Kids in Ethiopia

Living with my host family taught me a lot about kids in Ethiopia. My host sister was 4 years old, and yet she knew more than I did when it came to cooking, or cleaning in this country. I'd watch her sit with my host mom and soak in how to make shiro, how to prepare injera and how to take care of the household. Kids in Ethiopia are like kids all over the world, they play, they joke, they get dirty and they have fun, but the kids here also learn how to work hard from a young age.

 I went on a hike one saturday morning and saw this boy herding his animals and watching them graze the land. I didnt look or think twice when I  first snapped this photo, because its a very common sight in Ethiopia, but later I sat staring at it and thought about what it says about the lives of kids in Africa. When I was his age my saturday mornings were all about epsiodes of Pokemon, Dragonball Z,  Jackie chan adventures and it was my day to sleep in. This childs life, compared to mine and many others looks so different. The kids in Ethiopia wake up early to till the land, to grind teff, and work to make money.







You will oftentimes find kids on the street selling gum, fruits and veggies. Boys from ages 8 to 16, shine shoes on the street, and stand behind the counters in stores selling goods.

 

Because so many parents need their kids to work, some children do not go to school until very late in life. I have 9th graders who are in their early and mid twenties because they started school when they were 10 and 12 instead of 5 and 6. They had to work in order to survive, so school isn't the priority, surviving is.

 

Kids at work, herding animals and selling corn on the street.

 This isnt EVERY childs life in Africa, its not EVERY kids life in Ethiopia, but it is the lives of some. What amazes me is seeing the same kid that sells corn on the street, smiling and playing soccer the next day. Ethiopian youth always find a way to have fun and enjoy life. They may not have an ipad, an iphone, a flat screen TV with every channel imaginable, but they have their creativity.

 Kids here play with tires, mud, empty water bottles and deflated soccer balls. They tie strings to bottles and drag them, they roll tires and run with them and draw outlines in the dirt to play skipping games and with marbles. They say that one mans trash is another mans treasure, and the kids here in Africa have shown me proof of that. In Mozambique a volunteer found out that the kids in her town played with condoms.  They would blow them up like ballons, and use the lubricant in the condom to grease their hair, or put on their skin like a lotion. Its fascinating and very well written, her post is called: If you give a kid a condom, so check it out!


There are about 4 kids of varying ages who live in my compound and I didn't have the nerve to give them a condom to see if they would play with it, but a balloon worked just fine lol