Chiro (town)

Chiro
Ciroo (Oromo)
Asebe Teferi
Town
Chiro
Location within Ethiopia
Chiro
Chiro (Africa)
Coordinates: 9°5′N 40°52′E / 9.083°N 40.867°E / 9.083; 40.867
Country Ethiopia
Region Oromia
ZoneWest Hararghe
Elevation
1,826 m (5,991 ft)
Population
 (2014)
  Total
56,900
Time zoneUTC+3 (EAT)
ClimateAw

Chiro (also called Asebe Teferi or Asba Littoria; Afaan Oromo: Ciroo) is a town and Aanaa in eastern Ethiopia. Located in the West Hararghe Zone in Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia Ahmar Mountains, it has a latitude and longitude of 9°05′N 40°52′E / 9.083°N 40.867°E / 9.083; 40.867 and an altitude of 1826 meters above sea level. It is the administrative center of the West Hararghe Zone in Oromia Regional State.

Nega Mezlekia described the town when he came to live there in 1977 as "a melancholic small town whose drab conditions are accentuated by the black roads, laid with crushed basaltic rocks" which "snakes along the edge of the main highway that links the city of Harar with the capital city". He describes the buildings in the town as unkept and rundown: "Generations of neglect were written into the faces of these derelict buildings. The walls had shed their meagre mud linings, and a few of the buildings tilted to one side or another, making it as dangerous a proposition to stand in their scant shade as to live in them." His opinion of the inhabitants is equally unkind, detailing how at night the marketplace was transformed into a stage where drunken peasants perpetuated blood feuds generations old. "Peasants didn't go to police or courts for justice. Blood called for blood."