In Ethiopia with a Mule (23 page)

The Port Manager noticed our arrival and at once offered hospitality; then an agreeable young teacher appeared and the three of us walked beyond the town to this tiny, corrugated-iron shed beside a warehouse at the top of a stone jetty. Here my host put down a camp-bed for me, and produced a ‘Visitors Book’ to be signed. There was only one other name in the thin exercise-book – Chris Barry, Churchtown, Dublin, Ireland. My compatriot had spent the night of 7 February, 1966, in this shed, on his way from Gorgora to Bahar Dar by steamer. It cannot be denied that we Irish get around.

After eleven hours’ deep sleep I woke to find that my host and the teacher had decided that we must have an escort to get us safely across the Little Nile. Few people walk from Kunzela to Zeghie, because the short boat-trip is so much quicker, but there is a track of sorts, used by the locals, and a tribe of pagan boatmen runs a ferry service. The teacher said that these boatmen are
notoriously
difficult to deal with and would be as likely to steal my load as to ferry it; so I greeted my escort enthusiastically, having had my fill of difficult lakeside dwellers.

We set off at 8.15, Jock being led by Fikre Selassie, a wiry little man of about forty who wore a permanently puzzled expression and was very polite but
unbelievably
dim-witted. As he wanted to get back to Kunzela before dark we walked non-stop for five and a half hours.

The track ran inland, at first across an uninhabited flatness where
eight-foot
thistles had flowers like foxgloves, and then through hilly, heavily-wooded country, inhabited by many small monkeys. Today the noon heat affected me more because of our forced march, and six of my swamp scratches have become throbbing streaks of pus – three on each leg – so I was not sorry when we passed a large settlement and came to the end of our marathon.

Here Lake Tana is very close, though invisible, and the Little Nile is some eighty yards wide, flowing deep and slow between low banks overhung by freshly-green shrubs. Wide, level pastures stretch away from both banks to the blue horizons and directly above the ferry-point the stream divides around a tree-covered islet. At times there is a disconcerting un-African-ness about these
highlands. When I looked at this dark current, gently moving below its fringe of dense greenery, I could fancy for a moment that I was standing by the
Blackwater
River near my home. Yet some eccentrics still believe this stream to be the true source of the Blue Nile.

However, there was nothing homely about the human element here. At the ferry-point gravelly shores replace the banks and, as we approached, I could hear violent shouting. Then we saw one of three tall, bony, black-skinned boatmen viciously striking a passenger across the face, while abusing him for not paying the fee demanded. (I afterwards found that ten cents had already been paid for the ferrying of a small load of salt-blocks, but the boatman wanted another ten cents because the donkey had been towed by the same raft.) The passenger was a frail young man, hardly up to his opponent’s shoulder, and now his wife courageously intervened by throwing a stone – which unfortunately struck her husband instead of the boatman. Then a second boatman joined in – the third was on the far bank – and at that point the young man gave up and produced the extra ten cents. These ferrymen certainly take full advantage of the highlanders’ inability to cope with water-transport. By local standards eightpence is a most unscrupulous charge for a single crossing.

When one sees these rafts close to it no longer seems surprising that their management is an esoteric tribal skill. They are simple bundles of reeds, shaped like giant rugger-balls and no more than eight feet long and two feet above water amidships. One man punts them with a thin pole, some twenty feet long, and passengers ride astride with legs dangling in the water. If I were a non-swimmer I wouldn’t cross a deep river on one of those contraptions for all the salt in the Danakil.

As I unsaddled Jock three interested men and two loaded donkeys formed a queue behind us. Someone asked where Jock came from and when I replied ‘Makalle’ there was an outburst of discussion and everyone assured me that a Tigre mule would not swim a river. Highlanders delight in arguing about a situation for as long as possible before taking any action and if they can build up an atmosphere of doom and drama so much the better; but at this stage I only wanted to immerse my sweaty, bug-bitten body in the river, so I postponed the Jock problem, pulled off my shirt and plunged in. (It is convenient to be among people who are not shocked by women stripped to the waist.)

