Buda, the Ethiopian evil eye

The evil eye in Ethiopian belief. Others pin the buda label on artisan and manual-labour castes and on Beta Israel, Ethiopian Jews.

Buda is the Ethiopian name for the evil eye. Wikipedia says the belief remains common in Ethiopia, and Charles Kemp's Baylor University page on the health beliefs of Ethiopian refugees and immigrants notes that infants are thought to be most at risk from it.

The belief is aimed at particular groups. According to Wikipedia, others often say Beta Israel, Ethiopian Jews, have buda, and ironworkers and other castes are labelled with it too. The Amharic word tabib, meaning manual worker, also means a person with the evil eye, whose supposed power is ranked with a witch's. A second Wikipedia article, on belief in Ethiopia, ties buda to Beta Israel and lower castes, mostly artisans and manual labourers, whom aristocratic families rank low. Mixing across the castes is treated as sinful, and the lower caste is described in terms of envy and evil. People wear beads and amulets, Kitab jewellery among them, to guard against the evil eye.

Niall Finneran, writing in Folklore (2003) on evil eye belief and the symbolism of iron working, explains the tension around artisans. They usually own no land, he writes, and farming and peasant groups tend to look down on them, though nothing in body, culture or language sets them apart from their neighbours. The only divide is economic.