The road from Arba Minch winds like a scar through the southern Ethiopian highlands, stitched with dust, switchbacks, and stories. Our 4x4 jolts along a rutted track flanked by tuk-tuks, herders, and women bent double under loads of firewood – chickens tucked under arms, baskets perfectly balanced on their heads. Teenage boys cling to the back of a grain truck, laughter trailing in the wind. A lone donkey blocks traffic with glacial determination.
As we climb, the air thins and the view opens up. Kapo Kansa, born and raised in Bonke—a community elder and our soft-spoken, eloquent guide – points to a house with an ostrich egg perched on its chimney. ‘That’s a sign an elder or guardian lives there,’ he explains. ‘It’s the highest honour a man can attain before he dies.’
Motorbikes wobble downhill, stacked with three – sometimes four – passengers. Along the roadside, a man ploughs his field with oxen beneath rows of eucalyptus trees. Time folds in on itself. Somewhere above us, close to 3,000 metres high, lies the tiny settlement of Arshe Bonke – our gateway into the world of the Gamo.
Halfway up, we pull over to take in the view. Remote as it is, the Gamo Highlands are one of the most densely populated rural areas in Africa – and remarkably, this land has been farmed sustainably for over 10,000 years.
The Gamo people live within a finely tuned, intricately managed ecosystem that—unlike most modern ones – thrives with astonishing diversity, stability, and resilience. Over millennia, they’ve crafted a way of life that supports long-term survival. Their stewardship of everything – from groundwater and soil nutrients to community relationships – is guided by a worldview that sees the Earth as sacred, alive, and wholly interconnected. This is the Woga system.
‘Woga,’ says Kapo, ‘is a set of traditional laws, deeply rooted and carefully enforced. They come from the belief that everything is linked, everything exists in balance. The Woga system governs not only how people treat the land – pasture, forest, water, soil – but also how they treat each other. If even one element is out of sync, the whole system is at risk.’
He looks across the valley. ‘It’s not just law,’ he says. ‘It’s how we live.’
Finally, the 4x4 jolts to a halt. After a two-and-a-half-hour drive, we’ve arrived. Arshe Bonke ripples across the ridges in a patchwork of barley, enset groves, and earth-toned compounds. It feels as if the entire village has gathered. Children peer at us wide-eyed; elders nod with quiet familiarity.
We’re led into a traditional elephant house, its name taken from the domed bamboo frame, where we’re served a small but ceremonial tasting: banga (a stew of beans and wild greens), genfo (a thick barley porridge), and a spoonful of shilshalo, a roasted barley flour so fine we’re warned not to inhale while eating it. One wrong breath and you’re coughing for minutes. The ritual is simple but deeply symbolic: a gesture of sharing, unity, and welcome. We wash it down with a generous sip of farso, the local slightly fermented beer.
‘Lo’okatse,’ they say. Eat well.
Outside, music begins. The krar – a traditional lyre – twangs as villagers form a circle. Hands clap, feet stomp, heads dip in rhythm. It’s a dance of welcome, but also of history and hope, courtship and community. Two women grind flour on flat stones, singing as they work. We share a water pipe with an elder; the smoke rises like incense into the sky.
Further up the mountain, in a compound surrounded by false banana plants, women peel the thick trunks of the enset. Nothing goes to waste: the pulp ferments into kocho bread; the sap feeds cattle; the fibrous residue is used to help women recover after childbirth. Over 150 varieties grow here, a quiet encyclopaedia of ecological knowledge and survival.
Back down the hill, we stop at a cluster of family workshops. Women spin cotton and weave it into intricate baskets and shawls. Nearby, potters shape the earth into vessels, and a blacksmith hammers glowing iron into ploughs and cooking tools. The air smells of fire and clay.
Our next stop is Bonke’s local market – a sensory storm, to say the least. Once a week, people walk up to 30 kilometres to buy, sell, barter, or simply catch up. The noise, the colour, the crowd – it’s all a bit dizzying, in the best possible way.
Children and adults gather around us like a tide. Teenage girls giggle behind cupped hands. Young boys circle us like satellites, some brave enough to touch our arms. ‘Most of these kids have never seen a white person before,’ Firew Konjo, our other guide, explains. Today, we’re part of the attraction.
Then, followed by what feels like half the market, we’re led to a square clearing surrounded by a chest-high fence: the traditional justice circle, central to the Gamo people’s Woga system.
A group of kings, guardians and elders sit in the open air on what look like makeshift thrones. Their expressions are serious but not stiff. Here, issues ranging from land rights to family disputes are discussed and settled – with input from those who need to be heard, and outcomes aimed at restoring peace.
