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- Herausgeber: Eland Publishing
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
Inspired by childhood stories of Prester John and the Queen of Sheba, in 1966 Dervla Murphy bought Jock, an amiable pack-mule, and set off to trek across the highlands of this awesome but troubled land. She wandered south from the Red Sea shore to Sheba's Aksum and up onto the icy roof of Africa, the Semien mountains. From there she descended to the ruined palaces of Gondar and skirted the northern shore of Lake Tana before crossing the drought-afflicted high ranges to Lalibela. Having exchanged the exhausted Jock (named after her publisher) for an uncooperative donkey, Dervla completed her journey to Addis Ababa. The real achievement was not surviving three armed robberies or a mountainous one-thousand-mile trail, but rather Dervla's growing affection for and understanding of another race.
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In Ethiopia with a Mule
DERVLA MURPHY
A diversification among human communities is essential for the provision of the incentive and material for the Odyssey of the human spirit. Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration.
A. N. Whitehead: Science & the Modern World
‘They tell us this is a table land. If it is, they have turned the table upside down and we are scrambling up and down the legs’ – A British soldier’s comment on Ethiopian scenery, during the Napier Expedition, 1867–8.
Contents
Prologue
WHEN I AM ASKED, ‘Why did you go to Ethiopia?’ I find it impossible to give a short, clear answer. From earliest childhood the romantic names of Prester John, Rasselas, the Queen of Sheba and the Lion of Judah are linked with Abyssinia and, in one’s reading, occasional references to the country build up a picture of some improbable land of violence and piety, courtesy and treachery, barrenness and fertility.
Ethiopia has always been difficult to explore and much of it remains so; yet for centuries it was less inaccessible than most parts of Africa and, since the early sixteenth century, a sufficient number of travellers have visited the highlands to maintain Europe’s interest. Latterly these travellers had commercial or political motives, but the earliest European explorers were Portuguese missionaries, whose excessive zeal inspired an era of xenophobia that is only now coming to a close.
Most of the Europeans who were lucky enough to return from Ethiopia wrote wondrous accounts of the mountain empire, and gradually the name of Ethiopia or Abyssinia became synonymous with beauty, danger, solitude and mystery. Often the lure of such places operates subconsciously. Then one fine morning the traveller wakes and surprises himself by saying – ‘I’m going to Ethiopia’.
Modern Ethiopia is about five times the size of Britain. Its southern tip is 250 miles from the Equator and its coastline on the Red Sea is 500 miles long. The region generally known as ‘the highlands’ is a vast, fissured plateau between the Upper Nile valley and the Somaliland desert; this plateau lies six to ten thousand feet above sea level, rising in certain areas to twelve to fifteen thousand, and its height gives it – despite the nearness of the Equator – a climate said to be the healthiest and one of the most agreeable in the world.
The country is divided into fourteen provinces, inhabited by people of many different races, religions and cultures – among them the Danakils, the Falashas, the Gurages, the Somalis, the Konsos, the Waytos and the Wollamos. But the true Abyssinians are the Amharas and the Tigreans, who form almost the entire population of the six highland provinces through which I travelled – Eritrea, Tigre, Begemdir, Gojjam, Wollo and Shoa. Until the latter half of the nineteenth century the eight other provinces were either completely independent of or only vaguely associated with the Amharic Empire.
It is thought that the original highlanders were of the same Hamitic stock as the Danakils, Somalis and Nubians. Then, probably between 1,000 and 500 BC, tribes of Yemeni Arabs began to cross the Red Sea to settle in the fertile northern highlands, where the ruins of large cities indicate that their civilisation thrived during the centuries immediately before and after the birth of Christ. One of these tribes was called the Habashat and from this derives ‘Habesh’ – by which name Ethiopia is still known in Muslim countries – and from ‘Habesh’ European tongues produced Abyssinia. However, the highlanders now resent being called Abyssinians and their wish to be known as Ethiopians creates a complication. All the Emperor’s multiracial subjects are legally Ethiopians, so it would be inexact to write ‘Ethiopians’ when one is referring specifically to Amharas or Tigreans, who have nothing in common with their non-Abyssinian fellow-subjects. Therefore I avoid ‘Ethiopians’ for the sake of accuracy and ‘Abyssinians’ for the sake of politeness and refer to ‘Amharas’, ‘Tigreans’ or ‘highlanders’.
Following the Arab migrations the Semitic language and culture replaced the old Hamitic civilisation, of which nothing is definitely known, though some scholars believe it to have been highly developed. The newcomers also intermarried with the indigenous population and, though the Hamitic strain remained dominant, the Semitic influence is still obvious and this cross has produced a race of outstandingly handsome men and beautiful women.
An Egyptian trader named Cosmas travelled from the Red Sea port of Adulis to Aksum in about AD524, shortly before the decline of the Aksumite Empire. This Empire had been founded by the Semitised Hamitic peoples of the present-day provinces of Eritrea and Tigre, but neither Cosmas nor anyone else is very informative about it and little is known of its six hundred years of glory. It was the centre from which the Semitic language and culture and the Christian religion seeped south until, by the thirteenth century, the provinces of Begemdir, Gojjam and Shoa had ceased to be pagan.
