The turning over of the Western calendar to measure a new millennium came at the same time that I reached a turning point in my own life. I lost my father within this past month. Gratefully, my mother called me home in time for me to see and talk to him and for him to see my two children, his grandchildren, before the illness took him. What he said to me and what I learned while I was at home in Oromia confirmed to me that the Oromo people are also at a critical turning point.
When my mother called me to say that my father was sick, I was caught up in my usual routine of the last few years--that is, sharing with my wife the tasks of holding down jobs, keeping up payments on two cars and a house in the United States, taking care of two children, running around to schools and doctors and shopping, seeing American culture through my children's eyes -- by exposure to television, music, stories and toys. Suddenly, in the midst of all the craziness of our current lives, one of my greatest illusions came crashing in on me. With my mother's sobering news, I was forced to comprehend that my father would never pass on his wisdom from his own mouth to my children. It was the end of an era and the end of my deeply hidden and foolish hopes that within the span of my lifetime I might see everything come together for me, my family and my nation. In that moment I felt my own burden keenly. I feel it still, but I'll return to that later.
With the phone in my hand, I asked my mother what had happened to my father. She answered sadly, “He is very sick now, but what has brought him real pain is what did not happen.” Apparently he had been angered, frustrated and sick at heart for some time, weighed down by the conditions that exist in Oromia under this government. He suffered more with rage against the constant daily diet of indignities, injustices and violations carried out against him and those close to him than he did with the illness that was killing him. To make things worse, the Oromo seemed paralyzed, unable to remedy the situation in any way. Hope had been shrinking within him. This same crisis of the spirit is exactly what had also been affecting me halfway around the world, causing my own paralysis, sickness of heart, withdrawal and silence regarding Oromo political affairs. I had suppressed my own rage and had retreated into the “busyness” of day-to-day survival abroad.
Hearing the alarming news about my father, I gathered my family, and in a dramatic gesture requiring enormous credit card expense and sacrifice, flew us to his side of the globe and to his bedside. I sat there as he lay dying, helpless to save him or to turn back the clock. I was confronted directly with the frustration and helplessness that had burdened his spirit and, according to my mother, was killing him as much as the illness that had been diagnosed by the doctors. Although he was physically quite weak, when he saw me, his mind and resolve revived a bit, and we were able to discuss some things together. It is a conversation I remember well.
“I'm glad you came,” he said to me. “Now you are here all the way from America to see me. Maybe I will survive this illness, maybe I won't. I do not have much strength left to talk to you as I would like to.”
“It is my mistake. I always foolishly thought that there would be plenty of time, but I was mistaken,” I responded. “I am here now, though. I guess we have to spend wisely what time and strength you have.” So I asked my ailing father, “What message do you have for me? Tell me what is most important to you now. What advice do you have to give me? If you let me know your thinking, I can have your wisdom with me when I leave here.”
He answered me right away with an assurance that makes me proud as I now remember it. He said, “It is a good question; it is exactly the right question. I have been lying here thinking about our predicament, yours and ours. It is no different from the Oromo predicament in general. Our people are still treated no better than slaves. I am disappointed that I will not see the Oromo leave this slavery. But I do believe that together the Oromos will find a way to leave it. I hope that you will play some part in the process of finding freedom. I put my trust in you, just as you must trust your children.”
I nodded, but thought about my life, how I spent more time watching Western TV with my kids than I did preparing them for anything that my father was talking about. He had no idea what our lives were like in America.
Then he surprised me by saying, “I know your lives are very different from ours, but remember, I was the one who sent you to school and pushed you toward a different experience. Now you have different opportunities from what I had. Consider it a blessing. When I pushed you to go to school, I was not pushing you away from being Oromo. I was pushing you toward finding a different way to be Oromo. I still want to push you toward being Oromo with all the opportunities that you have and all the means that are available to you that I will never see. This is what I have to say to you: It is your responsibility to use what you now have in your hands to change things. Do something to save your people from the horror they are living.”
“What do you think that I should do?” I asked him.
'I don't know how you should do the job, but I am telling you what needs to be done. You must not stop trying to find a way out of this misery that has been forced upon the Oromo. I am sorry to say that my generation was not able to find a way. Don't repeat what we have done. We have always compromised. We did it in peace to make peace, but we did not make or get peace. Ganna darbeef manna hinijaarani (people don't build a house for the rainy season that is past). Our circumstances were different, our view of the world was narrow and our resources were very small. You must look to the future and build what is going to serve you for that era. You do not have to live the same way that your mother and I have lived, son. We changed things for you. We gave up having you here with us so that you could go out from our location in order to have very different experiences from ours.
