Click Here to Read Part One and Click Here to Read Part Two
By Jilcha Hamid
The plane ride to Dirre Dhawa was only about 40 minutes. I was seated next to a polite, well-mannered individual. When he learned that it was my first trip he took it upon himself to give me some advice. He suggested that I shouldn’t only visit Dirre Dhawa and Hararge, and that I should visit different parts of the country such as Mekele and Lalibela and it was important that I socialize with different people. You know, to become a more balanced Ethiopian (lol). As the plane landed I was overcome with emotion. Here I was, back in the city my father had left over 30 years ago during the previous regime’s murderous red terror campaign. I was greeted at the airport by family and taken to my uncles house where the family had gathered. In Dirre Dhawa tradition, as soon as I walked in the front gate I had bag after bag after bag of candy dumped over my head. It was a really festive mood and as we settled down more people kept coming in with bags of candy. Everytime a bag was dumped over my head I was surrounded by children covering me like a swarm of bumble bees, grabbing every little piece of candy. Which was followed by a du’a (short supplication). This went on for most of the morning.
When the food was brought out, I didn’t want to eat. I wasn’t feeling well, so I just stuck with my bottled water. I was still getting adjusted to the heat. Later on in the day my cousins picked me up and took me for a tour around the city. Nothing else will get around the city as efficiently as a 4×4 pick-up truck. Much of the roads were either dirt, or worn down pavement. A lot of the damage was from the flash floods in 2006, which killed hundreds of people and left behind a trail of carnage. But generally speaking Dirre Dhawa was a town which had remained a town. While cities and towns across the country were growing and developing, by all accounts Dirre Dhawa looked like the Dirre Dhawa of the 1980’s in terms of its infrastructure. Back then it was the 3rd largest city in Ethiopia next to Addis Ababa and Asmara. Trade was booming, people were working, and the town was quite prosperous. The reality today tells a much different story. The Cotton factory, the city’s largest employer, since being downsized and its machinery taken elsewhere left countless people unemployed. And with the Djibouti railroad closed, and contraband strangled the towns commerce was effectively cut off. Unemployment and poverty soared through the roof and many believe it was a deliberate plot by the government to destroy the city’s economy. Whether it was deliberate or not, that was the aftermath.
Faced with poverty, unemployment and no political voice to address their issues, many youth want to leave the country. They follow one another in droves to Djibouti, Somalia, and Kenya. The route of choice these days is to go to Djibouti or northern Somalia and pay smugglers to take them across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen. From there many of them will attempt to reach Saudi Arabia for work. But many run out of money and end up in a desperate state, stranded somewhere along the way (Djibouti, Somalia, and Yemen if they manage to make it there alive). Although they’re often regarded as economic migrants, the issue wasn’t simply economics. There was also a social and political aspect driving them to leave. Many people didn’t feel like it’s their country. They had no voice, no opportunity, and hence no stake in its future. So those who didn`t leave weren`t motivated to do anything other than sit around all day, chew khat and gossip.
For those who did work the towns working day wasn’t very long; By mid-afternoon everybody already had their bundle of khat underneath their arm and were on their way home. There was no better way to pass the time other than relaxing on a pillow next to a bag of yours truly. Khat was enjoyment, khat was pleasure, khat was LIFE. A man with a bag of khat in his hands felt like a king. And they couldn’t wait to introduce you to their queen.
“Do you know what this is?”
“Yea..”
“Do you have this in your country?”
“Yea..”
“You guys chew this over there?”
“There are people who chew it.”
I asked people why they would waste their time and money on it. And they all had the same replies, acknowledging that it was a waste but never really motivated to give it up. Money was hard enough to come by as it was, but they would spend every last dime getting their fix. It came before everything, even food. Many beggars in the market would beg specifically for khat. It was sad to see how an entire society had become enslaved by such a useless plant.
