TODAY’S LANDSCAPE was a complete contrast to last week’s hot, silent world of golden-brown hills and valleys. Here we are on wide, cool uplands, where cattle and horses graze off sweeping yellow-green pastures, and the new-ploughed fields are grey-flecked with stones, and each hilltop has its tree-shaded settlement and streams sparkle every few miles.
Soon after midday we came to a compound where the menfolk were sitting drinking. One of them asked our destination, told me that we had gone astray and invited me to stop for talla before being guided back to the right track. Then, as I sat on a goatskin brought from a tukul in my honour, and felt kindliness lapping round me, I had to admit to myself that the locals’ attitude is important – though one may pretend at the time that it doesn’t much matter if most people glare and some people throw stones. Loneliness never touches me in uninhabited country, where my solitude is complete: but I do feel twinges of it where people are particularly unresponsive.
By four o’clock I was limping so badly that I received much incomprehensible medical advice from a group of men driving five spavined horses, piled high with hides, to Debre Tabor. Soon after we were overtaken by a tall, thin, elderly man with bright, deep-set eyes. He looked at my knee – now swelling again – muttered ‘Metfo!’ firmly took Jock’s halter, led us to this big village, installed me in his square, bug-infested hut and ordered his wife to scramble eggs for the faranj. He, too, had walked from Debre Tabor, and soon his young daughter appeared with a tin of warm water and a wooden bowl, to give us both a foot-wash and thorough massage from toes to knees. She paid special and rather painful attention to my right knee, and ended the ceremony by respectfully kissing my left big toe.
Kummerdingai is on a flat, windswept plateau, overlooked from the north by a range of rounded mountains. All day we had been climbing gradually and now the night air is so cold that I reckon we must be at about 9,000 feet. This seems a prosperous area, but my host’s family is very poor. They have no talla, and for Sunday supper they ate only injara and berberie paste; yet fifteen minutes ago the guest was given a second meal of injara and scrambled eggs.
Beyond Kummerdingai our track switchbacked for three hours over a series of steep, arid, smooth-topped ridges. Then we climbed to a wide, green plateau, where scores of horses were grazing, and from a large settlement two teachers came running towards us, shouting invitations to drink coffee. Settlements don’t normally have schools, but I soon discovered that the local headman is an unusually civic-spirited individual, who went to Gondar and persuaded the authorities to open a school, guaranteeing to organise the building of a schoolhouse by volunteer workers, and to provide for the teachers at his own expense. Happily, he has got the teachers he deserves – two refreshingly idealistic Gondares, who don’t at all resent living in discomfort and isolation.
Both the headman and his wife are charming, and he is one of the handsomest men I have ever seen – aged about fifty, well over six feet, broad-shouldered, with the head of a lion and the bearing of a king.
For two hours we sat in a large, clean, high-roofed tukul, drinking talla from glass carafes and coffee from tiny cups. Our conversation flowed with unusual ease, partly because the teachers spoke reasonably good English and partly because my host and hostess asked such intelligent questions. The coffee was being roasted, ground and brewed by a good-looking woman of twenty-eight, who had come from Gondar with the twenty-three-year-old boys as their joint temporary wife; recently her husband divorced her on grounds of infertility, but already she seems happy in her new rôle.
My dula split this morning, and when I was leaving my hostess noticed this and immediately fetched me a replacement which is much stronger than the original. It was now 11.30 and the sun felt uncomfortably strong, despite a cool, steady breeze. Yesterday the sky had become half-clouded over by eleven o’clock, but today there was no such relief and at this altitude the ultra-violet rays are quite fierce.
Before long I had again lost the right track, so we descended to a river, failed to receive directions from youths who were watering cattle, climbed a steep, forested mountain, crossed a few barley fields and went wandering over wide, windy slopes of short, golden grass. Here there were no paths and Jock found the slippery turf difficult; but soon I saw a clear stretch of main track, on the flank of the opposite ridge, and for the next two hours we were crossing undulating ploughland – mile after mile of it, sweeping brownly up to the deep blue sky.
From the edge of this plateau I was suddenly looking down into an enchanting little valley, set deep amidst rough grey peaks. On a floor of red-gold grass tawny-thatched tukuls were surrounded by slim green trees and each colour glowed pure and soft in the mellow afternoon brilliance.
These scattered compounds make up the village of Sali, and this morning’s teachers had given me a letter to their two confrères here. When we arrived my hosts were still at school, but their servant – a squat adolescent girl, plain by highland standards – welcomed me warmly, though timidly, and provided a foot-wash and massage, followed by a meal of fried dried meat and cold injara. Then the headman brought gifts of talla for me and fodder for Jock. The locals are more likeable than my singularly unintelligent Debarak-born hosts, who long to give up teaching and get ‘better jobs’, preferably as bank clerks in Asmara or Addis.
Tomorrow I’m going to the village of Bethlehem, where Thomas Pakenham discovered a well-preserved medieval church in 1955. To get from there to Lalibela I must return to Sali, so Jock will have a day off.
This two-roomed mud hovel was built three years ago, when the school opened, and it seems to be bugless though it vibrates with fleas. (Compared with what I feel for bugs my feeling for fleas is a tender affection.) The boys want to sacrifice one of their beds in the inner room but, as I have not enough faith in the establishment’s buglessness to risk this, I will share the living-room floor with the servant.