The ferrying of our load and saddlery required two trips, during which I swam watchfully back and forth beside the ridiculous raft, half-expecting my precious possessions to slide off at any moment. The water was cool, opaque,
probably unhealthy and wonderfully restoring. I tried to dive to the bottom, but failed, so it must be about twelve feet deep.

Then the Jock problem had to be faced – and it is indeed true that Tigre mules don’t like deep rivers. Clearly Jock had never met one before, and he so loathed the Little Nile that for the first time since our partnership began he turned mulish. When all my efforts to lead him in had failed I looked away, for I couldn’t endure to see him being brutally thrashed by Fikre Selassie, the boatmen and the donkey-men. This was a poor return for his patient, life-saving loyalty.

Local donkeys are ferried by one man half-lifting them into the water towards another man, who is sitting waiting on a raft and who immediately grabs their ears and tows them across. So now the donkeymen suggested ferrying their animals first, to reassure and lure Jock. But this stratagem also failed. Then at last the poor devil was so tormented that he plunged despairingly in – and, following the men’s advice, I rushed after him, seized the halter and swam beside him. When he broke away my efforts to head him off from the shore merely revealed the interesting fact that a mule swims faster than I do. Twice this happened, but the third time I quickly wound the halter round my shoulder and kept so close to him that I was in no danger of being kicked. Now another return to shore meant towing me, so he decided that crossing the river was the lesser of two evils and followed meekly – at which point even the sullen boatmen raised a cheer. Half-way across I noticed that the panic had gone from his eyes and when we scrambled on to the opposite shore he was looking faintly surprised. Probably he had just realised that swimming a cool river on a hot day can be quite pleasant.

By 3.30 we were following a clear path across close-cropped pastureland, where a few herds were visible in the distance. Some half-a-mile away, on our left, lay the lake, hidden by a fringe of tall, feathery reeds, and soon after five o’clock the path vanished at the edge of a swamp. This was a much swampier swamp than our last one, but it was also more predictable; the reeds were only two or three feet high and beyond I could see trees along the horizon and black dots that meant grazing cattle. Yet the next fifty minutes were unpleasant enough, for I was wading through waist-high water, slushy with rotted vegetation. As always in hours of peril I held trustfully on to Jock’s halter, but the slippery ground remained solid underfoot. The stink of decay was nauseating, and at every step we disturbed clouds of mosquitoes and other sharp-stinging flies. Later, when we arrived here, I looked at my legs and saw that they were covered with immense, swollen leeches. After burning them off I bled so profusely that my hostess came over all queer and had to sit down in the middle of preparing supper.

Beyond the swamp a continuation of our path soon brought us to
roughly-broken
scrubland, and as darkness fell we entered a thick forest, where the filtered starlight didn’t help much. Yet by night a thin forest would be even more difficult; here one knew that the path went where the growth was least dense.

By 7.30 we were clear of the trees and about a mile away I could see a black, serrated mass against the stars – the blue-gums of Zeghie. Then I lost the path, amidst a chaos of boulders. Before long our way was blocked by an inlet from the lake, and having retreated from that we wandered into a stony gully which seemed to be a cul-de-sac, and on climbing out of this we became painfully enmeshed in a thorny thicket. I was about to give up and unload when suddenly the path reappeared, and twenty minutes later we were beneath the shadows of the blue-gums.

I stopped at the first
talla-beit
– identifiable because lamp-light was reflected in rows of glasses upturned on a wooden bench inside the door. As I drank half-a-dozen men stared at me in unfriendly silence, and I felt relieved when a breathless teacher came to offer me hospitality. (There is a hint of magic about the speed with which teachers materialise when a
faranj
appears in a small town. We had entered Zeghie in total darkness and seen no one on our way to the
talla-beit
.)

Abraha is a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome young man from Debra Marcos – the capital of Gojjam province, which we entered yesterday. Like most rural teachers he longs for further education and has just been asking me wistfully if the Irish Government offers scholarships to Ethiopians, and if so could I please arrange for him to have one – a pathetically common request. He detests life in Zeghie, where the school has about four hundred pupils (some from far-away villages) and five teachers. Many of the locals are so opposed to modern education that they boycott the teachers cruelly – which does not surprise me, for since leaving Gondar everyone with whom I have discussed my route has frowned and muttered ‘
Metfo!
’ (‘Bad!’) at the mention of Zeghie. It would be interesting to discover why these people are so renowned for
unpleasantness
.

