"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 84"
The midday sun blazed over Ethiopia's Bale Mountains, where golden grasslands stretched to the horizon and Oromo pastoralists moved their cattle in slow caravans. Su Yao's jeep bounced along rutted tracks, passing women in red sari dresses carrying woven baskets and children chasing goats, until it reached a nomadic camp circled by acacia trees. In the shade of a giant fig tree, a group of weavers sat on cowhide mats, their fingers flying as they wove wool threads into a large rectangular cloth. Their leader, a 60-year-old woman with braided hair adorned with cowrie shells and a shamma (woolen 披巾) draped over her shoulders named Halima, looked up as they approached, holding a finished piece—warm browns, reds, and whites decorated with geometric patterns and animal motifs that seemed to breathe with the spirit of the savanna. "You've come for the shamma," she said, her Oromo dialect rolling like distant thunder, gesturing to piles of textiles laid out to air in the breeze.
The Oromo people of Ethiopia have crafted shamma for over 400 years, a craft intertwined with their nomadic lifestyle and Waaqeffanna faith. The shamma—a versatile woolen 披巾 worn as clothing, blanket, and prayer mat—serves as both survival tool and cultural marker: its thickness indicates the season it was made for, patterns denote clan affiliation (Borana, Guji, or Arsi), and the number of stripes represents the weaver's age. Each motif carries symbolic meaning: zigzags represent cattle trails, circles symbolize water holes, and stylized cows honor the sacred role of livestock. Woven from wool of Oromo cattle and sheep raised on highland pastures, each shamma requires up to three months of work, with weaving done during the dry season when "Waaq (God) watches over the threads." Dyes are made from plants and minerals of the Ethiopian plateau: indigo for blue, madder root for red, and charcoal for black, with recipes guarded by qallu (spiritual leaders) through oral tradition. The process begins with a buna qalaa (coffee ceremony) to bless the wool and includes hymns to Waaq sung while working to "infuse the cloth with nur (light)." Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this resilient craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored Oromo traditions while adding durability to the wool fibers. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "nomadic identity" and "innovation" was as different as the savanna's heat and the ocean's cool.
Halima's granddaughter, Amira, a 23-year-old who ran a mobile weaving school while studying pastoralist ecology, held up a shamma with a pattern of interlocking cows and stars—motifs that blend Waaqeffanna cosmology with daily life. "This is for a gadaa (age-set ceremony) when young men become warriors," she said, tracing the motifs that represent protection and prosperity. "My grandmother dyed the threads during Birraa (rainy season) when Waaq sends life-giving water—too many cows, and the cloth brings greed; too few, and it lacks abundance. You don't just make shamma—you weave the journey of our people into wool."
Su Yao's team had brought portable looms and synthetic dye blends, intending to mass-produce simplified Oromo patterns using their seaweed-metal blend for a "East African nomad" home decor line. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-woven cow motifs, the women froze, their wooden spindles clattering to the ground. Halima's husband, Abdi, a 65-year-old gadaa leader with a staff carved from acacia wood and a face etched with tribal scars, stood and raised his hands to the sun. "You think machines can capture the afaan (voice) of our ancestors?" he said, his voice booming like a storm over the grasslands. "Shamma carries the dust of our migrations and the wisdom of our qallu. Your metal has no dust, no wisdom—it's a desert stone, not a living tradition."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Oromo weavers shear sheep during the Magaalaa (market festival), offering the first fleece to the poor to "purify the wool with generosity." The wool is washed in river water said to be blessed by Waaq, where women leave grains as offerings to the water spirits, and spun on drop spindles decorated with beads made from ostrich eggshells. Looms are constructed from acacia wood, which repels insects and "holds the scent of the savanna," and weavers tie small pouches of frankincense to the loom's frame to "keep the threads pure." The seaweed-metal blend, despite its organic origins, was viewed as an intrusion. "Your thread comes from salt waters that drown our rivers," Halima said, placing the sample on a woven mat decorated with cow motifs. "It will never hold the nur of Waaq."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the madder root dye, turning it a murky orange and causing the wool fibers to weaken. "It angers Waaq," Amira said, holding up a ruined swatch where the cow pattern had frayed. "Our shamma grows more sacred with each journey, like a qallu's prayer staff that accumulates blessings. This will decay like a dried-up water hole, erasing our connection to the land."
Then disaster struck: a severe drought parched the Bale Mountains, withering the pastures and killing hundreds of cattle and sheep. The stored wool, kept in a leather tent, was damaged by dust storms, and their supply of rare indigo dye (traded from the coast) was exhausted. With the Irreecha (thanksgiving festival) approaching, when new shamma are worn to honor Waaq's blessings, the community faced a crisis of both culture and survival. Abdi, performing a rain ritual by sacrificing a goat and reciting hymns to Waaq, blamed the team for disturbing the natural balance. "You brought something foreign to our sacred grasslands," he chanted, as the wind carried dust across the camp. "Now Waaq is angry, and he withholds his rain."
That night, Su Yao sat with Halima in her shelter (portable hut), where a clay pot of doro wat (spicy chicken stew) simmered over a dung fire, filling the air with the scent of berbere spice and coffee. The walls were hung with shamma textiles and leather bags, and a small altar held a wooden carving of Waaq and a bowl of sacred grains. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping buna (coffee) from a clay cup. "We came here thinking we could honor your craft, but we've only shown we don't understand its soul."
