A Descriptive and Interpretive Documentation of Enemor Household Utensils
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Date
2012-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This is a qualitative study conducted to identify, classify, describe and
document the house utensils of Enemor in an effort to document endangered
elements of material culture of the Enemor people in south Ethiopia. To achieve this
general objective, participant and non-participant observations and unstructured
interviews were used to gather relevant data. The audio-video and image data
collected from Enemor consultants were digitally documented and employed for the
data analysis in the study.
The data analysis revealed that the following research findings are worth
considering in any effort geared towards documenting and preserving cultural
household utensils of the Enemor people in this age of globalization.
The current free market economic policy of Ethiopia appears to have opened
many socio-cultural and business opportunities for foreign household utensils
produced by different foreign factories (for instance, from China) to dominate
domestic household utensils produced by factories in Ethiopia in terms of price and
quality. Due to this, the Enemor people seem to have been attracted towards these
foreign household utensils instead of frequently producing and using their indigenous
cultural household utensils. Thus, the level of endangerment of their indigenous
knowledge of producing the utensils has been increasing from time to time.
The utensils identified are made of different kinds of raw materials. From
enset and qia, they produce endera, quachiqiche, kap’wat, itfoko, and chefad. There
are utensils produced from bamboo tree such as sisha, tekuya (in different size and
shape), and satera. Mektefia, zenb’were, sheta, and yechuceqye are produced from
zigeba tree. There are also house utensils produced from clay soil such as bitter and
jebena.
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The common utilities of the utensils are linked with the day to day activities of
the community. They utilize some of the house utensils for cooking, serving and
sleeping. They produce the utensils to subsidize their livelihood, to offer as a present
and to decorate their house. Most frequently women are involved in the production
and sale of the utensils.
The utensils on brink of extinction are inajapa, container to drink water, milk
and traditional drinks, and finjan, lit. coffee cups, which are made of clay. Ankefue
which is produced from animal horn and wooden utensils waqema, yeje, yegir and
gebete are no more produced in the community.
On the whole, it is recommended that stakeholders (e.g. NGOs, cultural
departments of the government, the Enemor community) should work together and
identify possible ways of preserving the indigenous Enemor knowledge and practices
of producing and using the household utensils. They need to involve researchers for
further research on issues out of the scope of this study. Eventually, such initiatives
can result in reliable ways of transmitting the Enemor culture of producing and using
the utensils to the future generation.
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