In Ethiopia with a Mule (17 page)

The laity’s progress was less orderly. Today the young men were in fine ‘
war-dance
’ form and many leaping, whooping groups preceded, accompanied and followed the procession. Shouting horsemen cantered up and down, scores of middle-aged men walked beside the priests, continuously singing ‘haaa-hooo, haaa-hooo’ in low-pitched voices, the ululating women kept abreast of the Tabot, and small boys rode their ponies like gay demons – racing to the front, then skilfully wheeling round and racing to the back, proudly flourishing their miniature
dulas
as though they were spears.

Half-way to the church the procession halted beside a small tent, and the Tabot-laden priest disappeared to drink
talla
. Then another priest recited a long prayer and all the cloaked clergy chanted happily, some of them performing a slow, graceful dance while others – laying aside their prayer-sticks and
sistra
– clapped rhythmically and the women ululated non-stop and the young men bounded joyously.

During this pause the horsemen began to race seriously, providing an exciting spectacle as they frenziedly urged their fast, light mounts over the smooth turf.
*
A ‘spear’-throwing competition with long, pointed sticks was part of the game, and one could see that this warrior-art is still very much alive, even among the younger, rifle-nurtured generation.

Sitting on a boulder – watching the dancing priests and the leaping laymen and the galloping spear-throwers, and listening to drums, bells,
sistra
, chantings, ululations and pounding hoofs – I felt, not for the first time, an uncomfortable reaction to Ethiopian Christianity. To me there is something false about it, and by now this feeling has given me a guilt-complex, since ignorance of the Ethiopian Church should prevent me from passing judgement on it. Yet
I have observed other incomprehensible religious rites – Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu – without ever experiencing this sense of something dead, or atrophied, or unborn: I don’t quite know which word fits. My reaction has nothing to do with the display of outward reverence – which may be governed by the
superficial
customs and racial temperament of a particular crowd – but it has everything to do with the atmosphere that a crowd evokes at a religious ceremony. Here I am aware of no spiritual vitality. It seems that a sacred ceremony is simply providing an excuse for colourful processing, prolonged singing and dancing, a day off work and lots of extra food, alchohol and love-making. All of which is good for the morale of a hard-working community, and might well be a means of expressing sincere religious feeling; but in this context both the genuine gaiety and the ritual gestures of devotion seem quite unrelated to true worship.

The midday sun was very hot as we started to climb the rock-strewn church hill, yet within the enclosure the tireless young men resumed their leapings and whoopings, which contrasted curiously with the formal, stately movements of the nearby dancing priests. Half-an-hour later the Tabot was carried once around the church, before being accompanied into the sanctuary by the clergy; but the lay dancers remained without, bounding up as though on springs, then squatting for an instant – leaning on their
dulas
– then bounding again and re-bounding, while their shouts grew louder and wilder and sweat glistened on their tense faces and their eyes gleamed with some mass emotion that may possibly have been religious fervour.

I was invited to lunch by a relative of Asmare’s, whose spacious
tukul
was crowded with guests. When we arrived my host’s mother sent a granddaughter to her own
tukul
to fetch
araki
in honour of the
faranj
, and soon the girl returned with six clean liqueur glasses and a decanter of colourless spirit.
Araki
is much the same as Nepalese
rakshi
and Tibetan
arak
(this Arabic word has travelled far!), but it has a peculiar flavour of its own, rather like smoky anice. It also has a peculiar potency of its own and as I returned to my room the fields seemed much more uneven than they had been earlier.

By nine o’clock this evening the whole of Derasghie was
en fête
. In most compounds drums were being beaten strongly beside huge bonfires around which dancers were still bounding high, keeping up their monotonous,
self-hypnotic
chanting. Also much song and laughter issued from
tukuls
, where women, children and older men were sitting drinking around smaller fires; and between compounds bands of young men, accompanied by drummers,
were singing and swaggering, followed by groups of cheering, giggling young women – whose virtue is, I assume, uncertain. As I write the sounds of gaiety are becoming louder on every side: but this is a happy, friendly noise and it won’t keep me awake.

Usually highlanders rise at dawn, but this morning I could find no one to load Jock until 8.30. A small boy accompanied us to the edge of the town and pointed out the track to Dabat – which expired within a mile, amidst acres of volcanic rock. So all day we’ve been going north-west instead of due west.