The rise of Islam quickly isolated these Christian highlands and, after Cosmas’ departure, a thousand years passed before the arrival at Massawah of the next foreign visitor to give an account of Ethiopia. His name was Francisco Alvarez, and he spent six years in the country as chaplain to a diplomatic mission sent by King Manoel I of Portugal to the court of the Emperor Lebna Dengel – whose grandmother, while ruling as regent during the Emperor’s minority, had appealed for Portuguese aid when Ethiopia was being threatened by the Ottoman Empire.
This millennium of isolation inspired Gibbon’s frequently quoted – ‘Encompassed on all sides by the enemies of their religion, the Ethiopians slept near a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they were forgotten’. But, in fact, the Ethiopians were much more wide awake then than they are now. During these centuries they produced their finest paintings and illuminated manuscripts, many extraordinarily beautiful rock-churches, of which Lalibela’s eleven examples are the most famous, and the best of what little original literature they possess.
Alvarez is the only European to have described Ethiopia as it was before the terrible Muslim invasions, which began in 1527 – a year after the departure of the Portuguese mission. The invaders were led by Mohammed Gragn, a remarkably able general who took full advantage of the firearms which had recently been made available by the Turks, from whom he also obtained a small corps of about two hundred matchlockmen. ‘The effect produced by this tiny body of disciplined regulars, skilled in the use of firearms, was catastrophic. The Abyssinian armies broke and fled like chaff before the wind. The whole of Abyssinia was overrun. … The treasure fortresses were captured and the accumulated wealth of the Kingdom was carried off. The churches and monasteries were looted and burnt … and the princes of the Solomonian line put to the sword. In the words of the Abyssinian chronicles, nine men out of ten renounced the Christian faith and turned Muslim. Only the King with a scanty band of faithful followers maintained the struggle … in the mountain fastnesses of the interior’.*
In about 1535 Lebna Dengel succeeded in sending an appeal for help to the Portuguese and six years later four hundred Portuguese troops landed at Massawah, commanded by Christopher da Gama, a son of the navigator. In the fighting that followed the Portuguese and Muslim leaders were both killed, and without Mohammed Gragn the invaders faltered and were expelled from the highlands during the reign of Lebna Dengel’s son, Claudius.
By then the Empire had been miserably weakened, and immediately there was a new threat from the Galla. These pagan nomadic tribesmen, being harried by the Somalis, began to invade the southern region of the Ethiopian plateau; and when they had acquired horses from the highlanders they soon became formidable cavalrymen, penetrating as far north as Begemdir. ‘The Galla came to the highlands not as raiders alone, but also as settlers. Wherever they settled, they made travel dangerous and uncertain for the Abyssinians, isolated entire provinces from one another, and broke up the empire. The Abyssinians fought many battles against the Galla, but though individual groups were defeated, the force of the Galla migration could not be stopped. … Many of them, because of their warlike propensities, were recruited into the armies of the Abyssinian rulers … [and] … it is said that during this period only the sacred character of the Abyssinian monarchy preserved the dynasty from extinction, so that the Galla, even though they wielded great power, never took over the throne itself.’†
During the ninety years or so between the expulsion of the Muslims and the beginning of the Gondarine era there was yet another disruptive element in highland life, which briefly threatened ‘the sacred character’ of the monarchy. This was the excessive missionary zeal already mentioned. In 1632 the conversion, by Jesuits, of the Emperor Susenyos, and the Catholics’ intolerant attempts to convert the whole Empire, led to the banishment from Ethiopia of all foreigners and was followed by a relapse into isolation. However, Ethiopian history since 1632 is reasonably well documented, and in my diary I have referred to some of the main characters and events.
There is a certain similarity between the developments of Ethiopian Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism. In both cases, when alien religions were brought to isolated countries the new teachings soon became diluted with ancient animist superstitions; and so these cuttings from two great world religions grew on their high plateaux into exotic plants, hardly recognisable as offshoots of their parent faiths. But there the similarity ends. Of the two religions Tibetan Buddhism is much more advanced philosophically and has a far greater civilising influence on the peasants. Lamas rarely encourage bigotry and racial arrogance – as Ethiopian Coptic priests frequently do, by teaching that Ethiopian Christians are the only true Christians in the whole world. This defect is not exclusive to Coptic priests, but it is extra-pernicious in such a remote land, where a pathetic national superiority complex tends to run wild for lack of sobering comparisons with other nations.
Though so little is known about early Ethiopian history, the romantic story of the Empire’s conversion is believed by scholars to be substantially true. In the first half of the fourth century Meropius, a philosopher of Tyre, was voyaging in search of knowledge with two young relatives, Aedesius and Frumentius, who were being educated by him. Their ship put in for water at a port (Adulis?) where it was boarded by ‘barbarians’. These tribesmen massacred Meropius and his companions, but spared the boys – who were found on shore, studying under a tree – and brought them to the court of Ella Amida at Aksum. The King became very fond of both boys, and made Aedesius his cupbearer and Frumentius, who was already learned and wise, his secretary and treasurer; but before long Ella Amida died, leaving an infant son, Aeizaras, as heir. The Queen begged the young men to help her bear the burden of the regency and, during the years when he was virtual ruler of the country, Frumentius encouraged Christian Roman merchant settlers to spread their faith.
