Silence. Then the whole class clapped. Even Chaltu, the girl who always sat at the back and never smiled, looked at me with something like respect. That day, I learned: walaloo isn’t just poetry. It’s the truth your tongue finds when your heart is too full.
“ Mana barumsaa koo, Si hin irraanfatani. Walaloon kee nannanaa jira. ” (My school, You are not forgotten. Your song still echoes.)
“ Mana barumsaa, mana ifaa, Bakka hubanni biqilaa… ” (School, house of light, Where understanding sprouts…)
Then I remembered my mother, a cleaner who never finished school, who’d wake at 4 a.m. to walk me here so I could “eat letters” ( qubee nyaadhu ). The words poured out: walaloo mana barumsaa koo
And I smiled, because mana barumsaa is never just a building. It’s the first place someone told you that your voice matters.
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.
“ Mana barumsaa koo, Ati qabda ija koo fi abjuu koo. Yeroo addunyaan natti dadhabde, Ati natti jette: ‘Bareeduma.’ ” (My school, You hold my eye and my dream. When the world tired of me, You said: ‘You are beautiful.’) Silence
I stood there a long time. Then I took a piece of chalk from my pocket — I always carry one — and beneath those words, I wrote:
But oh, the walaloo — the poetry — that lived in those walls.
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. That day, I learned: walaloo isn’t just poetry
Years passed. I grew taller, the benches grew shorter. Barsiisaa Girma retired. The odaa tree lost a branch in a storm. But the school remained — stubborn, poor, but alive .
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.
Of course! Here’s an interesting, heartfelt story about Walaloo Mana Barumsaa Koo (a nostalgic, poetic reflection on my school). The Echoes of Walaloo Mana Barumsaa Koo
One day, he pointed at me. My face burned. I stood slowly.
But then Chaltu — the silent girl — stood. Her voice cracked like dry earth meeting rain: