In Ethiopia with a Mule (3 page)

On the last lap I passed a big British War Cemetery and gazed into it enviously, feeling that a cemetery rather than an hotel was the obvious resting place for anyone in my condition. Fifteen minutes later I was approaching the uninspiring suburbs of Asmara and looking out for a bar. At 1.30 I found one, pushed aside a curtain of bottle-tops on strings and in a single breath ordered
three beers. Since morning I had only walked fifteen miles, yet my exhaustion was so extreme that I had to be helped to remove my rucksack.

By three o’clock I had found this Italian-run
pensione
in the centre of the city, conveniently opposite the British Consulate. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I took off my boots and socks and saw the worst. It is no longer a question of blisters: with my socks I had peeled off all the skin from both soles, leaving what looks like two pounds of raw steak. Undoubtedly this is where I forget ‘mind-over-matter’ and sit around for some days industriously growing new skin.

This morning I hobbled over to the Consulate to ask for the name of a reliable doctor; but the Consul, Major John Bromley, is on duty in Massawah today and his Ethiopian staff were vague – though friendly and anxious to help. The next few hours were spent limping around in a daze of pain searching for sound medical advice – not that there is any shortage of doctors here, but in my insular way I distrust foreign medicine-men whose names are followed by a
rearrangement
of the whole alphabet. Eventually I chanced to meet a kind nurse from the Lutheran Red Sea Mission, who recommended Professor Mario Manfredonia as being Ethiopia’s best doctor; but he, too, is in Massawah today, so I could only make an appointment for tomorrow morning.

By this morning my right foot had begun to heal but my left had turned into a suppurating mess. Professor Manfredonia did a lot of skilful pressing and prying, before plastering it with antibiotic ointment, putting on an imposing bandage and telling me to rest for four or five days. He is the sort of doctor who makes you imagine that you are better long before you possibly could be, so I left his surgery feeling quite uninfected.

Today the Bromleys returned from Massawah. Major Bromley has lived in Ethiopia for thirty years and he gave me much practical advice on conditions in the highlands, telling me that it will be necessary to carry a full water-
bottle
and supplementary food rations. When I explained that I couldn’t possibly carry one ounce more than my present load we decided on the purchase of a pack-mule. Apart from pack-carrying, it is wise to have an animal that can be ridden in an emergency, should one fall ill or break a bone at the back of beyond.

During the afternoon, as I was dutifully resting in my room, Mrs Bromley telephoned and nobly invited me to stay. So I’m now happily installed in this agreeably happy-go-lucky household.

Fortunately I’m a rapid healer; tonight my right foot has a nice new tough skin and my left is no longer throbbing.

This morning’s mule-search was unsuccessful. The Bromleys’ servant reported that it had been a poor market; but on the twenty-fourth he will try again, as the most important market of the week is held on Saturdays.

Today I took a sedate stroll through Asmara, which was founded by the Italians seventy years ago and looks like a lost suburb of Milan, with many Arab
shanty-settlements
, nomad camps and highlanders’ hovels scattered around the periphery. The Catholic Cathedral, the Grand Mosque and the Coptic Church were all designed by Italians. Mussolini was among the chief contributors to the cathedral building fund and the design is said to have been inspired by the Lombardic school of architecture; but this inspiration seems to have flagged quite soon and I much preferred what I was allowed to see of the mosque. Apart from one Latin flourish – a fluted Roman column at the base of the minaret – this is a fine no-nonsense example of Arab architecture. Near the mosque is St Mary’s Coptic church (rectangular, with mock-Aksumite stonework) and I spent a couple of hours sitting in its enclosure – not because I was riveted by the building, but because the worshippers interested me. Ethiopian churches are locked after morning Mass, yet as I sat in the sun on the steps, surrounded by spectacularly-maimed beggars, people were all the time praying vigorously at each door. Having crossed themselves, and made three little curtseys, they went to the door, pressed their bodies close to it and, between whispered prayers, kissed and stroked the smooth, golden wood. Many were women, with
fly-covered
infants tied to their backs. Five wild-looking men seemed to be new-comers to Asmara; they had ebony skins, pure Hamitic features, a fuzzy disorder of long hair and tall, thin bodies, draped in the ragged remains of one-piece,
knee-length
, cotton garments. Probably they belonged to some lowland tribe recently converted to Christianity. When they had finished their prayers they stood back to view the enormous, gaudy mosaic which decorates the facade, and for twenty minutes these apparently ferocious tribesmen remained on the steps animatedly discussing angels and saints.

