WORDS FAIL ME when it comes to describing the dreariness of Bahar Dar – so I quote from my guidebook. ‘Bahar Dar is a small town on the bus route from Addis Ababa to Asmara. The only passable hotel in town is the Ras Hotel. The bus station is across the street from the hotel, near the Total petrol station. Ethiopian Airlines connects Bahar Dar with Addis Ababa. The airport is across the street from the hotel just beyond the Total station. Of interest to some is the Polytechnic Institute, a modern secondary school staffed by Russian and Ethiopian teachers and attracting an enrolment from all over the Empire. The school is just past the Shell petrol station and is distinguished by a number of large, modern buildings.’ To complete the picture add hundreds of tin-roofed hovels and a textile factory. Yet Abraha, in Zeghie, had described Bahar Dar as ‘a fine city’.
I overslept this morning, missed the early bus to Gondar and decided to hitch-hike instead of waiting for the afternoon bus. There was very little traffic, but I was soon picked up by an interesting American girl archaeologist named Joanne. She was driving a Land-Rover, with a mongrel pup on her lap, and beside her sat an elderly, fat, chain-smoking interpreter-guide, who had been appointed to help her by some cultural institute in Addis. Unluckily this man seemed to be convinced that digging in Ethiopia was a futile occupation.
After a twenty-five-mile drive over an arid, brownish plain we said good-bye and Joanne turned off the gravel road and went bumping away through the scrub towards a site. Four miles further on I was picked up again, by three young men in a WHO jeep. They were officials of Gondar’s Public Health College and, despite Jock’s absence, they had at once recognised ‘the Irish lady with the mule’. The remaining eighty-five miles took us across a continuation of the featureless plain, and then over a splendid range of barren mountains; Lake Tana was rarely visible, as this road is far inland, and we passed only a few tin-roofed villages.
At half-past one I presented myself at Gondar Police Headquarters, where for ninety minutes I sat in a tiny office beside a rusty filing-cabinet reading Talleyrand while I waited for Colonel Aziz to return from his lunch.
Colonel Aziz is a stocky man of forty-five, with a round, brown face, keen eyes, a neat, slightly self-conscious moustache and a tinge of that pomposity common to most highlanders in responsible positions. His English is easily understood, though far from fluent, and I had much enjoyed our previous meetings; but obviously this official reunion was going to be embarrassing.
Already I had realised that the robbing of a faranj causes genuine shame and distress to the average highlander. This crime is ‘not cricket’ and had I wished to profit by my misfortune I could easily have done so, since every peasant was eager to compensate me to the limit of his resources. For those who know that I am writing about my travels in Ethiopia the situation is even worse, so when Colonel Aziz appeared – looking as guilty as though he had robbed me himself – my first task, as we walked to his office, was to cheer him up. I stressed that the robbery was an isolated reef in an ocean of kindness; I pointed out that Ethiopia is the sixth foreign country in which I have met robbers and – when he continued to look miserable – I abandoned patriotism and admitted that I had also been robbed in Ireland, where the police had made no perceptible effort to recover my property. At this the poor fellow brightened up. Pulling his chair closer to his desk, he rang a bell and said that of course things were quite different in Ethiopia, where stolen goods were normally restored to their owners within twenty-four hours.
A tall, slim young lieutenant appeared in response to the bell; he spoke excellent English, and after we had been introduced he sat down to take my statement. When I began to describe the priest the atmosphere suddenly became electric and simultaneously the officers exclaimed ‘Kas Makonnen!’ Then, as Colonel Aziz grabbed the telephone and demanded Gorgora, Lieutenant Woldie looked at me and said ‘You’re lucky!’
It hadn’t occurred to me that my quartet were shifta: they had seemed merely the extra-degenerate inhabitants of a region where most people looked somewhat degenerate. I had imagined shifta to be colourful types on fast horses who came galloping down hillsides brandishing rifles; but apparently every detail of my description of the priest fitted one Kas Makonnen, a shifta-leader wanted for countless robberies and two murders.
