Barnesh is 10 years old. She belongs to Borana people. In Oromo, her language, Barnesh means “mercy”, but for a strange coincidence, in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, Barnesh means “you are a slave”. Barnesh doesn’t speak Amharic.
When Barnesh doesn’t work, she attends the fourth class of the local school. Every Saturday she goes down to the crater of El Sod to climb up with a bag of salt extracted from the lake on the bottom, 400 metres down. Salt working is the main maintenance source of her community. The bag which Barnesh carries weighs 22 kilograms. Usually the salt carriage is entrusted to the donkeys, but the parents of Barnesh are too poor to buy one. A donkey costs 700 Birr (81 Euros).
This is the story of Barnesh.
It’s only one of the many stories of African children.
Thank you for reading.
