Bride WAS 7

[barb162]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0412120360dec12,1,2974333.story

BRIDE WAS 7
In the heart of Ethiopia, child marriage takes a brutal toll

By Paul Salopek
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published December 12, 2004

THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS OF ETHIOPIA -- Tihun Nebiyu the goat herder doesn't want to marry. She is adamant about this. But in her village nobody heeds the opinions of headstrong little girls.

That's why she's kneeling in the filigreed shade of her favorite thorn tree, dropping beetles down her dress. Magic beetles.

"When they bite you here--" Tihun explains gravely, pressing the scrabbling insects into her chest through the fabric of her tattered smock "--it makes your breasts grow."

This is Tihun's own wishful brand of sorcery--a child's desperate measure to turn herself into an adult. Then maybe, just maybe, her family would respect her wishes not to wed. She could rebuff the strange man her papa has chosen to be her husband. And she wouldn't have to bear his dumb babies.

snip

[proud patriot]

1. as a mother of an 8 year old

this leaves me speechless :cry:

[barb162]

2. it is quite common there to get married at that age and the

story mentions that at about 12 or 13 a girl is way over the hill and basically can't get married. When the girls are married this young, they get taken out of school and nothing ever gets resolved in regard to their rights, abuse by husbands, etc.

[DulceDecorum]

8. Talked to any Ethiopians lately?

Or people who ACTUALLY speak any one of those languages?

Or are you willing to believe than African women have so little compassion for their children as to abandon them at that age?

[barb162]

12. per UN: this area has the highest child marriage rate in the world

Here's more of the story (I will trust this particular newspaper's reporter, the UN and Ethiopia's own stats) :

"Not surprisingly, the epicenters of child wedlock are sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where cementing clan ties through marriage, a preoccupation with bridal virginity and fear of contracting AIDS are strongest.

Ethiopia is one such hot spot. Its government, pressured by aid organizations, has started prohibiting early marriages. Yet the tradition is hard to stamp out.

Among Ethiopia's rural Amhara people--a culture of warrior-farmers in which a staggering 82 percent of all brides are underage--the drumming and tribal dancing that enliven child weddings can still be heard echoing through the mountain nights. Only it is a bit muffled these days: The grooms and their tiny, bewildered brides--cocooned in white cloth--simply have moved their nuptials indoors.
snip

Amharaland has the highest child marriage rates in the world, according to UN and Ethiopian statistics; in some dusty corners of the ancient highlands, almost 90 percent of the local girls are married before age 15.

[barb162]

15. What in the world is your point? Do I have to speak Ukranian to

understand they are doing a second election in the Ukraine?

[barb162]

17. how do you account for the UN stats

[DulceDecorum]

10. As someone with several Ethiopian friends

this story forces me to speak out.

[McKenzie]

3. that is just sick, even when one accepts the right of others

to cultural differences. Human rights are universal...cultural differences don't apply if someone's human rights are being violated. A 7-year old girl...I weep...she should be playing games with her friends.

And for the supporters of cultural determinism...is female circumcision ok because it's part of a culture???

[UL_Approved]

4. Culture is just an excuse

I've heard this argument made many times. The fact is, the idea of cultural differences is what allows our own shortcomings and injustices to be validated. Africa has as much blame on itself as it has on the rest of the world for its lack of development. Africa will never get ahead unless it gives up on these practices. Women's rights and development in countries go hand in hand.

[DulceDecorum]

6. Africa? Lack of development?

Built any pyramids lately?

[barb162]

19. Is there a reason we want to build enormous tombs these days

with lots of unpaid labor for the afterlife of a monarch

[fortyfeetunder]

7. Our culture is certainly no better

The US marketing of sexual innuendo to the young, (Brittany Spears (sp?) wannabees) and premarital sex among pre-teens don't make us any better than the Ethiopians who marry off child brides.

[DulceDecorum]

9. Apart from the word of a foreigner stationed in Johannesburg,

What reason do you have to believe that the the people of Ethiopa are in the business of raping children under the age of ten?

[DulceDecorum]

11. Salopek: Texas child bride.

The same EFFING DAY that Paul Salopek slams Ethiopia (see below)
He and the Chicago Tribune publish THIS:

FROM CHILD TO BRIDE
Early marriage survives in the U.S.

By Paul Salopek
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published December 12, 2004

BELLMEAD, Texas -- In its most forgiving outline, the love story of Liset and James Landeros has the ring of a fairy tale.

Liset and James fell in love. They defied their parents--and the law--to follow their hearts. And after many struggles and trials, they finally married.

But one harsh detail--their ages--belies this romantic formula. A slight, quiet girl with coffee-colored eyes, Liset was only 12 when she began dating James, four years her senior. At 13 she was pregnant and miscarried her first baby. At age 14 she married James to keep him out of jail; the state of Texas was threatening to charge him with the statutory rape of a minor.

