The story
Gursha (ጉርሻ) is Amharic, and it names a gesture from the Ethiopian table. A meal is often served on injera, a large, soft sourdough flatbread made from teff, with stews spooned on top, and it is eaten without cutlery: you tear off a piece with your right hand and use it to pick up the food. A gursha is the moment when, instead of eating that piece yourself, you put it into someone else's mouth.
It is meant as affection, offered to someone sharing the same platter, and it turns a meal into something closer to an embrace.
The word has a second, everyday meaning: a tip, a little extra on top of what is owed. The two senses sit well together. Both are something given beyond what is required, and both are a way of saying thank you.
English can only describe it. Hand-feeding sounds like something done for a baby or an animal, and feeding someone sounds like care work. The Ethiopian gesture is neither. It is hospitality made physical, and it happens between adults who could perfectly well feed themselves.
A family lunch in Addis Ababa, with one large platter in the middle of the table. The grandmother tears off a piece of injera, wraps it around a little doro wat, and leans across to the youngest guest.