Soon Colonel Aziz had arranged that at six-thirty tomorrow morning he, the lieutenant, the Governor of Gorgora (who is at present in Gondar), eight armed policemen and myself will leave for Gorgora, where the Colonel and Governor will wait, while the rest of us go man-hunting. When I explained that it might take me more than a day to locate the settlement, since I’d been thoroughly lost on my way there, it was decided that we would take a motor-launch along the shore of the lake and land where I recognised the shifta bay.
Colonel Aziz asked me not to discuss our plan or the identity of my ‘robber baron’. Only the Colonel, the lieutenant, the Gorgora sergeant, the Governor and myself are in the secret: neither the Gorgora nor the Gondar constables are to be given any information about our objective until we are aboard the motor-launch. This reversal of a familiar procedure interested me. At home the help of the public would be enlisted for a manhunt; here not only the public but the ordinary police are regarded as potential allies of the criminals – either through fear or friendship. Tomorrow the aim will be to capture men in terrain so difficult that if they once get a start pursuit would be futile. Therefore the surprise element is of first importance; and in Ethiopia the concept of a police force is new and not very popular.
This evening I am a little confused about Kas Makonnen’s status. One person has told me that he is not a priest but disguises himself as one (‘Kas’ means priest); yet I have also been assured that the Bishop of Begemdir will unfrock him when he is brought in chains to Gondar. This assurance naturally makes me suspect that the first statement was a face-saving manoeuvre on behalf of the Ethiopian Church – though if he is a priest one feels the Bishop might justifiably have unfrocked him by remote control quite some time ago.
Today has been suffused with improbability. For an ordinary citizen of Ireland there is something not quite believable about the business of guiding seventeen armed men through a remote corner of Ethiopia in search of a murderer.
By this morning it had been decided that sixteen policemen might serve our purpose better than eight and when we left Gondar at nine o’clock the new police Land-Rover, driven by Colonel Aziz, was so overloaded that its driver would have been arrested in any other country. Two hours later we reached Gorgora and went straight to the launch, which was moored at a little Italian-built jetty – where sacks of teff, sorghum, millet and coffee were being unloaded off a great papyrus-raft just in from Kunzela. The next hour was spent waiting for the Governor to provide us with four baskets of dabo, injara and wat, two flasks of tej and several fat earthen pots of talla. Then, at twelve o’clock precisely, we pushed off, leaving the Colonel and the Governor waving on the jetty and calling final instructions and good-luck messages.
There were twenty-four of us aboard – a crew of three, sixteen policemen in civvies, two police officers, two undefined local officials and the faranj. Everyone except the crew and the faranj was so heavily armed – with a rifle and revolver each and a sub-machine gun between them – that I wondered the elderly launch didn’t sink. The lieutenant and the Gorgora sergeant had been in uniform, but now both changed lest someone ashore should notice their dress and warn the shifta. I was impressed by the sergeant – a small, wiry man of about fifty, who greatly distinguished himself as a Patriot fighter against the Italians. He has a strong, shrewd, kindly face and a reassuring air of calm authority; only a lack of English has hindered his promotion.
For two hours we travelled at top speed, about a mile and a half offshore, with the forested cliffs of the coast on our right. Frequently we passed between rocky, wooded islets of various shapes and sizes – each with its monastery or church half-hidden by trees – and all the time the sun shone and Lake Tana sparkled and the wind blew strong and cool. Standing at the prow I reflected that there are many less pleasant occupations than chasing shifta.
At about two o’clock I decided that we should move inshore. As we cruised along slowly I attempted to work out our position in relation to my route last week – but this was surprisingly difficult, for a landscape seen from half-a-mile offshore looks strangely unlike the same landscape seen from the middle, as it were. However, that ghastly semi-swamp put me right and at 2.30 we slid quietly into the wide bay. The crew refused to go close to the unfamiliar coastline, so a tiny life-boat was put down and we were rowed ashore in four groups.
