In Ethiopia with a Mule (9 page)

There was a Jock crisis when we arrived here at 4 p.m. While unloading I noticed that the base of his tail has been rubbed raw – so I hurried off to seek some sort
of veterinary aid. Predictably, none was available; and in a country where
pack-animals
are worked mercilessly, even when covered with suppurating
saddle-sores
, no one could be expected to take much notice of my little crisis. Therefore I’m now treating the patient with Yardley’s talcum powder – presented to me in Asmara for my feet – and the pale pink tin, embellished by graceful floral designs, is an object of much admiration in the hotel yard. Despite the incongruity of the treatment it should work within a few days, the sore being so small and new.

My companion’s physical state was not today’s only mule-trouble. The road from Adua to Aksum teems with traffic (relatively speaking – one vehicle passes about every twenty minutes) and those twelve miles shredded poor Jock’s nerves. While controlling his plunging and rearing I twice thought that my right arm had been dislocated, and tonight my shoulder muscles are throbbing. Yet Jock is not to blame; for some reason Ethiopian lorries are singularly noisy, especially when tackling steep slopes, and Ethiopian buses harbour fiendish radios and blow ear-splitting horns non-stop – so how could any rural mule retain his
self-control
?

This morning I rose at 5.30, to see Adua’s two most interesting churches. Ethiopian churches are locked after the daily Mass has been celebrated, and I prefer to avoid searching for a man who will search for a priest who will search for the key – and only find it if he has hopes of being well paid.

When we left the hotel at 8 a.m. hundreds of children were on their way to school – Adua being a centre for secondary education – and one gang of about twenty boys was soon following us, shouting and laughing and teasing Jock in an attempt to make him bolt. Jock very properly ignored all this, and at first I merely waved at the youngsters and laughed back; but then out of the corner of an eye I saw one boy whipping my straw hat off the top of the load and another putting his hand into the hanging bucket, where I keep my camera, torch and map. I swung round and gave the nearest lad a blow across the shoulders with my
dula
, whereupon they all fled.

After some five miles we climbed a steep – but not high – pass and at the top I sat on a flat boulder under a tree to eat brunch while enjoying Adua’s grotesque mountains and thinking about Adua’s significant battle – the first defeat of a European army by African warriors. Then we crossed a wide plain, where barley was ripe – though hardly more than a foot high, and dirty with five-foot thistles. (Most of the thistles I’ve seen so far are much smaller and have blue-green stems and large primrose-yellow flowers.) I had many fellow-walkers today, all of them curious and most of them friendly. About half-way I was joined by two men, one
of whom insisted on leading Jock – until a truck approached and Jock decided otherwise. After that I led Jock.

Aksum is one of Ethiopia’s main tourist attractions and outside the town I was commandeered by two small boys, who proved to be professional parasites. Both mistook me for a man and offered to get me ‘a good bad woman for
tonight
’, as they so graphically expressed it. They were taken aback when I put them right, but unlike their Indian counterparts did not then offer to provide me with ‘a good bad man’.

This hotel is shoddier than last night’s Ritz, but the staff are much more agreeable. Here I must get my kit sorted out; tomorrow I’ll look for cardboard boxes in which everything can be neatly packed. To load a mule securely the ropes have to be tightened to an extent that has left me with a mangled mess of ink on clothes, toothpaste on books, insecticide in dried fruit, pills mixed with broken glass, torch batteries crushed beyond redemption and films torn to shreds. Not to mention the fact that everything is permeated through and through with white dust, sacking being the least dust-resistant of materials.

Yardley’s talcum is working well, but I’ve decided to stay here an extra day to give the sore time to heal completely.

I spent an exhausting morning at Police Headquarters, having been ‘picked up’ after breakfast by a suspicious constable. It was bedlam in the CO’s little office, where eight officers were simultaneously shouting – in Tigrinya – about the impossibility of
anyone
walking through the Semien Mountains, least of all a solitary woman. After two hours I lost my temper at the stupidity of assuming a journey to be ‘impossible’ merely because one wouldn’t care to do it oneself. I hated bothering Leilt Aida again, but at last was forced to call Makalle and ask her to soothe the maddened crowd – which she did, with difficulty.

Aksum’s tourist trade is in its infancy, yet already the place reeks of
commercialism
. Everywhere one is furtively followed by little boys and shabby youths, each claiming out of the corner of his mouth to be ‘best guide, cheapest guide for Aksum’. Ras Mangasha recently ordered the suppression of this sort of thing – which makes it easier to shake off these touts, who greatly fear the police.

