Breaking the chains of harmful traditions and norms

Breaking the chains of harmful traditions and norms

As the birth place of coffee, we fry, grind and brew coffee while he she sits in our house. Any visitor expects you to do the coffee ceremony while he or she is in your house. However it’s a long process, we’ve to do it. We popped some pop corns, cut some loaves and serve with it. But if we’ve a visitor on weekend, he or she can say: “When did you grind that coffee? You know I’m not drinking if you do it today.”

In my country, we are not allowed to wash clothes, grind coffee, on Saturday and Sunday. When we have a visitor, it’s a tradition to brew coffee. There are also more weekdays which people celebrate some saints, so that they can't do the house chores on those days.

I challenged my Mom,” All days are equal. We can wash, grind and take grains to the meal house any day. Don’t tell me the saints will be angry at us. And Mom used to answer: “ Hey, my fernj (foreigner)daughter, stop acting like white girls. They always work, but we have few days to celebrate the saints, and we’ll receive blessings.”

There is no blessing that we sit and wait to come. We should work to prosper, not sit and idle. I heard the other day, from where the Ethiopian adopt these things. It’s a sad story. World Pulse is a plat form to inspire each other, not to gossip. So, I keep that secret for me.

After 6 pm in the evening, you cannot broom your house, if you dare to broom and remove the rubbish, you’ll block blessings. I don’t know which blessings from which God. I didn’t accept it since I was a child God was that kind of Lord. I think he likes clean hearts and houses.

After 7 pm in the evening you can't buy salt or sell a salt if you're a shopkeeper. If you do that, the business will go bankrupt.

Now in my family’s house, we do anything any day. We made my dad drink coffee which is friend, grind and breed on weekend. Even for the visitors, we tell them we prepare coffee once in a week, whatever the day is, and we’re not sitting in front of the pot and coffee cups for hour to serve you. If you drink coffee, we’ll make it like tea in the kitchen, and we’ll serve you in the sitting room. Annoying at us, or thinking all the girls in our house are behaving like feregi girls, they’ll drink the coffee.

I want to read until the water for coffee boils. I can cook on a side while preparing the popcorn. But if you go to any Ethiopian house, a mother, a girl or a house girl sits with a table full of coffee cups in front of a visitor, bring a charcoal stove to fry coffee beans, she smash the coffee in a wooden stuff using a metallic bar, then she put the clay coffee pot on the fuming charcoal stove. She does the long ceremony, for an hour or more. We prepare any meal, or take grains to the meal house any day of the month. And we benefit from that. When we go to the meal house on the day other people choose to do, there’s a long queue. On the day they celebrate the saints, the meal house is empty. We do what we want and come back home without wasting time.

Ethiopians are coffee drinkers. Not in our house. For your surprise, none of the children takes coffee in our house. Only the parents used to drink. Mom stopped before my Dad. Later my Dad stopped to drink his favorite coffee. Now, they’re both gone. No coffee beans or pot in our house. I could regret if I didn’t break that tradition in my house while I was teenager.

Let me add some more; we have some greens which cures us from different sicknesses. One's my favorite\" Kes bedejea\" which means, \" Priest at my gate\" this leaf you can find it around my house, one the road, by corner of every compound. when your gum swells, it heals. Your tongue has problems, put it in your mouth, it will remove the pain instantly. the second one, which is found in the next two doors called \"damakesie', cures, headaches, flu, if your eyes gets red, squeeze this leaf and drop it, it will make it perfect. This one can't be cut on the day of the saints, even to cure the sick, the saints don't allow you to cut it. If you cut it, the owners think it'll dry. I never believed the saints and angels had a heart like that.

That's why i always chaleged my Mom and her friends.

Please, let’s break any tradition and norm which is harmful.

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