A harmful traditional practice exposing young girls to experience virgin pregnancy (Shilshalo): a qualitative study in Argoba community, Amhara National Regional State, Ethiopia

Argoba is one of the ethnic groups found in Amhara National Regional State of Ethiopia. The Argoba Nationality special Woreda [an autonomous administrative region or district], was founded in June 2006. It is found in South Wollo Zone of Amhara National Regional State. It is bordered with Kalu Woreda of South Wollo zone in the north and northwest, Dewa Chefa Woreda of Oromia Zone in the south, and Telalak Woreda of Afar Regional State in the east. The center of the Woreda is Medina, a small town 85 Kms and 375Kms far from Dessie and Addis Ababa, respectively [7].

With an area of 30,918.70 Km², the Argoba Nationality special Woreda consists of seven rural kebeles [the lowest administrative region under Woreda]. It is a home for about 40,000 people (22,715 Male; 17,594 Female). The community is entirely Islam. Only some of the government employers, who came from other areas, are non-Islam. With respect to the economic activity, 99.5% of the total population is engaged in agricultural activities. Only the rest 0.5% participate in trade and other service economy [7].

Qualitative approach was employed in this study. Among the different kinds of qualitative research designs, case study design was used since the nature of the study calls for an empirical investigation of a particular phenomenon within its real life context. Hence, exploratory case study design was used to investigate the features of Shilshalo by taking the setting and context of Argoba community into account.

The information about Shilshalo was elicited from the participants of this study through in-depth interview, key informant interview, and focus group discussion. To this effect, in-depth interviews were held with 8 girls and 6 boys and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 8 key informants comprised of religious leaders, elders, and health professionals. The in-depth and semi-structure interview guidelines were developed and used only for this study purpose (See Additional file 1).

Since Shilshalo is practiced by boys and girls in the stage of puberty before marriage, the boys and girls were purposively selected based on two inclusion criteria: having the experience of Shilshalo and being in the age range of 15 and 18. Before interviews were held with boys and girls, written consent from their parents and oral assent from them were obtained. Each interview lasted for an hour on average. The in-depth interviews were held in Amharic. The interview focused on issues such as why and how the teenagers practiced Shilshalo and the harms it brought to them.

Key informant interviews were held with two groups of purposively selected participants including two male religious leaders, two elderly women, two elderly men and two female health professionals. The first group consisted of religious leaders, and elderly women and men who could provide explanations about the socio-cultural rationales of performing the Shilshalo. The second group involved Kebele health professionals who could clarify the potential harm of practicing Shilshalo on the wellbeing of girls. A face-to-face interview was undertaken in Amharic with each of the key informants.

To validate the interview data and to get collective information, three separate focus group discussions were conducted with girls, boys and community members. Also, three discussion guidelines were prepared for each group of discussants to properly moderate the focus group discussion (See Additional file 2). Each focus group discussion consisted of eight individuals; and in total 24 people (12 women/girls and 12 men/boys) participated in the discussions. All focus group discussions were moderated by the researchers, and tape recording was used to capture the reflection of both interviewees and focus group discussants.

The data were analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis technique, involving the following stages. First, the audio recorded data gained from interview and focus group discussions were transcribed. Then, the transcribed data were translated from Amharic to English. The English version of the raw data was read repeatedly to maintain familiarity (See Additional file 3). Next to this, the data were sorted and arranged into different types depending on the sources of the information. After that, detailed analysis was done with a coding process. This involved the process of organizing the material into chunks before bringing meaning to those chunks. And, it involved taking text data in categories and labeling those categories with themes. Finally, the data were interpreted and analyzed qualitatively.

Trustworthiness is seen as the strength of a research. It is used to determine whether the findings are accurate from the stand point of the researchers, the participants, or the readers of the account [8]. To ensure the trustworthiness of this qualitative study, we triangulated different data sources of information by examining evidence from the source and used it to build a coherent justification for themes. In addition to this, we used easy and simple language and description to convey the findings.