What misery! Last night I woke with a searing pain in my chest, a savage headache and what felt like congestion of the lungs. Groping through my sacks in the dark I found aspirin and antibiotics and then sat with my back to the wall, painfully struggling to breathe – if I lay down I at once experienced a terrifying suffocating sensation. Yet I had gone to sleep at 9.30 feeling perfectly well, so this was no ordinary influenza or bronchitis germ. Presumably it was sunstroke and, as I wheezed agonisingly through four long, dark hours, I tried to forget that sunstroke can cause pneumonia. Dawn was breaking before the suffocating sensation lessened – but an hour after taking the second acromycin I felt so much better that I decided to act on the ‘Fresh Air and Exercise’ principle and stick to my plans for today.
At nine o’clock I set off, with two schoolboys as guides, and four hours’ walking took us to Bethlehem. All the ascents were steep and at every breath my lungs felt as though they were being simultaneously compressed by some instrument of torture and scraped with sandpaper. I had brought my spare shirt to drape over my head and neck – a precaution I should have taken yesterday – but by 10.30 kind clouds had half covered the sky.
Part of this walk was through ‘conventional’ mountain scenery that might have been in the Himalayan foothills, but most of it was across roughly beautiful ridges – some thickly forested, some ploughed, some grassy – and from each crest wild ranges of dusky-blue mountains were visible against the horizon.
Bethlehem is a big settlement on a high spur. When we arrived a service was being held, to celebrate one of the innumerable Coptic feasts in honour of Mariam, and from without the enclosure we could hear splendid chanting and the beating of many drums and the clicking of many sistra. I felt reluctant to distract the faithful by appearing during the service, but my guides hurried me in, and at once I was surrounded by the entire congregation and welcomed by several polite, unpredatory priests.
At first sight Bethlehem’s church looks like any other circular highland church. To quote from Thomas Pakenham: ‘The tukul church was simply a rude veneer overlying an older church. Preserved inside the circular mud walls and under the conical roof was a rectangular mediaeval church of the most exciting design: the vast stumpy timbers of the doorways, and the pink stone walls polished like porphyry were finer of their sort than any yet known … I had … discovered an entirely unknown mediaeval church of the most dramatically exciting style.’
At that time (eleven years ago) ‘there were many eighteenth-century frescoes painted on linen hangings superimposed on the pink stones of the west facade’. Now there are only marks on the walls, indicating where these frescoes once hung. The priests – assuming that I had come specially to look at the paintings – released a cataract of apologetic explanations, which conveyed nothing whatever to me. In fact I was not particularly disappointed, for the church itself had made my painful detour seem well worth while.
At the end of the service my guides and I were invited to accompany the priests, the village elders and the boy deacons to a broad ledge below the enclosure, where we sat under giant wild fig-trees that looked as old as the world, and ate blessed hot dabo and drank thick grey-green talla from huge, yellow-brown gourds.
Beneath us a profound semicircular gorge separated our mountain from the blue-green-ochre slopes of its neighbours – and to all this wild glory cloud shadows ceaselessly brought subtle changes.
Soon a deacon came down the path carrying on his head a goatskin full of roast atar, and when the peas had been poured on to wicker platters these were laid within reach of every little group. Meanwhile other deacons were refilling gourds, fetching fresh pots of talla and distributing second rounds of dabo; and the priests and elders were discussing their own affairs, having lost interest in me as a faranj with characteristic rapidity. As a guest, however, I was not neglected: the chief priest repeatedly used his fly-whisk for my benefit and never allowed my gourd to be empty of talla or my fist of dabo. And here I felt such a deep contentment that this became – all unexpectedly – one of my happiest hours in these highlands.
There are two phases of enjoyment in journeying through an unknown country – the eager phase of wondering interest in every detail, and the relaxed phase when one feels no longer an observer of the exotic, but a participator in the rhythm of daily life. Now I am at ease among the highlanders, for wherever I go, in this static, stylised society, everything seems familiar. Not only the graceful formalities – significant though minute – but the long, lean faces and the clear brown eyes, the way men flick atar from palm to mouth, the movement of settling shammas about their bodies when they sit, their stance as they stand and talk, leaning their hands on the ends of a dula that rests across their shoulders, the harsh, staccato language, the expressive gesticulations, the sudden bursts of apparent anger that can quickly change to laughter. All this makes up a world which only two months ago seemed puzzling, amusing and sometimes a little frightening, yet which now seems as normal as my own far world away to the north.
Soon after we left Bethlehem it rained heavily for about twenty minutes. At sunset we were crossing the wide plain that lies below Sali and here the scene was so autumnal that it reminded me of Ireland in late September: above a gold-brown ridge lay sombre, torn clouds, against a blue-green horizon, and the cold wind was gusty.
This evening the headman and his wife called to see me, bringing another kettle of talla. All the usual questions were asked and my answers provoked the usual reactions. It really distresses the highlanders to hear that I have no parents, brothers, sisters, husband or children. Some of the women almost weep in sympathy and an Amharic proverb is often quoted: ‘It is better to be unborn than to be alone.’
I felt better this morning, despite a restless night of wheezing. When we left Sali at 7.30 the sky was grey and for four hours we were climbing gradually across still, sunless widths of ploughland and moorland. From the edge of this plateau I saw a little town which seemed hardly twenty minutes walk away; but below the plateau there were so many deep chasms to be negotiated that it was one o’clock before we reached Nefas Moja.
