She Ate Beans!

The longer we live in new cultures, the more we enjoy learning new things about the intricacies each culture offers. It took me a while to learn that there is no word for "pregnant" in Moru or Juba Arabic. The word simply doesn't exist. However, we finally asked our Moru friends what they say when someone is pregnant and discovered this wonderful gem of a phrase :)...

"Huwo akulu janjarro."

Directly translated (from Juba Arabic), it means: She ate beans.

Nope, I'm not joking.

If you want to tell someone that you are pregnant, you would say, "I ate beans" hehe. It still makes me giggle each time I say it.

In Moru you say a phrase you would say translates to: "Her stomach is heavy".

Although the phrase makes me laugh, the reason they use this phrase is quite sad. In this part of the world (this goes for women here in Uganda too), losing pregnancies is very common. Therefore, there are a lot of superstitions around why women lose babies in pregnancy. One is that if you talk about the baby before it is born, the "spirits" will kill it. Hence why they do not have a word for pregnancy in their languages. This leaves them to talk around what they are really trying to say- thus describing how the body looks instead of mentioning anything about a baby growing inside.

When Will was in Mundri last week (more about that in a future post), he greeted many of my friends for me. While doing so, he showed them by picture and told them, "Huwo akulu janjarro!". They all responded with great excitement about my "bean eating"!

So folks, this is what it looks like when you eat too many beans...

Theresa 30 weeks