Gurage People - Description

Description

According to the historian Paul B. Henze, their origins are explained by traditions of a military expedition to the south during the last years of the Aksumite Empire, which left military colonies that eventually became isolated from both northern Ethiopia and each other.

Over 50% of the Gurage claim allegiance to Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, an Oriental Orthodox church related to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and another 40% are adherents of Islam.

According to the 1994 Ethiopian census, self-identifying Gurage comprise about 4.3% of Ethiopia's population, or about 3 million people.

The Gurage live a sedentary life based on agriculture, involving a complex system of crop rotation and transplanting. Ensete is their main staple crop, but other cash crops are grown, which include coffee and chat. Animal husbandry is practiced, but mainly for milk supply and dung. Other foods consumed include green cabbage, cheese, butter, and roasted grains, with meat consumption being very limited (also used in rituals or ceremonies).

The Gurage, the writer Nega Mezlekia notes, "have earned a reputation as skilled traders". One example of an enterprising Gurage is one Tekke, whom Nathaniel T. Kenney described as "an Ethiopian Horatio Alger, Jr.":

He began his career selling old bottles and tin cans; the Emperor recently rewarded his achievement in creating his plantation by calling him to Addis Ababa and decorating him.

The Gurage sometimes experience spirit possession. William A. Shack postulated that spirit possession is caused by Gurange cultural attitudes about food and hunger, because while they have a plentiful food supply, cultural pressures that force the Gurange to either share it to meet social obligations, or hoard it and eat it secretly cause them anxiety. Distinctions are drawn between spirits that only possess men, spirits that only possess women, and spirits that possess victims of either sex. A ritual illness that only affects men believed to because by a spirit called awre. This affliction presents itself by loss of appetite, nausea, and attacks from severe stomach pains. If it persists the victim may enter a trancelike stupor, in which he sometimes regains conciousness long enough to take food and water. Breathing is often labored. Seizures and trembling overcome the patient, and in extreme cases, even partial paralysis of the extremities.

If the victim does not recover naturally, a traditional healer, or sagwara, is summoned. Once the sagwara has determined the spirit's name through the use of divinitation, he prescribes a routine formula to exorcise the spirit. This is not a permanent cure, however, it is believed to allow the victim to form a relationship with the spirit. Nevertheless, the victim is subject to chronic repossession, which is treated by repeating the formula. This formula involves the preparation and consumption of a dish of ensente, butter, and red pepper. During this ritual, the victim's head is covered with a drape, and he eats the ensente ravenously while other ritual participants chant. The ritual ends when the possessing spirit announces that it is satisfied. If the victim does not recover naturally, a traditional healer, or sagwara, is summoned. Once the sagwara has determined the spirit's name through the use of divinitation, he prescribes a routine formula to exorcise the spirit. This is not a permanent cure, however, it is believed to allow the victim to form a relationship with the spirit. Nevertheless, the victim is subject to chronic repossession, which is treated by repeating the formula. This formula involves the preparation and consumption of a dish of ensente, butter, and red pepper. During this ritual, the victim's head is covered with a drape, and he eats the ensente ravenously while other ritual participants chant. The ritual ends when the possessing spirit announces that it is satisfied. Shack notes that the victims are overwhelmingly poor men, and that women are not as food-deprived as men are due to ritual activities that involve food redistribution and consumption. Shack postulates that the awre serves to bring the possessed man to the center of social attention, and to relieve his anxieties over his inability to gain prestige from redistrubiting food, which is the primary way in which Gurange men gain status in their society.