When Aeizaras had been crowned Aedesius and Frumentius handed over their trust and returned to the Roman Empire, though both the King and his mother implored them to stay. Aedesius hurried back to visit his family in Tyre, where he later became a priest, but Frumentius went direct to Alexandria and urged Athanasius to send a bishop to foster Christianity in Ethiopia. Athanasius decided to consecrate Frumentius himself and sent him back to his mission-field – where he converted countless pagans, ordained priests and after many years converted Aeizaras himself, thereby firmly establishing the Coptic Church in Ethiopia.
From the appointment of Frumentius by Athanasius until 1951 the Abuna (head of the Ethiopian Church) has always been an Egyptian monk, chosen by the Patriarch of Alexandria from the monastery of St Antonius. Inevitably there were long intervals – sometimes one or two decades – between an Abuna’s death and the arrival of his successor; and the suffragan bishops who were occasionally appointed could not ordain. Moreover, as a solitary exile for life, with a language, training and background which completely isolated him from his strange diocese, the Abuna never formed a real link with orthodox Christian traditions – so there was no check on the uninstructed Ethiopians’ peculiar scriptural interpretations.
Many animist strands still run through Ethiopian Christianity, which also reveals a considerable Jewish influence. The Amharic words for ‘alms’, ‘idol’, ‘purification’, ‘Hell’ and ‘Easter’ are of Hebrew origin, though the only version of the scriptures ever known to the Ethiopian Church was a translation into Ge’ez of the Septuagint. A. H. M. Jones thinks that before the rise of Islam Yemeni Jews may have been proselytising in Ethiopia, ‘which had at this time very close commercial and political relations with South-Western Arabia and was closely akin to it in language and culture. … The conversion of the royal house to Christianity … prevented Judaism from becoming the official religion of the Abyssinian Kingdom, but was not in time to prevent the conversion of various independent Agau tribes to Judaism, nor the adoption by the Abyssinians of certain Jewish practices.’
These aboriginal Agau converts are called Falashas (exiles) by the Coptic highlanders, and some of them still speak an Hamitic language as well as Amharic. Their traditional stronghold was in the Semien mountains and, though they now number only about 30,000, they were sufficiently powerful in the seventh century for Professor Simoons to suspect that they aided the collapse of the Aksumite Empire by blocking the southward spread of Christianity.
Among the Falashas, as among their Christian neighbours, isolation has led to various eccentric beliefs and practices, and a number of Coptic traditions – including a monastic system – eventually merged with their own archaic form of Judaism. Never having had a written language of their own they are dependent on the Ge’ez version of the Old Testament and they do not possess the Mishra or the Talmud. According to Wolf Leslau most of their laws and precepts are based on the apocryphal Book of Jubilees. These ‘Black Jews’ are now scattered throughout the provinces of Tigre and Begemdir, where they are not allowed to own land, but must rent it from the Christians, who despise them for being non-Christians – though this doesn’t worry the Falashas, who like to keep well away from unclean non-Falashas.
This, then, was the background to my journey – a country not quite of Africa nor of Asia, with a civilisation that became completely introverted as time passed. During many centuries the currents of new thought merely lapped the Red Sea coast, reaching the interior as disturbing rumours to be at once rejected for seeming far less credible than the legends of the saints in the monastery manuscripts.
The preparations for a walking-tour are simple. I only had to buy a large rucksack, a strong pair of boots, a one-gallon plastic water-bottle, a Husky outfit of jacket, pants and socks that was light to carry but warm to wear, a few basic medical supplies, half-a-dozen notebooks and a dozen ballpoint pens. To maintain contact with my own civilisation I also packed a Shakespeare anthology, TomJones, W. E. Carr’s Poetry of the Middle Ages, Cooper’s Talleyrand and Boros’ Pain and Providence. Unfortunately other books inexplicably accumulated in my rucksack between London and Massawah and when climbing to the 8,000-foot Eritrean plateau I found myself carrying a weight of fifty pounds.
I had been warned – by people who knew people who knew people who had been to Ethiopia – that the Ethiopian authorities distrust foreigners and would only give me a thirty-day tourist visa. Happily this proved to be nonsense. When I had presented my passport at the Ethiopian Embassy in London, filled in an application form for a six-months’ Business Visa and paid the fee, I was asked to call again at 10 a.m. the next day. I came at 10.05 a.m., expecting to encounter a large snag; but my passport had been duly signed and sealed and was at once delivered.
The real difficulty concerned maps. There is no such thing as a good map of Ethiopia, but Barbara Toy generously presented me with the Italian maps that she had used on her Ethiopian journey and these suited me perfectly. They were inaccurate enough to give me, at times, the gratifying illusion of being an explorer in trackless wastes – yet accurate enough to tell me that Addis Ababa is due south of Massawah. So it didn’t matter if I went mildly astray every day en route, provided I didn’t go east or west for too long at a stretch.
My homework was a little more arduous. I read most of the recently published books on Ethiopia and carefully studied Wax and Gold‡ – which greatly increased the pleasure of my journey, for without Dr Levine’s sympathetic analysis of the Amharic culture I would have gone wandering through the highlands in a permanent daze of incomprehension.
Then, having had my ‘shots’, I flew to Cairo on 3 December, 1966, and eight days later boarded a Norwegian boat, at Port Said, for the five-day voyage to Massawah.
*A History of Ethiopia: Jones & Monroe.
†Northwest Ethiopia: Frederick J. Simoons.
‡ University of Chicago Press, 1965.
