ECOPOETICS OF PLACE:
Reclaiming
Finfinne, Past and Present
(Oromia,
Ethiopia)
Assefa Dibaba
(PhD)
Indiana
University
What
people do about their ecology depends on
what
they think about themselves in
relation
to things around them.
___Oscar C.
Labang (citing Lynn White, 1967)
ABSTRACT
Some narratives are close to the core of who we are in the
world. A song or a story may play with slippages in time to connect us with a
place past and present, making connections that may seem to transcend time and
place and thereby memorialize historical losses. The songs and the story to be
presented in this study come from a repertoire of Oromo expressive culture
through the observation of performances and through interviews in Oromia,
Ethiopia, in 2009 and 2010, and from print sources about the dispossession of
land and land resources in and around Finfinne, renamed Addis Ababa, in the
last-quarter of the nineteenth century. These narratives engage us with the
environment across a history of exclusion, exploitation, displacement,
pollution, and forced exile on one hand, and, on the other, unceasing
resistance, resentment, and lamentation of the unresolved historical grief. In
response to the ongoing youth-led wave of protest in Oromia, Ethiopia, since
December 2014 in opposition to the annexation of land around Addis Ababa, the
capital, the song of place and the personal story, I posit, give Oromo people
today a sense of their history and culture by evoking a deep sense of ecospace, that is, a rooted connection
to environment habitats. I intend this study as a contribution to ecopoetics,
an analytical model based in artistic verbal expression and oriented to the
ethically challenged human relationships with the environment, and ethnoecology,
an overarching interdisciplinary approach to human environmental cultures
that is receptive to the genres of environmental folklore and environmental
humanities in the context of current Oromo situation.
Keywords: Sense of Place, Oromo, Oromia/Ethiopia,
Ecopoetics, Ethnoecology, Expressive culture / Narratives (Song of place,
Personal story), Pollution, Finfinne, Displacement.
Author's Bio:
Assefa
Tefera Dibaba is a PhD in Folklore & Anthropology from
Indiana
University. He is a poet, educator, and
a 2009/2010 IIE/SRF Scholars Fellow from Oromia, Ethiopia.
OROMO
& OROMIA
The
Oromo are the most populous single ethno-nation in Northeast Africa. They speak
Afaan Oromoo (Oromo Language), a Cushitic branch which is spoken in Ethiopia
and Kenya and a fourth widely spoken language in Africa after Arabic, Swahili,
and Hausa.[1]
Oromia is the region of vast geographical and ecological diversity that covers
141, 699.5mi² (367, 000km²), more than 30% of the Ethiopia’s total area, with
Finfinne, the capital, at the center.[2] 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).[3] 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).[4] Moreover, the 2007 census reported Oromia Region population to 27
million, making it the largest state in population and area.[5]
And there are other sources that indicate the current
Oromo population estimated to more than 30 million.[6] The
expressive culture of the Tulama Oromo in the heartland of Ethiopia is the
source of information about the people who suffered an immeasurable human and
environmental catastrophe and endured the harsh reality of living in proximity
to Finfinne as a broken place.[7]
This
study does not attempt at present to develop a detailed account of Oromia’s
environmental changes overtime. Instead, using available data it explores the
role and impact of the state, which is both conservationist and exploitative,
from the conquest
by Abyssinian musketeers in the 19th century to
the present. Thus, I argue, a lasting and sustainable
development is one which prioritizes the freedom and wellbeing
of both the people and the environment in which they dwell. Toward
this goal, this study is organized into three sections. The
first section establishes a background of the study from local historical and
folkloric perspectives. The second segment connects ethnoecology and ethnopoetics
with transdisciplinary approaches. Drawing on the narratives and expressive
culture of the people, this section demonstrates ethnoecology and ecopoetics as
collaborative endeavors to chart suitable methodological and theoretical
terrains informed by local ontological and epistemological views about
human-environmental transformations. The third section presents ecopoetic
analysis of human interaction with place and the natural world in the study
area overtime. The last part concludes,
tying together the themes of expressive culture and environmentalism is what
should define the current trend of folklore scholarship as ever compelling and
relevant academic endeavor to study the humanity-environment nexus.
NARRATIVE TREND
The
background reading in this article and its theoretical underpinnings reflect
the transdisciplinary nature of ethnoecology and its analytical model, i.e.,
ecopoetics. Interviews, my personal experience, and direct observations were
used in Oromia during the 2009 and 2010 ethnographic fieldwork in Salale. I also
used relevant sources in print to interpret and analyze the data alongside
narratives about some of the environmental challenges the local people
encounter to date and the ethnoecological practices the people use to tackle
those challenges. Toward this goal, I will begin with two premises. First,
there is scarce literature that attempts to converge folklore and environmental
studies, and the available works lack thematic focus. That is, the folklorist
ethnoecologist relies on the local knowledge to foster collaboration between
the researcher and the local population to root ecopoetics (ecological poetics)[8]
and ethnonoetics (ethnoscience)[9] as
an analytical framework, to propose merging theory and practice, and “to
empower the cultural voice of the structurally disempowered.”[10]
Betsy Taylor has rightly observed, “the
very fabric of public life is so threatened by current global forces that a
more urgent mission is the reconstruction and reclamation of public life
itself,” which demands to unify the “academic” and the “public,” and “theory”
and “practice” (Taylor 2002, 1).[11]
Second,
the narratives discussed here are examples of many of the present social and
environmental crises which are deeply connected to the past policies and
practices, with a far-reaching implications for the future. Thus, this project
attempts to trace the place-based local and national (global) hostile
relationship in the current Oromo context in Ethiopia. At the same time it
demonstrates the unequal historical relationship of the Oromo close to their
land and to the environment. The narratives presented here are
proto-ethnoecological as they are historical artifacts. The Song of
Displacement (DS) was initially composed and presumably performed by a Gullalle
minstrel during the first Tulama Oromo removal from inside and around Finfinne
in the first half of the 19th century. Amina’s
Story (AS) is a personal narrative about water pollution and the dire human and
environmental impacts of reckless “development” plans in Ethiopia.
