Preface
Ate-loon is a nationalist literary practice following Symposia (2018) and my other collections in Oromo. It is an independent imagination of an independent nation in Oromia and beyond, a way of thinking about “nationhood” and “peoplehood,” which is an empowering image for our artists. Ate-loon is a Pan-Oromo reflection that may be enormously insightful for those who are exploring a literary nation-building without compromising the integrity of Oromummaa (Oromoness), for reasons that become self-evident as the engaged literary undertaking proceeds. One major reason is that the nation we are building needs a nationalist poet, who rises from the artistic genius of the people to give the people back their history to learn from the past without fear, courage to change the present, and hope to envision the future. This volume also offers our literary critics a language and a set of ideas they may not previously have come across in working on Oromo literary criticism, or on a supreme literary material rooted within the vibrant Oromo culture. Thus, the collection is a modest contribution to the rather small body of critical works on sabboonummaa ogumaa / literary nationalism in ways that make it interesting and relevant to a broader audience who share the Oromo cause of national liberation.
This new literary criticism revolves around a nation, a culture, as around a set of other theories, other cultures, other languages, as part of a larger literary discourse, a contested terrain of literary space, the center versus the periphery, the “global” versus the “g/local”.
Although this is an anthology of my poems put thematically into five books, it has taken me a long time to write it since I came home from exile. I owe many thanks to my family members for their love and care, and to friends and colleagues for their encouragement, for reading and commenting drafts of this book or for spending their precious time talking about the issues discussed in it. I am also highly indebted particularly to professors Francesca Orsini of SOAS, University of London, UK, and Sadhana Naithani of Jawaharlal Nehru, India, for their genuine support and encouragement.
To the people and many others who chose to remain anonymous, I owe them many, many thanks.
Assefa Tefera Dibaba (PhD)
Adama, Oromia
3 May, 2020
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Preface 8
Introduction 11
Prologue 62
P O E M S
Book I
Dear Poet 69
Dear Poet 69
Book II
Amor Fati 115
Book III
Gyres of History 140
Book IV
Oromia 158
Book V
Death Lore 250
Epilogue 271
I N T R O D U C T I O N
…There was a book that descended from [waaqa/the sky] in ancient time. A [sacred] cow [Ate-loon] ate the book. The book stuck in the cow’s belly and became a peritoneum. Today the peritoneum is the book that descended from [waaqa] and eaten by the sacred cow [Ate-loon]. [That is the Oromo Book of Knowledge—Kitaaba Oguma!]
__ Enrico Cerulli, 1922:44
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O G U M A:
Towards an Oromo Literary Nationalism
1. Where From/Where To?
This essay aims to explain why to seek a “literary nationalism” is to move toward a “process of dynamic relationality,” ground up, “not a matter of removing ourselves and our communities from the influences of the world in which we live” (Bauerkemper 2015:5). In Ethiopia, after nearly thirty years of evil days of war, famine, and social crisis that ran through 1991/1992 (AWR, 1991), another round of structured state violence has followed for nearly additional thirty years under the guise of “federalism” and now “meddemer” by affecting negatively the everyday lives of the people and the environment in which they live to meet this end goal of absolute unionist agenda. Today, the previous regime has morphed itself into a “Prosperity Party” (PP), after the Qeerroo-led Oromo national movement gave chance to some reformist members of the surrogate party to lead the transition, which instead, secured itself another legal cover, as it did over the years through unfair and unfree elections “to rebuild and deploy the dismantled institutions of the empire-state to serve its own interests” (Abiyu Geleta, 2003:74). As far as humanity is unfree, no one has access to justice, social and environmental.
If art is to be offered as a celebration of reality, the personal narrative of a marginalized individual presented toward the end of this essay (text iii) and the remaining two “ethno-texts” are examples of Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism which view narrative discourses as forms of social exchange that locate the social basis of individual and social interactions within conflicting worldviews and determine the bases of “ideological interrelations” (Bloom, 2010:5-6). In this essay, against Plato’s skeptical view of poetry (and poets) to be discussed shortly, a nationalist poet is one who adopts the perspective that “makes the world speak itself and speak itself as a story,” not one who “looks out on the world and reports it” (Bloom, ibid.), unlike in Plato’s “noble state,” one who “imitates, arouses ‘the beast’ within us—our appetites, which, when aroused to the point of unruliness, can overthrow reason’s management of the soul” (Smith 2007:44).
Thus, being a nationalist poet, a critic, a humanist, and a folklorist is a legitimate perspective from which to approach Oromo literature. There is a dichotomous approach toward literary criticism. First, the “cosmopolitan critic” focuses on analyzing “how Native literatures and intellectual histories resist the legacies of colonialism through the foregrounding of ‘cultural fluidity, adaptation, subversive resistance, and cross-cultural engagement,” and, second, the “‘nationalist critics insist that Native writing remains accountable to specific tribal histories, epistemologies, and sovereignties while also aggressively confronting land dispossession and other colonial injustices” (Bauerkemper, f5). Both are critiqued for “oversimplifying and ignoring” varied “critical approaches and ways in which diverse, dynamic, and mutually illuminating perspectives interact and resonate with one another” (ibid).
Outline
In this essay, I build my argument in four stages. In the introduction section, I focus on presenting two main thematic threads that run through my literary project: first, constructing an Oromo literary history to trace the trajectory of connections between Oromo history, literature, and folklore (where from), and second, illuminating reasons for Oromo literary nationalism and considering national identity (Oromummaa/Oromoness) as an emblematic of unity and solidarity toward the common goal (kaawoo) of building a free Oromia (where to) (Asafa Jalata, 2007). The second section will proceed by looking at the poetics and politics that precipitated the rise of Oromo nationalism in its different shapes and forms, followed by discussing methods of obtaining and presenting the data used in this essay. The examples presented in the fourth section of the essay will apply turn of events to the texts to prove that cultural/collective memory and nationalism were intertwined subjects for the poems in the present anthology. Using first-hand knowledge of prospects that pervaded in the country (Ethiopia/Oromia), the essay will conclude by theorizing that “Oromo Literary Nationalism” (OLN), alongside optimism and hopefulness, evolves out of common eco-cultural background, which is considered a key factor and contributor to a unified national identity and nationalism.
Where From?
Sources indicate that the Oromo population covers nearly half of the total population of Ethiopia: to PTW Baxter, “almost certainly the Oromo are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia and make up…over half of its population” (Baxter 1978, 286). David Shinn puts the figure to less than half as saying “The Oromo are the most numerous ethnic group at about 40 percent of the total population” (Shinn 2003, 27). Moreover, the 2007 census reported Oromia Region population to 27 million, making it the largest state in population and area. And there are other sources that indicate the current Oromo population is estimated to more than 30 million.
For over a century and a half now, the Oromo are engaged in a painful history of subjugation and alienation in the traditionally dominant Abyssinian Orthodox Christian culture and are attempting to redress persistent injustices and unequal historical relationship in the face of denial from Abyssinian elites. It is seen by many as an irrational endeavor that the Oromo people claim the national liberation struggle for their democratic rights as a legitimate quest while there was no ethno-nation or people in Ethiopia who did not experience oppression. Contrary to the fact that Oromo nationalism evolved out of the precipitating historical factors and resentments to political exclusion, economic exploitation, and cultural domination, Oromummaa (Oromoness), the underlying principle of Oromo nationalism, has been misconstrued as an ethnocentric orientation of a resentful nationalism, not as a legitimate creed of national struggle for constitutional and democratic rights (Asafa Jalata, 2007; Assefa Tefera Dibaba, 2018, www.panafrican.org).
