Grieving the Loss of Ethiopia; Discovering the Beauty of Oromia

I spent the better part of my 27 years on this planet to many not being much more than the Ethiopian girl. And as reductive as that could be nothing could have made me prouder. The only truly independent, never been colonized, country in Africa, rich culture, history and more than anything else it was home. It was the motherland, the basis of my identity.

In fact I attended a makeshift Ethiopian school called Ewket from the ages of 6-14 (mainly in a rented room in a rec center). The goals were pretty simple: networking, learning to read and write Amharic fluently, and of course taking in Ethiopian history and culture. And despite the failure of these goals it ingrained in me a deep sense of my Ethiopian identity and I was convinced that that was completely unshakable.

But then as we all know in November 2020 a war was waged on the people of Tigray and all those conceptions went out the window. My father was steadfast in the notion that we were no longer Ethiopian, we were Tegaru (Tigrayan) and that was that. My mother was like me, a little tepid in the idea of completely throwing away our Ethiopian identity but still very much devoted to our Tigrayan extended family.

But this new era also opened our eyes to the perspective of our ostracized Oromo brothers and sisters, many of whom have never felt like part of greater Ethiopia. In fact, they were so fiercely independent that they refused to accept Amharic as their primary language. Before the war, my family and I never understood this as a sense of pan-Ethiopianism still very much drove us.

Something that was so striking to me was reading the tweets of various Oromo activists putting "Ethiopia" in quotation marks, and referring to it as an "evil colonial empire." Make no mistake they were advocating for the total and complete dismemberment of Ethiopia as we knew it. During the Tigray genocide, many Tigrayans began to feel the same way about self determination, independence of the states and eventually dismemberment.

So I realized a couple of things, I was deeply conflicted about all of this and the Oromos had the potential to be the most formidable allies. They too were disenfranchised, had a profound sense of their own regional identity, and were on the receiving end of some of the most gruesome atrocities.

The Oromo people, the largest ethnolinguistic group in Ethiopia, constituting a whopping 1/3 of the population, first immigrated in large waves in the 16th century. Like us, they grew to suffer a great deal of subjugation at the hands of the Amhara elite. But through subjugation a defiant cultural sense of self was born.

In fact they came out on the other side of the most horrifying barbarism imaginable and are now in complete control of the federal government much to the chagrin of the Amhara establishment.

Now, that's marginally better for the Tigrayan people as they are now sending help (food, fertilizer, etc.) to the region, partly for humanitarian reasons and partly because they are needed tactically to help quell resistance from the Amharas.

But it highlighted to me the need for Tigray/Oromo solidarity in Ethiopia and in the diaspora. So I found myself one day, showing up at the small yet striking Oromo Evangelical Church in Dallas, TX wearing my Palestine scarf to represent solidarity desperately wanting to say a few words encouraging the congregants to stand with Tigray for the good of both our communities.

Unfortunately, the leadership of the church was extremely weary of politics mixing with religion but they directed me towards some members of the Oromo Community Center. And my Dad and I met a very thoughtful member of the Oromo community, a community college professor named Tariku who taught us quite a lot about the Oromo people and plight and what solidarity between the communities would mean moving forward.

I personally was thrilled and was bubbling over with ideas about potential mixers, forming a formal organization, etc. but they were encouraging me to think small and those ideas never got off the ground.

But I will never give up hope just as the fighters of the Oromo Liberation Army or TDF never gave up. Solidarity, no matter what the liberation cause is, is the answer and those fighting for freedom and justice for all have a duty to pursue it at every single turn.