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Issue 4
A World Apart
By Rachel Gwilym
As my little girl turned two on 24 August, I had the opportunity to look back over these last two years and wonder at all we have been through together since her beginnings. Conceived in the highlands of Ethiopia, she grew in secret until my amenorrhoea could not be attributed to traveller's ill-health any longer, and my partner and I were confronted with the fact of a baby.
Rowan was born six months later in my London flat; as different from the place of her conception as her parents' own childhoods had been. My partner Zeinu spent his early childhood travelling with his mother in rural Ethiopia, barefoot, familiar with the adoration of hyenas, working as a shepherd at the age of six, being trained as a deacon in the ancient christian orthodox church and not much older before shifting gear to live with his Muslim father in the capital city where he began formal schooling at the age of nine. My own birth in an English Archway hospital was followed by a secure middle-class upbringing in Surrey and Kent, steeped in Baptist doctrine. My education was unremarkable and very English, beginning as a rising five at the local first school and leaving the neighbourhood girl's grammar school age eighteen. Our different upbringing and the cultural milieux surrounding childbirth and infancy in these two countries, have shaped and informed the way we care for Rowan and the discussions we have had (sometimes heated!) about how we should raise her.
The first decision we had to make concerned what to call her. For many couples where naming is done differently in their respective home countries choosing a name can be fraught with difficulties. In Ethiopia the child is given her father's first name as her surname, and after a lot of thought we decided to follow this pattern. We decided that our daughter's first name should not come from the Muslim or Christian tradition but should still be meaningful and pronounceable in both English and Amharic. We chose Rowan and settled on a spiritual naming ceremony of our own design in place of the christening that I would have favoured had I been the only one choosing.
The selection of her name brought to the fore our religious beliefs and reflected the type of spiritual backdrop we want to provide for Rowan. My adult faith, liberal and questioning, is quite different from my parents' evangelical bent but nonetheless one I want to share with Rowan, while Zeinu's experience of forced conversion from a strict Christian context into a Muslim one, means he wants to allow Rowan to be introduced to many religions without preference for one. Out of our discussions and thoughts has come an integrity of the search position and we hope that Rowan will grow to respect the religious traditions of her parents, grandparents and those about her and have the tools to follow her own heart. She comes with me to church when I go, and Zeinu shares with her verses from the Koran. We try to focus on the beauty of merely living in our day to day lives by preparing and eating food together and sharing our worries and pleasures of the day. Our desire is for Rowan to value human friendship and the unexplainable in the world.
Religion is such a thorny issue for so many couples that some do not go on to have children at all. Rites connected with religious belief can also present a stumbling block to dual faith new parents. Circumcision, for example, featured in our discussions before we knew the sex of our baby. Zeinu is very keen on male circumcision while I would have put up quite a fight against it. We will have to wait until a real son helps us decide how to resolve this conflict!
Zeinu and I have been in agreement about many of the practical issues that concern the care of a new baby. Breastfeeding, for example, is a topic that unites us although Zeinu found it incomprehensible that I should feel it necessary to attend a breastfeeding workshop. In Ethiopia, breastfeeding is something girls grow up seeing and when, as grown women, they come to feed their own baby they are surrounded by female relatives who can guide and support. As Rowan enters her third year and is still avidly breastfeeding, I have found Zeinu's support invaluable. It is common in Ethiopia to breastfeed a child as old as four or five. When I travelled in Ethiopia with Rowan at eight months and twenty months many Ethiopians I met would say something like, "Thank you for following our culture". It has been heartening for me that breastfeeding is so proudly linked to culture and has helped me keep going when I have found going against the grain on my home territory tiring.
Breastfeeding, bed-sharing and a scarf instead of a pushchair are so unremarkable in Ethiopia that I have felt well supported and quite normal caring for Rowan in ways considered so questionable in British bottle and cot favouring society. However, as Rowan stands on the threshold of childhood we are glad that we can take from Britain a contemporary repulsion against beating, so common in Ethiopia where authoritarian parenting carries on where the nurturing through the early years leaves off. We also take from London's melting pot the challenge to rigid gender roles still prevalent in Ethiopia. It has tickled many of Zeinu's elderly relatives that he carries Rowan as much as I do or willingly whisks Rowan off to change her nappy. The way gender has been turned upside down in Western societies, however, can leave a breastfeeding mum and her partner bewildered. Should dad get up in the night with a bottle just to help out, for example? I think this is dangerous territory and have been very grateful to span two cultures from which we can pick and mix. I take from Ethiopia an acceptance of my child's biological and emotional need for her mother, and from Britain the understanding that being mum does not also mean doing all the household tasks too.
Travelling with Rowan in rural Ethiopia, particularly when she was a toddler, revealed to me the amazing adaptability of young children to their surroundings. Rowan fell in love with the animals that abound in Ethiopia - chickens, sheep, goats, donkeys, and dogs. The natural environment provides so many stimuli for children and Rowan would often sleep early after a day full of physical activity. Now, back home in London, I find it easier to resist the temptation to buy another educational toy or take her to too many structured classes. Zeinu is incredulous at the number of baby-directed activities - baby-yoga, baby-singing, baby-gym, baby-swimming and the incredible amount of products aimed at the baby-market from the height of fashion clothing to the little plastic computer that helps you do your sums. We have tried to draw from Ethiopia something about the simplicity of living while benefiting from the number of choices and the vast amount of information available at our fingertips in London.
We have found that our shared familiarity with each other's cultures, languages, homelands and families has smoothed the way for us to benefit positively from the different perspectives we bring to parenting. Cultural clashes can be exacerbated when one or both partners are ignorant of their spouse's background. But of course, culture is not the only or necessarily the most significant determinant in a multi-cultural couple's decision making about parenting. Many of the thoughts and discussions we have had could just as well have been exchanged between a British couple who have different outlooks on life. Ultimately, I believe that the passion between two people that brought a child into being, needs to transform into an enduring love that accommodates the other as co-parent; and embraces the child's need to grow safely through thoughtful discussion and reflective praxis. In this context, two cultural treasuries can provide for a rich and interesting childhood for children of mixed heritage.
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© Juno Magazine 2007 |
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