ETHIOPIAN WOMEN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22390, 9 April 1936, Page 4

ETHIOPIAN WOMEN

REFINED AND DIGNIFIED CHILD WELFARE CLINICS "One has only .to see the Ethiopian woman of the upper or ruling class, to realise her natural refinement, culture and artistry and to realise also that Italy's talk of ' civilising ' Abyssinia is not only groundless, but also libellous," said Dr. C. J. Rolls, a former resident of. Auckland who returned home recently from Abyssinia, where ho was for six months actively associated with the Sudan Interior Mission and Red Cross work.

During his travels in Ethiopia which took him to many little-known and seldom-visited districts and villages, Dr. Rolls came in close contact with the people of the country, visiting them at their homes, sharing their meals, and taking an active interest in all aspects of their daily lives. His experiences of the people, he said, had left him with a sincere admiration and regard for them, while ho had an especially great respect for the Abyssinian women whose patriotism, courage and powers of endurance and loyalty were remarkable.

The women of the upper or what was known as the ruling class lived normally the life of any cultured women. They had, in the capital of Addis Ababa particularly, comfortable, tastefully furnished homes, servants and such occupations as the embroidering of heavy silks, basket-work, the fashioning of quaint necklaces and other ornaments. When entertaining a European visitor to a meal in thqir homes, they would have the table laid with a spotless linen cloth, and shining with silver, cut-glass, and well-known English brands of china, while the meal was as tastefully arranged and served as it would be in any European home. A Distinctive Dignity Dr. Rolls, who has had a wide experience of the people of Egypt, Iran, Africa and India, said that although he he had lived among and known the picturesque peoples of all these countries he had found among the women of Abyssinia something inexpressibly different. They were all, not only the cultured women, but also the women of the more primitive Egan or Pagan tribes, distinctive in their inner, natural dignity and pride of race. The women of the two lower provinces of Ethiopia, although they spent most of their time in hard work, also possessed this same dignity in they- bearing. He was astounded, he said, at the strength and endurance of these women whom he had seen felling trees and carrying strapped across their backs immense bundles of wood that would try the strength of any ordinary man. These bundles were made of branches and split wood, and were not, as might generally be expected, of sticks and twigs. In the course of his work in Abyssinia Dr. Rolls had also some experience with the peoplo among whom slavery was still practised, but on a steadily diminishing scale, and he had found that the life •of a woman slave was almost as free as that of any of the other women. What household tasks she had to perform were few and included the grinding of grain, which was easily and rhythmically done by the rolling of a convex stone upon the grain placed in a concave stone, and the preparation of the daily meals. They were cheerful, happy people who accepted their lot without question and who were not at all ill-treated by their mistresses.

Ethiopian Women's Dress The dross of the Ethiopian women was most picturesque, said Dr. Rolls, and expressive of their natural artistry. The majority of the women wore fairly lone skirts, pleated and tied with tape about the waist to fall in very neat folds. They were made of a heavy cotton material which most of them had made themselves. Above this they wore a white calico bodice covered by a long "shammah" which resembled a wide and heavy scarf and which hung over the back and front of the left shoulder. The women of the capital and of the ruling class were distinguished by a long black cape which they wore on every outdoor occasion. They also, adopted for outdoor wear a smart grey felt hat lightly adorned with feathers, which was the uniform outdoor headwear of the upper class woman. In the pagan districts the women dressed often in skins which they tanned very efficiently and cut into decorative patterns and which reached from shoulder to knee. Every tribe in Abyssinia, said Dr. Rolls, had its characteristic method of dressing the hair, and he had himself photographed women of 20 different tribes all with a distinctive hairdressing. One of the most unusual was that in" which the hair was plaited in narrow plaits from the front of the liead to the back and laid flatly over the scalp. He had never seen an Ethiopian woman with straight hair and, while in most' cases it was just curly, some tribes possessed very frizzy hair which was neatly trimmed to stand out from the head in a halo. Among these people the men "dressed" their womenfolk's hair every morning as their first task of the day.