ALL DAY THE COAST was in sight – a long line of low mountains, of en indistinguishable from the pale clouds that hung above it. No one could tell me where the Sudan ended and Ethiopia began, but at 5.40 p.m. we were approaching Massawah and a crimson sun slid quickly out of sight behind the high plateau of Abyssinia.
We anchored a mile offshore, to await our pilot, and as I stood impatiently on deck a tawny afterglow still lay above the mountains and a quarter-moon spread its golden, mobile sheen across the water. Near here stood Adulis, the principal port of the Aksumite Empire, and in the first century AD the anonymous author of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote, ‘There are imported into these places double-fringed mantles; many articles of flint glass; brass, which is used for ornament and in cut pieces instead of coin; iron, which is made into spears used against wild beasts, and in their wars; wine of Laodicea and Italy, not much; olive oil, not much; for the King gold and silver plate made after the fashion of the country—— There are exported from these places ivory and tortoise-shell and rhinoceros-horn’. Then the traders feared the attacks of ‘barbarous natives’. Now my luxury-loaded Italian fellow-passengers fear the attacks of shifta (bandits) on their way to Asmara tomorrow.
Following the arrival of our pilot-boat we spent two hours with easy-going Immigration and Sanitary officials. The Passport officer was a small-boned, dark-skinned little man, with an expression like a grieved monkey, and he warned me against the natives of Massawah – a pack of ‘murderous, thieving Muslims’. From this I rightly deduced that he was a highlander. His home is in Tigre and he hates the climate here, but says that because the locals are so ignorant and unreliable highlanders have to fill all responsible posts.
At last the Customs officers deigned to come on duty and we were permitted to go ashore. The Customs shed was comically vast – it could easily have held two hundred passengers instead of seven. My rucksack and general appearance gave the usual convenient impression of grinding poverty, and I was chalked and sympathetically waved on my way with a three months’ supply of tax-free cigarettes undetected.
I cannot remember feeling so alien during my first hours in any other country. One doesn’t think of Massawah as being Ethiopian, in any sense but the political, and I should find the atmosphere of an essentially Arab town quite familiar. Yet enough of the singularity of the tableland has spilled over to the coast for newcomers to be at once aware of Ethiopia’s isolation – even where contact with the outside world is closest.
Certainly there is no outward evidence of isolation here. I walked first along the sophisticated Italianate street that faces the quays and passed many groups of foreign sailors or local officials sitting at little tables drinking iced beer, or coffee, or smuggled spirits. Several beggars tried to ‘help’ by getting hold of my rucksack and leading me to the doss-house of their choice; but they were easily deterred and no one followed when I turned into a rough, narrow, ill-lit lane between tall houses. Most of these houses were brothels, and young Tigrean girls were sitting in the doorways playing with their toddlers (prostitution and family life are not incompatible here), or dressing each other’s hair in the multitudinous tiny plaits traditional among Tigrean women. In the gloom I was often mistaken for a customer and, on realising their error, most of the girls either jeered at me rather nastily or sent their children to beg from me.
However, this ‘hotel’ is congenial. The friendly owner – an elderly, handsome Tigrean woman – thinks I’m the funniest thing that has happened in years. She is now sitting nearby, with two neighbours, watching me write. Apparently the neighbours were called in because such a good joke has to be shared.
From the alleyway outside a high door – marked Pensione – opens into a large, square room where a few ugly metal tables and plastic chairs stand about on a wilderness of concrete flooring. Ethiopian Christians are very devoted to the Blessed Virgin, and two pictures of Our Lady of Good Counsel hang on the walls between several less edifying calendar ladies advertising Italian imports. Behind this ‘foyer’ – separated from it by wooden lattice-work – is a small, unroofed space, with a tiny charcoal cooking-stove in one corner and some unsteady wooden stairs leading up to a flat roof, off which are five clean three-bed bedrooms. Other hideous tables and chairs furnish this ‘lounge’, where I’m now sitting beneath a corrugated iron roof. The shutters of the unglazed windows and the upper half of the bedroom walls are also of lattice-work – attractive to the eye, but not conducive either to privacy or quiet. The loo hangs opposite me, adhering most oddly to the next-door wall, and the plumbing is weird and nauseating in the extreme. Theoretically all should be well, since it is a Western loo with a plug that pulls successfully – one can see the water running towards it through transparent plastic pipes fixed to the roof. The snag is that nothing seems to get any further than a cess-pool, covered with an iron grille, which stands in the centre of the kitchen floor.
