I just read an interesting information pieceby the University of Washington about the tribal roots of both of my children. Minnow and Peepers are both of Oromo descent. Sadly, my son and daughter would have been second class citizens with no political autonomy in their own country because of their Oromo heritage. I had no idea that there was such a system of overt oppression in place and it reminds me a great deal of our white society’s own systematic oppression of blacks. I am sad that this “racism” or tribalism is part of my children’t heritage and that part of the reason there are so many poor Oromo in Ethiopia is because they are discriminated against. Did Minnow and Peepers moms’ feel they had no choice but to give up their children because they would be doomed to a life of living at the bottom of the social hierarchy? I will sadly never know their reasons. I can only hope to teach my children that “racism” is real and painful and something we must work to change–something we must never accept as okay. We must speak up and work to change the relegation of whole populations of people to the lower strata based on their skin color or heritage.
I am glad that Obama is the Democratic Nominee for President and I accept and realize what an important step it is. We cannot become complacent in our fight for equality because a black man has achieved what was once deemed impossible. There is racism lurking in every corner of our society. We must work to bring it to an end and arm our children with the tools and intellect to be able to bring about change.
Embracing Imperfection 
Thank you so much for the link to the information about the Oromo people. We believe that Teeny, too, is Oromo. It seems like most of the information out there regarding culture, food, names, etc. is Amharic-centered, so this is a really nice resource for me! I’d love more information, links, books, etc. on our children’s heritage…anyone???
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Amelie is, as you know, also Oromo, so I also thank you for the link! I also have had a hard time finding info. Most of the info we have came from our guide in Ethiopia who knew tons about the Oromo people (his wife is Oromo) and since he helped us investigate, we were able to learn lots.
One of the main problems the Oromos face today (in the Harar area anyway) is that as farmers, they’ve switched from farming coffee to farming chat (a powerful hallucinogenic drug). We saw lots of people who were very high in the villages–including an incredibly tall naked man walking down the middle of the street. We also saw parents giving it to babies to keep them quiet while they worked in the markets. It seemed as if every woman was pregnant and had a baby strapped to their back–apparently chat also makes you want to have sex. The only racism we personally noticed was in Dire Dawa when we told some young girls we’d met at the playground that our daughter was Oromo. Their reaction was “Oh, Muslim” with a sneer. Our daughter does happen to be Muslim, but only about half of the Oromo people are, the rest are Christian. There are also 2 subtribes within the Oromos–itu and otu (spelling probably wrong). One is lighter skinned, one is darker skinned. Oromos are one of the two tribes (Afari being the other) that were the first humans on Earth (the Lucy skeleton was found in Oromo and Afari tribal areas, so they aren’t sure which tribe she belonged to). We spent lots of time with an Afari tribe in a remote area, but were unable to do the same with an Oromo one (although we did witness an Oromo wedding first hand!). The Afari are feared as militant (all the men had AK-47s on their backs..), but they were the sweetest people. They invited us into their homes and made us food and sent their camels to bring us back for another visit the next morning. They asked for photos of our daughter to decorate their huts and cried when we told them we were adopting an Oromo baby. They made her beautiful tribal jewelry and made my husband an awesome machete. At the Oromo wedding, we were invited into a woman’s home to see where our daughter would have lived. She offered to have us stay the night (it was a very tiny round mud hut with a thatched roof). All of the children wanted to kiss Amelie and were chanting her name and cheering. It was one of the best experiences of our lives. We have nothing but fond memories of them.
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Great link! Micah is Oromo too – so I appreciate having this information.
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