After crossing several low, grey-brown hills we came to broad, bright
grasslands
where boys were herding sheep and cattle. Here another track appeared, and thinking that it might be the right one I optimistically appealed to the boys for guidance, but at the sound of my voice they fled to the shelter of a forested hillock and then peered fearfully at me through the bushes.

Ten minutes later we were on the brink of a valley whose floor looked so remote that one might have been viewing it from an aeroplane. The descent took two and a quarter hours, on a
very
precipitous path of loose clay, scattered with round pebbles on which my feet slithered uncontrollably. I fell eight times, acquired three open cuts and twice had to go tobogganing on my behind – a slightly painful procedure, when one is wearing thin shorts. Meanwhile Jock was methodically picking his way down – though even he stumbled occasionally – and at intervals he paused to graze while waiting for me to catch up. Luckily there were a few narrow ledges, on which the path ran level for thirty or forty yards, and I stopped on these to apply nicotine to my nerves while enjoying the spectacular view and admiring the most varied selection of shrubs and
wild-flowers
that I have yet seen in the highlands. Dense growth covers this mountain and though it is now autumn here a glorious array of blossoms remain – blue, yellow, white and pink.

Soon after reaching comparatively level ground a few compounds appeared and our path degenerated into a criss-cross of faint pathlets. The descent had loosened Jock’s load, so when we came near a compound I reluctantly decided to look for help. (As husbands and wives are left alone in their
tukuls
only during the daytime, unexpected callers can be a nuisance.) I shouted from a tactful distance and a young man appeared, looking rather grumpy, but he securely re-roped Jock and we were soon on our undecided way – my enquiries about the route having elicited the inevitable vague ‘
Mado
’.

This region was bewildering. Here I could see that what had seemed to be the valley floor was merely a gigantic, sloping ledge, which hid the true, narrow valley – now about 600 feet below us. The descent to river-level was gradual, but I doubted if we should descend at this point, for no track could possibly climb the tremendous north–south barrier beyond the river. Our faint path also ran
north-south
, and logically we should here have turned south, but an intimidating chaos of massive mountains and (presumably) deep gorges lay in that direction, so I decided to follow the northern line of least resistance.

After about a mile our pathlet became a clear, level track, which for two hours wound round a succession of golden-grassed spurs. We passed a few women – carrying enormous loads of firewood – who greeted me with shy friendliness.

When the track suddenly dropped to river-level I saw four vividly green fields lying by the water’s edge like displaced scraps of Ireland. This was an unfamiliar crop, and only then did I realise how much one misses fresh growth. While Jock was drinking I stood entranced – to gaze on that tender, bright greenness felt like the quenching of a visual thirst.

On the opposite bank our track faded away amidst plough-land, but I continued north, towards a break in the mountain-wall, hoping that it would reappear – which it did, and took us from 7,800 feet to this plateau at 10,600 feet.

I felt dazed by beauty during the ascent. Four uninhabited mountains led up one from another, with short, level walks over each summit but never a downward step; and as we climbed through dark green forests, or across
red-gold
, rock-strewn grasslands, or up rough black escarpments, every turn of the path revealed new, immeasurable heights and depths. By 6.30 we were at 10,500 feet and the deep valley on our right was full of dusk and shrieking baboons. From here I could see the path going over yet another escarpment, some 200 yards ahead, and that final climb brought us on to a wide plateau, where a
settlement
lay only fifteen minutes’ walk away.

Already the sun had set and two minute pink cloudlets were poised above the south-western horizon. I would have hugged them had they been a little nearer; cloudless skies are delightful in theory, but after living beneath their perfection for five weeks an Irishwoman feels that something is missing.

