What Being an Oromo Means to Me

By Abdisa Amanuel*

An identity crisis of sorts is what you can call the shifts that have been made during the past couple of years. What does it mean for me to be Oromo? How do I feel about being Oromo? How does this identity fit into the life I had before coming into this blogging site, and the life that I wish to lead afterwards? These have been difficult questions that I have been wrestling with over the past couple of weeks, especially in light of all that has happened in our country.

For the majority of my life, I had never really identified with being an Oromo, although the way I act said something different. I have always been an Oromo, but I have never “been Oromo.” I talked differently, played differently, and was just overall different. This is what the world saw of me. But there was also the internal struggle of believing the stereotypes that have always been perpetrated against the Oromo people: we are always late; we like cultural food; every Oromo person speaks only for Oromo. And then, the even more negative ones: Oromo men are dangerous. I began to really believe this, and in turn, affected the way that I looked at my Oromo brothers and sisters. It also meant that, for most of my aware life, I spent most of it trying to assimilate to Habesha’s culture. Whether it meant in the way that I dressed or the way I show my culture, I never wanted to accept actually being an Oromo.

What I have learned in the past couple of years is that I belong to a culture of people who are strong. I belong to a culture of people who fight for what they believe in. I belong to a culture of people who believe in equal rights for not only just Oromos, but for all. I belong to a culture of people that God has ordained to be great in His name. Being an Oromo means to me that I have the opportunity to create change and use my voice for the people. Being Oromo to me means that I know that we, as a people, are important and that an injustice against some of my people is an injustice against me, whether I know them personally or not.

People often associate Oromo identity with secessionisim, but that’s not always true. Some Oromo people do support independence, but others want to build a new Ethiopia, one that reflects the diversity and complex history of the country, and allows our people more political power. We’re accused of being divisive just by identifying as Oromo, but we can’t erase our identity, history or our memories of oppression within the Ethiopian state. Ethiopia is a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic country, so we have to be open to the multiple possibilities of what being from Ethiopia might entail. No single group of people can maintain a monopoly on that.

How does it change things for me? How does this fit into my life? It changes my heart for justice, which has become exponentially more present in the past couple of months than ever before. It changes how I view the world that I live in. It changes what the word solidarity means for me. Because, if I am called for a heart of justice, because God calls for justice, then I must be able to walk along side those who are hurting because it must be hurting me, too. This change in identity has not been easy and has been probably the hardest transformation that I think I have had to go through. The realization that maybe the past 12–13 years of my life, I may have been wrong about almost all of the preconceived notions that I had about my own nation, hurts for the most part. As a community, our house

continually prays for the situations that are going on in our country. We pray for peace, for national reconciliation, for hope, for our children in our neighborhood and the ones we work with, and for justice.