A co-worker and I were standing at a window shooting the breeze when we noticed, in a villa across the road, that there was a woman carrying a young child in the traditional Ethiopian way, piggy back style wit a netella wrapped around him. I made a random comment to the effect that carrying kids in such a manner would make them bow or skinny legged when they got older. I am not sure whether this statement holds any water or not, but it was something that I had heard said time and again, particularly from older women. The comment that my co-worker made was much more insightful than the one that I had. He said that abeshas are carried on their mothers backs when they are babies and children, then carried on the shoulders of others when they are adults. He took the analogy even further saying that western kids are pushed around in strollers (prams, for those of you who prefer the British dubbing) and they end up either pushing others or being the drivers themselves.

These were not comments that I had expected, and considering that the conversation that we were having up to that point did not have any concrete substance per se, it was surprising to hear such a statement. It took another 10 or 15 minutes of looking at the woman carrying her child and walking around trying to rock it to sleep for the weight of the words to sink in. The more I thought about it the more I saw what a heavy truth it was carrying, and the clarity and reasoning of mind with which it was spoken amazed me.

We Ethiopians, by nature, like to rely on others. This is true even when we are fully capable of doing things on our own. I of course cannot extend this not so ingenious generality to everyone that wears the abesha hat, but for the most part this holds true for the majority of us.

I, for one, rely on others to do a number of things for me, although if I made the time, I am more than able to do those things on my own. I make at least five or six phone calls in a day asking different people in my life to handle mundane details that I really should be handling myself. I always give the excuse that I am too busy or I don’t have the free time to handle these things myself, but that is far from the truth. If these people were not around to do those things for me then I would be forced to do them for myself. This was true when I was living abroad and had to handle every single detail of my life on my own, I did not have the access to people who would be able to do things for me as everyone was pretty much busy doing things for themselves.

And relying on others to handle things for them holds true for a lot of people that I know. They outsource responsibility that is in reality all theirs to handle.

I suppose one could argue that it is the social nature of our culture that makes us behave in such a manner without even thinking twice about it. Although it is a good thing that we live in a society that will not just stand by and let one of its own reach harm, it still does not teach complete autonomy of the self. This is the most vital lesson that one can learn in their life, and when it is not learned, then things usually end up not so pretty to put it mildly.

A person, as they progress through their life, has to be able to detach themselves from all the things that they were dependant on during the younger years of their lives. It is like a baby being weaned off the breast of its mother, it is something that cannot be maintained past a certain point in a person’s timeline. Or like a drug addict that just won’t get off that heroine needle, these are things that may at the time seem necessary or unable to be eliminated from a lifestyle, but in the long run end up being absolutely detrimental to the person that continues to practice them.

So the comment that my co-worker made evinced to me, more clearly than could any argument, what type of a life we were really leading. It was a gateway into the world that is a continued dependant state, that we as a whole (and I in particular) find ourselves in. It would be nice though, if I could go back to that childlike state so that I could wean myself off this dependency on others, like a baby would the breast of his mother.