The
significance of this study is to
contribute to the ongoing green discourse about the wanton exploitation and
destruction of natural environment which is of global concern. We folklorists
(and Africanists) haven’t considered yet ethnoecology as relevant both to work
beyond a narrowly “interpretive” tradition and to incorporate insights and
concepts from folkloristics stance and ecopoetics. The notion of relevance is
understood here as the extent to which some principle, method, information or
belief is pertinent, connected, or applicable to the subject at hand. It will
suffice to repeat Betsy Taylor here: “If there is a crisis of ‘place’ at the
heart of postmodern culture, folklore brings a close knowledge of its
vicissitudeness.”[12]
In my dissertation two years ago I introduced ecopoetics to a critical folklore
scholarship as relevant to balance the theory (folkloristics) and its practical
application to ecology. I argued,
To place ecopoetics on
the flaring interdisciplinary avenue of study such as folkloristics, there is
no more compelling time than the present when we are encountering the planetary
scope of multiple environmental crisis and social injustices that face the
earth and when our academic mainstream offers less alternative way, if any, to
sustain at least the debilitating “sacred ecology” which should concern us as
folklorists and Africanists.[13]
Folklore
as “artistic communication in small groups” can be understood as a locally
situated phenomenon, as a social construct, a lived experience and folklorized
meaning of the social world which goes beyond the relatively narrow disciplinary
terrain in the Humanities to understand.[14]
Now, why is “Humanities” relevant in the study of ecosystem from
ethnoecological perspective?” Two major reasons are considered pertinent here.
First, humans are fundamental components of the ecosystem and possess a
profound understanding of the environment in which they live. To attain a full
understanding of human relation to environment, close examination of the
people’s expressive cultures about their use
of ecosystem and implications of the
use and perceptions is essential.
It is essential because historically the fields of Humanities “have focused on
‘the human’ in a way that has often excluded the non-human world.”[15]
This leads us to the second significance of the “Humanities” and the compelling
urgency for ethnoecology and ecopoetics in folklore scholarship. Second, the
National Endowment for the Humanities’ defines “Humanities” as “a specific set
of disciplines, including literature, languages, history, philosophy,
archaeology, comparative religion, ethics, and art history,” fields which have
been known to have “civic, moral,
aesthetic, and spiritual value for people and communities.”[16]
It is fair to say “human ways of thinking and interacting with the environment
are ‘inadequate’”[17]
and necessitate “‘more constructive and imaginative engagements’… in how ‘we
grapple with the changing relationship between human society and natural
environment’”.[18]
The question is whether or not we can focus seriously on ethnoecology as a
folklore-oriented ecological study and ecopoetics as an ecology-oriented
folklore theory to analyze human condition in relation to environment.
ECOPOETICS OF PLACE
“Ecopoetics
of place” is a critical and creative, often poetic, evocation of sense of
place, description of a history, topography, people, culture and nature of a
particular place, meanings of mysteries in the local (hence, mythscape), and
the embodied knowledge of place, and mythscapes of the dwelling.[19] By
this ecopoetic analysis of human-place bonding, places “are repositories and
contexts within which interpersonal, community, and cultural relationships
occur, and it is to those social relationships, not just the place qua place,
to which people are attached,” and socially construct and negotiate place
meanings.[20]
“SENSE OF PLACE” & “PLACE
ATTACHMENT”
It is important at this point to explore the question what is the significance of place in people’s culture. Keith Basso asks, “what do people make of places?” and he notes, before he attempts to offer a direct answer, if there is one, “the question is as old as people and places themselves …as the idea of home, of ‘our territory’ as opposed to ‘their territory’ …and to which they feel they belong” (Basso 1996, 72).[21] Basso puts it clearly, “when these attachments to places are threatened we may feel threatened as well…places are as much part of us as we are part of them.” Community members involve in place in three ways: by observing the physical aspects of it; by using the landscape and engaging in different physical activities “based on duration and extent;” and through “communicative acts of topographic representation” and descriptions in social gatherings, which involves, no doubt, names, stories, songs, beliefs and rituals (Basso 1996, 73).[22]
It is important at this point to explore the question what is the significance of place in people’s culture. Keith Basso asks, “what do people make of places?” and he notes, before he attempts to offer a direct answer, if there is one, “the question is as old as people and places themselves …as the idea of home, of ‘our territory’ as opposed to ‘their territory’ …and to which they feel they belong” (Basso 1996, 72).[21] Basso puts it clearly, “when these attachments to places are threatened we may feel threatened as well…places are as much part of us as we are part of them.” Community members involve in place in three ways: by observing the physical aspects of it; by using the landscape and engaging in different physical activities “based on duration and extent;” and through “communicative acts of topographic representation” and descriptions in social gatherings, which involves, no doubt, names, stories, songs, beliefs and rituals (Basso 1996, 73).[22]
A
sense of place is a rooted “place attachment” conveyed by symbolic
representations (naming) and creative imagination (cultural expressions). A
sense of place takes into account “the social and geographical context of place
bonds and the sensing of places, such as aesthetics and a feeling of dwelling”
(Kyle and Chick 2007, 211).[23]
Central to this construct of human-place bonding is “affect, emotion and
feeling … often accompanied by cognition (thought, knowledge and belief) and
practice (action and behavior)”.[24] Literature
about this subjective construct of sense of place (rootedness, insidedness,
place identity) indicates that “a space becomes place as
we get to know it better and endow it with value”.[25] The
subjective perceptions of environment and conscious feelings about it involve
“both an interpretive perspective on
the environment and an emotional reaction to
the environment”.[26] “Rootedness” and “insidedness” are two
concepts that indicate a long-term and overwhelming identification with a place
which indicate that much of the landscape is taken for granted while being at
home in an unself-conscious way. So, the Oromo bitter words of resentment “Mana
hin jirru, ala hin jirru!” (“At home, we are not at home!”) is a remorseful
reaction to this estrangement and alienation felt on one’s homeland. The
socially constructed place meaning evolves “through ongoing interactions with
others and the environment” as reflections of cultural and individual identity.[27]
Ethnoecology is an emerging field that offers a fresh way of doing research
about these human-environment interactions using transdisciplinary approaches
and conveys local understandings of environments from the local people’s
worldview or folk ideas.[28] For
example, the Oromo Ujuba or Kaabbaa (gravesite) is believed to have sprung from
the bones of the ancestors and is protected from felling as the abode of
spirits.