According to research participants, Shilshalo is a traditional sexual practice done by unmarried young boys and girls of the Argoba community. Boys and girls were playing a kind of sexual activity which is characterized with no actual insertion of the male’s genital organ (penis) into the female’s genital organ (vagina), but apart from this, other sexual activities are allowed in this sexual play. An old Argoba man explained this harmful traditional practice as follows.

Shilshalo is a sexual play which a young unmarried girl and a young unmarried boy perform. A girl may start earlier than a boy, at 10 or 11 or 12 years age whereas the boy may start at the age of 14 years or later. They continue playing until she or he marries. Once they become friends, they play it when they get favorable conditions. When they are ready to play, they put their bodies in contact, especially making use of their hands. They also kiss each other, and finally the girl sleeps sticking her legs together, and the boy then brushes her thigh up to her vagina with his penis. He continues rubbing until he reaches at the state of orgasm and ejaculates his fluids there.

The results of this study showed that there are certain procedures followed in practicing Shilshalo. At the beginning, the boy is expected to express his love for a girl he loves. If she accepts his request, she expresses her agreement by putting jewelry on his neck or hand. Since then, they become sexual /Shilshalo/ partners so that they could practice everything that gives them sexual pleasure except practicing the actual sexual intercourse. This process was well articulated by the account of the following participant.

I remember how I started playing Shilshalo. When I was 13 years old, one boy approached me and asked me to be his partner. As that time, I feared to give response, so he stayed for some time with no any answer from me. On day, while I was collecting firewood, he again asked me to be his partner. At that time, I expressed my agreement by putting a Musebeha (a jewelry made from a chain of iron and used as a gift by girls to express their willingness for boys’ love request) on his neck. After two years of joyful time, we separated when I married another man.

This study also found out that a boy often allows his friends to enjoy with his girlfriend. This implies that the practice of Shilshalo allows a girl to play with more than one boy. In this regard, one of the participants shared her experience as follows:

Playing Shilshalo with a lover is amusing but sometimes boys force girls to play it with their friends. In my two years stay with my boyfriend, I had encountered this problem for four times: once with a boy, once with two and twice with three of his friends. I used to enjoy when my boyfriend ejaculated his fluid on my body. However, when his friends ejaculated on my body I felt distasteful and it did not bring any joy for me. Although I disliked it too much, I did it for the sake of satisfying the interest of my boyfriend.

The above narration shows that there is a hierarchal relationship between boys and girls during Shilshalo. The boy shows his masculine behavior by forcing his girlfriend to perform it with his friends. However, girls remain submissive and for that matter they do not have the power to oppose the interest of their boyfriends. Due to this reason, therefore, most girls do Shilshalo with many boys without their consent.

According to the result of the study, most members of Argoba community had considered shilshalo as a beneficial cultural practice, only because it lets the teenagers to gratify their sexual feelings. They thought that it is useful to prepare young girls and boys for the expectation married life. That means they believed that the practice helps the youngsters to share love with their friends and at the same time to respect cultural criteria for marriage--a girl should stay virgin until marriage. It is true that in a patriarchal society, virginity of girls is associated with purity and honor but in contrast, virginity of boys is not as such an issue. Since the study community was a patriarchal community, they understood virginity in the sense of the above notion. However, the study communities, unlike the other patriarchal societies, did not believe that protecting girls from any sexual relationship with boys is not a long lasting option to keep girls’ virginity because love affiliation between youngsters is a natural phenomenon. By recognizing these facts, therefore, the Argoba community had created shilshalo as means to protect girls from losing of virginity before marriage. In this regard one participant said:

In our culture, a girl must be virgin to be a wife of someone. Assume if a man married a girl with wedding ceremony and if he identified her as she is not virgin, he will immediately send her back to her families. And the girls’ families will consider this as something that degraded their dignity; and she will then be discriminated by the society as she violates the norm of the society. However, our culture does not want to control sexual behavior of girls though their virginity is not compromised. Therefore, shilshalo is created as a method to make girls to be able to preserve their virginity and at the same time to perform sexual activity.

