Culture and Values

Part 1: Reading
Work individually. You are going to read part of an article about the Pokot people of Kenya.
First read the following questions. Then read the article quickly and answer the questions.

1 . What type of publication do you think this article is taken from?

a.a Kenyan current affairs journal

b. an international academic journal for geographers
c.a popular geographical and cultural magazine

What evidence for your answer is there in the text?

2. What kind of readers do you think the article is meant to be read by? What is the evidence in
the text for your conclusion?

3. Look at the title, the first paragraph and paragraph 5. Which words does the writer use to
express his attitude towards (i.e his reaction to) what is happening to the Pokot culture?

Report your answers to your group.

THE THREATENED WAYS OF KENYA’S POKOT TRIBE

by Elisabeth L. Meyerhoff
( Taken from the National Geographic, Volume 161, January 1982)

1 . CROUCHED IN THE CORNER of Siwarenga’s smoky hut, I could sense the importance of
what was going on. Everyone was absorbed in the ceremony of Parpara. Among the Pokot
people of Kenya, this ritual is performed before the birth of a first child. Only the older Pokot
men and women are allowed to be present. Parpara ritually cleanses and purifies the parents- to
be and their extended families. It attempts to exorcise all evil from the unborn child and ensure a
healthy baby.

2. Lokor, a tribal elder, knew the complex history of Siwareng’s family. While the others handed
around a wooden mortar, Lokor sang out phrases, each one reciting a fragment from the past of
Siwareng or his wife. The people chanted in slow, melodic refrain, voices and rocking bodies
joined to will away all badness. Each man, as he passed the bowl, swirled the water and red
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 earth in it with his fingers, blessing the words stirred into the bowl. ‘’We came to eat the black
goat,” Lokor intoned somberly. He was referring to the slaughter of a goat, a ritual performed
years before to pardon a member of Siwareng’s clan who had accidentally killed another pokot.
The fire burned lower, but the participants continued singing until dawn.

3. Next day, what a different mood prevailed for the climax of Parpara! Relatives and neighbors
formed a chain of singing dancers, each man holding the waist of the woman in front of him. Old
women welcomed the celebrants, blessing them by smearing milk on their foreheads. Villagers
streamed into Siwareng’s hut to dance around the expectant couple. Siwareng’s wife carefully
held between her legs the mortar with the magic mixture. At a signal from Lokor, the bowl was
tipped over and its contents spilled, carrying away all wrong actions with the stirred- in words
and symbolizing easy birth.
4. To the Pokot, carrying out communal blessing can bring healing: witchcraft and sorcery can
cause illness . After death, and for many generations, a person’s spirit still wields power. A
moral bond continued to link the living and the dead. Since an ancestor, if angered, can harm a
live descendant, elders through their blessings try to appease departed spirits.

5. The pokot are an exceedingly proud people, colorful in personality, appearance and social
practice They constitute a subgroup of the Kalenjin, a Nilo- Hamitic linguistic family, Among
the least acculturated tribes of East Africa, the Pokot have traditionally remained aloof from
pressures of modernization and development. But new roads through their lands and social
progressive change are threatening their fragile and cherished culture.

Task 1. Reading for main ideas

Answer the following questions individually. Write your answers in your exercise book

1. How important is the Parpara ceremony for the Pokot people, according to the writer?
How do you know?
2. Does the writer think that change is good for the Pokot people or not? Does she assume
that it is inevitable? Do you agree with the writer?
3. How successful do you think the Pokot tribe will be in preserving their cherished
culture?
Report your answers to the class

Task 2. Reading for detail

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Write answers to the following questions in your exercise book. Then Siwareng and his wife?

3. What is the magic mixture in the mortar mentioned in paragraph 3?

4. In paragraph 3 what does its in “its contents spilled” refer to?

Task 3: Vocabulary focus

Find words or phrases in the above article close in meaning to the following. Use clues in the
context to help you make your choices.

1. feel (paragraph 1) 6. stir (paragraph 2)

2. carried out (paragraph 2) 7. high point (paragraph 3)
3. existed (paragraph 3) 8. flocked or swarmed ( para 3)
4. pacify (paragraph 4) 9. endanger (para5)
5. affected by western ideas (paragraph 5) 10. form ( para 5)

Reading 2: Women Friendly Customs of the Kunama

A lot has been written and said about traditional harmful practices perpetuated in various
communities of the country and their adverse consequences on the economic, social and personal
advancement of women members of respective communities. The fact that harmful practice like
early marriage, rape, and abduction, female genital mutilation and a lot others that are widely
spread and deep rooted in the cultures of many communities have led to the mushrooming of
organizations working on advocacy and awareness creation on the issue these days.