RECLAIMING
FINFINNE (Past and Present)
In this section I try to answer the
following question of ethnoecological and ecopoetic nature: What determines the
relationship between expressive cultures and the spatial/social context that
gave rise to them? This project deals
with these issues of the politics of resources and trajectories of lives and
local ecological knowledge in rural Africa, Oromia. Using some folksongs and a personal narrative about
water pollution, it is an attempt to understand the local
ecopoetic practices against the historical environmental and social injustices
in Oromia and the ongoing eco-colonialist agenda to exploit the scarce
resources by involving surrogate nation-state leaders. Using a sense of place
as a focal point, this study explores the poetics and politics of reclaiming
broken places in rural Africa that includes deprivation, eviction, pollution,
and the local counter-hegemonic discourse. Broken places are areas of decline
left in a state of degradation by war, natural disaster, or reckless
anthropogenic activities such as toxic dumps and industrial wastes (Krasny and
Tidball, 2015).[29]
To reclaim a broken place is a social-ecological rescue through stewardship
based on sound social-ecological principles as it is a conscious political act
to regain control of, re-create and restore the place where people and nature
thrive. The “reclaim” occurs at the intersection of a broken place and ruined
ecosystem and urgency to take control of the “broken place,” restore, and
provide a narrative of healing the historical grief of loss.[30]
SPATIAL IMAGINATION OF THE PAST[31]
The Oromo people attach a special significance to
Finfinne. Scholars have expended much effort to
delineate exactly how the people conformed to or resisted the tenets of
imperial expansion in the name of nation building.[32] The
songs and narratives here attempt to show how the colonial land use policies
and practices are rooted in the historical context of land appropriation and
environmental degradation in and around Finfinne. The local ecopoet’s
perspective is layered in this song of love by Tadele Gamachu but not to be
talked about without remorse and indignation:
Qonneet lafa
ba’ee yaa damma too maasaanii We
plowed, oh my love, yet we didn’t sow
Garaat’ nama bada waan darbe
yoo kaasanii! Alas! Grief to recall the past, what we
lost, woe![33]
The
above folksong is a historical allusion widely sung to capture the historical
loss. Finfinne, which was solely inhabited by the Oromo clans of Gullalle, Ekka,
Galan, and Abbichu, until conquered by Menelik II, was partitioned into twelve
districts, each administered by the local clan chiefs: Tufaa Munaa, Duula
Harra’a, Jimaa Jaatanii, Guutoo Wasarbii, Jimaa Tiksee, Abeebe Tufaa, Waaree
Gololee, Tufaa Araddo, Mojoo Boxoraa, Birraatuu Goolee, Waamii Gaaroo, and
Shambuu Bordee.[34]
Historically, there were five gates to Finfinne: Karra Alo, northeast; Karra
Qirixii, west; Karra Meexxii, northwest; Karra Qaallitti, southeast, and Karra
Qoree, southwest.[35] On Oromoland, the last 400 years have been
the history, “at times of bloody conflict, at other times of conciliation and
assimilation” between the Amara and the Oromo.[36]
Major
Harris of the British envoy wrote thus his eyewitness account of the first half
of the 19th century Amara invasions:
“…rolling on
like the mighty waves of the ocean, down poured the Amhara horse among the rich
glades and rural hamlets, at the heels of the flying inhabitants—tramping
underfoot the fields of the ripening corn, and sweeping before them the vast
herds of cattle which grazed untended in every direction”[37]
The
conquest caused not only the forced eviction of indigenous Oromo people in and
around Finfinne but also the degradation of the environment in which they lived
by ruining houses and the environment, by “firing village after village until
the air was dark with their smoke mingled with the dust raised by the impetuous
rush of man and horse”.[38] As
it reduced the citizens to serfs and slaves under subjugation, the Amhara rule
wiped out indigenous trees and gradually replaced them by eucalyptus, which
affected the environmental quality (Gessese and
Teklu 2011, 2).[39]
SONG OF DISPLACEMENT (SD)
The
historical song of displacement (SD), presumably a minstrel song, presented in
this section comes from a print source (Griefenow-Mewis
and Tamane Bitima 2004).
[40]
It is a theme of significance, of
resentment, and a historical grief recited by the Tulama Oromo around Finfinne about
a broken place—a place once revered as a sacred site, considered as traditional
and constitutional home of gadaa,[41]
gradually wrecked by pollution, eviction, displacement, marginalization, and
desecrated by prostitution.[42] de
Salviac observed with pity in the turn of the twentieth century the beauty of
Oromoland lamented previously in the historical song next and described it as
“an oasis luxuriant with large trees [an] opulent and dark greenery used to
shoot up from the soil” (trans. Mulatu Keno 2005, 127).[43]
He adds that in the turn of the twentieth century,
“the greenery
and the shade delight the eyes all over and give the landscape richness and a
variety which make it like a garden without boundary. Healthful climate,
uniform and temperate, fertility of the soil, beauty of the inhabitants, the
security in which their houses seem to be situated, makes one dream of remaining
in such a beautiful country.”[44]
de
Salviac’s observation matches well with the theme of abundance, peace,
fecundity, and dispossession and nostalgia for home inscribed in the song which recapitulates, as
the killings and appropriation of their land continued, that “the Oromo natural
resources were depleted and their environment and natural beauty were
destroyed.”[45]
This song is a contextualized experience of dislocation and eviction suffered
by the Oromo clans around Finfinne for over 100 years, and believed to be
performed originally, as already mentioned, by a Gullalle Oromo minstrel:
Inxooxxoo irra
bahanii No more standing
on the Enxooxxo hilltop,
Caffee ilaauun
hafee to watch the
meadow and wild grass below, no more
Finfinne loon geessanii
no more taking cattle to
Finfinne,
Hora obaasuun
hafee to water at the
mineral spring. no more
5 Oddoo Daalattiirratti No more gathering on Oddo
Daalattii,
Yaa’iin
Gullallee hafee where the
Gullalle assembly used to meet, no more
kooraa Dhakaa
Araaraa no more elders’
counsel,
jaarsummaa
taahuun hafee at Dhakaa Araaraa,
no more
Hurufa
Boombiirratti No more
taking calves,
10 Jabbilee yaasuun hafee to the meadow at Hurufa Boombii,
no more
Gafarsatti
darbanii No more
going to Gafarsa,
Qoraan
cabsachuun hafee to collect
firewood, our maiden, no more
Bara
jarri dhjufanii the
year the enemy came,
loon keenyas in
dhumanii our cattle perished.
