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The Indigenous and the Foreign

The Role of Religion in Nineteenth-Century Oromia

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Integration and Peace in East Africa

Abstract

The Oromo believe in a supernatural being called Waaqa, “who is almighty, omniscient, all-good, all-wise, in short, possessing all the qualities which we Christians attribute to our God.”1 The belief in Waaqa is uniform throughout Oromia. Among the most southern Oromo, those of the Tana River in Kenya, the missionary Thomas Wakefield observed in the second half of the nineteenth century the belief in a Waaqa (God) who is good, wise, and righteous. He also observed that the Oromo believe in an afterlife in which the soul becomes ekeraa (a spirit of a dead person believed to appear on earth) after death.2 The Oromo belief in Waaqa tokkicha (one God) is remarkable. As Daniel Kidder writes: “They have no idols; nor do they, as most of the African pagans do, make any use of those fetishes, or charms, supposed by the superstitious to be remedies against evil spirits and obstinate diseases.”3

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Notes

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© 2012 Tsega Etefa

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Etefa, T. (2012). The Indigenous and the Foreign. In: Integration and Peace in East Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137091635_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137091635_6

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-29788-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-09163-5

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