Moras are cultural spaces of Konso located at the centre of the main central enclosure and at different locations within the walls, and sometimes outside the walls. Paths from all gates lead to these Moras. Usually moras consist of, or are associated with various cultural, ritual, public and ceremonial features like pafta (big huts used as men’s sleeping place), dancing field, pala (public seating floor made using large stone slabs), dhaka dhirumas (manhood stones/steles), olayta trees (tall juniper trees erected for a past generation as the new generation takes over traditional power), waka (wooden grave statues erected often on graves for heroes, but sometimes for clan leaders (poqolas), and wives of clan leaders, poqoltata), arumda (often oval stones used to sharpen ritual hunting/battle spears), dhaga khakha (swearing or oath taking stones), khorata stone (a stone, found in some moras, where wrongdoers are fined), tomatasha (pebble and pit playing wooden structure), shapa (stretcher to carry sick people to health centers or corpse to burial places), kawula (wooden sticks used as musical instruments during ritual dancing) and living trees (usually standing with olayta trees and thus sacred as an olayta tree).

The Moras retain an important and central role in the life of the Konso. Moras are places where the society discuss and solve its problems. They are also places where justice is administered and places for chatting, playing and dancing. Children stay and play at moras in the day times when their families go to farm. Guests who are tired and need a break or travelers who need a safe place to pass a night freely rests or pass nights in moras, inside or outside the towns. As moras are at junction of main avenues of the towns, old people and weavers sit and weave in or around moras. Meantime these old people and weavers control and see the movement of persons in the town when adults go to farms.

  Typical Mora with Pafta (Mora Shilale, Gamole Paleta); source: Konso Management Plan; 2011