Kojo- The False Banana

1/22/10


‘Kojo’ is a food typical of the south (where Injara/ Teff is hard to get.) of Ethiopia made from the ‘False Banana.’ The False banana tree is just what the name describes. It looks like a banana tree only it never produces fruit. Kojo is typically eaten with ‘Kitfo’ (a meat dish.)

The outer layer of the tree is chopped away and the inner part is mashed. The locals mash the inners with their bare feet. (Most people in the countryside don’t wear shoes and their feet can be pretty gross.) They burry the mash in the false banana leaves underground for a few years while it ferments.

Once the mash has fermented it is unburied and by this time has grub larva within the muddle (the locals say if there are no larva in the mash it has not fermented enough.) again the mash is pounded by bare feet and again it is burred for some time.

Finally they unearth the mixture, pound it one last time, and cook it into a flat gray chewy slightly sour mass of what is called ‘Kojo.’



The Bishop was here today for lunch. He is very funny. During lunch he was telling jokes. One of these was:

Two priests go to dinner they begin drinking. They drink and drink until one of the priests points across the room and says to the other “you must stop me when those two priests over there become three.”
The other priest replies, “but father, there is only one priest sitting over there.”





There was an Ethiopian priest instructing an older Ethiopian man why he shouldn’t drink at his age. The man was arguing and in his defense asked if the bible discouraged it. The Ethiopian man thought he could distract the older man by going in order with books so that the older man might give up on the search.
The Ethiopian priest says to the older man, “Go ahead and start with the Amharic alphabet first and then read so on, and so on.” The older man agrees and picks up the book with the Amharic alphabet.

It begins like this, “HA, HU, LE, LU, ME, MU SE, SU, KE, KU, TE, TU…” at that moment the priest is interrupted by the older man and the man says, “can you repeat that?”

The priest says, “TE, TU…” Again the older man asks the priest to repeat. “TE, TU” says the priest. “See!” the older man says rejoicing. “Even the Amharic alphabet says ‘to drink!’ ” (Tetu = to drink in Amharic)



One of the children new to the catholic school asked Brother Simon, “Why do you wear that dress?”
Brother Simon replied, “It’s not a dress it’s a ‘habit.’
The boy then said, “Well, it looks like what they wear in my Karate class. Is that rope to hit me with when I’m bad?”