GURAGE

ethnolinguistic group of the fertile region in southwestern Ethiopia west of Lake Ziway and east of the Omo River. These people are descendants of a mixture of Sidamo peoples with military conquerors from the Tigray province of Ethiopia and with later immigrants from the southeastern city of Harer. Contact with many outsiders has bequeathed an almost bewildering linguistic and cultural complexity to this group. The Gurage practice animism, Ethiopian Christianity, and Islam. The dominant language group, Gurage belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly Hamito-Semitic) family. Settled agriculturalists, the Gurage centre their lives on the cultivation of their staple crop, the ensete, or towering banana tree, prized not for its false (or inedible) fruit but for its roots. The Gurage have no centralized institutional political power or leadership. Local power is vested in lineages; these descent groups display corporate rights, obligations, and influence. In contrast, the religious or ritual system is highly centralized; ritual officials sanction the authority of the political elders. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this religiouspolitical asymmetry is the integral place in the system assigned to the Fuga, the local representatives of what are believed to be remnants of earlier Negroid-Cushitic inhabitants of the Horn of Africa. This lower caste group of artisans and hunters are also ritual specialists whose powers are feared but deemed essential in all major Gurage religious functions. The Fuga share a ritual language with Gurage women, which Gurage men may not learn lest they penetrate the mysteries of the female initiation ceremonies.