The members of the Awra Amba Community initially came to change the harmful traditional practices practiced in Ethiopia. The community practices the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
In 1972 we established and began to practice a new and progressive way of life. We created a good social system by living and working together, sympathetically, peacefully and cheerfully. We treated one another as brothers and sisters. This idea was established for all people in the world.
The founder: Zumra Nuru
The community was founded by Zumra Nuru, who comes from the rural part of the Amhara region in northern Ethiopia. At the age of two, he began asking questions about the world around him to people he thought would have the answers. No one could answer him.
From the age of four, he began to talk about issues such as women’s equality, children’s rights, caring for the elderly, and avoiding bad speech and bad deeds. However, his family and the society around him didn’t accept his ideas.
At the age of thirteen, Zumra began traveling from place to place in search of people who shared his ideas. During this time, he had no one to talk to, no food to eat, and no place to sleep. He was forced to sleep in the jungle, surrounded by wild animals. Although he spent five years in these difficult conditions, he was unable to find like-minded people.
After this time, Zumra returned to his family and became a farmer like everyone else. He began to share his harvest with people who were unable to work because of age or health problems. In addition to sharing his harvest with the needy during the dry season, he continued to look for people who would share his ideas.
After several years in this situation, Zumra met some people in a nearby district, Fogera Woreda, who were open to hearing his ideas. As a result, he left his former community and went to live with these like-minded people. Together they founded the Awra Amba community in 1972.
In 2008, Zumra was named an Honorary Ambassador for Peace by the Interfaith Peace-building Initiative, and the community received three gold awards for implementing the “Golden Rule” or the ethic of reciprocity, which states, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or “Do not do to others as you would have them do to you.”
On June 12, 2010, Zumra received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Jimma for his original philosophy of community development and his strong and successful commitment to improving the lives of his grassroots community.
Zumra’s story in his own words
«When I was four years old, I shared my thoughts with the surrounding communities and discovered four basic principles (concepts), including respecting women’s equality, respecting children’s rights, helping people who are unable to work due to health problems or aging, and changing bad behavior. However, I was ostracized for my ideals.
When I turned thirteen, I was desperate to meet like-minded people. To satisfy my desire, I decided to go out and find people who might share my ideas. No one from my family or community came with me.
Surviving difficult times
I traveled from place to place. People I met asked me what my ultimate desire was. I replied that my longing for like-minded people was similar to someone who was hungry or thirsty. Even if all the people in the world were with me, I knew that I would not be satisfied until I could find those people who were willing to share my ideas. Hoping to find such individuals, I traveled to Gojam, Wollo, and Gonder.
My trip didn’t go as I thought it would. During the day I had no one to talk to; at night I had no place to sleep. I often climbed a tree in a field to sleep. After spending some time on the tree, I felt a tingling sensation.
I would become hopeless and come down to the ground. When I came down from the tree, wild animals came and surrounded me. At daybreak, the wild animals left me alone. During those times, I had no food to eat and no water to drink.
I traveled alone for five years, sharing my ideas in various social gatherings away from my parents. When I did that, people said: “What is this child saying? He has big ideas, but who would ever put them into practice? I couldn’t make people understand my ideas. I wished that I could get people to listen to me, or at least to ask me what I had in mind. But I couldn’t do either. I decided to return to my home village and become a farmer like my parents.
They thought I was mentally ill because I had moved from place to place on my own. When I finally asked them to find me a fiancée, they said that if I was thinking of marriage, I must be cured of my insanity. They soon found me a fiancée and I got married. I thought I would find peace within myself if I shared my harvest with the elderly or those with health problems.
When my parents saw me giving my harvest to the needy, they told me that I hadn’t been healed after all; the disease I had caught couldn’t be cured. They said that I didn’t eat and drink well or wear good clothes, that my relatives didn’t get a share of my wealth. I gave it away to non-relatives. When I realized this discrimination among people, I felt lonely. I was being ostracized by the community because of my unique ideas. I couldn’t live in such isolation.
Getting allies
I still believed that I could find people who would accept my ideas. I began to travel again during the dry season, returning home to farm during the rainy season. I traveled for several years.
One year I was traveling from my village to Gondar and I met some farmers in Fogera Wereda who listened to me. When I realized that they shared my vision, I went back to them several times to discuss my ideas in detail. I thought that if I went there and lived with them, my wish might come true. So I left Estie Wereda and went to live with these people in Fogera Wereda in 1972. That is when the Awra Amba community was founded.
The first concept we discussed was about respecting women’s rights. The woman in her femininity is a mother and the man in his masculinity is a father. When they become mother and father, why did the woman become a nurse and the man became a commander?
