Dubiousness of Survival in Gidicho Island: Economic Livelihood Shift from Farming to Fishing
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International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR) ISSN: 2319-7064 ResearchGate Impact Factor (2018): 0.28 | SJIF (2018): 7.426 Dubiousness of Survival in Gidicho Island: Economic Livelihood Shift from Farming to Fishing Mohammed Seid Mohammed1, Teferi Hatuye Hilate2 Arba Minch University Abstract: The economic life of the inhabitants of Gidicho Island was full of glitches. Farming, as part of the livelihood of the people of the Island, was also crumbled from the subsistence economic system of the people due to the wraparound of farmlands by the continuously expanding water of Lake Abaya. This article intends to give some insights on the nature of the shabby economy of the inhabitants of the Island byexplaining the major challenges that tempted to affect farming and the peoples’ decision to shift their livelihood to fishing. It anticipates to precisely discuss the efforts exerted by the inhabitants of the Island to ensure their survival by meticulously finding solution to economic problems that encountered them in different periods. In the discussion, the article also discusses the eventual collapse of farming economy and the emergence of fishery by replacing it as part of solutions applied by the people of the Island to ensure their survival. The data used to write this article are gathered through fieldworks conducted from 2015 to 2017. The researchers collected sources in different form from Gidicho Island, Mirab Abaya, Hawassa and Addis Ababa. Both written and oral sources are gathered from the above regions and carefully analyzed to write an objective historical account on the issue. Sources collected from different contexts are cross-checked and meticulously analyzed to write this article. Keywords: Dubiousness; Farming; Fishing; Gidicho; Shift; Survival 1. Introduction admiration towards the boat technology that the inhabitants of Gidicho Island have made from a very light wood species Islands have been used as a home of communities in of ambatch to float over Lake Abaya. [4] It is confirmed that different parts of the world. Lazrus states that islands are Harold Fleming is the first author who drew the attention of home to one-tenth of the global population and also cover linguists to the Baiso language. He made brief trips to one-six of the Earth‟s surface. Likewise, the author also lists Gidicho Island in 1958 and 1960 in order to determine the those politically independent islands which have sovereign linguistic affiliation of the peoples of the Island. The states that counts one-quarter of the world‟s sovereign states. pioneering descriptive work of Harold Fleming supports [1] The Rift Valley lakes of Abaya and Chamo, which are Neumann‟s impression of the Somali-like structure of Baiso. found 500 kilo meters far from Addis Ababa to south, host [5] Susanne Epple, who conducted ethnographic research both inhabited and uninhabited islands. Lake Abaya which is among the Baiso people, carried out fieldwork in the years part of the largest lacustrine complex of the Ethiopian Rift between 2012 and 2015 in four rounds. She documents Valley hosts about thirty islands. However, most of them are aspects of Baiso culture which the author herself considered not inhabited by now. Among the islands of Lake Abaya, it as a kind of “salvage ethnography.” This work gives only Gidicho Island was inhabited by Baiso and Haro important insights with regard to a history and origin, their peoples during the researchers‟ fieldwork in 2015. Gidicho indigenous religions and ritual life, livelihood strategies, and Island is the largest Island available within Lake Abaya. It the complex relationship between the Baiso and Haro people extends about eight km north to south and three to four km of the Island. However, thequestion of survival that tempted from east to west. The Island has been served as a safe place the economic aspects of the inhabitants of the Island, and the to its inhabitants. [2] way they could survive here by wrestling the problems were not briefly discussed by anyone of them. Thus, this However, islands and inhabitants of them did not get manuscript intends to give brief account on the effort of the attention from social science studies in general and history inhabitants of the Island to shift their livelihood from in particular. The first note that gives some insights with farming to fishing as a means to ensure their survival in regard to the existence of peoples in Gidicho Island was Gidicho Island. LambertoVannutelli and Carlo Citerni who visited the Island as a member of Bottego‟s pioneering expedition in southern Pastoralism was identified as the earlier and their major Ethiopia in 1899. It is obvious that the first western scholars economic activity for the people of the study area. The who mentioned the inhabitants of the Island were the ancestors of the inhabitants of the