Meanwhile a distinguished-looking elderly man had joined the worshippers around the main door. He had iron-grey hair, almost black skin, handsome features and tremendous dignity; in his well-tailored suit and snow-white shirt he was conspicuous indeed among this filthy, barefooted throng. Having completed his ritual devotions he withdrew from the mob, carrying
highly-polished
shoes, and stood erect and motionless for over an hour in the shade of a nearby bell-tower, staring intently at the church and praying
sotto voce
. He was still there when I left.

This afternoon I bought ten pounds of imported emergency rations – dried fruit, and tins of cheese and fish. The prices were astronomical, for in addition to freight charges there are import duties of 65 per cent to 100 per cent on all foreign goods. These taxes may seem unreasonable, but they are the
Government’s
chief source of revenue and the
faranjs
who buy most of the imported goods can better afford to pay taxes than can the Ethiopians. At present Ethiopia desperately needs more money, because in many ways this is the least advanced African country – a result of never having been colonised and a sore point among the few Ethiopians who can bring themselves to face the Empire’s backwardness.

In general, relations between the Eritreans and the Italian colony seem to be excellent. The majority of the resident Italians have been born here and the fact that they chose to remain, after the union with Ethiopia, proves that to them Eritrea is ‘home’. All the locals to whom I have spoken declare that the Italians are their favourite
faranjs
; but a regrettable bond between the settlers and the Eritreans is their shared contempt for the rest of the Emperor’s ‘uncivilised’ subjects.

During the past few days the weather has been quite cool. This plateau has an extraordinary even temperature. In May, the hottest month, the Asmara average is 65ºF and in December, the coldest month, it is 58ºF. Yet the Danakil desert, immediately west of the tableland, is one of the hottest places in the world. The mountains which make things so pleasant up here also bring to the highlands the Indian Ocean monsoon, from June to September.

Today’s mule-buying effort also failed. The servant reported that though he had seen a few good animals the prices were exorbitant – two hundred dollars, which is thirty pounds. He therefore advised buying at a smaller market, where it should be possible to get an equally good animal for half the price. This development coincided with an announcement by Major Bromley that on the twenty-sixth he
must take two vehicles to Makalle; so we decided to make a minor expedition of it, Mrs Bromley (known as Peter) and myself going by car, the Major and the children by Land-Rover.

In Makalle lives Her Highness Leilt (Princess) Aida Desta, eldest grandchild of the Emperor. She is an old friend of the Bromleys, who say that she will be happy to help me buy a good mule at a reasonable price. I can then spend a few days getting acquainted with the animal, and start trekking from Makalle when my foot is completely re-soled.

My original route did not include Makalle, which lies south-east of the Asmara–Adua–Aksum trail that I had planned to take on my way to the Semien Mountains. I’ll now have to walk north-east to Adowa, before turning due south towards the Takazze Gorge, which divides the provinces of Tigre and Begemdir.

Having two children in the house – Christopher and Nicola Bromley – gives some point to the tedious ballyhoo of our modern Western Christmas. Ethiopian Christians celebrate this feast on 7 January, by which time I hope to be
celebrating
with them in the middle of nowhere.

On our drive from Asmara my first glimpse of the highlands overwhelmed me. Their magnificent, ferocious beauty is beyond all expectation, imagination or exaggeration – even to think of it makes my heart pound again.

We left Asmara at 10.30 and immediately outside the city were on an arid, red-brown plain, with low hills ahead and high mountains to the east. Then, beyond Decamere, the road swooped down and up for many miles through mountains whose configuration was so extraordinary that I felt I must be dreaming. Often we were driving on the verge of immense chasms, which lay between escarpments of pink or yellow rock that had been eroded to the most grotesque contrasts – and this tormented splendour is sustained for hundreds of miles.

