In Awra Amba, a small community in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, men and women share the same work, religion is treated as a private matter, and religious holidays are working days.
A view of the Awra Amba community in the Amhara region, April 2010 (Robert Joumard, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0) [file photo]
The village was founded in 1972 by Zumra Nuru, a former wandering preacher who was 68 when the German public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk profiled the village in July 2019. He told its reporters, Sven Weniger and Michael Marek, that about 500 people live in Awra Amba and that others come in from the district to work.
Zumra said he herded cattle in neighbouring South Gondar until he was 13. Even as a child, he said, people told him he was not right in the head because he believed every person was of equal worth.
“Religion is a private matter. It belongs to you or to me,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether you are Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox. Everyone has the same God, so we are all equal.” He said there is no discrimination between men and women: where both can do the same physical work, both do it.
The community bans polygamy and child marriage. A man and a woman marry only if both want to, and no one under 18 may marry. “Polygamy undermines the relationship between a man and a woman,” Zumra said. “When two people choose each other, their relationship lasts longer.”
Neighbouring communities were hostile at first, and it was Awra Amba’s economic success that softened them, according to the report. The village runs a dairy, a grain mill, a tea house and a hostel, and earns money from tourists. Its school also takes children from other villages, and its library holds more than a thousand books.
Awra Amba has 144 families, and committees elected by residents run its affairs. Ayalsew Zumra, the founder’s son, said joining costs a one-time fee of 500 birr, then about 15 euros. Members who work in the cooperative share its income equally at the end of the year. Newcomers must first accept the community’s rules. “Saying ‘I am a good person’ is not enough,” he said. “We check that ourselves.”
The village also keeps a home for ten elderly residents, where members cook, clean and wash for those who can no longer do so. “We know nothing about a life in heaven after death,” said Worksew Yeshanew, a teacher and Zumra’s assistant. “We want to take care of the happiness of these people here on earth.”
Asked about the future, Zumra said he had no clear picture of what Awra Amba would become. “But I wish that the people who come here see in us, as in a mirror, what is possible, namely peace,” he said.
Sources: Deutschlandfunk – Äthiopien: Gelebte Utopie in Awra Amba