Awra Amba RJ 300612 EN - Contacter un comité local d'Attac

6. External relations
The relations are day-to-day relations with neighbouring communities, either through school students
or through neighbours, clients of the café, the shop or the mill. Relations with Ethiopians living far
away are conducted on the one hand through the administrative and trade relations within the
Amhara region, on the other hand through the activist exchanges, either the participation of Zumra or
other Awra Amba members to radio and television broadcasts, or conferences in different public
structures, or through the visit in the village of very many isolated people and above all of groups.
Awra Amba received so 1700 visitors from 2003 to May 2005 (At05/7), 1300 visitors more until the
end of 2007 (Ya08/141), and 6000 in 2009 (Jo10b/10), which would be considerably greater than
during the former years: it is probably 6000 visitors until 2009, i.e. 3000 since the end of 2007
(Question 38 in Annex). These figures are quite considerable for a small village. Among these
visitors, some foreigners, either tourists, or working in Ethiopia or journalists.
6.1. Relations with neighbouring communities
The women of the village rarely wear traditional clothes, unlike women of the neighbouring villages:
it shows without doubt a refusal to accept the traditional customs, as well as the distance of
community members with the behaviours of their neighbours. Awra Amba is perceived by its
neighbours as a deviant, suspicious, secret, cruel, lazy and pagan caste (At05/66):
- Deviant and suspicious, because it has definitely a culture and behaviours very different from the
traditional Amhara society: this assessment is mainly supported by neighbouring Muslims and by
old Orthodox Christians;
- Secret, because its members do not mix with their neighbours, as detailed below;
- Cruel, because they do not go with the relatives of the deceased during funerals (see section 4.6)
and are not crying and wailing after the death of a relative;
- The use of the term lazy is connected to the infringement by men of the traditional sharing of
duties: they are not without doubt real men. This assessment is nevertheless not general, since
many others characterize them as hard working, especially the Orthodox neighbours and the
relatively poor neighbours (At05/66 & 71);
- Pagan, because the community does not respect any of the religious Muslim or Orthodox rites.
The lack of religion and above all of respect of religious rites raises obviously a serious problem for
the members of neighbouring communities, for which their observance is essential (Yi07/66-68 &
77). For Me09/74, it is the fundamental reason, which leads to distrust for any innovation coming
from Awra Amba. It could explain that the Muslim neighbours are more severe with the community
members than the Orthodox neighbours, most of the inhabitants of the village having a Muslim
background and having in some way recanted their faith. But in addition, it makes difficult the
relations between children from Awra Amba and children from other communities in the shared
school: during their games, how to play with children, who are unable swearing by God that such a
thing or such a word is exact? How to play with children who have no religion?
The assessment of the neighbours is therefore strongly negative. It was built over the history of
creation of Awra Amba, characterized by the hostility of neighbours for reasons of culture and land
sharing. The stabilisation of the community, its success, its external recognition, the daily contact of
its members have probably mitigated this ostracism, as reported by Yi07/62: the cross-cultural
relationships seem better when compared with previous years (Yi09/92), religion and funerals
remaining the black spots (Yi07/63). The media and political success of Awra Amba fuels obviously
71 /85