Pottery, women and fighting the marginalization

Recently Addis Ababa City Administration has inaugurated a pottery center called Ensera, meaning pot. Ensera, like many other household utensils made of clay, can be highly associated with the life of women especially in rural areas. Many of the clay made housewares are used to cook food, make coffee, fetch water as well as contain traditional drinks.

In addition to the use of such clay pots women are also the primary makers of such housewares in various communities of Ethiopia. Yet traditional skills like weaving and pottery have not grown to the extent they should due to various reasons. This is mainly because despite being important and marketable skills the practitioners are highly despised and marginalized by majority of the society.

In this regard the city administration’s endeavor to foster Ethiopian traditional pottery arts to the rest of the world thereby transform livelihoods of the people engaged in the sector is commendable. This is a significant move by the government as the industry makes a livelihood for many citizens and community in the country.

There are many such communities in the country that specialize the work for generations. Such intervention by the government is good to replicate in many other areas of the country so as to extricate many women from poverty as well as contribute in the development of the cultural aspect at national level.

Among the people known for their pottery crafts are the Aari people of Southern Ethiopia. Aari people are one of the nationalities in South Nations, Nationalities and Peoples State. Located some 700 kilometers South West of Addis Ababa, the people inhabit mainly highland areas and engage in farming and cattle rearing.

According to study by Morie Kaneko of Kyoto University, the people have also unique skills of making pottery. They use approximately 50 to 60 differently shaped and sized cooking pots.

As is the case in many communities throughout the world women are the major actors in the making of pottery among Aari. Girls play in their mother’s workplace and easily acquire information on pottery without any verbal instruction from their mothers. When girls attain the age of six years, they start making pots themselves. At this stage, the mothers provide special direction to their daughters.

Kaneko’s study further shows that women potters are in charge of procuring the clay, forming the shapes, firing the pots on the ground, and selling them at local marketplaces. The women form the tila shape without using tools. They use their hands and fingers as tools and form the pots in a step-by-step manner while drying the clay.

An important aspect of making pots that mothers should inform their daughters about is the amount of clay required for different kinds of pots. Girls tend to spend a considerable amount of time with their mothers in the latter’s workplace. When a girl turns six, she starts making pots independently in her mother’s household, the study states.

Aari pottery makers exhibit 20 Finger Moving Patterns (FMP)s, and they follow four stages in making pots. potters also assess common FMPs in forming tila, but qualify it in different idioms. Second, because each potter develops a different Unique Procedures (UP) to form pots, each UP constitutes the technological unit of forming a functional pot that does not crack. Third, each potter follows her own order of UPs to make pots. Her UP procedures not only differ from those of her home village but also from those of her relatives, according to Kaneko.

 Each potter experienced several trials and errors while creating her pottery. Due to her life experience, each potter has developed a unique procedure for making pottery. Although a potter practices pottery-making procedures based on techniques unique to her experience, she creates her own variation of pottery making, which is influenced by her life history and social relationships.

In the same way as other communities Aari Potters generally work alone in their work huts. They only work together with their daughters. In other words pottery is an indoor activity. In one way or other such tendency has something to do with an effort to prevent the possible challenge of stigma associated with the making of pottery.

 For instance among the Ari only portion of the community called Mana are engaged in the making of pottery. There is no intermarriage and having meal together with the other section.

This shows that marginalization is a serious challenge to the development of the sector among people engaged in pottery. As a result apart from slowing down the economic and social development of the people engaged in pottery, it also affects the cultural and social values and skills that the people accumulated throughout ages old practice.

Hence centers like the one that Addis Ababa City Administration inaugurated recently should be encouraged and further expanded in various parts of the country.

The Ethiopian Herald June 27, 2020

 BY ZEKARIAS WOLDEMARIAM