Island were familiar with members of the Second Bottego Exploration who came to pastoral economic activity in the twelfth century when they the area around the turn of the nineteenth century. [3] Oscar were found in eastern Shewa. Available evidences point out Neuman who defined the inhabitants of the Island as that the ancestors of the inhabitants of Gidicho Island were “Somali like people” was the first traveler who mentioned living in plains of lower Awash in this period. Tamrat Baiso language in his travel account based on his own clearly states that people living in this region were familiar personal observation which took place in 1902. He with pastoralism. [6] The region between lower Awash to mentioned the linguistic and physical resemblance of Baiso Lake Abaya, through where they moved across until their and Somali peoples briefly. According to Oscar Neumann‟s arrival to the Island, is considered as the probable site that sketch, the inhabitants of Gidicho had almost an identical represents the first adoption of a pastoral economy in East expression with the people of Somalia. He also expressed his Africa at least since the second Millennium BC. [7] Sava also set his assumption whicharguesthat the ancestors of the Volume 9 Issue 2, February 2020 www.ijsr.net Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY Paper ID: SR20221183027 DOI: 10.21275/SR20221183027 1564 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR) ISSN: 2319-7064 ResearchGate Impact Factor (2018): 0.28 | SJIF (2018): 7.426 inhabitants of present-day Gidicho Island were pastoralists contact among each other which apparently brought a before their movement to the Island. However, Sava is not in platform for cultural exchange among each other, including a position to indicate the evidence he used to reach to such farming. conclusion. [8] Informants also confirm that pastoralism was a major economic activity of them until recently. They Kuls who visited Gidicho Island in 1958 provides an moved with their cattle along the shores of Lake Abaya. account of the agricultural practices of the inhabitants of Particularly the regions found in the western shore of Lake Gidicho Island. [15] Harold Fleming, who visited the Island Abaya, which now are the major settlement areas, were the in the same year, enumerates words in his description of the main centers of animal rearing for them. Moreover, the Baiso vocabulary to suggest theiracquaintance with farming Island is also stated as a healthy environment for animal practices at least since his visit to the Island. He presents rearing. That is why Mathias Brenzinger points out that the words like hoke (hoe), bʌdƹla (maize), maŝiŋka (sorghum) in people of Guji sent their donkeys to the Island to recover the vocabulary aspect of them. It is based on such analysis from infirmity. Thus, the inhabitants of the Island have kept that he, finally, suggests that theywere once lived in the cattle, goat and donkey in the Island. [9] It is in recognition highland or mountainous regions, landscape mostly of the role of pastoralism to their economy that they rehearse conducive for farming, before their spread to the Island. [16] the following poem in their poetry: Murdock also confirms that East Cushitic peoples, including አላቴመረእቴአባጊኒ፤ I am proud of being a milker the Baiso of Gidicho Island, were originally agriculturalists ጭፍራጋሎሀንዶቴቴማቶ፡ ፡ and we owe to a herd before their spread to the lowland. According to Murdock, the present-day southeastern Ethiopian lowlanders were This poem clearly indicates the role plaidby animal rearing living in the highland region where agriculture has been the in the economic history of them. Peoples who lived both on major economic activity. [17] the Island and the western shoreline of Lake Abaya proudly remember their engagement in animal rearing by chanting Based on the account of Eike Haberland, who visited the such poems in their day to day speech. Island in 1950, Susanne Epple states that there was no farming practice in the Island during the visit of the former. Farming was another major economic activity of them until [18] This thesis, however, is not confirmed by oral sources. recently. It is, however, difficult to precisely indicate the The inhabitants of the Island bitterly expressed their anger of exact period of the beginning of farming on the Island. losing their farmland to the expansionist state which There is also no concrete evidence that could prove established cotton plantation since around the turn of the theiracquaintance with farming during their infiltration to nineteenth century. [19] This depicts that there was farming the Island in the early sixteenth century. Some historical practice at least as early as the turn of this century. It is also accounts narrate that the Cushitic people of the region known that Italy expanded cotton plantation on the Island on disliked farming in the pre-sixteenth century southern the expense of the subsistence farming activity of them. [20] Ethiopia.