Prostitution was a highly respected profession in Ethiopia before they were civilized by Europeans

[Crow]

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2011.552319?journalCode=cgpc20

Traditionally, to provide for and support men was considered by society to be a reputable position for a woman and respect was often gained through duties carried out for husbands and male relatives. Therefore, in tracing the history of prostitution in Ethiopia, it is important to recognise that cultural values and beliefs have changed regarding the status of this work. Previously, prostitution was reserved as an occupation for high status respectable women who were thought to provide important services. During the middle ages, such women travelled with the Emperor's camp offering sexual services and later in the nineteenth century were found to offer such services to sailors, both local and foreign, at the coastal towns. It was from this point, although particularly through European infiltration into Ethiopia during the Italian occupation in the 1930s, that a different perspective emerged of prostitution as dirty, diseased, and not a service, confining women to hidden locations and degrading medical inspections. This thinking changed the value of sex workers in Ethiopia from respected to insignificant and despised, creating a prostitute identity that was in conflict with traditional societal norms and values.

These girls earned very little money from clients, often as little as 30 birr (£1.50) for the whole night, and generally worked from the small local bars and Tella and Araki.

Those are some pretty low prices. @xabashi How does $2 CAD sound?

 

[Apollo]

You are being Anti-Ethiosemitic.

Don't be an Anti-Ethiosemite. :siilaanyosmile:

 

[Garowe boy]

When civil war broke out my dad went Ethiopia slept in a hotel. 3 habshes came and ask for money on return they'd give them their siil

 

[Crow]

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41965872?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

The Moving Capital of Hoes

One of the characteristic features of Ethiopian life in the middle ages, and indeed up to relatively recent times, was the Emperor's camp, a vast establishment which moved around the country at the ruler's wish, and was often composed of several thousand tents and upwards of a hundred thousand people.

The existence of such a multitude of people resulted in a far more pronounced division of labour than existed elsewhere in the land, for the inhabitants of such camps included not only the sovereign's soldiers and servants, but also their families and various categories of men and women ministering to their needs. Among such persons, according to the sixteenth century Portuguese priest Francesco Alvares, who provides us with our first testimony on this score, were a singi- ficant number of "prostitutes" though exactly what is implied in the term is not defined.

Alvares records that at the camp of Emperor Lebnä Dengel (1508-1540) he saw "the tents of the prostitutes, whom they call Amaritas," i.e. amarli, an Amharic word defined by the Italian linguist Ignazio Guidi at the beginning of the twentieth century as a female minstrel or dancing girl. The Portuguese traveller, who fails to give us any details which would enable us to evaluate how far he is correct in terming them "prostitutes/' adds that these women women were "numerous," and that "an immense number" of them were "rich and well dressed." Such women seem to have formed an integral part of the moving camp, and, we may assume, would have spent much of the time, like the camp's population at large, in travel- ling from one site to another, but how far we can consider them in the modern sense as "prostitutes" is open to question.

Gondar: The City of Sin

The French travellers Combes and Tamisier, who as good Saint Simonians took a keen interest in the profession, reported in the 1830's that the Ethiopian capital was "a town of pleasures" and that "courtesanes abound there", while two other Frenchmen, Ferret and Galinier, noted a decade or so later that the female courtesans of the city displayed "distinction and elegance of manners", and were "not despised in the capital of Abys- sinia as those in our countries of Europe", and add: "In the eyes of the inhabitants nothing shameful or degrading is associated with these unrepenting madeleines." Further evidence as to the existence of the institution in this period is afforded by the fact that the French scientific mission of the 1840's lists the word "prostitution" and its Amharic translation zemut in their brief vocabulary though whether they found this word employed at Gondär or elsewhere is not specified.

Prostitution at Gondär seems to have acquired some notoriety, for the great reforming Emperor Téwodros (1855-1868) was later quoted in an Ethiopian chronicle as expressing disgust with the monks and däbtäras , or lay clerics, who were reputed to "live in the city" with galämota as well as the "wives of others," while the essentially intolerant Protestant missionary Henry Stern angrily exclaimed, "Most of the merchants and debterahs at Gondar live in undisguised adultery."