Revisiting Oromo Literary History
The beginning of Oromo national literature scholarship was not without ideological altercations and repressive policies from Abyssinian rulers which undermined the promotion of Oromo identity, culture, language, history, and a construction and distribution of knowledge, advancement of Oromo scholarship, and acute need for self-rule to this day (Asafa Jalata, 2007; Pankhurst 1976; Andrzejewski 1978). For example, the language and education policies of successive Ethiopian regimes, among other factors, disrupted Oromo studies and the promotion of Oromo culture (Mekuria Bulcha, 1994). The literary and folklore study is no exception. The early Oromo folklore collection and documentation began as a craft rather than as science for more than a century, which is also true to the genealogy of folklore scholarship (Assefa T Dibaba, 2017). Since those initial attempts lack a theoretical framework and methodological procedures, they could not lay a foundation for systematic research, identification and selection of researchable subject matters, and knowledge “resurrection”/construction. However, the efforts set ground not only for understanding the intellectual history of Oromo folklore study but also for exploring the uncharted terrain of history of Oromo lexicography, (bible) translation, and literary history.
As a common practice of the day, at Munkullo (Eritrea) and Europe, methodologically speaking, it could be difficult, without doing folklore collection and documentation, for the philologists, ethnologists, missionaries, and linguists in the 19th and early 20th centuries to learn Oromo language through collecting and compiling Oromo dictionary and grammar. The Munkullo Team of ex-slave young Oromo evangelists followed the same pattern to write Oromo folksongs from memory, to compile lexes, and finally to translate the Bible into Oromo in 1894, a pioneering task which marks the beginning of Oromo literature in exile (Mekuria Bulcha, 1995).
To construct a literary history of Oromo national Literature one faces, among other problems, the possibility of space spread out of reach as time— hence, the “alternative narrative” of “producing effect” in exile. However, as Michelle Foucault writes in his “Of Other Spaces,” one of the two functions of heterotopia is a “compensation” of space, that is, to create a real space, a space that is “other” (Foucault 1986). In this new “home,” Munkullo, the displaced Oromo youth gave themselves a “space” and dreams, and perhaps told stories and sang songs from memories about their people, rivers, mountains and hills, plains and trees, and grasses, and animals in whose form the spirit of the nostalgic home dwells. As victims of the slave raid committed by Menilik II’s rule in the second half of the nineteenth century, now far from home and estranged from their people, the young evangelists compensated “Munkullo” for the real place that could not immediately come to their eye, namely, “Biyya Oromo” (Oromoland), the “heimat,” and engaged in “producing effect” in exile (Makuria Bulcha, 1995).
For the young Oromo evangelists then living in liminality, Oromoland was a utopia, in a non-Foucaultian regal sense (Foucault 1986:27), but Munkullo became a heterotopic compensation for Oromoland, an idea or image not real back then, but representing a perfected version of society, an “[Oromo-] speaking colony” (Mekuria Bulcha 1995:41). The notion of heterotopia and liminality theory is compatible in that the ritual heterotopia, like the liminal space, is a physical representation or approximation of a utopia, other space, isolated from the real space and not freely accessible like a public space. To construct a literary history, one cannot disregard the intersection of time with space since in everyday human life there are places of important function, real or imagined (Foucault, p22). Of crisis heterotopia in the so-called primitive society, Foucault writes, there are forbidden places reserved for people in a state of crisis: for menstruating women, a pregnant woman, and the elderly, or as in spirit possession, spaces reserved for the subject, diviner and clients (Foucault, p25).
In the case of the Oromo ex-slaves who were freed from slavery but not free to go home, and banned from re-entry, thereby put in a state of crisis, they had to create a liminal space, a crisis heterotopia where, as converts, they could make “history” and experience “truth” in exile. They formed a small heterotopic society of “other space,” an [“Oromo-] speaking colony” entwined with several places (Munkullo, Sweden, Red Sea, Oromoland, Abyssinia, and Northeast Africa) not only for the affirmation of differences but also as a means of escaping from the disempowering situation they were put in. Thus, the idea of place as a heterotopic entity relates more to ethnicity and gender than class in the postmodern theoretical discussion of social heteronomy, or absence of autonomy.
In narrating the nation and a national project, Homi Bhabha suggests to explore “the Janus-faced ambivalence of language itself in the construction of the Janus-faced discourse on the nation,” the nation which, Bhabha rightly argues, is “a form of cultural elaboration (in the Gramscian sense) ... an agency of ambivalent narration that holds culture at its most productive position, as a force for subordination, fracturing, diffusing, reproducing, as much as producing, creating, forcing, guiding” (Bhabha 1990:3-4). In narrating the Oromo nation and development of the Oromo national literature, the issue of which “language” and which “script” has been contentious ever since Krap’s valid proposal. The Reverend Johann L. Krapf, who arrived in Shawa in 1838 and contacted the Tuulama Oromo, chose Latin script, instead of the Ethiopic (Geez) script, to write the Oromo Language with a justification that, among others, “the Ethiopic characters present great difficulty to writing [Oromo] language as well as to memory” (cf. Mekuria Bulcha 1995), an argument which opened venue for the later significant measure to choose Qubee (Latin) script for writing Oromo language.
Where To?
I, the author of this anthology, Ate-loon, am a poet (waloo), an insurgent folklorist (afoolee), and educator (barsiisaa). Like many of you, I come to the present with the past: my views are shaped by your attitude as by my life practices and experiences at home or on exile, by my education, my profession as an educator, and my roles in the society as a poet, and as a humanist(-activist). Also like anyone of you, I have personal flaws and failings, prejudices, unforgettable memories (good or bad), pains, fears, and desires, as I have dreams, insights, brilliance, objectivity, success stories, sincere beliefs, commitments, and hopes. And I write with pain, not just with pen!
As an ecopoet I am a humanist who campaigns for validating the marginalized people’s voice about any decision that directly affects their life and the environment in which they live. By the Oromo worldview of Seven Generations Principle (seera akaakilee-abaabilee torbaa), any decision made by the current generation of humans should not compromise the kaawoo (cause) and fedhii (needs), to live and work in a sustainable environment, of the seven generation to come. Misoommi waaraan uumama hin faalu, ni fala malee! (Sustainable development sustains life!).
One may well raise the question, Why an Oromo Literary Nationalism (OLN) now? First and foremost, to work on Oguma Oromoo (Oromo Literature) the love for the fields and forests, hearths and homes, and memories of victories and defeats are compelling. Hence, without the love for and memory of the local, land, land resources, and people, Oromo literature would be poor and banal. As a poet, I strongly believe that, we are all “humans,” not just “human,” who share one common “home” (ekois) called dachii, planet earth. I was born and grew up in Gomboo Kooraa, Jaarsoo, observing my father and mother, the late Tafarra Dibaba Jini and Aragash Sambata Tokkon of Macca, the diligent Oromo farmers, who performed, every new morning, some agricultural rites accompanied by the “earth song,” “dachi nagaa bultee?” (good morning mother earth?), like messengers for peace, abundance, and cohesion, from dawn to dusk by adhering to alter/native indigenous Oromo practices to balance human-nature solidarity.
