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Ethiopia: A Dream for Many, A Nightmare for Many More

This is a headshot of Soreti Kadir. She's an Oromo storyteller, journalist, activist, and facilitator. She's pictured smiling at the camera. In the background we see folliage. She's smiling at the camera, wearing a yellow tank top, and black-rimmed eye glasses.

Oromo storyteller, journalist, activist, and facilitator

A title card for a video that reads out a poem. The title of the poem is handwritten in white over an image of a farmer. It reads: "Ethiopia: A Dream for Many, A Nightmare for Many More by Soreti Kadir"
This is a headshot of Soreti Kadir. She's an Oromo storyteller, journalist, activist, and facilitator. She's pictured smiling at the camera. In the background we see folliage. She's smiling at the camera, wearing a yellow tank top, and black-rimmed eye glasses.

Oromo storyteller, journalist, activist, and facilitator

    Editor's note: Though Ethiopia is regarded as the only country within Africa that successfully resisted European imperialism, it has nonetheless been a site of internal colonisation since at least the late 19th century, with the subjugation and incorporation of several independent nations into the Ethiopian Empire. Today, the country is wracked by long-standing conflicts for autonomy between the state and its constituent nations. The conflict in Oromia, for example, has been raging for at least half a century, with 2023 marking 50 years since Oromo nationalists established the Oromo Liberation Front and its armed wing, the Oromo Liberation Army. As a result of the armed conflicts, as well as natural disasters, Ethiopia is among the countries most affected by internal displacement, with 4.2 million internally displaced people at the end of 2021. In December 1994, the country adopted a constitution allowing for secession of its constituent nations as a last resort if certain preconditions were met.

    NAIROBI

    People are getting nervous 

    Is she about to snap?

    The never colonised 
    Sweetheart of the continent 
    Her second largest population 
    Oh Ethiopia,
    A dream for many 
    And nightmare, for many more 

    Pointing outward 
    into the big wide sea
    But not quite touching it 
    Red 
    with generations of my very blood 
    yet it’s only now
    That people are getting nervous 

    Come! It’s time for us to fact check!
    Who is dead! 
    Which flag did he wave! 
    How much is his name worth at the altar of extraction and give and take! 
    Yellow, red, green - wear it now and save your life! 

    Like my people don’t know peace talks 
    Like your guns didn’t tear up the grounds of gadaa
    Just for a little short change 

    I’ve watched the sun rise and set from this very home 
    Watched thousands climb out of pits and come back to try again 

    Reading books to fourth graders under the cool of Bale’s mountain’s
    With wrists marked forever by a prisons hold

    Ploughing land on the outskirts of the “addis ababa” - the “new flower”
    Ya Tuluma tiyyaa! 
    Nobody really knows that entire bloodlines were wiped out so that Bole could hold the seat of the African union upon you 

    Returning to the gaming shop in Neqemte’s quiet corner. Finally safe. But not for long. They always come back, angrier than before at their own lives and at what they know of you. I hope you survive. 

    Nobody wants peace more than the drought shaken land my feet forage on the daily 
    But I don’t want a peace that can be undone by another deal 
    made in another house 
    that comes with another plane 
    that drops yet another sound from our sky onto my kitchen table 

    Dead again
    That will not be my fate 

     

    Soreti Kadir is an Oromo poet, activist, and journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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