In Ethiopia with a Mule (4 page)

Yohannes IV’s stone palace-fortress was constructed by an Italian workman, named Giuseppe Naretti, and its practical solidity fittingly commemorates one of Ethiopia’s greatest warrior Emperors. But the many cavernous reception rooms are not very suitable for a family of eleven and innumerable servants, so an inconspicuous bungalow has recently been built on to the south wing.

As I write a fiendish gale is tearing around the hotel, incessantly howling, whining, rattling and roaring. Makalle is renowned for these strong, cold winds, which rise during the late afternoon and continue until dawn.

This morning I mentioned mule-buying to Leilt Aida – and such is the Imperial Magic that within twenty minutes no less than six pack-mules were being paraded before me, by hopeful owners, in the stable-yard behind the palace.

My choice was quickly made, for one animal looked much superior to the rest. He is about thee years old, with perfect feet, a good coat and an
apparently
docile nature. It seemed auspicious that he meekly allowed me to open his mouth and pick up his feet, and when I took the halter he followed me around the yard like a lamb. He is dark grey, with a black off-foreleg, a white
saucer-sized
spot on the withers, a large chestnut patch on the near flank and a few white stripes on his belly. But the most important – and surprising – thing is his endearing expression. It had never occurred to me that one could be on more than civil terms with a mule, yet I can foresee myself becoming fond of this creature, for whom I willingly paid 105 dollars (fifteen guineas). The owner was an affable character, who considerately admitted that his animal had never seen a motor vehicle until today, and would therefore be inclined to ballet-dance on main roads.

I immediately named my new comrade ‘Jock’, in honour of a friend of mine who is noted for his kind dependability and capacity for overworking every day of the year – qualities which one hopes will be encouraged in Jock II by this talisman of a mutual name. I trust the friend in question will appreciate the compliment of having a mule named after him. As compliments go it is perhaps a trifle opaque at first sight.

Watering Jock in the stable-yard proved to be a little difficult; he had never before drunk from anything save a stream and was shy of both tank and bucket. When he had at last followed the example of a palace mule, I led him into a stable and left him settling down to a feed of barley. The buying of accessories was postponed till tomorrow, as Leilt Aida had arranged to take us to the Leul’s road-building camp for a picnic lunch.

The age when arrogant, energetic highland princes were the
de facto
rulers of their provinces has passed, but one can see traces of it in Ras Mangasha’s career as Governor-General of Tigre. His position is a curious one. Officially he is a senior civil servant in a centralised bureaucracy; actually he remains the hereditary prince of the Tigreans – a people to whom bureaucrats mean nothing and feudal lords everything. This vigorous great-grandson of Yohannes IV has shown a traditional independence in organising his latest project. Instead of
submitting
his scheme to the relevant procrastinating ministry in Addis he designed the road himself (though without academic training as an engineer), appealed to the peasants to help him, took off his shirt – literally – and got on with it. The peasants are now willingly contributing unpaid labour, though if an unknown
official from Addis requested this sort of co-operation he would get a stony stare from these same people. The work has been in progress for only fifteen days, yet ten miles of road have been completed; and it must give Ras Mangasha
considerable
satisfaction personally to lead the peasants in this communal effort as his forefathers led their forefathers in battle.

At 11 a.m. we left Makalle in a battered chauffeur-driven Mercedes and followed the main road towards Addis for an hour and a quarter, seeing no traffic except large mule and camel caravans on their way to the Danakil Desert to fetch salt. When we turned off the main road to begin our nine-mile climb the new track rounded many well engineered hairpin bends and near the summit of the range’s highest mountain we stopped at a tiny caravan – Ras Mangasha’s temporary home. Today’s work-party was visible at the end of the road, and soon the Leul came slithering expertly down a cliff to greet us – stocky, self-confident and dark-skinned, with bright, enthusiastic eyes and work-roughened hands. He has none of his wife’s calm depth and his conversation at once reveals a certain naïvety of approach to this complex transition period in Ethiopian history; but one feels that he genuinely loves his people and that they love him.

We sat on a boulder, and were served with
injara, wat, talla
and
tej
while watching a giant bulldozer edging its way along a precipice, pushing over the verge tons of rock already loosened by the herculean endeavours of ill-equipped peasants. It was thrilling to see and hear these colossal chunks of mountain go rolling and rumbling through the undergrowth into the invisible depths of the valley below. Apart from the workers, scores of men, women and children walk for miles every day just to watch, and they feel that this machine which moves mountains must be operated by some high-powered magic, lately discovered through the cleverness and virtue of their Prince. Frequently, during our picnic, Ras Mangasha leaped to his feet and yelled frantic warnings at open-mouthed onlookers who had chosen to stand and stare in the path of lethal boulders. As Leilt Aida remarked, these recurrent dramas were very bad for everyone’s digestion. Not to mention the fact that from our angle the bulldozer itself looked in imminent danger of following the rocks.

Despite the bulldozer, the tractors and the Mercedes this scene was essentially of another age. As we ate, several peasants approached Ras Mangasha to present gifts of bread. They came towards us bent double, holding out the leaf-wrapped loaves with both hands and not daring to raise their eyes; but when a servant had accepted the gift some of the bolder spirits came closer and, after a moment’s hesitation, reverently touched the muddy princely boot with their fingertips.

