In Ethiopia with a Mule (15 page)

At 5.40 we seemed doomed to a night out – but then I saw goat droppings on the turf and a moment later I noticed that the upper slopes of a valley to the west had recently been ploughed. A brisk five-minute trot brought us to the edge of this deep, circular depression beneath sheer, smoky-blue mountains. Ripe barley lined the valley, creating a lake of golden light in the evening sun, and far below were three tiny settlements, each sheltered by a few blue-gums. Harvesting had begun on the slopes and as I stood there, luxuriating in relief, I could hear the distant whip-cracking and chanting of threshers who were driving muzzled oxen round and round through knee-high piles of barley.

The steep descent on loose clay was difficult for me, but Jock seemed pleased by the change. For him smooth, dry turf is very trying, and to my dismay those hoofs which had taken him so unerringly up that nightmare escarpment often slipped treacherously on our way across the plateau.

As we approached the main settlement three little boys excitedly yelled, ‘
Faranj! Faranj’!
, so I realised that here foreigners are not unknown. Yet the score of men who at once gathered silently around us were obviously suspicious – no doubt because I lacked an escort and had come from the ‘wrong’ direction. (
Faranj
trekkers usually hire mules at Debarak and enter the Semiens from the west.) However, after travelling hard for ten of the previous twelve hours I felt too tired and hungry to care about anyone’s reactions, so I quickly unloaded Jock, getting no assistance from the men, and sat in the stubble on a sack, signing my need for shelter. But this only increased the general uneasiness, since
faranjs
normally have tents, and without addressing me the men began a vehement
discussion
.

Ten minutes later a youngish man came striding across the field with a rifle over his shoulder and a truculent expression on his face. He wore western clothes beneath his
shamma
and immediately demanded my permit, by making a stamping gesture with his right fist on his left palm; but as he was illiterate my Ethiopian visa meant nothing to him. What he wanted was a
familiar-looking
chit, issued by some local governor, and there followed a few unpleasant moments while he shouted angrily at me and slapped my passport
contemptuously
. I could sense that he was unpopular with the other men and now some of them began to speak up for me, referring to the fact that I was a lone woman, and one of them invited me into his compound. Emboldened by this support I took back my despised passport and indicated to the company that the visa was Ras
Mangasha’s chit – a deception which satisfied even the official, though in theory Ras Mangasha’s authority does not extend beyond the Takazze.

Once their initial suspicions have been allayed these highlanders are
consistently
hospitable and soon I was being given a place of honour near the fire in this tiny
tukul
. My altimeter shows 12,400 feet and within moments of the sun’s setting it began to freeze; at present my hands are so numb that I can hardly hold the pen. It seems odd that in Tigre, where the climate is comparatively equable, most dwellings are solidly built of stone, yet at this altitude one finds only wretched wattle hovels. Cakes of mud or dung are usually plastered over the stakes, but here I can see stars twinkling frostily in every direction and at intervals a blast of icy wind comes whistling through, making my candle gutter and sending wood-smoke swirling into everyone’s face. Such huts are common throughout Negro Africa, but with the example of Tigre so close their construction in the Semiens is extraordinary. Perhaps it is relevant that the Aksumite Empire – which introduced Semitic building techniques to the highlands – corresponded almost exactly to the modern Tigrinya-speaking regions and had as its southern boundary the Takazze Gorge. However, the Aksumite Empire flourished quite some time ago, and the failure of the Amharas to learn from their Tigrean cousins hints at an abnormal mental inflexibility.

For supper – after my host had devoutly said grace – crisp, hot barley bread was served with our
injara
and vegetable-
wat
; this bread contained so much foreign matter that I lost half a tooth while enthusiastically masticating. The Man of the House had wanted to kill a chicken for me, but as I could not permit such extreme generosity he presented me instead with four tiny eggs.

