The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons (33 page)

As we descended to the Nechisar Plain, I was vigilant for the Nechisar Nightjar, an enigmatic bird known only from a single wing salvaged from the corpse of an individual found at the side of the track in 1990. We didn’t spot one. Even so, there was no shortage of other great birds, including Abyssinian Rollers, giant African Fish-eagles, Secretarybirds, Kori Bustards, Kurrichane Buttonquail, Helmeted Guineafowl, and Yellow-necked Spurfowl.

Most wildlife lovers probably come to the Nechisar Plain for the mammals. We saw Swayne’s hartebeest, Grant’s gazelles, and dozens of Burchell’s zebras, which, as long as we were on foot, allowed us to approach amazingly close. I realize that travellers to Africa are supposed to describe zebras in their millions, but as someone who had never previously seen one in the wild, “dozens” seemed pretty good.

At lunch I probably managed to re-inoculate myself with whatever bug had been making me ill for the past few days. I ordered assorted vegetables, assuming that they would arrive steaming hot. Most of them had been cooked, but not well and not recently. Lindsay joined Legese and Hassen in two rounds of
injera,
a sour, nutritious, pancake-shaped flatbread served with
wat
stew. She wanted to know what each of the bits was.

“What’s that?”

“Meat.”

“And what’s that?”

“Meat.”

“What kind of meat?”

“We don’t know. Maybe chicken.” Sometimes it is better not to ask.

A
SSIGNING A EUCALYPT
to a particular species requires a lot more botanical knowledge than I have. I might have some luck in deciding if a tree’s bark is smooth, scribbly, powdery, pepperminty, iron-barky, or tessellated, and I could probably distinguish between seeds that are red, brown, grey, and black. However, in distinguishing between leaves that are orbicular, lanceolate, falcate, peltate, amplexicaul, concolorous, or emarginate, or fruit that might be sessile, ribbed, urceolate, truncate-globose, obconical, or cupular, I would be at a loss.

If someone sent you to Australia to find a suggan buggan mallee tree, you might be facing a significant quest. You would know it to be a small, slender-stemmed tree found amongst the rocky hills and gorges of far-eastern Victoria around the Stradbroke Chasm. That is the easy part. Upon arrival, you would have to search for a plant
with a strongly beaked operculum with scars, campanulate fruit with a flared rim, flattened-ellipsoidal lacunose seeds, unbranched inflorescences, smooth sessile buds appearing in threes, glaucous juvenile leaves, and a crown consisting of lanceolate or falcate leaves with large island oil glands.

If I couldn’t figure out exactly which eucalyptus tree I was seeing in Ethiopia, I wasn’t going to be too fussed. Back on the main road, eucalyptus trees started to regain their abundance as we travelled north. In contrast to my loathing of rhododendrons, I was becoming very fond of eucalypts, with their long, dagger-shaped leaves and tall, straight trunks.

As eucalypts flashed by, I told Lindsay about some of the demographics I had looked up before coming to Ethiopia. I had learned that the country’s per capita gross domestic product was just $780 per annum, which didn’t compare favourably with that of, say, Iceland, at $29,750. Indeed, Ethiopia is credited with being one of the poorest nations in the world. While everyone in Iceland has access to safe drinking water, the same can be said of just 23 percent of Ethiopians. For every 100 girls of secondary school age in Iceland, 113 actually go to school. I’m not sure how that works, but it sounds pretty good. In Ethiopia, the number is just 22 per 100 girls. Infant mortality is nineteen times higher in Ethiopia than in Iceland. A woman in Iceland has a 90.7 percent chance of living to reach sixty-five years of age; only one-third of women do so in Ethiopia. All in all, the numbers suggest that Ethiopia can be a pretty rough place to live.

And to prove it, just south of Sodo we came upon another funeral procession. This one had only twelve mourners and no choir. For the sake of the family, I hoped that the gathering would pick up steam as it moved along. North of Sodo, we came across another. This time, hundreds of people were in attendance, and the closer we got to the truck with the deceased, the more grief-stricken the mourners looked. I probably wouldn’t cross paths with three funerals in three years at home.