When he came here last year Abraha took a wife on a temporary basis. She is the twenty-two-year-old daughter of a rich local coffee-farmer and was divorced by her first husband after five years of childless marriage. Abraha said that if she bears him a child he may keep her, otherwise he will leave her behind when he gets a transfer. Meanwhile, he treats her considerately, though I noticed a marked difference in her demeanour compared with that of the average wife
and mother. She shows a rather servile manner towards Abraha, and though her expression is cheerful enough there is a resigned sadness behind her eyes.

This is going to be another hellishly buggy night; within minutes of my sitting down the ghoulish brutes were attacking me and, having discovered that my flea-bag had been stolen, Abraha insists that I must sleep on his hair-mattress. I would much prefer to lie outside under the blue-gums, coldly bugless, but to do so would dreadfully offend my host.

This morning I saw that Zeghie stands on a high cliff overlooking a bay sheltered to north and south by wooded promontories. Many of its square, sophisticated houses seem quite new; they have high tin roofs, smooth, solid mud walls, little unglazed windows, and doors made of chopped-up packing cases. These dwellings are so well spaced out, amidst tall, dignified blue-gums, that the town parodies a European ‘select residential area’.

Last night was as expected: I got no more than two hours’ sleep, in uneasy ten-minute snatches. Apart from the battalions of bugs, rats were rattling continuously amongst the cooking utensils and quarrelling with high-pitched squeals.

We left Zeghie at 8 a.m. and arrived here six hours later, having struggled through three rivers, each more difficult to cope with than the last. None was wide, or above four feet deep – but all were fast-flowing, and it was never clear where one should or could cross, and Jock didn’t want to cross any of them anywhere. If it wasn’t treacherous oozy mud underfoot it was treacherous slimy stones and between Jock’s nerves and the strength of the current I was submerged as often as not. This was a region of dense, green forest – the nearest I’ve ever been to a true jungle – and our path frequently disappeared. The three rivers were overhung by dark tangles of trees and creepers so that one could never go straight across – always it was necessary to wade up and down searching for the point of exit on the opposite bank. Twice, between rivers, Jock got wedged and had to be partially unloaded, while scores of little monkeys paused in their swingings to peer down at us and make impertinent remarks. Then at last we escaped on to a path thronged with people going to market and an hour later were back on the motor-road, which comes to Bahar Dar along the east shore of the lake.

At once I made for the newly-opened luxury Ras Hotel (the measure of my demoralisation!) and its dapper Ethiopian manager could hardly conceal his
agitation when a room was booked by a repulsive object covered in mud and blood and wearing a shirt and shorts so torn that they had become mere tokens of the will to be decent. However, he relaxed somewhat when I changed a damp but valid traveller’s cheque from the roll in my money-belt. Then he noticed Jock standing patiently by the veranda – and all was well. Jumping from his chair he exclaimed ‘The Irish lady with the mule!’ and held out his hand. Even before he said it I knew that Leilt Aida had been on the telephone.

When a platoon of wide-eyed servants had conducted me to my room I sent one of them to buy barley for Jock and another to buy insecticide for me. This enormous hotel consists of rows and rows of rooms on the edge of the lake, laid out in chalet style. Tonight two rooms are occupied. My spacious, elegant suite has a private (pale pink) bathroom, limitless boiling water, a bed with
primrose-yellow
sheets and an ankle-deep, wall-to-wall olive-green carpet. The whole thing seems Hiltonian and I’m loving every inch and minute of it: I haven’t asked what the tariff is – and just now I couldn’t care less.

After a bath and before a late lunch I telephoned Colonel Aziz, who suggested that tomorrow I should leave Jock here and return to Gondar by bus to guide a Punitive Expedition to the Scene of the Crime. This seemed to me an excellent idea, and I said so with un-Christian enthusiasm.