We landed at the foot of the northern ridge and I suggested that, since surprise was vital, we should go along the water’s edge to the south ridge and follow it to the compound. Lieutenant Woldie then ordered everyone to bend double and we hastened along the lakeside with the fig-trees between us and the tukuls. By this time I was thoroughly enjoying myself. Skulking through jungle-grass, followed by my little army with its weapons at the ready, I felt like a cross between Napier on the way to Magdala and a child at play.
Suddenly a figure moved behind the trees. It was a scared-looking youth and instantly two policemen ran towards him, waving their rifles and gesturing that he must be quiet. He reacted by fleeing at top speed and then, since his flight could have been observed from the compound, we changed our tactics. The sergeant and six policemen went north-east, using the cover of a maize-field, while the rest of us sprinted west and followed the base of the ridge towards the settlement.
When we were thirty yards away, still hidden by an outcrop of rock, we paused to collect ourselves. Then we rushed into view, raced through the compound and saw our quarry sitting outside a tukul. He was seized as he rose to his feet. Whereupon I got the giggles, in reaction to this anti-climax at the end of our perilous manhunt.
The compound was now surrounded by police and within moments I had identified the other three robbers and all four had been securely roped and manacled. Lieutenant Woldie told me that both the older man and the slim youth had recently been released from gaol – which may explain their disinclination to murder faranjs. At this stage I became convinced that Kas Makonnen is an ordained priest. His companions-in-manacles were being handled brutally, yet he was not ill-treated but was allowed to sit in the shade of a tukul – with a guard on either side.
At first all four vehemently denied ever having seen me before – though the horrified recognition in the priest’s eyes when he found me standing beside him was a sufficiently eloquent admission of guilt. During our unsuccessful search of the eight tukuls police tempers became frayed, and then the older man was taken out of my sight. But he was not out of earshot, so it didn’t surprise me to see him reappearing ten minutes later looking ill. He was now most anxious to guide the police on an hour’s walk to a settlement where he said all my property would be found intact. The sergeant and eight policemen accompanied him, the rest staying to guard the prisoners and prevent anyone from leaving the compound, which had been put under ‘martial law’ pending the recovery of the stolen goods.
I then went to investigate a strange cave that I had noticed in the north ridge last week – when too distraught to pursue cultural interests. As I had suspected, it was a series of chambers and passages hewn out of the rock. My only light was from brands fired with matches, which was not very satisfactory – though it enabled me to see that the rock had been hewn smoothly and skilfully. I could find no traces of wall-paintings, but they may well exist, for my exploration was sketchy. When the system of corridors became too complex for my nerves I retreated: this is not my luckiest area. Later I was told that the place is called Selassie Washa and is believed to have been hewn out of the mountain six centuries ago – about a century after the creation of Lalibela’s rock churches. But one can never rely on Ethiopian dates. The tradition is that Selassie Washa was used by kings (unspecified) as a refuge from their enemies and a place of religious retreat.
When I got back to the compound my ‘army’ was eating and drinking merrily and I was given a large meal of inferior injara and fresh milk. On such expeditions the police follow the ancient custom of highland armies and demand sustenance as their right. Indeed it may be said that they looted this compound, because on our return to the launch each man was laden with foodstuffs – none of which had been paid for.
At 5.30 the sergeant’s party reappeared in the distance and we cheered loudly on seeing a canary-yellow dot – my precious flea-bag – being carried by the prisoner. Everyone had known of my obsessional desire to recover this particular item, so the sergeant and his men were grinning all over their faces as I ran to thank and congratulate them.
My torch and Jock’s bridle had also been recovered, but nothing else – which didn’t worry me in the least, as I sat gloating over my flea-bag. The police, however, were very worried, especially about my camera, which I only mildly regretted since I am incapable of using it effectively. As the ‘fence’ at the other compound was away at a wedding his mother had been arrested instead, and I was told that she would be kept in gaol until he gave himself up and handed over the rest of my property. She was a frail, bewildered, terrified woman of about fifty and this procedure appalled me. Yet it would have been absurd for the faranj to deliver a lecture on Justice in such a situation, so I simply begged to have her released. This silliness was ignored; but now the poor woman, perhaps realising that she had my support, knelt weeping before three policemen and resumed her protestations of innocence and her pleas for freedom. In response all three kicked her hard on the shoulders, back and breasts. Whereupon I intervened very angrily. During the afternoon several acts of needless brutality had enraged me and at this point all my pent-up indignation was released. I gave the nearest kicker a box on the ear and called Lieutenant Woldie, who immediately reprimanded the constables – not, I fear, for kicking the woman, but for allowing me to see them kicking her.