Unlike the Western civilization and Christian tenet that upholds, “Nature is what man is brought on earth to rule on,” or the Islamic “nimah” that “nature is a gift/favor from God” to man, or “ayat” (signs of God), for the Oromo farmer who lives by safuu (moral/social order), “humankind” has no any special privilege whatsoever to assume an absolute power over “nature” and over his own kind. This tendency is evident in my previous works such as Symposia (2018), Theorizing the Present (2004), Decorous Decorum (2006), Ilyaada / Finfi (2014), Anaan’yaa (1998, 2006), Edas-Edanas (1997), and Danaa (2000), among others, that Oguma Oromo today has been departed so widely from all that had gone before it and, consequently, the soul and the driving forces of it are yet to be reborn in the areas deemed “local”.
Second, to imagine a plurinational literature project that accommodates the widespread cultural nationalism of minority cultures and the less developed languages in the current Ethiopia’s political sphere have become bleak, despite the relentless efforts made by states to promote a full-blown nationalist agenda, namely, the promotion of what Francesca Orsini calls “language and literature in the time of nationalism,” from her North India jatay experience (Orsini 2002:5-6).
Third, the notion of memory in literature or literary memory is equally pertinent. This assumption can be further explained as follows:
a) To consider the effect of a dualistic ontology of literature and memory/history is another rationale for the relevance of literary nationalism. That is, literature as a textual representation of reality or as a social critique and memory/history as a basic source of creative imagination are interdependent entities which constitute both the phenomenon to be explained and the means of explanation. In history of the nation, historical text is considered as a literary artefact, the reason being, “the process of creative imagination involves [the poet] as much as it does the historian” (Ogude, 1999:4). What is more, “selectivity” and the use of culture/s and memory/historical experiences as the source of their material is another commonality between memory/history and literature (p4). The phenomenon of memory, linked as it is to place, hence a memory site (cf. Keith Basso’s sense of place), also represents a particular event for the nation, for example, defeat, conquest, eviction and migration, massacre, or independence and memorials, which is carried in narratives and in the national literature. In a prefatory note to his Lyrical Ballads of 1798, William Wordsworth defined poetry as a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings that takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility (emphasis mine) (Nalbantian, 2003:35)—the individual’s “emotion recollected” thus, “in tranquility,” feeds into a collective memory of the nation.
b) Memory, as abovementioned, is about recollecting past events, or considering consequences of past events (distant past or most recent) at present, and imagining the future. Literary memory is not about righting the wronged past. Rather it is about learning from the past, discovering how and why the present developments are what they are, and having confidence in the future. For instance, once the Coronavirus pandemic is over, or any crisis of that kind for that matter, humanity is destined to live with the living memory of an unbearable pain of loss of family members, grandparents, neighbors, colleagues, and friends both far off and nearby. Once the crisis is over, it is fair to ask, should humanity take for granted this precious life and the priceless gifts of nature: the sunrise, the sunset, the fresh air, the surrounding greenery, or, value it above all, hug it, show love and care for everyone and everything as if it is the last day on this marvelous planet earth and appreciate the environment it lives in? This social memory, and memory of a crisis of an equal magnitude, is a haunting shared experience for humanity in general, at the same time around the world, at “local” and “global” levels, which is compelling and worth considering in memory studies as part of the literary nationalism.
c) There are other historical griefs of loss—both human and ecological—that humanity is condemned to re-play and to re-enact in the mind as an uncomfortable experience/memory of guilt or grievance—collective or individual—which is left unsettled for generations to contemplate. Thinking of the war of nations, the assumption that the winners never remember, the losers never forget holds true at least for two reasons: On the one hand, what the losers lost in the war is not just the battle but also their home, their family, their people, their land and land resources, their country, their freedom and pride. This bitter “collective memory,” which the loser is unable to forget, is a historical recollection identified with particular memory sites than others. On the other hand, for the winners some memories are simply intolerable and they choose “collective silence” or “collective forgetfulness,” an ideal metaphor for which is “burying the past”. It is appropriate to seek methodological and theoretical means of studying such “rival memories/histories” and strategies, to juxtapose them at a symbolic level through national literature/s or heritage conservation, which can constitute what one may call memory narrative or “literary memory”.
Fourth, the ultimate goal of “literary nationalism” should be an emancipatory resistance, which is not just “ungovernability” and reform of the status quo but two more purposes:
a) for the oppressed it is a means to permit the sense of freedom from all that is a dehumanizing force and, freedom to exercise full democratic rights as “self” by overcoming fear and liquidating the internalized oppression, i.e. decolonizing the self, as a prelude to a complete liberation and self-recovery (Memmi, 1961/1991). To further elaborate similar cases, it is fair to echo Linda T. Smith who reminds us of Albert Memmi’s “series of negations,”
The fact that indigenous societies had their own systems of order was dismissed through what Albert Memmi referred to as a series of negations: they were not fully human, they were not civilized enough to have systems, they were not literate, their languages and modes of thought were inadequate. As Fanon and later writers such as Nandy have claimed, imperialism and colonialism brought complete disorder to colonized peoples, disconnecting them from their histories, their landscapes, their languages. (Smith, 1999:28)
b) it would serve to awaken the attitudes of the oppressor to the reality of the inherent brutality they impose on the oppressed, the concept which Frantz Fanon developed in his idea of “violence as purgatory”.
Fifth, it is now generally recognized that there is an acute need for the Oromo Literary Nationalism (OLN) as one of the complex and multi-voiced genres re-emerging contrary to the Amharic (Abyssinian) literary “melting pot” and integral to the emergence of many other localized national voices, written or oral. Not to distance itself from other marginalized texts voiced in Amharic, the Oromo Literary Nationalism (OLN) is an attempt to sing/perform/write back to the Orophobic cultural (linguistic, literary), political, and economic domination in Ethiopia. Hence, the poetics & politics of poetry!
2. The Politics of Poetry, the Poetry of Politics
The problem of politicizing and appending a literary project to the mainstream culture in Ethiopia is part of the general skepticism about the lack of open and genuine dialogue, the nonexistent substantive and balanced deliberation in Ethiopia’s political culture, and the structure vacuum which John Markakis (2013) calls the “two frontiers” to be crossed, i.e., the center-periphery discrepancies in Ethiopia to guarantee peace, democracy, equity, and sustainable development in the country. The historically highly centralized imperial “official nationalism” with its repeated psalm “we the people,” and its monocultural “only Amharic” language policy, galvanized the authoritarian power following the end of Italian occupation in 1941.
After the failed coup attempt and multiple ethnic-based political upheavals and cultural/literary movements championed by artists and university students, the monarchic rule ended in 1974, and then radical nationalisms emerged. For instance, in Oromia, the “Oromia First!” creed spearheaded by the vanguard Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) countered the glamorous “Ethiopia First!” mantra then held by the Derg regime and after (1974-1991), and to end, once and for all, subjugation of the Oromo people. To date, after the long protracted Oromo national liberation struggle, the “Abyssinianist” Orthodox Amhara patriotic sentiment continued in disguise as meddemer to tear down the pillars of the 1995 Constitution which turned Ethiopia from a melting-pot of cultures into a federation of (ethno-)nations and peoples, though without real decentralization and equal distribution of power/authority and resources.
Speaking of the young Oromo protesters, preferably Qeerroo, Messay Kebede (2016) writes “...I want to remind that most of the young Oromo protesters have no idea of Ethiopia as a unitary nation: as the established political system forces them to do, they see Ethiopia as a collection of different nations.” This restates the debate which began 47 years ago in the then Haile Selassie I University among the students centering on “Ethiopianness” and “Oromoness” or Ethiopia being a prison house of ethno-nations and nationalities in the writings such as the controversial poem titled “Ethiopiawew Manew?” (“Who is an Ethiopian?”) by Mr. Ibsa Gutama.