I notice a few slight differences in the customs of this household. For our hand-washings a wooden bowl of water was passed around – an apparently
unnecessary
economy in an area of many springs. Also, one empties one’s
talla
vessel before having it refilled, and at each refill a burning twig is held briefly over the gourd to allow drinkers beyond the firelight to see what quality of
talla
they are getting. But here, as elsewhere, the server always pours a little of the guest’s drink into her own hand and tastes it, to prove that the brew is not poisoned. Evidently it suits some highlanders to poison certain guests.

This is one of the filthiest hovels I have ever been in – which is saying quite a lot. Yet here filth never seems intolerable, as it might in a European slum. One finds no stale food, dirty clothes, scraps of paper, empty tins or unwashed utensils – only manure, wood-ash, leaves, straw and chicken-droppings on a
never-swept floor, completed by the smell of humans who are no smellier that I am at present.

I enjoy this neolithic world where money is unimportant and all the objects in daily use have been made of mud, wood, stone, hides or horn. However, in one respect life may prove a trifle too neolithic tonight. Eight adults and three children live in this hut, which has a diameter of about eighteen feet, and as the twelfth inhabitant I’ll have to roll up like a hedgehog. In such a confined space my meagre kit seems to occupy an inordinate area, but when I suggested dumping it outside consternation ensued. So many people can live in one minute
tukul
only because they have no personal possessions, apart from their land, its products and their livestock. Every object here is communal – for storing and grinding grain, or for cooking and serving food. Despite the savage frost, there is not even any extra bedding; yet these people do suffer from the cold, which may be why they sleep in a crowd. I felt guilty about needing to sit near the fire, though wearing everything I’ve got, so after supper I moved away and wriggled into my flea-bag – a procedure which causes much astonished amusement in every compound.

This family is most endearing – generous, considerate, friendly and gay. Within a few hours they have made me feel that I belong to them, and in defiance of the language barrier we seem to have spent a lot of time laughing at each other’s jokes. I am learning that the quickest way to come to terms with the highlanders is by appealing to their sense of humour.

Two hours ago everyone else curled up in their threadbare
shammas
under their stiff cow-hides; but my sleeping prospects are so poor at this temperature that I’ve kept on writing, hoping that eventually extreme exhaustion will cancel out the cold – which, unhappily, does not affect the bed-bug population. Just inside the crude plank ‘door’ is a ‘two-tiered bunk’ type of bed which I haven’t seen elsewhere. It is made of wood and hide thongs, on the charpoy principle – but without anything approaching the skill of Indian craftsmanship – and as my torch-light caught it, when I was going out a moment ago, bed-bugs were swarming all over the wood. No wonder the occupants are muttering miserably in their cold-bedevilled, verminous sleep.

Now I think I’ll read a chapter or two of
Pain and Providence
.

After a few hours of shivery dozing it was a relief this morning to hear the harsh crow of a nearby cock. Everyone else must have felt the same, for my hostess
was up in the dark, vigorously blowing on the embers – which had been covered with ash – and as the first light seeped through the wall the other adults rose and crouched around the blazing sticks, so closely wrapped in their
shammas
that only their eyes were visible and each voice was muffled. Many of the poorer highlanders never eat before midday and as no one seemed to be thinking of breakfast I opened a tin of tuna fish and ate it with my pale pink plastic spoon, watched by a fascinated family who accepted the empty tin as though it were a golden goblet. Everyone disapproved of my leaving so early – they shook their heads and rubbed their hands together while repeating ‘
Birr! Birr!
’ (‘Cold! Cold!’) But I reckoned that I would feel a lot less cold if moving and we started out at seven o’clock.

Strangely, none of these men was an efficient mule-loader, and this worried me as we walked down a sloping stubble-field that felt iron-hard under black frost. On being asked about the path to Derasghie my host had vaguely indicated the summit of a sheer mountain to the south-west and I had no idea how populated – or unpopulated – the route might be.

