YELLOWKNIFE - When I think of Ethiopia, where we lived for two years, I sometimes think of staring down at a bread roll, knowing I should eat something but being unable to.

This happened the weekend our compound in a remote part of southern Ethiopia was besieged by 10,000 angry Guji people.

Gabriel, Warwick and Tom Bullen survey the damage to the cafeteria the week after the ethnic uprising in Ethopia. Tania Spencer with sons Tom (top) and Gabriel take a nature walk in Ethiopia during less stressful times. - photos courtesy of Tania Spencer

Our youngest son, Tom, 4, was walking around our house with tears streaming down his face, saying "We must save our lives, I don't want to be shooted." I regret that I did not pick him up and hold him. Instead, I ruffled his hair and said it would be all right.

I was busy filling buckets with water and cutting up our hosepipe to share with our neighbours in case our houses were set alight. What I did do, however, was make sure that Tom and his brother, Gabriel (then 7), did not look out of the windows. The ridge of the valley opposite our house, only 400 metres away, was lined with thousands of people, many armed with AK-47s, which they sometimes fired. A happy ending seemed unlikely.

Rescue was equally unlikely. The Ethiopian mining company for whom Warwick worked, refused to send a plane in case it created a bad impression. And our own Embassy, the Canadian Embassy, were interested but at this early stage could offer no help.

Thus Warwick gave composed reports of the unrest until the cell phone network was shut down by the local authorities (apparently to prevent more people from being mobilized to our town, Shakisso). Thoughts of escape by road were scuppered when we heard of blockades being set up and by the fact that parts of the main road to Addis Ababa (some 500 kilometres away) had been deliberately dug up.

Events first erupted in mid-March last year when our neighbour shouted to Warwick to "Shut the door, there's trouble." We were sitting in the gloom of our house, windows shut, curtains drawn, doors locked, hearts hammering in our throats.

We said little to each other as we hurriedly put boots on the boys, gathered our raincoats, and packed our bags. In 15 minutes, everything that was important to us (not much) was packed at the door, and we were ready to leave our life in Ethiopia.

We listened as gunfire split the air, and what had sounded like a rowdy soccer match on a lazy Saturday afternoon was redefined. A few hundred metres from our house, the kitchen staff fled as a 1,000-strong mob, firing into the air, stormed our compound, destroying company property, including vehicles.

The trouble had started a few days before when local schools were closed to protest an offensive description of the indigenous Guji people. In the dictionary the Guji were described as "servants." Although the protest was sparked by Guji students in Addis Ababa, Ethopia's capital, in truth things had been smouldering in Shakisso for a while. There was considerable tension between the local Oromo community and the mining company.

The fury continued over the weekend with ongoing shooting and battles between groups of Guji and the authorities. We mostly stayed indoors, and when the gunfire abated we crept out to our neighbours, exchanging food, hosepipes and rumours. I learned that fear is not an emotion. And every time my heart began to hammer, I drank water. I drank a lot of water.

The first night, we distracted the boys by allowing them to watch Titanic, which just happened to be on TV. Initially I had said it might be too scary for the boys but relented when Warwick gave me a funny look. Instead I went to check on one of our neighbors who was pregnant and whose husband was besieged at the mine, seven kilometres away. As I walked in the pitch dark, I tried to get my mind around what had happened.

For two years I had gazed into this valley opposite our house and watched farmers plough with methods from the Old Testament. And now I scurried along a dirt road, without a torch, mindful that the perimeter fence had holes in it big enough for cows to step through. And from the surrounding bush, eerie war songs snaked up towards the compound. I know this because on the way I asked a neighbour, rather hopefully, if someone was getting married. My friend had replied, "No, Tania, they are singing war songs about us."

I took the first watch of the night, and Warwick the second. All this achieved was the elimination of surprise. During the night the company security guards absconded. As Guji-speaking people themselves, they were in an untenable position. Throughout Sunday more gunfire rang out around the compound. And I learned that when you can hear a bullet whistle, it is close.

It was a long wait until Sunday afternoon, when about 150 government troops and federal police arrived, enforcing an immediate curfew with a shoot to kill command. They took up positions in our compound, commandeered vehicles, and restored order while we waited for the president of the Oromo people to travel to Shakisso.

On Monday our gardener returned, traumatized, from the forest where he had fled after being beaten on the weekend. Many children from town had also hidden in the forest when the Guji people had destroyed the houses and businesses of Amharic-speaking townspeople.

By Tuesday it was clear that the president was not coming. All the while, increasing numbers of Guji people continued to pour into town, armed to the teeth. After some negotiation, the Guji were persuaded to meet with the vice-president of the Oromo people, and were subsequently mollified by a government undertaking to ban the dictionary concerned. We stood outside with our neighbours, watching the Guji leave in trucks, buses and on foot. The relief was immense. One of my neighbours invited me to a coffee ceremony at her house, and both of us could not stop smiling at each other.

Normality was exquisite. That night Warwick and I slept properly for the first time in days. Remarkably, there had been no fatalities, and only two Guji people sustained gunshot wounds.

It took a lot of talking to settle the fear in Gabriel and Tom, who both began calling us by our first names rather than Mum and Dad. Even nine months later Tom, the youngest, inexplicably burst into tears at the sight of ice melting in a glass. It took a while for Tom to say that it reminded him of his first glimpse of loss, the day the Guji people expressed their own.

Before writing this article, I asked the boys if they remembered why the Guji people were so angry.

They replied that it was because the Guji didn't have hospitals and nice schools for their children. "Yeah," chimed in Tom, "And no houses, and they had to sleep on logs and rocks, and they had no paper to draw on."