1
Finding my Four Feet
16 December. Massawah
ALL DAY THE COAST was in sight – a long line of low mountains, often indistinguishable from the pale clouds that hung above it. No one could tell me where the Sudan ended and Ethiopia began, but at 5.40 p.m. we were approaching Massawah and a crimson sun slid quickly out of sight behind the high plateau of Abyssinia.
We anchored a mile offshore, to await our pilot, and as I stood impatiently on deck a tawny afterglow still lay above the mountains and a quarter-moon spread its golden, mobile sheen across the water. Near here stood Adulis, the principal port of the Aksumite Empire, and in the first century AD the anonymous author of the Periplus of the ErythraeanSea wrote, ‘There are imported into these places double-fringed mantles; many articles of flint glass; brass, which is used for ornament and in cut pieces instead of coin; iron, which is made into spears used against wild beasts, and in their wars; wine of Laodicea and Italy, not much; olive oil, not much; for the King gold and silver plate made after the fashion of the country—— There are exported from these places ivory and tortoise-shell and rhinoceros-horn’. Then the traders feared the attacks of ‘barbarous natives’. Now my luxury-loaded Italian fellow-passengers fear the attacks of shifta (bandits) on their way to Asmara tomorrow.
Following the arrival of our pilot-boat we spent two hours with easy-going Immigration and Sanitary officials. The Passport officer was a small-boned, dark-skinned little man, with an expression like a grieved monkey, and he warned me against the natives of Massawah – a pack of ‘murderous, thieving Muslims’. From this I rightly deduced that he was a highlander. His home is in Tigre and he hates the climate here, but says that because the locals are so ignorant and unreliable highlanders have to fill all responsible posts.
At last the Customs officers deigned to come on duty and we were permitted to go ashore. The Customs shed was comically vast – it could easily have held two hundred passengers instead of seven. My rucksack and general appearance gave the usual convenient impression of grinding poverty, and I was chalked and sympathetically waved on my way with a three months’ supply of tax-free cigarettes undetected.
I cannot remember feeling so alien during my first hours in any other country. One doesn’t think of Massawah as being Ethiopian, in any sense but the political, and I should find the atmosphere of an essentially Arab town quite familiar. Yet enough of the singularity of the tableland has spilled over to the coast for newcomers to be at once aware of Ethiopia’s isolation – even where contact with the outside world is closest.
Certainly there is no outward evidence of isolation here. I walked first along the sophisticated Italianate street that faces the quays and passed many groups of foreign sailors or local officials sitting at little tables drinking iced beer, or coffee, or smuggled spirits. Several beggars tried to ‘help’ by getting hold of my rucksack and leading me to the doss-house of their choice; but they were easily deterred and no one followed when I turned into a rough, narrow, ill-lit lane between tall houses. Most of these houses were brothels, and young Tigrean girls were sitting in the doorways playing with their toddlers (prostitution and family life are not incompatible here), or dressing each other’s hair in the multitudinous tiny plaits traditional among Tigrean women. In the gloom I was often mistaken for a customer and, on realising their error, most of the girls either jeered at me rather nastily or sent their children to beg from me.
However, this ‘hotel’ is congenial. The friendly owner – an elderly, handsome Tigrean woman – thinks I’m the funniest thing that has happened in years. She is now sitting nearby, with two neighbours, watching me write. Apparently the neighbours were called in because such a good joke has to be shared.
From the alleyway outside a high door – marked Pensione – opens into a large, square room where a few ugly metal tables and plastic chairs stand about on a wilderness of concrete flooring. Ethiopian Christians are very devoted to the Blessed Virgin, and two pictures of Our Lady of Good Counsel hang on the walls between several less edifying calendar ladies advertising Italian imports. Behind this ‘foyer’ – separated from it by wooden lattice-work – is a small, unroofed space, with a tiny charcoal cooking-stove in one corner and some unsteady wooden stairs leading up to a flat roof, off which are five clean three-bed bedrooms. Other hideous tables and chairs furnish this ‘lounge’, where I’m now sitting beneath a corrugated iron roof. The shutters of the unglazed windows and the upper half of the bedroom walls are also of lattice-work – attractive to the eye, but not conducive either to privacy or quiet. The loo hangs opposite me, adhering most oddly to the next-door wall, and the plumbing is weird and nauseating in the extreme. Theoretically all should be well, since it is a Western loo with a plug that pulls successfully – one can see the water running towards it through transparent plastic pipes fixed to the roof. The snag is that nothing seems to get any further than a cess-pool, covered with an iron grille, which stands in the centre of the kitchen floor.
Tonight the heat is appalling and, while writing this, I’ve absorbed five pints of talla – the cloudy, home-brewed highland beer. As far as I can feel it is totally unintoxicating, though very refreshing and palatable.
17 December
At lunchtime today I had my first meal of injara and wat. Injara has a bitter taste and a gritty texture; it looks and feels exactly like damp, grey foam-rubber, but is a fermented bread made from teff – the cereal grain peculiar to the Ethiopian highlands – and cooked in sheets about half-an-inch thick and two feet in circumference. These are double-folded and served beside one’s plate of wat – a highly spiced stew of meat or chicken. One eats with the right hand (only), by mopping up the wat with the injara; and, as in Muslim countries, a servant pours water over one’s hands before and after each meal.
