Toltu Tufaa: The founder of the Afaan Publications is on the new project: Toltu Eessa jirta? September 3, 2019
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Afaan, Afaan Oromoo, Inspirational Oromo Woman, Inspirational Oromo Women, Toltu Tufa
add a comment


Professor Martha Kuwee Kumsa: Unsung heroine and iron lady! September 10, 2017
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, Ethiopia, Inspirational Oromo Woman, Inspirational Oromo Women, Kuwee Kumsa, Oromia, Oromo
add a comment
“Even though my imprisonment was limited to the radius of the prison compound – Ethiopia itself was a giant cell.”
Martha Kuwee Kumsa is an Oromo born in Ethiopia where she worked as a young journalist in the later half of the 70’s. She was separated from her three young toddlers, tortured and thrown in jail where she remained incarcerated without charge or trial for the ten years of the 80’s. She was released and brought to Canada through the intervention of Amnesty International and PEN International. She has chosen social work as her mid life career change and now teaches Social Work at Wilfred Laurier University.
(Jun 17, 2006)
Martha Kuwee Kumsa is standing in front of her social work students at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo. Out of the corner of one eye, the Ethiopian-born woman catches sight of a man in uniform lingering in the hall. She continues her lecture, but her heart beats faster and her breathing becomes heavier. Then she gets a clear view of the man — and it’s a university security officer, not a soldier come to drag her away. She relaxes.
“It’s amazing how the brain works and the body responds,” the soft-spoken Kumsa says of the triggers she has learned to cope with over the years.
Martha Kuwee Kumsa of Kitchener is at home in Canada, but still has strong feelings about her native Ethiopia. For years she had long dreadlocks, but two months ago she cut them off in a symbolic gesture.
Terror, struggle, pain and grief have all been part of a long journey in which she lost her husband, her home and sense of security.
Two months ago, in an act symbolic of those losses, she lifted her dreadlocks and cut them off.
Kumsa, 51, who now lives in Kitchener, had let her hair grow since moving to Canada and starting work on her PhD. This spring, however, she decided a woman her age shouldn’t have hair down to her buttocks.
Kumsa knows now, however, that there was more to the haircut than that. In Ethiopia, women who cut their hair are often in mourning.
Martha Kumsa was born in Dembi Dollo, a small town 800 kilometres southwest of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, near the border of Sudan.
The youngest daughter of a Presbyterian minister, she was named Martha after the Christian nurse who delivered her. The name she holds close to her heart is her middle name, Kuwee, the name of a heroine in Oromo history. But Kumsa wasn’t allowed to go by Kuwee in Ethiopia, where the Oromo people, the largest ethnic group in the country, are still struggling for equality.
Read more at source: Professor Martha Kuwee Kumsa: Unsung heroine and iron lady!
Related:-
Oromia: OMN: Qophii Jiruuf jireenyaa Artist Dirribee Gadaa Bit 28, 2017. OMN: Interview with one of the most creative minds in Oromo music and art, artist singer Dirribee Gadaa March 29, 2017
Posted by OromianEconomist in Muscians and the Performance Of Oromo Nationalism, Music.Tags: #OromoProtests, Africa music, Dirribee Gadaa, Inspirational Oromo Woman, Inspirational Oromo Women, Kemetic Africa, Music, Musicians and the Performance of Oromo Nationalism, Oromo Artist Dirribee Gadaa, Oromo music, Oromo News in Afaan Oromoo, Resistance music
4 comments
OMN: Artisti Dirribee Gadaa (Bit 28, 2017)
Mother of all earth December 31, 2015
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: #OromoProtests 2015, Africa, Hawi Tazara, Human Rights violations against Oromo People, Inspirational Oromo Woman, Inspirational Oromo Women, Mother of all earth, Oromia, Oromo, Oromo woman Artist
1 comment so far
When I was a kid growing up in Ethiopia, I used to closely watch how the man around me acted towards women. I followed their characters and tried to learn from them. See, for a young boy like me, there was nothing more important than emulating them. The older ones in my community did things in a respectful manner towards women and girls. They talked to them in different way they do to us boys. Even when we mess around and get in trouble, we were scolded differently. One night we were watching a TV, a younger lady walked in and the older gentleman wanted her to take his seat. I was a little taken a back by his action. Later that night I asked him why he did what he did and he told me “A women is a mother of all earth, everyone comes into the world from a mother’s womb. No one knows who the mother give birth to, a king or a Pop. You should always respect a women because that is a measure of a just man”
The quote sound much better in our language (apologize for the lack of good translation) but it thought me a very important lesson in my young age. A women is a mother of all earth!
