In Ethiopia with a Mule (18 page)

Jock has apparently forgotten his baptism of diesel fumes. When we reached the main street and saw a moving truck he promptly reared in protest – whereupon the load conveniently fell off on to a hotel doorstep. ‘Hotel’ is of
course a courtesy title. This sleazy Italian-built doss-house is blatantly a brothel, where harlots (to use the favourite term of English-speaking highlanders) may be observed partially undressing truck-drivers in the bar. I am now installed in an adjacent bedroom, amidst extreme squalor. The once-blue walls are nastily smeared, the floor tiles are stained with food and candle grease and littered with cigarette ends and dead matches, the broken window is patched with cardboard and the three iron beds are spread with revolting blankets. I intend to sleep on the floor; bed-bugs are an occupational hazard, but the likely result of using these foul beds is not.

Tonight I am suffering from what the Americans call ‘Cultural Shock’. This road runs like an infected scratch down the tough, rough, healthy body of the unprogressive highlands and on coming to these towns one knows that they are sick. Contact with our world seems to suppress the best and encourage the worst in the highland character; here it is evident that already the locals have degenerated from an integrated, respect-worthy peasantry into a community of coarse and crafty primitives. Walking around Debarak – or sitting in its bars, watching highlanders in dirty jeans and T-shirts drinking ‘Chianti’ and smoking cigarettes – one sees a much cruder aspect of the highland culture than one would ever see in an isolated settlement. At the foundation of this culture certain indigenous Hamitic–Negroid influences are being forever delicately balanced by Asian–Hebrew–Christian influences; and apparently the lightest touch of Westernisation can tip the balance in favour of the less advanced tradition.

The High Semiens have left my lips so badly cracked that if I absent-mindedly smile little trickles of blood run down my chin – an inhibiting affliction, when one’s only means of communication is a smile or a frown.

Since we arrived here at 2 p.m. the sky has been refreshingly obscured by slowly-drifting pale grey cloud.

Today’s twenty-three miles were unexpectedly enjoyable. For much of the way our track ran close to the motor-road and Jock staged a minor crisis every time a vehicle passed; but sixteen vehicles in eleven hours don’t constitute an
intolerable
volume of traffic, even for me.

All day we were crossing what in this context is an undulating plain, though at home one would describe it as ‘hilly country’. In every direction, to the blue ridges along the horizon, charming patterns harmonised with calm
contours. Side by side lay sloping expanses of ripe barley, green emmer wheat, brown ploughland, yellow-green
atar
and pale gold
teff
; and on level sweeps of golden-brown pasture-land grazed herds of sturdy horses, brown and white fattailed sheep, piebald goats and lean cattle. Many thatched settlements looked cosy amidst groves of blue-gums and the landscape was lively with singing shepherd-boys, chattering women bent double under earthenware water-pots, and chanting, whip-cracking harvesters.

A fresh breeze had been blowing all morning and at midday clouds again drifted up from the south, adding wonderfully to the beauty of the scene as their shadows slowly passed over these vast widths, gently fading the colours – which then seemed all the brighter as the sun restored them.

Ciarveta is a recently-built village on the bleak crest of a 9,000 foot ridge and, despite this being the main road, our arrival caused quite a sensation. To the locals
faranjs
are curious creatures who quickly drive past in Land Rovers, motorcars or – more rarely – buses.

I was given a friendly welcome in this square, two-roomed shack, where an icy wind cuts through the ‘chimney-gap’ between the tin roof and the tops of the mud walls. There is one iron bed, equipped with two filthy blankets, but most of the family sleep in hides on the floor. For the
faranj
’s supper my hostess scrambled six tiny eggs – a sophisticated addition to the menu. Her method, however, was not so sophisticated. The eggs were broken into a dirty enamel bowl and beaten thoroughly with very dirty fingers before being slopped into a probably dirty saucepan containing rancid butter and salt. Yet the result was excellent, though having stupidly lost my spoon I soon discovered that it is not easy to eat greasy scrambled eggs with one’s fingers.

