Waka is a town in central Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

. Located in the Dawro Zone

Dawro Zone

Dawro is a Zone in the Ethiopian Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region . it is named for the Welayta people, whose homeland lies in this Zone...

 of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region, this town has a latitude and longitude of 7°04′N 37°10′E with an elevation of 2220 meters above sea level. It is the larger of two towns in Mareka Gena

Mareka Gena

Mareka Gena is one of the 77 woredas in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region of Ethiopia. Part of the Semien Omo Zone, Mareka Gena is a triangle-shaped area located south of the confluence of the Omo River and its east-flowing tributary the Gojeb River, bordered on the southeast...

 woreda

Woreda

Woreda is an administrative division of Ethiopia , equivalent to a district . Woredas are composed of a number of Kebele, or neighborhood associations, which are the smallest unit of local government in Ethiopia...

.

Wacca is reported as having a telephone station in the 1930s, but this service had vanished by 1994. Two roads connecting the town to the outside world, one to Chida 73 kilometers in length and the other to Sodo

Sodo

Sodo or Wolaita Sodo is a town in south-central Ethiopia. The administrative center of the Wolaita Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region, Sodo has a latitude and longitude of with an elevation between 1600 and 2100 meters above sea level...

 75 kilometers long, were under construction by 1996. The contractor was the Italian firm of Salini Costruttori. These roads were completed in late 1998/early 1999. The town is also served by an airport

Wacca Airport

Wacca Airport is an airfield in Wacca, Ethiopia . It has an unpaved runway with a length of about 1200 meters. Records at the Nordic Africa Institute website show it was in existence in the 1970s.-References:...

 .

History

Arnold Weinholt Hodson

Arnold Weinholt Hodson

Sir Arnold Wienholt Hodson , KCMG was a British colonial administrator who was Governor in turn of the Falkland Islands, Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast.-Background:Hodson was born in Bovey Tracey, Devonshire, in 1881...

 visited Wacca when he was the British resident in southern Ethiopia (1914-1923), where he shared a meal with a local chief which he obviously did not enjoy:

I had to go through the ordeal of a meal with him for the sake of policy, and it is an ordeal. They cook very fat meat, and all their food is full of butter; they have also a very hot sauce. To add to this the servants tear the meat off in chunks for you to eat and hand it to you with their fingers. This is a special honour, and if you are not careful they put butter into your coffee, which is the nastiest drink one can possibly imagine. It is tiresome if one is a teetotaller, as they worry you to drink their liquor, tej

Tej

Tej is a mead or honey wine that is brewed and consumed in Ethiopia. It is flavored with the powdered leaves and twigs of gesho , a hops-like bittering agent that is a species of buckthorn...

 by name, made out of honey.

The Sudan Interior Mission had a station at Wacca from 1952 until it was nationalized in 1988 and the buildings used as a school. Foreign travelers who came to the station in early 1965 found the original missionaries still in residence, and learned they were the first non-natives to visit the station in three years. A visitor in 1972 described Wacca as a town on top of a mountain, with a post office, a pharmacy, and an Ethiopian Orthodox church. Most buildings had iron sheet roofs and there were numerous eucalyptus

Eucalyptus

Eucalyptus is a diverse genus of flowering trees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Members of the genus dominate the tree flora of Australia...

 trees. In 1995, the local school participated in an experimental curriculum to teach subjects in the Gamo-Gofa-Dawro language

Gamo-Gofa-Dawro language

Gamo-Gofa-Dawro is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in the Dawro, Gamo Gofa and Wolayita Zones of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region in Ethiopia. Dialects include Gamo, Gofa, Dawro. Subdialects of Dawro are Konta and Kucha...

.

Demographics

Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency

Central Statistical Agency (Ethiopia)

The Central Statistical Agency is an agency of the government of Ethiopia designated to provide all surveys and censuses for that country used to monitor economic and social growth, as well as to act as an official training center in that field. It is part of the Ethiopian Ministry of Finance and...

 in 2005, Wacca has an estimated total population of 3,439 of whom 3,424 were men and 6,863 were women.

The 1994 census reported Wacca had a total population of 3,788 of whom 1,904 were men and 1,884 were women. The five largest ethnic groups reported for this town were the Kullo (79.7%), the Amhara

Amhara people

Amhara are a highland people inhabiting the Northwestern highlands of Ethiopia. Numbering about 19.8 million people, they comprise 26% of the country's population, according to the 2007 national census...

 (10.7%), the Oromo

Oromo people

The Oromo are an ethnic group found in Ethiopia, northern Kenya, .and parts of Somalia. With 30 million members, they constitute the single largest ethnic group in Ethiopia and approximately 34.49% of the population according to the 2007 census...

 (2.19%), the Konta (1.32%), and the Gurage

Gurage

Gurage is an ethnic group in Ethiopia. According to the 2007 national census, its population is 1,867,377 people , of whom 792,659 are urban dwellers. This is 2.53% of the total population of Ethiopia, or 7.52% of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region...

 (1.32%); all other ethnic groups made up 4.77% of the population. Kullo is spoken as a first language by 89%, 6.47% Amharic

Amharic language

Amharic is a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia. It is the second most-spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, and the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Thus, it has official status and is used nationwide. Amharic is also the official or working...

, 0.98% spoke Konta, and 0.84% spoke Oromiffa

Oromo language

Oromo, also known as Afaan Oromo, Oromiffa, Afan Boran, Afan Orma, and sometimes in other languages by variant spellings of these names , is an Afro-Asiatic language, and the most widely spoken of the Cushitic family. Forms of Oromo are spoken as a first language by more than 25 million Oromo and...

; the remaining 2.81% spoke all other primary languages reported.