| Tabita Hatuti
I spend several hours a day making pots, six days a week. I am Protestant and Sunday should be observed as a day of rest--I go to church with my family.[1] I have six children, all of them boys. Making pots is basically women's work but men do help out. Once the pots are dry, the boys help polish the surface, collect wood for the fire, and assist in their firing. They also often carry my finished pots to the market. They go to school, but after school and on the weekends they help a great deal with household chores. Busho also sometimes interrupts his farming to help with the firing of my pots. Formerly most, if not all, of the extra pots that women like myself made, were given to our landlords as rent for the land on which we were allowed to live and farm. But today, due to the land reforms implemented after the fall of the Emperor [Haile Selassie], we have been given access to land and I am now able to sell my pots at local markets. It's nice because the extra income allows us to buy food and clothing at the market and to invest in our local equb.[2] |
It was about thirty years ago that I was born here in Shento. It is unusual that I should be living here because most Wolayta women, after they are married, go to live in their husband's village. My husband, Busho Anjajo, comes from the village of Qontola in northern Wolayta and we did live there for a short time after our marriage but there are no good markets near the village where I can sell my pots. I make large beer-brewing pots called gan, and I was frustrated that I had no place to sell my pots, so we moved back here where we have access to good markets and some land on which to farm. The women in Qontola made pots but they were not as tight as mine.