At a tej-beit a kind woman filled me with talla, tej and tea, but would accept no payment. When we continued the sun was out, so I tied my spare shirt round my head. We were now back in ‘precipitous’ country, and during one nightmare descent poor Jock almost lost his footing on a narrow path overhanging a sheer drop of at least seven hundred feet. Then the track levelled out and for six miles wound round the flanks of forested mountains, with deep, golden valleys on our left, an upheaval of blue ranges beyond them and no settlements visible.
Soon we were overtaken by two men driving a donkey. The elder, aged about fifty, was small, slim and one-eyed – and I disliked the look in that one eye. The other, aged about twenty, was burly and thick-lipped, and at once he took Jock’s halter and urged me to walk on ahead. This is a common highland courtesy, but it was clear that my present companions were not being inspired by good manners. However, I feigned friendliness and walked beside the older man, behind Jock, watching my load. I felt so uneasy that had we met travellers going towards Nefas Moja I would have returned to the town with them.
Then my one-eyed companion began to beg whiningly for clothes and medicines. When I denied having either his whining changed to truculence and he ran ahead, prodded the sacks and demanded to be told what was in them. As I replied ‘Faranj injara’ the young man turned suddenly and asked where my money was. I said that I had no money, whereupon both laughed unpleasantly and remarked that every faranj has much money. For a few moments they stood discussing the situation sotto voce, and then they invited me, with artificial cordiality, to spend the night at their settlement. Obviously they feared to unload Jock on a main track and to gain time I accepted their invitation.
The next fifty minutes felt like as many hours. Often I glanced back to see if anyone was overtaking us; at every turn of the path I looked hopefully for someone ahead or for signs of a settlement, and all the time I was listening for the calls of shepherds or ploughmen – but these mountains were too thickly forested to be grazed or cultivated. As I was considering asserting myself before we reached the settlement, where everyone would be likely to support their relatives against me, the path turned another corner and I saw a man and woman ahead, walking very slowly. Grabbing the halter I ran as fast as Jock would trot and we overtook them just where a faint path branched off towards my companions’ settlement.
The couple had been walking slowly because the woman was ill; her eyes were glazed with pain and she scarcely noticed me. Both husband and wife were, I should think in their forties, and the man, too, looked unwell. He stared at me blankly when I offered him Jock’s halter, pointed ahead and emphatically repeated, ‘Debre Zeit! Debre Zeit!’ Then the two toughs caught us up and his expression became uneasy as they began to talk angrily, pointing first to Jock and then towards their settlement, high above the track. They were claiming to have been put in charge of me by the local Governor, and my friend seemed a person of minimal intelligence who only wanted to keep clear of the situation. Making a gesture of indifference he turned away, beckoning his wife to follow. I despairingly pulled out my purse, thrust a dollar into his right hand and the halter into his left, and repeated pleadingly ‘Debre Zeit!’ He gazed for a moment at the money, frowned and returned it – but to my astonished relief he retained the halter, suddenly shook his dula at the toughs with unexpected vigour, and quickly led Jock down the main track. Strolling nonchalantly after him, I looked back and saw the toughs climbing towards their settlement, still glancing covetously in our direction. It is most unlikely that they would have harmed me, but in this country one never quite knows what might be regarded as a sufficient motive for murder.
At a small village I said grateful goodbyes to the pathetic couple. Here we were back in a region of overwhelming heights and depths, of symmetrical ambas, sheer escarpments and grotesquely eroded peaks. As the afternoon advanced the valleys were filled with a wonderful light, like pale blue smoke, through which I could see expanses of rose-coloured earth glowing on steep slopes above green-gold forests.
Near the base of the gruelling escarpment below this plateau we met a handsome young gunman who claimed to be ‘the Police’. I knew that he was lying, and I disliked his plausible manner and mistrusted his speculative glances towards Jock’s load, but as my knee was now throbbing again it helped to have someone to show us the easiest way up the escarpment and when we reached this settlement everyone looked so surly that I chose the devil I knew slightly and accepted the youth’s invitation to sleep within his compound.
My host’s family consists of his mother, a child-wife and two other women, and the atmosphere in this tukul is unique. All the time I am being laughed at unkindly – a discourtesy I wouldn’t have thought possible among Ethiopian highlanders – and payment in advance has been demanded for every glass of talla I’ve drunk, for my injara and berberie paste and for Jock’s fodder.
As I write, injara is being cooked beside me. The batter is poured on to a flat iron skillet from an earthen jar (in which it has been fermenting for three or four days) and is then covered with a conical pottery lid. A round takes hardly five minutes to cook, over a hot wood fire, and when the housewife has skilfully slid it on to the injara-stand she wipes the skillet thoroughly with a filthy rag soaked in vegetable oil, and starts again. Injara jars are never washed so scraps of stale dough speed the fermentation of each fresh mixture.
Today I noticed some tukuls solidly built of stone and a few men wearing brown, or brown and black check blankets instead of shammas. These reminded me of the shepherds’ blankets in the Kangra Valley in northern India, though here the workmanship is much inferior to anything one sees in Asia.
Now I’m going to take my flea-bag out to the smooth turf of the compound and sleep beneath cool, brilliant stars; but because of the ferocity of the local hyenas Jock is being stabled in the tukul.
