Shashemene is a busy provincial centre two hundred and forty kilometres due south of Addis Ababa, in Oromo province. It was here that Emperor Haile Selassie set aside five hundred hectares of farmland from one of his estates for black people living in the west who had supported Ethiopia in her struggle against Mussolini, and the grant drew Rastafari settlers from the Caribbean and Britain to what they understood as the promised land.