷ When I asked him about his life, he contrasted his childhood with that of his grandchildren. He told me that he never got sick as a boy. He said that people were now telling him that his grand­children needed to wear jackets, as the cold weather approached. “We never had jackets!” he exclaimed. “And now they say that disease is coming, and that we need shots. But we didn’t have shots.” On and on he went, highlighting the differences in attitudes and practices between his childhood and that of his grandchildren. I asked him: “Why has there been a shift? What has made the difference between your time and now?” He answered in one word: “Education.”

The implication was that the schools were doing more than just in­structing children to read and do math. Sanku had witnessed firsthand how they were changing the culture of his Maasai community, lifting up the modern over the ancient and replacing traditional values with those more in keeping with the Western world.

People revere education because it can lead to a “good job,” plenty of money and a modicum of self-sufficiency and success, but in many of the tribal communities I’ve visited, the people appear to have everything they need already. They may not have paper money, but they are rich in other ways. Their families are provided for through traditional means: hunting, herding and gathering. Success is defined by familial and tribal connections, not by money, status or career.

If this is so, what purpose does schooling serve in tribal communi­ties? Is there a way to preserve indigenous culture while also empowering children with skills that are useful in the modern world? Or are those new skills altogether unnecessary and somehow interfering with what matters most to indigenous people?

Our conversation that first night sparked my curiosity about the values we would find among the tribes we were about to visit in the Omo Valley. Were the children attending school, or were they educated in tribal ways, or both? Had the modern world encroached on their wise traditions or left them intact? Below are some snapshots of encounters and lessons from the five tribes we connected with in the Omo Valley: the Mursi, Karo, Hamer, Daasanach and Dorze.

NOURISHMENT AMONG THE TRIBES

When Dr. Weston A. Price traveled the world nearly one hundred years ago, he was able to find peoples virtually untouched by the Western world. His studies of isolated groups of indigenous people revealed that their diets and traditional tribal lifestyles correlated with vibrant health, strength of constitution and a vitality that was already becoming rarer in the U.S., even in the 1930s.

Today, it is increasingly difficult to find people untouched by moder­nity. In Kenya, I’ve seen small roadside stands selling local produce— under tin roofs painted with an outsized red and white Coca-Cola logo. In the homes of Mongolian Kazakh eagle hunters, I’ve seen bowls of individually wrapped candies.⁸ But for the first time in my travels, in the Omo Valley region of Ethiopia I saw no visible sign of the influence of modern foods. Among the five tribes we visited, there was no evidence of chips, cakes or candies. There were no wrappers on the floors of huts; nor were nearby stands selling anything of the kind. There were no packaged cereals or refined flours. There was no soda. There was nothing canned anywhere in sight. I was astounded! As far as I could tell, there were no “displacing foods of modern commerce,” as Dr. Price called them. So, what were the five tribes that we visited eating?

Our first visit was to the Mursi tribe. This is the tribe perhaps most known for the custom of lip-plating. (Young women insert cylindrical clay plates in their lips to stretch them out. The larger the lip, the more attractive the woman is considered.) When we approached the village, some women were sitting under trees. They invited us to join them and share a meal with them and the children. It was midday, and our lunch was prepared outdoors, right where we were. It was a sorghum porridge made of roasted, stone-ground sorghum mixed with local cabbage and river water, brought to a boil over an open fire. Once cooked, we shared it in a communal bowl. The village chief joined us within the hour, and I conducted a brief in­terview with him. I asked, through a translator, what food made him strong, and he enthusiasti­cally replied, “Milk!” In his village, they have the custom of bleeding and milking the cattle. He said that men drink blood, especially as the warriors prepare for battle.

The Karo tribe is known for painting de­signs on the body and face. The colors vary depending on the festival they are celebrating. Warriors get tattoos that indicate which animals (such as lions and elephants) they have killed. The Karo invited us to sit among the women of the village and share a mug of their homemade fermented beer. We learned that they also eat sorghum, along with Moringa tree fruit and leaves. They eat fish as well (“Karo” in fact translates to “fish eating”). They told us that fish soup is baby’s first weaning food. Their diet includes meat from wild game: the kudu and dik-dik (types of antelope), buffalo, lion and leopards.

