r/Oromia

Jawar’s recent political shift is very interesting and honestly I welcome it 100%.

His recent posts and analysis of this new Alliance for Survival have been pretty critical. He’s been pointing out the contradictions between OLA, TPLF, Fano etc and how they don’t even have the same political or military objectives.

His recent post about Jaaraa Abbaa Gadaa was also interesting. He tells the story of how Oromo liberation fighters were supported and armed by the Somali government in the 70s, but Jaaraa eventually realised that Somalia had its own interests and wasn’t simply helping the Oromo out of goodwill, but rather they wanted to snatch Oromo lands after defeating Ethiopia (Thank God they Lost)

He refused to go along with it and ended up spending 5 years in Somali prison. If anyone from Hararghe knows more about this part of Jaaraa’s story I’d be interested to hear it.

The main point Jawar made was basically that we should learn from our history and not sacrifice Oromo/national interests for short term political gains.
And I can’t help but think that’s also a pretty obvious dig at this new alliance.

What’s interesting is how different this is from the Jawar we’re used to seeing constantly attacking the PP. Now he’s spending a lot more time criticising the forces fighting the government and warning about the consequences of their alliances.

I’m not saying Jawar has suddenly become a PP supporter lol. But his position does seem to be moving more towards an Oromo-Ethiopian political outlook rather than the more Oromo-first position he was associated with before.

And considering the current situation, it seems like he’s increasingly viewing the interests of the Oromo within the Ethiopian state rather than through alliances with forces like TPLF and Eritrea.

Whether you agree with him or not, the shift is definitely interesting.

The late 19th century had produced extraordinary histories of displacement, survival, and transformation. So, while the Atlantic slave trade dominates much of the historical narrative, systems of enslavement along the Indian Ocean and Red Sea remained active in the same era. It was the interception of slave trade by the British Royal Navy that set in motion an unexpected connection between the Horn of Africa and the landscape of South Africa that had been defined by a journey of 64 children who came to be known as the “Children of Hope”.

Their story began in the Oromo-inhabited regions of Ethiopia during a period of intense political upheaval and territorial expansion. Oromo communities were subjected to violent slave raids, in which children were among those captured and forcibly transported toward the Red Sea for sale in Arabian markets. In September 1888, the British Royal Navy vessel HMS Osprey intercepted several vessels carrying enslaved Oromo children and liberated them. The children were taken to Aden in Yemen, where they were placed under missionary care. Unfortunately, diseases and the harsh conditions of the region claimed many of their lives. Seeking a healthier environment in which the survivors could be educated and cared for, missionaries eventually arranged for the remaining 64 children to be sent to the Free Church of Scotland's Lovedale Institution in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa.

In August 1890, after a long journey from Aden around the African coast - including a stop at Port Louis in Mauritius - the children arrived in South Africa. They were admitted into an institution whose student population was predominantly Xhosa-speaking and which combined academic education with Christian instruction and industrial training. The young men were trained in trades such as carpentry, printing, and masonry, while the young women received training that included teaching. Remarkably, many of the Oromo students performed exceptionally well in their academics, demonstrating the resilience and intellectual capacity that would become characteristic of their subsequent lives.

However, perhaps the most valuable legacy of the group lies in the testimonies they left behind. Several of the children recorded accounts of their first passage: their individual lives in Oromo communities, their capture, their journeys through enslavement, and their experiences before reaching South Africa. These accounts provide rare first-person evidence of the 19th century slave trade in the Horn of Africa. Their histories have been substantially recounted in Sandra Rowoldt Shell's Children of Hope: The Odyssey of the Oromo Slaves from Ethiopia to South Africa (picture 12 and 13), which draws upon the children's testimonies alongside Lovedale records, correspondence, photographs and other archival material. The book therefore serves as an important source for understanding not only how the children reached South Africa, but also the lives that they built afterwards. Although the testimonies were recorded within a missionary setting and require careful historical interpretation, they provide a profound record of the experiences of enslaved Oromo children from their own perspectives.

Their presence in South Africa also produced an important linguistic legacy. Despite being immersed in an English-and-Xhosa speaking environment, the Oromo language was preserved through the missionary press. In the 1890s, Lovedale published Oromo-language religious texts, including a Roman-script translation of the Gospel of Mark and Galla Hymns. These publications are noted to represent an important early chapter in the development of Oromo language print culture and demonstrate that the children's displacement did not entirely erase the connection to their linguistic heritage.

As the children reached adulthood, their lives followed different paths. Some remained in South Africa - becoming teachers, artisans and even assimilated into the local cultures in which they established new lives. Others retained a powerful attachment to their original homeland and eventually returned to Ethiopia, where several pursued a future with the education and skills they had acquired at the Lovedale Institution. By 1910, approximately one-third of the original group had died, one-third had settled in South Africa, and another third had returned to Ethiopia.