The generally assumed debauchery of mid-nineteenth century Gondär is confirmed by the French linguist Antoine d'Abbadie who as a result of his researches in the city listed in his Dictionaire de la langue amariñña no less than five terms which he states were then used for a prostitute.

THEY'RE BLOODY EVERYWHERE!

The existence of "prostitutes" in various parts of the countriy was also asserted by the Armenian priest Dimothéos who claimed that whereas important persons travelled with their wives or female servants those of lower status "found prostitutes in the places where they stopped, and found them everywhere." Revealing the domestic character of such "prostitution" he adds that such travellers when "remaining for some time in the same place" would "give salary to one of these women with whom they lived," providing them with food and perhaps a dress and a couple of dollars a year, while the poor would "also find women who do not have permanent husbands ... this employment is regarded as honourable in this country."

Another observer of this period, the British surgeon Henry Blanc, reported that "professional prostitutes" were "very numerous in the large towns and camps," and, confirming the good status of such women, added:

"They are very highly considered there; rarely will they condes- cend to marry even a great chief or a rich man; and when for love or interest they exchange the voluptuous life of the prostitute for the seclusion of the harem they rapidly age and lose their beauty, their grace, and that charm which led so many lovers to their feet."​

 

[Crow]

Combes and Tamisier, who took a keen interest in these women, report seeing some of "marvellous beauty" at the camp in Tegré of Dājazmač Webé, and, describing the rôle of such women in general terms, remark:

"There is, in this country, a special class of women who are called courtesanes; free of all ties, and with a rare beauty, these women come from the various provinces of Abyssinia to the towns which serve as the residence of the princes of this country; these women follow the rulers on all their expeditions and neglect nothing to attract their royal favours. The courtesanes enjoy, in general, a great consi- deration; this name, which has become with us an insult, far from being odious in Abyssinia, is an honourable title. These women occupy a high rank, and their protection is not to be despised.... One could assert, without exaggeration, that their rôle is more brilliant here than it ever was in antiquity, from Louis XIV's time until our own days. These women, who bear so well the influence of their charms, maintain themselves in absolute independence, and know, through their grace and coquetry, how to attract many adorers; they display great luxury in their dress, and many of them have retinues like queens; the kings have a deference for them which has something of galantry, these women are admitted to all the banquets and feasts, and one could even add that they are the principal ornament; they receive the hommage of the great men of the court; the King tole- rates their intrigues and is in no wise offended by them. The courte- sanes charge dearly for the love which they grant, and not any one who wishes receives the favours of these Ethiopian Ladies."​

A British visitor A.B. Wylde likewise reported of this period that at the port as well as at the island villages of Monkullu and Otumlo there were "many Abyssinian women of easy virtue that do a good trade, save money, and ultimately return to their country, and are immediately married and lead a good life."

The business was apparently so lucrative that slave-dealers used its reputation, according to Wylde, as a lure to attract women from the Ethiopian highlands, with the result that there had been quite a business made of decoying pure-bred Abyssinian women to Gallabat, where they were told that they could make plenty of money by immoral purposes," but "once being got there, they were regularly sold to the slave dealers.

The founding of Addis Ababa in the 1880's and the city's rapid growth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was followed by a notable upsurge of prostitution. The German traveller Kurt Herzbruch, who visited the city in 1907, recalls seeing many "places of lust", and adds: "we went past one of these huts before whose open door sat a few dusky beauties surrounded by dusk swains. One of these girls sang songs accompanied by a kind of lute. Usually such houses of joy hold four to five priestesses of Venus."

The development of such houses was closely related to the rapid growth of cheap täj - or drinking houses which, according to the Georgian physician Dr. Mérab, made their appearance in the early twentieth century. At the time of his arrival in 1908 there were, he says, scarcely fifty but they began rapidly to increase in the following year and reached about a hundred by 1913, thus expanding, as he says, by ten or so a year. Or returning to the capital in 1922 he found that their number had quadrupled since 1914, and claims that by 1929 they had increased to "over a thousand."

