THE PIERCING COLD kept us all in our flea-bags until 7.30 this morning, and it was 8.30 before Jock and I left the camp, led by a local who was also going to Derasghie. Last evening, as an anti-shifta precaution, Afeworq had contacted this taciturn little man – whose fair skin went curiously with Negroid features.
Remarkably, there were no steep climbs in today’s twenty-two miles and there was only one steep descent, from the campsite to river-level. Then our path ascended the ploughed ridge diagonally, passing many giant thistles – twenty feet tall, with enormous balls hanging from their upper stalks like toys on a Christmas tree – and sometimes crossing uncultivated stretches where clumps of thyme and heather grew between outcrops of rock, or the now familiar Semien shrubs shed their small green leaves into Jock’s bucket. From the crest of this ridge we walked for hours down a slightly broken, sloping plateau, seeing occasional conspicuous groups of twisted pines. Here I got a close-up view of two magnificent Lanner Falcons, with red-brown heads, dark-grey backs and black wings; both had perched on boulders and neither moved until we were almost beside them. Apart from these the only birds I’ve noticed in the Semiens are Thick-billed Ravens – natives of Ethiopia – but the Lammergeyer (Bearded Vulture), which has a wing-span of eight to nine feet, is also quite common here.
At about 10,000 feet the vegetation became more colourful and many yellow-flowered shrubs and enormous pinkish-purple cacti lined the path. Over the last five miles several settlements were visible in the distance and we passed one church, where my companion paused to perform the usual ritual of kissing the enclosure wall. This enclosure contained some fine trees – junipers higher than the church itself, wild fig-trees and oleasters. The practice of preserving trees only within church compounds is probably a relic of pre-Christian feeling, for trees are sacred to many of Ethiopia’s other ethnic groups – as they were in pagan Ireland.
Foreigners seem popular in this region and everyone we met was exceptionally friendly. The normal greeting is an unsmiling bow, and should a man’s shamma be covering his head he will lower it while bowing; but here the men also shook hands and smiled warmly, including three mule-riders who respectfully dismounted to salute me in proper fashion. Today, too, I saw for the first time a highland woman on a mule – riding astride, wearing tight, ankle-length, velvet trousers beneath her skirt, and carrying a white silk umbrella. She herself didn’t greet me, but ordered her servant to do so, whereupon he prostrated himself before the bedraggled faranj and touched my battered boots with his fingertips, which he then kissed. Here umbrellas are more common than rifles and presumably they too are status symbols, since at this season there is neither rain nor heat to justify them.
A month ago I would have laughed at my map for calling Derasghie a ‘town’, but now it seems just that to me. Amidst the straggle of tukuls and oblong mud huts there are two Muslim traders’ stalls, in which one can buy Chinese torches and batteries, Indian cotton, Polish soap, Czechoslovakian pocket-combs, kerosene and salt. There are also a primary school, a Governor’s office, a Health Centre and a Police Post – all these institutions being housed in extremely primitive buildings.
Hordes of children greeted us by shouting ‘Faranj! Faranj! Faranj!’ – a reception which brought the law on me, so that within moments I was being marched off to the Governor’s office. When we appeared in his compound the Big Man was about to leave for Debarak, but he postponed his departure to cope with this disconcerting problem, for which convention provided no set answer. Immediately a twenty-year-old ‘Dresser’ from the Health Centre was summoned as interpreter; but unfortunately Asmare speaks minimal English and his Amharic pride led him to confuse various issues by pretending to understand much more than he did.
The Governor demanded my non-existent travel permit and when I produced my visa instead he scrutinised it suspiciously, complained that he couldn’t read the signature and asked who had signed it. I replied ‘The Ethiopian Consul in London’, but I had to admit to not knowing the Consul’s name and my ignorance of this elementary fact seemed to confirm whatever his worst suspicions were. Yet he was not being at all unpleasant and I sensed that he was merely making a formal show of his power, as much to impress his subordinates as to awe me. However, we were now at an impasse, for, having expressed such strong disapproval of my ‘papers’, and reacted so sceptically to my improbable tale about walking from Tigre through the Semiens, he could hardly relent with dignity. I therefore decided that the moment had come for me to claim unblushingly that Leilt Aida was one of my closest friends – and at once the atmosphere changed completely and talla was brought forth.
Inevitably, the Governor wanted to provide me with an escort, but I successfully argued that the walk to Debarak would be an Old Ladies’ Outing compared with trekking in the High Semiens. Then, as both Jock and I are in need of rest, I asked if we might have lodgings for three nights – which will give me an opportunity to see the Timkat ceremonies here on the nineteenth – and the Governor immediately told Asmare to show me to the ‘guest-room’ beside his office.