“Now that I have children, I realize what a sacrifice that was,” I said.
“Yes, it was very difficult, but we knew that you would carry Oromoness out into the world wherever you went. I am happy to see that you have not lost your Oromummaa by being in a distant place. You are just as much an Oromo as I am or as anyone who remained here in Oromia. I can see that and I am proud of you.”
How could he have known these things with such confidence? I thought. When I left Addis Ababa for the United States, I did not see myself as an Oromo. I was a diehard Ethiopian. I never told my father about my identity crisis, my own quest for Oromummaa, my satisfaction in finding it in the United States. Yet here he is talking as if my awakening to my own Oromo identity were the most natural thing in the world, as if he had known all along what would happen. Maybe he had.
“Son,” he continued, “you have to find a way to express Oromummaa and to build up the Oromos from wherever you are. The Oromo must find a way to liberate Oromia. I want you to be a part of that process. I think that you can do more for the Oromo from where you live now than we could do here, where the foot of Woyane is on our necks. But you have to work together with other Oromos. Your generation of Oromos is not doing that. Your generation has been separated from each other and divided up so much that you see other Oromos as your enemy and turn to the enemy seeking cooperation. This is wrong. You must find ways back to each other. We old men have been deeply sorrowful to see how you fail to trust each other and fail to work together. It has grieved us to see Oromo leaders spend far more of their energies to reach some agreement with the Tigray or the Amhara or the Eritreans than they spend to reach agreement or to build strategy with other Oromo. Work with all Oromos, my son, whether they are Muslim or Christian, wherever they are from, whatever their past political affiliation. Bind yourselves together. You do not have much time, either. Soon the responsibility will shift entirely from the children of Haile Selassie to the children of the Dergue's era. That will be a major shift.”
He motioned toward my children who were there in the room with us. Then he said, “After that, the children you are raising now will take over with what you give them. Deal wisely with this generation. I trust you to carry this message to them. It is your responsibility to decide what is necessary to be a good Oromo in this world. You and they must carry on wherever Oromos are living and you must use knowledge and tools that we have never dreamed of. If you arrange your lives in a way that you know is right in the eyes of Oromos, you can proceed with full confidence. That is what I ask of you.
It took all his strength to tell me this. He slept.
Later he repeated some of these points to me in different words, particularly saddened by “the failure of his generation.” In his remaining days, he showed great interest in and curiosity about his grandchildren from America. Eventually, however, my wife and children returned home on a scheduled flight. I remained with my father. Occasionally he would begin to talk about the betrayal of OLF or the horrors of living under the EPRDF, but the subjects upset him so much that nobody encouraged him. The medication I had brought for him from the United States eased his pain but also caused him to sleep a lot.
Three weeks after my arrival, he fell into a coma. I was with him when he died and stayed to attend the funeral. It was a traditional Oromo funeral, the kind that really celebrates the life of a person, with family and friends praising his exploits and honestly appraising his character. It provided quite a contrast to the customs that Oromos have chosen to follow abroad, crying for days and giving up authority for speaking at a person's service to a priest who never knew him. I personally prefer the fine old Oromo tradition.
During the time that I was with my father, many people whom I had known as a youngster, both relatives and friends, came by to visit him and I took the chance to talk to them. Many more attended his funeral. From what they shared with me and from the signals that they gave in the way they behaved, I learned a great deal about the general state of mind of Oromos and Ethiopians in the neighborhood where I was born. Some people seem to have been killed internally. They saw my dead father as better off than they were. Most of the sadness and helplessness I saw was among the middle aged group. The elders who had been my father's peers and the youngsters appeared much more spirited, especially when political issues were raised. They have no fear.
The young people have no uncertainty, either. I was talking to my 18 year-old nephew after the funeral and asked him what he thought was the best solution to the Oromo dilemma. He smiled at me and said, “I am surprised that you are asking me this question. The last time I saw you, I was about ten or eleven years old and you were visiting from America. We were all impressed by you and placed our hopes in you. Over here we are waiting for you people who had an education and money to come up with a solution to Oromia's problems. We have been informed that you, the people in America and elsewhere, do not agree on anything, political or otherwise. Is it true?”
