Mereja.Forum

[Dama]

As a food crop, it has useful attributes such as foods can be stored for long time, grows in wide range of environments, produces high yield per unit area, and tolerates drought. It has an irreplaceable role as a feed for animals. Enset starch is found to have higher or comparable quality to potato and maize starch and widely used as a tablet binder and disintegrant and also in pharmaceutical gelling, drug loading, and release processes. Moreover, enset shows high genetic diversity within a population which in turn renders resilience and food security against the ever-changing environmental factors and land use dynamics. Therefore, more research attention and funding should be given to magnify and make wider use of the crop.


E. ventricosum originated in Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, the wild representatives of the genus Ensete are found throughout Africa and Southern Asia. In Africa, it occurs widely across the continent in the western, central, eastern, and southern parts. Unlike its widespread distribution, enset has only ever been domesticated in Ethiopia. Even within Ethiopia, enset cultivation as a food crop is confined to a relatively small region of the southwest, in areas inhabited by speakers of Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic languages.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7199586/

[Horus]

Dama,
If you are a true Gurage and want to contribute something significant to your people, do the following. Enset (I would use Eset -the authentic Gurage name) probably originated at the mouth of the Nile (Chomen Marsh area) and it is mentioned by James Bruce in connection with Egyptian goddess Isis (2350bc- 400ad). In other words, Eset is a Nile River Plant or A Gibe River Plan.

The fundamental fact: Gurages are the people who first domesticated Eset and created a major Ethiopia food - Kotcho (all the related products). In other words,Kocho a soon to be an Ethiopia staple is a Gurage invention. This is a major historic economic and cultural contribution of the Gurage people to Ethiopia (not only Kitfo)! You must research and write about this invention.

Soon in our life time, there will emerge a whole Enset Industry involving innovations on all of the multiple byproducts of Eset.

The key research problems:
(1) where is the origin of Eset
(2) How did Egyptians know about it?
(3) When did Gurages come in contact with the plant
(4) Is Enset related to very origin of the Gurage people?
etc...

This is a fascinating major mystery that must be a subject for more than one doctoral theses for students of history and anthropology.

[Dama]

Dama,
If you are a true Gurage and want to contribute something significant to your people, do the following. Enset (I would use Eset -the authentic Gurage name) probably originated at the mouth of the Nile (Chomen Marsh area) and it is mentioned by James Bruce in connection with Egyptian goddess Isis (2350bc- 400ad). In other words, Eset is a Nile River Plant or A Gibe River Plan.

The fundamental fact: Gurages are the people who first domesticated Eset and created a major Ethiopia food - Kotcho (all the related products). In other words,Kocho a soon to be an Ethiopia staple is a Gurage invention. This is a major historic economic and cultural contribution of the Gurage people to Ethiopia (not only Kitfo)! You must research and write about this invention.

Soon in our life time, there will emerge a whole Enset Industry involving innovations on all of the multiple byproducts of Eset.

The key research problems:
(1) where is the origin of Eset
(2) How did Egyptians know about it?
(3) When did Gurages come in contact with the plant
(4) Is Enset related to very origin of the Gurage people?
etc...

This is a fascinating major mystery that must be a subject for more than one doctoral theses for students of history and anthropology.

I don't conclude based on probability. It has the potential to narrow the gap and between you and I, suffer the label of educated ignoramus. Facts only can establish a conclusion.
I dont put too much weight on a primitive traveller of the of Abyssinia in the 17th century, who was not trained on botany. If he used the term a 'banaba' plant, it was just that. I czn't say he meant enset or asat in Chaha, just to clear your ever present disfranchisement of me as alien to Gurage. Of course I am not a Christoan Gurage but that doesnt make a foreigner to Gurage.
There is no proof enset existed on the Nile River planes north of the Cataracts. I travelled wide from Juba to Dongola, north of Omdurman. Not there. The most northwest in Ethiopia where enset grows untamed, like your wild ideas, is in Amara.

For any pursuasive assumptions you floated, it's you sir who has the burden of proof.

[Horus]

Dama,
Enset is not a desert plant. I did not say Enset grew in ancient Egypt. I said the mouth of Blue Nile. The mouth of Blue Nile Chomen Marsh an area not too far from where James Bruce stated he saw the plant. Enset is a wetland or temperate climate plant that requires a lot of water. In any event both science and history are the witness that it is the Gurage people that transformed the plant into not only an Ethiopia national staple but also a globally known super food. I pointed an opportunity to you and it is your choice what you wish to do with the idea. Gurage is blessed with 100s of highly educated researches and as we speak the plant is being studied and developed in many different areas including method of modern mechanized processing of Kotcho and Bula. End of my discussion on this topic.

[Dama]

Dama,
Enset is not a desert plant. I did not say Enset grew in ancient Egypt. I said the mouth of Blue Nile. The mouth of Blue Nile Chomen Marsh an area not too far from where James Bruce stated he saw the plant. Enset is a wetland or temperate climate plant that requires a lot of water. In any event both science and history are the witness that it is the Gurage people that transformed the plant into not only an Ethiopia national staple but also a globally known super food. I pointed an opportunity to you and it is your choice what you wish to do with the idea. Gurage is blessed with 100s of highly educated researches and as we speak the plant is being studied and developed in many different areas including method of modern mechanized processing of Kotcho and Bula. End of my discussion on this topic.

MOUTH of the Nile River or any river discharging its waters to another body. A word so ungeographic. Stop behaving like an uneducate. May be you can't help it. From now on, learn this: Delta of the Nile River. Delta of the Niger River, etc.

Again, you are very uneducated on the science of the enset plant. Nor do you observe things critically on your own. There is a reason why asat is described by scientists of the US Science Academy, UNDP and UNAO as the plant against drought. It's because it can survive prolonged lack of rain= drought for upto 4 years. It doesn't require a lot of water to grow. It can in fact grow in a desert if we stretch the fact of its ability to survive a prolonged drought. Read studies of enset.

If you make a claim, you have to make sure it's backed by facts. You have not provided facts to help you claim Gurages are the society in Ethiopia who domesticated it. This false statement is different from the fact of the deserved claim that Gurages have popularized its consumption in Ethiopia. This of course is undisputable. Oromos, Hadiya, Sidama, Gedeo, Gammus and all southwest Ethiopian nations numbering more than 25 million agree to it.
Which group of the above minus Oromo domesticated enset remains a question but not that important.
I would suggest cut down on your Gurage bubble. Not healthy for Gurage because it's bigotry.