The Hamer tribe is known for using red clay mixed with butter and oil to color their skin and hair. The diet of the Hamer is similar to that of the Mursi. Sorghum and corn are staples. Ani­mals are used as currency or wealth, rather than for eating. The men are pastoralists, spending their days tending the cattle.

The Daasanach tribe is known as the crocodile-hunting tribe. Like the Karo, they eat whatever they catch, such as kudu and dik-dik. They told us that they drink milk every day and that the goats and sheep that they tend are eaten only during times of ceremony. They also told us that they make butter. They use urine and feces as fertilizer.

Members of the Dorze tribe are known as weavers. The women spin cotton, and the men weave it into clothing and items for the home and to sell at market. They grow barley, wheat, sorghum, potatoes, beetroot, cabbage and car­rots. They also eat “false banana” bread, which we got to enjoy! It’s made from enset, a banana-like fruit that is inedible in its raw state; its starchy stems and roots are fermented and made into a bread-like cake. The Dorze also produce and drink their own homemade liquor. They eat meat now and then from animals that they raise (goats and cattle) but generally slaughter these (the ox, for example) only for special celebrations.

HEALERS AND HEALING

The Mursi tribe told us that they had two types of healers—“spiritual women” and “traditional medicine women.” The spiritual women might, for example, put their hands on the ground, touch the stomach, spit and make mud from the dirt and then rub it on the stom­ach and in this way “remove” the sickness. The traditional medicine women would be more likely to use herbal medicine treatments for illness.

Among the Karo tribe, we were told that people prefer healing with herbs rather than going to the hospital. In this tribe, the men have the medicinal herbal knowledge. They pointed out trees whose leaves and sap they use as medicine. They have herbal remedies for yellow fever, malaria, stomach problems, African sleeping sickness and snake bites.

The Dorze told me something I found stunning when I inquired about health issues. “No one gets sick.”

WISE TRADITIONS IN COMMON

We learned much about diet, culture and even tribal conflicts, and we found that rites of passage, ceremonies and customs varied from tribe to tribe. However, what stood out most to me were the traditions that the various tribes had in common. These included living in tight-knit villages, with huts in close proximity to one another; nuclear families sleeping together in one small hut, often on cowskin or goatskin mats; waking with the sun (the villages had no electricity); children and adults alike going barefoot, constantly grounding with the earth’s natural frequencies; and eating no displacing foods of modern commerce.

Even though in some tribes the children were being “educated” in schools with teachers appointed by the government, we found that many tribal customs are still intact. The Omo Valley tribes value connections and, as one Hamer tribe member put it, recognize the value of their off­spring, saying: “Kid is our richness.”

I am thankful for the treasure that each tribe sees in the children. Thankfully, these children are being nurtured, first and foremost, by their families and tribal culture in ways that have served these peoples well in the past and will do so into the future.

REFERENCES

1. Gore HL. Lost wisdom of the tribes with Mary Ruddick. Wise Traditions Podcast, episode 455, Jan. 1, 2024.
2. Gore HL. Lessons from the traditional Mongolian diet & lifestyle with Mary Ruddick. Wise Traditions Podcast, episode 400, Jan. 2, 2023.
3. Gore HL. The Sherlock Holmes of Health with Mary Ruddick. Wise Traditions Podcast, episode 318, Jun. 21, 2021.
4. Ruddick M. The Batwa pygmies of Uganda. Wise Tradi­tions. Fall 2021;22(3):34-38.
5. Ruddick M. The Kazakh eagle hunters of Western Mon­golia. Wise Traditions. Spring 2023;24(1):37-41.
6. Neela S, Fanta SW. Injera (an ethnic, traditional staple food of Ethiopia): a review on traditional practice to scientific developments. Journal of Ethnic Foods. 2020 Sep 14;7:32.
7. Gore H. A WAPF visit to Kenya. Wise Traditions. Winter 2015;16(4):62-66.
8. Gore HL. “Faces covered in smiles”: Mongolia’s enduring traditions. Wise Traditions. Spring 2023;24(1):42-43.

This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2024

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