South Ethiopia, Dorze Village near Arba Minch

South Ethiopia, Dorze Village near Arba Minch - tourist attraction

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The Dorze are a people living in the Gamo Highlands of Southern Ethiopia, they are famous for the shape of their huts, that recall the structure of a beehive and the face of an elephant.
The typical compound of a Dorze family consists of 3 huts, a main hut in the center and two smaller huts on the sides, the Dorze huts are built using only natural materials such as wood, bamboo and enset leaves; around the huts there is a garden where coffee and cotton are grown, there are also numerous false banana plants, the enset.
The main hut has considerable dimensions, on average the height of these huts ranges from 9 to 12 meters, the supporting structure is made of bamboo wood on which are placed the panels of woven bamboo and enset leaves, also finely woven , these make the hut water resistant.
The shape of the Dorze hut resembles the face of an elephant, these animals lived in these lands centuries ago, before moving to Kenya; the hut has two holes in the upper part for ventilation that look like two eyes, and an entrance that protrudes from the rest of the structure that looks like the nose of the pachyderm.
These huts can be attacked by termites or ants that feed on these materials, damaging the lower part of the hut; when it happens the house goes down gradually.
To respond to the attack of ants and termites the Dorze act in two ways: they modify the entrance of the house that, progressively goes down along with the house, or they move the hut to another place safe from termites and ants; these huts are real mobile homes.
The structure of the hut is liftable and transportable but it is not a simple operation, twenty men are needed inside the hut and another 40 outside who, with the help of wooden poles, that are placed under the house, raise the whole structure and move it to another place.