Children's play

As an occupational therapist, I know that culture affects occupation, but what are specific ways and specific occupations relevant to the Ethiopian context?

One song I am fascinated with illustrates the impact of how changing cultural norms affects child’s play.

Watch a video of this song, sung by a 6 year old boy in Ethiopia. (if the embedded video doesn't work, click here)

A 2 year old girl singing

What was your initial response to this song? When I heard it in Amharic, I heard only the lovely tune and sweet voices. I saw only the beautiful physical and emotional connection to one another as they simultaneously sang and gestured.  

The English meaning of the words are as follows:

My sister, my mother, you taste like lemons

Tonight, what did that man say?

He said only one thing, that he wants to marry me and get divorced

He will never divorce, but he will marry you by force

(There are several versions of this part)

A raven nested on top of my roof

Flew away thinking that I wasn’t home

Oh, poor raven! I feel bad it flew away

May I will be cursed to drink Elephant’s bile

Elephant’s bile is bitter!

A brave man’s heart is as big as a mountain

When I came back after a mountain trekking

I saw a hyena crying for a dead donkey

I saw a flea standing there and praying

I saw too a snake getting tattooed its neck

50 chickens were slaughtered

One chicken survived

And ran away to the backyard!

When I heard the translation, I was reflexively horrified to realize that young children were casually singing about child brides. I realized I needed to learn more about the origin, history, and context of this song.

I could not find any published research so I asked many adults from the community as many questions as I could think of. What people said is they hope the themes of this song (connection to female friends, family members, and role models, enjoying childhood, eschewing marriage while still a child) can shape a child’s thinking about childhood and marriage and hopefully contribute to the decrease in the rate of child marriage.

This song is sung by many children nowadays, but in the beginning it was intended in particular for girls. While some in the West shun the idea that activities should be assigned a particular gender category, the history of this song was an answer generated by the community to address a particular need in the community. The fact that it is now sung by all children, regardless of gender, can be seen as a cultural evolution in several ways. It may empower girls who will grow to be young women and later women possibly raising children of their own, to make safer choices on their own behalf. It may prepare boys who will grow to be men to see the world in a way they may not have previously which may impact their decisions regarding marriage and their own daughters when they become men. Parents who teach this song to their children or hear their children sing it will hopefully also be impacted by it's message.

Although the Ethiopian government has committed to eliminating child marriage by 2025 and child marriage rates have declined by around 20%, in the period from 2000-2011, 41% of girls in Ethiopia under age 18 were married or in a union.

For more information regarding child marriage and efforts to end this practice in Ethiopia, visit these places:

United Nations in Ethiopia

Population Council

Unicef

United Nations Foundation

Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a concept, known throughout Africa by various names, which means, “a person is a person through other people.” With a Western focus on independence, this complete dependence, even for one’s own definition of oneself, can be bewildering as a concept, and as a practice, daunting. As an occupational therapist, the implications for daily life are many. It encompasses one’s identity, the roles one fulfills, the daily responsibilities, and time management. It affects whether one fulfills one’s dreams, and what those dreams are. Westerners tend to strongly self identify as individuals and to see their role as distinct within the context of the snippet of history they are on this earth. Not so for many Africans, as Breyten Breytenbach so eloquently describes in his novel Memory of Snow and of Dust:

An African doesn’t normally experience the need to explain. He simply is the way he is, though he may well pretend to be different, or someone else, in an attempt to fool you. Why is this so? Maybe it is because the African even now still grows up secure in a larger family context where sharing is a matter-of-fact, everyday practice, in that there’s an absence of having to fight those closest to you for survival, of having to claw your way to the top, maybe because there still is an open-ended communication with the environment, animals and natural phenomena have histories and characteristics and personalities too, even when the surroundings are hostile you fit in, you are not isolated, you are not the master, maybe because there is an unbroken chain linking past to future, the dead are standing with wise eyes just beyond the glow of the fire, maybe because rationality has not been isolated and favoured the way it has been elsewhere in the world, there is an easier and more complete flow of sentiments too, less watertight dykes between heart and mind and liver; maybe because there is simply not such an insurmountable demarcation between ‘reality’ and ‘illusion’ and ‘magic.’ (p. 103)

After a 40 kilometer trek down a dirt road filled with potholes and arriving in a small village of single room mud huts without electricity or running water, I had a budding migraine, however my guide to Blue Nile Falls beamed with pride in his tradition and community as he told me, “We are not rich, but we have no stress. We have our community and that is everything to us.”

Here are some photos from the environment including people, animals, and natural phenomena which shape this particular community:

Returning from market. Near Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

 3 day old donkey with his mother. Near Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

 Crocodile. Blue Nile, Ethiopia

Crossing the Blue Nile, on the way home from school. Near Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

Returning from market. Blue Nile Falls, Ethiopia

Blue Nile Falls, Ethiopia

A family at home. Near Bahir Dar, Ethiopia