Horn of Africa School

Tonight's question at the English Discussion Group, was "what is better, an arranged marriage or an accidental marriage?" In Africa, it is still traditional for parents to arrange marriages without the consent of their daughters. The view tends to be changing with this younger generation that this is not good. The young ladies in our group preferred to be able to chose their husbands and the young men tended to agree. An accidental marriage is one where a young man gets a young lady pregnant out of wedlock and have to marry. They said that if man gets a girl pregnant, he is obligated to marry her. They did not think that this was the best type of marriage. They thought the best marriage was one where the young man and the young lady fell in love with each other and decide together to get married similar to the young people in the United States.

English Discussion Group

As always, I enjoy going to the English Discussion Groups and learning about life in Djibouti. Pictured here is "Jerry", one of our group favorites. Tonight he is more interested in one our volunteer's IPOD's, especially when he was able to put the ear piece in and listen to the music and watch the videos. Tonight we talked about health care in Djibouti hand signals and other customs. Djibouti has recently changed from government funded health care that was available for free to residents to one that charges one fee for those employed and another fee for the unemployed. One of the driving factors appears to be the large influx of refugees into Djibouti, especially Somalia. Vaccinations remain free. The costs for health care remain largely subsidized by the government as x-rays average just $6 dollars, dental visits $6 dollars for unemployed and $30 dollars for those with jobs. In discussing food, I mentioned that I didn't see any people fishing in Djibouti, even though Djibouti bordered the Gulf of Aden. Apparently, most Djiboutians do not eat fish. From what we are told, Africans from countries inland usually do not eat fish as it is not readily available whereas people in Somalia do. Most meat in Djibouti comes from camel and goats. While times are changing and many families eat together, for the most part, traditions prevail and children up to the age of 10-11 eat first, men second, and women last. By age 11, boys eat with the men and girls eat with the women. They said that camel meat actually was very good and that it had very little fat.