So, with an attempt to make Oromo literature a subject of academic enquiry and to generate the enduring problematics in Oromo critical practice, and so doing, to clarify the emerging Oromo literary identity, here is the underlying assumption: the cultural identity of modern Oromo literature (oral or written), its “significance” and “relevance,” is determined by what informs the poet and the poetry both in time and space. Hence, it is the aim of the present commentary to interrogate the Oromo critique and challenge the status quo and hegemonic powers using Oguma (orature/literature). In this respect, it is the bard’s (afoolee’s) role to critique cowardice, oblivion, insensitive behavior and submissiveness using Oguma (expressive culture of verbal arts and performances) as a verbal weapon and to encourage those who are relegated to a subservient position by the dominant power.
Poetic power reversal
As Fugich Waqo states, writing of the Boorana women’s qoosaa-taphaa by which women assail the Boorana men humorously, “it is a way of coming to terms with history and a means of getting out of it by negotiating the power differential between the two genders” (Fugich Waqo, 2003:92, citing Koljevic, 1980).
For the Oromo women who perform Ateetee rites of fertility, the ritual space is a licensed opportunity to articulate their sentiments like at a spirit possession rite to present their grievances to Ateetee, goddess of fecundity, and the “songs invoke not merely an alternative interpretation of history, but also an alternative vision of how life ought to be lived” (Fugich Waqo, 2003:93). In that social context of a localized/marginalized space, the participants “find a niche for themselves within a world dominated by men” (Fugich Waqo, ibid; see also Emana Bayana, 2019). Hence, the Oromo sarcasm that “Afooleen sirba tolti, sirna hin toltu!” meaning, “A bard knows no boredom nor border!” is an indirect reference to Oguma which can lit the fire of revolution in any marginal but significant locale.
So, in some occasions of festivals, ceremonies, and rites reversing norms and violating taboos is a norm for the bard (afoolee) and for the attendees. For instance, Buttaa is another Rabelais-like humorous, a wildly fantastic, frequently absurd, and Dionysian excessive Oromo feast, a social space of, I would say, a “strategic primitivism,” which meant to reverse conventions and challenge norms. The absurdity of the acts, the language, and songs is justified by the common beliefs that should Buttaa-goers shy away from singing obscene songs and performing bawdy acts, then, it is believed, the rain shies away too, the bull shies away from its mate, the crop fails, and productivity falls. The Catalan annual fire dance festival (Patum of Berga) is another ‘unconventional’ festival that mixes profane and religious features and has been performed nearly for over four hundred years, following the week of Corpus Christi between late May and late June (Noye, 2003). The festival combines layers of symbolism representing social divisions and communion, grassroots, and intense bodily expressions.
Zelalem Abera (2003), in his “Transition from Oral to Written Oromo Poetry,” echoes Alexander Bulatovich’s observation, a Russian Lieutenant who accompanied Minilek II during the “southern march” and wrote his eyewitness account of Minilek’s invasion of the Oromo, and of the “natural poetic ability and artistic instinct of the Oromo”: “The [Oromo] is a poet. He worships nature, loves his mountains and rivers, considering them animated beings,” (p122). Zelalem underscores that this unique poetic ability of the people remained totally oral because of the monolingual policy of the Ethiopian Empire until after the 1974 popular revolt that overthrew the monarchic rule (ibid.). Following the emergent Oromo scholarship of the 1970s, “Oromo” was (re-)introduced instead of the derogatory term “Galla,” which presumably appeared in Bahrey’s Chronicle (“History of the Galla”) perhaps for the first time in 1593 and continued in articles and books up until the 1970s.
It is this feeling of unequal historical relationships between humans, between humans and nonhumans, and its consequent social resentment manifested in Oromo spirituality, cosmology, folk-psychology, and Oromo personality that constitutes the Oromo literary nationalism today to struggle for an autonomous literary space independent from linguistic, economic, and political dominance (Assefa, 2018).
Haunted by the fear of remembering the past, or more precisely, by the challenge of memories of the unsettled historical grief, which has been signified in Oguma Oromo / Oromo Literature (primarily Orature), the Oromo poet (waloo) declares a happy literary detour from what has been around as the Abyssinian (Amharic) literary “melting pot” for over a century.
Literary significance & relevance
Thus, the present poetic commentary has significance to point at this continuing gap on empirical research into the social resentment, into an Oromo oppositionary literary culture, and into the obstructed struggle for democratic rights, as it has relevance or implications for the moral/ethical responsibility of Oromo political elites.
The dominant ideas of Oromo oppositional literary culture have been marginalized by the mainstream culture largely as a product of Oromo social resentment, as a negative reactionary stance to domination and exploitation, not as positive legitimate actions and forms of resilience in Oromo resistance culture (Assefa, 2018.). It has been argued elsewhere in this essay that the ongoing national Oromo liberation struggle for democratic rights is seen by many not as a legitimate quest for freedom. The reason being, it is assumed, that there is no ethno-nation or nationality in Ethiopia who has not experienced oppression. However, the truth is that, no Amhara national has been removed from his home singled out for his/her ethnic Amhara background, for his/her religious or linguistic affiliation, or lack thereof, with the dominant culture, not to mention the rechristening of places, or persons in schools and in courts by the Abyssinian elites, the typical injustices which the Oromo, and other peoples in Ethiopia, have suffered for over a century and a half.
If one affirms that “the primary subject of literary texts is human experience” (Caroll, 2015:21), then, to study “human experience,” “literary nationalism” is an alternative literary model, I suggest, which integrates other fields of humanities and social sciences including life-history, political theory, “biocultural theory” (Caroll, ibid.), anthropology, ethnoecology/ecopoetics, folklore, and linguistics.
Joseph Caroll, echoing Foucault, asserts that “society is a system subserving impulses of domination– domination of one class by another class, one gender, race, or ethnic group by another such group (Caroll, p23). He adds, from Foucault’s perspective, “the function of criticism is to expose the subterranean machinations of social dominance,” … and that of the intellectual “is to engage in ‘a struggle against power, a struggle aimed at revealing and undermining power where it is most invisible and insidious’” (Caroll, p23).
3. Methodology
Based on the criteria of their theoretical and practical relevance & significance, i.e., phenomenologically speaking, “directedness & intentionality of experience,” texts used in this essay are selected from available data used over the years in my teaching and poetry writing experience. The texts have traits of nationalism as a reaction to cultural domination, political suppression, and economic exploitation imposed by Abyssinian elites and as an appeal to be proud of Oromoness instead of selling the national identity out to the “Ethiopianess” orthodoxy.
The examples show that national literature is believed to be one unifying factor and evolves out of common cultural background, shared historical and socio-cultural practices centered around common language and worldview, which are considered key contributors to unified national identity and nationalism. “Culture” is understood here “not as a unified corpus of symbols and meanings that can be definitively interpreted but as a contested, temporal, and emergent nature” (Bloom, 2010:6). Thus, as to be discussed in more detail next, the central theme of texts presented in this essay is resistance and nationalism instead of compliance or conformism.
4. Text, Context, and Cultural Criticism
The Oromo Literary Nationalism (OLN) aims to advocate a plurality of creative dialogues, to enforce a mutually enriching literary symbiotic relationship between “centers” and “peripheries,” and to go across the Amharic/English “melting pot” literary Greenwich Meridian and traverse other uncharted literary frontiers.