Tonight the heat is appalling and, while writing this, I’ve absorbed five pints of talla – the cloudy, home-brewed highland beer. As far as I can feel it is totally unintoxicating, though very refreshing and palatable.
At lunchtime today I had my first meal of injara and wat. Injara has a bitter taste and a gritty texture; it looks and feels exactly like damp, grey foam-rubber, but is a fermented bread made from teff – the cereal grain peculiar to the Ethiopian highlands – and cooked in sheets about half-an-inch thick and two feet in circumference. These are double-folded and served beside one’s plate of wat – a highly spiced stew of meat or chicken. One eats with the right hand (only), by mopping up the wat with the injara; and, as in Muslim countries, a servant pours water over one’s hands before and after each meal.
During the afternoon a blessed silence enfolds sun-stricken Massawah and I slept soundly from two to five. By then it was a little less hellish outside, so I set forth to see the sights – not that there are many to see here. Visitors are forbidden to enter the grounds of the Imperial Palace and women are forbidden to enter the mosques – of which there are several, though only the new Grand Mosque looks interesting. It was built by the Emperor, presumably to placate his rebellious Eritrean Muslim subjects.*
In the old city, south of the port, the architecture is pure Arabic, though many of the present population have migrated from the highlands. The narrow streets of solid stone or brick houses seem full of ancient mystery and maimed beggars drag themselves through the dust while diseased dogs slink away at one’s approach, looking as though they wanted to snarl but hadn’t enough energy left.
The process of converting a cyclist into a hiker is being rather painful. Today I only walked eighteen miles, yet now I feel more tired than if I had cycled a hundred and eighteen; but this is perhaps understandable, as I’m out of training and was carrying fifty pounds from 3,000 to 6,000 feet. At the moment my shoulder muscles are fiery with pain and – despite the most comfortable of boots – three massive blisters are throbbing on each foot.
Yesterday Commander Iskander Desta of the Imperial Navy kindly suggested that I should be driven across the coastal desert strip in a naval jeep, which collected me from my pensione at eight o’clock this morning. The Eritrean driver spoke fluent Italian, but no English, and the dozen English-speaking cadets, who were going to spend Sunday at the 4,000-feet Embatcallo naval rest-camp, were not disposed to fraternise with the faranj (foreigner).
Beyond a straggle of new ‘council houses’ our road climbed through hillocks of red sand, scattered with small green shrubs. Then these hillocks became hills of bare rock – and all the time the high mountains were looming ahead in a blue haze, sharpening my eagerness to get among them. We passed one primitive settlement of half-a-dozen oblong huts, which is marked as a village on my map – perhaps because Coca-Cola is sold outside one of the shacks – and a few miles further on the road tackled the steep escarpment in a series of brilliantly-engineered hairpin bends.
By 10 a.m. I had been released from the truck at 3,000 feet, where mountains surrounded me on every side. Here the climate was tolerable, though for an hour or so sweat showered off me at every step; then clouds quickly piled up and a cool breeze rose. On the four-mile stretch to Ghinda I passed many other walkers – ragged, lean Muslim tribesmen, highlanders draped in shammas (white cotton cloaks) and skinny children herding even skinnier goats. Everyone stared at me suspiciously and only once was my greeting returned – by a tall, ebony-skinned tribesman. One doesn’t resent such aloofness, since surprise is probably the main cause, but I soon stopped being so unrewardingly amiable. Already I notice a difference between cycling and walking in an unknown country; on foot one is even more sensitive to the local attitude and one feels a little less secure.
Ghinda is described in my official guidebook as ‘a small resort city’ to which people come to escape the cold of Asmara or the heat of Massawah. In fact it is a small town of tin-roofed hovels from which I personally would be glad to escape in any direction.
Just beyond Ghinda a squad of children advised me to avoid the main road and guided me up a steep short cut for about two miles. Later I took two other short cuts and discovered that on this loose, dry soil what looks like a reasonable climb is often an exhausting struggle. The busy Massawah–Asmara railway runs near the road and when I was attempting one short cut, up the embankment, I went sliding down on to the track just as an antiquated engine, belching clouds of black smoke, came round the corner twenty yards away. Happily this line does not cater for express trains; extermination by a steam-engine would be a prosaic ending to travels in Ethiopia. During the abrupt descent my knees had been deeply grazed and my hands torn by the thorny shrubs at which I clutched; but this was merely the initiation ceremony. When one has been injured by a country, then one really has arrived.