This guest-room is more weather-proof than the average hut, as the inner walls have been well plastered with cow-dung. The builders evidently felt a feeble impulse to be ‘Western’, because two spaces have been left unplastered, to serve as windows – though these admit little light, since the roof-stakes project far out and down to form a verandah. (This common device can be a danger to the unwary, especially after dark, as the sharp stakes are often at eye-level.) There is no furniture, the tin door won’t shut and when I arrived the uneven mud floor was thinly covered with straw: but before his departure the Governor ordered a ‘carpet’ of freshly-cut blue-gum branches.
I slept well last night. We are still in the Semiens, at 10,200 feet, but the penetrating frosts of the High Semiens have been left behind.
At 7.30 Asmare guided me to Derasghie Mariam, the most important of the local churches. It is, of course, famous – by now I’ve realised that to the locals every highland parish church is famous – and Asmare proudly informed me that the Emperor Theodore was crowned within its sanctuary. Its murals are the finest I’ve yet seen, but circumstances were against any leisurely enjoyment of them. Protective sheets of dirty cotton hang from ceiling to floor and these had to be lifted aside, with difficulty, by Asmare – using a long pole – while a group of priests and debtaras lurked in the background, looking predatory. The light was poor, too, though debtaras opened various twenty-foot-high doors; but for all that I greatly appreciated what I could see of these gay or bloodthirsty saints. It is clear that at some period Derasghie produced – or attracted – artists whose imagination and sense of humour could not be repressed by ecclesiastical conventions.
The clergy here are not very amiable. At the enclosure gate-house, where a score of blind and maimed were patiently awaiting alms, three priests objected to my entering (though I was decently attired) and they only relented on hearing Asmare mention the magic name of Leilt Aida. Then, when we were leaving, I gave the chief priest a dollar – but he looked at it with angry disdain and aggressively demanded five dollars. So I snatched the note off his open palm and gave it to the beggars instead. Later this morning a Muslim trader invited me into his stall for a glass of tea, and as I was enjoying this rare luxury another Muslim politely asked if I would sell him a cigarette for twopence. It was difficult to persuade him to accept one as a gift, and I couldn’t help contrasting his attitude with that of the local priests.
Here one gets a most exhilarating sense of space, for Derasghie is on a plateau so vast that mountains are visible only in the far distance to east and west – where their crests appear just above the edges of the plain.
I spent the afternoon wandering through nearby fields, tenaciously attended by children. Everywhere barley was being harvested and I noticed that wild oats were also being threshed and then winnowed from the barley for storage in separate containers.*
This evening the Timkat ceremonies began at sunset. Timkat commemorates the baptism of Christ – the word Timkat means baptism – and it is one of the three most important Ethiopian church festivals. (The other two are Easter and Maskal, which is held in September to commemorate the finding of the true Cross by Empress Helena.) At this time are baptised the children of syphilitic mothers, and when the priests have blessed a pool convenient to the church the devout bathe in this sanctified water. The ceremonies begin on the eve of the festival, when the Tabot, representing the Ark of the Covenant, is carried to a tent – preferably near a stream – where Mass will be celebrated early next morning.*
Perhaps because of my disagreement with the clergy at Derasghie Mariam, Asmare brought me this evening to a smaller church nearer the town. We were accompanied on our way by scores of men, women and children – most of the children in new clothes and all the adults in clean shammas. Soon after our arrival within the enclosure a procession left the church, preceded by a gun-man and led by an elderly priest draped in tattered, gaily-coloured silken robes and bearing on his head the Tabot, hidden beneath a grubby, gold-embroidered, waist-length cloak. Beside him walked another priest, holding over the Tabot a variously-coloured, silver-spangled silk umbrella, and close behind walked two more priests, also draped in gay silken rags. The procession was completed by two drummer debtaras, dressed in lay clothes, and as it wound its dishevelled way down a steep slope it was followed by scores of chanting men, ululating women and silent children – who were more interested in the faranj than in the Tabot.
At first the men had been chanting slowly, but soon their rhythm quickened and they broke up into three groups, forming circles of wild dancers who leaped high in the air every other moment while brandishing their dulas as though they were spears. Frequent whoopings and hand-clappings accompanied the leapings and dula-wavings and clearly everyone was having a wonderful time. Meanwhile the ululating women remained close to the Tabot, and when the procession reached the tent everyone was quiet for a moment, and all dulas were thrown to the ground as the Chief Priest prayed and the men bent forward, eyes cast down, while chanting their responses.
After the Tabot had disappeared a strip of matting was laid on the ploughed earth for the local VIPs and a debtara invited me to take a seat. Then a priest came from the tent, carrying a basket of hot, blessed dabo, and having given the first piece to the faranj he distributed the rest amongst the general public – who each reverently kissed their hunk before eating it.