In the fading light of late afternoon, we pulled into Wondo
Genet, whose wooded hills are among the last of the original Ethiopian forests, dominated by podocarp trees. Perhaps this was why there was a forestry college and a centre for biodiversity nearby. We checked into a government-operated hotel, part of which dates to the rule of Emperor Haile Selassie. My guidebook described the hotel in less than glowing terms, claiming that it makes “an elegant case for the introduction of architectural crimes against humanity as a hanging offence.” Well, rubbish. The dated architecture might inspire a sound thrashing at best. The hotel had cockroaches but no bedbugs, at least not in our room, and I’ll take cockroaches over bedbugs any day.

When Lindsay heard that the town had a hot-springs pool, she immediately decided to have a go. I was torn between a hot soak in a hot country and sitting quietly in the shade to catch up on my notes. While Lindsay shaved her legs in the windowless bathroom by the light of her Petzl headlamp, I lay on the bed to decide what to do. Then I spied her small floral bikini.

At the pool, the pre-soak shower issued from pipes coming out of a rock face, and pummeled my body with glorious scalding water. In contrast, the water in the pool was tepid, and the pool walls were algae-covered, but I hadn’t brought my swimming gear all the way to Ethiopia to let it sit in my backpack. And there was, of course, the bikini, which was considerably less modest than the bathing costumes of the several other women in the pool, all locals. The men wore bathing suits straight out of 1983, in contrast to my knee-length trunks. My body was the oldest one in the pool by nineteen years. Lindsay’s was second oldest.

O
N OUR WAY OUT
of Wondo Genet, we came across yet another road-blocking congregation. Surely not another funeral … As we approached the gathering, it seemed even more ominous, and police lights flashed on a pickup truck approaching from our right. When Hassen tooted the horn to get by, as he had with previous funeral processions, we got some very hostile looks, and I feared that we might be immersing ourselves in one of
the things I dread most in a foreign country—an illegal political protest.

Reality was far worse. From what we could gather from the throng, a child had been stoned to death by another child, and at that moment I simply could not imagine anything more dreadful. One young life was gone and another lay in tatters. Far more than just a funeral procession, we were watching the outpouring of a community in deep, deep grief and anguish.

As on previous days, we started climbing and climbing, and it occurred to me that I was having trouble remembering many descents to match the ascents. Perhaps we would eventually find ourselves at the top of the world. East out of Wondo Genet along Highway 40 until it turned into Highway 8; it should have been a piece of cake. Our planned route was only the length of my index finger on my highway map. Poor Hassen—every bit of the road was under construction.

As Hassen struggled, the rest of us watched the scenery, which included some patches of big and stately podocarp trees. I spied tremendous eucalyptus trees, monsters every one. In places, they made the landscape appear as something out of a Turner oil painting. The higher we got, the more the terrain looked like the Russian steppe, or what I suspect the Russian steppe looks like. Horses became more and more common, and the riders sat comfortably in the saddle. Legese explained that the Bale region was among the wealthiest in Ethiopia. Wheat farming is really big here, and Legese said that farmers can afford to use tractors and combine harvesters to farm the vast fields. This may be, but all of the plowing I saw was being done with single-blade plows pulled by pairs of oxen.

At the road’s peak, after Hassen had battled construction trucks and endless buses hour upon hour, we pulled over for a quiet lunch. It was only quiet for a few minutes until word got out to the children of the dispersed community that
faranji
and their minders had arrived. They appeared out of nowhere. I really wanted to munch on my boiled potato and egg in a bit of windy peace while trying to identify a few birds, but it wasn’t to be. “Hello-how-are-you-I-am-fine”
was getting a bit tiresome, but the twelve-year-old who shadowed me had picked up a little more English.

“That is a house!” he said.

“Yes, I know it is a house.”

“That is a rock!”

“Yes, it is most certainly a rock.”

“That is a rock!”

“You are correct. That, too, is a rock.”

“That is a donkey!”

I was growing a little tired of the dialogue and decided to try some gentle teasing. “No, it’s a mongoose,” I claimed.

“What?”

“It is not a donkey. It is a mongoose.”

“It is a donkey!”

“No, it’s a mongoose.”

“Now you give me 120 birr.”

“I’ll buy that mongoose for 120 birr.”

“What?”

“If you bring me that mongoose, I will give you 120 birr for it.”

“You want that donkey?”

“No, I want that mongoose. The one right over there.”

“Okay. Too much. Now you give me 100 birr.” And so it went.

On the downhill slide from the peak, we spotted an assortment of cool mammals, including warthogs, mountain nyalas, and a rarely spotted serval cat. At the Bale Mountains National Park headquarters, we spied grey duikers and Menelik’s bushbuck. A sign at the entrance to the park’s headquarters indicated that nine rivers and streams between Adaba and Goba contain rainbow and brown trout. Both species were introduced to Ethiopia in 1967 via Kenya and quickly spread, as introduced species so often do. These trout are now fair game for anglers.

