THE TREE OF BENGODI

In her village, Adanec is the only woman who cannot have children.

At the height of the soil infertility she raises a huge tree that will save her people from starving.

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In the South of Ethiopia a fertility chant accompanies each step of the processing of Ensete, the ‘false banana’ or breadfruit tree that women, as silent custodians, have cultivated for centuries in their gardens.

Only Adanec, among all of them, is sterile. She devotes herself to agricultural practices with more strength than her companions, with discipline and in absolute secrecy; in mute anticipation that such gestures of caring would finally generate fertility, both in the soil and in her womb. Adanec is marginalized by all the women. Yet, sheltered from the big leaves of Ensete, she keeps accumulating ethnobotanical wisdom. She orients herself towards a dry thinness, and gets rid of unessential desires. She learns how to listen to her womb and, through the womb, to her pain. When famine finally comes and leaves the village dry and hungry, it is this little woman, with an empty womb that in the meantime has been refilled with creative energies, who re-educates women to the art of reproducing seeds. The warmth of the tree, as a result of Adanec’s work, creates an underground vibration. The earth awakes. The seeds produce a sound which is itself a chant. The rich bread that is shaped from the plant, carried around and celebrated by women and children, has become the child of the whole community.

This illustrated book was born out of a reflection on the concept of abundance. From a local point of view, abundance can only be conceived of as being in tune with the rhythm of the seasons and as a form of respect for the available resources; it necessarily intertwines with periods of deprivation and has to be achieved at a slow pace and through sacrife in order to be truly ethical and sustainable. The book aims at developing a curious, interactive, and far from exotic vision of the food (produced and consumed) and the body (embroidered with meaningful signs) as resources through which women unrelentlessly weave their own subtle paths to creativity.