By now the air was cold and as we hurried home the trees on the church hill were standing out blackly against a blood-orange western sky, and the distant mountain crests to the east were a delicate pink-mauve-blue, and all around us the last of the sunset lay on the crackling barley stubble in a strange, faint, red-gold haze.
I spent the early morning at the scene of yesterday’s ceremonies, watching the faithful being sprinkled with blessed water as the sun rose. Then Asmare reappeared to accompany me to today’s main festivities, in a long, level field some two miles from Derasghie Mariam. As we arrived white-clad crowds were converging on the Tabot tent and scores of shouting horsemen could be seen galloping to and fro across the wide grasslands – including many little boys riding bareback at top speed with great skill. Today the women looked particularly animated, for Timkat frees them of all domestic responsibilities. Many young wives were eyeing the horsemen boldly, and by now both they and their husbands are probably enjoying temporary changes of partners.
Timkat is also one of the occasions when unmarried girls dress in their finest clothes and groom their hair meticulously, for unmarried youths often avail themselves of this appearance of virgins in public to choose an attractive mate. The youth will then ask his father to begin negotiations with the girl’s father – though he can never be sure either of his father’s cooperation or of the negotiations proceeding satisfactorily. There can be no question of marrying without paternal consent. To do so would invite a solemn cursing and permanent disinheritance, since marriages are arranged to link families rather than individuals. However, if a young couple find each other incompatible discreet unfaithfulness is overlooked and divorce is easy. Yet an unmarried girl is constantly chaperoned, and in some homes she is even forbidden to do strenuous jobs lest her hymen should be accidentally ruptured. On the other hand, a boy who is still virgin at eighteen or nineteen will be jeered at by his contemporaries and called ‘silb’ (‘castrated one’); so dissatisfied young wives have a wide choice of lovers.
At eleven o’clock a tiny boy in a spotless white tunic left the tent ringing a large bronze bell and followed by the inevitable gun-man. Then appeared a handsome young priest, robed in black and scarlet silk and wearing a golden crown surmounted by a silver cross. He was followed by the Tabot itself, invisible beneath red velvet on the head of an elderly priest clad in gold, purple and crimson vestments and walking beneath the shade of a silver-spangled blue, yellow, red and green silk umbrella – borne by a young priest. Next came a second crowned priest, two debtaras beating enormous gold and silver drums and an old priest swinging an empty silver censer and holding aloft a large, crudely-worked silver and gold cross. The procession was completed by seventeen priests from other churches, carrying prayer-sticks and sistra and wearing heavy black, white or navy-blue woollen cloaks.
The laity’s progress was less orderly. Today the young men were in fine ‘war-dance’ form and many leaping, whooping groups preceded, accompanied and followed the procession. Shouting horsemen cantered up and down, scores of middle-aged men walked beside the priests, continuously singing ‘haaa-hooo, haaa-hooo’ in low-pitched voices, the ululating women kept abreast of the Tabot, and small boys rode their ponies like gay demons – racing to the front, then skilfully wheeling round and racing to the back, proudly flourishing their miniature dulas as though they were spears.
Half-way to the church the procession halted beside a small tent, and the Tabot-laden priest disappeared to drink talla. Then another priest recited a long prayer and all the cloaked clergy chanted happily, some of them performing a slow, graceful dance while others – laying aside their prayer-sticks and sistra – clapped rhythmically and the women ululated non-stop and the young men bounded joyously.
During this pause the horsemen began to race seriously, providing an exciting spectacle as they frenziedly urged their fast, light mounts over the smooth turf.*A ‘spear’-throwing competition with long, pointed sticks was part of the game, and one could see that this warrior-art is still very much alive, even among the younger, rifle-nurtured generation.
Sitting on a boulder – watching the dancing priests and the leaping laymen and the galloping spear-throwers, and listening to drums, bells, sistra, chantings, ululations and pounding hoofs – I felt, not for the first time, an uncomfortable reaction to Ethiopian Christianity. To me there is something false about it, and by now this feeling has given me a guilt-complex, since ignorance of the Ethiopian Church should prevent me from passing judgement on it. Yet I have observed other incomprehensible religious rites – Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu – without ever experiencing this sense of something dead, or atrophied, or unborn: I don’t quite know which word fits. My reaction has nothing to do with the display of outward reverence – which may be governed by the superficial customs and racial temperament of a particular crowd – but it has everything to do with the atmosphere that a crowd evokes at a religious ceremony. Here I am aware of no spiritual vitality. It seems that a sacred ceremony is simply providing an excuse for colourful processing, prolonged singing and dancing, a day off work and lots of extra food, alchohol and love-making. All of which is good for the morale of a hard-working community, and might well be a means of expressing sincere religious feeling; but in this context both the genuine gaiety and the ritual gestures of devotion seem quite unrelated to true worship.
