ABSTRACT
There is a roughly seven-and-a-half year gap between the Ethiopian and Gregorian calendars. So when I returned to Addis Ababa to begin fieldwork in April 2007, Ethiopia was just a few months away from the year 2000. The turn of the Ethiopian millennium was accompanied by government discourses about an Ethiopian economic and cultural “renaissance.” Residents in Addis Ababa were less optimistic. In early September, a few days before New Year’s Eve, some Ethiopian friends told me over dinner that it had become popular to refer to the new era as “ ye’alicha millennium .” The term alicha refers to a “bland” stew lacking spice, particularly the mix of red pepper, salt, garlic, ginger, and other herbs known as berbere . Since the prices of these key ingredients in Ethiopian cuisine had skyrocketed along with other staples, people in the capital were settling for blander dishes, if they could afford food at all. In rural folk experience, being deprived of spice is a sign of impending famine or declining household economic status and food security (Amare 1999; 2010).
