If the Rains Don’t Come

by Kokahvah Zauditu-Selassie

I live in the Omo Valley near the Omo River, the largest river in Ethiopia outside the Nile basin. Just a few years ago, when I was only eleven, I walked five miles to the river to get water. Although I balanced the large plastic jug on my head, it was very heavy. Now, I usually get to the well early before the line forms. If it is crowded, I have to wait more than an hour to pump the water. It is our only well. I really don’t mind since it gives me the chance to talk to the other girls my age. You probably won’t believe this. Before I started school, I didn’t even know I lived in Ethiopia. I knew that my people are Mun, but when I went to school, the teacher told me that my group was called Mursi. There are different things to learn about the world that the other girls don’t know. Few of them go to the one school in the village, like me.

There are many things they say at school that make me think really hard about other things I thought I knew. Don’t get me wrong, I like going to school, but sometimes the teacher says things that make me feel uncomfortable and even sad about myself. Just the other day, she said that piercing the ears and wearing lip plates was a custom that had no place in the modern world.  “It deforms the ears and mouth,” she said with authority and confidence. I think it is beautiful. My mother and all of the older girls wear ear plugs and lip plates. I can’t wait until I get mine next year. I will be fourteen years old then. I am a little afraid of the pain I will suffer when they remove 4 of my bottom teeth before they pierce the lower lip. But when I think of wearing the clay plate, it chases that expected pain away, leaving only pride in its wake. Like me, the Mun people believe that lip plates, dhebi a tugoin, are beautiful and say many things about a woman. When I told my mother what my teacher said, she told me to focus on the things to learn that will help me, like reading and math. Leave the other things behind. She did not tell my father about all of the things I shared with her. It was already such a battle in our house when my mother put me in school. My father thought it was a waste of time since I would be getting married in a couple of years. 

My mother was building the morning fire to make the corn and sorghum porridge, when he came outside to argue with her. She stood firm on her decision. She told him, “I said what I said, and I meant what I meant. She is going to school.” It’s a good thing that like all Mun women my mother makes the decisions in the house. My father is waiting for the day when one of the young men will come to ask me to marry him. He tells me all the time, “You are so beautiful. I will probably get 30 or 40 nice cows for you.”  I say thank you, but I don’t know if it is a compliment to me or his sense of hope concerning his future wealth.  He was so happy when I was born because of the money from the groom’s family that will eventually build wealth for our family. It is wealth measured by how many cows one has. Our people value cows although we rarely eat meat, unless there is a drought and the rains don’t come. We also eat meat at festivals and other community events.  However, we do add the cow’s blood to the porridge to get the necessary protein. They make a small wound in the neck and drain the blood into a hollowed gourd to add to the beans and other foods. The cows ensure that we will live when the rains don’t come.

Last year, when I started my blood cycle, my mother’s friends and two of her sisters came to the house and gave me a ritual bath and sang some songs. My mother said that I am special because the day I bled for the first time, a rainbow, ahi a tumwin, appeared as a sign from our God, Tumwi. The next day one of my aunts, took the razor blade and made cuts circling my navel. While the cuts were still bleeding, she lifted the skin up with a thorn from the acacia tree to raise the scars to grow into bumps. They feel like small stones when I rub my finger over them. I love my new status as a bleeding girl. 

That same year, for the first time I became interested in the courting rituals that are part of our culture.  My friends and I flocked to see the young men of the village participate in the sanginé or stick fighting battles to demonstrate their strength and courage. Like the other girls, I enjoyed looking at their black skin glistening in the sun dotted with perspiration that looked like stars in the night. Sometimes my friend, Bongosi and I sit outside the house on the log that we use as a chair and look up at the sky. We imagine that the stars are blinking at us as they shine and dim their lights in a rhythm that only Tumwi knows and understands. The Komoru, our priest, has taught us to look to the sky. He said that all things higher than us are in the sky. He said that the birds and rain are powerful, as are the sun, moon, and stars—all in the sky.  We are grateful to have him to help us especially since he knows the secrets to all matters pertaining to drought, pestilence, and disease. He has a ritual for every problem that can happen to us. Sometimes the rains don’t come. 

When I think about my future, I think that I will only go to school for a few more years.  For practical reasons, literacy is important especially to help fill out the forms that come from the central government and also for safety and security. As the modern world comes closer to the space we have carved out for ourselves, I pray to Tumwi that I will find a way to stitch the two worlds together for a happy life and to maintain our identity.  It is my turn to pump water now. I think a lot about water. There is nothing we can do as a people without water. In fact, no living thing can survive without it. I am grateful to be able to help my family.  I am grateful for the pump, especially when the rains don’t come.