A Survey of Oromo Popular Superstitions with Reference to Selected Districts in Bale Zone

This is an inquiry that attempted to explore popular superstitions among Bale Oromos. The rationale behind this research was the fact that there is no former endeavor to study the Bale Oromo community popular superstitions. Four woredas were selected for this study from Bale zone by purposive sampling. The inquiry was expected to play its part in helping us preserve the cultural heritage of the Oromo people. The popular Oromo superstitions were collected primarily from the elders of the selected districts of Bale Robe through a semi-structured interview. Simple random sampling was used to select the kebeles from each selected woredas. And snow ball sampling technique was used to select local elders from each selected kebeles. Also questionnaire was used to collect data from the informants who were identified as educated. Those educated categories were selected high school students and the woredas culture and tourism officers. Relying on the semi structured interview, several superstitions which are practiced amongst the rural communities have been collected. The quantitative part of the study showed that the educating youths in general are fairly superstitious. While the degree of being superstitious among different genders was not significant; nonetheless, females appeared to be slightly more superstitious than males. In light of education level and their tendency of being superstitious, the woredas culture and tourism officers were more superstitious being followed by those students in grade nine and ten.