Gary Nabhan, who lectures tonight (21 May 2010) in Rome, continues his exploration of the markets Vavilov visited in Ethiopia. Pictures here.
As we descended down endless switchbacks from the plateau above the gorge, we could see the towers of the cathedral [of Debre Libanos] well ahead of us, but did not catch a glimpse of the market until we were nearly on top of it. There can be little doubt that it has remained in the same exact spot where Vavilov had known it, for it sprawled beneath a tree so tall, with such a spacious, shady canopy that it served as a refuge for any weary traveler passing its way. If it was not, in fact, “the tree where man was born,” it most certainly seemed like the tree where man and woman first traded seeds and healing herbs.
Beneath that canopy, there were no neatly framed vendor’s stands as there were in Ankober; instead, there was a mob of herb traders who showed their wares on shawls and blankets and baskets spread out before where they sat on the hard-packed clay. Each vendor sat in the midst of many multi-colored piles, which they guarded from incidental “sampling” by visitors walking by.
Perhaps “walking” is not the appropriate word for how buyers had to maneuver among the many vendors; they were so thickly packed beneath the tree that one had to almost tiptoe between the herb displays so as not to stumble or fall into anyone’s carefully sculpted conical piles of tumeric, chile powder, or cumin.
At last we saw the shiny black seeds of noog piled high, next to other oilseeds such a peppergrass and sesame. Next to the many colors of ground cumin and chile pepper, there were brilliant golden piles of ginger, as well as masses of intact but sinewy ginger roots. One woman hand-roasted and weighed various grades of Ethiopian wild and domesticated coffees right before your eyes, while another sold various colors and textures of sea salt nested in pale brown paper containers, each looking much like a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a sugar cone. There were countless medicinal herbs as well as the crystallized globules of Ethiopian myrrh and “false” frankincense. Surrounding all the herbalists were huge piles of blue Hubbard squash, papayas, onions, Swiss chard, kale, mustard greens, and pomelos.
I was reassured that we found such a timeless marketplace; of course, it now has vegetables from the New World as well as the Old, [1] and plastic or fiberglass containers as well as pottery jars and baskets. Yet, the cultural context of this vernacular trading was much the same as it had been for centuries. Regardless of the changes in the rest of the world, these traders had managed to maintain some modicum of continuity with their predecessors, sustaining one of the world’s most celebrated cuisines. For the moment, regional tradition was holding its own against globalization. No Wal-Mart could offer what this one-tree, one-stop shopping place could offer, as it stood watch over the tributaries of the Nile.
Extracted from Where our Food Comes From by Gary Paul Nabhan
and used with permission.
Notes:
- And did when Vavilov visited too. [↩]