I
T WAS BAMBOO MARKET DAY
in Goba. As we drove through town, we were held up by legions of horses and donkeys dragging their loads of bamboo to market from wherever uphill it had been harvested.
At a crossroad, the beasts were relieved of their burden and moved off to the side. Cash earned from the sale of bamboo would be spent on essentials and a few luxuries at the weekly market, due to start in a few hours.

The road passed substantial eucalyptus forests on one side of the road, and juniper and
Hagenia
forests on the other. For the first time, I saw eucalyptus trees in flower, little starbursts, and it looked as though these trees would erupt in the following few weeks. For now it was just the odd little bright and creamy puff here and there. These eucalypts seemed pretty happy with life, growing straight and strong, and with a sense of smug superiority. This wasn’t so unusual; eucalypts introduced to foreign lands often do much better than they do in Australia, having left behind their natural predators, parasites, and diseases. The soil into which they are introduced is sometimes much more nourishing than the nutrient-poor soil of Australia.

As the road climbed to the 4,000-metre-high Sanetti Plateau, constituting the northeast portion of Bale Mountains National Park, the landscape lost its thick vegetation and turned to low scrubby brush and bare ground, punctuated by the occasional giant lobelia tree rising a couple of metres. A few lobelia had generated huge phallic structures at their tops, each containing several thousand flowers, with each flower producing several thousand seeds. Pity the poor lobelia; after the plant reproduces, it dies. Lindsay pointed out that you have to admire the strength of anything that manages to survive in the alpine.

Wherever a depression in the ground had allowed a little water to accumulate, we saw more wildlife, including Blue-winged Geese, an endemic to Abyssinia, and Yellow-billed Ducks. Hassen spotted a giant mole rat, found in the Bale Mountains and nowhere else. The oversized creature lumbered across the landscape, giving us plenty of time to stop the car, get out, wander over, take some pictures … um … poke it with a stick … Giant mole rats do not move quickly. A few minutes later we spotted a fox. The fox did not spot the mole rat. We spied Thekla Larks,
Wattled Cranes—a vulnerable species—and Bale Parisoma, found nowhere but the Bale Mountains.

We continued on to Tullo Deemtu, which at 4,377 metres is the highest peak in the Urgoma Mountains, the second highest in Ethiopia, and among the highest peaks in all of Africa. Any more than a few minutes and the cold wind would have been too much, but it was one of those magical moments when everything else in sight is down. It did seem a bit of a cheat though, driving to the top of a mountain, but there was an automated communications tower at the top, and I suppose it requires periodic servicing.

Scooting downhill, it wasn’t long before we came to a Jawa at the side of the road. Or at least it looked like a Jawa. It unfolded itself to reveal a small child, perhaps six or seven years old, bundled up against the cold wind. Legese passed the child a few biscuits and a banana, while I contemplated where in the world the child’s parents might be. Ethiopian wolves and African hunting dogs are rare in the Bale Mountains, but it still seemed pretty chancy to me. Legese pointed out a herd of goats and cows crossing the plateau below us about a kilometre away and speculated that the child’s parents must be herding them. Sparsely populated, the Sanetti Plateau has long attracted herders, and the tradition continues despite the region’s designation as a national park.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
was one that I had not been looking forward to since booking the trip. Legese had not built it up as anything more than it was—a very long drive from Goba back to Addis Ababa for a flight north the next day. Over the horrid road we had travelled just two days before, Hassen set some sort of record by getting us from Goba to Sheshemene in just six hours. Highway 6 north is as significant as any road gets in Ethiopia, serving as the major route between the Kenyan border and Addis Ababa. It is nicely paved except where it isn’t. Imagine the 401 through Toronto redesigned as a carnival ride. Users of the highway include cattle, goats, horses, donkeys, horse-drawn carts, donkey-drawn carts, tractors, and a few motorized vehicles. Competing hitchhikers
wouldn’t stand a chance if they stood politely at the side of the road, and so they positioned themselves in the middle of the lane they hoped to travel in. Not content with the universal extended thumb, they used semaphore, without the flags, until the moment before death by collision became inevitable. As we sailed by, we got a lot of looks of resignation but also a lot of gestures that I can only assume were rude.