The women of this area are more elaborately tattooed than most, mainly on their necks. Among highlanders a long neck is regarded as a sign of great beauty and attractively designed tattooed ‘necklaces’ are thought to accentuate the length.

Jock is now amongst those present, because everyone affirmed that if left outside he would probably be stolen. Such a possibility has never been
considered
elsewhere, so this suggests that mule-stealing proclivities are among the fringe benefits of a motor-road.

Today’s twenty-seven miles took us through placid pastoral country until 3 p.m. Then abruptly we were again amidst rough mountains and the road went
curving around high, forested spurs, with shrub-grown cliffs rising sheer above us and deep, broad valleys below.

Soon after midday I heard market-noises coming from a big plantation of blue-gums above the road so I made a
talla
-questing detour up the steep slope, past hundreds of animals and through a crowded square surrounded by
tin-roofed
shacks – where our progress caused some consternation, since Jock found it difficult to avoid the piles of merchandise that lay all over the ground.

Having refuelled I took a stroll around the square, leaving Jock in the charge of a boy who had politely appointed himself my temporary servant. These weekly markets are the corner-stone of highland trade, and are regularly attended by people who may have come twenty miles to exchange home-produced goods and acquire the imported goods made available by Muslim traders. (Trading as an occupation is despised by the highlanders, who only recognise two honourable ways of life – soldiering and farming. Therefore they never attempt to compete with the Muslims, many of whom are Yemeni Arabs.) The rural markets have also become centres for the collection, by big-town merchants, of surplus grain, hides and wool, which could not be bought economically from individuals in scattered settlements. This is one reason why I find it so difficult to buy fodder for Jock: highlanders are not used to doing business outside the market-place and are slow to adapt to the unfamiliar.

Going to market is among the chief pleasures of highland life. Most
highlanders
can walk tirelessly from dawn to dusk, so these long, leisurely treks are not a hardship, but a welcome break in the routine labours around field or compound and an occasion for meeting relations and friends, and for
collecting
such news as may be percolating through from the outside world to the market-town.

As we left the village many others were leaving too and I could see lines of trotting donkeys moving across the plain in every direction, some of them followed by whole families, down to the newest member on mother’s back. Then, looking up, I saw other groups making their way along the crest of a nearby ridge – the women draped in simple, chiton-like dresses, carrying high loads on their heads, the men striding behind pack-animals, their
dulas
held across their shoulders, supporting both hands, and a rich man cantering proudly on a gaily-saddled mule – all silhouetted against the grey sky.

Two hours later a break in the cliff-wall on our right revealed how high we still were, for below us lay the weirdly wind-sculptured summits of a range of blue mountains that spread far away to the western horizon.

We then climbed slightly to cross a pass, before beginning the final, gradual descent from the Semiens. By sunset we had reached 8,400 feet and were rounding a steep mountain which towered above us on the right and fell away below us on the left. To the south-east I could see our serpentine road diving through a narrow gap that leads to Gondar – only fifteen miles further on – but here no settlements were visible, and I only noticed this tiny compound when surveying the mountainside for a camping-site. (If not marked by blue-gums
tukuls
are inconspicuous to the point of invisibility.)

It is unusual to find a solitary compound amidst such rough territory and these people are really poor – a rare phenomenon in the highlands. Their only animals are a broken-down donkey and two ferocious curs and they have no grain, which means no
talla
or
injara
. At first I wondered if they were
semi-outcasts
from some non-Christian tribe, but then I noticed that they all wear the
Matab
– a neck-cord which signifies membership of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. A young couple live in one
tukul
and their hunger-dulled expressions remind me of Indian peasants in Bihar. They have three children, none of whom look likely to live much longer.

As I approached the compound the wife was filling her water-jar, and when she saw me coming through the bushes she screamed and fled, though every day
faranjs
drive along the road a hundred yards above.