The other reason raised for the favor of shilshalo is mothers’ opinion on it. They took it as an indicator for the fate of their daughters. As to them, a girl who participate in the practice (has a boyfriend) is considered as beautiful and she will be wanted for married life. If not, it will be interpreted otherwise and she will remain unmarried. Therefore, the mothers used it to know if or not their daughters are wanted for marriage. In connection to this idea, one woman shared her experience of treating her daughters as:

I have three daughters. I have always encouraged my daughters to practice shilshalo. I take it as a means of checking the fate of my daughters in terms of accessing husbands in the near future. If my daughters do not have boyfriends, I thought they will not have a married life in the future. But if they have boyfriends, it implies that they will be wanted by males for marriage.

From the above explanation one can conclude that the mothers were those who favored shilshalo. They perceived their daughters engagement in the practice of shilshalo as a guarantee for their future married life. They assumed a girl participates in shilshalo, mean, she is a one wanted for marriage, otherwise she is considered as unfit for married life. Likewise, the information collected from the focus group discussants showed that although the mothers stand in support of the practice of shilshalo, it was difficult to say men had no role in sustaining the practice. While mothers used the practice as a means of assuring their daughters’ destiny regarding married life, the fathers did not take any action on it. This indicates that the fathers had favorable attitude towards it since they did not restrict their sons and daughters to involve in the shilshalopractice.

The study also found out that Argoba girls had a positive attitude towards shilshalo. In the Argoba culture, a girl was expected to marry a person whom her families choose. This implies that she did not have a right to select whom she wanted to marry. Therefore, girls had taken ‘shilshaloas an opportunity to entertain love relationship with the one they might not get in their life. One young girl clearly explained this idea by saying:

Love coupled with adolescence feeling initiated me to play shilshalo. In our culture, being a female mean, you do not have a right upon choosing your future life partner. Our families have decided all about us. As a human being we look something that could bring about joy. For example, in my case I want to marry the man I loved but my culture does not allow me to do that. So I used shilshalo to get my beloved one before I married someone that I may not like. However, if I make an open sexual intercourse by mistake, I would lose my virginity and this would in turn create different societal problems upon me. Therefore, in order to escape from such bad condition I take care when I perform it.

The Argoba boys had also supported the practice of shilshalo but their justification is a little bit different from what the girls mentioned. In the Argoba culture, there were different expectations for a boy and a girl to engage in marriage life. The boy should be self-reliance for basic needs. Whereas a girl was expected to marry someone her families prefer. However, most of the boys found out fulfilling household materials, which are basic to live with his future wife, was a time consuming activity. Boys did not want to wait their wedding day to have sexual relationship with girls; and because of this reason they had practiced shilshalo before marriage. One of the interviewed boys strengthened this view as:

To marry a girl, I should first secure the basic goods. Once, I secured it, I can marry a girl I loved. But getting enough resource for life is a big problem for me. So that, I have used shilshalo as a way of getting sexual fantasy until I become capable enough to marry someone.

The above case stories showed that boys and girls had strong zeal to practice ‘shilshalo’ at their adolescent age. They explained that the practice helped them to share love with their partner before they marry someone. Especially, girls considered it as the only means to enjoy with someone she loved before marrying some other person chosen by her families. Similarly, a boy perceived it as an opportunity to satisfy his sexual desires until he became financially capable to marry a girl. Both boys and girls did not expect any harm from it as long as it was properly performed. They perceived that the harm resulted from the practice occurred due to improper practice. Otherwise, it was safe as they thought.

However, the religious leaders had openly opposed the practice. Most of Argoba community members were follower of Islamic religion and their religious leaders had often taught the community not to practice shilshalo. One of the religious leaders explained this matter by saying:

Shilshalo has been practiced by our community for ages. Our religion forbids any form of sexual practice before marriage. Even any form of relationship between young boys and girls before marriage is considered as a sin. We (religious leaders) have often preached this to our followers but most of the community members are reluctant to behave as per our teaching.

From the standpoint of the above religious leader it was possible to say that the practice does not have religious grounds. The Islam religion prohibited any form of sexual practice before marriage. In contrast to this religious teaching, the Argoba community has still practiced it.