15 Eega Mashashaan dhufee Since Mashasha came,
Birmadummaan in
hafe Freedom vanished.[46]
This
minstrel song (SD) is an evidence that historically, Finfinne and its
surrounding was home of the Gullalle Oromo who were evicted in the 19th
century by the Shawan rulers, Sahle Selassie (reigned 1813-1847) and later by
his grandson, Menilik II (r. 1889-1913) from each and every place named in the
song. The Gullalle, Ekka, Galan, and Abbichu Oromo were evicted and could not
exercise the basic human attributes which Asafa Jalata discusses by citing Hussein
Abdilahi Bulhan: there are “‘essential human needs and essential human powers’
in order to survive and develop fully” (Asafa Jalata 2012, 128).[47]
Those basic needs and self-actualizing powers that the “people who were
colonized and dominated cannot adequately satisfy include: (a) biological needs, (b) sociability and
rootedness, (c) clarity and integrity of self, (d) longevity and symbolic
immortality, (e) self-reproduction in praxis, and (f) maximum
self-determination.”[48] Likewise,
the human and environmental impact of war, famine, and displacement can be well
captured also in a testimony of one Oromo farmer, a victim of forced
villagization policy of the Derg regime (1974-1991): “The army came and started
burning everything. We ran into the forest with nothing” (Africa Watch Report
1991, 65-67).[49]
Toponymic Features of the SD
Names
of places have historical significance to construct the ecopoetics of place. The Tulama Oromo recount the toponyms,
eponyms, ethnonyms, and genealogical memories of those dominant spaces which
recur in their folklore tradition and folklife. Next, by revisiting place names in the historical SD set in the
past as a point of departure, I relocate in the present those toponymic
encounters and their implications for the Oromo people today.
Inxooxxoo (or, Entoto)
Available
sources
indicate that, the area near Mount Inxooxxo, also called Dildila, was the
traditional home of the Meettaa Suubaa Oromo.[50] The Sululta Oromo south of the Gaara
Gorfu Mountains are probably descendants of the Gullale Oromo who were
displaced from Finfinne. Located on an average elevation of about 10, 822 feet (about 3,300
meters) above sea level, most of the natural vegetation in the plateau north of
Finfinne has been devastated and the landscape is mostly covered with a few
open broadleaved deciduous forest and eucalyptus trees. In the early 1880s
Menilik II, the ruler of Shawa, moved his capital from Anko-bar in the
northeast to Inxooxxo.[51]
Menilik selected Inxooxxo plateau perhaps “because it had been the capital of
the early 16th century Emperor Lebna Dengel.”[52]
As the mountainous location made it difficult for access to water and wholesome
climate, Menilik moved south to the Finifnne plain, where hot spring gushes
out, hence, Finfinne, meaning, “fountainhead,”[53]
which, by contrast, had “an equitable climate, fertile, well-watered land”.[54]
The Oromo sang this SD above with bitter remorse to this day, and historically
they allude to the more regrettable incidents following the conquest which they
engraved desolately for generations to contemplate (S.D., lines 1-2):
Inxooxxoo irra
bahanii No more standing
on the Inxooxxo hilltop,
Caffee ilaauun
hafee to watch the
meadow and wild grass below, no more!
Hurufa
Boombii (Beetle Field)
Another
place of some historical significance in the song (SD) is Hurufa Boombii later
renamed Jan Meda (SD, lines 9&10). As already indicated, Finfinne and those
significant spaces were the ‘traditional commons’ recognized as shared
resources among the indigenous Tulama Oromo and later occupied by Shawa rulers as
urban public space after conquest.[55]
Today
those sacred sites in Finfinne, including Jan Meda, are a ‘new commons’ set
between the two extremes of abandoned and overcrowded spaces.[56]
Traditionally Hurufa Boombii was used as a grazing land for calves (SD, line 9)
and for horserace, and later renamed as Jan Meda it staged “religious
festivals, coronations, military reviews and campaign inaugurals…a place of
refuge and temporary settlement,” and sports.[57]
To date there are two designated public open spaces in Finfinne: Jan Meda and
Meskel Square, both used for coronations, sport activities and public meeting
places. Leasing land and generating personal income by officials rather than
leaving open spaces for public use is a common corruption challenge in Ethiopia
where allegations of crony capitalism have plagued the regime.[58]
Dhakaa Araaraa (Altar of Peace)
Dhakaa Araaraa
is one of the specific examples that show in this study ways in which
dislocation and environmental degradation affect local communities and shape
their cultural concerns (SD, lines 7&8). It is the dominant space near what
has become renamed as Gebbi, a palatial compound and seat of the power of
Abyssinian emperors at Tulluu Heexoo. The song shows that the Oromo used to
assemble at the site of this rocky hilltop to deliberate on matters of public
concerns including peace, rituals, and prayers. Until recently, there was a
restaurant and bar known as Dhakaa
Araaraa owned by the sub-city at Fit Barr near the imperial palace.
