Bagaja Bidiru & Sora Ade

Gabra Historical Texts (1978-1982) Number: GHT015

North Horr

February 12, 1979

INTERVIEWED BY: Paul W. Robinson TRANSLATION BY: Wata Guyo Ibrae

“The Safar (Somali) went out to buy tusks. Elephant tusks. They brought their goods here to people. Other goods. How many cattle did we buy with one elephant [one pair of tusks]?

Thirty.

The tusks of one elephant bought thirty cattle.”

(Bagaja Bidiru & Sora Ade)

Biography

I interviewed Bagaja Bidiru and Sora Ade together on two occasions between 1979 and 1981: first at North Horr in February 1979 (GHT015), and again two years later at a seasonal well near Balessa (GHT029). Although I never learned whether they were close relatives or simply lifelong companions, they seemed inseparable as narrators of tradition and history. Their knowledge emerged not as two separate voices but as a conversation that had clearly been unfolding over many years.

From the beginning, I found immense pleasure in simply listening to them. One would begin a story, the other would complete it. One recalled a name, the other supplied a date or place. Occasionally one hesitated, only for the other to recover a forgotten detail. Their exchanges never felt competitive. Instead, they revealed a trust that comes only from decades of shared experience. Together they became more than the sum of their individual memories.

Their interests ranged widely across Gabra history. They spoke of the historical calendar, migrations, warfare, elephant hunting, pastoral life, environmental change, and the rebuilding of herds after epidemic livestock mortality from the great rinderpest panzootic. Yet what remains most memorable is not just the breadth of their knowledge, but the way in which that knowledge was created through conversation itself.

Meeting them again two years after our first encounter offered me a reminder that historical memory is always rooted in place. Our first conversation took place in a classroom in the small desert town of North Horr. The second unfolded far from any town, at a seasonal well, where families had gathered with their livestock during the dry season. There, surrounded by camels, sheep, goats, cattle, and the rhythms of everyday pastoral life, the conversation continued almost as though no time had passed between our meetings.

Bagaja and Sora remind us that oral history is not always carried by remarkable individuals working alone. It is equally preserved through enduring companionships, where each person’s memory strengthens, corrects, and completes the other’s. Their interviews remain among the most memorable and compelling examples in this collection of history remembered together.

Interview Summary

This interview brought together two respected Gabra elders, Bagaja Bidiru and Sora Ade, whose shared recollections provide one of the broadest historical conversations in the collection. Rather than focusing on a single event or theme, the discussion ranged across chronology, pastoral life, trade, warfare, environmental change, and the ways in which the Gabra remembered their past through named years and significant events.

The conversation began with the Gabra historical calendar, as the two elders reconstructed sequences of named years by linking each to memorable occurrences including raids, epidemics, eclipses, migrations, and environmental crises. Their discussion illustrates how historical chronology was preserved not through written records but through collective remembrance anchored in shared experience.

A major focus of the interview is the devastating cattle epidemic remembered as Chin Tite Guracha. Bagaja and Sora described the destruction of cattle herds, the resulting famine and hardship, and the long process through which livestock herds were rebuilt. Their account naturally broadened into discussions of raiding, exchange, and the importance of elephant hunting and the ivory trade, recalling a time when the tusks of a single elephant were be exchanged through Somali traders for as many as thirty cattle.

The elders also reflected on changing patterns of warfare and mobility. They described conflicts with neighboring peoples, the former importance of horses in Gabra society, and the gradual disappearance of horses during the colonial period. Throughout these discussions, places, wells, grazing lands, forests, and migration routes became reference points through which historical events were remembered, demonstrating the close relationship between landscape and historical knowledge.

Although the conversation spanned many subjects, a consistent theme united them: the resilience of pastoral communities in responding to environmental uncertainty, disease, conflict, and social change. Together, Bagaja and Sora offered both a rich reconstruction of Gabra history and as well an illuminating example of how historical knowledge itself was preserved through dialogue, shared memory, and the careful exchange of ideas between trusted companions.

Conversation notes

Looking back nearly fifty years later, what I remember most vividly is not a single story they told; rather, the pleasure of listening to them think together.

Many of the elders I interviewed possessed extraordinary historical knowledge, yet Bagaja and Sora taught me something different. They showed me that memory itself can be collaborative. Neither individual carried the whole account; each prompted the other, supplied forgotten details, confirmed uncertain recollections, and gently restored the thread whenever it faltered. Their conversation demonstrated that oral history often resides not within individuals alone, but within relationships.

The contrast between our two meetings has remained equally vivid in my memory.

The first interview took place in a classroom at North Horr. Like many of my early interviews, it was recorded in a setting chosen because it was quiet and convenient.

Two years later I found them again, not in a town but out on the rangelands beside a seasonal well. The setting itself became part of the conversation. Livestock arrived throughout the day to drink while families waited patiently for their turn.

Gabra wells are described by their depth in “people” rather than in feet. A well described as “eight persons deep” reaches roughly thirty feet below the surface. At the bottom, in the water a strong young woman filled gallon-sized giraffe-hide buckets known as bute. Above her, a line of young men passed each bucket upward from hand to hand until it reached the surface, where another person emptied it into the watering troughs. Hour after hour the rhythm continued, accompanied by song continued as camels, cattle, sheep and goats in turn drank their fill.

Sitting beside that well, listening to the singing and watching the steady movement of people, animals, and water, it became impossible to separate history from everyday life. The landscapes through which Bagaja and Sora guided me in their stories were the very landscapes surrounding us. The wells they described were not archaeological remains or distant memories; they were living places, sustained by cooperation and by knowledge accumulated over generations.

Only much later did I realize that the form of their conversation mirrored its content. Just as the water was lifted from the depths through many hands, so too did memory resonate through shared voices. Neither of the elders carried the whole story alone.

Decades later in 2024, Wata would have the privilege of sitting with Bagaja’s son, Ibrae Bagaja, listening to another generation reflect upon many of the same questions. That experience deepened my appreciation that these interviews are not isolated historical documents, they are conversations extending across generations and lineages, reminding us that memory survives because people continue to remember together.

Original Transcript

Transcript (pdf.)

Interview Recording

🎧 Listen to interview part 1

🎧 Listen to interview part 2

Kenya National Archives Reference