This morning my host woke me before it was light and seemed most anxious to see our backs, though highland hosts usually try to delay a guest’s departure. He had already brought out my kit from the tukul and was attempting to load Jock but could make no sense of the Italian saddle. He had tied the sacks, which I left open last night, and when he saw me untying one of them, to insert my flea-bag and Huskies, he became abusive. Investigating, I saw that he had stolen my tin-box of coins and everything else had been examined, though nothing else was missing. Now he was standing over me, scowling, and when I stood up he poked me roughly with his rifle and told me to load quickly and go. His fear suggested that by reporting to the headman I could recover my money, but remembering the unfriendly glares when we arrived last evening I decided to ignore the theft. This incident was another illustration of the average highlanders’ lack of intelligence. Had my host behaved normally this morning I would never have thought of checking my possessions before leaving.
As we were walking across the table-flat plateau, towards a lemon-streaked, red-flecked east, I heard someone yelling ‘Faranj!’ Faranj!’ and looked round to see a young couple with three small children running to overtake us. They were going to visit relatives at Debre Zeit – twelve miles away, at the end of the plateau – and the father asked if their sickly five-year-old boy might ride on top of my load. Already the child was whimpering, so I could hardly say ‘no’, and he beamed delightedly when lifted on to the sacks. His eight-year-old sister walked sturdily with the adults, but his three-year-old brother rode all the way on Father’s shoulders.
For six miles our path ran level over parched grassland. Then it switchbacked through scrub – where baboons barked at us, and two hyenas went slinking into the bushes at our approach – and at 9.45 we saw the blue-gums of Debre Zeit against the horizon. I stopped briefly for talla at my companions’ destination, and then several boys guided me to the edge of the plateau and pointed out the downward path – a narrow, rocky stairway of blood-chilling instability.
I paused here, and looking north saw one massive square mountain, towering above scores of other blue giants. Undoubtedly this was Abuna Josef (13,747 feet), which overlooks Lalibela – and when without map or compass it is reassuring to have such a conspicuous landmark. Then I gazed down at the intervening chaos of mountains and gorges, and remembered that somewhere among them, hidden deep, the tortuous Takazze Gorge was waiting to renew our acquaintance. There are two special moments in a trek like this – the moment of challenge, when you first sight such a stretch of country, and the moment of triumph, when you look back over the same stretch as its conqueror. In the present case that moment of triumph still feels very far away.
From the base of the escarpment we slithered down a precipitous ploughed slope and were suddenly confronted with the most difficult descent yet. This was not a straightforward progress from high to low, but an involved scramble up, down and across a confusing complex of cliffs, ridges, and crags on which the path sometimes overhung drops of up to 1,000 feet. I enjoy rugged mountains, deep valleys and precarious situations – but one can have too much of anything.
We were three-quarters down when Jock lost his footing and went over the edge. I could hardly grasp the horror of it as I watched him fall. My mind refused to register that this really was happening. He landed on his back, on a narrow ledge some thirty feet below the track – and then rolled off on to the next ledge, twenty feet lower. Mercifully this second ledge was about fifteen feet wide. Had he again rolled off he would have crashed onto rocks three hundred feet below.
Knowing nothing of the durability of mules I was astounded to see him scrambling to his feet, apparently intact. Impatience to examine him sent me down that cliff like a baboon – forgetful of my knee, which was severely re-wrenched on the way. The poor fellow was trembling all over – and so was I – but he seemed quite unharmed, and when I realised this I flung my arms around his neck and burst into tears. One could easily buy another mule, but one could never buy another Jock.
When we had pulled ourselves together I set about collecting my kit, which was strewn all over the two ledges. Yet the saddle was still in place: probably it had been both the cause of Jock’s fall and the shield which preserved him from injury. (Very likely Italian loading techniques were not adopted here because in these mountains it is safer to avoid protuberances on either side.) Little damage had been done, apart from a box of carbon paper being ruined by a burst tin of insecticide. Even my precious bottle of ink and my still more precious fountain-pen were unbroken. However, I soon discovered that it is not easy to load a mule on a ledge fifteen feet by ten, above a sheer drop of three hundred feet – particularly when the nerves of all concerned are in bits. It took me twenty minutes to get organised, and then we began timorously to pick our way across the cliff to rejoin what here passes for a path.
Twenty minutes later we were on the floor of a long, hot valley, where the arid earth was a dirty white and even the scrub looked unhealthy. Now I knew that my knee had been badly injured. Each step was such agony that I decided to spend the night in the nearest compound. But the second of the month is not our luckiest date. During the next four and a half torturing hours I saw not even one tukul in the distance – and I was afraid to camp out, lest a stiffening knee should leave me incapable of defending Jock from the possible attacks of hyenas or leopards.
The rough track led us out of the valley, up, across and down an amba, and then again down, down, down through dense forest to a broad river-bed where a shrunken stream flowed filthily between green-slimed stones. By then I was past caring about filth or slime. I drank pints to match Jock’s gallons, bathed and massaged my knee and in a daze of pain tackled the last lap – a ninety-minute climb to a wide plateau scattered with patches of stubble. A settlement lay half-way up a mountain at the plateau’s western edge, and though our arrival caused some alarm my agonised exhaustion quickly reassured everyone.
