So, where are you from originally? I met a sweet couple from Sierra Leone for dinner and naturally, the question where are you from originally presented itself. I hesitated before answering like I always do. and soon enough we were discussing Ethiopia and the larger Horn of Africa when the husband says to me that he knows a little bit about Ethiopian politics. He said Oh, there is a big population here, they want to break away from Ethiopia It turns out aside from the fact that they want to break away from Ethiopia, there was nothing this gentleman knew about the Oromo. For a couple of seconds, I wondered if I should provide context and explain that this is not just about breaking away as he understood it but i found that task so daunting, especially as we sat there at their dinner table. better save this one for another time I thought. I changed the conversation and continued with dinner. but all the way home I had the same nagging feeling Ive had for a while now. It is really disconcerting that the story of the Oromo remains not only unheard but also simply reduced to those people who want to break away from Ethiopia nothing else. No context. No history. Obviously, this narrative of what the Oromo want has been told and re-told a billion times by unitarist propagandists and pseudo-intellectuals who benefit by framing struggles of the Oromo in this narrow and demeaning way. All this to say that there is an incredible amount of work that still remains to be done to tell stories about Oromo that is complex and contextualized. Heres to that.
Posted on: Wed, 16 Apr 2014 01:12:19 +0000
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