The creators of the Ethiopian television show "Tsehai loves learning"
© AFP/File Lealisa Westerhoff

ADDIS ABABA (AFP) - In the ancient language of Amharic, the long-necked marionette offers the friendly warnings and lessons about values, culture and hygiene on Ethiopia's version of the acclaimed US children's television show "Sesame Street."

Tsehai, Amharic for "sun," has top billing on "Tsehai Loves Learning," a puppet and animated production that premiered last month in Ethiopia, hoping to emulate Sesame Street's wild success and its own yellow star, Big Bird.

Along with her giraffe parents and grandparents, an elderly tortoise, a dog, a sheep and a foreign human friend, Tsehai navigates life's pitfalls in Amharic, interspersed with a few words of English, every other week.

The product of a young mixed Ethiopian-American couple, the groundbreaking biweekly 8-10 minute segments are intended to fill an educational void for three-to-six-year-olds in the impoverished nation.

"Especially for kids of this age, very little is being done in terms of public education in Ethiopia," says the show's co-founder and co-producer Bruktawit Tigabu, half of the husband-and-wife team behind the show.

"Only a few people can afford to send their kids to private kindergarten, most of them would just stay at home or play on the streets, so there was really a gap to fill," the 25-year-old voice of Tsehai says.

The primary school teacher and her husband, American software engineer Shane Etzenhouser, 35, met at an Ethiopian school in 2003 and say the show is their first child, born of a desire to give something back to the country.

With their Whiz Kids Workshop they aim to boost early childhood development in Ethiopia by following the lead of the pioneering Children's Television Workshop, now Sesame Workshop, that created Sesame Street in 1969.

"Over the last 35 years, there is a lot of data and research that has been done on how these animated puppet programs can benefit children," says Etzenhouser, who manipulates the characters.

"We wanted Ethiopian children to benefit from this," he said, adding that "Tsehai Loves Learning" is the first educational show in the Horn of Africa nation to feature Amharic-speaking animated characters and puppets.

Armed with a few homemade muppet-like creatures and a laptop computer, Bruktawit and Etzenhouser have so far produced eight episodes at a cost of 4,800 dollars each since coming up with the idea two years ago.

The first was broadcast on September 17 on state-run Ethiopian television, which has agreed to air the program on a provisional basis for six months before deciding on a longer-term contract.

There are 30 more in the pipeline, and although some have been funded with a grant from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the couple is looking for financing to complete them.

"Using puppets is cost effective in terms of doing a production compared to a classical animated film so we think this is within the grasp of what could be economically sustainable in this country," says Etzenhouser.

Because 80 percent of Ethiopia's 77 million people live in rural areas with uncertain access to electricity, let alone television, the reach of "Tsehai Loves Learning" is not yet clear.

According to projections based on government statistics only about 2.2 million Ethiopian children are in a position to be able see the adventures of Tsehai and her friends but Bruktawit and Shane are convinced of its value.

"Perseverance, hard working or giving services to your community: these values are key elements to help Ethiopia recover from poverty," he says.

"There is so much history of develoment efforts that have been destroyed through corruption, greed or conflict, so we feel that these personal values really should be a part of early child education," he says.

Bruktawit echoes that sentiment and says she hopes the show can be produced in other languages, notably Oromifa, the most-spoken in Ethiopia, and perhaps expanded to other African countries.

"I hope it will have a long existance," she says. "The next step will be to show it in Oromifa and then Swahili and make it more African, so that perhaps one day the whole continent could benefit from it."

Until then, though, Tsehai learns the lessons her grandmother and parents teach her every other Sunday, singing an Amharic theme song with the refrain "she asks a lot of questions because she loves learning".

©AFP