Seven tukuls make up this compound (four for humans and three for animals) and the poverty and disease are heart-rending. I’m sitting now on a huge, smooth boulder, being demented by clouds of flies as I write on my usual food-box desk. Already the injured knee feels better, having twice been massaged expertly and lengthily by my hostess.
A few moments ago two shepherds drove the family’s wealth into the compound – one sheep, two lambs, a billy-goat, three nannies, two kids and five cows. All look dreadfully emaciated. This is the edge of the Lasta famine-area, which has been afflicted by drought during the past several years, and tonight Jock has had only half an armful of straw and I am on emergency rations. One of the shepherds, aged about fourteen, has limbs so frail and a head so disproportionately big and eyes so sunken that he seems to epitomise all the starvation in the world. Nor is his younger brother much better. There is a harrowing difference between sitting beside human beings in this condition and seeing Oxfam pictures of famine victims. Both boys, and the three younger girls, are clad in scraps of worn cow-hide. As I write two older girls are coming into the compound, bent double under huge water-jars; they must have had to carry these from some distant well or river, for they look near collapse. One of them has a gruesome leg, covered from knee to ankle with suppurating sores. Yet she seems quite cheerful, so now I feel ashamed of the fuss I have been making about my knee. Here medicine is not in demand – a sign that these people have had little or no contact with faranjs.
What a day! If any path to Lalibela exists in this region I’ve yet to find it, and at present Abuna Josef is my only hope of salvation.
This morning my knee felt less painful than I had expected and we were on our way by 6.30, but during the next three hours we can’t have gained more than three miles. Repeatedly our attempts to descend to river-level were thwarted by sheer, jungle-covered cliffs, which forced us back to the plateau to try another route; and when we did get into the gorge I couldn’t find a way out, for this was not one simple gorge, but a very beautiful labyrinth of deep ravines. We spent over an hour ploughing through soft, scorching, silver sand in search of a path on any of the forested cliffs that walled the various river-beds. Then, as we were following the most northerly stream, I saw people ahead – a surprise, amidst this motionless, soundless wilderness. They were a laundering-party – eight children with their father and mother – and everyone was trampling patched clothes in stagnant pools.
When Father had recovered from the shock he pointed to a boulder and told me to wait for guidance out of the gorge. It was now 9.30 and I was glad to rest, while the younger children left their work to study me with awe and Jock grazed enthusiastically off the few green plants that grew by the water. This family was unusual in having some affection for their dog, who was smaller than the average highland cur.
After half-an-hour the wet clothes were ready to be carried home in bundles on their owners’ backs. As mother was shouldering an immense load of firewood, Father tied her bundle and his to the top of Jock’s load before leading him up a path so faint that faranj eyes would never have detected it. On the clifftop we joined a clearer path which climbed through arid scrubland to another high plateau.
Our progress was funereal. Mother walked very slowly and Father kept pace with her, making encouraging noises and calling the children back whenever they scampered disrespectfully far ahead. It would have been unspeakably infra dig for him to carry the firewood, yet he was certainly not indifferent to his wife’s struggle as she toiled, panting, up one long slope after another. Many faranjs condemn the treatment which highland women receive from their husbands, but my own impression is that most couples show a normal degree of mutual affection and consideration. Highland tradition undoubtedly gives women a lowly status in some respects, as is symbolised by their carrying of loads in a country where I have never yet seen a man carrying anything but his dula or rifle – and perhaps an injara-basket, if he is not accompanied by his wife. However, it is unfair to deduce from this that most men always treat their wives callously or that there is no such thing as a henpecked highland husband. In at least two tukuls on my route I have noticed that the unfortunate head of the household lived in constant dread of his overbearing wife and became almost as subdued as a highland child when she was present.
My rescuers’ large settlement seemed wretchedly poor. No talla was available because of the crop failure, so I was given a gourd of curds. As I sat on a boulder, eating, the whole population – friendly though timid – came to stare wonderingly. At first there was much speculation about my sex, but already the cotton shorts I bought in Gondar have reached a stage which renders lengthy speculation unnecessary – and this caused great and charmingly unshocked amusement.
At 11.30 Father led me to the edge of the settlement, with scores of people following, and pointed out the path to the Takazze Gorge. He and several other men had argued strenuously against our continuing towards Lalibela, for they said that beyond the Takazze I would find no tracks, no tukuls and many wild animals. So after much hand-shaking and bowing everyone stood in gloomy silence watching us leave.
For the next hour we were descending steeply through a harsh, drought-stricken world of sharp rocks, grey-brown, crumbling earth and dying scrub. I had been able to get no information about this stretch of the Takazze Gorge and my heart lurched with fear when suddenly we were overlooking a ravine that was deeper than any other ravine I have ever encountered. The descent looked tolerably safe for a cautiously-moving human being with a reasonable immunity to heights, but for a loaded mule it looked murderous. I hesitated, then decided to reconnoitre on my own and tethered Jock to a stunted tree lest his superlative loyalty should prompt him to follow me, even here. About one-third of the way down the vertical, ill-defined stone stairway I saw donkey-droppings. These reassured me – though it is certain that no animal burdened with an Italian pack-saddle has ever before used this route – so I returned to Jock, said my prayers and directed him over the edge.
The next twenty minutes were the most nerve-wracking of my life. Even Jock’s unflappability came undone and in his pardonable panic he tended to leap towards level ledges of rock from which he could never have escaped had he once reached them. And my repeated efforts to check his foolhardiness were perilous, for this was no precipice on which to frisk baboonishly.