Hence, in this essay three texts are considered examples that characterize the proposed Oromo Literary Nationalism (here after, OLN) stance:
(1)“Uume Walaabuu baate/i”
“Creation began at Walaabu;”
(2)“Afooleen sirba tolti, sirna hin toltu”
“A ‘bard’ knows no boredom nor border;” and
(3) The tale of Ate-Loon
(a poetic lore about a looted Sacred Cow called Ate-Loon (Loon Ateetee).
From an Oromo perspective, these texts are examples of Oromo tradition and literature (Oguma) which provide insights on how the society works (the social fabric & relations), how it survives adversities (resilience), and how it critiques the status quo (creative resistance). They reveal the correlation between Oguma (wisdom/literature) and the idea of self—the historical, societal/communal and the individual, and the cultural self—to answer questions of identity and values, both personal and collective set in bara, time. Next, I try to clarify how.
TEXT I: Uume Walaabuu baate/i
(Creation began at Walaabu)
In the present Anthology, there are poems of strong ecological and human concerns; hence, ecopoetry, as an example of the ongoing OLN project. In addition to issues of environmental justice, that is, poems that explore ethics about human connection to the environment in a way that implies responsibility, there are poems of social justice in the present anthology that pose questions of engagement about human to human relations. Thus, as a means of describing ecopoetics, the collection embraces ecological and social imperatives that indicate changes in cultural transmission and transformation.
The text above draws on the “Oromo inside origin theory” caught in the narrative “Uume Walaabuu baate/i,” meaning, the origin of Creation or Uumama Ganamaa (the genesis of Mother Nature/Earth) is believed to be Walaabu, the sacred place of origin, a mythic homeland of the Oromo, traditionally believed to be in eastern Oromia. By this model of Oromo origin, which is an account of the Oromo sense of place (mythscape), Walaabu (also related to Fugug, Tulluu Nam-dur), stands out as a dominant space in Oromo inside origin narrative mainly for the following reasons. First, it is a common knowledge carried in Oromo historical tradition that Walaabu is the mythical homeland of the Cushitic Oromo Nation in North East Africa, a “memory site”; second, Walaabu serves as a reference point of an alter/native narrative in response to the phony outside-origin-theory made-up by Abyssinian and Abyssinianist chroniclers for the Oromo; third, it is a narrative used as a counter-text to the Christian (and/or Islamic?) myth of Eden in Genesis as a cradle for humankind (of Adam and Eve or Hawa); fourth, Walaabuu represents a universal symbol of the dawn of Creation, a highly regarded sacred site, like the Greek Olympia, or the Roman Mount Etna, which are subjects and settings of countless poetic productions; and fifth, the narrative is an evidence for the Oromo worldview of indispensable human & nature relationship and environmental ethics that goes back to the dawn of Creation (Uume) and the Collective Humans, as it is, metaphorically speaking, a reverence for Dachii (Mother Earth). Sixth, for a similar argument, one may also consult Stephen Belcher’s “The Oromo of Southern Ethiopia,” in his African Myths of Origin; Fayisa Dame’s “Oromo Origin Theory” for the inside-origin narrative; and Bairu Tafla’s “Atsma Giyorgis” (1987) for the “outside-origin theory”.
In all accounts, I submit, this text is more about the “Beginning” than about “Origin”. The poetic and philosophical meaning heavily loaded in the text above is opposed to the Western pragmatic approach to nature by which primary human needs are met first and foremost before the needs of other living organisms and ecosystems.
TEXT 1I: “Afooleen sirba tolti, sirna hin toltu!”
(“A bard knows no boredom nor border!”)
Salient to the significance and relevance of Oguma Oromo is that dominant patterns of social relations are challenged, ideological mystifications of subjugation, assimilation, cultural domination, and economic exploitations are confronted, and eventually, critical exposure to a unified discourse, i.e., a literary ideology, becomes evident. Hence, the present Oromo Literary Nationalism project is pertinent and compelling. A group of singers at Ateetee fertility rites, ritual performers at Wadaajaa, or thanks-givers at Irreecha festival join in such ceremonies which, to Mikhail Bakhtin (1968), are “opposed to dogma and authoritarianism, and they are full of revival and renewal that are sanctioned by the highest aims of human existence and the world of ideals” (p8). One can also remember the obscene nature and bawdy language of Oromo nuptial songs (seenaa), which are humorous, often sarcastic, ritual advices to the departing bride with genuine concern at her natal home, which is also the case on the groom’s side (Dereje, 2019:15).
Although we are not quite certain why the Oromo ridicule the poet (afoolee) as nonstandard, deviant, morally unacceptable (sirna hin toltu), while they still approve the poet’s role in the society as entertaining, aesthetically conventional, and functionally relevant and significant (sirba tolti), here I suggest a few speculative remarks. First, what the saying “Afooleen sirba tolti, sirna hin toltu” means is that, given the theory that in Oromo tradition one should be willing, not forced, poetry does its work in autonomy, free from external restraints, and the commitment of engaged performance has the risk of turning into having negative connotation to some individual audiences. A case in point is, a minstrel’s poetic attack lashed at an individual (audience) publically when not rewarded or rejected by the individual. Hence, afoolee uses indecent words to ridicule the victim mainly for meanness as it can be to rebuke for personal flaws or, for moral character (cowardice, insincerity, meanness, betrayal, infidelity). To the contrary, those who generously invite or reward the bard and join in the performance are praised as kind and brave and their heroic deeds are extolled.
Second, there is another assumption that logically evolves out of the first; and that is, the impact of poetry on the society operates at the level of collective remembrance against any forced forgetfulness, which means, its objectification (i.e., meaning-making) takes a long process to translate its latent praxis into manifest praxis. The full autonomy for the expressive culture does not permit victim of the poetic assault to engage in any confrontation or immediate correspondence to reclaim his damaged reputation. As it entertains some, poetry may discomfort others. Hence, the observation, “Afooleen sirba tolti, sirna hin toltu!”
Literature (Oguma) is a cultural capital, a social critique, an ideological nonconformity to injustices that can happen everywhere without border. Marlia Banning is right to note that discourse, particularly critical discourse, “knows no national or institutional border” and it can “impact the language, literacy, and rhetoric that circulate in local institutions of work, faith, learning, and civic life” (Banning, 2006:68, 69). In what follows it will suffice to present Plato’s skeptical view on poetry.
Revisiting Plato’s view of poetry
It is necessary to reconsider Plato’s charges against Homer (and other poets) and poetry and the argument which is built upon them. It is one of the hardest things, though, for the student of Plato to pinpoint the philosopher’s attitude toward poetry and the poets (see Tucan, 2013). Here are some thoughts.
First, poetry directly appeals to emotion and poets are wordsmiths; therefore, poets can manipulate the people by the techniques of their craft and can influence by the melody and rhythm of their words. The poet is able to convince listeners that he knows what he speaks of. Thus, one main reason for Plato to banish poets from his court is that poets, particularly, Homer and Hesiod, miseducate the young, who are trained to become a “warrior class,” the guardians. That is, children in their early years are first taught by stories which are to the most part untrue, and, therefore, it needs to exercise a strict supervision to accept the good stories and reject the bad ones. For Plato, bad stories were told by Homer, Hesiod, and other poets, stories which misrepresent the characters and deeds of gods and heroes.
Second, mimesis (imitation, repetition) presents a metaphysical difficulty to the court, as Plato writes in The Republic (Book III & X), that abstract ideas and truths exist in a place beyond the material objects of the world. Hence, contrary to Plato’s belief, the poet is an imitator of the real world, and therefore, like all other imitators, poets must be removed from the court. Plato also believes, “use,” or “significance,’ not just “delight,” “aesthetics,” must be proved for poetry to be allowed in the court.