Nonetheless the evening sessions (barcaa) were the venue for discussion. From personal lives, to society, religion, philosophy, business etc. everybody let their hair down. With their cheeks pouched like squirrels everybody became a scholar and expert analyst. Although people generally preferred to stay away from discussing politics for obvious reasons, there was one person in the neighbourhood who was always quite open about his views. I’ll call him “the Cadre”. The Cadre was a member of the government allied SPDP (Somali Peoples Democratic Party). A dedicated tribalist, and a devout Meles loyalist, he was a colourful personality. He would pick the ripe leaves from the branch of khat with the utmost concentration and toss them in his mouth, looking up occasionally to make eye contact with his audience.“People say I hate Oromos, but how many Oromos have I helped get jobs using the Gurgura name?”Government jobs in the city are issued by ethnic quota and the Gurgura being a single clan inhabiting the Dirre Dhawa area, tended to be favoured for positions in the towns administration, which was made up primarily of OPDO (Oromo Peoples Democratic Party) and SPDP party members. Because the town was disputed between the Oromia and Somali regional states people like the Cadre were encouraged by their party to go out and “mobilize the youth” which usually meant instigating and spreading hatred among the population. Although the tension is nowhere near the point it reached in the 1990’s and early 2000’s when ethnic and tribal clashes cost many lives, the party cadres helped keep the tension alive by preaching to the youth that the city belonged to their own ethnic and tribal group. The fact that these were members of the ruling party who were doing this seemed pretty irresponsible. For example announcing an ethnic referendum then sending in party cadres to mobilize “their people” against the “other side” seemed almost like classic divide and rule. On one occasion the Cadre had to leave the neighbourhood and stay elsewhere, when neighbourhood kids came looking for him because of some of the inflammatory stuff he’d been saying. He later recanted his inflammatory rhetoric. Whether it was genuine or not I sensed that his actions were driven by opportunism. On one occasion he was an SPDP cadre spreading hatred against Oromos in Dirre Dhawa, and on other occasions he was sucking up to OPDO officials when there was a job opening in Oromia regional state. But one of his loyalties never changed:“I love Meles… I just love him. I don’t care about the EPRDF, I just love Meles!” he said, squinting at me while sticking more fresh leaves in his mouth. I doubted that he loved anybody but himself. But it’s like they say… keep your friends close, and your crazy relatives closer?“Don’t pay attention to what he [the Cadre] says. It’s all about the benefits” I was told. “If I could get a job by saying I’m Somali, I’ll do it. If I could get a job by saying I’m Oromo, I’ll do it.”
Click here to read Part IVNonetheless the evening sessions (barcaa) were the venue for discussion. From personal lives, to society, religion, philosophy, business etc. everybody let their hair down. With their cheeks pouched like squirrels everybody became a scholar and expert analyst. Although people generally preferred to stay away from discussing politics for obvious reasons, there was one person in the neighbourhood who was always quite open about his views. I’ll call him “the Cadre”. The Cadre was a member of the government allied SPDP (Somali Peoples Democratic Party). A dedicated tribalist, and a devout Meles loyalist, he was a colourful personality. He would pick the ripe leaves from the branch of khat with the utmost concentration and toss them in his mouth, looking up occasionally to make eye contact with his audience.“People say I hate Oromos, but how many Oromos have I helped get jobs using the Gurgura name?”Government jobs in the city are issued by ethnic quota and the Gurgura being a single clan inhabiting the Dirre Dhawa area, tended to be favoured for positions in the towns administration, which was made up primarily of OPDO (Oromo Peoples Democratic Party) and SPDP party members. Because the town was disputed between the Oromia and Somali regional states people like the Cadre were encouraged by their party to go out and “mobilize the youth” which usually meant instigating and spreading hatred among the population. Although the tension is nowhere near the point it reached in the 1990’s and early 2000’s when ethnic and tribal clashes cost many lives, the party cadres helped keep the tension alive by preaching to the youth that the city belonged to their own ethnic and tribal group. The fact that these were members of the ruling party who were doing this seemed pretty irresponsible. For example announcing an ethnic referendum then sending in party cadres to mobilize “their people” against the “other side” seemed almost like classic divide and rule. On one occasion the Cadre had to leave the neighbourhood and stay elsewhere, when neighbourhood kids came looking for him because of some of the inflammatory stuff he’d been saying. He later recanted his inflammatory rhetoric. Whether it was genuine or not I sensed that his actions were driven by opportunism. On one occasion he was an SPDP cadre spreading hatred against Oromos in Dirre Dhawa, and on other occasions he was sucking up to OPDO officials when there was a job opening in Oromia regional state. But one of his loyalties never changed:“I love Meles… I just love him. I don’t care about the EPRDF, I just love Meles!” he said, squinting at me while sticking more fresh leaves in his mouth. I doubted that he loved anybody but himself. But it’s like they say… keep your friends close, and your crazy relatives closer?“Don’t pay attention to what he [the Cadre] says. It’s all about the benefits” I was told. “If I could get a job by saying I’m Somali, I’ll do it. If I could get a job by saying I’m Oromo, I’ll do it.”
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