From Ghinda to the outskirts of Nefasit the rounded mountains and wooded gorges appear to be almost entirely uninhabited and uncultivated. Even this colonised fringe of Ethiopia feels desolate and the silence is profound. Many of the lower slopes are covered in green bushes, giant cacti and groves of tall trees; one lovely shrub blazes with flowers like the flames of a turf-fire and vividly coloured birds dart silently through the undergrowth. Around the few villages some terracing is attempted, but it looks crude and ineffective. My impression so far is of a country much more primitive, in both domestic architecture and agriculture, than any Asian region I know.
At intervals the weekend traffic passed me – Italian or American cars returning to Asmara in convoys of six or eight as a precaution against shifta. (There are 5,000 Americans stationed at the Kagnew Military Base near Asmara.) As another precaution two policemen sat watchfully by the roadside every five miles, leaning on antediluvian rifles. The shifta are said to be far better armed than the police, their foreign backers having equipped them well. Many cars stopped to offer me a lift, and soon this kindness became tiresome; it is difficult to persuade motorists that two legs can also get one there – at a later date. The last five miles were a hell of muscular exhaustion. At every other kilometre stone I had to stop, remove my rucksack and rest briefly.
Here I’m staying in a clean Italian doss-house and being overcharged for everything by the Eritrean-born proprietress. While writing this I’ve got slightly drunk on a seven-and-six-penny bottle of odious vinegar called ‘vino bianco’ – produced by the Italians in Asmara.
I awoke at 6.30 to see a cool, pearly dawn light on mountains that were framed in bougainvillea. The Eritrean servant indicated that mangiare was impossible, so by 6.50 I was on the road. After ten hours unbroken sleep my back felt surprisingly unstiff, though my feet were even more painful than I had expected.
From Nefasit the road zigzagged towards a high pass and before I had covered four miles all my foot-blisters burst wetly. During the next two hours of weakening pain only my flask of ‘emergency’ brandy kept me going. It seemed reckless to use it so soon, yet this did feel like a genuine emergency. Several cars stopped to offer me tempting lifts, but I then supported a theory (since abandoned) that the quickest way to cure footsores is by walking on them.
Here the road ran level, winding from mountain to mountain, and the whole wide sweep of hills and valleys was deserted and silent. These mountains are gently curved, though steep, and despite the immense heights and depths one sees none of the expected precipices or crags.
The sky remained cloudless all day, though a cool breeze countered any sensation of excessive heat. However, the sun’s ultra-violet rays are severe at this altitude and the back of my neck has been badly burned.
It takes a few days for one’s system to adjust to being above 6,000 feet and as I struggled towards the 8,000 foot plateau my head was throbbing from too little oxygen and my back from too much weight, though I hardly noticed these details because of the pain of my feet. Then at last I was there – exultantly overlooking a gleaming mass of pure white cloud that concealed the lower hills. But on this exposed ridge a strong, cold wind blew dust around me in stinging whirls and pierced through my sweat-soaked shirt; so I soon began to hobble down the slight incline towards Asmara.
On the last lap I passed a big British War Cemetery and gazed into it enviously, feeling that a cemetery rather than an hotel was the obvious resting place for anyone in my condition. Fifteen minutes later I was approaching the uninspiring suburbs of Asmara and looking out for a bar. At 1.30 I found one, pushed aside a curtain of bottle-tops on strings and in a single breath ordered three beers. Since morning I had only walked fifteen miles, yet my exhaustion was so extreme that I had to be helped to remove my rucksack.
By three o’clock I had found this Italian-run pensione in the centre of the city, conveniently opposite the British Consulate. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I took off my boots and socks and saw the worst. It is no longer a question of blisters: with my socks I had peeled off all the skin from both soles, leaving what looks like two pounds of raw steak. Undoubtedly this is where I forget ‘mind-over-matter’ and sit around for some days industriously growing new skin.
This morning I hobbled over to the Consulate to ask for the name of a reliable doctor; but the Consul, Major John Bromley, is on duty in Massawah today and his Ethiopian staff were vague – though friendly and anxious to help. The next few hours were spent limping around in a daze of pain searching for sound medical advice – not that there is any shortage of doctors here, but in my insular way I distrust foreign medicine-men whose names are followed by a rearrangement of the whole alphabet. Eventually I chanced to meet a kind nurse from the Lutheran Red Sea Mission, who recommended Professor Mario Manfredonia as being Ethiopia’s best doctor; but he, too, is in Massawah today, so I could only make an appointment for tomorrow morning.
By this morning my right foot had begun to heal but my left had turned into a suppurating mess. Professor Manfredonia did a lot of skilful pressing and prying, before plastering it with antibiotic ointment, putting on an imposing bandage and telling me to rest for four or five days. He is the sort of doctor who makes you imagine that you are better long before you possibly could be, so I left his surgery feeling quite uninfected.