Third, poetry represents opposing ideals of the intellectual life during a transition, and Plato’s court faced the strains created by the transition from an oral culture to a literary culture—the transition from what was to be performed loudly and listened to, to what was to be written and read silently.
Fourth, it seems Plato generalized in The Republic a few examples of the existing quarrels between philosophers and poets, like Heraclitus and Xenophanes against the important poets like Homer and Hesiod. Plato’s hostility to the poets and tragedians centers on the misrepresentation of the gods, heroes, death, and men in the stories which shouldn’t be taught to children who grow to become guardians (soldiers). Hence, Plato laid down some principles to govern the poets and to frame their stories: representing deities as the author of good alone and not of evil (e.g., that Zeus depicted by Homer as the sender of more misfortunes than blessings to humankind); death as not to be feared, nor the underworld as a realm of unhappiness and horror (which makes poor soldiers); heroes as kinsmen of the gods and as models of the young men, not as guilty of acts of piety and cruelty; and of men, that poets shouldn’t misrepresent the unjust as happy and the just as unhappy, and injustice as profitable to the doer and justice as unprofitable.
In sum, one can make two points from Plato’s quarrel with poets & poetry: that the progress of ancient Greek cannons, both song and poetry, can be attributed to an extension of Hellenic oral tradition and not primarily to the factor of writing” (Tucan, 2013:170); and that “poetry was likely to have a bad effect on those who hear them: for everybody will begin to excuse his own vices” (p172). By the same token, it is reasonable to think of the literary history of the Oromo, whose writing culture is quite a recent phenomenon (cf. Zalalem Abera, 2003:119-134), and of the mythic “Oromo Book of Knowledge,” which, in Oromo tradition, is believed to have been eaten by Ate-Loon, the Oromo Sacred Cow (Cerulli, 1922; 44, citing Theophile Lefebure, 1845: xv).
Hence, nationalism has many forms and one is literary nationalism, which, in fact, gets people killed under dictatorial regimes (Thomas, 1987:271-296). In the absence of full autonomy to practice freedom of expression, poets suffer continuous persecutions, imprisonments, forced exile, or killing under dictatorial regimes. To survive, and to continue their creative resistance abroad, thousands of Africans and African poets, artists, and scholars chose (and choose) the lesser evil being exiled from their homes, farms, and families and crossed international boundaries to seek home far from home. One of the major reasons why I was removed from my teaching position in Jimma in 2004, why I was repeatedly persecuted under the violent state structure, why I was put in Maekelawi, the torturous prison-house, I was told, was my writings. I survived those atrocities but to serve another 10 years of forced exile in USA, which was a happy accident for me to do my PhD (and for my family to move), after repeated persecutions, imprisonments without charge, and loss of job, over the last 27 years in Ethiopia for speaking to power. In like manner, the ecological activist poet, Ken Saro Wiwa of Ogoni, Nigeria, was executed for his political ideal and revolutionary writings embedded in his ecopoetic analysis of the Ogoni people’s resentment to the eco-colonialism commanded by Shell Oil Company for over fifty years in the River State (Doron and Falola, 2016).
There are two major challenges for an Oromo poet today as before: first, it is highly uncertain to survive and to be productive under continuous persecutions, poverty, and systemic epistemic violence (intellectual terrorism at best) put in marginal/localized and “broken places”; second, it is another challenge to confront the pressure of unequal power relations in a literary world where the literary Greenwich Meridian is set in Paris, London, New York, or even “Addis Ababa”.
As a poet, educator, and researcher it has been an enlightening moment for me to work with other faculty members and researchers, who contributed to and benefited from the MULOSIGE Project in SOAS, University of London, during my academic visit in November 2019. First and foremost, as a poet who writes back to the Euro-centric and marginalizing notion of World Literature, the discussions and informal conversations I had with the MULOSIGE people in SOAS were eye-opening indeed. As an example, in one conversation, two issues were of prime concern a) what makes the works of Oromo writers, including myself, a “literature”? b) what is an “Oromo Literature” vis-Ã -vis the mainstream Amharic Literature (not literature in Amharic)? From such personal and other MULOSIGE discussions and materials (online publications & videos), I came to realize that in the world of a marginalizing “GLOBAL” literary space called “World Literature”:
a) there is a GLOCAL space situated between the GLOBAL (Greenwich Meridian) and the LOCAL, another “othering” force, a replica of the “World Literature,” to which we write back from the margin (e.g., Amharic Literature and its dominant space in the Ethiopian literary history), that is a space where inequalities of geopolitical spaces are reproduced, and,
b) there are LOCAL “significant geographies, which are not just marginalized “spaces” but also “broken places” from where we speak to and speak for the voiceless who seek earnestly to attain social and environmental justices.
In the emerging independent Oromia State, what will be in store for Oromo poets who recite or write in pain, not just in pen, time will tell.
TEXT III. The Tale of Ate-Loon
This text evolved out of a narrative of discontentment presented to me in 1996 in Karrayyu, Fantaalle, by a Karrayyu woman called Ayantu (Ayyo), who had mental illness. While I was teaching the Karrayyu children in 1996 at Dheebit, during my summer vacation after school (at Addis Ababa University), I encountered this amazing Karrayyu woman, who was mentally disturbed and, as I was told, a homeless. Ayantu was, I guess, in her early fifties then and she was thin, tall, and had an elegant look, in spite of her wretched life condition, without a healthy life and home of her own. I requested people to ask Ayantu on my behalf to meet and she permitted to talk with me.
I sat with Ayantu, opened my tape-recorder, and she told me her life-history at random, which I recorded. In the personal story I was told, her narrative focused on some historical grief, an unsettled loss: looted cattle, stolen properties, burnt house, murdered family-members, rape, abused resources, countless other damages and injustices occurred to her and to her family. Was it this bad fortune that disrupted Ayantu’s mental health? I thought. Six years later, while I was teaching at Jimma, I listened to Ayantu’s narrative again. I found her life-history narrative very powerful, resourceful, and rich in its content, artistic beauty and recurring words of injustice loaded with multi-laired meanings, full of repetitions and thoughts of an unfathomable depth, though on the sub/unconscious level. I transcribed the narrative and rewrote it into a short story titled “Eker-Dubbiftuu” (The Medium) which appeared later in my short story collection published as Danaa (2000:101-106). Hence, this is not a qualitative analysis of an interview made with someone who suffers mental illness; rather it is a recollection, a reflection of one’s auto-ethnographic incursion (a poetic ethnography) into a desolate significant locale. The story to follow is a memory/story based on another story about Ate-Loon, about the Book of Knowledge, and the genealogy of moortuu, seer, i.e., a reader of peritoneum:
…[Kitaaba] waaqaa bu’e tu ture. [Kitaabicha] sa’i/loon nyaatte. [Kitaabichis] garaa sa’attiitti hafee moora tahe. Har’a moorri moortuun ilaaltu, kitaaba waaqaa bu’e, kan sa’i nyaatteefi moora tahe san.
…There was a book that descended in ancient time from [waaqa/the sky]. A [sacred] cow [Ate-loon] ate the book. The book stuck in the cow’s belly and became a peritoneum. Today the peritoneum is the book that descended from [waaqa] and eaten by the sacred cow, [Ate-loon].
(Cerulli 1922:44, citing Theofile Leferbure, 1845:vx).
Ayantu’s recollection, I submit, is an “implicit memory,” which “refers to manifestations of memory that occur in the absence of intentions to recollect,” unlike “explicit memory,” which “occurs when people attempt to recollect events from their past, the process which is intentional, volitional,” and conscious (Jeffrey and Marsolek, 2003:4, citing McDermott, 2000). This is evident in the informant’s narrative of an unsettled loss next.
