 |
 |
 |
||
|
||||
|
September 30, 2005
DISPATCHES FROM ABROAD Life can be dangerous for a tourist in Africa
By MARK WAITE
JINKA, Ethiopia - The sticker for a travel company read, "Discover the land before time." I later found out that saying was strangely prophetic, both culturally and when it came to my transportation schedule on a tour of southern Ethiopia. The tribes of southern Ethiopia dress in very traditional clothes, not a very common sight in modern day Africa. The route to see them can also be atrocious, making any schedule pure fiction. I felt I was in good hands with Jean Auerhan, a tourist from Toulouse, France, who rented a Toyota Land Cruiser with driver and guide for $90 per day to tour southern Ethiopia for 28 days. Auerhan said he worked in West Africa as a teacher for 17 years. We met at the Itegue Taitu Hotel in Addis Ababa, standing on the back porch watching the rain. I shared half the transportation cost and only planned on traveling with him for perhaps 11 days; I ended up spending twice that much time in the Land Cruiser. We left Addis Ababa with 100 liters (24 gallons) of spare fuel in four jerry cans, two spare tires and a load of food, including 10 liters of red wine Jean brought from France. By afternoon, the paved road was littered with countless potholes, making the going very slow. Our first night the hotels in Jimma were full of relatives attending their children's graduation ceremonies at the local university. The last white face I was to see for a while was a man walking around Jimma with an Ethiopian friend. The road was all dirt after that. Later on the second afternoon, during a stop for beer at a rundown country restaurant and hotel in Bonga, a little boy began crying hysterically at the sight of a strange white man. Different children yelled out for money, "One birr! One birr!" the name for Ethiopian money, or yelled out "Feranji!" the Ethiopian word for foreigner or just yelled out "You! You!" People played ping-pong or fusbol outside on the dirt streets. I wondered whether my dreams of visiting remote southwestern Ethiopia were washed out, literally, during a torrential downpour most of the night in Mezan Tefari, the place we stayed the second night. The next morning, my driver, Tesfamariam, a former driver in the military, had to fix a rear brake. We pulled up to a garage next to the grass airstrip as a crowd of people gathered to watch. An insect gave me the biggest bite on my back leg I ever experienced, I yelled out "Ouch!" loudly as a group of children laughed. We were back on the road but a day behind schedule. We were supposed to be touring Mago National Park the third day. We drove through the Bebeka Coffee Plantation, a huge spread with guards and a checkpoint entering and leaving. The road became impassable as we traveled. Trucks were stuck in the mud, the only form of public transportation at this point. Eventually we encountered a roadblock. Our guide, Fitwi, said we would have to wait for a military convoy to escort us after this point, as bandits had been robbing and killing passengers. We drove south with a group of heavily armed soldiers riding on trucks in front of and behind us. "When was the last attack?" I asked Fitwi. "Three days ago," he replied. "What happened during that attack?" I asked. "Two people were killed," Fitwi nonchalantly replied. This bit of news, of course, made me even more scared. But I was a little relieved to hear Fitwi say the bandits were afraid of the soldiers. At one point some soldiers got off the truck to walk alongside the road. I thought how easy it would be to be ambushed, driving slowly along the rough road - easy game for people hiding in the tall grass. Prostitutes servicing the troops back at the camp called out to us as we left. "They are asking why you didn't come over and talk with them," Fitwi said. I asked Jean what we would do if we missed the convoy and had to spend the night there. He replied in his Gallic humor, "Just find the most beautiful girl and stay in her hut." The convoy ended in Dima, a town full of Sudanese refugees. Many of them were tall, some had facial scarring, a tradition for the Dinka tribe. Many refugees spoke English amazingly well. One friendly Sudanese staying at the hotel said he learned English from Presbyterian missionaries from Minneapolis. The hotel wasn't as welcoming as were the Sudanese. There were rats crawling around at night. The owners gave me a tub to take a bucket shower bath in a tin shed with a flashlight balanced on the wall for light. At least it was better than the two other hotels in Dima, one was clearly just a brothel. The other had been partly burned by a fire that seemed to have destroyed half the town. In Dima I saw my first few members of the Surma tribe, the women cut their bottom lip open to stretch it out and hold a clay plate. There was about 45 miles of nothing but rolling, savannah grassland the next day, which provided a gap between civilization and the land of the Surma tribe. Suddenly, a boy herding livestock, completely naked, appeared in the grass. A few more then appeared, we talked a couple into posing for photographs. Before traveling to the tribal south of Ethiopia, we were told to cash about 100 birr into one-birr notes to pay for photos. There were 8.5 Ethiopian birr to a dollar. The standard price was two birr per photo, about 25 cents. We were also advised to bring razor blades to give away, so the tribes people could shave their heads in the traditional hairstyle - and bars of soap. We drove into Tulkit and camped out in the police compound. Police were always on guard as the local Surma tribesmen had plenty of Kalashnikov rifles, which they use when raiding neighboring tribes' cattle or protecting their own. I got my first glimpse of women wearing the clay plate in their lower lip. A