Today the Bromleys returned from Massawah. Major Bromley has lived in Ethiopia for thirty years and he gave me much practical advice on conditions in the highlands, telling me that it will be necessary to carry a full water-bottle and supplementary food rations. When I explained that I couldn’t possibly carry one ounce more than my present load we decided on the purchase of a pack-mule. Apart from pack-carrying, it is wise to have an animal that can be ridden in an emergency, should one fall ill or break a bone at the back of beyond.
During the afternoon, as I was dutifully resting in my room, Mrs Bromley telephoned and nobly invited me to stay. So I’m now happily installed in this agreeably happy-go-lucky household.
Fortunately I’m a rapid healer; tonight my right foot has a nice new tough skin and my left is no longer throbbing.
This morning’s mule-search was unsuccessful. The Bromleys’ servant reported that it had been a poor market; but on the twenty-fourth he will try again, as the most important market of the week is held on Saturdays.
Today I took a sedate stroll through Asmara, which was founded by the Italians seventy years ago and looks like a lost suburb of Milan, with many Arab shanty-settlements, nomad camps and highlanders’ hovels scattered around the periphery. The Catholic Cathedral, the Grand Mosque and the Coptic Church were all designed by Italians. Mussolini was among the chief contributors to the cathedral building fund and the design is said to have been inspired by the Lombardic school of architecture; but this inspiration seems to have flagged quite soon and I much preferred what I was allowed to see of the mosque. Apart from one Latin flourish – a fluted Roman column at the base of the minaret – this is a fine no-nonsense example of Arab architecture. Near the mosque is St Mary’s Coptic church (rectangular, with mock-Aksumite stonework) and I spent a couple of hours sitting in its enclosure – not because I was riveted by the building, but because the worshippers interested me. Ethiopian churches are locked after morning Mass, yet as I sat in the sun on the steps, surrounded by spectacularly-maimed beggars, people were all the time praying vigorously at each door. Having crossed themselves, and made three little curtseys, they went to the door, pressed their bodies close to it and, between whispered prayers, kissed and stroked the smooth, golden wood. Many were women, with fly-covered infants tied to their backs. Five wild-looking men seemed to be new-comers to Asmara; they had ebony skins, pure Hamitic features, a fuzzy disorder of long hair and tall, thin bodies, draped in the ragged remains of one-piece, knee-length, cotton garments. Probably they belonged to some lowland tribe recently converted to Christianity. When they had finished their prayers they stood back to view the enormous, gaudy mosaic which decorates the facade, and for twenty minutes these apparently ferocious tribesmen remained on the steps animatedly discussing angels and saints.
Meanwhile a distinguished-looking elderly man had joined the worshippers around the main door. He had iron-grey hair, almost black skin, handsome features and tremendous dignity; in his well-tailored suit and snow-white shirt he was conspicuous indeed among this filthy, barefooted throng. Having completed his ritual devotions he withdrew from the mob, carrying highly-polished shoes, and stood erect and motionless for over an hour in the shade of a nearby bell-tower, staring intently at the church and praying sotto voce. He was still there when I left.
This afternoon I bought ten pounds of imported emergency rations – dried fruit, and tins of cheese and fish. The prices were astronomical, for in addition to freight charges there are import duties of 65 per cent to 100 per cent on all foreign goods. These taxes may seem unreasonable, but they are the Government’s chief source of revenue and the faranjs who buy most of the imported goods can better afford to pay taxes than can the Ethiopians. At present Ethiopia desperately needs more money, because in many ways this is the least advanced African country – a result of never having been colonised and a sore point among the few Ethiopians who can bring themselves to face the Empire’s backwardness.
In general, relations between the Eritreans and the Italian colony seem to be excellent. The majority of the resident Italians have been born here and the fact that they chose to remain, after the union with Ethiopia, proves that to them Eritrea is ‘home’. All the locals to whom I have spoken declare that the Italians are their favourite faranjs; but a regrettable bond between the settlers and the Eritreans is their shared contempt for the rest of the Emperor’s ‘uncivilised’ subjects.
During the past few days the weather has been quite cool. This plateau has an extraordinary even temperature. In May, the hottest month, the Asmara average is 65ºF and in December, the coldest month, it is 58ºF. Yet the Danakil desert, immediately west of the tableland, is one of the hottest places in the world. The mountains which make things so pleasant up here also bring to the highlands the Indian Ocean monsoon, from June to September.