At one point the load got jammed between shelves of rock and Jock was wedged head down, his hind legs feebly scrabbling. By then I had been reduced to such a state of numb desperation that I no longer feared the sheer drop on to the boulders of the river-bed, hundreds of feet below. Recklessly I pulled myself on to the inner shelf, said a few would-be-steadying words in an unsteady voice and bent down to untie one sack. As Jock unwedged himself I seized the halter. Had he continued with an ill-balanced load he would have been in more acute danger than ever and for a hideous instant I thought that he was going to plunge ahead; but by one of those telepathic miracles which distinguish our relationship he stood still below the rock-pincers while I – braced against the cliff-face and sweating with tension – roped the sack back into position.
When at last we reached the river-bed Jock’s sides were heaving and his coat shone ebony with sweat. He was so far gone that he didn’t even want to drink; and I was so far gone that I vomited before drinking. I considered filling my water-bottle here, but as one could think of no more lethal liquid than the Takazze in March a last flicker of what seemed to be common sense inspired me to keep bacteria to the minimum by leaving my bottle empty.
To my relief Jock now moved towards the water and while he was drinking I lit a cigarette. Here the river-bed curved, limiting my view to about eighty yards in both directions, and the dark rock walls of the gorge had been eroded to soaring, fluted pillars of an eerie symmetry. Only opposite our point of descent was the cliff not quite sheer and the rock mixed with soil. There, presumably, lay our ascent route.
As the gorge felt oven-like beneath the midday sun I soon led poor Jock onwards, over a jumble of burning boulders. While we climbed sweat streamed off me, clouds of powdery dust irritated my lungs and often it was one step up, two steps back. However, neither of us was in mortal danger, so what would normally have seemed an ordeal now seemed a Sunday afternoon stroll.
At the top I realised what a mistake I had made by not filling my water-bottle; already thirst was tormenting me and my dusty throat felt raw. A faint path led us over a desolation of burnt-up grassland, but an hour later Abuna Josef reappeared through a gap in the nearer mountains and showed me that we were straying wildly. Turning towards him, we descended a long, pathless slope between bare ridges that converged at the foot of the slope. Since leaving the settlement I had seen no trace of humanity, but near the meeting of the ridges four girls were gathered round a water-hole, their pots on the ground beside them. Thirstily, I hurried forward – and then they saw me, shrieked piercingly, abandoned their pots and fled up the northern slope. As I reached the edge of the hole a fifth girl pulled herself out of it, glanced at me like a hunted animal, shrieked too and followed the rest. It amuses me to remember all that I have heard about faranjs being afraid to travel among highlanders – when so many highlanders are afraid to be travelled among!
At this water-hole I drew the line. Probably it was less contaminated than the Takazze but my thirst was not extreme enough for me to drink the liquid brown mud that lay in a pool two inches deep, eight feet below ground level. It must take half a day to fill one pot here.
From the crest of the northern ridge we descended to a wide, dusty stubble-field. The girls’ settlement, where I hoped to find some drinkable liquid, lay a hundred yards ahead – isolated on its parched plateau, surrounded by silent ravines and rough blue mountains. The scene was a beautiful one, and tranquil in golden sunshine. Yet death hovered over it.
The settlement was unusually well fortified; its thick, six-foot thorn stockade seemed to have only one ‘gateway’ and each compound had a high, strong fence. Obviously the girls had warned everyone that something very peculiar was in the vicinity and the place looked deserted. Nor did anyone appear, or make the slightest sound, as we walked along the narrow paths between the compound stockades: but all the time I was aware of being watched from every side.
Eventually I entered one of the compounds. As we approached a tukul two men came to the door, tense with suspicion, and behind them women were exclaiming in alarm as they peered out. When I asked for water the men turned and muttered with their womenfolk, then tentatively beckoned me inside.
As usual, a thaw followed rapidly. I was given two small gourds of foul water, faintly flavoured with honey (a diluted form of the non-alcoholic drink called birz) and, as I gulped it most of the population – now reassured – came to stare silently, packing the tukul and crowding outside the door. The general atmosphere seemed neither friendly nor hostile and it was depressingly evident that the lethargy of malnutrition explained this neutrality.
At first I had been bewildered by the number of men wearing turbans, especially as there appeared to be no church anywhere near. Then I realised that this was a Jabarti* settlement, hence the strong stockades and birz instead of talla.
The woman of the house offered me half a round of injara – something that has never happened before since scraps are considered fit only for servants or children. As I declined it I wondered why these people remain in this accursed region, where some 5,000 people have recently tied of typhoid, malaria and starvation, while most of the few survivors have migrated. Perhaps Jabartis would find it difficult to obtain land elsewhere.
When we left this sad settlement it was impossible to continue towards Abuna Josef. Turning west, we crossed a slope of impoverished ploughland on a thread-like path that soon vanished, and for three hours were in a hot wasteland of thinly-forested hills. I saw two hyenas, a leopard lying under a bush happily playing with his tail and one abandoned settlement, roofless and overgrown. There were no traces of cultivation or paths, for already the bush had reclaimed every slope.