Finfinne (Fountainhead)
When
Menelik was away to conquer the eastern part of Oromia (Hararge) in 1886,
Taytu, his wife, moved from Inxooxxoo to Finfinne (SD, lines 3&4). Kevin
Shillington writes, Taytu
“preferred the
mild climate of the Finfinne plains to adjacent hilly Entoto, a rather
inaccessible, cold, and windy summit that located the then capital city a few
hours journey to the north…Taytu camped at Filwoha (‘hot-spring’), [the
Finfinne fountainhead]. He adds, “She decided to build a house north of the hot
springs” and she “settled fully in 1887, after Menelik's return in March of
that year, and gave it the name Addis Ababa (“New Flower”), possibly due to the
presence of the mimosa trees. Officially, the name of the capital city changed
from Entoto to Addis Ababa in 1906” (Shillington 2005, 23).[59]
Menelik,
“the founder monarch of the city allocated large tracts of … land to regional
rulers, military chiefs and the clergy” from the late 1880s onwards and the
dignitary of a region settled on top of a hill and administered his sefer,”[60]
and each sefer was renamed after the name of its respective administrator. The
great landscape of Finfinne previously used by the surrounding Oromo clans for
farm, grazing, watering, and medicinal purposes at the hora (hot spring) (SD,
lines 3-4) is described in more detail in another study as follows. Mikyas
writes, before 1886,
“the name of the
area was called Finfinne and it was known for its fertile farm land and dense
forests with streams and a sloping terrain. The landscape which attracted the
Empress had a focus point at Filwuha (Amharic for ‘hora’ or Finfinne), a
natural spring of hot water which was used for bathing and medical purposes…the
Entoto Mountain, Mt. Wachacha, Mt. Furi and Mt. Yerer sheltered this flat
terrain in the middle” (Mikyas Aragaw 2011, 6).[61]
Before
Addis Ababa grew into a political and commercial center, the city was a
multi-centered semi-rural settlement inhabited by “soldiers, priests and civil
servants, who were related or acquainted to the dignitary of that particular
sefer” (settlement).[62]
Fasil Ghiorgis describes the earlier days of Finfinne landscape as a panoramic
view of “semi-rural settlement”:
“These
village-like settlements or camps were separated by natural boundaries, such as
rivers and steep slopes,… one had to traverse steep slopes, streams and winding
paths to go from one sefer to the other”.[63]
Finfinne
is a harbor for resource exploitation and conservationism by crony and global
capitalism to date, which reduced developing nations into a natural history
museum of game laws and hunting preserves.[64]
Today, Addis Ababa has a population of about 3 million (1994-2007) by the 2007
census report and is expanding sideways by evicting Oromo peasants from their
home. The regional statistical data shows that about 91% of the population around
Finfinne is engaged in agriculture and cattle rearing.[65]
The decision to implement the annexation of lands around Finfinne without
seeking consent from the Oromo and the regional state provoked an immediate reaction across Oromia, the Oromoland, in 2014 to
which the government responded with brutal repression of the protests.[66] This rightful claim to Finfinne was put succinctly
in the 1995 Constitution:
“The special interest of the
State of Oromia in Addis Ababa, regarding the provision of social services or
the utilization of natural resources and other similar matters, as well as
joint administrative matters arising from the location of Addis Ababa within
the State of Oromia, shall be respected. Particulars shall be determined by
law,” Article 49 (5) of the Constitution (1995).[67]
It
is hard to locate the past panoramic attractive slopes, streams, and rivers in
Finfinne now identified as a broken place. The garbage dump landslide that
claimed the lives of more than 150 residents at the landfill site in March 2017
is one typical example of the broken place.[68]
A
recurrent observation of Oromo songs shows that the songs lead back into one
another creating a non-ending chain of representation of the historical grief
of dislocation and describing a chronic situation of loss that colors almost
all Oromo songs to date. Following the ongoing mass protest, Galana Garomsa, a young folksinger came up
with this revolutionary theme injected into the genre of a love song titled
“Amala Kee,” meaning, “Your Vibe,” next:
Salgan Haroo Abbaa
Makoo The nine pools of Abba
Makoo,
Iddoo gabaa hin qotani. It is taboo to plow a marketplace.
Dur manni keenya asoo Oh, our home used to be here—
gamoo itti ijaarattanii. They evicted us to erect these buildings.[69]
Iddoo gabaa hin qotani. It is taboo to plow a marketplace.
Dur manni keenya asoo Oh, our home used to be here—
gamoo itti ijaarattanii. They evicted us to erect these buildings.[69]
This
sense of grief colors Oromo songs of environmental and social justice along
with the need to reconcile oneself to nature as a metaphor of wholesomeness and
regeneration amid the ongoing national struggle for democratic rights. Nature
and places represented here in the expressive culture are references of
reclaiming the broken places. In addition to the increasing population
intensified by land grab, eviction, and rural-urban migration, unfortunately,
“Industrialization within the urban areas and conversion of different land use …
has caused the rapid depletion of existing tree cover during the past 100
years”.[70] The current Oromo protest is more than opposition to
the annexation of land and reclaiming Finfinne; rather it builds on Oromo
resentment and the decades of protracted struggle for social and environmental
justice.
PERSONAL
NARRATIVE: Amina’s Story
The
folkloric element of storying resentment in the narrative voice of Amina’s
Story (AS) next and the various contents of the descriptions of the injustices
depict the dystopia of the top-down policies and development plans that
disregard the involvement of the local population. Bruce Bradshaw argues that narratives or deeper traditions and
stories explain the world and shape perspectives, actions, and behavior of
members of the communities and work as a background to everything visible in
the culture.[71]
Hence, narratives carry the values and beliefs of the society and direct the
daily life of the people, and, it is fair to say, real changes will occur when
the people take command of their narratives and transform their
social-ecological system.
AMINA’S STORY
“I gave birth to nine children. Six of them died: Makida, Hadiri, Tahir, Sultan, Kasim, Kalil. Three survived. My husband also died. I have lost seven members of my family. They were all vomiting and having diarrhea with blood in it. We visited a health center, but we were told the problem was associated with water. I feel sad about my dead children and husband. I wake at night thinking of them, and I now worry if my remaining children will survive. I don’t even know if I will survive. Except for God, we have no hope.”[72]
Amina
is an Oromo mother of nine children in Amudde village, southeast of Finfinne. Amina’s
Story (AS), is about water pollution and the dire human and environmental
impacts of reckless “development” plans in Ethiopia. The personal story is
believed to be a symbolic representation of many other unheeded narratives of
resentment about social and ecological crisis in Ethiopia. As her story shows,
pollution in Amina’s locality shares in the processes of the whole ecosystem
challenges caused overtime by urbanization and industrialization and the
consequent human and environmental degradation as a price of “development
without freedom”.[73]
The dominant political culture desecrates ritual sites, sacred wells, and trees
in the name of development, a loss which is not compensable. Ethiopia is considered the water tower of east
Africa because of its great resource of surface and groundwater. However, in
spite of its available water, the country is unable to provide access to clean
water. With the reckless growth of urbanization and industrialization inside
and around Finfinne, humanity and ecosystem face many “wicked problems”.
