Ensete e processi migratori: i Guraghe dell’Etiopia

More than any other plant, ensete, aset for the Gurage, has contributed to the representation and self-representation of the Gurage, a segmentary society of the Ethiopian Highlands. In the taxonomic classification aset is Ensete ventricosum (Ensete edule). This pulpy plant is in fact a giant herb, like the common banana, the Musa sapientum, which belongs to the same order and family. It grows best between 1600 and 2400m above sea level, in the valleys and wet slopes of the high plateaux, along the rivers, in the forests. It is not easy to define when and how ensete was adopted by the Gurage. But its cultivation allows a production of about ten tons food per hectare: in a Gurage perspective this is the definitive argument in favour of intensive ensete cultivation. If we finally take into account that its cultivation requires a relatively low input of work concentrated in the months at the beginning of the Gurage year, and mostly group work, i.e. institutionalised work groups, we then understand how the working activities which do not concern agriculture, first of all the rentable seasonal migrations of the Gurage, can take place thank to the ensete without damaging the domestic unit of production, i.e. the household, the abarus. Cultivation of ensete is presented to the outside world above all by the urban Gurage as a part of their identity of which they can be proud, but also as the only possible solution to the extreme scarcity of good farmland due to overpopulation, to the impoverishment of the soil because of over-exploitation and rain erosion and to the severe lack of accessible water supply etc.