Archbishop Mathew has remarked that until the accession of Yohannes IV ‘the sustained element of the picturesque, which was so marked a feature of court life in Ethiopia, was lacking in the viceroyalty of the Tigre. … These viceroys were without a sense of dynasty, armed chief had followed armed chief. … There could be nothing withdrawn or sacred in such a feudal history.’ However, since the reign of Ethiopia’s only Tigrean Emperor this province has adopted the rigid, stylised etiquette that for so many centuries regulated the behaviour of the Gondarine and Shoan courts – though the differing traditions are
remarkably
reflected in the personalities of Leilt Aida Desta and Leul Ras Mangasha Seyoum. Yet neither is pure-blooded, for theirs is not the first marriage alliance between the rival royal houses of Tigre and Shoa. When Yohannes IV was dying on the battlefield of Gallabat he named as his heir Ras Mangasha, an
illegitimate
son by his brother’s wife (his legitimate heir had already been poisoned), and this man became the future Emperor Menelik’s only serious competitor. Soon Menelik had vanquished the Tigrean prince on the battlefield and he then compelled Ras Mangasha to divorce his wife and marry a niece of the Empress Taitu. It was after this Mangasha’s son – Seyoum – had been killed in the 1960 revolution that the present Leul became head of the family.

As I watched the peasants paying homage to their Prince I thought of all this tangled background – which partly explains why Ras Mangasha maintains no royal aloofness. His noted accessibility is a reversion to type, though it bewilders the Tigrean peasants, who know little of their own history and have long since accepted the formal Amharic code.

When we got back to the palace I hurried out to see Jock, who was looking a little forlorn in his new quarters. We took a short stroll, and I then decided that since both my feet feel comfortably re-skinned we can start our trek on the twenty-ninth.

For dinner Leilt Aida provided us with a sheep roasted whole on a spit. It looked romantic and tasted delicious.

This morning I woke at 6.30 to see Christopher and Nicola standing by my bed, pleading to come with me as far as Aksum. They are a tough pair – born and bred in Southern Ethiopia – so I said that of course they could come, if parental permission were granted. But in the end this daydream was reduced to
Christopher
’s accompanying me on tomorrow’s stage and being retrieved in the evening by a palace car.

When the other Bromleys had left for home Christopher and I went to the open-air market, where I hoped to find a suitable walking-stick. The
market-place
covers about two acres and scores of villagers from surrounding districts – the majority women suckling babies – sat on the dusty ground behind small piles of eggs, grain or unfamiliar herbs. All these highlanders wear rags and look filthy beyond description – which is hardly surprising, with water so scarce.

We found that
dulas
(heavy sticks) are not marketed here, since people prefer to cut and prepare their own weapons, so I looked for a substitute at several of the poky Arab huckster-stalls that line the narrower streets. My enquiries had to be made in sign language and, remembering the highlanders’ predilection for hitting each other over the head, I used this gesture – with the result that I soon became a popular turn. A delighted crowd followed me up the street, all perfectly understanding what I meant but none willing to part with his beloved
dula
. Then an Arab trader offered his own light stick for fifty cents (one and fivepence) and I gladly accepted it – against the advice of my Tigrean followers, who despise light sticks.

After lunch Jock and I went for a stroll around the ‘estate’, which is
delightfully
unpretentious. Broken-down farm machinery and the displaced statues of stone lions litter the forecourt, a chihuahua bitch complacently suckles three almost invisible pups in a cardboard box on the bungalow verandah and donkeys and mules graze on nothing in particular inside the imposing arched gateway – while the Prince’s standard flutters importantly above them.

For centuries Ethiopia’s emperors and nobles lived nomad lives, their courts elaborate camps set up at various points throughout troubled domains, and here one realises that two generations of ‘settledness’ have not counteracted the effects of this wandering tradition, which bred indifference to comfort and beauty. The Ras Mangasha who succeeded Yohannes IV stabled his riding horses within his palace to mark the esteem in which they were held – a natural gesture, for someone reared in a robust society immemorially centred on good horses and good horsemanship. Many Ethiopian emperors and chieftains were intelligent men, but they devoted their skills and energies to intriguing, hunting, repelling invasions or warring with neighbouring chieftains; and when the Imperial Court did settle in Gondar it soon became degenerate.

At teatime I went indoors, and soon several servants appeared at the french windows, holding up sundry bits of terrifyingly complicated pack-mule equipment. Leilt Aida asked my opinion of these items, but I hastily confessed that I’d never seen the like in my life before and couldn’t possibly pronounce
on their quality or suitability. The palace staff are taking this matter of Jock’s equipment very seriously and soon we heard them arguing vehemently about the relative reliability and convenience of various bridles, bits, pack-saddles and ropes. Finally it was decided that a servant, Gabre, should accompany me to a saddler in the bazaar to advise me on the purchase of a bit and bridle.

Because today is one of Ethiopia’s many important religious feasts the saddler’s shop was shut, so Gabre led me on to the man’s home, through alleyways where mounting-blocks stood outside most of the sturdy little stone houses. (Compared with other highlanders the Tigreans are noted for their solid buildings.) In the saddler’s compound some forty men and women were being entertained to
talla
and
dabo
(substantial wheaten bread) and I was taken to a small room, where much saddlery hung on the mud walls and women were baking on a fire in the centre of the earthen floor. The general reaction to this
unprecedented
intrusion of a
faranj
was interesting. I sensed a mixture of curiosity, amusement, shyness and suspicion; and, despite the status of my escort, I was given no special treatment – as one inevitably would be by Asians in similar circumstances. A minor Ethiopian official would have been received with much more ceremony, and one could see that the Princess’ servant was regarded as a person of far greater consequence than the Princess’ foreign friend. I was glad to observe so much today, before setting out on my trek. It is always a help to know one’s place from the start.