"Everybody wanted to separate us, but we didn't let them," Liset says with girlish pride. "Being married young isn't easy. But we're trying."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/printedition/chi-0412120359dec12,1,3445765.story

So,
what does this say about American mothers in particular and Americans in general?
What do you think that the average Ethiopian reading THIS is going to say about y'all and the way you raise your kids?

**** **** **** ****
MORAL:
Don't believe all you see and only half or what you hear.

**** **** **** ****

THE BRIDE WAS 7
In the heart of Ethiopia, child marriage takes a brutal toll

By Paul Salopek
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published December 12, 2004

THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS OF ETHIOPIA -- Tihun Nebiyu the goat herder doesn't want to marry. She is adamant about this. But in her village nobody heeds the opinions of headstrong little girls.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0412120360dec12,1,2974333.story

[barb162]

14. how often is this happening in the US and how often in Ethiopia?

That's the difference. What's extremely odd here is not odd at all in Ethiopia or other large parts of Africa

[UL_Approved]

20. What makes you think I approve of western practices either?

I just have to wonder why you think this is self-righteous grandstanding. We have severe women's rights issues in America, and are gaining more each day. Did you know that STD's are very prevalent in Utah because they refuse to deal with the problem outside of a religious context? Do you think that the Christian fundamentalists in this country are something I look up to?

I made this comment to stand on its own. The girl doesn't want to do this. They are forcing her. This is not right.

[barb162]

13. I agree that women's rights go hand in hand with development

but when they pull the young girls out of school this young (or they never went to school at all) I don't see how they can lift themselves out of the mess.

[barb162]

21. you have the answer right: "unless it gives up on these practices"

These poor little kids don't even know they have rights and they just aren't educated so that they ever find out they have rights. ANd then they "teach" their own kids the same things. Primal scream.

[eridani]

24. No, but the leaders in the fight against it--

--need to be from that culture. And in the case of FGM and child marriage, there are plenty of such leaders in Africa.

[DulceDecorum]

5. Paul Salopek wrote the article

Salopek began his journalism career in 1985 when his motorcycle broke down in Roswell, N.M., and he took a police-reporting job at the local newspaper to earn repair money. Since then has had covered conflicts in Central America., New Guinea and the Balkans.
http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2001/international-reporting/bio/salopekbio.html

In 1998, Salopek won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism for a series on the controversial Human Genome Diversity Project.

Also nominated as finalists in this category were: Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times for her consistently illuminating coverage of the United States Supreme Court (moved by the Board to the Beat Reporting category), and David Barstow of the St. Petersburg Times for his narrative portrait of the legal struggle against the tobacco industry, centered on the personalities who were key in reaching a tentative settlement of billions of dollars.
http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1998/explanatory-reporting/

So how did he get his info?
Does he speak even ONE of Africa's many thousands of languages?
But then again, does he really need to?

Prior to joining the Tribune, he worked as a writer for the National Geographic for three years, and wrote the October 1995 cover story on Africa's mountain gorillas.

[Tansy_Gold]

16. Not all Ethiopians are educated, sophisticated urbanites

I worked with a young woman whose family had emigrated from Ethiopia several years ago. Her English was faultless. Her father was a professional man -- engineer or accountant, I can't remember -- and her mother was working on her credentials to become an elementary school teacher. All her siblings were either in or preparing to enter college; most were ahead of their American age-peers.

The family's immigration had been sponsored by one of my professors and her MD husband, also from Ethiopia.

How far such sophistication extends from the metropolitan centers of Ethiopia, I don't know. But I do recall seeing television reports of famine that suggested there is much of the country where "school" is not quite what we think of when we hear the term. The young woman in the story is a seven-year-old goatherd; her profession defines her, not her schoolgirlishness.

Marriage to prepubescent girls, rape of virgins, female genital mutilation: these are all realities in many countries, some developed but many more "developing." To consider the reporting of the truth as a "slam" of the country is to enforce silence on the truth.

The United States has an almost universal system of public education. The pulling of a seven year old child from the classroom and putting her into a forced marriage would create headlines. If such a practice is indeed common or even just frequent in another country, why should a reporter not report it?

[barb162]

18. ditto!!!!! I think the more these kinds of anti-female practices

are reported, the more likely something can be done about it.

[barb162]

22. Anything wrong with using interpreters? They do it at the UN ALL

THE TIME, also at the Hague and at a few hundred other international meetings every year. Are interpreters not a valid form of communication? Don't governments around the world use interpreters?

Also, is a Pulitzer Prize winner not good enough to be writing these stories?

[AliciaKeyedUp]

23. Holy shit

This is horrible.