During the afternoon a blessed silence enfolds sun-stricken Massawah and I slept soundly from two to five. By then it was a little less hellish outside, so I set forth to see the sights – not that there are many to see here. Visitors are forbidden to enter the grounds of the Imperial Palace and women are forbidden to enter the mosques – of which there are several, though only the new Grand Mosque looks interesting. It was built by the Emperor, presumably to placate his rebellious Eritrean Muslim subjects.*
In the old city, south of the port, the architecture is pure Arabic, though many of the present population have migrated from the highlands. The narrow streets of solid stone or brick houses seem full of ancient mystery and maimed beggars drag themselves through the dust while diseased dogs slink away at one’s approach, looking as though they wanted to snarl but hadn’t enough energy left.
18 December. Nefasit
The process of converting a cyclist into a hiker is being rather painful. Today I only walked eighteen miles, yet now I feel more tired than if I had cycled a hundred and eighteen; but this is perhaps understandable, as I’m out of training and was carrying fifty pounds from 3,000 to 6,000 feet. At the moment my shoulder muscles are fiery with pain and – despite the most comfortable of boots – three massive blisters are throbbing on each foot.
Yesterday Commander Iskander Desta of the Imperial Navy kindly suggested that I should be driven across the coastal desert strip in a naval jeep, which collected me from my pensione at eight o’clock this morning. The Eritrean driver spoke fluent Italian, but no English, and the dozen English-speaking cadets, who were going to spend Sunday at the 4,000-feet Embatcallo naval rest-camp, were not disposed to fraternise with the faranj (foreigner).
Beyond a straggle of new ‘council houses’ our road climbed through hillocks of red sand, scattered with small green shrubs. Then these hillocks became hills of bare rock – and all the time the high mountains were looming ahead in a blue haze, sharpening my eagerness to get among them. We passed one primitive settlement of half-a-dozen oblong huts, which is marked as a village on my map – perhaps because Coca-Cola is sold outside one of the shacks – and a few miles further on the road tackled the steep escarpment in a series of brilliantly-engineered hairpin bends.
By 10 a.m. I had been released from the truck at 3,000 feet, where mountains surrounded me on every side. Here the climate was tolerable, though for an hour or so sweat showered off me at every step; then clouds quickly piled up and a cool breeze rose. On the four-mile stretch to Ghinda I passed many other walkers – ragged, lean Muslim tribesmen, highlanders draped in shammas (white cotton cloaks) and skinny children herding even skinnier goats. Everyone stared at me suspiciously and only once was my greeting returned – by a tall, ebony-skinned tribesman. One doesn’t resent such aloofness, since surprise is probably the main cause, but I soon stopped being so unrewardingly amiable. Already I notice a difference between cycling and walking in an unknown country; on foot one is even more sensitive to the local attitude and one feels a little less secure.
Ghinda is described in my official guidebook as ‘a small resort city’ to which people come to escape the cold of Asmara or the heat of Massawah. In fact it is a small town of tin-roofed hovels from which I personally would be glad to escape in any direction.
Just beyond Ghinda a squad of children advised me to avoid the main road and guided me up a steep short cut for about two miles. Later I took two other short cuts and discovered that on this loose, dry soil what looks like a reasonable climb is often an exhausting struggle. The busy Massawah–Asmara railway runs near the road and when I was attempting one short cut, up the embankment, I went sliding down on to the track just as an antiquated engine, belching clouds of black smoke, came round the corner twenty yards away. Happily this line does not cater for express trains; extermination by a steam-engine would be a prosaic ending to travels in Ethiopia. During the abrupt descent my knees had been deeply grazed and my hands torn by the thorny shrubs at which I clutched; but this was merely the initiation ceremony. When one has been injured by a country, then one really has arrived.
From Ghinda to the outskirts of Nefasit the rounded mountains and wooded gorges appear to be almost entirely uninhabited and uncultivated. Even this colonised fringe of Ethiopia feels desolate and the silence is profound. Many of the lower slopes are covered in green bushes, giant cacti and groves of tall trees; one lovely shrub blazes with flowers like the flames of a turf-fire and vividly coloured birds dart silently through the undergrowth. Around the few villages some terracing is attempted, but it looks crude and ineffective. My impression so far is of a country much more primitive, in both domestic architecture and agriculture, than any Asian region I know.
At intervals the weekend traffic passed me – Italian or American cars returning to Asmara in convoys of six or eight as a precaution against shifta. (There are 5,000 Americans stationed at the Kagnew Military Base near Asmara.) As another precaution two policemen sat watchfully by the roadside every five miles, leaning on antediluvian rifles. The shifta are said to be far better armed than the police, their foreign backers having equipped them well. Many cars stopped to offer me a lift, and soon this kindness became tiresome; it is difficult to persuade motorists that two legs can also get one there – at a later date. The last five miles were a hell of muscular exhaustion. At every other kilometre stone I had to stop, remove my rucksack and rest briefly.
Here I’m staying in a clean Italian doss-house and being overcharged for everything by the Eritrean-born proprietress. While writing this I’ve got slightly drunk on a seven-and-six-penny bottle of odious vinegar called ‘vino bianco’ – produced by the Italians in Asmara.
19 December. Asmara
I awoke at 6.30 to see a cool, pearly dawn light on mountains that were framed in bougainvillea. The Eritrean servant indicated that mangiare was impossible, so by 6.50 I was on the road. After ten hours unbroken sleep my back felt surprisingly unstiff, though my feet were even more painful than I had expected.