Today’s mule-buying effort also failed. The servant reported that though he had seen a few good animals the prices were exorbitant – two hundred dollars, which is thirty pounds. He therefore advised buying at a smaller market, where it should be possible to get an equally good animal for half the price. This development coincided with an announcement by Major Bromley that on the twenty-sixth he must take two vehicles to Makalle; so we decided to make a minor expedition of it, Mrs Bromley (known as Peter) and myself going by car, the Major and the children by Land-Rover.
In Makalle lives Her Highness Leilt (Princess) Aida Desta, eldest grandchild of the Emperor. She is an old friend of the Bromleys, who say that she will be happy to help me buy a good mule at a reasonable price. I can then spend a few days getting acquainted with the animal, and start trekking from Makalle when my foot is completely re-soled.
My original route did not include Makalle, which lies south-east of the Asmara–Adua–Aksum trail that I had planned to take on my way to the Semien Mountains. I’ll now have to walk north-east to Adowa, before turning due south towards the Takazze Gorge, which divides the provinces of Tigre and Begemdir.
Having two children in the house – Christopher and Nicola Bromley – gives some point to the tedious ballyhoo of our modern Western Christmas. Ethiopian Christians celebrate this feast on 7 January, by which time I hope to be celebrating with them in the middle of nowhere.
On our drive from Asmara my first glimpse of the highlands overwhelmed me. Their magnificent, ferocious beauty is beyond all expectation, imagination or exaggeration – even to think of it makes my heart pound again.
We left Asmara at 10.30 and immediately outside the city were on an arid, red-brown plain, with low hills ahead and high mountains to the east. Then, beyond Decamere, the road swooped down and up for many miles through mountains whose configuration was so extraordinary that I felt I must be dreaming. Often we were driving on the verge of immense chasms, which lay between escarpments of pink or yellow rock that had been eroded to the most grotesque contrasts – and this tormented splendour is sustained for hundreds of miles.
We covered 200 miles today, and one gets such a confused impression from a car that already I’ve forgotten where we saw what. I think we were near Adigrat when the Semiens first appeared, some eighty miles away to the south-west – a fantastic array of powder-blue ruggedness, their 12 to 15,000-foot summits seeming deceptively near and clear. Never have I seen such strange mountains; they look like peaks in a cartoon film. We were then on a 9,000-foot plateau and between us and the Semiens lay this fissured wilderness of gorges, cliffs and lesser mountains. In the middle distance was a curiously perfect cone, and there were several solitary, flat-topped, steep-sided ambas, rising abruptly from a surrounding area of level ground. These ambas form almost impregnable natural fortresses and their rôle in Ethiopian history has been so important that one looks at them with awe, rather as though they were the venerable veterans of some remote and famous battle.
My map marks six ‘important’ towns between Asmara and Makalle, yet none of them seems more than a large, shoddy village. Those in Eritrea were important once, but since the Italians left the bigger houses have become roofless ruins, on which faint lettering indicates that thirty or forty years ago Italian grocers, barbers and hotel-keepers were in residence. The locals never moved into these comparatively solid and spacious houses, preferring to live on in their own rickety, cramped, tin-roofed shacks. Here corrugated-tin roofs are not merely a status-symbol, as in Nepal, but a means of collecting precious rain; and in such a barren region the use of every raindrop justifies even this ugliness.
Though we were driving on one of Northern Ethiopia’s only two motor-roads we passed no other private cars and saw not more than six or seven trucks. Between Decamere and Senafé a convoy of nine buses approached us, escorted by two smart army vehicles, bristling with machine-guns. This is the hub of the shifta country, where private cars rarely travel unescorted unless flying a flag that denotes diplomatic privileges. I noticed that here even Peter, who has nerves of steel, was slightly tensed up, despite the large Union Jack fluttering conspiciously on our bonnet. But she assured me that the danger was minimal as shifta specialise in buses; if the owners of Transport Companies don’t regularly pay a protection fee their vehicles are pushed over precipices.
Makalle lies west of the road and previously it was necessary to overshoot it and then turn back north from Quiha; but a few years ago Leilt Aida’s husband, HH Leul Ras Mangasha Seyoum, the Governor-General of Tigre, designed a direct ten-mile jeep track to the town, and did most of the construction work himself with a bulldozer and tractors.