Then we left, with our ‘bag’ of seven prisoners – my quartet, the fence’s mother and two other ‘wanted’ men who had been captured incidentally at this shifta headquarters. On our way to the shore I asked Lieutenant Woldie a question that had been puzzling me for hours – why these shifta neither carried rifles nor had them in their tukuls. He replied that the men of this region are professional cattle-thieves, who operate over a wide area of Begemdir and Gojjam provinces, and when most of them are ‘away on business’ – as at present – they take all the available arms with them, having no reason to fear police raids in their absence. Several other questions were also bothering me – why the shifta risked robbing me when I was then let loose to inform the police, why certain things were stolen and others not, and why the quartet remained in their settlement when there was danger of a police raid. However, Lieutenant Woldie was vague about all these points, so I can only assume that the naïve shifta thought it unlikely that I would survive the shores of Lake Tana, or didn’t realise that an English-speaking faranj could communicate effectively with Ethiopian police officers, or miscalculated the impetus that the robbery of a faranj would give to police activity. Tonight I feel flickers of ridiculous sympathy for the quartet – their capture was so obviously a victory of sophistication over simplicity.
We reached the lakeside at sunset – when the water was a rippling expanse of copper, lemon and blue-green. As I was being rowed out the sky flared briefly to blood-red and the masts of the launch formed a black cross against it. Pulling myself aboard I sat in the stern, with the fence’s mother sobbing on my shoulder, and watched the light being swiftly absorbed behind the ridge beyond the swamp.
By 7.45 everyone was aboard and, as the engine quickened, our celebration party began. With their valuable cargo of prisoners securely roped together on deck, all the police were in good humour – and before long they were in high good humour. A mysterious flask of araki soon appeared, to supplement the Governor’s generous supply of talla and tej, and as we swished through the starlit water we mixed our drinks recklessly. Towards the end of the voyage a group of policemen began to quarrel among themselves about rifles and in the cramped cabin I found it a sobering experience to have four drunken highlanders disputing possession of as many loaded weapons. Lieutenant Woldie was sitting beside me, asking progressively less intelligent questions about European history, and now he blinked benevolently and remarked that really these peasant lads were like children – which was precisely what was worrying me. But luckily we slackened speed then, and were soon beside the jetty.
By torchlight, we climbed a rough path to the local gaol – a solid mud building, with clean straw on its floors. Here the six men were locked into one room – manacled in pairs – and the wretched woman was left alone; but at least they all have more comfortable accommodation than they are accustomed to at home.
When the lieutenant, the sergeant and myself came to this doss-house – where I spent my last night in Gorgora – we heard that Colonel Aziz had had to return to Gondar during the afternoon, but already he has been told of our victory and tomorrow he will come to collect us.
It is now 11 p.m. and I have just returned from a party at the Police Officers’ Club. Indeed the whole of today has felt like one long party, starting from the moment when a beaming Colonel Aziz arrived at Gorgora this morning and we had tej for breakfast. When we got to Gondar I was somewhat disconcerted to find myself the Local Heroine. Apparently yesterday’s excursion was reported on the Addis news bulletin this morning, and the citizens of Gondar are behaving as though I had captured the shifta single-handed. This afternoon I was invited to have tea at the Palace with the Governor-General’s wife (a cousin of Leilt Aida) who has just returned from Addis. She speaks fluent English and once the initial shifta embarrassment had been overcome we enjoyed a long talk about the more cheerful aspects of highland life.
Today my books, insecticide and medicines were recovered, but the camera and money are still missing and I must remain in Gondar until they have been found. Then I will be required to give evidence in court when the quartet are being tried for this particular robbery.
