Many young Ethiopians, Bushra Ibrahim, a Qeerroo (youth) representative in Ashoka, a small town in Kofele, Oromia,  says, are seduced by the blandishments of dalalas – people-smugglers who call up frustrated young men or approach them in towns across the region, spinning tales of the lucrative job opportunities in Saudi Arabia and promising to facilitate the journey.

The journey from Ethiopia to Saudi Arabia or Middle East in general, is fraught with risks – even death.

“They also see people who have been to Saudi Arabia and come back and who have bought a house and a car,” the official noted. “Their plan is to be like them.”

Negesu Tabse, an elderly farmer in Kofele and father of 11 children, knows this only too well. One day in the summer of 2023, his 17-year-old son, Abdelfattah, disappeared. He had been listless for some time, Negesu recalled, saying he could see no future for himself at home.

Negesu owns just a quarter of a hectare of land, not enough to parcel out among his sons, who therefore cannot easily get married or start a family.

“I didn’t have any land to give him,” he said. “Sometimes Abdelfattah would say ‘This life is not good; maybe I need to go somewhere else’.”

But when Abdelfattah went missing, the family were shocked. “We didn’t know what had happened to him, and we were afraid,” said Negesu. “We were all crying at home.”

For a week, the family heard nothing. Then, suddenly, Abdelfattah rang home. He was calling from Las Anod, a contested Somali town between breakaway Somaliland and Puntland that has been at the centre of a war between Somaliland and a secessionist militia called SSC-Khaatumo since 2023.

Abdelfattah explained that he had been contacted by a dalala, who offered to take him to Saudi Arabia for free if he could meet him in Harar, a city in eastern Ethiopia. When Abdelfattah arrived, he was taken across the border into Somaliland, and eventually on to Las Anod.

At first, he said, he and his fellow migrants were treated fairly well. But once in Somaliland the dalalas became abusive. In Las Anod they were beaten, Abdelfattah said, and told to call their families to ask for money. Abdelfattah told his father that if he didn’t send the dalalas 30,000 birr (about $230), they would kill him.

The family sent the money to the dalala’s bank account. Then they begged their son to come home.

“Please come back, my son, I will share everything I have with you,” Negesu told Abdelfattah. “He didn’t accept. He said he needed to work and change his life. So he didn’t come back.”

The dalalas took him on to Bosaso, a port city in Puntland on the Gulf of Aden, from where he eventually managed to cross into Yemen. Now Abdelfattah is somewhere in northern Yemen near the border with Saudi Arabia, his family says. He has tried to cross once but was pushed back by Saudi border guards. Every time his family calls, they beg him to return, but each time he refuses.

Just across the road from Negesu’s farm, another family is also mourning the departure of their children. Bonsai Said says two of her sons, Musa and Ramato, left for Saudi Arabia via Bosaso late last year, one within a month of the other.

Musa, aged 18, went first. His brother, Hussain, explained that he had been in touch with a dalala, who promised to buy him new clothes and a new phone and fund his trip to Saudi Arabia if he came to Adama, a city in central Oromia.

Musa disappeared, and the family heard nothing from him for several weeks, until he called them from Bosaso in severe distress. Like Abdelfattah, he described beatings and abuse by the dalalas, and said they were threatening to kill him unless the family sent them 40,000 birr.

They paid the ransom, and Musa managed to cross into Yemen and on into Saudi Arabia, where he now works as a labourer on a date farm. He is yet to send back any money, his family says, but they are glad he is alive.

When he called from Bosaso, Musa begged his brothers not to attempt the journey, describing his ordeal of hunger, beatings and the killings of other migrants at the hands of the dalalas.

“Musa said: ‘Don’t follow me. The road and the situation is very difficult’,” Bonsai, his mother, recalls.

Yet, less than a month after Musa left, Ramato, aged 20, went as well. A few weeks later he too called from Bosaso, asking the family to pay a ransom, which they duly did. But unlike Musa, it is not clear whether Ramato managed to make it across to Yemen. Up to late February, his family says they had not heard from him in a month.

Boats carrying migrants across the Gulf of Aden regularly sink. In March, the IOM reported that four boats had capsized off the coast of Yemen, with more than 180 migrants feared dead. Even for those who survive the crossing, traversing war-ravaged Yemen is itself fraught with danger.

“We are very worried,” said Bonsai, tears welling in her eyes.

Despite knowing the dangers, many young Oromos seem to have decided, like Ramato, that they must reach Saudi Arabia at any cost.

Some stop initially in Hargeisa, the capital of the self-declared independent Somaliland, working as shoe-shiners or casual labourers to save up money for the journey. On a trip to Somaliland in March, The New Humanitarian met several groups of young Oromos walking along the road towards the coast, in searing heat, with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Back in Kofele, the local government official says a new rhyming Oromo saying has recently been coined by local youth: “Gala Suudii, yookin gala luudii.”

In English, the rough translation would be: “I am going to Saudi Arabia, or to my grave.”

• A Tell Media report / Republished with the permission of The New Humanitarian