Studies show that “The most predominant water borne disease, diarrhea, has an
estimated annual incidence of 4.6 billion episodes and causes 2.2 million death
every year” worldwide (Gurmesa O. Erena 2015, 1).[74]
The
Oromo Studies Association (OSA) based in North America joined in a serious
debate with Pittard, a UK based PLC, investing in leather products in Ethiopia
concerning the pollution of Lake Koka and addressing the problem to the
management of the Ethiopia Tannery S.C. (ETSC), later taken over by Pittards
plc.[75]
However, Pittards Plc, in its letter to OSA in 2009, denied the
accusations stating that OSA’s study about Lake Koka’s pollution was based
on evidences from 2003 whilst Pittards took over the tannery in 2005 but its
management offered to consider a meeting with OSA to discuss the matter in the
future. Four of the presentations on one panel of the 2009 Oromo Studies
Association (OSA) addressed the issue of Koka Lake pollution and the
inattentiveness of investors committed to development without environmental
sustainability.[76]
Amina’s personal narrative in this study shows that as the poor waste
management system in the capital (Addis Ababa) continues, humans and nonhumans
living in the fringes of the city and around Akaki River and Koka reservoir
located southeast of Addis Ababa continue to suffer incalculable disaster. Koka
Lake is a crucial source of water for thousands of people in Amudde area. To
address sustainability problem caused by water pollution in the area, I posit,
it is crucial to integrate scientific ecological knowledge obtained from
environmental education with the local knowledge and alternative indigenous
resilience practices.
Among
the powerful tools of human rights approach to address environmental justice is
story telling. Through narrating personal accounts, data about resentment to impacts
of environmental assaults on individuals, families, and communities can be collected,
documented, and analyzed to influence policies. Like through personal stories,
“through oral history, we can listen to the land speak.”[77] The
narratives presented in this study testify to an unmistakable sense of a
folkloric pilgrimage that combines the ecopoetics of a deep rooted historical
grief of loss Africans suffer.
ECOPOETICS: Practicing Folkloric
Environmentalism
In
this study I tried to locate the historical trajectories of environmental
devastation in and around Finfinne occasioned by forces of war of conquest, unplanned
development policies, urbanization and industrialization, and the role of
expressive culture to critique the catastrophe and to mobilize national
consciousness and transform Finfinne into ecocity of human-ecology solidarity. This
study has also revealed that from the dynamics of Oromo ethnoecological and
ecopoetic practices, indigenous knowledge of environmentalism comes from two
sources: the cultural information (expressive culture) passed down as a
creative process of folk wisdom, and the experiential knowledge of individuals
and social groups obtained through experience and empirical observations. In
this study I also stressed on the issues of relevance.
In line with the recent involvement of folklorists in “practical engagement” with
human-environment relationship we need to give more explanation for why
folklore is relevant and significant, and to offer suggestions (or trigger
discussions) how this relevance/significance could be farther improved on
ontological and epistemological bases. If the problem of disengagement derives
from the historical focus of the discipline, from its inception, on details of
collection and classification of texts, and later on ultratheoretism (“pure”
folkloristics) instead of practicing the larger systems of meaning about human
condition in the face of rapidly changing environment, that problem needs to be
addressed. To remain relevant and diversified, meaningful to the “folk,” and to
get clear on the nature and institutional arena of its scholarly advance, it is
helpful and compelling for folkloristics (and for folklorists) to widen the
scope to embrace Ethnoecology and its theoretical stance, Ecopoetics, as
critical and creative acts, and to open door for the discipline
(Ethnoecology/Ecopoetics) as a suitable academic practice that works closely
with the “folk” and the environment in which they live from local or
holistic/comparative perspective.
NOTES
[1] Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi, “The
Language Situation in Africa Today,” Nordic
Journal of African Studies 2(1) (1993), 79–86 , see pp79, 84. The Oromo are
understood as a branch of Cush (Kush), the
eponymous ancestor of the people of the “land of Cush,” an ancient territory on
either side or both sides of the Red
Sea.
[3] P. T. W. Baxter, (1978). “Ethiopia's Unacknowledged Problem:
The Oromo” in African Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 308, pp. 283-296.
[4] David H. Shinn. (2003). “Ethiopia: the ‘Exit Generation’ and
Future Leaders” in the International Journal of Ethiopian Studies, Vol.
1, No. 1 (Summer/Fall 2003), pp. 21-32.
[5] Central Statistical Agency (CSA)
of Ethiopia, 2007.
[6] See “Oromia & the Oromo
People,” http://www.gadaa.com/aboutOromo.html; also Unrepresented Nations
& Peoples Organization, http://unpo.org/members/7917.
[7] Tsegaye Zeleke Tufa, “Salale
Oromo: A History, 1840s to 1936,” an MA thesis (Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa
University, 2003). See also Svein
Ege, Class, State, and Power in Africa, (Harrassowitz
Verlag, 1996), p94.
[8] Christopher Arigo, “Notes Toward
an Ecopoetics: Revising the Postmodern Sublime...” Available at
[9] Betsy Taylor, 2002. “Public
Folklore, Nation-building, and Regional Others: Comparing Appalachian USA and
North-eastern India,” in Indian Folklore.
vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 1-27, p1.
[12] Betsy Taylor,
Ibid, p6.
[13] See Assefa Tefera Dibaba, “Ethnography
of Resistance Poetics: …. Oromia/Ethiopia,” Indiana University, Department of
Folklore & Ethnomusicology, 2015, pp60-61. See also Fikret Berkes, Sacred Ecology. Philadelphia: Taylor
& Francis, 1999.
[14]See Dan Ben-Amos. “Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context.” The Journal of American Folklore, 84 (1971)
(331), 3-15; See also Michael Herzfeld, “An Indigenous Theory of Meaning and
its Elicitation in Performative Context,” Semiotica,
34-1/2, (1981a), 113-141.
