I have this one person in my family who is both my aunt, and my sister. It's a very complicated ordeal and I have trouble explaining it so sometimes I'd call her my aunt or my sister.
My mom is the oldest child of her 14 children family, born to the 1st wife of my grandfather. Whereas my aunt was born to the third wife of my grandfather, and is around the 4th-5th youngest. It's kind of funny because my grandfather was having children the same time his eldest daughter, my mom, was having children. So because of that a lot of my uncles and aunts are in the same generation as me, some of them are even younger than my eldest brother.
My dad was a USSR trained fighter pilot so he lived in the west way before the civil war, he came back to somalia to find a wife, and then him and my mdad agreed to raise us in somalia until my oldest brother turned 10. Thats when they decided to bring us to canada. At this time my mom was in her early mid 30s, and my aunt was in her early teenage years. My mom treated my aunt like her daughter and didn't want to leave her, so with the permission of my awoowe she adopted her and brought her to the west.
So this is the weird part, I've always called her habayar or "habo" when I was growing up, but our relationship was a lot more informal, almost like that of siblings. Every time people see my aunt they get so surprised, because my mom is already pretty old and they assume my aunt would be the same, but instead see a young woman in her 20s.
A couple of years ago she married and moved out, but even now I visit her very often, much more often than my cousins even. I used to just tell people she was my sister out of convenience sake, but now that she has two babies a 1.5 yr old and 1/2 year old, I think it's more fitting I call her my aunt. I never realized how unique these circumstances were with uncles and aunts being in the same generation as their nephews, and one of them even growing up in the same household as their neices and nephews until I was like 13
My mom is the oldest child of her 14 children family, born to the 1st wife of my grandfather. Whereas my aunt was born to the third wife of my grandfather, and is around the 4th-5th youngest. It's kind of funny because my grandfather was having children the same time his eldest daughter, my mom, was having children. So because of that a lot of my uncles and aunts are in the same generation as me, some of them are even younger than my eldest brother.
My dad was a USSR trained fighter pilot so he lived in the west way before the civil war, he came back to somalia to find a wife, and then him and my mdad agreed to raise us in somalia until my oldest brother turned 10. Thats when they decided to bring us to canada. At this time my mom was in her early mid 30s, and my aunt was in her early teenage years. My mom treated my aunt like her daughter and didn't want to leave her, so with the permission of my awoowe she adopted her and brought her to the west.
So this is the weird part, I've always called her habayar or "habo" when I was growing up, but our relationship was a lot more informal, almost like that of siblings. Every time people see my aunt they get so surprised, because my mom is already pretty old and they assume my aunt would be the same, but instead see a young woman in her 20s.
A couple of years ago she married and moved out, but even now I visit her very often, much more often than my cousins even. I used to just tell people she was my sister out of convenience sake, but now that she has two babies a 1.5 yr old and 1/2 year old, I think it's more fitting I call her my aunt. I never realized how unique these circumstances were with uncles and aunts being in the same generation as their nephews, and one of them even growing up in the same household as their neices and nephews until I was like 13
