Confession of a Mutant Oromo

Confession of a Mutant Oromo

By Idris Shaankkore

You see I am not your typical Oromo, I am a mutation. This is what makes me dangerous to the amara. I was initiated into amara culture and amara ways when I started my training in the Kess Temaribet, while continuing to attend regular school at a very early age. When I protested, my late father, an Oromo nationalist, said to me that the most effective way to defeat a long term enemy is to live with your enemy, to learn your enemies ways, to get into your enemies mind, to learn to think like your enemy, and to learn the enemies strengths, vices and virtues, and to then use what you have learned to your advantage.

Every afternoon, I attended and toiled at Kess Temaribet. My wise father demanding that I study the amara culture from its core - reciting the alphabet from left to right, then from top down then in geez (Ha Hu Hi, - Ha, Le, Ha Me, Ha geez, Hu Khaim, Hi sadess,) then Abu Bu Gi Da, - then Melekte Yohannes Wold Hawariyaa, - then Wengel and recited the Dawit three times to Abbba Fere Senbet and Abba Kinfe Michael, washed their feet, removed Moyale from their toes with a merfe kulfe and kissed their feet before they were rewarded by my father. I was an aleka, I sat among the menzes, gonderes, and welloyes and consumed their breath and fess and shared their kollo and dabo and their kunicha, niffro, kemal, and played with the cherke quass with them and mud marbles, and shared in their happiness and their grief etc. Save for my blood, I was one of them. As I was whipped by my amara alekas I too learned like my mentors to enjoy whipping the others under my supervision and control to step on their back and press them to the ground as they coiled from pain and for protection, while whipping them without mercy. I studied to interpret quinee under the famous amara Poet Laureat and grew up celebrating all things amara.

Contemporaneously, I grew up around the privileged children of the chauvinists of the highest order with the children of Leuls and Alga Werash and all the famous Rases, Dejazmatches, Fitaweraris, Bitwodeds and feudal lords and nefxanyaas of every class and personally knew most of the chauvanists of my child hood era that amaras only read about. I also grew not having had a single Oromo friend during my elementary and high school years in FinFinne. If some were Oromos, I did not know, as much as they did not know that I was an Oromo. In college, my circle of friends consisted exclusively of the amaras and not a single Oromo was included, because I was the only Oromo.

In the end, unlike most Oromos, I acquired knowledge of the amara software operating system and I have it in my possession. I have it within my reach for reference so that I need not rely on the sinister for knowledge or to be misled. No amara need waste time reciting what I already know. The amaras comparative disadvantage is that there is no amara who has possession of the Oromo operating system and hence the amara's inability to understand, to communicate, and strategize in a meaningful way and over reliance on assumptions and Oromos with amara software. I do not rely on assumptions because I already know how amara think and why amara think it. Unlike amara, I do not waste time grasping at straws.

Now I see why my father immersed me in amara culture. My father’s generation was wiser than we give them credit for. They did what they could to prepare us under trying circumstances and above all they made certain that there was a fuse in each of us to be ignited by enlightenment and consciousness. It is now our duty to acknowledge their investment and sacrifice and to lead our people to the Promised Land and freedom from abyssinian oppression.

It is time for the many other mutants like me, some dormant to wake, and some that have not yet morphed to discover their true Oromo nature.

Idris Shaankkore, shaankkore@yahoo.com


The opinion posted above doesn't necessarily reflect the view of Oromia Times.