The informant is a good friend from one of my clubs. We had met up for lunch and she shared many of her Ethiopian traditions and customs with me, as well as some superstitions of her people.
Original Script
Informant: “If a black crow has crossed the street, don’t. You have to wait until someone else does, ’cause… then you’ll die. So like if you see, umm-”
Me: “Well then what if they see it too? Then you’re never going to cross the street!”
Informant: “Literally in Ethiopia, people will stop driving. Like no one would go. If you come to a road where no one has crossed yet, that means something suspicious has gone down, and they’ll just wait for a foreigner to cross, so that everyone else can continue about their business. It’s like an actual thing, if a… like a a black, I think it’s just crows, yeah. They hate crows. If a black crow is in the middle of the road, then no one should walk on that road, ’cause the next person to walk on that road, something terrible is going to happen to them. It’s going to be awful.”
Me: “Wait. So let’s say you saw a crow and you stopped, and I was like driving up and I didn’t see the crow-”
Informant: “If you didn’t see the crow, you’re good. But if I know there’s a crow there…”
Me: “Oh, so like other people, if they see you stopped, if they didn’t see the crow they’ll keep going?”
Informant: “If you’re really, really superstitious, if people are stopped, you’ll wait too! You know, just in case.”
Me: “I can imagine lot of traffic jams because of one bird!”
Informant: “Oh yeah! Those stupid birds, they stop a lot of things!”
Me: “What does the crow represent?”
Informant: “Death.” (laughs)
Me: “Death?”
Informant: “But I don’t know what else it represents!”
Me: “Yeah it’s interesting! ‘Cause with Native Americans, it’s like a trickster.”
Informant: “Yeah… My mom is not down for the black crows. My grandpa will literally stop the car. He’ll just not go. He’s like ‘I can’t! I can’t!’ Like anywhere he was he would just stop. I don’t know what the-”
Me: “Do you stop?”
Informant: “No!” (laughs)
Me: “Like what about here? There’s crows, like, everywhere!”
Informant: “I mean, it’s not often here that crows stop on the middle of the highway, like before I go.”
Me: “What if it just flies over then?”
Informant: “No, if a crow has landed… That’s a big deal. You see a crow land, don’t walk in that direction, like just leave that crow alone! Like, that whole area is off limits. Like I don’t know what it is, but they don’t like crows.”
Me: “But, so you have a thing against them too now? Because of this culture thing?”
Informant: “No I’m… I don’t care about crows. But my mom, like, will not-”
Me: “Are there ravens whee you are?”
Informant: “Probably. I don’t know. But there are definitely crows.”
Me: “So like, would it be ravens too? Because they’re black birds.”
Informant: “I mean, I’m sure no one is real, like, specific about it if you see a strange black bird stopped. I’m sure that’s just enough, but I’ve only heard it with crows.”
Background & Analysis
The informant learned this omen from both her mom and her grandpa. Her grandpa lived in Ethiopia all his life, and when she would visit him, every time he saw a crow while driving, he would stop.
The informant is a student here at USC as well, and although her mother is from Ethiopia, she was born and raised here in California. However, she often goes back to Ethiopia with her mom to visit friends and family.
As I listened to this superstition, I could definitely see why people would think it a bad omen if a crow, which is the color of death, landed in the middle of a road out of nowhere. This type of superstition can also be easily perpetuated, if one were to just link some bad or unfortunate event with the crossing of a road that a crow had just landed on. It’s interesting to see this flip side belief about the crow, since for Native Americans, the crow is often seen as good luck, or at the very least, a trickster along with the raven.