If it is because of physical strength, then let us use that strength to work. If there is no mother, there is no father. If calling women our wives makes them seem like distant relatives, let us call them our mothers. Therefore, woman and man (mother and father) should have equal rights.
The second topic of our discussion was how to eradicate conflict from the world and how to create peace and paradise on earth. My new friends asked me how to eradicate conflict. I answered that conflict has no root. When we become aware of conflict, it is our duty to end it.
Conflict is a product of our imagination. Instead of imagining conflict, let us imagine love. The causes of conflict are mostly bad words and bad deeds. We don’t like it when someone does something wrong to us or talks badly to us, so we should also avoid bad speech and bad deeds. If we live like this, there will be no conflict.
The next question my friends asked me was how to achieve peace. I replied that peace can be achieved when people treat each other as brothers and sisters. If someone has a problem, we should all join hands to solve that person’s problem. This will make that person happy.
Seeing someone happy is our wealth. We should share his happiness.When we live harmoniously and treat each other with love, we feel joy. After creating a joyful life, we will bring about peace. When we create peace, we can create the paradise we want.
Creating paradise is what we do before death. Paradise cannot be created after death. Avoiding conflict and creating peace cannot be expected to come down from heaven. We have to make the effort to do it while we are alive.
My friends agreed with my ideas. We promised to put them into practice. When we began to practice our principles, the people who opposed our ideology became obstacles to our progress.
Even when they tried to harm us, we continued to share our ideas. Who do we mean by “educated people”? Do we mean academic intellectuals or religious leaders?
We decided to sacrifice our lives until they heard our concepts, because when educated people hear an idea and believe in it, they will raise it. If they do not believe in it, they will abandon it.
Escaping
As time went by, the neighboring people continued their hostility towards us and reported us to the Derg regime, the ruling government in Ethiopia at the time, claiming that we were members of “Woyanie”, their rival front. So the regime tried to kill us.
We fled from our village in February 1988 to the southern part of Ethiopia, Bonga. When there is migration, there is no occupation; when there is no occupation, there is no money.
At that time, we had nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and no money for medicine or treatment when we were sick: we lost most of our members and we buried their bodies under bushes. Despite these circumstances, we were determined to continue our goal of reaching educated people with our ideas.
Back to Awra Amba
Finally, in August 1993, we returned to our original place of residence, Awra Amba. When we returned, we found that our farmland had been occupied by neighboring farmers. We applied to the woreda, zonal and regional administrations to get our land back, but we couldn’t find a solution.
We were told that we would get our farmland when the proclamation on the redistribution of farmland would be implemented. In the meantime, the woreda administration gave us 17.5 acres of land to live on.
When the time came to redistribute the farmland, the regional government proclaimed an equal redistribution of farmland among the farmers. However, the group in charge of this task negotiated with the neighboring farmers and refused to give us enough land. As a result, we had no source of income and suffered from hunger and disease.
During this time, many of our community members died. Eventually, we realized that we could not live on agriculture alone, that we needed to do something else to survive. We decided to shift our focus to weaving.
Utopia became reality
From 1972 to 2001, we struggled to spread our ideas. But in 2001, many journalists started coming here and spreading our ideas in different media. One of the most successful dissemination of our idea to the Ethiopian people was prepared by the journalist Mekicha Engdayehu, the cameraman Getachew Mehari and Asmamaw. It was broadcast on Amhara TV in 2001.
Spreading my principles throughout the country allowed me to fulfill one of my childhood visions, which was to find people interested in my ideas. I missed this at the beginning of my childhood.
Since then, my dream has been to make people curious about my ideas and to get them to put those ideas into practice.
Even if people do not practice the ideas yet, they are interested in them. In the last decade, many people around the world have heard about my ideas through various media such as magazines, journals, radio, television, and the Internet. This is just the first step for me. Letting people know about my basic ideas is just the beginning.»
About our name
According to Zumra — the founder of the community — the origin of the name “Awra Amba” comes from the following legend…
A wild aquatic animal named awra came from the nearby river (or sea) and settled on the site (awra means an adult male animal that has a great leadership role in its family, such as a bumblebee (awra nib) or a rooster (awra doro).
The villagers living there would have tried to get him to leave, but to no avail. They would have said “awraw embi ale”, which means “awra refused to be dismissed”, hence the name Awra Amba.
According to another researcher, this animal would be a bull coming from the sea, and it is this animal that said no (embi).
The people of the community used to call the place Arba Amba until an Orthodox official told them in 1998 that this was not the historical name, which was Awra Amba. They changed the name to Awra Amba.
