25should a family possess any. Solega of both sexes seek employment as labourers or
farm-hands in nearby coffee estates, construction sites or towns, or in short-term state
government initiatives such as the roadside clearing of the woody weed Lantana.
1.7.6 Nutrition
The traditional staple food of the Solega is the fi nger millet ( Eleusine coracana ) or
ra:gi , whose fl our is cooked with water and moulded into balls or iṭṭu , and eaten
with a lentil or meat curry ( uduka ). In the past, ra:gi was cultivated by practically
all Solega families, along with other food crops such as pumpkin, corn, banana and
a variety of legumes. The only foodstuffs that were routinely purchased or bartered
for in town included salt and cooking oil. Nowadays, many Solega have taken to
growing coffee on the plots of land that have been granted to them by the state
government. This is seen as an advantageous strategy because the sale of coffee
beans provides cash, and the coffee plants themselves are not prime targets for
wild animals. In contrast, ra:gi fi elds are regularly raided by wild pigs and birds,
which have the potential to reduce harvests by a signifi cant proportion (up to half).
Elephants could easily wipe out an entire year’s efforts in a single night, and ra:gi
cultivators routinely build temporary shelters next to their fi elds to keep watch
over their crop.
In recent years, rice has become fi rmly established as the main staple in many
Solega settlements, and parents often complain that children now refuse to eat ra:gi
iṭṭu. A cash income has allowed many Solega to buy other new kinds of food from
nearby towns, instead of having to seek out traditional forest foods. Solega elders
blame the increasing consumption of ‘city’ foods, grown with the help of pesticides
and artifi cial fertilisers, for what they perceive to be a rise in the prevalence of dis-
ease in their community. Many older Solega will also emphatically state that the
food bought from towns—including ra:gi grain for coffee-growing families—has
neither the taste nor the aroma of home-grown food.
The Solega were once heavily reliant on forest foods, including various kinds of
edible fruit and mushrooms , yams , edible foliage and honey. Many kinds of animals
and birds (along with their eggs) were trapped and eaten in the past, but this practice
has now stopped, subsequent to the setting up of the wildlife sanctuary.
Unsurprisingly, the availability of forest foods is patchy and seasonal, and isolation,
a lack of ready cash and external restrictions frequently conspire to make it diffi cult
for Solega families to obtain adequate nutrition. One of my primary consultants
recalls that the monsoons in the year of his marriage were particularly active, and
that his fi nancial situation was simultaneously dire. Unable to leave the house to
fi nd work, or to seek forest foods, he and his young wife had to subsist on their
meagre store of yams for a couple of months. This occurred in the late 1990s, and it
1.7 Ethnographic Sketch