I am sure you heard about the current situation in Ethiopia and Oromo protest against the illegal master plan to take the land from poor farmers to give it to private foreign companies and government cronies. I am sure you heard the government killed 100 plus, injured hundreds of protesters and imprisoned over a thousand activists. The images of dead students some at the ripe age of teens and some in college years are televised and broadcasted in diaspora TV stations. Every single one of them are sad and infuriating. Here is a story of one of the thousands that are detained and tourtured by Federal security forces in Ethiopia.
Meet artist Hawi Tefera. The famous Oromo female singer Hawi Tezera was detained and tortured by the Ethiopian Federal police for releasing an Afan Oromo single music that’s critical of the Ethiopian government’s affairs, i.e. the Master Plan and the killings following the protests against the Master Plan, in the Federal State of Oromia. The single, which was released on December 15, 2015, was produced using the traditional Oromo protest genre called Geerarsa.
Upon the intervention of the Oromian State police, Hawi was released from her ordeal only to be imprisoned again over the last few days. In that time interval, activists able to take a photo of her pain inflicted body and no one knows where she is and how she is doing.
Here is the song she released.
Her story really bothered me and pained me. Who are the federal police officers that tortured her. How does a government with a good standing with the world, be able to do this without consequences? when do the world fell this low to do nothing while artists, students and farmers summarily executed because they protested.
Yes, in Ethiopia, the government is above the law. But when we torture the mother of all earth, bad karma will torture as back very soon.
Free Hawi Tefera!!
Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere!
Related:-
Oromia: Famous Oromo female singer Hawi Tezera feared to be under another torture, activists say. #OromoProtests
Oromo Speaks: Some of the Collected Inspirational Speeches (Interviews) of Oromo Women September 29, 2015
Posted by OromianEconomist in Afaan Publication, African Beat, Amane Badhaso, Artist Almaz Tafarraa, Ateetee (Siiqqee Institution), Ayantu Tibeso, Inspirational Oromo Women, Oromia, Oromian Voices, Oromo Culture, Oromo First, Oromo Identity, Oromo Sport, Oromummaa, Safuu: the Oromo moral value and doctrine.Tags: Africa, African culture, African Studies, Inspirational Oromo Women, Oromia, Oromo culture, Oromo people, Oromo Youth, Oromummaa
1 comment so far
15-Year-Old Haawii’s Moving Speech on the Importance of Media, OMN and the Struggle to Uphold Afan Oromo
Mini Documentary by Seenaa Jimjimo
‘The Oromo Community Association in Chicago was featured on Chicago Public Radio’s Worldviewprogram on Wednesday, October 20, 2010. Listen below the full segment of the program on the Oromo people, the Oromo Community Association in Chicago, and the benefit jazz concert that the Association will hold on October 24, 2010.From the Chicago Public Radio: There are an estimated 40 million Oromo in Ethiopia, which makes them the nation’s largest ethnic group. Their numbers extend into Kenya and Somalia as well. Yet, despite their wide influence in the Horn of Africa, many people have never heard of the Oromo. Seenna Jimjimo of Chicago’s Oromo Community Association and Kadiro Elemo talk with Jerome about the Oromo culture, the struggle for independence and the local Oromo community in Chicago.’ Source:Gadaa.com
Listen:
Related references:
https://www.oromiamedia.org/2015/03/omn-gaafiif-deebii-artist-bohaarsituu-obsaa-bitootessa-16-2015/
Related References to Inspiring Oromo Women:http://www.oromotv.com/category/oromo-women/
Pinnacle of Excellence in High School: Valedictorian Biiftu Duresso | An Oromo Inspiration June 29, 2015
Posted by OromianEconomist in Inspirational Oromo Women.Tags: Biiftu Duresso, Inspirational Oromo Women
add a comment
FEATURE –Pinnacle of Excellence in High School: Valedictorian Biiftu Duresso | An Oromo Inspiration
(Fox News NY) Biiftu Duresso was the valedictorian this year at Wilson Magnet High School in Rochester. She gave a moving tribute to her parents in her speech this weekend. Her father Jamal Abdullahi raised Biiftu while working as an assistant custodian at his daughter’s high school.
“My parents Jamal and Zubaida made their way to Rochester, New York from Ethiopia in the 80’s and 90’s,” Biiftu said in her speech. “They had the audacity to imagine something better for me and my siblings.”
It was a long journey. Her father escaped Ethiopia for Somalia and eventually got refugee status from the U.S. government and headed to New York. Biiftu is headed to Columbia University’s Barnard College in the fall. She homes to become a doctor and open a clinic in Ethiopia to help the people who are not as fortunate as her family.
The poem ‘Homeland’ (Biyya too) stared in Oromia Media Network, AOA Show June 14, 2015
Posted by OromianEconomist in Africa, Inspirational Oromo Women, Oromo Literature, Oromo Media Network.Tags: Africa, African Studies, AOA Show, Homeland (Biyya too), Inspirational Oromo Women, Mammaaksa Oromoo, OMN
add a comment
Related:
You must be logged in to post a comment.