On the night of June 29th, a popular Ethiopian singer from the Oromo tribe was murdered and it immediately sparked several days of violence. The hospital closed early on the 30th and the drive home was so odd. The drivers knew and avoided the trouble areas, but the streets of Addis were barren with everyone not part of the mob sheltering at home. Work was canceled July 1st and 2nd and on the advice from everyone I knew, I stayed home as much as possible. The latest news I’ve heard is over 200 people were killed over the three days of violence.
While none of it was particularly fun, July 1st was the tensest day with several violent mobs spread throughout the city. One of the mobs was on the main street outside my apartment complex. It’s about 500m from my apartment to the main road, but for several hours I could see part of the mob and hear the chants of young guys running around with sticks. The craziest part though was that night.
The mob had dispersed in the early evening after a heavy rain had sent them all running for cover, but around 7pm they had started to reconvene on the road out front and had become bolder under the cover of darkness. In response, around a hundred men from my apartment complex gathered by our front gate (maybe 10m from my apartment) in order to deter any of the mob entering our complex to cause trouble. They armed themselves with sticks, shovels, mops, brooms, really anything they could use in a scuffle.
It was a scene out of days gone by, a community coming together and arming themselves in response to a shared threat. The mood was almost festive, but you could feel the tension running beneath the surface. It all came to a boiling point around 9pm when the police had pushed the mob back to directly in front of our side street and several hundred fled down our street. Some of the younger of the apartment’s guards ran towards the mob, but the police soon fired tear gas down own street and it put everyone in the same boat. While the tear gas was thickest about 400m from the apartments, it slowly wafted down and ended up gassing the entire complex.
While coughing and teary eyed themselves, the guys from our apartments ended up escorting the mob offshoot through our complex, away from the police, and out the back entrance. In all, it was a thankfully peaceful end to what had been potentially violent situation.
Our apartments were peaceful for the remainder of the riots and we returned to work soon after although the government shut down all internet for about the next two weeks which was more than a bit frustrating since the majority of my work requires the internet to do …
Turkey Alwan Travels