There were no police developments today and I’m getting restive. I long to be with Jock again, on the track to Labibela – though Jock himself doubtless prefers inactivity and barley in Bahar Dar. I telephoned the Ras Hotel just now and the manager assured me that my buccolo is receiving full VIP treatment. And so he should.
This morning the Governor-General returned from Addis and this afternoon I was summoned to the Presence. Though he has only been here eighteen months he gives the impression of taking an exceptionally intelligent interest in the province and he was eager to discuss with me the little-known area between the Takazze and Buahit. In his general approach to regional problems he seems wise, kindly and considerably more than just a figurehead representing the Emperor.
My patience-test continues. Luckily for me Joanne is stranded here too, awaiting a permit to dig in Begemdir province. She is the only faranj I have met in Ethiopia who sleeps in tukuls, drinks tukul talla and eats tukul food. She also speaks Amharinya, swims in Lake Tana, rides unbroken horses through the Semiens and is oblivious to the multitude of infected insect bites at present covering her legs. We like each other.
Today’s diversion was a visit to a barber who gave me a barbaric haircut. The operation took thirty-five minutes and I had the sensation of being scalped rather than barbered. My Gondar boy-friends are shocked and saddened – they say that now my virtue will certainly be safe on the way to Addis.
Morale is low this evening. Two of the six septic cuts on my legs have turned into inflamed, suppurating messes from which arrows of pain are shooting up my thigh and making me feel queasy. This is the logical consequence of having neglected them completely, amidst all the other alarms and excursions, and on Nancy O’Brien’s advice I’ve started a course of antibiotics.
I had a grim night with my throbbing leg, which was accompanied by the throbbing of wedding drums in a compound just behind the hotel and by incessant chanting, hand-clapping and dog-barking. Today was spent lying on my bed, dozing and reading. Colonel Aziz says that the Court won’t sit tomorrow, but perhaps on Tuesday. … Or perhaps not.
Today the robbers were told that if my camera had not been found by noon they would be given fifty-five lashes in the market-place tomorrow morning. The police expected me to rejoice at the prospect of my enemies receiving a public whipping – which I was cordially invited to attend – and Colonel Aziz announced the decision to inflict it in self-satisfied tones, as though he were displaying some extraordinary virtue of the Ethiopian police. His astonishment was considerable when I turned pale green and begged him not to do any such thing on my behalf. Then, recovering himself, he looked at me scornfully and exclaimed, ‘This is why you have so much crime in European countries!’ Mercifully the threat of a whipping was sufficient. My camera is now at Police Headquarters and the Court will sit at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.
At 11.30 a.m. I was summoned to the Courthouse and led along filthy corridors between rows of men who were squatting on their haunches with their backs to the walls, arguing quietly. The high-ceilinged courtroom was about sixty feet long and twenty feet wide. On a dais at one end three judges, robed in rusty black silk, sat behind a table covered with a green plastic cloth. The ‘witness-box’ was a small wooden table in the centre of the floor, behind which I sat with my ‘recovered goods’ and an Amharic Bible before me and a teacher as interpreter beside me. The ‘dock’ was a waist-high corrugated-iron pen on a dais to the right of the door as one entered. There was no jury, but the public – about fifty men – occupied benches behind the witness-box. Some of these men were waiting for their own cases to come up, others were indulging in one of the favourite pastimes of these litigation-loving highlanders.
The proceedings were orderly and subdued. When I had sat down the Public Prosecutor – also robed in black silk – took the chair on my right and read to the Court an Amharic translation of my statement. (No one present spoke English, except the teacher and Lieutenant Woldie.) Then the teacher read my original statement, and I stood up, laid a hand on the Bible, swore that it was a true statement and identified both my property and the prisoners. Next Lieutenant Woldie described the arrests and the finding of the stolen articles, and finally three of the four spoke in their own defence, only Kas Makonnen remaining silent. No one interrupted or hurried the accused. But they didn’t speak for long, being obviously without hope, and the cross-questioning was brief.