The midday sun was very hot as we started to climb the rock-strewn church hill, yet within the enclosure the tireless young men resumed their leapings and whoopings, which contrasted curiously with the formal, stately movements of the nearby dancing priests. Half-an-hour later the Tabot was carried once around the church, before being accompanied into the sanctuary by the clergy; but the lay dancers remained without, bounding up as though on springs, then squatting for an instant – leaning on their dulas – then bounding again and re-bounding, while their shouts grew louder and wilder and sweat glistened on their tense faces and their eyes gleamed with some mass emotion that may possibly have been religious fervour.
I was invited to lunch by a relative of Asmare’s, whose spacious tukul was crowded with guests. When we arrived my host’s mother sent a granddaughter to her own tukul to fetch araki in honour of the faranj, and soon the girl returned with six clean liqueur glasses and a decanter of colourless spirit. Araki is much the same as Nepalese rakshi and Tibetan arak (this Arabic word has travelled far!), but it has a peculiar flavour of its own, rather like smoky anice. It also has a peculiar potency of its own and as I returned to my room the fields seemed much more uneven than they had been earlier.
By nine o’clock this evening the whole of Derasghie was en fête. In most compounds drums were being beaten strongly beside huge bonfires around which dancers were still bounding high, keeping up their monotonous, self-hypnotic chanting. Also much song and laughter issued from tukuls, where women, children and older men were sitting drinking around smaller fires; and between compounds bands of young men, accompanied by drummers, were singing and swaggering, followed by groups of cheering, giggling young women – whose virtue is, I assume, uncertain. As I write the sounds of gaiety are becoming louder on every side: but this is a happy, friendly noise and it won’t keep me awake.
Usually highlanders rise at dawn, but this morning I could find no one to load Jock until 8.30. A small boy accompanied us to the edge of the town and pointed out the track to Dabat – which expired within a mile, amidst acres of volcanic rock. So all day we’ve been going north-west instead of due west.
After crossing several low, grey-brown hills we came to broad, bright grasslands where boys were herding sheep and cattle. Here another track appeared, and thinking that it might be the right one I optimistically appealed to the boys for guidance, but at the sound of my voice they fled to the shelter of a forested hillock and then peered fearfully at me through the bushes.
Ten minutes later we were on the brink of a valley whose floor looked so remote that one might have been viewing it from an aeroplane. The descent took two and a quarter hours, on a very precipitous path of loose clay, scattered with round pebbles on which my feet slithered uncontrollably. I fell eight times, acquired three open cuts and twice had to go tobogganing on my behind – a slightly painful procedure, when one is wearing thin shorts. Meanwhile Jock was methodically picking his way down – though even he stumbled occasionally – and at intervals he paused to graze while waiting for me to catch up. Luckily there were a few narrow ledges, on which the path ran level for thirty or forty yards, and I stopped on these to apply nicotine to my nerves while enjoying the spectacular view and admiring the most varied selection of shrubs and wild-flowers that I have yet seen in the highlands. Dense growth covers this mountain and though it is now autumn here a glorious array of blossoms remain – blue, yellow, white and pink.
Soon after reaching comparatively level ground a few compounds appeared and our path degenerated into a criss-cross of faint pathlets. The descent had loosened Jock’s load, so when we came near a compound I reluctantly decided to look for help. (As husbands and wives are left alone in their tukuls only during the daytime, unexpected callers can be a nuisance.) I shouted from a tactful distance and a young man appeared, looking rather grumpy, but he securely re-roped Jock and we were soon on our undecided way – my enquiries about the route having elicited the inevitable vague ‘Mado’.
This region was bewildering. Here I could see that what had seemed to be the valley floor was merely a gigantic, sloping ledge, which hid the true, narrow valley – now about 600 feet below us. The descent to river-level was gradual, but I doubted if we should descend at this point, for no track could possibly climb the tremendous north–south barrier beyond the river. Our faint path also ran north-south, and logically we should here have turned south, but an intimidating chaos of massive mountains and (presumably) deep gorges lay in that direction, so I decided to follow the northern line of least resistance.
After about a mile our pathlet became a clear, level track, which for two hours wound round a succession of golden-grassed spurs. We passed a few women – carrying enormous loads of firewood – who greeted me with shy friendliness.
When the track suddenly dropped to river-level I saw four vividly green fields lying by the water’s edge like displaced scraps of Ireland. This was an unfamiliar crop, and only then did I realise how much one misses fresh growth. While Jock was drinking I stood entranced – to gaze on that tender, bright greenness felt like the quenching of a visual thirst.
