Walaloo Mana Barumsaa Koo -

Last month, I drove six hours to visit Arabsa Primary School. The blue paint had faded to grey. The well was dry. The odaa tree had fallen completely.

Every Thursday, we had Yeroo Walaloo (Poetry Hour). We’d sit in a circle under the giant odaa tree whose roots had cracked the school’s back courtyard. Barsiisaa Girma, with his patched jacket and eyes like embers, would begin: “ Mana barumsaa, mana ifaa — School, house of light.” Then he’d point to a student. You had to finish the verse.

“ Bakka hawwiin coomaa dhabe, Bakka rakkoon darbe… ” (Where hunger loses its fat, Where suffering passes by…) walaloo mana barumsaa koo

But on the wall of my old classroom, someone had scribbled new words in Oromo:

We cried. Even Barsiisaa Girma wiped his glasses. Today, I am a teacher in a city school — clean windows, projectors, a library full of books. But sometimes, in the middle of a lesson, I close my eyes and I’m back there: the smell of rain on hot cement, the scratch of chalk, the laughter under the odaa tree. Last month, I drove six hours to visit Arabsa Primary School

And I smiled, because mana barumsaa is never just a building. It’s the first place someone told you that your voice matters.

One memory haunts me sweetly: The last day of 8th grade. We had no graduation party, no cake. Instead, we gathered under the odaa tree, and Barsiisaa Girma — now old, using a stick — asked us each to sing our own walaloo about the school. The odaa tree had fallen completely

One day, he pointed at me. My face burned. I stood slowly.

It wasn’t a grand school. No marble floors, no smartboards, no green field for football. Mana Barumsaa koo — my school — was a tired, weather-beaten building with chipped blue paint and windows that never fully closed. But to me, it was a universe.

One boy sang of the broken bell that rang late. A girl sang of the well where we washed our feet before class. I sang of the window near my desk, where a lizard always watched me solve math.

“ Barsiisaa Girma’s class. 1999–2007. Walaloo hin du'u. ” (Teacher Girma’s class. 1999–2007. The song does not die.)