For most people a who is who in a family is often not that
clear unless you ask further. If I say that someone is my aunt, you do not know
whether the lady in question is a sister
of my mother or father or whether she is the wife of a brothers of either my
mother or father (though nowadays of course in quite a few countries, she could
be married to a sister).
Here in Myanmar, relationships are even more complicated. Many women are addressed as ‘Aunty’, ‘Uncle’
is widely used to indicate an older man.With siblings it can be very complicated too. It took me a
little while before I caught on. Someone mentioned he had 7 sisters (or
brothers). Ok, active parents but not impossible. Then you hear of a child playing with his
sister who is about the same age. “Twins?” , you ask. But no, that is not the
case.Here cousins and even second cousins are referred to as
brothers and sisters. Many a time, some cousins live in the same household. It
takes you a while to figure out which child belongs with which parents. I have
even heard people from the same village, age-mates, referred to as “my
brother”.
It can make for interesting exploring if you have the time.
In other cases it can be really frustrating if you have no idea what the
relationship really is.
A while ago I had parent-teacher conferences. In comes the
mother of a child with a lady introduced as “Aunty”. I know this child lives
together with grandparents, an aunty and uncle and their child (referred to by
him as his sister), and his own parents at least. So another aunty, well I
didn’t think much of it. Halfway through the meeting, I do have a funny feeling
that this lady is no ‘Aunty’. Indeed, we
find out later that all that time we were talking to the tuition teacher. The
mother spoke no English so couldn’t even correct the wrong assumption even if
she would have wanted to, the tuition teacher obviously had no intention of
making her role in the family clear. It made for some awkward moments since the
child was not doing well in school. Without a Myanmar translation for the
mother (which we did only ever so often since we were talking to an Aunt) we
don’t know if everything came over all right.We did learn an important lesson though and from the coming
year tuition teachers, Aunties or not, are no longer allowed to attend
parent-teacher consultations.
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