This evening I had a talk with Birhana Meskel, the official tourist guide – an elderly, knowledgeable man who deplored Aksum’s changing atmosphere. He assured me that ten years ago every woman here wore ankle-length skirts, but now many harlots have moved in from Adua and Asmara, wearing calf-length
skirts, and generally the ancient city is fast losing its atmosphere of devotion and learning. I listened sympathetically to all this, though I couldn’t help thinking that Aksum’s devotion and learning must have become mummified quite some time ago: otherwise they would hardly have crumbled to dust at the first touch of tourism.

Now I must talcum Jock for the night. Since early this morning he has been enjoying the hospitality of a kind Peace Corps couple, who teach at the secondary school and live in a house surrounded by a large grassy garden.

Aksum is the first town on my route without a mosque; the resident Muslims wanted to build one, but the Old Testament-minded local priests said ‘We’re not allowed to have a church in Mecca, so you’re not having a mosque here’.

The population of Aksum is about 20,000 (500 of whom are clergy), though the town is so compact that this figure seems hard to credit. All these highland towns are extraordinarily ugly, but Aksum does have a certain sad, hidden splendour, discernible when one is alone among the ruins of an empire that once was ranked with Babylon, Rome and Egypt. Yet the melancholy is great wherever a proud past is not allowed to rest in peace, but is disturbed and degraded by trippers and touts.

No women are permitted to enter even the grounds of the monastic Church of St Mary of Zion – Ethiopia’s most hallowed church – but this morning I went to the Church of St Taklahaymanot, where many of the paintings have recently been renovated. Ethiopian church art is interesting, yet to me these naive, stylised paintings are not true art, if by art one means the disciplined product of a creative imagination. The delicacy of Moghul miniatures or the richness of Hindu carvings touch me, whereas these paintings, though inspired by our common Christianity, merely interest me. It has been suggested that here, as in Tibet, the development of pictorial art was inhibited by the rigid conservatism of clerical practitioners – but the best of the Ethiopian murals that I have seen so far cannot compare with a mediocre Tibetan
thanka
.

By now the talcum has been completely victorious and Jock is full of grass and the joys of life, so tomorrow we head for the Semiens. Ever since I arrived in Aksum they have been beckoning – a vast barrier of blue chunks stretching across the southern horizon.

T
ODAY IS CHRISTMAS EVE and when we left Aksum at 8 a.m. the holiday traffic was at its peak. For miles around I could see groups walking or riding across the wide plain towards their home-villages, and within half-an-hour we had been absorbed by a cheerful party which was also going south. Its members were a local District Governor on a mule, attended by two gunmen, a young priest – also riding – attended by one gunman, the Governor’s twelve-year-old son – walking sturdily – and a ragged Muslim trader driving eight donkeys loaded with salt-blocks. And soon we were joined by Abebe, a breathless
eighteen-year-old
student who told me that he had been running for miles to catch up with a party which included ‘gun-people’. There is a certain Chaucerian quality about this sort of travel, and in their way such casually companionable
wanderings
can be as enjoyable as solitary trekking.

A few miles south of Aksum we climbed a long, rocky ridge, dotted with round, green bushes, and on the crest I was glad that I had walked ahead and could enjoy this moment alone. Below me – like a vast bowl brimming with beauty – lay a broad, sunny valley, lined with golden grasses, and from its floor rose a low hill, crowned by a tree-surrounded church, and faintly, across the silence, came the solemn chanting of many priests – a sound so sweet in its
remoteness
that it seemed to belong to the soul of the mountains rather than to the rituals of man.

As we descended to this valley Abebe told me that our party – except for the Muslim – would here make a slight detour to pray at the church, which is dedicated to Emmanuel and celebrates its patron’s feast day on Christmas Eve. Now I could see many white-clad figures passing between the trees on the
hill-top, and a few graceful groups of elders had gathered on the bright meadows beneath to discuss immemorial village problems.

Within the overgrown church enclosure men were everywhere, but the women – some fifty or sixty of them – stood together on one side of the main door, their off-white
shammas
covering their heads. Here I heard for the first time that eerie, melodious ululation which highland women produce on such ceremonial occasions; the trembling wave of sound, which is never sustained for more than a few moments, has an unforgettable purity and poignancy.

This circular church was typical of its kind – an old building, crudely constructed of stone, mud and wood, and recently reroofed with tin. No one suggested that the
faranj
female should enter it, so I took the hint. Soon after our arrival seven priests emerged from the main door and led some twenty
debtaras
(deacons) around the church three times in a noisy procession. The chief priest held aloft a silver Coptic cross and the others waved strange little silver rattles (
sistra
) that tinkled pleasantly. Two
debtaras
walked backwards before the priests, each vigorously beating a three-foot oblong drum, and the other youths kept up a loud, cheerful chanting and clapping of hands. Despite the importance of the occasion no fine robes were worn. The chief priest was draped in a creased and torn black gown, but the rest were in ordinary clothes, apart from the untidy white turbans always worn by all ordained clergy.

