Ethiopian Cuisine - The Embodiment of Community

Since I grew up on Indian food, I am no stranger to eating with my hands and my family places a great deal of importance on eating meals together – yet and still I felt that trying Ethiopian cuisine for the first time was quite a frame shifting experience. This was a result of experiencing the way they eat rather than the what they eat. When people ate together, they not only shared meals together, they all shared food off the same plate. This gave me the impression that the idea of community was strongly integrated in the way they eat.

Initially I didn’t feel too much discomfort in the idea of sharing food off a communal plate because I was sharing with close friends who I was secure enough with and are people who I would consider to make up my own community. However, I don’t know if I would ever suggest an Ethiopian restaurant for anyone’s first date - because there is something a little too intimate about sharing food off the same plate (at least for those of us unfamiliar with the dining etiquette). For Ethiopians, however, intimacy is more connected with the act of feeding rather than sharing. The act of feeding someone (called Gursha) is a selfless act that you do to show appreciation (1). Someone once told me that you feed a friend one bite, a family member two and a lover three bites. And if someone REALLY likes you they will feed you their last bite!

I really enjoyed my experience with Ethiopian cuisine because it made me look closer at the benefits of eating communally - which I think I was taking for granted. I had forgotten how easy it was to connect with people over food and how it brought people together. I also realized that although Ethiopian cuisine may embody a sense of community - our own local communities tended to also use food as a central part of bringing people of a community(sometimes from distinctly different cultures) together - i.e. community kitchens, community gardens, and community events with food.


I think that viewing the way Ethiopian’s eat from a western perspective may lead to worries about hygiene and contamination, and of course many people hate sharing food off their plate or those of others. I, however, found it charming and I felt that it added a little bit more to the enjoyment of the meal. Some people say that food tastes better when you make it yourself - I'm now inclined to believe that it also tastes better when you share.

References

1. Ethiopian Restaurant.com. (2010). Gursha. Retrieved March 29, 2010 from http://www.ethiopianrestaurant.com/gursha.html