Ybralem Adhneni

Father's name: Adhneni Yeheys

Mother's name: Ester Esresi

Year of birth: 1962

Place of birth: Edi Zer Dayet, Welkait

Region in Ethiopia: Tigray

Main occupation in Ethiopia: Housewife

The language of the interview: Tigrinya

Ybralem Adhneni, nature, agriculture, song, holy Yehonas, housewife, housework, spinning cotton threads, cookery, injera, grinding, sewing, games, festivals, sabbath, customs and tradition, menstruation house, ritual purification customs, arranged marriage, wedding, childbirth, gunshots, rubella, disease, henna, jewelry, Derg, Welkait, song, Edi Zer Dayet, Asgada

Summary of the testimony:

Ybralem begins with a song from the holy festival of Yehonas. She explains the tradition of celebrating this festival. She describes her family tree, her village, and the local history. As a child, she used to help her mother with the housework, such as cooking, cleaning, grinding seeds, preparing spices, spinning cotton threads, sewing, and taking care of the younger children. She would sometimes help her father work in the fields. On the Sabbath, she used to play games with her friends.

When her mother went to the menstruation house, Ybralem, who was the oldest child, would take her place in running the house. Ybralem explains protection of ritual purity and staying in the menstruation house.

Ybralem describes the preparations for festivals and the special dishes she helped to prepare. She relates that when she was a young girl, she and her friends in the youth movement used to sell injera as part of the traditional celebrations. She explains how henna is made, and what events it is used for. She describes what jewelry the women used to wear, what events they wore them at, and where the jewelry came from.

She was engaged through an arranged match when she was six. She describes how she only understood what this meant when she reached the age of nine. She reminisces about this period. Ybralem got married at the age of 12. She describes the preparations at length, the wedding ceremony, and the post-marriage traditions, including the custom known as the mehtsan house, where the bride sat for three months and guests came to visit her. Ybralem teaches the rules of the gebetta game that provided entertainment while staying in the mehtsan house. Because of her young age, during her first years of marriage she lived alternately with her husband’s family and in her father’s house.

Ybralem describes the birth of her oldest son when she was 17: the prayers, the methods for inducing labor, including gunshots, and the various customs that were meant to help her. She also talks about the rubella disease that she and her son contracted when they were in the menstruation house.