Family in Africa

Page history last edited by PBworks 3 years, 6 months ago

The AIDS epidemic has contributed to the widespread loss of family structure within Africa. This epidemic has been the sole accesory to fifteen million deaths since the outbreak in Africa. The amount of Africans that perish every year because of AIDS amplifies with each year, making 2006 the highest death rate of AIDS in Africa, a staggering 2.1 million. With these deaths occurring each year and Africans dying everyday, the family structure has been tarnished.

The most concise and comprehensive way to describe family in Africa is stated by Will and Ariel Durant, "The family is the nucleus of any civilization." Family is the only structure of most tribes, countries, and cities within the gargantuan continent known as Africa. Life and survival in Africa is most dependent on not only the closeness of a family, but on the knowledge within a family. The only thing most Africans have is the wisdom, experience, and cognizance that the previous generation passed down unto them.

Before what Africa is known as today, a family's size, in most areas in Africa, represented a man's wealth and status within society. The Masaai, found in Kenya and Tanzania, could be refered to as the spokesmodel of the aforementioned statement. In tribes, such as the Masaai, cattle is the root of all wealth; anything desired within a tribe could be purchased for the right amount of cattle. Tribes such as these strictly lived in polygamy, which is why the family size, in turn, represented a man's wealth. Men inherited whatever came from their birth mother, but to achieve the wealth to marry took hard work and an immense amount of time. Any man wishing to marry within a tribe must be able to prove their wealth, which answers the question as to why young girls were married to much older men. When a man married, there were only two rules to which he must follow; first, honor the father's cattle price, and second, choose a girl who is at least twenty-eight years younger. The woman's role within a tribe such as the Masaai was the typical female role in just about every area of Africa. A woman must take care of the children, milk the cattle, make repairs to the shambas(huts), collect fire-wood, prepare the food, and obtain water, which could mean a distant trip of many miles. The man's role, however, was much simpler and in most eyes, easier. All the worries a man had within a tribe such as the Masaai is to herd the cattle well.

With the outbreak of AIDS, the family structure in Africa has been completely wiped out. The "typical" family in Africa is usually parentless caused by the many diseases and illnesses effecting the continent today. Family plays an extremely important role in Africa. Since most inhabitants are technically orphaned, the eldest cousin, or aunt and uncle, will take over as the pseudo father/mother in order to support their family. A current family in Africa has no room for the conveniences we, in America, are customed to. African families cannot afford time to send the kids to go get an education. The hours of which a school would run is precious time wasted when family members could be collecting water, trying to find food, etc. However, no matter how much valuable time school would intervene in, every family wants the opportunity to send the children to a place where they can be safe and learn invaluable information every day. With the AIDS epidemic and the outbreak of several diseases, families have had to take in numerous family members which meant a cutback on what families could afford. Children are being forced to resign the luxury of school, and even young girls are cornered into prostitution to make some income for the family. With this prostituition, young girls who should be in school are now passed the virus which, thus, keeps AIDS and other diseases circulating in Africa. The result of these young girls contracting AIDS is far worse then inhabitants in Africa have thought possible.

The more that AIDS affects Africa, the more the family structure is going to vanish into thin air. With people dying from various medical diseases each day, the more likely families will stay together diminishes. African families are now finding themselves less of a family and more of a scattered genealogy. Parents, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, etc. do not have a place in Africa anymore. With new medical issues plaguing Africa each day, more people die and furthermore, families cannot see the normal family structure of a mother and father anymore.

Another aspect of why families are structureless in Africa today is the loss of money. When families are stricken with AIDS and other diseases, any type of health care for these diseases take one third of a family's income making survival an automatic failure. The most recent life expectancy for an African should be sixty-six years old, however with an enormous amount of the population affected with AIDS, the life expectancy is thrity-three. Also, when a family member dies, it is the duty for the family to honor the deceased by a proper burial. One burial, for an African family, consumes three times as much as their monthly income. Furthermore, these burials leave them with no type of money for around three months, and most families are hit with numerous deaths each year making survival impossible and deathly poverty inevitable.

Whenever a family member has perished, or anytime income needs to be made, the woman completely steps up her responsibility. The woman has to be the housekeeper, the caretaker of the ill, and the income-maker. The women are often forced to be placed outside of their comfort zones and they are troupers because they know that the family heavily depends on them to carry the family. The women are constantly forced to try to gain jobs that are currently viewed as male dominated in Africa, such as carpentry.

The facts mentioned above are what we would call the higher middle to upper class within Africa. When I found out this certain piece of information, I was in total and complete shock to think our basically low class is Africa's upper class. Most people in Africa are lucky to even have a family member around to support them. Many children in Africa have to rely on their brothers and sisters to get them through the day. Most people could not imagine relying on their six year old sibling, when they are four, to support them and raise them, it's absolutley ludacris. The family structure in the most common areas of Africa, the most grief stricken poverty areas, is not even in existence. In fact, some people go through their lives not even knowing what a family is or how wonderful it is. Could you imagine living a life without knowing how great a family can be, or even what the most lateral definition of a family is? In today's Africa, children are sweeping the ground for any way of survival instead of knowing what it's like to have fun. African children are focused more on how to get another meal and how to survive instead of how to get a date for prom.

On the outside, family has little value to Africans, but family is major in Africa. Although some will never know they're family, they find people to share things with and survive with and without knowing it, they have a family. I sincerely believe that Africa can teach every country something about family, no matter where they came from, or who they came from, they always seem to have a family. Yes, Africans can, at moments, be dying by each breath they take, but they never do it alone. Africans have a way of bonding with each other and sticking with each other through thick and thin, even though all they go through is the thick.

Education folds into family structure as well. Africa has thirty-one of the top thirty-five highest fertility countries in the world. All the thirty-five are in poverty stricken countries around the world. Women are in the dark about modern contraception, as we have plenty of in American. Women are not educated on the plain fact that they do not have to have three kids, but the more children women have, the less of a chance the entire family will be demolished by disease.

Basically, the less Africa knows about the "definition" of family, the better it turns out for them. Without previous knowledge of how family could be, they are able to create their own family and really show what the true meaning of being a family is all about.