Goba

Goba is a comparatively young town. The Bale highlands were settled by Oromo pastoralists and farmers, and the area was brought under imperial rule during the southern expansion of the Ethiopian empire in the late 19th century. The advance of Ras Darge Sahle Selassie into southern Arsi and Bale led to a camp at Goba in 1900, on a site that held a medieval Christian rock church or monastery, and the town grew from that camp into the administrative centre of the Bale highlands.

The mountains kept the town at the edge of national events for much of the 20th century. The Bale revolt of the 1960s, a rural uprising against imperial land and tax policy in these highlands, ran from 1963 until 1970, and rebels attacked the town twice between November 1965 and March 1966. The Derg years that followed brought land reform, resettlement schemes and villagisation to the district. Bale Mountains National Park was established to protect the Afro-alpine moorland and the mountain nyala, and the road south from Goba across the Sanetti Plateau, among the highest in Africa, opened the range to vehicles.

Goba was the capital of the former Bale Province until the province was abolished under the constitution of 1995, and it has continued since then as an administrative centre in the Oromia region, with government offices, a hospital, colleges and the trade of a productive farming district. The national park was inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2023, and tourism to it has become a steady part of the local economy, though the town remains far smaller and quieter than Robe, its neighbour a short way down the road, which has taken most of the area's commercial growth.

Goba is an Oromo town, and Afaan Oromo, written in the Latin alphabet, is the language of the street, the market and the schools. The Arsi Oromo of these highlands keep the memory of the Gadaa system, the age-grade institution that organised Oromo society into generations holding authority in turn; it is on UNESCO's intangible heritage list and remains a source of identity and ceremony even where it no longer governs daily affairs. Irreecha, the thanksgiving at the end of the rains, is the great annual celebration.

Islam is strong across the Bale highlands, and the calendar of Ramadan and Eid sets the shape of the year for many families, although the 2007 census recorded an Orthodox Christian majority within Goba itself, with a large Muslim minority and a smaller Protestant one; mosques, churches and meeting halls stand within a few streets of each other. Hospitality follows the same forms found across Ethiopia: guests are received with coffee roasted, ground and brewed in front of them, and the third round is expected.

Horses matter here more than in most of the country. The Bale horse is a local breed, and riding is both transport and sport in the highlands, with horses hired out to trekkers in the national park. Honey from forest hives, woven baskets and the long woollen or cotton wraps worn against the cold are the everyday crafts of the district, and singing and dancing at weddings and at Irreecha are the main public performances.

Goba had about 32,000 residents at the 2007 national census, a small town by Ethiopian standards, and it works as an administrative and service centre rather than a commercial one. Government offices, a hospital, colleges and schools employ a sizeable share of the working population, and the surrounding countryside supplies the rest of the economy: barley, wheat, pulses, potatoes, cattle and sheep, with honey collected from forest hives on the southern slopes.

Housing is low, built of stone, timber and corrugated iron, laid out along a few paved roads with unpaved lanes running off them. Robe, about 15 kilometres away, has grown faster, taking the zone's larger market and many of its newer businesses, and the two towns work as a pair, with minibuses running between them all day.

The day begins early and cold, with wood smoke over the roofs and buses leaving at first light. Trade peaks in the late morning, and the afternoon is slower, given over to coffee and, for some, to khat. Electricity and water supply interruptions, the state of the mountain roads in the rains, and the pressure of farming and grazing on the edges of the national park are the recurring local concerns, as is the insecurity that has affected parts of Oromia in recent years.

The food of the Bale highlands is grain and dairy country cooking. Barley is the staple crop at this altitude, eaten as a thick porridge or as dense flatbread, and wheat and pulses follow. Injera made from teff or from barley and wheat flour is served with shiro, the chickpea purée, with misir lentils, with cooked greens and, on days of celebration, with meat stewed in berbere or sautéed as tibs.

Oromo dishes appear alongside the national ones. Chuko, or michirra, mixes roasted and ground barley with spiced butter and is eaten with the fingers or with milk; ittoo, a meat stew, and qincee, a coarse grain porridge, belong to the same tradition. Butter, sour milk and fresh cheese are plentiful in a district that keeps a great many cattle, and the honey gathered in the Harenna forest below the mountains is sold in combs in the market.

Coffee is drunk constantly, and the forest on the southern side of the range is one of the places where Arabica grows wild beneath the canopy. Macchiato is served in the town's cafés, the jebena ceremony at home, and tea is taken sweet and heavily spiced. Tella, the home-brewed barley beer, is made in the countryside, and bottled lagers are sold in the town's bars.