While the judges were deciding on the sentence the prisoners were taken to the corridor and I went to an adjacent room with my interpreter and Lieutenant Woldie. Twenty minutes later we were recalled, and the Chief Justice stood up and made a long speech about the loathsome iniquity of robbing faranjs. He then sentenced the four to two years imprisonment each and thirty lashes of the whip in the market-place at nine o’clock on next Saturday morning – this being the hour at which the greatest crowd is assembled for the biggest market of the week. Immediately I stood up and pleaded for the whipping to be reprieved – whereupon the whole Court, including the judges, rocked with mirth at this exhibition of quaint faranj squeamishness. The Chief Justice told me to sit down and stop being silly, or words to that effect; but later I learned that had an Ethiopian made a similar plea he would have been promptly sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for contempt of Court.
At two o’clock I was back in my room, sombrely swigging tej and plunged in remorseful gloom. The judges had implied that the sentences were so severe because by robbing a faranj the prisoners had sullied Ethiopia’s fair name, and it is shattering to feel responsible for three men being punished out of all proportion to their crime. (My compassion does not extend to Kas Makonnen, who presumably will soon be receiving a far more severe sentence at the Central Criminal Court.)
These broodings were interrupted by a telephone call from the Palace, announcing that the Provincial Government had decided to replace my missing E.$120. I protested strongly, for all my expenses during this Gondar delay are being paid by the Government – most unnecessarily, since no Ethiopian asked me to go wandering alone amongst nests of shifta. However, my protests were ignored: and putting down the receiver I reflected that anyway the making of this generous gesture would lessen the locals’ shame.
Just then Lieutenant Woldie walked into the bar, so I told him of the Governor’s kindness and grovelled slightly about being an expensive nuisance to Ethiopia. But he only laughed – and by way of cheering me up explained that the E.$120 would be taken from the prisoners’ families.
Now I was flung into the uttermost depths of guilty depression. Almost certainly these families got none of the money, so this system involves penalising a number of innocent people to whom E.$120 mean as much as E.$1200 would mean to me. Leaving the bar, I went to cosset my depression in the Royal Compound – where I’ve spent a lot of time during this past week.
Sitting outside the shell of Iyasu the Great’s castle I eventually got things in perspective by dwelling on the deeds done within this very compound, and reasoning that my contribution to the history of cruelty in Ethiopia is not significant. I also began to see that it is impertinent for a faranj to criticise Ethiopian police methods in general, though obviously one should criticise particular excesses. In a country where the rural population cannot be communicated with through newspapers, or by radio, public floggings are the only effective method of publicising the fact that criminals have been caught, and of instilling respect for law and order. Nor does it do to forget that a century ago public executions were among the more popular entertainments of our own civilisation.
On my way back to the hotel I concentrated on silver linings. The sergeant at Gorgora is at last being promoted, as a reward for the efficiency and secrecy with which he organised things at his end, and the Ethiopians are now unique in my experience for no other police force has ever found what I have lost. When I was robbed at home the Irish police showed not one-tenth of the intelligence, efficiency and energy of Colonel Aziz and his men: but perhaps they would have exerted themselves a little more had I been an Ethiopian.
My plans to leave for Bahar Dar tomorrow morning were abruptly changed this evening. At the Itegue Menen Hotel I found John Bromley sitting in the lounge – newly arrived from Asmara – and half-an-hour later Peter rang, heard of my tribulations and commanded me to come to Asmara for a rest, before rejoining Jock. The idea of relaxing for two days in ‘a little bit of England’ seemed not unattractive, so I have booked seats on tomorrow’s early bus to Asmara and on Sunday’s flight from Asmara to Bahar Dar.
The large, comfortable Addis–Asmara bus left Gondar at 7.10 a.m. and arrived here at 5 p.m. It was only slightly overcrowded and had a cautious Eritrean driver whose caution was fully extended as we zigzagged through the western extremity of the Semiens. I detest bus-travel, yet I am glad to have seen this road: even in the Himalayan foothills there is nothing comparable, for the terrain there makes no such outrageous demands. To cross the Takazze Gorge we descended steeply for eight miles in a series of tight hairpin bends and then climbed north in a twin series. Those passengers from Addis who had never before seen the Gorge thought this wildly exciting; yet to me it was an anticlimax, since the road naturally crosses the Takazze at its tamest point.