By six o’clock the terrain had become rougher and the forest thicker. Hundreds of baboons delighted me as they hurried along the crest of a low ridge, silhouetted against the sky and pausing often to swear discordantly at the intruders. I was no longer hoping to find water, so when we came to this dry river-bed it seemed as good a camping site as one could expect. It is about thirty yards wide and the ground rises on both sides, giving the place a cosy feeling. Many flat slabs of rock lie amidst the fine silver sand and on one of these I’ve built my fire, thus avoiding the possibility of sending the whole mountainside up in flames.
While collecting wood I moved some way down the gully – and suddenly the sweet music of running water rippled through the stillness. My thirst was now an ache dominating both body and mind and when I saw a shallow river, some 400 feet below this ledge, I rushed back for my bottle and made three attempts to reach the ravine. Thirst is so compulsive that sufferers within sight of water tend to disregard safety; but it was no use – everywhere the last hundred and fifty feet were sheer, smooth rock. The baboons now reappeared, far below me at the water’s edge, and I realised that when last seen they had been on their way to the local, as it were. For a few moments I stared at them gloomily, contemplating the disadvantages of having evolved. Then I precariously climbed back to camp and ate a tin of tuna fish, which considerably increased my thirst.
Earlier a sprinkling of rain had fallen and as I ate ghostly, starlit cloudlets went drifting by overhead. Jock was munching above me, on the jungle-grassed eastern slope, and while unpacking my writing things I glanced up at his comforting black bulk, moving slowly between the bushes. Then my heart jerked. Close to him was a brilliant, malevolent yellow eye, glinting near ground level. It looked no more than a leopard’s spring away and seizing a heavy length of firewood I charged the slope, marvelling at his placid stupidity. It took me some moments to discover that my One-Eyed Savage Beast was in fact the planet Venus, just risen above a mountain crest and glittering through the scrub.
During these past few hours my self-esteem has been restored by two large pairs of genuine eyes reflecting the firelight from various points on the upper slopes. Neither pair was near Jock, who gave no sign of being alarmed, so I took my cue from him and remained seated in a dignified way. I’m glad that I have an open space on which to sleep; it would not be relaxing to spend a night entangled in this forest.
Soon after sunset a strong wind rose and the fire has been burning quickly. Its leaping, twisting, crimson-orange flames are lighting up an extraordinarily wide area, which in an odd way seems to belong to me, as I sit at its centre – while beyond are the black walls of the night, shutting out a country that belongs now to no man. At this comparatively low altitude (about 6,000 feet) being beside such heat makes one sweat continuously, so my thirst is steadily increasing.
Already it is eleven o’clock. I have been writing for four hours, by the light of candles sheltered from the wind between boxes in the lee of a boulder – but with many pauses to enjoy a flawless tranquillity which here seems to have absorbed me into itself. Despite thirst and glinting eyes I know that this evening will forever remain among my finest memories. Here the solitude has a quality such as I have not experienced since crossing that plateau between the Ataba and Buahit. Almost certainly there is no other human being within a radius of ten miles; and the spirits of the local plague-victims must feel friendly towards me, for my peace is complete.
Now the sky is cloudless again, and alive with the golden vigour of its stars. A moment ago a jet passed on its way from Asmara to Addis, and I thought of the passengers – briefly my nearest neighbours – sitting back after their five-course dinner, reading magazines and sipping iced drinks. But
When I survey the bright
Coelestiall spheare
So rich with jewels hung, that night
Doth like an Æthiop bride appear
I can’t wish, even for the sake of an iced drink, to be up there hurtling towards Addis.
Thus those coelestiall fires,
Though seeming mute,
And all the pride of life confute.
For they have watcht since first
The World had birth:
And found sinne in it selfe accurst
And nothing permanent on earth.*
It is impossible to mule-sit efficiently after climbing mountains all day. Last night my sense of duty roused me only once, for long enough to heave two huge branches on to the fire. I then slept deeply until six o’clock, yet when I woke our hillock of embers still glowed rosy in the silver dawn-light – and Jock was safe, though not, as I soon discovered, sound. There was a great joy in that solitary awakening to the cool stillness of a mountain morning.
While I was eating a tin of sardines the baboons came quite close and sat round scratching and making insulting gestures and abusive remarks; but when I stood up they retreated, protesting raucously.
By 6.45 we had begun a two-hour struggle with a series of broken, thickly-forested hills which sometimes threatened to defeat us utterly. Abuna Josef was disobligingly invisible, but that didn’t matter much, for my immediate concern was to escape in any direction from this formidable complex of gullies and spurs. Then suddenly we were free – overlooking a broad, gradual slope of sun-powdered grey soil. And at the foot of the slope gleamed water.
This tributary of last evening’s river was laced with minute strips of green slime, but I reasoned that these must be composed of some health-giving vegetable matter. Beyond the high riverside dunes of fine grey sand I again looked for Abuna Josef, but on every side towering ranges restricted my vision to a few miles and warped my sense of direction. So I went vaguely towards the least stern-looking mountain, hoping that from its summit Abuna Josef might be more co-operative.
It was during this climb that Jock began to fold up. He moved only very slowly, his breathing was heavy and his expression was the ultimate in dejection. I felt seriously alarmed, but not at all surprised. He has had little corn since we left Debre Tabor and we have been averaging twenty miles a day through demanding country. At the thought of his collapsing in this godforsaken spot I almost panicked. I myself was now safely within reach of Lalibela, but the desertion of Jock, to save my own miserable skin, would be an experience from which I could never hope to recover; and I doubted if my common-sense would prove robust enough for me to abandon a sick animal and a good friend to beasts of prey.
