A lively traditional habitat
The hut in all its forms, generally made of adobe and covered with a thatched roof, is still and for a long time to come the common lot of the vast majority of the population. The dwellings of the Dorzé can be distinguished as being very high and ogival in shape, while the Guragé are renowned for their vast, well laid-out huts. The Afar hut, a simple, light structure covered with skins, is a kind of tent that can be easily dismantled and is well suited to a nomadic lifestyle. Finally, in the old town of Harar, traditional multi-storey houses with several rooms, including a richly decorated reception room, have an oriental charm all their own. Depending on the region, the houses may be decorated with animal, geometric or symbolic motifs. In sparsely wooded and rather arid areas, stone is the natural building material, resulting in more elaborate buildings. In Tigray, some farms are organized around vast outbuildings, while the Amhara region of Lalibela boasts a few multi-storey houses. On the whole, the average towns, which lack any charm, are all similar, organized around a main street lined with low, flat-roofed buildings. Collective housing, which until a few years ago existed only in Addis Ababa, is developing on the outskirts of provincial towns in response to rapid population growth, following a vertical urbanization pattern.
The family, a safe haven in Ethiopia
While for many, the family remains the basic unit of education, for the Konso, Borana and Oromo, community education by age group is a constant, surpassing the family. Within these groups, intense social initiation is provided by representatives invested with administrative prerogatives, spiritual guarantors ensuring respect for customary traditions. In peasant families, children are close to their mothers, who breast-feed them until they are two years old or even older, while fathers are treated with great deference, especially in the countryside, where children serve and do not share their parents' meals. If they don't go to school, boys herd cattle and help in the fields. Domestic chores are reserved for women, and therefore for girls, who learn the art of cooking, milking animals, fetching wood and water, and selling produce at the market. Another of the children's duties is to look after their younger brothers and sisters. Whatever the ethnic group, decision-making power is still almost always in the hands of men. However, some groups, such as the Surma, maintain a deeply egalitarian spirit. Among the Afar, women can own livestock (usually goats) in their own name, giving them a degree of independence.
A family model that varies according to religion
For many, the first name received is a sign of religious belonging, making it easy to distinguish Muslims from Christians. Among the Orthodox, Yordanos (Jordan), Mariam, Getachew (the guide), Teferi (the feared one) are common. A boy is baptized forty days after birth, or eighty days if it's a girl. The constant, for the Orthodox, is monogamy and the indissolubility of religious marriage. For this reason, many Ethiopians marry outside the Church, under various contracts, and divorce and remarriage are frequent. Priests, on the other hand, may marry, but only once. Among animist tribes, it is common for children to receive a second name from the bestiary or linked to natural elements. Among nomadic populations, for whom livestock is the supreme wealth, the second name is most often that of a bovine or the color of a cow's coat. Polygamy is very common among Muslims and animist tribes. For the latter, the idea of virginity has no value whatsoever, and sexuality is free from adolescence onwards, with marriage alone entailing obligations of fidelity (especially for the wife). The importance of livestock in unions is a constant among nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples. Only a man who has built up a substantial herd is eligible for marriage, and it is the abundance of his herd that enables him to take several wives. In various ethnic groups, the right to marry is granted after certain rituals have been performed. The Hamer's oukouli and the Surma's saginé are an obligatory passage to adulthood, without which a marriage cannot be accepted. Among the Oromo, Borana and Gudji, in particular, the right to procreate is conditioned by access to an age group determined by the gada system, while among other tribes, the council of elders regulates births according to the resources required for the group's survival. Although nowhere expressly mentioned in religion, he is likely to be circumcised by tradition, as is the case almost everywhere in the country. While some ethnic groups in the Omo Valley do not practice circumcision, for others it is accompanied by collective rituals that consecrate the boy's entry into the group's social structure. For some Christians, who wear a cross on their foreheads, and in many ethnic groups where the motifs are decorative, adolescence is the period of scarification to mark pride in belonging to a group. Large cuts on the forehead and cheeks, and hundreds of small scars on the chest and back, are a mark of courage and resistance to pain, and serve as an indelible identity card to identify one's origins.
Marriage at too young an age, kidnapping and excision: women's harsh conditions
Although there is a legal age for marriage, it is almost never respected, as early marriage remains a major problem in Ethiopian society. Frequently married off as early as the age of twelve, many young girls suffer complications during pregnancy. These complications sometimes lead to rejection by their husbands, or even their families, creating situations of great distress. According to a 2022 IRIN report, 50% of girls in the Amhara region are married before the age of 15. Nationally, more than half are married before the age of 18. The Fistula Clinic in Addis Ababa is dedicated to treating women suffering from obstetric fistula - an ailment directly linked to early childbearing. In some regions, bride "kidnapping" is still common, even though it is officially punishable by law. This Oromo tradition from another age was brought to the screen by Zeresenay Mehari in the 2015 film Difret. In a survey of 227 Ethiopian brides abducted for marriage, also conducted by IRIN, 60% said they had been abducted before the age of 15, and 93% before the age of 20. Lastly, according to a UNICEF report, excision affects almost 75% of women in Ethiopia. This is less than the 80% in the 2000s, but still a very high rate. Among Ethiopian Muslims, almost all girls are excised. Among the Afar, Kereyou or Somali, who practice a very conservative Islam, girls will be "at best" excised, at worst infibulated (the labia minora and majora are also excised in addition to the clitoris). The same applies to the animist tribes of the Omo Valley. These mutilating practices can be carried out well into old age, leading to death as they are performed in medieval conditions. Orthodox Christians also practice excision in this country, a little less so in Addis Ababa and the Amhara region, but it is one of the countries with the highest excision rates in the world.