Halima smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of injera (fermented flatbread) with lentil stew. "The drought is not your fault," she said. "The grasslands breathe in and out—that is Waaq's design. My grandmother used to say that even thin wool can keep you warm, like a small community can survive hardship. But your thread—maybe it's a chance to show that shamma can tell new stories, without losing our Oromo heart. Young people buy clothes from Addis Ababa. We need to show them our weaving still speaks to Waaq."
Su Yao nodded, hope rising like the moon over the mountains. "What if we start over? We'll help dig water wells to irrigate the pastures, clean the damaged wool, and trade for new indigo from Djibouti. We'll learn to weave shamma by hand, singing your hymns to Waaq. We won't copy your clan patterns. Instead, we'll create new ones together—designs that merge your cows with our ocean waves, honoring both your grasslands and the sea. And we'll let Abdi bless the metal thread with a buna qalaa ceremony, so it carries Waaq's favor."
Amira, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside, her sandals crunching on the earth floor. "You'd really learn to weave the lafa qulqulluu (grassland) pattern? It takes 20,000 knots for one shamma—your back will ache, your fingers will blister from the coarse wool."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the gadaa poems you recite while working. Respect means knowing your history."
Over the next five months, the team immersed themselves in Oromo life. They helped dig a series of wells using traditional techniques, their hands calloused from shoveling dirt, and traveled with Abdi to a gadaa council meeting to learn about Oromo governance, participating in the buna qalaa rituals that bind the community. They sat on cowhide mats, weaving until their arms ached, as the women sang hymns to Waaq that echoed across the grasslands. "Each thread must be woven with the same care as we tend our cattle," Halima said, demonstrating the shuttle technique. "Too loose, and the cloth lets in the cold; too tight, and it loses its breath. Like our people—strong but flexible."
They learned to dye wool in clay pots over dung fires, their clothes stained red and blue as Amira taught them to add shea butter to the madder dye to "make the color last like our oral traditions." "You have to stir the dye with a singing stick," she said, her voice rising in a melodic chant. "Waaq listens to beauty, and the color will be true." They practiced the plain weave technique that gives shamma its distinctive texture, their progress slow but steady as Halima's 86-year-old mother, Fatuma, who remembered the Italian occupation, corrected their work with a sharp eye. "The stripes must flow like our migrations," she said, her gnarled fingers adjusting a thread. "A jagged line means a lost path."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and madder dye, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of shea butter and acacia resin, a mixture Oromos use to preserve leather. The butter sealed the metal, preventing discoloration, while the resin let it bond with wool fibers—a combination Abdi declared "carries the light of Waaq" after the buna qalaa ceremony. "It's like giving the thread an Oromo soul," she said, showing Halima a swatch where the red now blazed against the metal's subtle glow.
Fiona, inspired by the way Ethiopia's rivers flow to the Red Sea, designed a new pattern called "Cattle and Currents," merging cow motifs with wave patterns in seaweed-metal thread. The cattle gradually walk into ocean waves, symbolizing how Oromo pastoralists connect to global waters. "It honors your herds and our sailors," she said, and Abdi nodded, pressing the fabric to his forehead in a blessing. "Waaq's creation includes both grassland and sea," he said. "This cloth understands His plan."
As the rains finally came and the pastures turned green, the community held an Irreecha celebration, with men in white shamma dancing the somo and women singing thanksgiving hymns. They unveiled their first collaborative shamma at the sacred lake, where it was held up to catch the sunlight like a banner of red and gold. The fabric featured the "Cattle and Currents" pattern, its wool fibers strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that glowed like sunlight on water, and traditional clan borders that seemed to pulse with nomadic energy.
Halima draped the shamma over Su Yao's shoulders, as the community chanted praises to Waaq. "This cloth has two homes," she said, her voice rising with the music. "One from our grasslands, one from your sea. But both are blessed by Waaq."
As the team's jeep drove away from the camp, Amira ran alongside, waving a small package. Su Yao rolled down the window, and she tossed it in: a scrap of wool dyed red with madder, stitched with a tiny cow and wave in seaweed-metal, wrapped in acacia leaves. "To remember us by," read a note in Oromo and Amharic. "Remember that grassland and sea both drink from Waaq's rain—like your thread and our wool."
Su Yao clutched the package as the Bale Mountains faded into the distance, the setting sun painting the grasslands in hues of orange and purple. She thought of the hours spent weaving under the fig tree, the hymns to Waaq that seemed to carry the voices of Oromo ancestors, the way the metal thread had finally learned to move with the wool. The Oromos had taught her that tradition isn't about rigid nomadism—it's about carrying cultural identity forward with resilience, letting old patterns evolve while staying rooted in the land that sustains a people.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Albanian team: photos of Lira holding their collaborative xhubleta at a mountain festival. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new cow—Ethiopian grasslands and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, a kirar (lyre) played a haunting melody that echoed across the savanna, a reminder of the music that connects all pastoral peoples. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless nomadic cultures to honor, countless stories of survival to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with humility—listening to Waaq, honoring the weavers—the tapestry would only grow more vibrant, a testament to the beauty of all things bound by thread and land.