We so want to keep our boys connected to their culture of origin, but are finding it hard to do so. Almost all the Ethiopians we have met are from around Addis Ababa and most have never heard of Burjii. The Ethiopia described in children's books is Lalibela, Gondar and Axum, the Amharic language and fidel, the shamma, the iskista. None of that has anything to do with our boys. Yes, I want them to be proud of being Ethiopian, but I also want to them to be proud of being Burjii and to feel that the Burjii are as important to Ethiopia as the Amhara and Tigrinya are.
The boys continue to be very resistant to going to the Ethiopian church and I now think it's partly because the church has nothing to do with their experience of Ethiopia (and partly because church is boring). At the church everyone wears a white ne'tela, so visually it's pretty striking. The only person we ever saw in Burjii wearing white was me. And everyone at church speaks Amharic, which for our boys was never more than the language of the orphanage, not the most positive of associations. It would be as if someone took me to an NRA convention and said, "You're American, they're American, so this is your culture." I would definitely resist.
I have been looking online for more information about Burjii culture. There is not a lot out there. Anyone have any resources to point me toward?
Kyra, I have been struggling with some similar questions. I'll go ahead and pose one of them here. While waiting for E, we celebrated Gena. I now know that E's birth family is Muslim. So, when Gena rolled around this year I wondered: do we still celebrate Gena? Do we celebrate Muslim holidays instead?
ReplyDeleteI hadn't given as much thought to language but E's experience is similar to your boys, Amharic was only the language of the orphanage not of his birth family or birth place, hmmm ...
You could do both, Genna and Muslim holidays. You can never celebrate too much, right?
DeleteGreat point. My son is Oromo, and while I've been trying to use a few words of Amharic, the Oromo people I've met locally don't/ won't speak Amharic. Lots to ponder.
ReplyDeleteI have been working on the same thing. The Hadiyan tribe is disappearing rapidly and information is hard to find. I hope our visit this spring will help ME to understand more.
ReplyDeleteI never thought about the fact that Amharic is the language (for many of our children) of the orphanage only. M loves language but has always resisted that one. It would make sense that that is why. It is not her family language. It is the orphanage language.
I've been thinking about these things, too! To further complicate matters for our family, we now have one daughter from the north and one from the south. Z's family specifically mentioned celebrating the Sidamo New Year (Fiche), so our goal is to find out more about that and try to celebrate it here and also be in Ethiopia for it at some point.
ReplyDeleteFor language, we've decided to pursue Amharic even though it is neither of our daughters' family language. When we brought Z home with us, we tried really hard to find someone who could speak Sidama, but though everyone said they knew someone from Sidamo, no one was ever able to connect us with any of those people. What we realized in the end was that at least we could get one step closer to birth language by knowing Amharic, and cutting out one interpreter. When we reconnected with Z's family last summer, we discovered that one of the cousins spoke Amharic, so we had an interpreter readily available from Amharic to Sidama. I'm fairly certain we'll find the same to be true of E's family, as children learn Amharic in school throughout Ethiopia. We're also mindful that both of our children may choose to return to Ethiopia to live at some point, so to give them a foundation of Amharic will be helpful in that regard as well.
Good luck finding more Burjii culture! I wish I knew more or knew someone who could give you good info! I will ask around and see what crops up.
I completely agree that knowing Amharic is better than not knowing an Ethiopian language. I know at least one person speaks Amharic in our boys' village (the man we have phoned a few times with updates). And I've had the same thought about equipping them with Amharic for a future return to Ethiopia. Still, I wish I could find out more about Burjii culture.
DeleteDo you live within 100 miles or so of a college or university? Often there are exchange students and perhaps one or more of them may have a connection to Burjii. Inour little community we have a college with students from Myanmar/Burma and Kahzakstan. Or even if you could find a student from Burjii (or the area) who could be an email connection?
ReplyDeleteI tried to keep my daughter involved in Chinese language and cultural activities when she was younger. It was hard. We lived in a college town that had Sunday Chinese classes, but al of the other kids had Chinese/Taiwanese parents and spoke Mandarin and /or Cantonese at home. SHe loved celebrating New Year and other holidays but as she has gotten older summer camp and team sports/school activities have replaced culture camp etc. At his point, as she prepares to leave for college, it is going to be up to her if she wants to have more of culture or go on as she has been with an awareness but not a huge attraction to her birth culture. It is tough and probably even harder for you because of the far smaller population (in the States) that you have to draw from for information and support. Good luck - to all of you.
Burma has a population of 50 million and a huge refugee population in the United States. Kazakhstan has a population of 17 million. (That said, I don't know how many different languages these populations represent). In contrast there are fewer than 60,000 speakers of Burjinya. So the chances of finding a speaker locally are pretty low. We've asked at the church with no luck. I have found some Burjii people on facebook and I'm considering sending friend requests to a bunch and seeing if anyone responds. Couldn't hurt to try, right?
DeleteIt will be interesting to see what your daughter decides. College is such a time for personal reflection and development.
I did not know anything about Burjii and Burjinya, so you have opened my eyes. Yes, your chances of finding a native speaker near by are small. :-( The friend requests are another resource. If nothing else, it will be an adventure. Would tracking down former Peace Corps volunteers be of any use? From what I know from former volunteers, they love to connect with new people and pass on what they have learned.But better, they may have connections!
DeleteThe whole college experience is looming in front of us. And yes, it WILL be interesting, to say the very least.
One of our adoption classes was on "keeping the culture alive", and the speaker started off by saying that, basically, once a child hits an orphanage the culture of the birth family is pretty much gone by the wayside--food, language in many cases, celebrations. I thought it was an interesting take--and the message was not to give up, but that it's harder than it seems like it would be. And it is hard--we are working on a strategy as well, and I'm not sure how it will play out over the long haul.
ReplyDeleteIt probably depends on the age. Our boys, especially A, have some memories of Burjii, though they don't share much. I mostly want to give them some history so they have that pride in their roots.
DeleteThis is really tough. We are lucky that our daughter's birth family speaks both Oromo and Amharic, and that she is from a town relatively close to Addis. I wonder if you tried looking into resources in the DC area if you might have a bit more luck? I'm just thinking that since it's the largest population of Ethiopians in the country, and it's not all that far away from you (close enough for weekend car trips, or even long day trips), that there might be more possible Burjii immigrants and resources. (Or not.) There is an Ethiopian Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Maryland that might be a place to start if you want to look into that. Just a thought! I wish you the best of luck - I know this is very important to you and your boys.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really good idea - I'll look into it. Thanks!
DeleteCan't help you out at all. We are suffering from the same problems. Afar is so different than many parts of Ethiopia, and we've yet to find anyone who can tell us much. Also, like one of the previous commenters, we struggle with the Muslim/Christian thing. Afar and our kids' family is almost all Muslim, yet the only Ethiopian connections we have here are through the Christian church. But that's better than nothing, right?
ReplyDeleteKristin, have you seen this?
Deletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23-Dk9SA9V4
OK, yes, it's a reality TV show, but you get a nice glimpse of Afar.