From Nefasit the road zigzagged towards a high pass and before I had covered four miles all my foot-blisters burst wetly. During the next two hours of weakening pain only my flask of ‘emergency’ brandy kept me going. It seemed reckless to use it so soon, yet this did feel like a genuine emergency. Several cars stopped to offer me tempting lifts, but I then supported a theory (since abandoned) that the quickest way to cure footsores is by walking on them.
Here the road ran level, winding from mountain to mountain, and the whole wide sweep of hills and valleys was deserted and silent. These mountains are gently curved, though steep, and despite the immense heights and depths one sees none of the expected precipices or crags.
The sky remained cloudless all day, though a cool breeze countered any sensation of excessive heat. However, the sun’s ultra-violet rays are severe at this altitude and the back of my neck has been badly burned.
It takes a few days for one’s system to adjust to being above 6,000 feet and as I struggled towards the 8,000 foot plateau my head was throbbing from too little oxygen and my back from too much weight, though I hardly noticed these details because of the pain of my feet. Then at last I was there – exultantly overlooking a gleaming mass of pure white cloud that concealed the lower hills. But on this exposed ridge a strong, cold wind blew dust around me in stinging whirls and pierced through my sweat-soaked shirt; so I soon began to hobble down the slight incline towards Asmara.
On the last lap I passed a big British War Cemetery and gazed into it enviously, feeling that a cemetery rather than an hotel was the obvious resting place for anyone in my condition. Fifteen minutes later I was approaching the uninspiring suburbs of Asmara and looking out for a bar. At 1.30 I found one, pushed aside a curtain of bottle-tops on strings and in a single breath ordered three beers. Since morning I had only walked fifteen miles, yet my exhaustion was so extreme that I had to be helped to remove my rucksack.
By three o’clock I had found this Italian-run pensione in the centre of the city, conveniently opposite the British Consulate. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I took off my boots and socks and saw the worst. It is no longer a question of blisters: with my socks I had peeled off all the skin from both soles, leaving what looks like two pounds of raw steak. Undoubtedly this is where I forget ‘mind-over-matter’ and sit around for some days industriously growing new skin.
20 December
This morning I hobbled over to the Consulate to ask for the name of a reliable doctor; but the Consul, Major John Bromley, is on duty in Massawah today and his Ethiopian staff were vague – though friendly and anxious to help. The next few hours were spent limping around in a daze of pain searching for sound medical advice – not that there is any shortage of doctors here, but in my insular way I distrust foreign medicine-men whose names are followed by a rearrangement of the whole alphabet. Eventually I chanced to meet a kind nurse from the Lutheran Red Sea Mission, who recommended Professor Mario Manfredonia as being Ethiopia’s best doctor; but he, too, is in Massawah today, so I could only make an appointment for tomorrow morning.
21 December
By this morning my right foot had begun to heal but my left had turned into a suppurating mess. Professor Manfredonia did a lot of skilful pressing and prying, before plastering it with antibiotic ointment, putting on an imposing bandage and telling me to rest for four or five days. He is the sort of doctor who makes you imagine that you are better long before you possibly could be, so I left his surgery feeling quite uninfected.
Today the Bromleys returned from Massawah. Major Bromley has lived in Ethiopia for thirty years and he gave me much practical advice on conditions in the highlands, telling me that it will be necessary to carry a full water-bottle and supplementary food rations. When I explained that I couldn’t possibly carry one ounce more than my present load we decided on the purchase of a pack-mule. Apart from pack-carrying, it is wise to have an animal that can be ridden in an emergency, should one fall ill or break a bone at the back of beyond.
During the afternoon, as I was dutifully resting in my room, Mrs Bromley telephoned and nobly invited me to stay. So I’m now happily installed in this agreeably happy-go-lucky household.
22 December
Fortunately I’m a rapid healer; tonight my right foot has a nice new tough skin and my left is no longer throbbing.
This morning’s mule-search was unsuccessful. The Bromleys’ servant reported that it had been a poor market; but on the twenty-fourth he will try again, as the most important market of the week is held on Saturdays.
23 December
Today I took a sedate stroll through Asmara, which was founded by the Italians seventy years ago and looks like a lost suburb of Milan, with many Arab shanty-settlements, nomad camps and highlanders’ hovels scattered around the periphery. The Catholic Cathedral, the Grand Mosque and the Coptic Church were all designed by Italians. Mussolini was among the chief contributors to the cathedral building fund and the design is said to have been inspired by the Lombardic school of architecture; but this inspiration seems to have flagged quite soon and I much preferred what I was allowed to see of the mosque. Apart from one Latin flourish – a fluted Roman column at the base of the minaret – this is a fine no-nonsense example of Arab architecture. Near the mosque is St Mary’s Coptic church (rectangular, with mock-Aksumite stonework) and I spent a couple of hours sitting in its enclosure – not because I was riveted by the building, but because the worshippers interested me. Ethiopian churches are locked after morning Mass, yet as I sat in the sun on the steps, surrounded by spectacularly-maimed beggars, people were all the time praying vigorously at each door. Having crossed themselves, and made three little curtseys, they went to the door, pressed their bodies close to it and, between whispered prayers, kissed and stroked the smooth, golden wood. Many were women, with fly-covered infants tied to their backs. Five wild-looking men seemed to be new-comers to Asmara; they had ebony skins, pure Hamitic features, a fuzzy disorder of long hair and tall, thin bodies, draped in the ragged remains of one-piece, knee-length, cotton garments. Probably they belonged to some lowland tribe recently converted to Christianity. When they had finished their prayers they stood back to view the enormous, gaudy mosaic which decorates the facade, and for twenty minutes these apparently ferocious tribesmen remained on the steps animatedly discussing angels and saints.
