By Gee Hir

Every day, a vibrant, urgent, and necessary conversation happens. It unfolds in Afaan Oromo on Facebook—a stream of powerful testimony, incisive political analysis, cultural reflections, and the raw material of contemporary Oromo history. The thoughts are there. The voices are loud and clear. But the medium is failing the message. The real issue is not a lack of writing; it’s the lack of a permanent home for that writing.

Facebook functions brilliantly as a distribution channel—a bustling, noisy town square. Posts are delivered, debated, and disappear. The algorithm, a disinterested gatekeeper, quickly buries today’s powerful analysis under tomorrow’s viral trend. Lived experiences shared with profound emotion become nearly impossible to find a month later. This isn’t just about lost posts; it’s about a slowly disappearing narrative.

When our primary digital footprint is etched in the sand of a social media feed, we cede profound ground:

• Our history becomes ephemeral, reshaped by the absence of our own primary sources.
• Our language, Afaan Oromo, remains digitally invisible to the wider web, unseen by search engines and global researchers.
• Our narrative is ultimately defined by others who do publish in permanent, searchable spaces.

The solution is not to stop using Facebook, but to change our relationship with it. It’s time to see it as the starting line, not the finish line.

From Moment to Monument: The Case for a Digital Home

The shift requires two parallel paths:

1. The Website: Our Sovereign Digital Territory
A personal or collective website is more than a blog; it’s a digital homeland. Here, you own the ground you build on.

• Ownership: The content is yours, governed by your terms, safe from arbitrary platform rule changes or deletions.
• Permanence: Your writing lives for years and decades, not hours. It becomes a resource, not just a reaction.
• Legacy & Language: It creates a searchable, accessible archive for future generations. Crucially, it forces search engines like Google to recognize, index, and legitimize Afaan Oromo on the open web, fighting digital invisibility.

2. Medium/Substack: Expanding the Republic of Ideas
Platforms like Medium and Substack are the next tier—owned apartments in a bustling intellectual city. They offer:

• Built-in Discovery: Your voice can reach interested readers far outside your immediate Facebook network.
• Serious Intent: Publishing there signals a commitment to craft and preservation, attracting a different kind of engagement.
• A Bridge: They provide the permanence of a website with the community-building tools of social media.

The Simple Pivot: Reframe Your Process

You do not need to be a “Writer” with a capital W. If you can articulate a thought on Facebook, you can write an article. The workflow is straightforward:

1. Draft on Facebook: Write that powerful post as you always do.
2. Edit Lightly: Take 10 minutes to refine it, add a title, and structure it for reading.
3. Publish Externally: Post it to your WordPress site, Medium publication, or Substack.
4. Share Strategically: Return to Facebook and share the link to your permanent article. The discussion stays vibrant on social media, but the source is now anchored.

The Stakes of Sovereignty

This is about narrative sovereignty. A Facebook post is a moment—brilliant, but fleeting. An article is a legacy—a brick in the edifice of our collective intellectual history. By moving beyond the newsfeed, we accomplish something profound:

✔️ We strengthen our collective voice by building a searchable library of our thought.
✔️ We make Afaan Oromo visible and permanent on the global internet.
✔️ We finally control our own narrative for ourselves and for those who will come after us.

The tools are free or low-cost. The barrier is not technical; it’s a shift in mindset. The time for a temporary digital existence is over. Let’s not just share our stories for today. Let’s document them, publish them, and preserve them.

Move beyond the feed. Build the archive. Our future is waiting to read us.