DL Phiri, 49255266

My ethnic group is the Zulu speaking people. Growing up in a Zulu household we were taught the importance of consulting and communicating with our ancestors. I grew up watching my family perform rituals and slaughtering animals as thanking our ancestors for “opening opportunities for us”, or slaughtering for pleading with them to grant us the things we wish to have and sometimes they would slaughter to welcome a new baby into the family and introducing the baby to the ancestors. Another teaching that I have learned from my ethnic group is that girls should gather together and do virginity testing by the elderly women who not only offer the virginity testing but they also teach girls and young women how they should handle themselves and behave as females and encourage that women should be able to perform house duties as it will help them when they have their own houses and married to their future husbands.

Now that I am older and with the help of anthropology, I realize that a person can have a mind of his own. My ethnic group has social standards for both men and women. As a young woman right now I have taken my own path which is becoming a Christian, I believe that God is the creator of things and he grants us everything that I was made believe that my ancestors do, I acknowledge my ancestors as a black child but I will not live up to my society’s expectations which is worshipping my ancestors and slaughtering animals for them as much as this is a normality to my society but I will be taking a different path. I also find it appalling that girl children are taught to obey their husbands, learn house duties and bear children while a boy child is encouraged to work hard, have money, build a home for his wife and children as if a girl child is not capable of doing so. At this day and age we see so much change and we see that what was normal then is not normal now, people are changing the narrative and they are more open to not conforming to society’s expectations but conforming to what they believe is right for them.