Awra Amba RJ 300612 EN - Contacter un comité local d'Attac

3. Values and principles
in an atmosphere of mutual respect (Ya08/68).
3.1. Honesty
"I saw people hurting, killing, and stealing each other. I knew that we, as persons, were doing
something to other that we would hate if it would happen to us. How do we differ from animals if we
don’t think and behave humanly?" said Zumra according to Habtamu (2009).
Honesty is one of the main values of the Awra Amba community. Stealing and lying have no place
in Awra Amba, as begging: they are absolute rules (At05/50 & 66; Ya08/74). Ennat-Ayighegne
Thasew, member of the Chamber of the social justice of the kebele, envies their habit of telling the
truth and emphasizes they do hate straight lies and strongly condemn theft (Me09/71). There is no
theft in Awra Amba, and children do not beg – almost unimaginable in a country where begging is
widespread (Calvino, 2008). Nevertheless, houses are all locked in order to be protected against
outsiders (many people from the neighbouring villages come to Awra Amba for the mill, the shop or
the café) (Jo10b).
3.2. Equality
Awra Amba is above all known for its principle of gender equality. But equality is claimed not only
between men and women, but also between adults and children, and more generally between human
beings.
3.2.1. Gender equality
While sex differences are physical, gender differences are socially constructed. The latter are social
or cultural interpretations of sex differences, the roles assigned to or expected from each sex in a
specific society.
In Ethiopia, even the roles assigned to each sex vary from a region to another, girls are educated
during their childhood to be obedient, submissive, shy, virginal and imaginative 2 . Women are then
suffering from socio-cultural and economic discrimination and have fewer opportunities compared to
men for personal growth, education and employment (Ya08/37 & 77). Gender and age are the chief
parameters concerning work: baking injera, fetching water are left only to females; ploughing,
hunting, slaughtering are works left only to males (Yi07/58). Women and the youngest do most of
the work. Among Amhara peasants, the wife is too busy in the morning to sit down for a regular
breakfast; she has breakfast while doing her various works: preparing and baking injera, preparing
the local beer (tela), spinning cotton, collecting dung for fuel, sweeping rubbish of the floor, carrying
water from the spring, weaving straw baskets of mats. If the peasant is working in a distant farm
field, his wife carries lunch out to him. Otherwise, she risks being beaten with a stick. If he is not far
away he come for lunch, they eat together at home. After dinner, the peasant asks often his wife or
his children to wash his feet, while other wash themselves (At05/45). In Ethiopia 15 years ago, a
husband was still authorized to “discipline” his wife (France 24, 2009). The woman's schedule is
today only lightened, not radically altered. Except for a possible trip to church with her husband
Sunday morning before breakfast, woman's hours are still confining to the home compounds and its
obligations. In the wealthier families, where one or several servants are in charge of the hardest
works, woman must still be passive and reserved. Women are beaten as a matter of cause for
mistakes in their work (At05/45-46).
The status women enjoyed in traditional Amhara society is therefore to be at home and her main
2 Sentence attributed to (Ministry of Economic Development and Cooperation – MEDaC, 1999) by
Ya08/76, who does not give the reference.
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