Valentina Peveri - The Edible Gardens of Ethiopia: An Ethnographic Journey into Beauty and Hunger (biodiversity in small spaces)

(Acknowledgments)

T HE COREchapters of this book took shape during a summer season spent in a Boston neighborhood, only a short walk from the Arnold Arboretum. Every morning before reaching the library at the Boston University African Studies Center, soon after dawn, I would go for a run through the woods. On July 14, 2018, I took a steep rocky path off the beaten track, trudged up to the top, and heard the sound of rapid movement coming from behind a pile of stone and wood. I rested, breathless. A majestic deer stepped forward, also bewildered, and simply stood. We stared at each other for what seemed to me like an eternity. The spell broke when I decided to run away, tripped, and fell to the ground. When I turned back he or she had vanished. Only later during the writing process did I realize what the details of our wordless communication had actually meant; but I knew that the deer was my Gemini spirit animal, and therefore immediately felt that he or she was another meor me looking into the abyss of my Self. I developed most of the confidence in my authorial voice after this encounter, and I could more clearly see what the essential, still nameless, message of this book should be.

The spirit animal has since incarnated and manifested itself in more human forms. I am deeply grateful to James C. McCann, who has watched over this project long before anyone could think of it as having the potential to become a book. He has nurtured my imagination and devoted hours on end to reading and commenting on the draft chapters; but especially, he has provided an immersive flux of storytelling around emerging ideas that stretched my imagination even further, down into the abyss and back to the written pagealways encouraging me to think like an octopus. Grazie, Professore, for all those adventurous detours.

Nothing of what is written in these pages would be the same had it not been for the immense love of language, words, detail, and philosophy of my friend and guardian angel Rob Edwards, who generously handed to me the practical tools to speak the nameless message of the book in English, and then escorted me every step of the way into the underground of Wonderlandinto the painful magic of crafting ideas through words (and the other way round).

Funding was critical to the development of this project. The seed of it was planted during a research stay at the African Studies Center of Boston University in 201516, which received support from the U.S.-Italy Fulbright Commission. I have fond memories of my time spent at the African Studies Library and of the technical and human support from its staff membersBeth Restrick, Gabeyehu (Gabe) Adugna, and Rachel Dwyer. Afterward, the project was boosted by a Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship, which the Wenner-Gren Foundation awarded me in fall 2017. In particular, I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers who urged me in the infancy of the project to experiment energetically with turning the successful proposal into a book, and to cling to an intimate and evocative approach to the subject matter.