What is Yilugnta (ይሉኝታ)? Ethiopians know the answer!

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Broadly speaking, the term habesha refers to Ethiopians (and Eritreans) and their culture. As an Englishman who has lived in Addis Ababa for over 6 months now, I have discovered that Habesha people are very proud, and rightly so,  of their unique customs and way of life and thinking. They are also well acquainted with the term yilugnta (ይሉኝታ). The “gn” in this word sounds like “ny” as in “canyon.” I find that the closest I can get to pronouncing it properly is to say, “yeluynta.” Those of you who read Amharic well can get the proper pronounciation from the Amharic spelling.

“What is yilugnta?,” you are asking, and I’ll endeavour shortly to explain it to you. It was quite a revelation to me to hear about it, because it explained what I thought was strange or unusual behaviour of some of my Ethiopian colleagues and friends, and it even described some of my own feelings and actions over the years of my life. I also realised that my mother had lots of yilugnta.

First, though, let me tell you about some of the definitions of yilugnta that I found when I did an internet search. Now, I’m no expert on this topic, but my discussion of yilugnta in this post is based on conversations I’ve had with my Ethiopian friends and colleagues in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. These have left me with no doubt that most Ethiopians are proud of their yilugnta, and certainly I think it’s awe-inspiring. Still, various sites on the internet give it a different meaning to that formed from my own impressions, based on my conversations with Ethiopians. For example, yilugnta has been said to be “the fear of being regarded as misfit which leads to conformism….” Another source refers to yilugnta as an “Amharic word meaning the inability to say no.” One author writes that yilugnta is “Amharic for self-consciousness. It can be said that an Ethiopian would rather die than be caught doing something that the society frowns on. This creates an introvert and when the time comes to fly the nest that person has a rather cool, reserved, sometimes shy outlook towards other people and life in general. This makes Ethiopians…..a very gentle, reserved and polite people.” Yet another writer describes it as “(having) a serious concern for public opinion.”

These definitions and descriptions don’t agree precisely with the concept of yilugnta that I have formed in my mind. Rather, some of them seem to be somewhat negative and focussed on the idea that a person with yilugnta has a selfish concern for what others will think about them based on their actions, rather than that someone with yilugnta has a selfless and human concern for how others’ feelings.

Therefore, I’m going to tell you how I heard about yilugnta, what Ethiopians have told me about it, and how I feel I already know what the definition is from my own experience with yilugnta outside of Ethiopia. It’s one of those feelings that you know well but you can’t easily and simply define it in words. Some of you from western countries may be familiar with the term, “bad vibes,” which some people get if they meet a person who makes them feel uncomfortable or uneasy. It’s difficult to describe the feeling of “bad vibes,” but if you’ve experienced them you know exactly what bad vibes are. Yilugnta is a bit like that, but it is a positive, soulful and compassionate “feeling.”

It all began when I was having a conversation with my dear friend, Fikirte (who is habesha), about a foreign lady she knew. Fikirte commented that this lady, although well liked and respected, would often eat meals in front of visitors to her home without offering the visitors any food. She would happily converse with them while she ate her meal, as they stood (hungrily?) watching her. Ethiopians, Firkirte said, would find this impolite and uncaring, and would always offer the visitors some of their food. This behaviour, though, wasn’t too surprising, Fikirte added, because Ethiopians know full well that foreigners “generally don’t have much yilugnta.”

“Yilugnta? What’s that?” I asked. Fikirte explained that it was a feeling or emotion, even a way of life, that is well known in habesha culture. It’s mentioned frequently during everyday habesha conversation. It is, in some respects, a sense of feeling sorry for someone and not wanting to leave them out of a situation, of not wanting to hurt their feelings- a combination perhaps of compassion, love, respect, empathy and pity.

Fikirte, who herself has tremendous yilugnta, gave me several examples. Her mother, for instance, was thinking about who she should invite to one of her daughter’s weddings. She kept adding more and more people, even those who other members of the family felt shouldn’t be invited. Fikirte’s mother just didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings and make them feel left out, so you can imagine that there were a lot of people at the wedding!

People with a lot of yilugnta will often go out of their way to help others, even to the extent of making significant personal sacrifices. In one of my next posts I’ll tell you about a young Ethiopian lady, a friend of Fikirte, who has spent two years living on a roll-up mattress of the floor of a tiny and dingy shop, even though someone else (through their own yilugnta!) offered her a much better place to live, because she doesn’t want to hurt the feelings of the shop owners, who kindly offered her their store as a bedroom when she was essentially homeless.

