In the last chapter we saw how labour has been a critical factor in agricultural production and we saw some of the ways in which large landowners gained access to extra labour throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this chapter we will now turn to consider Gamo ideas about productivity, about what has to be done so that the land will be fertile and bear many crops, and we will explore the ways in which these ideas underlie a hierarchical set of relations of production within clans and communities.

Spirits, seniority and the flow of fertility

Gamo ideas about productivity centre around a belief in spirits known as ts'ala?e. These spirits, a combination of ancestral spirits and nature spirits, are thought to live in the ground and in water and they are considered to have great powers over agricultural production and human well-being. Local thought holds that, if fed through offerings and sacrifices known as maggana, the spirits will cause the crops to grow, the cows to give milk and women to have babies. In short they will cause the people who feed them to become fertile and prosperous. However, if these spirits are ignored and the requisite offerings are not made, then they can cause crop failure, sickness and conflicts. Feeding the spirits, then, is considered to be crucial to successful productivity.

According to Gamo tradition, however, not everyone can make offerings to the spirits for themselves.