I am being entertained in the smaller
tukul
by three old men who mistake me for a boy. A small saucepan of boiled haricot beans appeared for supper, but peasant hospitality is rarely daunted by poverty and my hosts insisted on sharing with me. I was so ravenously hungry that the nutty-flavoured beans seemed a food of the gods. However, conscience doth make martyrs of us all and I controlled myself after a fistful – though the grey-beards repeatedly urged, ‘
Tegabazu
!’ (Help yourself!) and ‘
Mokar
!’ (Try!). Unfortunately my emergency rations are at an end and as I write I rumble.

Here the night air is almost warm, so I’m going to sleep unverminously beneath a sky of moon-bright clouds.

I woke early, after my first bugless sleep since leaving Derasghie. All around it was night and overhead stars still glittered between dark shreds of cloud – but in the east, above the mountains, a long strip of clear sky glowed like copper in firelight. Always that immediate moment of wakening after a night in the open has a very special quality, compounded of freedom and peace.

The morning air was chilly, so while watching the dawn I remained in my flea-bag, being driven by a desperation of hunger to drinking dire Ethiopian brandy for breakfast. By 6.30 we were on our way and half-an-hour later I saw a group of men and boys driving laden donkeys off the road on to a steep, rocky track. Obviously they were going to Gondar market, so I followed them – and this short cut reduced the road’s fifteen miles by three. Apart from that first descent it was an easy track, and after four and a half hours’ slow walking across pastures, stubble-fields and ploughland we rejoined the main road, turned the shoulder of a mountain – and saw Gondar below us, cloaked in trees.

Then an odd thing happened. All the morning I had been aware of the extreme tiredness of hunger and every slight climb had felt like an
escarpment
, but I hadn’t been conscious of making any extraordinary effort to keep going. Yet here I was suddenly stricken by what cyclists call ‘the knocks’, and for ten minutes I had to sit on the roadside, struggling to summon the strength to
walk down
that final slope. The extent to which those knocks may have been fostered by Ethiopian brandy in a vacuum remains a moot point; but the psychology of the incident is curious, for had Gondar been ten miles further away my knocks would probably not have developed until another ten miles had been covered.

I had planned to stop first at the Post Office, but now even letters mattered less than food. Wobbling into the respectable Fasil Hotel I sat in the bar-
restaurant
, on a blue tin chair at a blue tin table, begged the startled barman to give me something – anything – edible, and within half-an-hour had put away a mound of pasta and
wat
, five large rolls, an eight-ounce tin of Australian cheese and six cups of heavily-sugared tea.

Standing up from this banquet I saw a fearsomely repulsive figure behind the bar; it is a strange experience to stare at one’s own reflection for some moments without recognising it. When I did recognise myself I no longer wondered at that unfortunate woman fleeing last evening. If I saw any such apparition coming through bushes in the dusk I too would flee, fast and far. The combination of ingrained dirt, sun-blackened skin, dust-reddened eyes, sweat-matted hair, height-stiffened lips, blood-caked chin and sunken cheeks really did have an unnerving effect. I had been aware of losing weight, but I hadn’t realised just how emaciated my body was. At once I booked in here for a week, to fatten up before the next lap.

When Jock had been stabled I went up to my room – preceded by a pair of servants solemnly bearing my dusty sacks – and the next two hours were spent
in three successive hot baths. I had no clean clothes to put on, but as I went downstairs the mere fact of having clean skin made me feel positively chic.

The news of our arrival had already spread and quite a crowd was awaiting me in the bar – which embarrassment became understandable when I learned that Leilt Aida has recently been telephoning the Chief of Police every evening, to enquire if we have yet arrived in Gondar. One member of my ‘Reception Committee’ was the Director of the Gondar Bank, who kindly offered Jock the hospitality of his back garden during our stay here; and he also promised to organise a daily supply of grain.

When I went to the Post Office to telephone Makalle I collected a belated Christmas mail; so the rest of the day was spent ‘attending to my
correspondence
’.