Among those who returned was Gutama Tarafo, whose experience at Lovedale left an especially revealing record of this enduring connection. In 1897, he presented a four-page essay, “My Essay Is Upon Gallaland,” to the Lovedale Literary Society, describing the landscape, customs, food, social life and traditions of his Oromo identity. The essay, later preserved by Sandra Rowoldt Shell in her book, provides a glimpse into how a young man reconstructed memories of a homeland he had left as a child. Its evident sense of nostalgia also prompted Shell to trace his later life, and eventually establishing that Gutama returned to Ethiopia with fellow Oromo student by the name of Dinkitu Boensa in 1909.

Some of the others who remained to forge lives in South Africa include Bisho Jarsa (picture 5), who was one of the 64 Oromo children. She grew up to become a teacher and later married a South African man by the name of Frederick Scheepers who worked as a minister. Their family would eventually produce one of South Africa's most important anti-apartheid intellectuals known as Dr. Neville Alexander (picture 11), Bisho's grandson, who became a scholar, linguist, revolutionary activist and spent ten years imprisoned on Robben Island alongside Nelson Mandela.

The story of the Children of Hope therefore extends far beyond their refuge as their lives connected the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and Southern Africa, revealing a much more interconnected history than boundaries would suggest. They arrived in South Africa as children violently displaced from their own homeland, yet prevailed as contributors to a new society.

Their story is ultimately one of memory, identity and the different ways displaced people attempt to reconstruct a sense of home. The photogaphs above are some of the Oromo children at the Lovedale Institution in Eastern Cape, South Africa.

Translation:

We decide how we work and execute our missions solely on our own terms. We tolerate no doubt, suspicion, or superficial perspectives. Our sole focus is to sever the enemy's backbone.

What you must properly understand is that any entity that enters into the crosshairs of the OLF-OLA army will not escape unscathed. Drill it into your heads. They will pay a price that far outweighs any cost.

Stop the empty noise and listen. If you like it support us. If you lack the physical strength to fight in the jungle, then step aside and stay out of our way. But if you hate what we are doing, then arm yourselves and stand face to face to oppose us. This army was built out of blood and bones; it is not an army that can be dismantled by loud chatter.

Trying to dismantle a military force through empty noise when mechanised weapons like drones, BM rocket launchers, heavy artillery, and tanks have failed to destroy us is severely foolish.

End translation.

Sooo.. 50 years fighting for 'liberation' only to end up telling their own citizens to shut their traps or buy a rifle. How much longer until they get buried, do you think?

- East oromia: west and east hararghe

- Southeast oromia: arsi, bale, west arsi and east bale

- South oromia: guji/west guji, borana/east borana

- west oromia: east, west, kellem and horo guduru wollega

- Southwest oromia: Ilu, bedele and jimma.

- Central oromia: east, north, southwest and west shoa

Today we’re slaves. Yesterday we were savages who conquered the horn during our migration.

One thing for sure, the only friend Oromo has is other Oromo’s - I hope this rhetoric is a wake up call to anyone who believes these kind of people can ever be allies to us.

Akkam, jirta?

Full disclosure, I used AI to help me organize all these messy family details into a clean post, but the music and the history are entirely my dad's!

I am currently working on building a definitive historical and musical archive for my father, the Oromo singer Ahmed Omar.

My father grew up in Dire Dawa and East Hararghe, with close family ties to Haramaya. After delivering an anti-Derg poem at a youth plaza gathering at age 16, he had to go into hiding in Haramaya (where he actually met the legendary Ali Birra, who heard him sing and famously gave him the musical advice to "follow the drum"). He eventually fled the Derg regime on foot through the desert to Djibouti, and years later, made his way to Minnesota.

He never recorded his music in Ethiopia. Instead, between 1994 and 1998, he went into a studio right here in the Twin Cities to bring his songs to life. Because there weren't many East African instrumentalists around at the time, he actually hired non-African professional American jazz and funk session musicians. He mouth-drummed and sounded out the rhythms to them, teaching them how to play the specific syncopated East Hararghe bounce.

This snippet is the first 1:30 of his song 'Eelee Fi Shankooyee'. He released this project on CD and cassette in the mid-to-late 90s, and it used to circulate a lot at local weddings, social gatherings, and barcha circles.

Unfortunately, my dad wasn't the most organized when it came to keeping track of his records, studio receipts, or tracklists, so a lot of the official details about this release have been lost to time.

I’m reaching out to the community to see if anyone recognizes this recording or remembers his cassettes circulating back in the day. If you have any leads on the original album name, the exact release year, or any old physical copies, please let me know! Also welcome to general discussion. I have some more songs I can post as well.