As we hairpinned steeply down the mountainside I had my first glimpse of Tigre’s provincial capital – a little town sheltered by eucalyptus trees on the edge of a wide and windswept plain. My guidebook claims that Makalle ‘gives the impression of a boom town’ – and perhaps it does, to those who knew it ten years ago. To me it gives the impression of a neat feudal settlement, gathered happily around the somewhat misleadingly named ‘palace’ of the Emperor Yohannes IV. It has such an atmosphere of remote tranquillity that neither the turmoils of its past nor the progress of its present are easily credited. We drove straight to the new tourist hotel, a converted eighty-year-old castle, managed by Indians, which stands small and square on a low hill. Here prices are reasonable (about twenty-five shillings for bed and breakfast) and, though tourist hotels are not my natural habitat, I find the wall-to-wall carpeting and the pink-tiled bathroom sufficiently compensated for by eccentric electricity and a moody water supply. When countless servants had pitted themselves against the plumbing for over an hour we achieved baths, before setting off to dine at the palace – me in my Husky outfit, which seemed one degree less removed from palatial evening-wear than a pair of ill-fitting Cairo-tailored shorts.
At present Ras Mangasha is away in the mountains, building another road, so Leilt Aida appeared alone in the courtyard to receive us. It can be disconcerting to meet a princess who seems like a princess; one feels as though a fairy-tale had come true – especially with a background of high turrets standing out blackly against a moon-blue sky. Haile Selassie’s eldest grandchild is very elegant and very beautiful – olive skinned, with a triangular face, large and lovely eyes and the finest of bones. The likeness to her grandfather is at first quite intimidating, but is soon countered by a subtle sense of humour and a kindly graciousness. Clearly she is going to be a wonderful ally – concerned for my safety, but only to a sensible extent. She has not opposed my setting out through the Tembien sans guide, sans guard, though she insists on giving me letters to the various district governors, who are being instructed to help me if I’m in difficulty.
Yohannes IV’s stone palace-fortress was constructed by an Italian workman, named Giuseppe Naretti, and its practical solidity fittingly commemorates one of Ethiopia’s greatest warrior Emperors. But the many cavernous reception rooms are not very suitable for a family of eleven and innumerable servants, so an inconspicuous bungalow has recently been built on to the south wing.
As I write a fiendish gale is tearing around the hotel, incessantly howling, whining, rattling and roaring. Makalle is renowned for these strong, cold winds, which rise during the late afternoon and continue until dawn.
This morning I mentioned mule-buying to Leilt Aida – and such is the Imperial Magic that within twenty minutes no less than six pack-mules were being paraded before me, by hopeful owners, in the stable-yard behind the palace.
My choice was quickly made, for one animal looked much superior to the rest. He is about thee years old, with perfect feet, a good coat and an apparently docile nature. It seemed auspicious that he meekly allowed me to open his mouth and pick up his feet, and when I took the halter he followed me around the yard like a lamb. He is dark grey, with a black off-foreleg, a white saucer-sized spot on the withers, a large chestnut patch on the near flank and a few white stripes on his belly. But the most important – and surprising – thing is his endearing expression. It had never occurred to me that one could be on more than civil terms with a mule, yet I can foresee myself becoming fond of this creature, for whom I willingly paid 105 dollars (fifteen guineas). The owner was an affable character, who considerately admitted that his animal had never seen a motor vehicle until today, and would therefore be inclined to ballet-dance on main roads.
I immediately named my new comrade ‘Jock’, in honour of a friend of mine who is noted for his kind dependability and capacity for overworking every day of the year – qualities which one hopes will be encouraged in Jock II by this talisman of a mutual name. I trust the friend in question will appreciate the compliment of having a mule named after him. As compliments go it is perhaps a trifle opaque at first sight.
Watering Jock in the stable-yard proved to be a little difficult; he had never before drunk from anything save a stream and was shy of both tank and bucket. When he had at last followed the example of a palace mule, I led him into a stable and left him settling down to a feed of barley. The buying of accessories was postponed till tomorrow, as Leilt Aida had arranged to take us to the Leul’s road-building camp for a picnic lunch.
The age when arrogant, energetic highland princes were the de facto rulers of their provinces has passed, but one can see traces of it in Ras Mangasha’s career as Governor-General of Tigre. His position is a curious one. Officially he is a senior civil servant in a centralised bureaucracy; actually he remains the hereditary prince of the Tigreans – a people to whom bureaucrats mean nothing and feudal lords everything. This vigorous great-grandson of Yohannes IV has shown a traditional independence in organising his latest project. Instead of submitting his scheme to the relevant procrastinating ministry in Addis he designed the road himself (though without academic training as an engineer), appealed to the peasants to help him, took off his shirt – literally – and got on with it. The peasants are now willingly contributing unpaid labour, though if an unknown official from Addis requested this sort of co-operation he would get a stony stare from these same people. The work has been in progress for only fifteen days, yet ten miles of road have been completed; and it must give Ras Mangasha considerable satisfaction personally to lead the peasants in this communal effort as his forefathers led their forefathers in battle.