As we left the enclosure the Governor invited me, through Abebe, to have lunch at his mother’s home. (He had heard of me in Askum and knew that I was a protégée of Leilt Aida.) Already I had become fond of Ato Gabre Mariam – a burly little man with a pompous manner but kind eyes – so I gratefully accepted this invitation and a steep two-mile climb brought us to a tiny settlement
surrounded
by wild fig-trees.

The Governor had not been expected and his old mother almost wept for joy when he appeared; immediately we were all ushered into an empty hut, made of new green branches intertwined with old stakes, and while the men were gathering to embrace and kiss their distinguished relative excited children spread straw on the earth floor and laid hides on top of it for our greater comfort. Then the women brought in a huge jar of
talla
and a flat basket of roasted whole barley, and half-an-hour later black coffee was served in tiny handleless cups (made in China!). Lunch was not ready until 2.30, by which time we were well away on our second jar of
talla
and full of festive cheer. This ‘Christmas
talla
’ was a refined, clear brew that looked rather like English ‘mild’.

For lunch countless rounds of
injara
were laid on the wicker stands – about the height and circumference of a coffee-table – which are used as communal plates. Then fast-day bean-
wat
was ladled on to the centre of the
injara
, and when a little boy had poured water over our hands we set to, pulling off strips of
injara
– beginning around the edge – and enfolding in them mouthfuls of
wat
. This
wat
was so fiercely spiced that tears were slowly running down my cheeks by the end of the meal. Luckily we also had two delicious purées; one was white and unspiced, made from ground peas, the other was brown and slightly spiced, made from ground beans – and both had been beaten to the lightness of a soufflé.

The formalities of highland social life bring much elegance into these primitive homes. When the Governor’s young relatives came to greet him, they touched both his feet with their lips and forehead before being raised by him and receiving kisses on their right cheeks; and it is evident that where everyone has his established position in the hierarchy such rites have an almost religious significance. Not that they are confined to special people or special occasions – they also grace the simplest actions between equals. When one man hands another a gourd of
talla
he never holds it out
unthinkingly
, but presents it with both hands, bowing slightly. And the recipient accepts it with both hands, half rising if he is seated, and inclining his head. In this way each trivial human interchange pleasingly becomes a miniature ceremony; and today I realised that I myself have already adopted some of the less obvious highland conventions – not deliberately, to be polite, but as an unconscious response to the finding of something that was lost. My instincts could hardly be less conventional, yet to me these antique highland customs seem not mere empty gestures but symbols of an essential stability at the heart of society. Seen against the background of our helter-skelter civilisation they would appear comical or tiresome; seen here they are sad reminders of all that we have discarded on our way to efficiency. It is not surprising that when highland peasants have an opportunity to observe Western social behaviour they imagine us to be a race of unfeeling barbarians.

We were back on the trail uncomfortably soon after lunch, lest darkness should fall before we reached this village – where Ato Gabre Mariam has invited me to spend the night in his compound. Beyond the settlement we crossed a region of black lava rock and stony fields; then a long, precipitous descent brought us to the Plain of Fools – so called because travellers often fancy
themselves
near the end of it when many miles remain to be covered. But personally I was not at all anxious to reach the end of such a blissful walk – through strong,
clear sunshine, with a cool wind sweeping up from the south and an apparent infinity of rugged glory on every side.

From this plateau our path again descended – steep as a ladder – into a deep gorge; and then it immediately ascended, equally steeply, to the next plateau. Here Abebe indicated a tree-covered hill on the near horizon and explained that our destination lay just beyond it; this landmark looked less than a mile away, but the intervening terrain was so chaotic – there were two more deep chasms – that it took us another hour to reach it.

Aedat tops the highest escarpment I have yet seen and we approached it by rounding the wooded hill above an apparently bottomless canyon. Now a brief sunset splendour – crimson, orange, bronze and lemon – was seeping through all the sky. And as this glow touched the ochre, purple, yellow and white of the cliffs beyond the void, our whole world seemed caught up in a triumphant
conflagration
of beauty. Then we saw the little village – built of pink stone – and it too was so wondrously glowing that for an instant one doubted its reality.

From this high, narrow ridge the cobalt roughness of the Semiens stood out darkly against a reddening horizon; and to the west more distant, smoother mountains were lilac against a primrose sky; and to the east, beyond the tawny shadows now filling the ravine, lay a ravaged width of chasms and cliffs, bounded by Makalle’s plateau – a long, grey pencil-line below the first star. As I followed the Governor’s reception party through the village I felt drunk on colour and space.