Meanwhile a distinguished-looking elderly man had joined the worshippers around the main door. He had iron-grey hair, almost black skin, handsome features and tremendous dignity; in his well-tailored suit and snow-white shirt he was conspicuous indeed among this filthy, barefooted throng. Having completed his ritual devotions he withdrew from the mob, carrying highly-polished shoes, and stood erect and motionless for over an hour in the shade of a nearby bell-tower, staring intently at the church and praying sotto voce. He was still there when I left.
This afternoon I bought ten pounds of imported emergency rations – dried fruit, and tins of cheese and fish. The prices were astronomical, for in addition to freight charges there are import duties of 65 per cent to 100 per cent on all foreign goods. These taxes may seem unreasonable, but they are the Government’s chief source of revenue and the faranjs who buy most of the imported goods can better afford to pay taxes than can the Ethiopians. At present Ethiopia desperately needs more money, because in many ways this is the least advanced African country – a result of never having been colonised and a sore point among the few Ethiopians who can bring themselves to face the Empire’s backwardness.
In general, relations between the Eritreans and the Italian colony seem to be excellent. The majority of the resident Italians have been born here and the fact that they chose to remain, after the union with Ethiopia, proves that to them Eritrea is ‘home’. All the locals to whom I have spoken declare that the Italians are their favourite faranjs; but a regrettable bond between the settlers and the Eritreans is their shared contempt for the rest of the Emperor’s ‘uncivilised’ subjects.
During the past few days the weather has been quite cool. This plateau has an extraordinary even temperature. In May, the hottest month, the Asmara average is 65ºF and in December, the coldest month, it is 58ºF. Yet the Danakil desert, immediately west of the tableland, is one of the hottest places in the world. The mountains which make things so pleasant up here also bring to the highlands the Indian Ocean monsoon, from June to September.
24 December
Today’s mule-buying effort also failed. The servant reported that though he had seen a few good animals the prices were exorbitant – two hundred dollars, which is thirty pounds. He therefore advised buying at a smaller market, where it should be possible to get an equally good animal for half the price. This development coincided with an announcement by Major Bromley that on the twenty-sixth he must take two vehicles to Makalle; so we decided to make a minor expedition of it, Mrs Bromley (known as Peter) and myself going by car, the Major and the children by Land-Rover.
In Makalle lives Her Highness Leilt (Princess) Aida Desta, eldest grandchild of the Emperor. She is an old friend of the Bromleys, who say that she will be happy to help me buy a good mule at a reasonable price. I can then spend a few days getting acquainted with the animal, and start trekking from Makalle when my foot is completely re-soled.
My original route did not include Makalle, which lies south-east of the Asmara–Adua–Aksum trail that I had planned to take on my way to the Semien Mountains. I’ll now have to walk north-east to Adowa, before turning due south towards the Takazze Gorge, which divides the provinces of Tigre and Begemdir.
25 December
Having two children in the house – Christopher and Nicola Bromley – gives some point to the tedious ballyhoo of our modern Western Christmas. Ethiopian Christians celebrate this feast on 7 January, by which time I hope to be celebrating with them in the middle of nowhere.
26 December. Makalle
On our drive from Asmara my first glimpse of the highlands overwhelmed me. Their magnificent, ferocious beauty is beyond all expectation, imagination or exaggeration – even to think of it makes my heart pound again.
We left Asmara at 10.30 and immediately outside the city were on an arid, red-brown plain, with low hills ahead and high mountains to the east. Then, beyond Decamere, the road swooped down and up for many miles through mountains whose configuration was so extraordinary that I felt I must be dreaming. Often we were driving on the verge of immense chasms, which lay between escarpments of pink or yellow rock that had been eroded to the most grotesque contrasts – and this tormented splendour is sustained for hundreds of miles.
We covered 200 miles today, and one gets such a confused impression from a car that already I’ve forgotten where we saw what. I think we were near Adigrat when the Semiens first appeared, some eighty miles away to the south-west – a fantastic array of powder-blue ruggedness, their 12 to 15,000-foot summits seeming deceptively near and clear. Never have I seen such strange mountains; they look like peaks in a cartoon film. We were then on a 9,000-foot plateau and between us and the Semiens lay this fissured wilderness of gorges, cliffs and lesser mountains. In the middle distance was a curiously perfect cone, and there were several solitary, flat-topped, steep-sided ambas, rising abruptly from a surrounding area of level ground. These ambas form almost impregnable natural fortresses and their rôle in Ethiopian history has been so important that one looks at them with awe, rather as though they were the venerable veterans of some remote and famous battle.
My map marks six ‘important’ towns between Asmara and Makalle, yet none of them seems more than a large, shoddy village. Those in Eritrea were important once, but since the Italians left the bigger houses have become roofless ruins, on which faint lettering indicates that thirty or forty years ago Italian grocers, barbers and hotel-keepers were in residence. The locals never moved into these comparatively solid and spacious houses, preferring to live on in their own rickety, cramped, tin-roofed shacks. Here corrugated-tin roofs are not merely a status-symbol, as in Nepal, but a means of collecting precious rain; and in such a barren region the use of every raindrop justifies even this ugliness.