At 11 a.m. we left Makalle in a battered chauffeur-driven Mercedes and followed the main road towards Addis for an hour and a quarter, seeing no traffic except large mule and camel caravans on their way to the Danakil Desert to fetch salt. When we turned off the main road to begin our nine-mile climb the new track rounded many well engineered hairpin bends and near the summit of the range’s highest mountain we stopped at a tiny caravan – Ras Mangasha’s temporary home. Today’s work-party was visible at the end of the road, and soon the Leul came slithering expertly down a cliff to greet us – stocky, self-confident and dark-skinned, with bright, enthusiastic eyes and work-roughened hands. He has none of his wife’s calm depth and his conversation at once reveals a certain naïvety of approach to this complex transition period in Ethiopian history; but one feels that he genuinely loves his people and that they love him.
We sat on a boulder, and were served with injara, wat, talla and tej while watching a giant bulldozer edging its way along a precipice, pushing over the verge tons of rock already loosened by the herculean endeavours of ill-equipped peasants. It was thrilling to see and hear these colossal chunks of mountain go rolling and rumbling through the undergrowth into the invisible depths of the valley below. Apart from the workers, scores of men, women and children walk for miles every day just to watch, and they feel that this machine which moves mountains must be operated by some high-powered magic, lately discovered through the cleverness and virtue of their Prince. Frequently, during our picnic, Ras Mangasha leaped to his feet and yelled frantic warnings at open-mouthed onlookers who had chosen to stand and stare in the path of lethal boulders. As Leilt Aida remarked, these recurrent dramas were very bad for everyone’s digestion. Not to mention the fact that from our angle the bulldozer itself looked in imminent danger of following the rocks.
Despite the bulldozer, the tractors and the Mercedes this scene was essentially of another age. As we ate, several peasants approached Ras Mangasha to present gifts of bread. They came towards us bent double, holding out the leaf-wrapped loaves with both hands and not daring to raise their eyes; but when a servant had accepted the gift some of the bolder spirits came closer and, after a moment’s hesitation, reverently touched the muddy princely boot with their fingertips.
Archbishop Mathew has remarked that until the accession of Yohannes IV ‘the sustained element of the picturesque, which was so marked a feature of court life in Ethiopia, was lacking in the viceroyalty of the Tigre. … These viceroys were without a sense of dynasty, armed chief had followed armed chief. … There could be nothing withdrawn or sacred in such a feudal history.’ However, since the reign of Ethiopia’s only Tigrean Emperor this province has adopted the rigid, stylised etiquette that for so many centuries regulated the behaviour of the Gondarine and Shoan courts – though the differing traditions are remarkably reflected in the personalities of Leilt Aida Desta and Leul Ras Mangasha Seyoum. Yet neither is pure-blooded, for theirs is not the first marriage alliance between the rival royal houses of Tigre and Shoa. When Yohannes IV was dying on the battlefield of Gallabat he named as his heir Ras Mangasha, an illegitimate son by his brother’s wife (his legitimate heir had already been poisoned), and this man became the future Emperor Menelik’s only serious competitor. Soon Menelik had vanquished the Tigrean prince on the battlefield and he then compelled Ras Mangasha to divorce his wife and marry a niece of the Empress Taitu. It was after this Mangasha’s son – Seyoum – had been killed in the 1960 revolution that the present Leul became head of the family.
As I watched the peasants paying homage to their Prince I thought of all this tangled background – which partly explains why Ras Mangasha maintains no royal aloofness. His noted accessibility is a reversion to type, though it bewilders the Tigrean peasants, who know little of their own history and have long since accepted the formal Amharic code.
When we got back to the palace I hurried out to see Jock, who was looking a little forlorn in his new quarters. We took a short stroll, and I then decided that since both my feet feel comfortably re-skinned we can start our trek on the twenty-ninth.
For dinner Leilt Aida provided us with a sheep roasted whole on a spit. It looked romantic and tasted delicious.
This morning I woke at 6.30 to see Christopher and Nicola standing by my bed, pleading to come with me as far as Aksum. They are a tough pair – born and bred in Southern Ethiopia – so I said that of course they could come, if parental permission were granted. But in the end this daydream was reduced to Christopher’s accompanying me on tomorrow’s stage and being retrieved in the evening by a palace car.