Mérab, one of the most careful observers of the city's life, affords us our most detailed description of these drinking houses. He says that they consisted of long barracks, divided into rooms four or five metres deep by not more than four wide, with a single floor. They were rented for one, two or three Maria Theresa dollars a month, and, despite this "enormous sum," the demand for them was so great that they were never vacant. Each room would be equipped with a bed and a curtain which was lowered on the entry of a customer, after which a small slave would keep away further customers by saying ' hti säw allä , i.e. "someone is present!" One of the principal prostitutes of the time, he says, was Wäyzero Sadeq. Similar houses, he explains, were likewise to found at Dire Dawa.

The publication of this letter prompted the United States envoy, Addison Southard, to file an interesting report, on October 30, 1928, in which he noted "the widespread development of bawdy-houses in which the average Ethiopian finds his principal and frequently only diversion." These houses were by then so well established, he observed, that "it might reasonably be argued that Ethiopia could as easily eliminate its bawdy-houses as could the zebra change his stripes."

Coon, who affords the best description of the Addis Ababa brothels of this period, observes that "these establishments may be distinguished by the presence of large red crosses on white flags hanging over their doorways." Adding an anecdotal element he continued: "It is a well-known tale in Addis Ababa that when one of the Scandinavian missions first came there its doctors hung a Red Cross flag outside, and the building was soon filled with perplexed and disappointed Ethiopians who had entered in quest."

Turning to the prostitutes and their tariff he continued on the basis of information obtained from his Indian informant:

"The ugliness of these women was a constant source of wonder to us, not, indeed, on account of their natural disadvantages, because that is a matter of common observation in their profession all over the world, but of their neglect of any possible means of embellishment. I asked my interpreter what were the charges at these houses.​

"For me, he said, it is a thaler because I am a British subject. If an Abyssinian gives a thaler he goes again and again until there is a quarrel.​

"Quarrels seemed fairly frequent to judge by the sounds which greeted us at all hours of the day on the way to the Deutsches Haus"​

@Emily

 

[Crow]

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

 

[Pastoralite]

@Emily

 

[Ferrari]

@Emily

emily's fiance is Somali apparently.

hope he doesn't catch hiv.

 

[Tukraq]

damn so a quick visit west and our ancestors were eating
kulaha for high class women even the ones traveling with the emperor
you mean to tell me the empress siil was for sale

 

[Pastoralite]

emily's fiance is Somali apparently.

hope he doesn't catch hiv.

emily's fiance: "baby you dont have HIV you have HIWE cuz we're in this together "

 

[Crow]

@Emily

Give her a tooney* and she'll suck your looney.
*Translator's note: Tooney is the name for the $2 coin in Canada.

 

[Crow]

damn so a quick visit west and our ancestors were eating
kulaha for high class women even the ones traveling with the emperor
you mean to tell me the empress siil was for sale

Check the date of that emperor's reign. I'm sure that she attained much "honour" after Ahmed Gurey's foot soldiers ran a train through her.

@ሕጊ።።

 

[Ferrari]

emily's fiance: "baby you dont have HIV you have HIWE cuz we're in this together "

 

[Dalmoor]

When civil war broke out my dad went Ethiopia slept in a hotel. 3 habshes came and ask for money on return they'd give them their siil

What! basically a playboy? Or he rejected their @$$?

 

[Dalmoor]

emily's fiance: "baby you dont have HIV you have HIWE cuz we're in this together "

 

[4head]

@Emily

 

[4head]

This thread is fantastic, we can finally hate on these raw meat eaters
"please, let's unite" they say

 

[Tukraq]

This thread is fantastic, we can finally hate on these raw meat eaters
"please, let's unite" they say

unification might be a good thing now if all their women are on sale even the married ones, since its a respectable job, no wonder their so nice and welcoming they would even let you sleep with their wife even their highest women in society
damn why did they also have to be cursed with HIV and they say somalis are mean unwelcoming with death stares who the hell wants to be a welcoming cuck

 

[Sophisticate]

I've read about this a couple years back.

 

[Emily]

The audacity of amisom village
Their whole country is a prostitute

And this garbage should be moved to qashin

@xabashi