History
The Swedish Philadelphia Church Mission opened a mission in this town in 1961, which included a medical clinic.
The Wondo Genet hotel was established in 1964, on land used as recreation site for the royal family until 1975. Emperor Haile Selassie bequeathed its name, meaning "Wondo Paradise", in reference to the beautiful panorama with a rich endowment of forests, wildlife and abundant water. Title to the hotel was transferred to the then Hotels Corporation, and currently it is a subsidiary of the Wabe Shebelle Hotels Enterprise. The hotel facilities include 54.4 ha area of land and possesses 40 bed rooms, restaurant and a bar, as well as swimming pools and access to the hot springs.
The Wendo Genet earthquake of 1983 was among the most significant in Ethiopia in the 20th century. Its magnitude has not been determined, but was severe enough that the frightened inhabitants gathered at the Ethiopian Orthodox church below the hotel to sing and pray the whole day and the whole night. A later disaster was a complex of forest fires which erupted in 17 places in southern Ethiopia on 10 February 2000 including the vicinity of the College.
On 3 April 2008, 18 people were killed in clashes near Wondo Genet between the Guji Oromo and Sidama people over ownership to grazing and farm land.
Read more about this topic: Wondo Genet
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“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)