On the opposite bank our track faded away amidst plough-land, but I continued north, towards a break in the mountain-wall, hoping that it would reappear – which it did, and took us from 7,800 feet to this plateau at 10,600 feet.
I felt dazed by beauty during the ascent. Four uninhabited mountains led up one from another, with short, level walks over each summit but never a downward step; and as we climbed through dark green forests, or across red-gold, rock-strewn grasslands, or up rough black escarpments, every turn of the path revealed new, immeasurable heights and depths. By 6.30 we were at 10,500 feet and the deep valley on our right was full of dusk and shrieking baboons. From here I could see the path going over yet another escarpment, some 200 yards ahead, and that final climb brought us on to a wide plateau, where a settlement lay only fifteen minutes’ walk away.
Already the sun had set and two minute pink cloudlets were poised above the south-western horizon. I would have hugged them had they been a little nearer; cloudless skies are delightful in theory, but after living beneath their perfection for five weeks an Irishwoman feels that something is missing.
Apparently Timkat is still operating here. As we approached the settlement, through a chilly, grey-blue twilight, I heard sounds of revelry and saw scores of men and youths sitting on the hillside drinking talla as they watched ten men dancing to the music of an azmari (wandering minstrel). Our arrival astonished everyone, but I was warmly welcomed and presented with two gourds of talla simultaneously – and after that climb I emptied them almost simultaneously. Then a laughing woman fed me with unfamiliar, delicious bread – wafer-thin, toasted crisp and faintly seasoned with salt and spices. As I sat on a boulder, devouring this delicacy, the azmari came to stand before me, playing his mazenka (a one-stringed fiddle) while improvising a song in my honour. (I could distinguish the words for ‘mule’, ‘high mountains’, ‘shifta’, ‘woman’, ‘cold’, ‘alone’ and I regretted my inability to understand it fully.) By now a golden half-moon had risen and was shining more brightly than a full moon at home; and it seemed to me that a day’s trek could have no happier ending than to sit in moonlight on a high mountain drinking with a friendly crowd and being serenaded by a wandering minstrel.
However, a day’s trek could quite easily have a more comfortable ending. This tiny, smoky tukul is totally unplastered and already my marrow feels frozen. The colossal local fleas seem preternaturally resistant to insecticide and my bed-to-be is a heap of large stones which serves as a fireside seat during the day and doesn’t even have the merit of adequate length. Nor can I lie on the floor, which will be sardined with children. (Here the adults sleep on wooden shelves attached hammockwise to the support poles and spread with straw instead of hides – possibly because straw is warmer, or cheaper.) The one consolation is a lean and amiable ginger cat, who has decided that I am a twin soul and is weaving around my legs as I write. Highlanders treat their few domestic cats far better than their many dogs – though this is not saying much. Perhaps the principle is that the more savagely dogs are treated the more savagely will they treat intruders.
And so to bed – with dyspepsia, because this evening’s vegetable-wat was so excruciatingly spicy.
Being at Debarak instead of Dabat means that we have joined the Asmara– Gondar motor-road twenty miles further north from Gondar than I had intended; but if one insists on travelling alone in this country one can’t reasonably complain about getting lost.
Even my insensitive body jibs at a heap of stones as a bed. I slept badly last night and was glad of an early, circulation-restoring start. Today’s track was both clear and easy; for fifteen miles it rose and fell over a succession of yellow-green or grey-brown ridges that were like the immobilised waves of some mighty ocean. After walking for a few hours through this sort of terrain one’s whole being seems soothingly involved in the gentle rhythm of regular climbs and descents.
On the crest of one ridge I saw my first highland funeral – two men carrying a shamma-wrapped corpse on a simple bier, followed at a little distance by half-a-dozen women keening professionally. Tears were streaming down their cheeks, but when they saw Jock and me their weeping and wailing stopped and for ten minutes they stood excitedly speculating, while the corpse went on its way unmourned.
Over the last four or five miles the track seemed crowded, after my fortnight of unpeopled remoteness – and one could see that the ‘civilisation’ of mass-production was at hand. Some men were wearing khaki bush-shirts and blue cotton shorts, instead of home-spun tunics and jodhpurs, a few with-it youths had Wellington boots in their hands – to be put on before reaching the town – and the donkeys were loaded with kerosene tins, or were carrying grain in jute rather than in hide sacks. It seemed inevitable when little boys ran towards me on the outskirts of the town with hands extended, crying ‘Cents! Cents! Gimme cents!’