I’ve encountered yilugnta among my Ethiopian work colleagues and students here. For example, one of my colleagues, whom I will call Yergalem and who is a professor at the Unversity of Addis Ababa, described a perfect case of yilugnta in his department. Yergalem’s boss, as senior member of the department, allocated a course of lectures to a group of professors. The course took weeks to organize and was essentially finalized, and each professor knew exactly what he or she was going to teach in that course. Then, Yergalem was talking with his boss about the course and it just so happened that another of his colleagues was present in the same room, and this particular professor had been left out of the lecture course. The boss clearly realised this and spoke as if the course wasn’t finalized; he asked the professor to join in the course. The whole lecture series had to be re-organized and reallocated to include this “neglected” professor. Yergalem is certain that this was because the senior colleague had yilugnta for the professor who had been left out, and didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so he verbally included him after the course had been all but finalized. I’ve seen similar actions due to yilugnta, and although people with yilugnta are truly to be admired for their thoughtfulness and concern, it does show how yilugnta isn’t always practically a good thing and can occasionally be counterproductive or confusing in some circumstances.

I’ve thought of some of my experiences, especially from my childhood, where yilugnta clearly was the explanation for my own or other peoples’ behaviour and feelings, though I’ve only just really thought about this as being yilugnta. For example, we lived in a relatively poor neighbourhood in Yorkshire, England. It wasn’t unusual to hear a knock on our door and open it to find a child from the neighbourhood saying, “My mum wants to know if she can borrow three pence for a loaf of bread.” My mother would ask me to look in her purse. “There’s only 3 pence there, mum,” I’d say. “Take it out and give it to them,” she’d reply. That was my mother’s yilugnta speaking! She would give her last penny to help others, even if she really needed the penny herself.

When I was about ten, I took a job delivering newsletters for a charity called Cancer and Polio. People in the Yorkshire village where I lived paid a monthly subscription for the Cancer and Polio newsletter, which contained information about what was going on in the world of cancer and polio, and a portion of the proceeds from the subscription went to support research and charitable deeds in these areas. I was paid a small wage for each newsletter I delivered. I discovered later that only a few pence went to the actual charities: most of the profits went to the man who was my boss, who came round to our house and collected the money every few weeks.

After starting this job, I soon realised that quite a few of the people who received the newsletter were poor and were unable to keep up with their subscription payments. The more they fell behind, the more money they owed and the more it became difficult for them to pay. I believe yilugnta made me feel sorry for these people, because I worked for nothing so I could pay their subscriptions secretly. Eventually I gave up the job because I hated the whole business and knew that these people were struggling financially, while my boss was benefitting the most and the cancer and polio causes were benefitting very little. I felt sick to my stomach for weeks. Those of you who have plenty of yilugnta will probably be familiar with its associated nausea.

I had many experiences with yilugnta as a physician in the USA. Many patients there have no medical insurance, and it can be very expensive for them to see a doctor. Not only was it my ethical duty as a physician who took the Hippocratic Oath to take care of any sick patient as best as I could, but also my yilugnta prevented me from turning these patients away, and I’d charge them little or nothing for the visit.

When you are aware of yilugnta, you see it frequently among Ethiopians. It is, indeed, an integral and wonderful component of habesha culture.

Lack of yilugnta also can be detrimental, even devastating to others. I can’t bear even to think about the negative consequences that a lack of yilugnta may have on individuals and society. I’ve read a few items on the internet implying that yilugnta is detrimental to Ethiopians and Ethiopia, but I would say, to the contrary, that a deficit of yilugnta may be very destructive. If we lack compassion for others and if we don’t make personal sacrifices to help others, we are left with a sad, cold and uncaring world.

That Ethiopians know yilugnta well and that it is a part of daily habesha life tells us something wonderful about their kindness, values and humanity. I don’t believe that yilugnta is unique to Ethiopians, but I think that a lack of yilugnta is more common outside of Ethiopia, and I believe that western societies pay less attention to it and that’s why they don’t have a word for it. I’m glad I found the word and the concept here in Ethiopia. I’m curious to know if yilugnta can be learned, or if some people simply are born with more of it than others. Do we have lots of yilugnta when we’re children, but lose it to varying degrees depending on our life experiences? Is it suppressed or destroyed by materialism, or does a lack of yilugnta encourage materialism? How much has a deficit of yilugnta contributed to the personal, social, even global problems, and how much can yilugnta help improve human interactions and society?

Let’s encourage yilugnta, I say, and talk about it more, as habesha people do? Let’s support those who have plenty of yilugnta and let’s tell those who show a lack of yilugnta that they need not be so mean and thoughtless! Long live Yilugnta!