[15] Deborah Bird Rose, et al.
“Thinking through the Environment, Unsettling the Humanities.” Environmental Humanities 1 (2012)
1-5.
[16] Felicia M Sullivan. et al. 2014.
“Humanities at the Crossroads: The Indiana Case Study Survey Report,” p1.
[17] Oscar Labang, “Toward A Postcolonial African Ecopoetics,” Ecocultural Perspectives:
Literature and Language. Eds.
Oscar C. Labang et al. Raytown (MO): Ken Scholars Publishing, pp13-32, p13.
[18] Ibid.
[21] Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996),
pp72, 73.
[22] Ibid. p73.
[25] Ibid. p211
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid. p. 212.
[28]Virginia D.
Nazarea.
Ethnoecology: Situated Knowledge/Located
Lives, Tucson, Ariz.: University of
Arizona Press. 1999. “By ‘folk
ideas,’ Alan Dundes claims, “I mean traditional notions that a group of people
have about the nature of man, of the world, of man’s life in the world….” “Folk
Ideas as Units of Worldview,” in Journal
of American Folklore, vol. 84, no. 331 (January – March 1971, 93-113), p.
95. See Ashenafi Belay Adugna, ibid., p25, citing Workneh 2001. Barre Tolken,
in his “A Cultural Worldview” explains “worldview” as a manner in which a
culture sees and expresses its relation to the world around it.” Barre Toelken,
“Cultural Worldview,” in Dynamics of
Folklore. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1996, p263.
[29] Marianne E. Krasny and Keith G. Tidball. Civic Ecology: Adaptation and
Transformation from the Ground Up. Cambridge MA, 2015.
[30] Ibid.
[31]Gadaa.com.
“Revisiting the Oromo Roots of Finfinne in Pictures,” Available at, gadaa.com http://finfinnetribune.com/Gadaa/2015/07/july-13-finfinne-day-guyyaa-finfinnee-revisiting-the-oromo-roots-of-finfinne-in-pictures/comment-page-1/. January 13,
2015. Also at Qeerroo.com
[32] Abbas Haji Ganamo. Conquest and
Resistance in the Ethiopian Empire, 1880 - 1974: The Case of Arsi Oromo. Leiden/Boston:
Brill. 2014.
[33]Tadela Gamachu, 2009. A love song
titled “Qonnee Lafa Bahe,” / “Plowed, Not Yet Sowed”. Available on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNsON2Rd85g.
[34] Negaso Gidada, “A Tragic
Consequence of the ‘10th Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan’:
Warning for the Future,” (A Memoir), May, 07, 2014, p1. See Bairu Tafla,
Review. Peter P. Garretson. A History of
Addis Ababa from its Foundation in 1886 to 1910
452, Aethiopica 5 (2002), 252-254.
[35] Talks on phone with an Oromo
elder whose name remains anonymous for his safety.
[36] Bairu Tafla, ed. Asma Giyorgis and His Work: History of the
Galla and the Kingdom of Shawa. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1987. Cf. Teshale
Tibebu, The Making of Modern Ethiopia,
1896-1974, (Lawrenceville, NJ: The Red Sea Press, 1995), p17.
[37] W.C. Harris, The Highlands of Ethiopia. in 3 volumes.
London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1844.
[38] Harris, ibid.
[39] See Gessesse
Dessie and Teklu Erkossa. 2011. “Eucalyptus
in East Africa: Socio-economic and environmental issues,” Planted Forests and Trees Working Papers. Gessesse and Teklu report
that “Indeed, in 1913, not long after its introduction to Ethiopia, a directive
was issued ordering the people of Addis Ababa to uproot half of the eucalypts
planted in the town (p2, citing Edy 2001).
[40] Catherine Griefenow-Mewis and
Tamane Bitima, Oromo Poetry Seen from
Within. Koln: Rudiger Koppe Verlag, 2004, pp42-43. Dajjach Mashasha is the
son of Abeto Sayfu Sahla Selassie (Ras Darge’s half-brother).
[41] See Asafa Jalata, “Gadaa (Oromo
Democracy): An Example of Classical African Civilization,” The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.5, no.1, (March 2012),
pp.126-152, p126. See also Asmarom Legese, Gada.
New York: The Free Press. (1973).
[42]Bethlehem
Tekola, “Urbanization and Prostitution in Ethiopia: A Historical Sketch” in Narratives of three Prostitutes in Addis
Ababa. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa
University, Center for Research Training and Information for Women in
Development (CERTWID), 2002. Available
at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/245109004_Narratives_of_three_prostitutes_in_Addis_Ababa
[43] Martial de Salviac. An Ancient People, Great African Nation,
translated by Ayalew Kano, (East Lansing, Michigan, 2005 [1901]), p127.
[44] Ibid. p128.
[45] Citing de
Salviac, p349, Asafa Jalata is right to maintain that “During Ethiopian
colonial expansion, Oromia, ‘the charming Oromo land, [would] be ploughed by
the iron and the fire; flooded with blood and the orgy of pillage’”. Asafa
Jalata, “Gadaa (Oromo Democracy): An Example of Classical African
Civilization,” The Journal of Pan African
Studies, vol.5, no.1, (March 2012), pp.126-152, p127.
[47] Asafa Jalata, “Gadaa (Oromo
Democracy): An Example of Classical African Civilization,” Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.5, no.1, March 2012, p128. See
also Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan, Frantz Fanon
and the Psychology of Oppression, (New York: Plenum Press), (1985), p262.
[48] Ibid.
[49] Evil Days. 30 Years of Wars and Famine in Ethiopia. An African
Watch Report, 1991. Africa Watch Report, 1991:65-67.
[50] Svein Ege, Class, State, and Power in Africa: a Case Study of the Kingdom of Shawa
(Ethiopia) about 1840. Aethiopistische Forschungen 46, Harrassowitz Verlag,
1996, p147
[51] Ralph E Birchard notes “… Entoto
Mountain ridge is where the city began and the original development still
contains two old churches,” pp162-165, see p162.
