Nilo-Ethiopian Studies No.21 (2016)

HARUKAARII

• How Women Choose Their Schooling in Their Life Course: The Case of Maale, Southwestern Ethiopia

Discussions of female education in Sub-Saharan countries often focus on ways to improve conditions and to achieve gender parity. However, a few studies have also examined the conditions under which individual women choose to go to school. The discussion of dropping out among female students has been focused on prevention and allowing more females to attend school, whereas there has been little discussion about education after dropping out or about those who did not enter school at customary age. This study used the community of Maale in southwestern Ethiopia as an example to investigate the process of female schooling with regard to how individual women decided to enter or return to school. To this end, I interviewed three women who entered or returned to school despite older than the usual school age. I identified two factors that enabled these women to enter or return to school: (1) the presence of a formal educational system and a community consensus in support of allowing females to make their own decisions about their education, (2) the relationships between the student and the people to whom she was close. Sustainable female education requires respect for the diversity of the decision-making processes by which individuals make choices. Keywords: school, life course, educational development, women, southwestern Ethiopia

MIHO SATO, BELKIS WOLDE GIORGIS, GABRIELLE O’MALLEY

• Barriers to and Factors Facilitating Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy from the Perspectives of Patients in Mäqälaä City, Tigray Region, Ethiopia

The decentralization and free provision of life-saving antiretroviral therapy (ART) to health centers in Ethiopia began in 2006. In the Tigray Region, the number of people who began ART increased almost tenfold between 2006 and 2010, yet treatment retention among these patients has been challenging. This qualitative analysis explores the experiences of patients who either continued or interrupted adherence to ART. Conducted at three health facilities in Mäqälä City from August to October 2009, the aim of this study was to document the facilitating factors and barriers to ART adherence from patients’ perspectives. For both continued and interrupted adherence, the most common facilitating factors are a belief in the efficacy of the medication, trust in the health-care providers, low level of side effects, positive treatment results, and having an HIV-positive friend. Each restarter had distinctive reasons for interrupting the ART. Major contributing factors to ART interruption were the side effects and fear of stigma or discrimination. In urban neighborhoods with a high volume of rural migration, where people lived far from their extended families, ART patients were more dependent on health workers for adherence support.

Keywords: HIV, antiretroviral therapy, adherence, lost to follow up, Tigray, Ethiopia

SAYURI YOSHIDA

• [Research Report] The Life and Collection of Friedrich Julius Bieber: An Archival Study of Kafa at the Beginning of the 20th Century

This report introduces the life and collection of Friedrich Julius Bieber. He visited Ethiopia several times, especially Kafa, at the beginning of the twentieth century and is recognized as the foremost authority on ethnological research focused on Kafa. Bieber left a great deal of property and written documents concerning both Ethiopia and his daily life. This collection included ethnological objects from Ethiopia, instruments used during his journeys to Ethiopia, photographs, books, and unpublished written documents, such as diaries, drafts, memoranda, letters, and postcards to his family and friends. Today, these items are housed in three places: the Ethnology Museum, the Austrian National Library and the District Museum of Hietzing in Vienna, Austria. They can help deepen our understanding of Kafa, both historically and in its current state, and of Ethiopia as a whole, providing insights that would be impossible to uncover by present-day fieldwork. However, we can gain significant knowledge from these items only if we construct a proper basis for the use of these valuable collections.

Key words: Friedrich Julius Bieber, Kafa, Austria, collection, archive

 

• Book Reviews

 

Reviewer, Nobuko Nishizaki
Maasai and “Coexistence” at Large: From the Field of Wildlife Conservation in Kenya (Samayoeru Kyouzon to Massai: Kenya no Yaseidoubutsuhozen no Genbakara). Toshio Meguro, Tokyo: Shinsensha, 2014, pp. 456 (in Japanese)

Reviewer, Kiyoshi Umeya
Improvised ‘Stage Performance’: Social Relationships among Young People in Contemporary Africa (Sho Pafomansu ga Tachiagaru: Gendai Afurika no Waluzmonotachi ga musubu Syaluzillankei). Midori Daimon, Yokohama: Shumpusha, 2015, pp.
380 + iv (in Japanese).

Reviewer, Hruka Arii
Analysis of the Relationships Between Local Development NGOs and the Communities in Ethiopia: The Case of the Basic Education Subsector. Yoshiko Tonegawa, Osaka: Union Press, 2014, pp. 174.

Reviewer, Soichiro Shiraishi
Embedded Mutualism for Co-Living in African Pastoralism: Ethnographic Studies of the Karimojong and Dodoth in Northeastern Uganda (Bokuchiku Sekai no Kyosei Riron: Karimojong to Dodoth no Minzokushi). ltsuhiro Hazama, Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2015, pp. 312 (in Japanese).