Debarak looks attractive at first sight. From the crest of a distant ridge the majority of its tin roofs are concealed by a thick wood of blue-gums, and this wealth of trees is pleasing on the naked plain. However, the reality is a hideous child of the engine-age – a shanty-town born to soothe drivers’ nerves before they begin the northward descent from the Semiens or after they have completed the southward ascent. It is not marked on my map – though it must have been conceived during the Italian occupation – and one wishes that in this case the map were accurate. Recently Debarak was made capital of the Semiens (one of the six districts of the province of Begemdir and Semien) and it has a governor, a police-station, a telephone, a petrol-pump, a Health Centre, several bars and as many brothels, a secondary school – and an American Peace Corps teacher. Some of the houses off the road are square, two-storey wooden buildings – like overgrown log-cabins – which look well beneath the tall blue-gums; but the Piccadilly of this capital is a large market-place, furnished with mechanical weighing-scales and surrounded by talla-beits and scruffy stalls, selling cloth, salt, kerosene, saddlery, rope, kettles, saucepans, glasses, coffee-cups, torches, batteries, gaudy nylon head-scarfs and a few very rusty tins of imported fruit which look as though the Italians had left them behind.
Jock has apparently forgotten his baptism of diesel fumes. When we reached the main street and saw a moving truck he promptly reared in protest – whereupon the load conveniently fell off on to a hotel doorstep. ‘Hotel’ is of course a courtesy title. This sleazy Italian-built doss-house is blatantly a brothel, where harlots (to use the favourite term of English-speaking highlanders) may be observed partially undressing truck-drivers in the bar. I am now installed in an adjacent bedroom, amidst extreme squalor. The once-blue walls are nastily smeared, the floor tiles are stained with food and candle grease and littered with cigarette ends and dead matches, the broken window is patched with cardboard and the three iron beds are spread with revolting blankets. I intend to sleep on the floor; bed-bugs are an occupational hazard, but the likely result of using these foul beds is not.
Tonight I am suffering from what the Americans call ‘Cultural Shock’. This road runs like an infected scratch down the tough, rough, healthy body of the unprogressive highlands and on coming to these towns one knows that they are sick. Contact with our world seems to suppress the best and encourage the worst in the highland character; here it is evident that already the locals have degenerated from an integrated, respect-worthy peasantry into a community of coarse and crafty primitives. Walking around Debarak – or sitting in its bars, watching highlanders in dirty jeans and T-shirts drinking ‘Chianti’ and smoking cigarettes – one sees a much cruder aspect of the highland culture than one would ever see in an isolated settlement. At the foundation of this culture certain indigenous Hamitic–Negroid influences are being forever delicately balanced by Asian–Hebrew–Christian influences; and apparently the lightest touch of Westernisation can tip the balance in favour of the less advanced tradition.
The High Semiens have left my lips so badly cracked that if I absent-mindedly smile little trickles of blood run down my chin – an inhibiting affliction, when one’s only means of communication is a smile or a frown.
Since we arrived here at 2 p.m. the sky has been refreshingly obscured by slowly-drifting pale grey cloud.
Today’s twenty-three miles were unexpectedly enjoyable. For much of the way our track ran close to the motor-road and Jock staged a minor crisis every time a vehicle passed; but sixteen vehicles in eleven hours don’t constitute an intolerable volume of traffic, even for me.
All day we were crossing what in this context is an undulating plain, though at home one would describe it as ‘hilly country’. In every direction, to the blue ridges along the horizon, charming patterns harmonised with calm contours. Side by side lay sloping expanses of ripe barley, green emmer wheat, brown ploughland, yellow-green atar and pale gold teff; and on level sweeps of golden-brown pasture-land grazed herds of sturdy horses, brown and white fattailed sheep, piebald goats and lean cattle. Many thatched settlements looked cosy amidst groves of blue-gums and the landscape was lively with singing shepherd-boys, chattering women bent double under earthenware water-pots, and chanting, whip-cracking harvesters.
A fresh breeze had been blowing all morning and at midday clouds again drifted up from the south, adding wonderfully to the beauty of the scene as their shadows slowly passed over these vast widths, gently fading the colours – which then seemed all the brighter as the sun restored them.
Ciarveta is a recently-built village on the bleak crest of a 9,000 foot ridge and, despite this being the main road, our arrival caused quite a sensation. To the locals faranjs are curious creatures who quickly drive past in Land Rovers, motorcars or – more rarely – buses.
I was given a friendly welcome in this square, two-roomed shack, where an icy wind cuts through the ‘chimney-gap’ between the tin roof and the tops of the mud walls. There is one iron bed, equipped with two filthy blankets, but most of the family sleep in hides on the floor. For the faranj’s supper my hostess scrambled six tiny eggs – a sophisticated addition to the menu. Her method, however, was not so sophisticated. The eggs were broken into a dirty enamel bowl and beaten thoroughly with very dirty fingers before being slopped into a probably dirty saucepan containing rancid butter and salt. Yet the result was excellent, though having stupidly lost my spoon I soon discovered that it is not easy to eat greasy scrambled eggs with one’s fingers.