[52] Richard Pankhurst and Denis
Gerard, Ethiopia Photographed, (London:
Kegal Paul International, 1996), p94. According to my informant, Maabre Goofee,
the mountain called Tullu Ilen near the town of Ambiso, Dagam in Salale, was
named after Lebena Dengel’s grandmother, Queen Eleni, one of the four wives of
Zara Yacob (1438-68). Eleni was from a Muslim family. The Salale say
“Saraa-Qum” to mean Zara Yacob, as his name is in Geez.
[53] Catherine
Griefenow-Mewis and Tamane Bitima, Oromo
Poetry Seen from Within,… pp42-43.
[54] Ibid.
[55]See
Garrett Hardin’s metaphor of peasants’ sharing an open access field until the land is completely degraded, also taken on the level of urban folklore,” in Garrett Hardin. “The
Tragedy of the Commons.” Science, New
Series, Vol. 162, No. 3859 (Dec. 13, 1968), pp. 1243-1248. See Indiana University web page to the
Digital Library of research on the definition of the “Commons,” on https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/contentguidelines
. See also Albert Kwokwo Barume “Land
Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Africa,” IWGIA Document 115, Copenhagen 2010.
[56]Veronika
Poklembovái et al., “Challenges of New Commons: Urban Public Spaces,” Conference Paper, Governing Pooled Knowledge
Resources: Building Institutions for Sustainable Scientific, Cultural, and
Genetic Resources Commons, 1st Thematic IASC Conference on the Knowledge
Commons, Sept. 12-14, 2012. Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
[57] Poklembovái et
al, (n.p.)
[58] Fasil Ghiorgis (Lecturer,
Independent Architect), “Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building
Construction and City Development” (EiABC), Addis Ababa University Modernity and Change in Addis Ababa A Brief
History of Addis Ababa pp54-59, p54.
[59]See Kevin
Shillington, ed., “Addis Ababa,” in Encyclopedia
of African History: A - G.. 1, Volume 1, New York/London: Tylor &
Franciss Group. (2005), pp23-26, see p23.
[60] Finfinne was
settled as a military garrison divided into sefer (settlements). Fasil Ghiorgis
notes that “a sefer is an area similar to a military settlement or camp, with a
buffer zone in between.” Ibid, p54. He adds, “after the fire of 1892, which
destroyed the old Ghebi (palace) and its environs, more ambitious construction
activities began to emerge that expanded upon the previous facilities.” Ibid.
p55. This and other matters of
environmental history, such as the traditional Oromo names in Finfinne, need
further study. Some names of the different places in and around Finfine
were: Finfinne (Fountainhead) = Addis
Ababa (New Flower); Burqaa Finfinne = Filwaha (Hot Spring); Birbirsa Yaa’ii
Gooroo = Araadaa Giorges, later renamed Piazza under the Italian occupation
(1936-1941); Chaffe Araara / Dalattii = Arat Kilo; Tulluu Heexoo / Dhakaa
Araaraa = Grand Palace; Baddaa Ejersa = Ras Kasa Safer; Luqo Kormaa = Ras Birru
Safer; Barro Kormaa = Ras Tesema Safer; Arbuu Irrecha = Ras Hayilu Safer; Adami
= Semen Mezageja; Baabbo = Addisu Qera; Burqa Qoricha = Yeka Micha’el. See
Ralph E Birchard, p162. See OLF Resolution, “Finfinne is the Central and
Integral part of Oromia.” No. 005/stm-abo/2014. (n.p).
Available at
[61] Mikyas Tesfaye Aragaw, “Urban
Open Space Use in Addis Ababa: the Case of Masqal Square.” Unpublished Master
Thesis. Department of Landscape Architecture, Swedish University of
Agricultural Sciences, 2011, p6.
[62] p54
[63] ibid
[64] “Eco-colonialism: An
Opinion from Sub-Saharan Africa,” http://furcommission.com/eco-colonialism-an-opinion-from-sub-saharan-africa/.
[65]Oromia
Facts, (Year
Book). (Finfinne: Published by Office
of the President, 2010); Central
Statistical Agency (CSA) of Ethiopia, 2007. See also Alain Gascon’s “Shäwa, Ethiopia's
Prussia. Its Expansion, Disappearance and Partition,” in Proceedings of the
16th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, ed. by Svein Ege, et
al. (2009, 85-98).
[66] See Negaso
Gidada, “A Tragic Consequence…,” p2. Cf. Bairu
Tafla, Review. Peter P. Garretson. A History of Addis AbÃba from its Foundation
in 1886 to 1910 452, Aethiopica 5
(2002), 252-254.
[67] Constitution of the
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, Article 49 (5).
[68] Tesfaye Getnet, “Koshe Tragedy
Could Happen Again,” in the Capital,
Ethiopia, newspaper, March 20, 2017. Available at http://capitalethiopia.com/2017/03/20/koshe-tragedy-happen/#.WVOaVWjysgA
[70] E.T. Shikur.
“Challenges and problems of urban forest development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,”
in Trees, People and the Built Environment. Proceedings of
the Urban Trees Research Conference, Birmingham, UK, 13-14 April 2011,
p131.
[71] Bruce Bradshaw, Change Across Cultures: A Narrative Approach
to Social Transformation, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), p240. See also Michael Jackson,
The
Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression and Intersubjectivity.
Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2002.
[72]This episode of People & Power aired from Saturday, February 21, 2009. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3vvy8xsqeM (pub. 2009).
[73] Human Rights Watch. “Development
without Freedom: How Aid Underwrites Repression in Ethiopia,” HRW, New York
City, October 2010.
[74] Gurmessa Oljira
Erena, “Investigation of Drinking Water Quality from Source to Point of
Distribution: the Case of Gimbi Town,” Adduis Ababa University, M.Sc. Thesis,
2015, p1.
[75]“Oromia:
Environmental Pollution,” at Oromo
Studies Association (OSA) Annual Conference, 2009, Georgia State
University, Atlanta, Georgia, August 1-2, 2009.
[76] Ibid.
77
Debbie Lee, Kathryn Newfont, The Land Speaks: New Voices at the
Intersection of Oral and Environmental History,
NY: Oxford U Press, (2017), p25.
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