Pastoral Culture · Oromia
Borana & Yabelo
In Ethiopia's far south, around the town of Yabelo, the Borana Oromo keep a pastoral way of life shaped by water: wells dug by hand deep into the ground, and a crater lake that has supplied salt for centuries.
Why We Go
Singing wells, a salt lake inside a volcano, and a bird found nowhere else on earth.
Where there is no surface water, the Borana dig for it. Their wells reach down as far as thirty metres, and to water the herds men and women form a chain inside the well, passing buckets up hand to hand and singing to keep the rhythm — the reason they are known as singing wells. The tradition stretches across the Borana lands into northern Kenya.
About ninety kilometres from Yabelo, the village of El Sod stands on the rim of an extinct volcano 1.8 kilometres across. On the crater floor lies a salt lake — its Amharic name means salt house — which the Borana have worked by hand for centuries, carrying the salt up the steep path to the rim.
Yabelo is also a quiet pilgrimage for birdwatchers: the Ethiopian bushcrow, or Stresemann's bushcrow, lives only within a small area around Yabelo and is protected in the Yabelo Wildlife Sanctuary and Borana National Park. Visits to wells and villages are arranged with local guides and always with the community's consent.
Highlights
- 01A singing well, where herders pass water up a human chain from as deep as 30 metres, singing to keep the rhythm
- 02El Sod, a 1.8-kilometre-wide volcanic crater with a salt lake at its floor
- 03The Ethiopian bushcrow, found only in a small area around Yabelo
- 04Borana villages and cattle country on the road south
Best combined with a stay of 2 – 3 days, travelling October – March.
Journeys Including Borana & Yabelo
Routes that pass through here
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