HARUKA ARII

• [News and Notes] The 19th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies

Nilo-Ethiopian Studies No.20 (2015)

CHIHARU KAMIMURA

• Milk Teeth Extraction and Behavior Changes in Rural Amhara, Northwest Ethiopia

This study examines behavior changes pertaining to traditional medical practices as a result of health intervention and knowledge transmission by community health promoters in rural Amhara, with a specific focus on changes in people’s treatment-seeking behavior for the traditional folk illness known as “milk teeth diarrhea.” The extraction of milk teeth is a traditional treatment for this condition, and is considered in several publications to be one of numerous “harmful traditional practices (HTPs).” Interviews with people in villages and in the medical sector reveal that changes in treatment-seeking behavior for folk illness, ranging from consultations with traditional healers to treatment in modern medical facilities, are not necessarily led by changes in the folk classification of the illness. In the current cultural context, in which the Ethiopian government is promoting the abolishment of HTPs, the main drivers of change in health-seeking behaviors can be described in terms of the recommendation of modern medical treatments and the negation of traditional customs, two different processes that act simultaneously but are not always linked to each other. Thus, health-promotion programs should be sensitive to local, cultural, and actual circumstances when providing training to community health promoters in transitional periods from traditional to modern medicine.

Key words: folk illness, harmful traditional practices (HTPs), Amhara, health promotion, milk teeth diarrhea

YUTAKA FURUKAWA-YOSHIDA

• Reconsidering Linguistic Ideology: A Case Study of Communication among Deaf Children in Kenya

In Europe, the US, and Japan, language is regarded as both a way of communication and a symbol of people’s solidarity. Recent conceptualizations of a deaf identity are based on the notion that people who are deaf are a linguistic minority who share one sign language as a common language. This contention, which is consistent with ideological multilingualism or multiculturalism, is important when reconsidering “hearing-impaired” or “deaf-and-dumb” frameworks from medical and social welfare perspectives. However, the idea of deaf people as a linguistic minority is not consensually accepted. This article explores the limitations of this idea, discussing cases of deaf children and hearing people in Kenya that involve mixed communication modes.

Keywords: communication, multilingualism, deaf children, sign language, Kenya

MORIE KANEKO

• [Research report] Collections and Archives on Ethiopian Studies in the Frobenius Institute

This report introduces archives and collections from six expeditions to Ethiopia between 1950 and 1971 at the Frobenius Institute, Germany. All of these expeditions focused mainly on southern Ethiopia. More than 90,000 pictures are available on the Frobenius Institute website. Most photographs and rock paintings were digitized from 2006 to 2009 with the financial support of the German Research Partnership (DFG). The majority are available for anyone to view and download at low resolution. The high-resolution images are also available upon request by email (detailed information on the five items required in the request is provided in this report). Despite the fact that the 16 mm film materials and Dr. Haberland’s legacy materials from his five expenditures to Ethiopia have not been released on the website, this report introduces a list of these items. A total of 1,171 objects from the Ethiopia expeditions are housed at the Institute, and 900 objects from two Ethiopia expeditions, in 1934-35 and 1954, at the World Cultures Museum (Weltkulturen Museum) in Frankfurt am Main. If you have the opportunity to visit Germany and wish to learn more about Ethiopia during the past century, please contact the researchers at the Frobenius Institute; you will be rewarded with a uniquely rich collection of materials.

Keywords: The Frobenius Institute, Leo Frobenius, Eike Haberland, South Ethiopia, Image archives

 

• Book Reviews

 

Reviewer, Shigeo Kikuchi
Rivalry between Religions and the State: Conflicts and Symbiosis of Religions in Ethiopia (Semegiau Sy1iky6 to Kokka: Ethiopia Kamigami no Sokoku to Kyosei). Minako Ishihara (ed.), Tokyo: Fukyosha Publishing Inc., 2014, pp. 436 (in Japanese).

Reviewer, Yukio Miyawaki
Modes of Construction and Preservation of History an1ong People without Writing Traditions: The Oral Chronicles of the Boorana, Southern Ethiopia (Mumoji Sbakai ni Okem Rekishi no Seisei to Kioku no Gibou: Koutou Nendaishi wo Keishou suru Etiop ia Nanbu Borana Sbakai). Chikagc Oba, pp. 463, Tokyo: Shimizukobundoshobo (in Japanese, English translation for thcoming in 2015).

Reviewer, Yoshimasa Ito
Million Ficldworker’s Series, Vol. 1: Entering the Field (100man-nin no f uirudo wahkah siriiz u: Fuirudo ni hairu). Wakana Shiino & Soichiro Shiraishi (eds.), Tokyo: Kokon-Shoin Publisher, 2014, pp. 242 (in Japanese).

Reviewer, Kyoko Nakamura
Anthropology of Nomadic Pastoralism and Sedentarization (Yuboku to Teiju no j inruigaku). Sun Xiaogang, Kyoto: Showado, 2012, pp. 196+viii (in Japanese).

Reviewer, Minako Ishihara
The Reality ofDiscrimination: Ethnography of the Kafa and the Manjo in Ethiopia (Dare ga Sahetsu wo Tsukunmoka: Ethiopia ni Ikiru Kaja to Manjo no Kankeishi). Sayuri Yoshida, Yokohama: Shunpudo, 2014, pp. 372 + xl (in Japanese)