The Shema - Ethiopian cultural dress

Ethiopia is an ethnically diverse country. Though I don't have formal statistics to support it I have heard that there are about 89 ethnic groups in Ethiopia. Most of these have their own language, cultural dressings, cuisines, and all the cultural things.

I will write a little bit about the main cultural dressing in Ethiopia. Thiss dressing is shared by several ethnic groups in Ethiopia including the Amharas, Tigres and the Gurages and is what people usually refer as as the Ethiopian cultural dressing.

The cloth is hand made out of cotton threads. The cotton threads are themselves usually hand made. In the cities you can go and buy these clothes from the shops. But in the rural areas it is very common that the ladies make the threads and give them to the traditional weavers called the 'shemanes' who in turn weave and make the cloth out of it.

Clothes made in these ways are called shemas in Ethiopia. The shemanes's put different designs and embroideries on the shema which makes it colorful and very attractive. In the rural areas most of ladies clothes are still made of the shema. Thick shawls made of shema are also worn by men in the rural areas specially during the cold seasons.


The picture above shows an Ethiopian girl wearing a decorated shema cloth preparing coffee.