The sun is setting and I'm sitting in the orchard, under the shade of my relative's olive trees. I'm sulking my father's trees, we've just argued. Again. As I turn to watch our lot to give me some sense of filial responsibility, I see my cousin's wife and her 4 year-old daughter awkwardly hiding behind tree trunks and picking the olives that have fallen on the ground after the harvest. My olives. My harvest. Next to me, my relative is working hard on her garden. We chat while I munch on 'tassememt'. "Have you seen what they're doing..." she tells me while she digs the ground to make space for her future onions. "Yup". "She told me she's teaching her daughter how to earn and save money. So at every sunset she comes down with her, and picks the olives that are left on the ground. Then they go by the roadside where vegetable merchants set up shop to sell on the highway, and she sells the olives there. She doesn't take the olives from under her trees, she takes it from under all of ours. She's stealing basically" "You're going to tell her off?" "No, I can't, we already argued years ago and didn't speak for one year. We can't do that again. When she's done stealing yours she's going to run off home, so am going to clear the ground under my trees then. She'll be a lot more upset to find nothing than to be told off."
"By remembering the past, the future is remembered". These notes are taken from Mengesha Rikitu's research on "Oromo Folk Tales for a new generation" by (see also his "Oromo Proverbs" and "Oromo Grammar"). Some proverbs are folk tales are worth the detour: 1) Oromo Proverb – Harreen yeroo alaaktu malee, yeroo dhuudhuuftu hin'beektu "The Donkey doesn't know that it is farting again and again when it is braying." (ie some people concentrating on their own verbosity are unaware of what is going on behind them) You can tell that dhuudhuuftu is the farting can't you, am betting on the sound that word makes. Oromifa is one of the five most widely spoken (Afroasiatic) languages in Africa. Its importance lies in the numbers of its speakers and in its geographical extent. The 'official' numbers point to 30 million Oromo speakers (but there has not been to this day a complete or reliable census). The majority...
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