This, on the other hand, has resulted in wide coverage on the media of the activities related to the
issues. Therefore, to a person who largely depends on the media for information about the
country, it may be misleading, as it seems that the nation has no women friendly traditional
practices at all.

This, however, is far from the reality as Ethiopia has practices on customs paying at the most
respect to the fair sex and, hence, are worth emulation by the outside world.

The culture of Kunama community, one of the minorities among the nationalities in Tigray State
could be a good example in this respect. The Kunma ethnic group whose number does not
exceed 8,000 are situated in parts of the Western Zones of the State, according to written
documents of the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction (IIRR).

The Kunama ethnic group have no access to services like health, education, and infrastructural
facilities and thus, are detached from sources related to modernization.

Yet, the community highly esteem their women. An article produced for the IIRR makes it clear
that unlike many cultures in the country, a Kunama girl marries when she likes to have a husband
and not when her parents feel like marring her off. It is also for the girl to decide on whom she

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 should marry. In their effort to facilitate for these conditions, Kunama parents build their grown
up daughters private domiciles where they live out of the supervisions of their parents. This gives
the girls the opportunity to choose their would be husbands and with whom they decide when to
marry. Three or four days after they reach an agreement on the conditions for their marriage, the
couple break the news to their parents who arrange the ceremony.

Kunama women also enjoy due care and special respect during pregnancy and childbirth. A
Kunama woman expecting her first born is exempted from working in the farmland and from
carrying other tasking activities. Pregnant women in the community wear white costumes as
against the colorful dress frequented by other women folk of their localities. This makes it easy
for community members to identify the pregnant women and treat her accordingly.

The freedom to choose one’s spouse among both male and female members of this community
makes rape, abduction and other forms of violence against women as well as adultery rare
among the ethnic group, according to some sources. In addition, a person found guilty of
adultery is flogged in public although this custom is fading with time.

The source indicates that Kunama women have a strong social bond because they perform their
duties collectively. It is customary for Kunama women to gather around a friend having some
problems to comfort and help her in all possible ways.

Elderly Kunama women are highly respected to the extent of involving in settling disputes
among community members. They reconcile quarrelling parties and penalize offenders, a
practice exclusively left to men in most other ethnic groups of the country. Moreover, it is
obscene to utter derogatory terms against women.

Task 1. Answer the following questions according to the passage

1. The writer believes that all cultures, with no exception, exercise bad practices against women.
(True/False)

2. The writer believes that the media does not always provide a true picture about women’s right.
(True/False)

3. What does the word `this` in paragraph 2 refer to? _________________________________

4. What does “mushrooming of organizations on advocacy and awareness creation” mean?

_______________________________________________________________________________

5. Why does the writer consider leaning on information from the media as misleading?

__________________________________________________________________________

6. The central argument of the text is?

_____________________________________________________

7. The restriction put forward by the Kunama society despite giving men these privileges is that

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____________________________________________________________________________

8. “In addition” (par.8), ‘in addition’ to what?

________________________________________________________

9. “they” (par. 10) refers to what?

Task 2. Fill in the following table with information from the reading text.

What makes the Kunama society different from other societies in Ethiopia with regard to women?

a) A Kunama girl marries when she likes. b) but not - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

d) Kunama parents build separate living rooms

c) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - for their grown up daughters in order to       give
them freedom to choose their partners.
------------------------------

e) f) Pregnant women who have to give birth for

_________________________________________ the first time are exempted from hard tasks
__________________________ during      pregnancy.

-------------------------------

g) _______________________________
_______________________________

------------------------------

Task 3. Vocabulary from the reading text.

Match the words or phrases in Column “A” with their appropriate meanings from Column
“B”
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 “A” “B”
_________ 1. obscene a) insult
_________ 2. perpetuated b) beaten
_________ 3. fair sex c) females
_________ 4. couple d) prolonged
_________ 5. derogatory e) husband and wife
_________ 6. flog f) taboo
_________ 7. abduction g) taking by force
h) two people
i) kick

Explain
1. Write the similarity and difference between the two texts. Use 75-100 words.
2. Compare the position of women in the two texts.