Enda Selassie is a regular overnight stopping-place for bus-travellers and we are staying in the most pretentious of its few small hotels. The chief snag about a pretentious hotel in a drought area is the loo. Here it is unspeakable – and my room is next door. It would be far healthier to scrap this impractical Italian innovation and revert to the wide open spaces, where everyone is responsible for digging their own hole or finding their own flat stone.
We left Enda Selassie at 7.30 a.m. and two hours later came to the Tigre–Eritrean boundary. Here a tall stone monument commemorates the re-unification of Ethiopia and the rough, gravel-topped road changes to smooth, well-kept tarmac.
We stopped for lunch at the Italianate town of Addi Ugri, where the sky quickly clouded over. Then, to my delighted astonishment, it began to rain, and as we approached Asmara a strong wind was sending low, grey clouds racing raggedly above the parched landscape. This was the first rain I had seen since leaving London, and while everyone else shivered and closed their windows I opened mine wider, the better to enjoy cold drops on my bare arms. However, the rainstorm didn’t last long and in Asmara a hideous dust-storm was blowing instead.
When the bus pulled up at the terminus Peter was waiting for me. It was a joy to be with her again – and to be greeted by the big, silent grins of Christopher and Nicola.
Amidst a neolithic trek this interlude of English domesticity feels extraordinary – bacon and eggs for breakfast, afternoon tea, log fires, dogs on chairs, books everywhere, The Times only two days old and news from the BBC.
Tomorrow John arrives from Gondar with Sir Thomas and Lady Bromley (the British Ambassador and his wife), who are doing the Addis–Asmara trip by Land-Rover. So today preparations were being made for two official parties and I spent much of my time in the kitchen shelling walnuts, stoning prunes, grating nutmeg and beating eggs. Normally this would not be my idea of relaxation, yet here I enjoyed it enormously.
This afternoon thunder rumbled loudly around Asmara, followed by heavy rain that was being driven before a strong, cold wind – even the climate is making me feel at home.
The Land-Rover arrived at midday, and though John has a streaming cold and Sir Thomas has lumbago we achieved such a gay lunch party that I slept away the afternoon. At six o’clock the cocktail schemozzle started and I slunk back to my room, being allergic to such entertainments. But as I lay reading Wodehouse the children rallied round so loyally that the final accumulation of empty glasses looked positively debauched. Now early to bed, for I must be at the airport by 7 a.m. tomorrow.
On arrival here I was enraged to find Jock in wretched condition, though I had left an ample ‘feeding-fund’ for him. Obviously no one has bothered to supervise the servant in charge, who seems to have pocketed most of the money and given Jock some vile fodder that has blown him up dreadfully and made his coat more starey than I have ever seen it. When I called to him as I approached he pricked his ears and then came towards me – which was indeed touching, for by now he must associate his faranj owner with a variety of strenuous horrors and unnerving predicaments. Evidently he knows that he is appreciated.
Our tiny Ethiopian Airlines plane left Asmara at 7.30 a.m. and arrived here three hours later, having stopped at Aksum, Gondar and Debre Tabor. Asmara has an International Jet Airport: elsewhere we came down on crude landing strips. The crew were all Ethiopians and the pilot was extremely skilful, but inevitably there were lots of bumps. As we flew low over the Semiens I heard my fellow-passengers exclaiming in awe and the Englishman on my left remarked that this was such a bloody impossible country one could only get around by air. I agreed politely.
Then I found myself looking into the future instead of the past. Debre Tabor lies on our route from Bahar Dar to Lalibela and it was strange to think that the fifteen-minute flight will probably be a four-day walk. From what I could see of the terrain our next lap will not be an easy one.
Bahar Dar is 2,000 feet lower than Asmara and feels almost tropical by comparison. I spent most of the afternoon swimming in Lake Tana – and now I must pack my sacks.