The women of this area are more elaborately tattooed than most, mainly on their necks. Among highlanders a long neck is regarded as a sign of great beauty and attractively designed tattooed ‘necklaces’ are thought to accentuate the length.
Jock is now amongst those present, because everyone affirmed that if left outside he would probably be stolen. Such a possibility has never been considered elsewhere, so this suggests that mule-stealing proclivities are among the fringe benefits of a motor-road.
Today’s twenty-seven miles took us through placid pastoral country until 3 p.m. Then abruptly we were again amidst rough mountains and the road went curving around high, forested spurs, with shrub-grown cliffs rising sheer above us and deep, broad valleys below.
Soon after midday I heard market-noises coming from a big plantation of blue-gums above the road so I made a talla-questing detour up the steep slope, past hundreds of animals and through a crowded square surrounded by tin-roofed shacks – where our progress caused some consternation, since Jock found it difficult to avoid the piles of merchandise that lay all over the ground.
Having refuelled I took a stroll around the square, leaving Jock in the charge of a boy who had politely appointed himself my temporary servant. These weekly markets are the corner-stone of highland trade, and are regularly attended by people who may have come twenty miles to exchange home-produced goods and acquire the imported goods made available by Muslim traders. (Trading as an occupation is despised by the highlanders, who only recognise two honourable ways of life – soldiering and farming. Therefore they never attempt to compete with the Muslims, many of whom are Yemeni Arabs.) The rural markets have also become centres for the collection, by big-town merchants, of surplus grain, hides and wool, which could not be bought economically from individuals in scattered settlements. This is one reason why I find it so difficult to buy fodder for Jock: highlanders are not used to doing business outside the market-place and are slow to adapt to the unfamiliar.
Going to market is among the chief pleasures of highland life. Most highlanders can walk tirelessly from dawn to dusk, so these long, leisurely treks are not a hardship, but a welcome break in the routine labours around field or compound and an occasion for meeting relations and friends, and for collecting such news as may be percolating through from the outside world to the market-town.
As we left the village many others were leaving too and I could see lines of trotting donkeys moving across the plain in every direction, some of them followed by whole families, down to the newest member on mother’s back. Then, looking up, I saw other groups making their way along the crest of a nearby ridge – the women draped in simple, chiton-like dresses, carrying high loads on their heads, the men striding behind pack-animals, their dulas held across their shoulders, supporting both hands, and a rich man cantering proudly on a gaily-saddled mule – all silhouetted against the grey sky.
Two hours later a break in the cliff-wall on our right revealed how high we still were, for below us lay the weirdly wind-sculptured summits of a range of blue mountains that spread far away to the western horizon.
We then climbed slightly to cross a pass, before beginning the final, gradual descent from the Semiens. By sunset we had reached 8,400 feet and were rounding a steep mountain which towered above us on the right and fell away below us on the left. To the south-east I could see our serpentine road diving through a narrow gap that leads to Gondar – only fifteen miles further on – but here no settlements were visible, and I only noticed this tiny compound when surveying the mountainside for a camping-site. (If not marked by blue-gums tukuls are inconspicuous to the point of invisibility.)
It is unusual to find a solitary compound amidst such rough territory and these people are really poor – a rare phenomenon in the highlands. Their only animals are a broken-down donkey and two ferocious curs and they have no grain, which means no talla or injara. At first I wondered if they were semi-outcasts from some non-Christian tribe, but then I noticed that they all wear the Matab – a neck-cord which signifies membership of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. A young couple live in one tukul and their hunger-dulled expressions remind me of Indian peasants in Bihar. They have three children, none of whom look likely to live much longer.
As I approached the compound the wife was filling her water-jar, and when she saw me coming through the bushes she screamed and fled, though every day faranjs drive along the road a hundred yards above.
I am being entertained in the smaller tukul by three old men who mistake me for a boy. A small saucepan of boiled haricot beans appeared for supper, but peasant hospitality is rarely daunted by poverty and my hosts insisted on sharing with me. I was so ravenously hungry that the nutty-flavoured beans seemed a food of the gods. However, conscience doth make martyrs of us all and I controlled myself after a fistful – though the grey-beards repeatedly urged, ‘Tegabazu!’ (Help yourself!) and ‘Mokar!’ (Try!). Unfortunately my emergency rations are at an end and as I write I rumble.