Apparently Timkat is still operating here. As we approached the settlement, through a chilly, grey-blue twilight, I heard sounds of revelry and saw scores of men and youths sitting on the hillside drinking
talla
as they watched ten men dancing to the music of an
azmari
(wandering minstrel). Our arrival astonished everyone, but I was warmly welcomed and presented with two gourds of
talla
simultaneously
– and after that climb I emptied them almost simultaneously. Then a laughing woman fed me with unfamiliar, delicious bread – wafer-thin, toasted crisp and faintly seasoned with salt and spices. As I sat on a boulder, devouring this delicacy, the
azmari
came to stand before me, playing his
mazenka
(a
one-stringed
fiddle) while improvising a song in my honour. (I could distinguish the words for ‘mule’, ‘high mountains’, ‘
shifta
’, ‘woman’, ‘cold’, ‘alone’ and I regretted my inability to understand it fully.) By now a golden half-moon had risen and was shining more brightly than a full moon at home; and it seemed to me that a day’s trek could have no happier ending than to sit in moonlight on a high mountain drinking with a friendly crowd and being serenaded by a wandering minstrel.

However, a day’s trek could quite easily have a more comfortable ending. This tiny, smoky
tukul
is totally unplastered and already my marrow feels frozen. The colossal local fleas seem preternaturally resistant to insecticide and my bed-to-be is a heap of large stones which serves as a fireside seat during the day and doesn’t even have the merit of adequate length. Nor can I lie on the floor, which will be sardined with children. (Here the adults sleep on wooden shelves attached hammockwise to the support poles and spread with straw instead of hides – possibly because straw is warmer, or cheaper.) The one
consolation
is a lean and amiable ginger cat, who has decided that I am a twin soul and is weaving around my legs as I write. Highlanders treat their few domestic cats far better than their many dogs – though this is not saying much. Perhaps the principle is that the more savagely dogs are treated the more savagely will they treat intruders.

And so to bed – with dyspepsia, because this evening’s vegetable-
wat
was so excruciatingly spicy.

Being at Debarak instead of Dabat means that we have joined the Asmara– Gondar motor-road twenty miles further north from Gondar than I had intended; but if one insists on travelling alone in this country one can’t
reasonably
complain about getting lost.

Even my insensitive body jibs at a heap of stones as a bed. I slept badly last night and was glad of an early, circulation-restoring start. Today’s track was both clear and easy; for fifteen miles it rose and fell over a succession of yellow-green or grey-brown ridges that were like the immobilised waves of some mighty ocean. After walking for a few hours through this sort of terrain one’s whole
being seems soothingly involved in the gentle rhythm of regular climbs and descents.

On the crest of one ridge I saw my first highland funeral – two men carrying a
shamma
-wrapped corpse on a simple bier, followed at a little distance by half-a-dozen women keening professionally. Tears were streaming down their cheeks, but when they saw Jock and me their weeping and wailing stopped and for ten minutes they stood excitedly speculating, while the corpse went on its way unmourned.

Over the last four or five miles the track seemed crowded, after my fortnight of unpeopled remoteness – and one could see that the ‘civilisation’ of mass-
production
was at hand. Some men were wearing khaki bush-shirts and blue cotton shorts, instead of home-spun tunics and jodhpurs, a few with-it youths had
Wellington
boots in their hands – to be put on before reaching the town – and the donkeys were loaded with kerosene tins, or were carrying grain in jute rather than in hide sacks. It seemed inevitable when little boys ran towards me on the outskirts of the town with hands extended, crying ‘Cents! Cents! Gimme cents!’

Debarak looks attractive at first sight. From the crest of a distant ridge the majority of its tin roofs are concealed by a thick wood of blue-gums, and this wealth of trees is pleasing on the naked plain. However, the reality is a hideous child of the engine-age – a shanty-town born to soothe drivers’ nerves before they begin the northward descent from the Semiens or after they have completed the southward ascent. It is not marked on my map – though it must have been conceived during the Italian occupation – and one wishes that in this case the map were accurate. Recently Debarak was made capital of the Semiens (one of the six districts of the province of Begemdir and Semien) and it has a governor, a police-station, a telephone, a petrol-pump, a Health Centre, several bars and as many brothels, a secondary school – and an American Peace Corps teacher. Some of the houses off the road are square, two-storey wooden buildings – like overgrown log-cabins – which look well beneath the tall blue-gums; but the Piccadilly of this capital is a large market-place, furnished with mechanical weighing-scales and surrounded by
talla-beits
and scruffy stalls, selling cloth, salt, kerosene, saddlery, rope, kettles, saucepans, glasses, coffee-cups, torches, batteries, gaudy nylon head-scarfs and a few very rusty tins of imported fruit which look as though the Italians had left them behind.