We covered 200 miles today, and one gets such a confused impression from a car that already I’ve forgotten where we saw what. I think we were near Adigrat when the Semiens first appeared, some eighty miles away to the south-west – a fantastic array of powder-blue ruggedness, their 12 to 15,000-foot summits seeming deceptively near and clear. Never have I seen such strange mountains; they look like peaks in a cartoon film. We were then on a 9,000-foot plateau
and between us and the Semiens lay this fissured wilderness of gorges, cliffs and lesser mountains. In the middle distance was a curiously perfect cone, and there were several solitary, flat-topped, steep-sided
ambas
, rising abruptly from a
surrounding
area of level ground. These
ambas
form almost impregnable natural fortresses and their rôle in Ethiopian history has been so important that one looks at them with awe, rather as though they were the venerable veterans of some remote and famous battle.

My map marks six ‘important’ towns between Asmara and Makalle, yet none of them seems more than a large, shoddy village. Those in Eritrea were important once, but since the Italians left the bigger houses have become roofless ruins, on which faint lettering indicates that thirty or forty years ago Italian grocers, barbers and hotel-keepers were in residence. The locals never moved into these comparatively solid and spacious houses, preferring to live on in their own rickety, cramped, tin-roofed shacks. Here corrugated-tin roofs are not merely a status-symbol, as in Nepal, but a means of collecting precious rain; and in such a barren region the use of every raindrop justifies even this ugliness.

Though we were driving on one of Northern Ethiopia’s only two
motor-roads
we passed no other private cars and saw not more than six or seven trucks. Between Decamere and Senafé a convoy of nine buses approached us, escorted by two smart army vehicles, bristling with machine-guns. This is the hub of the
shifta
country, where private cars rarely travel unescorted unless flying a flag that denotes diplomatic privileges. I noticed that here even Peter, who has nerves of steel, was slightly tensed up, despite the large Union Jack fluttering conspiciously on our bonnet. But she assured me that the danger was minimal as
shifta
specialise in buses; if the owners of Transport Companies don’t regularly pay a protection fee their vehicles are pushed over precipices.

Makalle lies west of the road and previously it was necessary to overshoot it and then turn back north from Quiha; but a few years ago Leilt Aida’s husband, HH Leul Ras Mangasha Seyoum, the Governor-General of Tigre, designed a direct ten-mile jeep track to the town, and did most of the construction work himself with a bulldozer and tractors.

As we hairpinned steeply down the mountainside I had my first glimpse of Tigre’s provincial capital – a little town sheltered by eucalyptus trees on the edge of a wide and windswept plain. My guidebook claims that Makalle ‘gives the impression of a boom town’ – and perhaps it does, to those who knew it ten years ago. To me it gives the impression of a neat feudal settlement, gathered happily around the somewhat misleadingly named ‘palace’ of the Emperor Yohannes
IV. It has such an atmosphere of remote tranquillity that neither the turmoils of its past nor the progress of its present are easily credited. We drove straight to the new tourist hotel, a converted eighty-year-old castle, managed by Indians, which stands small and square on a low hill. Here prices are reasonable (about twenty-five shillings for bed and breakfast) and, though tourist hotels are not my natural habitat, I find the wall-to-wall carpeting and the pink-tiled bathroom sufficiently compensated for by eccentric electricity and a moody water supply. When countless servants had pitted themselves against the plumbing for over an hour we achieved baths, before setting off to dine at the palace – me in my Husky outfit, which seemed one degree less removed from palatial evening-wear than a pair of ill-fitting Cairo-tailored shorts.

At present Ras Mangasha is away in the mountains, building another road, so Leilt Aida appeared alone in the courtyard to receive us. It can be
disconcerting
to meet a princess who seems like a princess; one feels as though a
fairy-tale
had come true – especially with a background of high turrets standing out blackly against a moon-blue sky. Haile Selassie’s eldest grandchild is very elegant and very beautiful – olive skinned, with a triangular face, large and lovely eyes and the finest of bones. The likeness to her grandfather is at first quite intimidating, but is soon countered by a subtle sense of humour and a kindly graciousness. Clearly she is going to be a wonderful ally – concerned for my safety, but only to a sensible extent. She has not opposed my setting out through the Tembien
sans
guide,
sans
guard, though she insists on giving me letters to the various district governors, who are being instructed to help me if I’m in difficulty.