Women aren’t allowed inside the circle, but they call out their views from behind the fence. I find myself among them – alongside a few hundred others, some leaning in, some chatting, a few shushing the rest as the case wraps up with quiet agreement and a nod.
As dusk falls, we pitch our tents on the school field. A handful of locals linger nearby, watching us set up camp with a mix of curiosity and amusement. Dinner is fresh lamb from the market, grilled over open flames. The sky fades from blue to black. A few people still hang around, chatting softly in the dark.
I wake to the sound of rain tapping on the tent roof. It’s 6 a.m. Our planned hike through the Sacred Valley is on hold. We lounge in our sleeping bags, waiting for the sky to change, occasionally peeking out to meet the eyes of curious locals watching us from a safe distance – as if we’re the ones on display.
By the time the clouds clear and the sun warms our faces, Kapo is ready to lead the way. We set off through the Sacred Valley. Along the river, children play, women hang laundry over bushes and stones. A patchwork of shirts and trousers flutters like prayer flags. Kapo walks with a kind of quiet authority, his words considered.
‘The Gamo are protected by kings and guardians,’ he explains. ‘Sacred land is safeguarded through ceremony: a king’s hair and a guardian’s fingernail are buried in the soil. That makes the land inviolable. You can’t dig here, not even with a hand tool. No ploughs, no metal. Cattle may graze, but the grass can’t be cut. Everything is shared. And because it’s shared, it lasts.’
We pass eucalyptus groves, terraced fields, and open spaces where kings were once crowned. ‘Forty kings,’ Kapo says, ‘from six dynasties. Each one with guardians – of land, of justice, of the spirit.’
There’s no sign, no fence, no plaque. Just land that’s been respected for centuries, and people who still know how to read it.
By midday, we reach Gaxe. Children shout ‘Farancha! Faranga!’ – foreigner, foreigner—then dart off, laughing.
Lunch is injera in a village ‘dancing house’ – two huts side by side. One pulses with music and tella-fuelled energy, the other is quieter, for eating and watching. Outside, goats mingle with children and the occasional stubborn dog. ‘The toilet?’ I ask Ruben, who was brave enough to be the first to go. ‘Mwah, I wouldn’t go there if I were you,’ he says. I grab an empty water bottle. Once I’ve set up my tent, and using a pair of nail scissors to cut off the top, I’ll have my moment. Unfortunately, the bushes won’t offer any privacy from curious children’s gazes.
Comfort: zero. Memory: priceless.
That night, we camp on a cliff above the Gaxe waterfall, which crashes more than 200 metres into the valley below – and somehow still doesn’t appear on any Western map. Local legend has it there’s a cave hidden behind the falls, home to a ghost.
‘Did you catch him?’ a local asks Kapo, pointing at Marco.
Around 3 a.m., I wake to the sound of Ethiopian pop blasting from someone’s phone. Our guard has invited a friend, and they’re catching up – loudly. Soon, everyone’s awake.
‘Shhh!’ someone hisses from a nearby tent.
Firew steps in with a few quiet words and a tired look. ‘They’re just excited,’ he says with a shrug. ‘Not many tourists come here, and they’ve never seen people sleeping in tents before. They kept asking me if this is how you always live – roaming around your country, camping like this.’
At sunrise, while we’re packing up, a commotion breaks out at the edge of the field. A boy we’d sent to buy cigarettes the night before is brought over by an elder. Head bowed, he admits he overcharged us. After a quick discussion with the elders, he’s come to apologise. ‘That’s how it works,’ says Firew. ‘You mess up, you admit it. Then you make it right.’
We sip sweet coffee in a local hut. Chickens peck at our feet, cows blink at us from the shadows. The 4x4 takes us down to the edge of the village, where the trail to the waterfall begins.
There are two routes into the Korja Valley, named after the river that carved its way through this dramatic landscape. One is a gentle path through the valley. The other: a steep, punishing 5-kilometre climb with 275 metres of elevation gain. Naturally, we choose the latter.
The path – if you can call it that – is a tangle of roots, mud and stones. A man hands me a walking stick. I accept it with gratitude and no shame.
Children bounce up the hill like mountain goats. Kapo – wiry, 65, unstoppable – leads the way. Halfway up, we’re gasping. He still hasn’t broken a sweat.
At the summit, he stops and gestures across the valley.
‘Look,’ he says. ‘This land is sacred. No one owns it. It feeds the animals. It holds the rivers. It binds us.’
He tells us how knowledge is passed down: from father to son, guardian to child.
‘Even the government comes here when they don’t know what to do,’ he says. ‘The Woga system works. It always has.’
From sacred valleys to hidden waterfalls, this video captures the heartbeat of the Gamo Highlands and the people who call it home.
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