In 1897, Italian explorer Vittorio Bottego and his retinue were killed by Oromo warriors near Gidami, in western Ethiopia. This was less than one year after the Italians had been routed in the battle of Adwa - the first time that a modern colonial power was completely defeated by an African army. Two blows to the Italian colonial dream.
When Mussolini managed to conquer the country in 1936, his troops went to Gidami and erected a monument to the memory of Bottego. The ziggurat-like structure was surmounted by a high steel structure, visible from very far away. A revenge of history.
The Italians, however, were expelled from Ethiopia in 1941 and Bottego's monument was blown up.
According to the local Oromo, Vittorio Bottego was killed because he refused the local hospitality three times: he turned down a cow, a sheep, and a hen. This is the remembrance of the past that survives in Gidami. Not the colonial history of heroic monuments and brave, white explorers.
A revenge of history of a revenge of history.
 by Alfredo Gonzalez Ruibal
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