When the other Bromleys had left for home Christopher and I went to the open-air market, where I hoped to find a suitable walking-stick. The market-place covers about two acres and scores of villagers from surrounding districts – the majority women suckling babies – sat on the dusty ground behind small piles of eggs, grain or unfamiliar herbs. All these highlanders wear rags and look filthy beyond description – which is hardly surprising, with water so scarce.
We found that dulas (heavy sticks) are not marketed here, since people prefer to cut and prepare their own weapons, so I looked for a substitute at several of the poky Arab huckster-stalls that line the narrower streets. My enquiries had to be made in sign language and, remembering the highlanders’ predilection for hitting each other over the head, I used this gesture – with the result that I soon became a popular turn. A delighted crowd followed me up the street, all perfectly understanding what I meant but none willing to part with his beloved dula. Then an Arab trader offered his own light stick for fifty cents (one and fivepence) and I gladly accepted it – against the advice of my Tigrean followers, who despise light sticks.
After lunch Jock and I went for a stroll around the ‘estate’, which is delightfully unpretentious. Broken-down farm machinery and the displaced statues of stone lions litter the forecourt, a chihuahua bitch complacently suckles three almost invisible pups in a cardboard box on the bungalow verandah and donkeys and mules graze on nothing in particular inside the imposing arched gateway – while the Prince’s standard flutters importantly above them.
For centuries Ethiopia’s emperors and nobles lived nomad lives, their courts elaborate camps set up at various points throughout troubled domains, and here one realises that two generations of ‘settledness’ have not counteracted the effects of this wandering tradition, which bred indifference to comfort and beauty. The Ras Mangasha who succeeded Yohannes IV stabled his riding horses within his palace to mark the esteem in which they were held – a natural gesture, for someone reared in a robust society immemorially centred on good horses and good horsemanship. Many Ethiopian emperors and chieftains were intelligent men, but they devoted their skills and energies to intriguing, hunting, repelling invasions or warring with neighbouring chieftains; and when the Imperial Court did settle in Gondar it soon became degenerate.
At teatime I went indoors, and soon several servants appeared at the french windows, holding up sundry bits of terrifyingly complicated pack-mule equipment. Leilt Aida asked my opinion of these items, but I hastily confessed that I’d never seen the like in my life before and couldn’t possibly pronounce on their quality or suitability. The palace staff are taking this matter of Jock’s equipment very seriously and soon we heard them arguing vehemently about the relative reliability and convenience of various bridles, bits, pack-saddles and ropes. Finally it was decided that a servant, Gabre, should accompany me to a saddler in the bazaar to advise me on the purchase of a bit and bridle.
Because today is one of Ethiopia’s many important religious feasts the saddler’s shop was shut, so Gabre led me on to the man’s home, through alleyways where mounting-blocks stood outside most of the sturdy little stone houses. (Compared with other highlanders the Tigreans are noted for their solid buildings.) In the saddler’s compound some forty men and women were being entertained to talla and dabo (substantial wheaten bread) and I was taken to a small room, where much saddlery hung on the mud walls and women were baking on a fire in the centre of the earthen floor. The general reaction to this unprecedented intrusion of a faranj was interesting. I sensed a mixture of curiosity, amusement, shyness and suspicion; and, despite the status of my escort, I was given no special treatment – as one inevitably would be by Asians in similar circumstances. A minor Ethiopian official would have been received with much more ceremony, and one could see that the Princess’ servant was regarded as a person of far greater consequence than the Princess’ foreign friend. I was glad to observe so much today, before setting out on my trek. It is always a help to know one’s place from the start.
* Throughout Ethiopian history Massawah has been important in a negative sense, for it was the highlanders’ inability to hold their natural port that isolated them so momentously. At the beginning of the fifteenth century King Yeshaq took Massawah from the Muslims, who had been in possession for seven centuries, but within eighty years it had been lost again to the coastal tribes then warring against the highlanders. From 1520 to 1526 it was occupied by the Portuguese, from 1527 to 1865 by the Turks, and from 1865 to 1882 by the Egyptians. The British next took over, promising the Emperor John IV that on leaving Massawah they would return it to the highlanders. They left three years later, but their anxiety to counter French influence along the Red Sea coast led them to hand Massawah over to the Italians – for whom it was the capital of their new colony until 1897, when Asmara was built. After World War II the British again took possession and not until 1952 did Massawah, with the rest of Eritrea, become part of the Ethiopian Empire. Today this province is a troublesome part, for many Eritreans resent being ruled from Addis Ababa, and foreign Muslim powers are busy transforming this resentment into a modern nationalistic ambition to have Eritrea declared an independent state.