Family Roles
I've found traditional family roles in Africa to be very interesting. Keep in mind that I'm looking at all of this through a Western filter.
Women are pretty much the glue that hold family and society together in much of Africa. The same seemed to be true for the Mwaanga family. Andrew has a job as a security guard at the Ubuntu school campus. He often has to work nights. During the day, as most men here do, he goes out visiting. Africans are very relational people. Much of their time is spent maintaining relationships with family and friends.
Grace works as a housekeeper for one of the teacher families in town at the same Ubuntu campus. In addition, she is responsible for managing her entire household. So after work, she comes home and starts cooking for her family. The girls do help with that. Young girls know that they are going to become wives and mothers. So their training begins very young. Many times I offered to help with cooking, dishes, or other things, and was always told, "We have daughters; they'll do it." This included hauling water from the pump/well to their family compound. Each of the containers, when full, weighed about 45-50 pounds. And they would carry them on their heads!!! The youngest daughter who is nine years old, can already carry 20 pounds on her head.
As a westerner, it bothers me to see the women and girls working so hard while the boys and men seem to do so little. I know that there are men who work very hard at their jobs, but really it is the women who do the heaving lifting. Women typically tend the fields while men are rarely seen in them. Women do the laundry, the cooking, the child rearing, the cleaning. Men don't. And they are catered to by the women in their lives. However, this system seems to work for them and I cannot impose my values and judgments upon them.