watching todays one and its at afar ethiopia

the white lady has flu and the ladies are talking about her

they say 'i hope she doesnt die because we will be responsible.
then they said

'when white people get sick they die quickly'

hilarious

I like the avi.
nice.

thanks............................

.lol. When is it on?

Want to see that episode.

it was on last night. you will have to try catch a repeat or check online

i'll go look for this episode, i saw the south american one

The Afar sure are some beautiful Ethiopians.

female mutilation is rife in some places and not in the holy books but

yep BP that whole loveless thing
reminds me of the color purple when ceelie describes sex with mister as he just clims on top of her and does his business and she lay there no feeling etc

but i thought it was sweet they killed the goat to feast to welcome her. i wonder if i can get peeps back home to do that for me

oh yeah the afar ladies said' how are we going to get anything done if she cries when we do stuff' classic. but the lady did have her own issues

I've watched two episodes of this, the one with the Ethiopian tribe and then this one about the Himba. What struck me about the Afar tribe in Ethiopia was how badly affected the women were by the arab way of practing islam. The way the men treated the women had a definite heavy arab influence, and it was shocking to me the way Africans are still allowing others to force religious customs and practices upon them which are not traditional or original African cultures. I'm referring to female circumcision and the covering of breasts.

imo any BBC programme about Africans is bound to have some sort of anti-African/white superiority/inherent prejudice, so I was conscious to bear this in mind as I watched this. I like to watch this kind of thing because it can inform you about different African cultures and the way they live. In both the episodes I watched I found comments made by the european women to be quite offensive - but then I expected this. I too found the scene with the young Himba girl being forced to go and get married quite disturbing, she was quite a stubborn child and literally had to be dragged...but then I thought about the scene that will confront many at the school gates this September when small children will be brought to begin their first day of school. The point is, different cultures do things in different ways - as one of the Himba men said. What may be 'wrong' or 'ugly' in one culture is the opposite in another.

The european woman's objection to the girl being taken to get married was more or less that it was upsetting to her that the girl's parents were giving her up into the hands of the intended groom and his family when she was just a child. However, we clearly saw and heard that the girl was only to go to these people for three days and then return to her family until she was old enough to live with her husband. Strangely, no mention was made of whether or not the marriage would be consummated in that three day period. I feel that if the marriage had been consummated the BBC would have made much of it, therefore I think we can safely say that the girl was not forced to have sex with her husband during that time. I doubt very much whether the BBC would have avoided mentioning that had they had information at their disposal which suggested that it did happen. If they were told it customarily did not happen that a young bride would not have sex with her husband immediately, I'm not surprised they chose not to bother to publicise that fact.

So basically, what I learnt from this documentary is that in the Himba culture girls are married off quite young, then the girl returns to her own parents after the ceremony and remains with them until it is deemed she is old enough to live with her husband.

Whereas in this culture we send small children to school or nursery to spend the majority of their day with people we don't know to be 'taught'. They continue to spend all this time away from parents daily - until they are young adults of 16, 17 or 18 years old. Many children cry and are upset when they begin to do this at four or five years old, but most of us don't have any major objections to this happening every year to millions of children in western cities. We accept this is the culture and we make them do it anyway, and then after a while they accept it and stop making a fuss. The initial upset followed by understanding and acceptance is also experienced by some of the young Himba women who get married so there is not that much difference between the ways young Himba people and young western people are socialised into their culture is there? The mother of the girl who was to be married said herself that she was also upset when she was getting married but that she was happy that she was married and that is just how they do things.

Sometimes it's difficult to watch these things without letting eurocentric attitudes that you may already hold (having been born and educated in a certain environment) influence your thoughts about what you see, but with anything made by europeans about Africans (especially the beeb) its always best to keep a very open mind and accept that they more often than not have their own agenda when they make these programmes, and it's often their aim to depict Africans in a negative light. I have my criticisms of course but I would recommend viewing these two programmes because they were interesting and very informative about the lives of these African women of the Afar and the Himba - although the two european women visitors really annoyed me throughout.

BBC iPlayer - Tribal Wives: Afar/Ethiopia

I had to comment . Its all about perception and how the prgrams edited. Suppose the young girl screamed more than that as she was taken away screaming and was raped and she screamed and screamed for hours? As a woman no matter what colour we would not accept that . Maybe thats what yvonne saw and thats why she cried. How do you explain that to bbc2 viewers that that happened when they were filming? What this program does highlight is how little we actually know about each others cultures ? The elder woman of the tribe knew this was happening and they were comfortable because after all it happened to them as young girls . The plus point to the culture though does seem that you can then go on and choose a boyfriend? Its all about balance then and not judging.

to be sensitive it doesnt say whether you could have a girlfriend or not. Although my comment was personal to me as a plus point it could be different for others.

regards