This compound is at the southern extremity of the plateau, but Ato Gabre Mariam had dismounted before we turned the last corner of the hill; it would be considered a shameful thing for him to have ridden while his guest walked. Now I am happily settled in his round ‘guest-room’
tukul
, beneath a thatched roof supported by a disproportionately thick and monstrously misshapen tree-trunk. I like the ‘clothes-hangers’ here – several cow-horns embedded in the mud walls.

As I write – sitting on the mud bed, relaxed after a thorough leg-massage – my host and eight other men are squatting on hides around the fire, drinking and talking. One of the younger men – Dawit, the Governor’s nephew – was brought up in Addis Ababa, where his father is a clerk and, having been trained as a ‘Medical Officer’, was sent here last week to run the Health Centre for three years. Despite an Addis education his English is not as good as Abebe’s, and in the circumstances his lack of intelligence seems alarming. Admittedly rural medical officers receive only a rudimentary training, but Dawit’s knowledge of his subject is virtually non-existent. However, the local Health Centre is unlikely to be provided with a very demanding range of drugs, and his presence may do
some good if he can persuade serious cases to go to Aksum hospital – though not many serious cases would survive that journey.

My visit is a Christmas gift from the gods for Dawit, who has reached the extreme of boredom after a week’s exile from Addis –
sans
cinema,
sans
bars,
sans
nightclubs,
sans
everything. He views Aedat as an ultra-primitive hell-hole, from which his father was lucky enough to escape and to which he has been unlucky enough to return – at the command of a government whose orders he dare not disobey. He considers the local food, drink and accommodation repellent and he despises all the villagers, including his own relatives. I winced when he jeeringly referred to the rest of the company as ‘savages’ who were content to wear dirty clothes, sit on dirty floors and blow their noses into the fire. His whole attitude reveals a too-familiar pattern – the corruption by Western superficialities of a non-Western mind, which then quickly rejects its own
traditions
while remaining incapable of extracting any virtue from ours. I feel deeply sorry for Dawit and his kind, who have been seduced by a shadow and then left to rot in a cultural no-man’s-land.

Today my reorganised kit caused a little bother. Neatly packed cardboard boxes may suit me, but it suited Jock much better to have everything jumbled up in the sacks, which then settled to fit the curve of his back. Twice since lunchtime the load slipped and this worries me slightly. Jock’s manners on such occasions are perfect – he stops at once to await re-loading – but if I were alone when the sacks came adrift all the mulish politeness in the world wouldn’t enable me to put them together again.

This evening I have several nasty cuts and scratches on my arms and legs. The local vegetation brandishes a most deleterious variety of thorns, spikes, barbs and razor-edged leaves.

I had hoped to be on the brink of the Takazze Gorge by this evening, but
integration
went so well yesterday that no one would hear of my leaving Aedat on Christmas Day. I’ve therefore had a riotous time boozing and feasting in the homes of Ato Gabre Mariam, Abebe, Dawit and Giorgis – the local teacher – not to mention a breakfast banquet with an endearing old priest at the famous local church of Debra Ghennet.

The Governor and I set off to Mass at 6.30 a.m., preceded by my host’s
eight-year-old
son, proudly wearing a bandolier and carrying a rifle – from which I deduce that the ‘armed guard’ fetish is more a status symbol than a safety device.
The path climbed through a dense wood of unfamiliar trees and on our way we overtook several men and women, all of whom exchanged elaborate greetings with the Governor – and questioned him about me, if their position allowed them that freedom.

This church has twice been partially destroyed – by Mohammed Gragn some 300 years ago and by the Italians some thirty years ago. Only one mural survives and the building looks more like a disused barn than a church. When we arrived Mass had begun and I stood just outside the south (women’s) door, from where I could see a group of elderly widows receiving Communion. (Because the majority of highlanders choose civil marriages they cannot receive the sacrament during the lifetime of their spouses.) This ceremony began when two white-robed priests, carrying richly-coloured silk umbrellas, emerged from the concealed sanctuary to which only clergy are admitted and stood in front of the women. Then a third priest appeared, bearing a silver cross, and as the choir began to chant the umbrella priests shook their
sistra
and the chief priest stepped out of the sanctuary, carrying a wooden chalice in which cross-shaped pieces of bread were dipped before being given to the communicants.

Throughout the highlands only the priests make wine and they refuse to divulge their method to any layman. In 1770 James Bruce observed crushed grapes being given to communicants on a spoon, complete with seeds, but nowadays it is likely that raisins are often used to make the sacrificial wine. It seems odd that this form of alcohol has never become popular in the highlands; vines would thrive in many regions and have long been known here – I noticed representations of grapes and their leaves on an altarstone at the base of one of Aksum’s monoliths. Possibly a lack of adequate containers is the snag, since highlanders have no casks, bottles, sealed skins or glazed pots – and wine would not long remain wine in their crude earthen jars.