A lack of education in rural areas
Since Ethiopian society is essentially rural, child labor is a necessity from an early age, and even elementary schooling is often seen as pointless, especially for girls. It's not uncommon to come across 5- or 6-year-old shepherds in the Lasta or Simien mountains, alone with their animals. Under the monarchy, education policy was mainly aimed at training cadres, and mass education only began after the 1974 revolution. According to Unicef figures, 7.6 million children are currently out of school, especially in the Tigray region, where 2.3 million children need humanitarian aid just to feed themselves after the war from 2021 to 2023. A further 20% of schools in Amhara and Tigray have recently been destroyed or damaged. Although school attendance is compulsory, there is a lack of capacity despite the construction of schools in the countryside. For many children, being too far from a school is an obstacle to school attendance. Nearly two-thirds of the population under the age of 20 are literate, but disparities between urban and rural areas remain glaring. More than half of the country's schools are located in the capital. More than a dozen universities, including the one in Addis Ababa founded in 1961 by Haile Selassie, welcome students from all over the country. The best faculties welcome students from the wealthy classes, some of whom will continue their studies abroad. The government has invested heavily in education in recent years, but the quality of training sometimes leaves something to be desired. The country has a parallel Orthodox university, which caters for a small proportion of students. Some young boys decide to leave their parents to be educated by a traditional master or in a monastery. Until recently, this type of education combined strict spiritual training with material deprivation, forcing each student to beg for food on a daily basis in the surrounding villages. This type of Church-dependent education has always preserved the country's Christian culture in its original form. Among Muslims, the Koranic school often complements classical education, and it is here that students learn Arabic by reading the Koran in a madrassa.
A non-existent health and pension system
With the exception of civil servants and the military, there is no pension system in Ethiopia. In rural areas, the "elderly" (rarely over 45) work as long as they can, or have to rely on their children and the clan for their livelihood. By tradition and for obvious health reasons, funerals take place on the day of death or the day after. For forty days, relatives and friends come to visit the family, sometimes at the cost of a journey lasting several days. Like weddings, funerals are costly, and in the countryside, solidarity funds have been set up to help the most destitute. As with education, access to healthcare is very unequal between urban and rural areas. With an average of one doctor per 30,000 inhabitants (1 per 300 in France), many Ethiopians have no real access to healthcare. More than eight out of ten Ethiopian children are born in rural areas. In conditions of comfort, hygiene and nutrition that are often minimal, the first battle is survival, in a country where the infant mortality rate is almost 47 deaths per 1,000 births. In the most remote areas, populations have to rely on the health programs of international organizations for access to basic care, or on the dispensaries opened by missionaries. In such conditions, it is not surprising that traditional medicine, practised by herbalists and sometimes clerics, has survived to a large extent, with ancestral techniques still taught in monasteries.
An ancestral medicine steeped in beliefs
Their belief in spirits of all kinds led Ethiopians to resort to amulets to protect them from the forces of evil and the unknown. From birth, children are provided with a talisman designed to protect them from disease and bad luck. At baptism, a Christian receives the mateb, a triple silk cord from which a cross hangs, and from which he must never be separated. The Christian symbol is often tattooed on the forehead, and sometimes even scarified, to avoid forgetting it. Throughout a believer's life, holy water is widely consumed for its curative virtues, and emnet, a powder of charcoal and incense, is applied to the face to ward off demons. As for Muslims, they wear little boxes around their necks containing verses from the Koran. Among the various beliefs, the one concerning the world of the zar seems particularly enduring. According to legend, Eve hid her fifteen most beautiful children from God. On learning of this, God decreed that "those who had been hidden should remain hidden", thus giving birth to the world of the zar, invisible but similar to that of men, organized as a hierarchical society, with chiefs and servants. The Almighty's statement that "a brother shall rule his brother" is interpreted by the followers of this belief as an affirmation of the zar's secret domination over men, which obliges the latter to devote rituals to the zar in order to secure their benevolence. For if a zar is offended, it can inflict torments on humans that only a healer can put an end to, through trance and sacrifice. While the Church condemns the actions of these enlightened men and the worship of genies, daftara (lay clerics) practice a form of exorcism by making prophylactic scrolls and even resort to magical calculations and astrological data to diagnose serious disorders. For the layman wishing to avoid evil spirits, a few simple rules are in order: avoid frequenting areas of tall grass, especially after the rainy season, as these places are known to be popular with the evil zar. Don't stand outside when the sun is at its zenith, when the maddening nedadé (Afar demon) can strike. Avoid breathing the air in a room that hasn't been ventilated for a long time, as the disease-carrying megania can lurk there..
