Gurage Enset Culture

Enset, the false banana, looks like a banana plant but is grown for its stem and corm rather than fruit, and across the Gurage highlands and much of southern Ethiopia it is the staple that feeds perhaps twenty million people. The processing is laborious and done by women: the pulp is scraped from the pseudostem, buried in a pit lined with leaves and left to ferment for months or years, then made into kocho, a dense flatbread baked on a griddle, or bulla, a finer starch. The plant is drought-resistant and stores in the ground, which is why it is called the tree against hunger. Gurage homesteads are surrounded by enset gardens, and the villages have a distinctive architecture of round thatched houses. Visits are informal and arranged through local contacts.

The main sights

• Enset gardens - false banana plants surrounding every homestead.
• Scraping and fermentation - the pulp processed and buried in pits.
• Kocho bread - the dense flatbread baked from fermented starch.
• Gurage homesteads - round thatched houses among the plantings.

When to go

October to March for the roads. Processing goes on year round since the plant is harvested as needed rather than seasonally, which is the point of it. Market days in the local towns show the trade.

Good to know

There is nothing organised for visitors: seeing this means arranging a village visit through a guide or local contact. The work is hard and done by women, and watching it as a spectacle needs care. Kocho is dense and sour and not to every visitor's taste.

Nearby

Tiya lies north; Butajira is the local centre.