display at a museum in Jimma said the women wore the plate as a sign of beauty and sexual maturity. It was the most bizarre body ornament I've seen in the world. We would need to hire an armed scout for 35 birr. We also hired an English-speaking guide for 50 birr per day. We walked into nearby huts to photograph women with the clay plate and paid the fee. On the way back to Tulkit, Tess, our driver, backed up into an embankment at a road construction site to get a head start on an upcoming hill and we tipped over on our side. We crawled out through a window; nobody was seriously injured. Luckily road construction equipment was nearby. The truck was righted by using a rope tied to an excavator. We decided not to continue south to Omo National Park in the southernmost corner of Ethiopia. The road was considered too rough. The night before we left Tulkit it rained heavily again. The road that was easily drivable before now looked like the mud bog contest at the county fairgrounds. Despite using the strongest gear of the four-wheel-drive we still had to push through the mud a handful of times. We were fortunate to have picked up the driver of a truck stuck in the mud with a bunch of passengers. At one spot he put the truck up on a jack and inserted rocks under a tire that helped us escape a flooded creek. We continued back to Mizan Tefari and Jimma and then crossed over to Soto, through beautiful, mountainous country. The Omo River sliced through the mountains that were as green as Ireland from the rain. Peasants, unspoiled by tourist dollars, willingly posed for photos next to scenic overlooks without asking for money. I decided to stay with Jean a little longer to see more tribes east of the Omo River, where a variety of colorful tribes people live in a small area. We descended from the mountains down to muddy Lake Abaya, one of the string of Rift Valley lakes south of Addis Ababa and back on the main north-south road. As we booked a room at Arba Minch, the main town on the lake, the clutch went out on the truck. We chipped in with Mannfred, an Austrian who was in Ethiopia monitoring elections for the European Commission, for the 300 birr ($35) boat ride on neighboring Lake Chamo to watch the hippos and crocodiles. The crocs quickly swam underwater as the boat approached, but I saw a spectacular scene as a big hippo leaped half out of the water, apparently in an attempt to scare us away from his territory. A flock of white pelicans sat on a sandbar near the dangerous animals. Hippos kill more humans in Africa than any other animal - except for mosquitoes - Mannfred pointed out. I didn't bother telling him that, technically, mosquitoes aren't animals. At any rate we were in little danger because this boat was too big for hippos to capsize, he said. A sunset drink at the Bele Mokele Hotel, on a hilltop overlooking lakes Abaya and Chamo, along with a baked fish served on a stand at the Soma Restaurant was a perfect way to end the day. Unlike the non-touristy west side, the east side of the Omo River is often visited by small groups of tourists, with better unpaved roads. The tours are usually timed to visit towns on market day. The first market day was in nearby Dorze, high in the mountains above Lake Abaya. Four young boys were busy doing "the Dorze dance" blocking the middle of the muddy road up to the town in an attempt to earn a birr. I wondered how the daily bus could make the trip on the horrible road. We toured one of the 45-foot tall, straw huts unique to the region, with a fire burning inside the home and cattle housed in a separate room from the inhabitants. The market itself was muddy from the precipitation but packed with villagers and produce. Jean and I stopped at a "tej bet," a house to drink traditional honey wine and sit on benches with the locals. A good thing about the tourists was that they provided me with the ability to find passengers to share the cost. A couple from Darwin, Australia, joined us for the next four days. We each paid 90 birr, $10.50, to enter Nechisar National Park. The truck was repaired and ready to go. Ethiopia isn't renowned for its wildlife like Kenya is, but it was a treat to be the only ones in the park and walk up to herds of zebra and impala, something that's forbidden at game parks in Kenya and Tanzania. The views of lakes Abayo and Chamo below were spectacular. The drive the next day was through Konso, past acacia trees with large beehives and then southwest into the heat of southern Ethiopia. It was Wednesday and in traditional parts of Ethiopia, meat isn't served on Wednesdays and Fridays. The usual substitute is shiro wat, a bean-type sauce served on injera, the sponge-like bread. Two meals of it were enough for one day. Shepherds along the highway divided their time between herding their flocks and hawking souvenirs to the occasional passing motorist. It was market day in Key Afar the next day, homeland of the Banna tribe. The tribes people wore colorful blue earrings and shaved their heads in interesting hairstyles. The tej bet was also more interesting, with tribes people gawking at the rare sight of a television video where Jean and I sat as we drank honey wine. We drove on to Jinka. We drove into Mago National Park the next day, but it was virtually devoid of wildlife except for the tiny deer-like dik dik. A battery cable shorted out and caught fire and our driver was able to fix the problem. We drove on to visit a Mursi village, where the women also wore the clay plate like the Surma, only this was an obvious tourist trap. Villagers came out already dressed up for tourists and aggressively pushed us to take photos for money. I was happy we spent time with the less touristy Surma tribe. We had to pay for an armed scout to accompany us on this trip as well. This was an uncanny proposition - hiring a guide