"Because my legs are bowed, I can't make the 45 minute walk to school. Instead, I stay home and do the chores that I can do while sitting."
Tigist is a twelve-year old girl living in a small rural community in northern Ethiopia. She is the youngest child of four sisters and two brothers. Tigist is adored by her older siblings, who take special care of her since she had trouble learning to walk. Tigist's legs are curved, and they hurt when she walks. Because of the pain and how easily she gets tired, Tigist could not walk forty-five minutes to school like her older siblings did. Instead she stayed at home and helped her mother around the house as much as she could. She preferred to do chores that could be done from a sitting position, like tending the stove and washing clothes.
Tigist spends her mornings doing laundry in water that her mother or someone else carried from a well twenty minutes away. If Tigist is feeling strong, her mother asks her to help and carry a bucket too. The afternoons she spends cooking for dinner, when her father comes back from the farm and five of her siblings come back from school or the farm. Her oldest sister is married and lives with her husband's family. Tigist makes injera, a large soft sourdough flatbread, and serves it with wot, or thick stew made out of onion, lentils, spices, potatoes, carrots, chard, and goat, lamb, or beef. Her family gathers around and tears off pieces of the injera, which can be 20 inches wide, with their right hand and scoops up the wot. She loves cooking with spices but does not like adding salt to her foods.
Tigist does not spend much time outside. The women in her village know that sunlight causes sunstroke and irritating skin rashes and boils. Tigist's mother made sure to keep all of her children out of the sun when they were infants so this would not happen to them. Her entire family takes pride in their clear, coffee-colored skin and avoids the sun for this reason.