Thursday, 12 July 2012

Family or not?


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.

No comments: