BY MULUGETA GUDETA
The rains have gone and the dry season has set in. Memories of kiremt or the rainy season in Amharic, are still vivid together with the street side hustles and bustles in the major cities where corn and roasted potatoes are sold to passersby. Young women were particularly busy selling these foods that are consumed by pedestrians young and old as if they come only once in a year. The real reason for rising demands for corn and potatoes during the rainy season is that the public believes that these items, rich as they are in carbohydrates and starch, are good in keeping people warm or deficiency in meet the body’s deficiency in high calorie.
Now that bega or the dry season has set in, the pubic craving for roasted corn and potato is replaced with another Ethiopian specialty, namely meat-raw, cooked, boiled, minced, ..you name it. Although the price of meat has gone through the roofs, the public is in no way hesitant to pay any price as long as it is good meat that has become an addiction to many people. Ethiopia is one of the few countries in the world whose livestock population ranks among the top ones.
By the same token, Ethiopians are among the people who consume meat more than anything else because it is easily available, was cheap until before inflation intervened to spoil the show. The typical Ethiopian meal is nothing without meat recipes where butter prepared in the Ethiopian way and spices give it a hell of a taste. It should not come as a surprise that Ethiopia’s food culture changes as the seasons change naturally and people’s preferences also change. May be this is nature’s way of telling people to make timely adjustments as cold gives way to high temperature and the public taste follows suit.
Now that the “meat season” is ushered in with weddings and holiday luncheons, meaty foods are on the minds of many urban Ethiopians who have a lot of money to burn. This article is inspired by a recent (or ongoing) TV advertisement whose main emphasis is on eating meat (raw or cooked) at this particular time of the Ethiopian Year or in the month of Tikimt (October) when the weather is supposed to go mildly cold and that the body needs more energy to fight it off. The claim that goes under the well-known Amharic proverb of “betikimt and atint” (literally meaning a bone in October) that can be translated as “it is necessary to eat meat in order to stay healthy when it is cold”. The interpretation of the adage may vary according to your culture, diet, economic status or whether you care or not about the saying at all.
Meat vendors seem to care about the saying. One of them is advertising it on TV and inviting the meat lovers with fat purses to come to its place and enjoy this traditional Ethiopian specialty, namely the raw meat. If you are one of those people hard-hit by the galloping inflation these days, you better not even watch the advertisement as it is meant for the haves and not for the have-nots or those imprisoned for life in the lowest socio-economic bracket.
This is best expressed in a popular Ethiopian tune whose lyrics that goes like “eyaleh kalhone, keleleh yelehim” roughly translated as “you can live as long as you have money and you cannot live if you have no money”. Sung by the legendary Tilahun Gessesse, the song is not only politically stinging or a critique of money worship that had caught on society even at his time but also a warning against poverty.
As we watch the advertisement, it seems that the invitation of betikimt and atint mainly goes to the well-fed people who have the financial means to wrestle with tons of raw or cooked meat washed down with barrels of beer or wine. Otherwise, what the common people can do it to past meat vending stores, looking at the fat and lean raw meat and swallow the saliva that accumulates in their mouth.
Even for the few better off compatriots, the expenses for visiting the most expensive meat shops in the wealthier parts of our great city, the going is tough. According to hearsay, one has to go with their pockets stuffed with an average of ten thousand Birr if they want to fully enjoy the food and drinks available in those places for one evening. While they savor the meat with much gusto, inflation is gnashing at their purses. The difference is that ordinary people complain about the astronomic price of meat while the regulars at expensive meat joint regale at the occasion and at being the lucky few who have an exclusive access to those places of wining and dining with all the accoutrements worthy of VIPs.
Let us go back to the advertisement and its content and look at it from the scientific point of view. Does eating too much meat real protect one from the cold weather during the rainy season or now that the Ethiopian summer has set in? To begin with, here is nothing comparable to the European or American winter in Ethiopia. The coldest season in Ethiopia must be a mildly pleasant climate for Europeans accustomed to the snow and blizzard of the Western winter when people go out covered with thick clothes from head to foot and breathing steam into the cold air. Here in Ethiopia, there is no cold season that forces that to eat meat in great quantity as the people in the above example often do.
I guess the wisdom reflected in the traditional adage is misunderstood these days. Our forefathers who were almost all residents of the rural areas advise their compatriots to eat meat in October because they have been eating mostly vegetables and grains all year-long and a little meat during the mildly cold season can be a good dietary balancing act and good for the body. However, this has been misunderstood by the mostly obese meat lovers and their advertising friends as meaning that October should be a good occasion to celebrate the gods of satiety and big eating as if their overfed bodies would not survive until November.
According to available information, “In Addis Ababa, a city of more than 3.5 million people, raw meat lovers flock to butcher shops that serve raw meat any time of day.” This is to say any time of day, week and year. This does not however mean that Ethiopians have a gene that make them susceptible to the passion for meat. It simply means that Ethiopia is one of the leading countries in the world with the highest cattle population and that Ethiopians can afford to buy and consume oxen meat whenever they feel like it and that the price of meat was relatively low mostly before the current inflation that has put it beyond the reach of the poor and downtrodden.
Meat consumption the way it is used or abused at the high-class butcher’s shops in the posh part of the city may cause some health problems. Health professional often advise meat lovers against overeating it as it may be the source of many non-communicable diseases like obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and what not. Whether eaten in October or in July, meat remains a highly useful and even indispensable diet for the body to stay healthy. As all advertisements are exercises in exaggeration and dramatics, they are expected to exaggerate the positive effects of meat without cautioning the consumers against the potential risks.
Raw meat in Ethiopia is considered a delicious delicacy despite doctors warning that eating uncooked meat can have serious health complications. However it is difficult for most of us to kick off bad habits and as the saying goes “Bad habits die hard.” Eating raw meat has now become not only of kind “addiction” among young men and women but it is also generating its own myths and legends. Some people are eating goat meat in particular in their drive to boost their sexual drive or avoid the excesses cholesterol in meats which is not allegedly found in goat meat. These assertions however are not supported by science.
Back in the old days, it was shocking to see young women and girls sitting alongside their male counterparts and munching raw meat and washing it down with beer or wine. It was even an act worthy of excommunication by the church and condemnation by men who consider them tomboyish to eat raw meat in shops with their men counterparts. Times have now definitely changed and eating raw meat in popular places has almost become a sign of pride, wealth, or macho behavior.
Nobody seems to care about the health hazards because tradition still holds sway even among the educated and well-informed citizens. However, health professionals often warn us that the country is spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year for the treatment of non-communicable diseases, money that could otherwise be used to treat other diseases.
Ethiopia is one of the countries with the highest number of cattle but the scenario for the future does not augur well. As population growth is uncontrollable and the cattle population does not catch up with it, the country is going to face some kind of shortage unless the agricultural sector is radically improved. Otherwise, our food culture is going to be negatively affected because this culture is also one of the reasons why tourists flock to our country to so many varieties of meat dishes in their search for the taste of a country that has still kept its tradition in the middle of irresistible modernization.
The Ethiopian Herald November 5/2022
