BY STAFF REPORTER
In the northwest of Ethiopia, a community of around 500 people founded by a once labeled “crazy” man, Zumra Nuru Mohammed, exists.
Unlike most of the communities in Ethiopia, the Awramba community is not ethnic based. All people in the community have no religion as distinct from most communities in Ethiopia. They believe in hard work and being good to people. They keep their houses and their surrounding clean. Theft is seen as very obscene.
The village is unique not only for its attitudes toward gender, religion, and education, but for the social security it provides its members in need. There are formal committees to provide services which include: education, to receive guests, to take care of patients, the elderly and children, and community health. They have established a literacy campaign for adults, a library, and a preschool. Despite living in a culture which practices early marriage,
the people of Awramba have decided girls should marry only after reaching the age of 18, and boys at or above 22.
The village invests a lot of energy in educating its children and diversifying its economy. It also embraces gender equality. You will see women here doing what is traditionally considered “men’s work,” like plowing, which effectively doubles the workforce.
Awramba is a community of individuals, currently in their hundreds, who share the same view and philosophy of life, according to Tefera Alemu.
This Ethiopian community was established when, one visionary man, was granted by the communist government of the time free land to realize his childhood goal.
His name is Zumra. Zumra is considered as a man with unique vision and exceptional personality. Although he did not go to a formal school and attend modern education, Zumra gives any visitor the impression that he is someone who did lots of reading and is very well familiar with communist principles.
As to him, what drove him to create this community was the discrimination and inequality that he observed in his society. He was also against a number of Ethiopian cultural values: the excessive domestic burden on women, the extended mourning periods during the loss of loved ones (taking up to 40 days) and the like harmful traditional practices.
Zumra also used to advocate that human beings have the power to get rid of vices such as lying, cheating, stealing and the like unethical behaviors that are harmful and have detrimental impacts on communities.
When he set out to establish this community in which everyone is equal and where there is no room for unwanted human behaviors, his seemingly utopian community was not taken seriously. Very few thought that the Awramba will survive decades and maintain the values it was first established for, Tefera illustrated.
The Awramba community is a self-sufficient one that follows four principles: respecting equality of women, respecting children’s rights, caring for the elderly and avoiding bad deeds. Later, they also added “Accepting all humans as brothers and sisters” to the list, according to a piece produced by Maheder Haileselassie and posted on ‘witness website’.
As to her, the community mainly uses weaving as a source of income and has ordinary members and union members. The union members work according to their abilities, sharing different tasks like weaving, farming, attending the elderly, guarding, etc. The profit they make from sales is equally shared between the members at the end of the year regardless of gender, input or capability.
By the same token, Tefera noted that the major source of livelihood of this unique Ethiopian community is farming. They also engage in weaving and spinning for their clothing needs. Representatives of the community go outside the territory to a nearby market where they will sell surplus production and get needed commodities.
There is no such thing where one will be handed the responsibility of doing a specific task in the community. Every task is done on rotation.
Most importantly there is no community leader. The Awrambas have their own constitution to which every member of the community is adhere to. Whenever there is someone who breaks the community’s codes, members convene and actions are taken in accordance with the constitution. The biggest penalty will be expulsing the individual from the community, as he indicated.
Although the community once used to educate each other on a small blackboard under the shade of a tree, now all children are sent to a kindergarten built by the community to memorize the community’s values by heart before joining elementary school. Elderly people are also taken care of in a house built for them.
The Awrambas have their own schooling system. Students start their classes by vowing never to commit sins like lying, cheating, swearing. This trend apart from helping them to create self-disciplined and responsible citizens, it is crucial to transfer communities’ cultural values and norms; and instilled them into their offspring since early childhood.
Although every child lives with his/her parent, he/she is a collective responsibility of the community. In the case where, for example, there is a widow in the community, everyone takes turn to fill the gap created by the deceased one by filling the domestic gaps. And in the case where both parents are passed away, the children are immediately adopted by the community, he further stated.
What is more, women are considered to be equal with their counterparts and are not limited to simply house chores, whereas men have the responsibility of helping women with household tasks. Due to this, the community is a haven especially for divorced and widowed single parents whom in many other villages would have had no choice but to get married again or fall into poverty, said Maheder.
She also stressed that the Awramba community system seems to work perfectly fine, but one thing to bear in mind as to her is that it has not yet created a guaranteed space to fit its younger and educated generation. So, it remains to be seen if this system will stand the test of time.
As it is stated in various pieces, Awrambas work together industriously, they are disciplined and self-confident. Women have equal rights as men and there is no distinction in divisions of labor between men and women.
The Ethiopian Herald February 2/2021