“Yes, it is true that we do not agree,' I admitted. “We are not really talking to each other much any more.
“There are many people here who think that it is not the EPRDF who is holding us back, it is rather the educated Oromo who keep trying to find a way back into Ethiopian politics. We want freedom from Ethiopia. Is that not clear to you? For us that means an independent Oromia. I don't know any Oromo who wants Oromos to be part of elections in Ethiopia and to be part of that government. Even most people who are in the OPDO are cooperating with EPRDF not because they believe in Ethiopia; they are with the Tigrays out of desperation and for survival. We know that Oromos could take Addis Ababa in one night, but then what? You are not ready. You are the ones who have the freedom where you live to plan strategy and to make allies for us and to work with us. But you don't. Don't you realize that you are keeping us behind? It is you who keep the TPLF/OPDO group on our heads.”
What a difference between this kid and eighteen-year olds during the previous generation! I began to ponder how much he had learned during the period since 1993 while I have been silently sitting, disheartened by the Oromo situation. I was glad to see his spirit. Other young people indicated a similar position to me, though not as forcefully. All hold out a hope for a free and self-determined Oromia. When I asked them how that will come about, the answer they tended to give was, 'that is your job, it is the job of the educated to come up with the design.'
One young fellow from the university asked me, “Do you Oromos get together in America? If you do, what is the result? Do any of you see it as your duty to address the problem of the Oromo and work toward finding a solution? Why not? Are we wrong to expect something from you? We have no publication of any political importance where Oromo could exchange opinions and information about our condition and its resolution. What keeps you from providing that, from communicating, at least, even if you do not always agree?” He was right. For the most part, we are not communicating in a constructive fashion.
One of my old friends from elementary school honestly remarked to me, “When we heard about the formation of an Oromo Studies Association overseas, we were very happy. We expected that you would begin to formulate issues that would give a serious direction to the movement. Frankly, it did not galvanize the thinkers the way that we had hoped it would. We do not seem to understand our own problem, and our educated people are not helping us to do that.”
Talking with the elders, I learned that my father's sentiments were echoed by most of them, with slight variation. This group is more concerned about the division among the Oromo groups than about anything else. It worries them, it bothers them; they don't understand it. They all asked, “Why all these divisions?” They see that the sons and daughters of Oromo have much more to unite them than to divide them. They declared the division among the Oromo to be artificial. One man said to me, “If you can find a way to unity of all Oromo forces, self-determination will be unstoppable.” I think he is right. The problem is that we have got to find a cure for the paralysis that has gripped the nation. We must turn the present situation around.
At the airport in Addis Ababa I found myself caught between the two worlds that I belong to. The Tigray again disrespectfully searched my body and my luggage, ordering me around. It felt as if my father had devised a master plan that would make me experience the very same indignities that had so outraged him. In the airport, for example, they search you nude. They search your underwear. What are they looking for? Are they looking for their lost manhood? I do not know. Every Oromo male put in that situation is placed in fear that he might lose his manhood between his two legs while at the mercy of the Tigray. Why do they do this? They must be trying to send a message that reminds you of your subjugation as an Oromo. I got the message loud and clear. They act like they want to break you psychologically. Nothing short of that seems to satisfy these relentless sadists empowered by an immoral state to occupy a position over us. They are enjoying their supreme position to the greatest possible extent. They relish the power they have found. They lap it up like a cat laps milk from a bowl.
Oddly enough, it less than nine years since the Tigray were in the same degrading position that the Oromo are now. Now they are at the top of the Ethiopian heap and seem to think that they are in a position to order Oromos and other subject nationalities around, because of some innate Tigray superiority. The Amharas thought the same about themselves before Tigray occupied the upper hand in Ethiopia. I suppose that there are some Oromo somewhere who are waiting for their turn to be on top of the pyramid and to humiliate the other groups as they themselves have been humiliated, but their number is very small. Most Oromo that I have talked to are not interested in participating in or preserving the hideous Ethiopian system that only works when one group is placed securely as supreme over another. It has been my observation that most Oromo are interested in getting rid of the heap called Ethiopia and seeing the Oromo build their very own, very different system and seeing the others do the same -- make a comfortable home for themselves which does not require the suffering of other nationalities to exist.