My own empty stomach was sick with anxiety as Jock battled on, game as ever, to the top. Now I looked desperately for Abuna Josef but the giant was still hidden behind a new array of nearer mountains.
While Jock rested I studied the terrain ahead. Lalibela, I knew, was at about the same height as this summit, so I decided to try to avoid further steep climbs by keeping, where possible, to the upper flanks of the intervening ranges – even if this meant doubling our mileage. However, we were soon forced down by scree slopes so steep – and above such a deep chasm – that I dared not risk them with a weakly stumbling Jock. We then followed a level, winding, silver-sanded gully; it seemed to be going in quite the wrong direction, but the only alternatives were other possibly futile ascents.
It was 10.40 when a faint path appeared on the left-hand slope. Relief exalted me – and perhaps infected Jock, who here quickened his pace in response to my eager tugs at the halter. Twenty minutes later we had reached another wretched Jabarti settlement, on a grey, desiccated hilltop. The compounds were fortified with ill-kept ‘Connemara’ stone walls, and the people – who must see tourists if they trade in Lalibela – observed our arrival apathetically. They had neither fodder for Jock nor food for me; but from this hilltop a man pointed out the route to Lalibela.
The miles that followed were the most trying of the whole trek. Had Jock behaved mulishly his suffering might have been a little less heart-rending, but he struggled on – becoming hourly more enfeebled – with a faithful courage that I shall never forget.
My earlier ambition to avoid climbing now looked absurd. Below the settlement the path expired in a broad, barren valley and for a few miles we followed a deep, dry river-bed, overhung by dense forest, between mountains which eventually merged so that we had to climb one of them. (My reward for this was the reappearance of Abuna Josef; he still looked dishearteningly far away, yet his presence had a steadying influence.) Then came another descent, another valley, another river-bed – this one retaining stagnant pools of malarial water – and yet another mountain on which we again went astray amidst gullies and thorn thickets. All that brought us to the most harrowing stage – a continual two-hour climb up a massive mountain wall which stretched unbroken for miles between us and Lalibela. At this point I faced the possibility that we might have to camp out, though one more night without adequate fodder would be likely to leave Jock too weak to continue in the morning. Here he had to pause about every ten yards to recover his breath; when he had stopped panting I would tug hard on the halter and he would meekly make the painful effort necessary to cover the next ten yards. Each time he stopped I stroked his nose consolingly and he gazed at me with dull, sad eyes. I hope never again to live through two such hours.
Below the crest the inevitable rock escarpment was not very high, but the absence of any established route to the top made it exceptionally difficult. Now poor Jock was near complete collapse. At the foot of the cliff he hung his head and refused to budge. This was the moment that I had been dreading; I had no alternative but to go behind him and use my dula. Reluctantly he responded, and I would like to think that he understood the spirit in which I was thrashing him. As he scrambled on to the crest ahead of me I was sick with suspense, knowing that if just one more climb lay between us and Lalibela he couldn’t possibly make it. I almost sprang on to the top in my anxiety, looked over the wide, new panorama – and thanked God to see tin roofs and blue-gums in the distance, on a level with ourselves. A deep valley intervened, its floor littered with hills, but our path swept semicircularly around the upper flanks of the high mountains to the north.
It took us two and a half hours to cover the last four miles and the several severe inclines were agony for Jock. Near Lalibela the track falls abruptly, to cross the river Jordan; then it climbs steeply. When we reached Lalibela Jock stopped in the middle of the ‘Main Street’ in a determined way and gave me a look signifying that as far as he was concerned we had arrived. Seeing his point, I unloaded him on the spot – surrounded by unhelpfully staring locals – and hired three youths to carry our saddlery and sacks to the tourist hotel, which is on a high ledge above the town. Elsewhere one wouldn’t have to pay people to help a traveller in obvious distress – but Lalibela is one of Ethiopia’s main tourist centres.
As I led Jock up this last steep hill, through the dusk, I suddenly became aware of my own miserable state and the pain of my knee and the soreness of my lungs swept over me like a wave. Not having eaten anything like a square meal for days I again got the knocks, as I did outside Gondar. Yet here I couldn’t eat when I dragged myself into the restaurant; and tonight, for the first time in this country, I have that stabbing, fiery bellyache which is the prelude to dysentery. Perhaps those strips of green slime were not, after all, health-giving.
* These Muslim highlanders are racially similar to their Christian neighbours and religiously dissimilar to Muslims anywhere else. Few of them observe Ramadan, go to Mecca, or pray regularly, and they know as little about orthodox Islam as the Copts do about orthodox Christianity or the Falashas about orthodox Judaism. The majority are descended from Copts converted by the Galla invaders or the armies of Mohammed Gragn. Deprived of hereditary land-ownership by several Imperial Decrees, many Jabartis weave and trade, thereby earning the contempt of the Copts. In their dress and buildings they are almost indistinguishable from other highlanders, though their compounds are often enclosed extra-securely as a defence against shifta, who are implicitly encouraged to attack Jabartis rather than Copts. Thousands of Jarbartis were forcibly converted by Theodore, in 1864, yet they now form about one-tenth of the highland population.
* William Habington (1605–1654).