to protect us against people we were going to meet. A huge market was held in Jinka the next day, but there were only a few tribes people in costume. There were exhibits at a German-sponsored anthropology museum on a hill above Jinka explaining all about the various tribes. The Aussie couple left us, but we picked up a Chicago schoolteacher to join us for four more days and help split costs. The insect bite I received in Mizan Tefari became infected and swelled to a huge sore on the back of my leg, a scrape on my finger also grew big and deep. A nurse at the Jinka hospital prescribed a week's worth of antibiotics, which reduced the swelling. It was something scary that I never encountered before, but then again, this was Africa. Next it was down to Turmi, a village that is the homeland of the Banna tribe. The countryside looked steadily drier as we went south. We stopped for lunch in the tiny town of Dimeka and picked up a Swiss anthropologist on his way out to a remote village. It made sense in this area to meet photographers and anthropologists. It was only about 60 miles from Key Afar to Turmi but the road was so rough it took a good part of a day. We set up camp on the outskirts of Turmi. The Hamer tribeswomen wore braided hair, sometimes dyed with red ocher. They wore goatskin clothes. The married women wore a big, iron ring around their necks to symbolize their marital status and a large necklace of cowry shells. Again we heard clapping and singing coming from huts near the campsite at night. The Turmi market was on the next day's itinerary. There were a few too many tourists for my liking, with about 25 foreigners showing up to take photos at the market. The local people didn't have much for sale, but there was a good collection of local souvenirs for tourists to buy, including the cowry-shell necklaces. The Hamer weren't aggressive, but would remind us of the two birr fee if they saw us taking photos. The Turmi market was probably the best one yet for photographing the colorful tribes people. There was one more tribe to visit - the Galeb, who were known for being hostile and at war with most of the other tribes. The theft of cattle is at the heart of most disputes between tribes. The landscape became drier still, and while there were at least a couple of trucks ferrying passengers from Key Afar to Turmi, there weren't any other vehicles on the road south to Oromate where the Galeb village is situated. When we arrived we crossed the Omo River in a dugout canoe, with the tree bark almost completely encircling us. Across the river, the Galeb villagers were almost as aggressive as the Mursi tribe. Villagers pawed at my shoulder and cried out, "OK, photo?" Again, women villagers appeared ready to pose for photos, topless, with jars balanced on their heads. Unlike tribes farther north, the Galeb lived in thatched-roof huts made out of tree bark instead of sticks. Tess, our driver, vetoed a drive down to Lake Turkana. It would be another two hours to the lake, which forms Ethiopia's border with Kenya. The road turned into a series of tracks through the desert. Jean and I swam in the Omo River, so silt-laden it was pitch black. We drove back to Turmi, then back up to Konso, a town renowned for its traditional walled villages. Unfortunately, our driver took us to the same village outside Konso all tourists seemed to frequent, nicknamed "New York" with canyons next to it that resembled a small part of Bryce Canyon in Utah. The villagers eagerly begged for our money. A tourism official showed us a local museum with a collection of wagas, traditional thin, woodcarvings decorated with faces for burial sites. Many wagas in the Konso area had been stolen and sold to art collectors. After a tour of photographing "human zoos," I was accustomed and a bit spoiled at being able to photograph the exotic-looking people, even though I had to pay for the privilege. But the last couple of days in Ethiopia were different. Villagers walking from the country to the Konso market ran for cover when I attempted to take their photos from the road. I asked a girl carrying jugs down to the market next to towering sunflowers if I could take her photo. Some bystanders attempted to help translate, but the girl started crying. I quietly walked away without the shot. After Jean and I parted ways in Yabello, the town on the main north-south highway, I took a bus at 6 a.m. the next morning for Moyale on the Kenya border. We stopped for bread and coffee at Magi 60 miles north of the border. A group of teenage boys were marching through town with their faces painted up, carrying spears and chanting. I thought it'd be a great photo. As the bus pulled out onto the road, I leaned out the window and snapped a couple of photos. The group of boys saw me take their photo and didn't like that at all. They surrounded the bus with their spears, a few of them banged on the bus in anger. A man standing behind the group of boys looked at me and made the sign of the cross - the situation didn't look good. I hoped the bus driver would be able to part the crowd and take off. But the bus driver turned around, looked at me and said, "Put your camera back in the box." The bus sat there for about 15 tense minutes. A policeman came on board, escorted me off and I walked across the street where I apologized to the village elder, with all the spear-carrying boys around me. The policeman said Oromi was a beautiful culture. He advised me before I take any photographs to arrange the shot first. Fortunately I was able to board the bus again and we left. After two days of rough travel through northern Kenya, employees at a photo shop in Nanyuki, Kenya, were awestruck looking at the photos I requested. I'm still amazed looking at the pictures today - amazed people that live like that still exist in this modern age. |
|