Ayantu’s narrative of discontentment:
….an nama hallaati… hallu egaa…hallu laaftuu hin qabdu…hallu san xurii na seensisan…dhiira mata-sagaliin na roorrisan…saniin egaa looniin na badan…looniin na badanii…ilmiin na badanii alaa-manaan na gubanii, naa dubbadhaa yaa gooftaa kiyyaa jedha…sa’aa-namaan na gubanii….
___Danaa (2000:101-106).
…i belong to halla…and halla…ugh…hallu is not a plaything…they desecrated hallu…and humiliated me …they abused me…they gang-raped me by nine men…then they looted my cows … they raided my cattle… so doing, they drained me my wit… they burnt my home and my homestead…so, i am here to appeal to you to your honor, to speak my plights on my behalf… that they disgraced me, impoverished me, burnt my home, my cattle, and my people…
Ayantu’s appeal is more than a passive remark, more than a desperate humble request, but it is a serious urge, a compelling duty to speak on her behalf against those dehumanizing acts of aggression loaded in the “active voices”: “desecrated,” “humiliated,” “abused,” “gang-raped,” “looted,” “burnt,” and eventually, to reclaim her looted properties, reconstruct her demolished house, restore her sacred sites and the environment in which she once lived with her people, and, so doing, to recover her honor through the inversion of the notions of power.
Given the facts, however, here are some challenges. First, regrettably, in my lifetime, Ayantu’s (Ayyo’s) claim above is one of the two pledges I happened to fail to fulfill—the other one being my deceased father’s (spirit’s) “request” made to me through a medium priestess at the hilltop of Gurura (Warra Afuuraa), Salale, south of Shararoo, on my pilgrimage to the area one Friday morning in May 2010, during my PhD research fieldwork trip. Upon the event, I was told my deceased father was waiting in a liminal position at Karra Waaqaa (Iddoo Dhugaa / Abode of Truth) until I, his first-born son, would perform the ritual with my mother so that he could gather to his forefathers (“Yaa ilma koo, manas hin jiruu, alas hin jiruu, na qaqqabii!”) but I failed to fulfill the promise. I had to leave to the USA in July 2010 awarded the 2009/2010 IIE/SRF Scholars Fellowship before I executed the duty granted to me. Now that I am back, after nearly 10 years of forced exile, I have not fulfilled the pledge yet since my mother had passed away (March 2018) before I came home, to further complicate the problem.
Next, I graft a story titled “The Tale of Ate-Loon,” on Ayantu’s life-history narrative to figure out the meaning of her life-history narrative after 24 years to visualize the current state of our abused and desecrated homeland, Oromia. Ate-Loon or Loon Ateetee can be described in two ways: First, she is an archetypal sacred cow that recur in Oromo folklore to represent the character which swallowed the Oromo Book of Knowledge (Kitaaba Ogumaa/Safuu) (Cerulli, 1922:44). Second, Ate-Loon relates to the archetypal themes of birth, death, and fertility in Oromo ritual and represents Ateetee, the Oromo goddess of fecundity (Dashu, 2010; see also Bartels 1983).
The Tale of Ate-loon (a story inside a story)
…sa’aan nu badani…namaan nu badani…loon-ateetee / Ate-loon rimaan nu badani… raadaa-dibichaan nu badani…loon nu saamanii, “loon kun keenya!” nuun jedhan…afaan qawween nu roorrisan…korma keenya Gommool nu hatan… “…loon keenya… foon keenya…dhaala abbaa keenyaa…dhaala haadha keenyaa ti!” nuyi jennaan, “kan keenya, keenya…keessanimmoo keessan tahuu, ni mariyanna,” nuun jedhan…Ate-loon sa’a rimaatiin nu badan… nutti roorrisan …sa’a rimaa garaa qabduun nu badan…obboleessi koo, nami an abdadhe, kan waliin karra bobbaafnu, kan waliin hora obaafnu, korma faarsinu, …. waliif baabsinu, na ganee, naan matoomee, naan morke, falme…akkana nan jedhe:
1) “Ate-loon dhiifnee rimaa garaa jirtu falmina,” naan jedha, …
an immoo sodaan koo, Ate-loon ha dhaltuu, haa gatattuu, waa beeknaa…rimaa garaa jiru? hin beeknu! obboleessi koo naan morma, akkana jedhee….
2) Ate-loon kan isaanii qofa tahuun ishee hafee, kan keenya qofas tahuun ishee hafee, kan walii keenyaa akka taatu, jara nu saaman nan mariisisa, naan jedha…
…an hunda dura Ate-loon dhuunfachuu! yaada jedhuttin cichan, jedheen, obbeeleessa koon
….sababiin isaas:
a) Ate-loon, loon Ateetee ti, galchaa dha, warajoo dha, wareega…sa’a rimaa, dhaala akaakilee-abaabilee keenyaati… tiksuun, kalootti boobbaasuun, hora obaasuun, dallaa itti ijaaruun, dhaloota dhaalchisuun, dirqama keenyan,” ittiin jedha…
a) Ate-loon, loon Ateetee ti, galchaa dha, warajoo dha, wareega…sa’a rimaa, dhaala akaakilee-abaabilee keenyaati… tiksuun, kalootti boobbaasuun, hora obaasuun, dallaa itti ijaaruun, dhaloota dhaalchisuun, dirqama keenyan,” ittiin jedha…
b) …hunda dura, Ate-loon keenya tahuu ishee, gosaafis hormaafis, mirkaneessuu tu dirqama keenya, jabbin garaa jirtullee keenya tahuun yoos dhugoomti…. san dhalootaaf mirkaneessuu tu, dhaalchisuutu dirqama namummaatis, dirqama lammummaatis… ittiin jedha, obbolaa koon
c) …horree namaa hiruuf, qonnee namaa safaruuf, dirqama namummaas, dirqama lammummaas hin qabnu…hammaannee horanne miti, horannee hammaanne…lafa keenya jaalatanii lafee keenya jibban…guguddaa nama keenyaa dhabnee, guguddaa lafa keenyaas dhabne,” ittiin jedha…obboleessa koon
…they looted our cattle … they raided our people …looted our Sacred Cow…Ate-Loon, expectant… looted our gray bull Gommool, and our heifer…they raided our cattle, and told us, “these are our own cattle!” they humiliated us using weapon… “…our cattle…sources of our life… our ancestral token…!” we claimed…they told us, “ours is ours, yours is negotiable!”
Ate-loon, our Sacred Cow, was expectant…they looted our Sacred Cow…
…my brother, whom I trusted and relied on, who I tended our cattle with, … took them to pasture, to wellsprings, walked them far off…with whom I sang in praise of our bulls to vie and defy…
he betrayed me and confronted me saying:
1) Forget Ate-loon,… focus on the calf yet unborn!… but my fear is that future is uncertain…uncertainty has become more certain …
2) “I would suggest Ate-loon belongs to us, common to us & to them,” he asserts…
… unflinchingly, I caution, Ate-loon is not a ration to be shared, but a pledge to Ateetee, our goddess:
a) Ate-loon is a Sacred Cow, a pledge, our ancestral symbol of covenant,…our duty to tend, to protect, forage, and to take to headwaters, and to pass her on to our children’s children and more…
b) …that, first and foremost, we ascertain, we guarantee both to our friends and foes that we restore Ate-loon, we reclaim the Sacred Cow, and so doing, we ensure that the calf is also ours….,
I would say to my brother
c) “…we have no moral duty or social obligation whatsoever to labor, to produce, and feed it to others while we perish and our land and land resources degenerate…it is a resource curse….they long for more…for our resources, but they hate us as people,” I would say
The resistance motif outlined above in Ayantu’s narrative of discontentment has been located in other Oromo narratives of historical losses as a collective shared experience under the continued Abyssinian domination. The veiled resentment of the people—of the Karrayyu, dislocated from their previous homeland on the banks of Hawas River, Wonji—toward the economic exploitation, human rights violation, cultural domination, and political exclusion erupted in Ayantu’s lamentation above under the cover of the narrator’s psychosocial disjunctions and maladjustment she was suffering.
