‘If you had money, you had slaves’: how Ethiopia is in denial about injustices of the past

A boy carrying firewood near the town of Dalbo in southern Ethiopia, once the site of a slave market. Photograph: Mike Goldwater/Alamy

Nothing hints at the dark past of the marketplace at Dalbo, a town in southern Ethiopia. Today, it is a thriving hub that draws farmers from the surrounding countryside each week, and doubles as a sports pitch on non-trading days.

There are no plaques, monuments or inscriptions revealing that enslaved people were once sold here alongside livestock and cereals. Local people will often shut down the conversation when the subject is raised.