Here the night air is almost warm, so I’m going to sleep unverminously beneath a sky of moon-bright clouds.
I woke early, after my first bugless sleep since leaving Derasghie. All around it was night and overhead stars still glittered between dark shreds of cloud – but in the east, above the mountains, a long strip of clear sky glowed like copper in firelight. Always that immediate moment of wakening after a night in the open has a very special quality, compounded of freedom and peace.
The morning air was chilly, so while watching the dawn I remained in my flea-bag, being driven by a desperation of hunger to drinking dire Ethiopian brandy for breakfast. By 6.30 we were on our way and half-an-hour later I saw a group of men and boys driving laden donkeys off the road on to a steep, rocky track. Obviously they were going to Gondar market, so I followed them – and this short cut reduced the road’s fifteen miles by three. Apart from that first descent it was an easy track, and after four and a half hours’ slow walking across pastures, stubble-fields and ploughland we rejoined the main road, turned the shoulder of a mountain – and saw Gondar below us, cloaked in trees.
Then an odd thing happened. All the morning I had been aware of the extreme tiredness of hunger and every slight climb had felt like an escarpment, but I hadn’t been conscious of making any extraordinary effort to keep going. Yet here I was suddenly stricken by what cyclists call ‘the knocks’, and for ten minutes I had to sit on the roadside, struggling to summon the strength to walk down that final slope. The extent to which those knocks may have been fostered by Ethiopian brandy in a vacuum remains a moot point; but the psychology of the incident is curious, for had Gondar been ten miles further away my knocks would probably not have developed until another ten miles had been covered.
I had planned to stop first at the Post Office, but now even letters mattered less than food. Wobbling into the respectable Fasil Hotel I sat in the bar-restaurant, on a blue tin chair at a blue tin table, begged the startled barman to give me something – anything – edible, and within half-an-hour had put away a mound of pasta and wat, five large rolls, an eight-ounce tin of Australian cheese and six cups of heavily-sugared tea.
Standing up from this banquet I saw a fearsomely repulsive figure behind the bar; it is a strange experience to stare at one’s own reflection for some moments without recognising it. When I did recognise myself I no longer wondered at that unfortunate woman fleeing last evening. If I saw any such apparition coming through bushes in the dusk I too would flee, fast and far. The combination of ingrained dirt, sun-blackened skin, dust-reddened eyes, sweat-matted hair, height-stiffened lips, blood-caked chin and sunken cheeks really did have an unnerving effect. I had been aware of losing weight, but I hadn’t realised just how emaciated my body was. At once I booked in here for a week, to fatten up before the next lap.
When Jock had been stabled I went up to my room – preceded by a pair of servants solemnly bearing my dusty sacks – and the next two hours were spent in three successive hot baths. I had no clean clothes to put on, but as I went downstairs the mere fact of having clean skin made me feel positively chic.
The news of our arrival had already spread and quite a crowd was awaiting me in the bar – which embarrassment became understandable when I learned that Leilt Aida has recently been telephoning the Chief of Police every evening, to enquire if we have yet arrived in Gondar. One member of my ‘Reception Committee’ was the Director of the Gondar Bank, who kindly offered Jock the hospitality of his back garden during our stay here; and he also promised to organise a daily supply of grain.
When I went to the Post Office to telephone Makalle I collected a belated Christmas mail; so the rest of the day was spent ‘attending to my correspondence’.
* Oats are never cultivated in the highlands, despite the enormous livestock population, and in most areas the common wild oats are weeded out of a grain crop before it ripens – or, if the farmer hasn’t had time to weed, they are thrown away after winnowing. But in this area they are sometimes mixed with barley to make talla or injara, though no one uses them alone as a food.
* Reverence for the Tabot is one of the main emotional links between Ethiopian Christianity and Judaism. A solemnly revered tradition says that when the Emperor Menelik I – son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba – was returning to his mother’s country from Israel his father ordered the first-born son of the High Priest of the Temple in Jerusalem to accompany him. Then the High Priest’s son decided to steal the Ark of the Covenant, containing the original Tables of the Law which Moses received on Mount Sinai, and to bring it to Ethiopia – where it is still preserved at Aksum. The young man’s reason for taking such a curious decision is obscure. Possibly we are meant to infer that he had a vision of Ethiopia’s future glory as a Christian country and felt that the Ark might most suitably be deposited on the holy highland soil. At all events a Tabot, representing the Ark, has always been cherished on the altar within the sanctuary of every Ethiopian church.
* Despite the greater popularity of mules highlanders have always used horses in battle, because of their superior speed, and many of Ethiopia’s most famous warriors were known by their horses’ names rather than by their own, since the foot-soldiers usually adopted the name of their leader’s horse as a war cry.