* * *
For the Oromo people, livestock, cows in particular, are considered an economic asset, a symbol of wealth and social status, and a sacred element of a household. A cow produces milk which is a source of nutrition and income, while its organic manure is used to fertilize and rehabilitate the depleted soil. Hence, a cow is used for nutrition, income generation, land fertility, sacrificial rites, energy, dowry, and a symbol of identity—a totem animal often referred to as Ate-loon, which represents Ateetee, the Mother Goddess of fecundity.
Speaking of the bulls (korma), upon the “gubaa” ( a.k.a. damara) ceremony of transition from the rainy season of ganna to birraa, Enrico Cerulli writes, “The male cattle are crowned with flowers as signs of rejoicing” (1922, FLO, #144), accompanied by blessings and prayers.
Among the Setswana-speaking people of South African culture, a cow is referred to as “God with the wet nose,” which is a crucial association with notions of the divine. From this perspective, cows are believed to exist in a liminal space: between the human and the divine, the physical and the spiritual, the living and their ancestors, and to invoke, connect, and bridge the World and the Beyond, the realm where the mind can’t see outside the scope of ordinary experience.
The significance of the cow in Oromo culture is depicted in folksongs as to critique, metaphorically speaking, the economic exploitation of Oromia by the Abyssinian successive regimes, which is compared to a lactating cow named “Kuullee”:
Kuullee yaa gaaddidduu—
booso maaf si elmatti
dhiittee hin didduu?
oh, Kuullee, an ethereal image—
stop letting an idiot milk you
be free and moo than woe!
The Jie people of northern Uganda and the Turkana of northern Kenya have a genesis myth built around Nayeche, the Jie woman who followed the footprints of a gray bull Engiro across the waterless plateau and finally to found the “cradle land” in the plains of Turkana (Mirzeler, 2014). Similarly, following Makko Billi, the Macca Oromo ritual leader, the Oromo have a tale built around the mythic gray bull Gommool, whose footprint they followed, according to the oral history, on the long journey, to occupy a place without people, where the bull lay down, and they name it ritually for a lineage or a clan to inhabit, cultivate, protect and pass it on to descendants.
5. Towards an Oromo Literary Nationalism (OLN)
In this paper, an attempt has been made to make a case for a nationalist approach to Oromo literature, as a practicing poet myself nearly for three decades now, by considering the relationship between literature and the people and by maintaining that Oromo literature be approached as a distinct national literature rather than as a corollary to the mainstream Amharic literary canon. (For the critics of Native Indians’ Literature in America and Canada, see Weaver 2006 & Fagan 2009.) From what has been presented, the guiding principle of literary nationalism is “more by example than by direct expression” (Cella, 2006). The intention here is to crystalize the nationalist perspective as a formidable component within Oromo Studies vis-Ã -vis the paternalistic mainstream Ethiopian Studies in general and within the study of Oguma Oromo, that is, Oromo literature, in particular.
Next, I conclude by reposing the questions which I have been grappling with over the years to direct attention and reflection/refraction toward the poetics of Oromo Literary Nationalism (OLN).
1. As a people, the Oromo claim to have “common history” & “ancestry”. What shared values & history do the Oromo have in common with “others,” particularly Abyssinians, to build a “common future” (hegeree) and a “common vision” (kaawoo) without sharing common fundamental values for peace, democracy, and respect for human rights? How “common” should the “common” be without shared values, history, ancestry, collective/social memories, common future, shared destiny, and common vision? (Cf. Text I).
2. In a multinational world and state where significant multivocal locals exist, how and why should univocal characters and views rule? What should be done when the poet (afoolee/shaayii/absaala/waloo) and his/her poetry is marginalized as irrelevant, as less significant, for speaking to power? (Cf. Text II).
3. History, at least for a poet, is a sequence of events in the past with some consequences at the present. How is people’s historical grief, an unsettled loss, and social resentment, be regarded as “irrelevant,” and as less “significant,” for a practicing politician? If letting go is to forget the emotion of a past experience, not its consequence at the present, where is the energy to imagine the future when still caught up in shadows of the horrible past? (Cf. Text III).
Next, by way of a tentative answer, I recapture some pertinent epistemic views raised in this essay about “relevance” and “significance” in an attempt to constitute an Oromo Literary Nationalism.
First, let me propose that when (not if) a certain idea, belief, or view relates to a certain other idea, belief, view, or task which increases the accomplishment of a certain goal (kaawoo), and, therefore, is deemed significant for the betterment of humankind or the collective human (human and nonhuman), then it is said to be relevant & significant. Such a relevant and significant idea is a collective human (and nonhuman) freedom which our poets earnestly seek and advocate through the Literary Nationalism stance.
Second, conversely, a systemic erasure of a certain relevant view, idea, belief, or task, what the society values most as significant, to marginalize it from media, in favor of one group, from academic forums, from school curricula, and so doing, from human mind, as not worthwhile, and, therefore, as irrelevant to address some pressing social issues at some point in time, is nothing but an epistemic violence, an intellectual terrorism.
Third, the significance & relevance of Oguma Oromo (Oromo literature/knowledge), and the question of what direction should an Oromo poet (waloo/afoolee) take, at the time when the political narrative is divided along two fault-lines, namely, Oromoness (Oromia First!) on one hand, and Ethiopianness (Ethiopia First!) on the other, is equally undecided. This “double-consciousness,” to borrow Du Bois in a non-Du Boian context, this two-soul in one body, is always a way of looking at self through the eyes of the dominant culture, measuring a life goal/purpose (kaawoo) by means of the political culture that looks back in contempt. The lack of a unified literary ideology, as a result of systemic erasure and marginalizing, delays the Oromo poet or politician to attain self-consciousness, to merge the double self into a better and truer self, or forces our poet to remain irrelevant and less significant.
Fourth, to reinforce the idea of reclaiming a common homeland, Oromia, to invigorate and practice a sense of high degree of autonomy among the people, to withstand hostile situations, to revitalize our collective / social memory of the past against collective forgetfulness, to uphold our special customs, values, and traditions, and to reclaim, recreate, restore and gain control of our sacred and memory sites, the role of a creative and critical literary praxis has become pertinent. Hence, the Oromo Literary Nationalism project is compelling now.
* * *
Judged pragmatically or silenced systematically by prejudices generated by elites’ pragmatic refusal to a heroic death or heroic life, this anthology may receive a neglect.
Oh, my people, if we can’t go forward, we can’t turn back, either. We are stuck in the world not of our own making! So, it is true! The problem is not the problem itself; the problem is our attitude about the problem! No wrong life can be lived rightly.
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now, my people,
how many days
how many nights
is a year
behind this bar?
P r o l o g u e
…& if letting go is to forget the emotion of a past experience, not its consequence at the present, where is the energy to imagine the future when still caught up in the shadow of the horrible past?