Though we were driving on one of Northern Ethiopia’s only two motor-roads we passed no other private cars and saw not more than six or seven trucks. Between Decamere and Senafé a convoy of nine buses approached us, escorted by two smart army vehicles, bristling with machine-guns. This is the hub of the shifta country, where private cars rarely travel unescorted unless flying a flag that denotes diplomatic privileges. I noticed that here even Peter, who has nerves of steel, was slightly tensed up, despite the large Union Jack fluttering conspiciously on our bonnet. But she assured me that the danger was minimal as shifta specialise in buses; if the owners of Transport Companies don’t regularly pay a protection fee their vehicles are pushed over precipices.
Makalle lies west of the road and previously it was necessary to overshoot it and then turn back north from Quiha; but a few years ago Leilt Aida’s husband, HH Leul Ras Mangasha Seyoum, the Governor-General of Tigre, designed a direct ten-mile jeep track to the town, and did most of the construction work himself with a bulldozer and tractors.
As we hairpinned steeply down the mountainside I had my first glimpse of Tigre’s provincial capital – a little town sheltered by eucalyptus trees on the edge of a wide and windswept plain. My guidebook claims that Makalle ‘gives the impression of a boom town’ – and perhaps it does, to those who knew it ten years ago. To me it gives the impression of a neat feudal settlement, gathered happily around the somewhat misleadingly named ‘palace’ of the Emperor Yohannes IV. It has such an atmosphere of remote tranquillity that neither the turmoils of its past nor the progress of its present are easily credited. We drove straight to the new tourist hotel, a converted eighty-year-old castle, managed by Indians, which stands small and square on a low hill. Here prices are reasonable (about twenty-five shillings for bed and breakfast) and, though tourist hotels are not my natural habitat, I find the wall-to-wall carpeting and the pink-tiled bathroom sufficiently compensated for by eccentric electricity and a moody water supply. When countless servants had pitted themselves against the plumbing for over an hour we achieved baths, before setting off to dine at the palace – me in my Husky outfit, which seemed one degree less removed from palatial evening-wear than a pair of ill-fitting Cairo-tailored shorts.
At present Ras Mangasha is away in the mountains, building another road, so Leilt Aida appeared alone in the courtyard to receive us. It can be disconcerting to meet a princess who seems like a princess; one feels as though a fairy-tale had come true – especially with a background of high turrets standing out blackly against a moon-blue sky. Haile Selassie’s eldest grandchild is very elegant and very beautiful – olive skinned, with a triangular face, large and lovely eyes and the finest of bones. The likeness to her grandfather is at first quite intimidating, but is soon countered by a subtle sense of humour and a kindly graciousness. Clearly she is going to be a wonderful ally – concerned for my safety, but only to a sensible extent. She has not opposed my setting out through the Tembien sans guide, sans guard, though she insists on giving me letters to the various district governors, who are being instructed to help me if I’m in difficulty.
Yohannes IV’s stone palace-fortress was constructed by an Italian workman, named Giuseppe Naretti, and its practical solidity fittingly commemorates one of Ethiopia’s greatest warrior Emperors. But the many cavernous reception rooms are not very suitable for a family of eleven and innumerable servants, so an inconspicuous bungalow has recently been built on to the south wing.
As I write a fiendish gale is tearing around the hotel, incessantly howling, whining, rattling and roaring. Makalle is renowned for these strong, cold winds, which rise during the late afternoon and continue until dawn.
27 December
This morning I mentioned mule-buying to Leilt Aida – and such is the Imperial Magic that within twenty minutes no less than six pack-mules were being paraded before me, by hopeful owners, in the stable-yard behind the palace.
My choice was quickly made, for one animal looked much superior to the rest. He is about three years old, with perfect feet, a good coat and an apparently docile nature. It seemed auspicious that he meekly allowed me to open his mouth and pick up his feet, and when I took the halter he followed me around the yard like a lamb. He is dark grey, with a black off-foreleg, a white saucer-sized spot on the withers, a large chestnut patch on the near flank and a few white stripes on his belly. But the most important – and surprising – thing is his endearing expression. It had never occurred to me that one could be on more than civil terms with a mule, yet I can foresee myself becoming fond of this creature, for whom I willingly paid 105 dollars (fifteen guineas). The owner was an affable character, who considerately admitted that his animal had never seen a motor vehicle until today, and would therefore be inclined to ballet-dance on main roads.
I immediately named my new comrade ‘Jock’, in honour of a friend of mine who is noted for his kind dependability and capacity for overworking every day of the year – qualities which one hopes will be encouraged in Jock II by this talisman of a mutual name. I trust the friend in question will appreciate the compliment of having a mule named after him. As compliments go it is perhaps a trifle opaque at first sight.
Watering Jock in the stable-yard proved to be a little difficult; he had never before drunk from anything save a stream and was shy of both tank and bucket. When he had at last followed the example of a palace mule, I led him into a stable and left him settling down to a feed of barley. The buying of accessories was postponed till tomorrow, as Leilt Aida had arranged to take us to the Leul’s road-building camp for a picnic lunch.