Our path – having skirted one end of a canyon that lies hidden at the edge of the valley – expired at the foot of a steep, newly-ploughed slope. So we simply went straight up, and even during this strenuous climb I was being seared by the frosty air. We paused on the crest, and looking back over the valley I noticed how few compounds there are in relation to the area of cultivated land and to the livestock population. Yesterday evening big herds of cattle, sheep and horses were grazing on all the stubble fields – here barley is cut half-way down the stalk – so, however primitive their homes may appear, the locals cannot be really poor. These fat-tailed sheep and small horses were almost the first of either species that I’ve seen in the highlands; sheep can survive in most regions, but are commonest at this altitude, and horses are nowhere as popular as mules, whose sure-
footedness
makes them much more valuable, both for riding and pack-carrying.

From this ridge the general view to the south-west was of a baffling array of seemingly unlinked escarpments and ledges. Directly below us lay a gorge of fearsome depth, overshadowed on three sides by perpendicular mountains of black rock on whose darkly forested lower slopes I could detect no sign of a track. Yet without a track it would be impossible to cross this formidable massif, so leaving Jock I began to quarter the ridge. Eventually a series of donkey
hoof-prints
leading south gave me hope – by following them we might find the track which I knew must exist somewhere. However, I’m no Red Indian, and as the hard, windswept ground had taken prints only between boulders, where the
dust lay sheltered, we progressed hesitantly, climbing a shoulder of the southern mountain before turning north to descend a steep incline sparsely covered with withered grass. Then we came to the tree-line – and ten minutes later were on a wide, rocky path which was obviously the local M1.

For an hour we continued west, climbing gradually through a hushed, twilit forest of giant heath; eerily, most of the trees seemed dead, and all were
elaborately
draped in fine, pale green, ghostly moss. Immediately above us yard-long icicles hung in hundreds from the eternally-shadowed cliffs, like an armoury of glass daggers; and all the time it got colder as the path became rockier and steeper.

I no longer expect these highland tracks to stop climbing until they have reached the top of an escarpment – however much against nature such behaviour may seem. And sure enough, in due course our path took a deep breath, as it were, and soared straight up – providing a new danger for Jock, since thick black ice now lay between the stones. But the invincible creature made it somehow – bless his stout heart!

This final climb taxed my own body to the limit. Scanty sleep on two consecutive nights and a recently rather frugal diet – in relation to energy expended – have so diminished my stamina that I reached the top of the 14,400 foot
escarpment
feeling like death not warmed up. For a few moments I shared Jock’s disinterest in the panorama and simply sat beside him with my head on my knees. Then, having recovered enough breath to smoke, I began to appreciate a view that was more confined than yesterday’s but no less dramatic in its own way. This indeed was the heart of the Semiens – a jagged, dark, cold, cruel
rock-world
– and to have ‘won’ it was reward enough for any degree of painful fatigue.

Here the path vanished amidst lava slabs and when it reappeared, on a long turf slope, it had multiplied confusingly into half-a-dozen pathlets, which rambled off inconsequentially towards various points of the compass. A low, grassy ridge stretched nearby on our right, and on our left the plateau swept gradually up to a rough rock crest which I later discovered was the summit of Buahit (14,796 feet) – Ethiopia’s second highest mountain. At this point I had no notion whether the Derasghie track went south or east, but I emphatically favoured walking down rather than up. So we proceeded south.

It was now half-past eleven and the sun had some warmth, though a steady breeze was blowing coldly across this roof of Ethiopia. Jock’s load had come loose on the ascent and my desperate attempts to straighten the sacks and tighten the ropes had not been very successful. However, this worry was banished –
temporarily
– when two men appeared over the horizon, driving four donkeys in our direction. It took these knights a little time to overcome their incredulity but then they willingly rescued the distressed damsel – though their eagerness to help was more impressive than their skill at mule-loading.

Before saying goodbye I pointed south and enquired, ‘Derasghie?’ – whereupon one man caught my arm, nodded vehemently, jabbed the southward air and shouted ‘Derasghie! Derasghie!
Thuru! Thuru!
’ But the other man caught
his
arm and jabbed the eastward air, shouting, ‘
Yellum! Yellum! Buzzy! Buzzy!
’ (No! No! There! There!) From all of which I astutely deduced that both paths led to Derasghie, and that opinions differed as to the better route for a lone female with a mule; but since it was not possible to discuss the relative merits of the two paths I decided to continue lazily downhill.