2016 Volume 26 Issue 2 Pages 81-90
The food culture of the Dirashe and Konso people in Southern Ethiopia is highly unique as their staple food is alcoholic beverage made of sorghum and Zea mays. The Dirashe area and Konso area lie adjacent to each other, and they have a lot in common in their ecological environment, history, culture, society and the like. Other than having the Omoro tribe as their ancestor, some of other similarities are their harsh semi-arid climate, severe insect damage, and land feature being slope mostly covered with stones. It can be assumed that, as these two groups having a lot of common grounds communicated with each other, they developed a very rare food culture that people took in nutrition necessary for survival by consuming crops in a form of alcoholic beverage, which is easier to consume compared to solid food or saccharified drinks.
However, the specifics of their food culture are never identical. The Dirashe people grow the limited kinds of crop plant with little labor input, so their food variety is also limited and meals are mainly consisted of local beer Since local beer is liquid diet, thus unfilling, the Dirashe people spend all of their spare time consuming it in order to supplement necessary nutrition. On the other hand, the Konso people devote their energy to utilizing land thoroughly to grow a great range of crop plant. Therefore, they have various types of food such as potatos, pulses and vegetables in addition to local beer. Yet, their farming method is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and they have such a limited spare time that their mealtimes in a day are fixed. Additionally, while the Dirashe people try to simplify the day-to-day brewing process by contriving ways to store beer in the course of and at the completion of brewing, the Konso people try to lessen their burden by taking turns in brewing among a group of ten households and above. Furthermore, the flavors of local beer brewed by these two groups are completely different. Each group prefers drinking their own local beer.
In this way, the food culture of these two groups are not uniform since they are influenced by the multifaceted factors such as their cultivated crops, farming methods, social relationships and tastes.