Why are the Tigray so suspicious and brutal to the Oromo? The Tigray may be afraid that if the Oromo who are not under their control find any power within Ethiopia, they will give out the same degrading treatment to the Ti gray that Tigray and Amhara have given to them. As a result Tigray calculate that they had better destroy Oromo while they have the means. They do not understand that most Oromo do not want to take over the Tigray position. The Oromo have not anywhere clearly stated what they want. What do the Oromo really want? My reading of the situation is that the Oromo want out. They want to manage their own affairs.
But what have the Oromo actually done so far to guarantee that this will happen, that the same old ugly Ethiopian order will not prevail after the current Tigray government leaves power? Have we Oromo spent our time constructing something that will function to support a just and democratic Oromo society? Not at all. We have spent our valuable time feeling sorry for ourselves, wallowing in the misery of betrayal and broken agreements, broken first by the Tigray, then by the Eritreans and finally by the United States, our supposed savior. When we turned around from these bitter disappointments we discovered that our own Oromo organizations were as weak and disheartened as we were. Our leaders were just like us, hoping for deliverance, uncertain how to proceed when it did not come. Now we have engaged in an orgy of blame and recrimination. The only thing that is clear to us is that whatever we have been doing is not working. We have to change fundamentally. We Oromo either have to abandon the struggle for liberation, or we have to turn around to fashion and to use new tools, new tactics, new strategies with new guidelines and new leaders.
How do we do this? We have to follow my father's advice. We have to use what we have at hand to refashion our future together. We have to look not to the past conditions but to the present and the coming conditions when making our plans. This means looking beyond ourselves to the next generation and redefining for ourselves and for them how the Oromo will step onto the world stage.
Time is not to our advantage because we have not laid a groundwork for the future. The males of the two generations on either side of me will never share together, let alone live together, in a peaceful encounter of mutual appreciation. That door is closed. Thanks be to God that their grandmother, however, is still strong, and their mother. More than the males in the family, the women are responsible for keeping alive what Oromummaa is all about. They are equipped to teach our Americanized children about their own Oromo people and heritage as this generation grows up. But women have not been included in the organizational plans in the past. Maybe that is why the organizations have fallen apart. We need new ideas. We need to redefine the center of our movement.
The week after I got home I could not sleep and switched on late night television. What was on was a movie called “Awakenings” about a hospital for patients who had been stricken with a mysterious condition that left them alive but unable to speak or move. They did not communicate or respond to others except to open their mouths to take food. Many had been hospitalized for twenty or thirty years without a change in their condition. A doctor assigned to treat them finally came with a medicine that brought all of these patients back to an active life. He found a diagnosis, the key to what had paralyzed them, was then able to treat them accordingly. The personality, knowledge, thoughts and feelings of each, once bottled up inside unexpressed, was unleashed in each. As a result they were able to take care of themselves. These people had not lost any of their essential nature. They were witty, charming and talented. What they had lost was time. Of course they had to observe closely and adjust to the way the world had changed while they were out of circulation. Remarkably, the events of this story are true. In the real medical case the dramatic treatment was not permanent, but I was fascinated by the account because it proved that the possibility for awakening the long-hidden potential of these patients had always been there. Someone had to keep looking until he found the key to unlock their abilities.
I sat there fully convinced that an awakening could take place among the Oromo people at least as remarkable and dramatic as the one that took place among the patients in that hospital. Everything the Oromo need to fully function on our own behalf is bottled up within us. Right now something is blocking us as a people, and we seem to be unable to move. But I believe that the potential remains intact within the nation. When the key is found, when it is clearly understood what is the cause of the immobility, then the Oromo will be able to spring into action. We have not carried out our task for our nation. We have not analyzed the condition that blocks the Oromo from action, which is necessary before devising a cure and giving a direction.
So, having buried a vitally important part of my past, I have turned around to realize more than ever that the inaction and agony which the Oromo people (including myself) have fallen into during most of the EPRDF decade has got to end. From 1984-1993 I wrote The Kindling Point. Then the paralysis hit me. My father's trust in me and the many people that I have met and talked to have brought me to understand that we all have reached a turning point. I will start writing again in order to address issues that concern the Oromo future. For me the transition from The Kindling Point to The Turning Point is a change from the ignited outburst of a young man in 1984 to the smoldering and determined declaration of a man in the year 2000 thrust reluctantly into the recently-vacated position of elder. We have to turn toward action. We have to build a house for the coming rainy season. We have to work together to design it and we have to build one that will accommodate everybody. I want to be a part of that process.
By H. Q. Loltu
P.O. Box 10192
Rockville, MD 20849
U.S.A