In Ethiopia with a Mule (5 page)

T
HIS MORNING’S ASSEMBLY in the palace farmyard was comical – one long-suffering mule, one clueless
faranj
, one anxious-to-help but (in this context) equally clueless princess and five bewildered farm-hands. (All these men are expert mule-loaders, but none had ever before encountered such an
intractable
miscellany of baggage.) The pack-saddle is a simple square of well-padded, soft sacking and we began by roping on my rucksack, flea-bag, box of emergency rations and water-bottle, topping them with Jock’s natty plastic bucket (bought in Asmara) and Leilt Aida’s bulky contribution of imported foods.

After a forty-minute struggle everything seemed secure, so all goodbyes were said and everyone industriously waved to every-else as Christopher and I left the farmyard behind Jock and Gabre Maskal – the servant who had been deputed to guide us on to the Adua track. Then, on the verge of the road, a hooting Red Cross jeep caused Jock to buck frantically, and everything slowly slid under his belly and thence to the ground.

As we retreated to the yard I decided that two evenly weighted sacks would have to replace my awkwardly-shaped rucksack. In due course these were produced and I impatiently tumbled into them a conglomeration of books, clothes, matches, medicines, candles, pens, soup-cubes, cigarettes, toothpaste, torch batteries, notebooks, maps and insecticides. Then, after much testing and balancing of sacks, and tying and retying of ropes and leather thongs,
reasonable
security was assured. Undoubtedly Jock is a patient animal: there he stood, the picture of bored resignation, while the men crowded around him yelling argumentatively and heaving on the ropes like sailors in a storm. Their loading method is impossibly complex and I am singularly inept at acquiring such skills
– so we will be dependent on hypothetical passers-by if we have to camp out at night.

Much of the route from Makalle to Adua follows a makeshift motor-track constructed during the Italian occupation but neglected for the past quarter of a century. Our guide evidently disapproved of Leilt Aida allowing
faranjs
to travel unescorted and he asked several peasants who were walking in our direction if they would take charge of us; but all were soon turning off this main track towards their settlements and eventually Gabre Maskal was persuaded to turn back.

For the next four miles our track ran direct over a light-brown, stony plain, bounded to east and west by low mountains. I walked ahead, leading Jock, and Christopher followed a little way behind, displaying remarkable stamina for a ten-year-old. Already I could see that he would never admit to being tired, so an early lunch seemed advisable and we stopped near the edge of the plateau, where a solitary, gnarled tree provided meagre shade. Here too was the first settlement we had seen – a few round, thatched huts (
tukuls
) clumsily constructed of stakes and mud. Several locals at once gathered around us and one young man asked if we were Italian or American; on being told that we were British and Irish he and his companions looked blank. These people must be quite used to seeing
faranjs
at Makalle, but beneath their formal courtesy I sensed – or imagined – a mixture of hostility, suspicion and contempt.

From the edge of the plateau we took a short cut down a steep, narrow path which wound around a mountain covered in low green scrub. This path was so rough that I urged Jock to go ahead and choose his own way, since my stumbling progress was making things more difficult for him, and on rejoining the main track he stood meekly waiting for me to catch up. All day his behaviour was angelic, apart from one slight aberration when he suddenly lay down beside a shallow river and attempted to roll in the fine sand; but the moment I tugged at the halter – exclaiming ‘Jock!’ in a horrified tone – he scrambled to his feet and consoled himself with a long drink. This docility was especially encouraging because I had by then removed the bit, which was obviously causing him great discomfort. At our next rest-halt I experimented further by letting him graze loose, and as a reward for my increasing trust he didn’t withdraw even a step when I went to catch him.

During the afternoon we were sometimes accompanied by groups of men and boys, driving mule or donkey caravans towards their invisible settlements in the folds of the hills. Everyone stared at us with astonishment and amusement
– the amusement being caused by Jock’s eccentric load. Amidst surroundings innocent of the garishness that now disfigures many European landscapes my simple possessions look horribly ostentatious – a canary-yellow nylon flea-bag, a vivid green plastic bucket and a white and red plastic water-bottle. No wonder the locals are amused, as they stride along in their off-white
shammas
behind sober-hued, professionally-balanced loads of hides and salt-blocks.

There is a disconcerting lack of spontaneity in the highlanders’ reactions to a
faranj
. No doubt it is illogical to deduce hostility from restraint, yet one misses the friendly, unrepressed interest aroused in Asia by wandering foreigners.

All afternoon our track switchbacked through easy hills – some
scrub-covered
, some barren – and despite this region’s appearance of infertility the many herds of wide-horned cattle and small, fat-tailed sheep seemed in excellent condition.

As the sun declined pale colours softened the hills, and then came the quiet glory of the highland sunset. Without clouds there are no spectacular effects, but this evening broad bands of pastel light merged dreamily into one another above the royal blue solidness of a long, level escarpment some hundred yards west of our track.

When we heard the distant roar of the palace jeep I led Jock on to some ploughland and murmured soothingly in his ear; but as the noise came closer he began to tremble, and much to his disapproval I hastily replaced the bit, lest he should try to bolt. However, he managed to retain his self-control and quietly followed me back to the track after the vehicle had pulled up nearby.

To our surprise it was not the jeep, but the Mercedes – and Leilt Aida was sitting in front with a picnic-basket. As Christopher and I gulped cups of steaming tea she and the driver discussed what seemed to them a Problem – where I would sleep tonight. We had walked only fourteen miles, so both Jock and I were fresh enough to cope with the remaining four miles to the next village. But Leilt Aida forbade me to continue – ostensibly because hyenas might attack Jock after dark, though I suspect that her real fear was of
shifta
attacking me. She then sent the driver to reconnoitre a steep, uncultivated mountainside that rose directly from the track on our right; there was no trace of an upward path and it would never have occurred to me to look for shelter in such an apparently unpopulated area.

By now it was dark and as we sat waiting, on a low stone wall, Leilt Aida repeated that I must telephone her whenever possible and not hesitate to ask for help if in need. I thought then of the words spoken by one of her ancestors to the 1841 British trade mission. His Majesty Sahela Salassie, seventh King of
Shoa, had said, ‘My children, all my gun-people shall accompany you; may you enter into safety. Whatsoever your hearts think or wish, that send word unto me. Saving myself, ye have no relative in this distant land.’ The difference here was that no gun-people were accompanying me, and it was obvious that Leilt Aida had already begun to reproach herself for not insisting on an escort.

Fifteen minutes later a favourable report was shouted from the hilltop and, waving goodbye to Leilt Aida and Christopher, I began to lead Jock up the steep slope, scrambling blindly over or around rough rocks and through
excruciatingly
prickly scrub. We were guided by the driver above and Leilt Aida below. He would yell down in Amharic, ‘More to the right,’ or ‘A little left there!’ and she would yell the translation up to me. Reaching the top, I saw by starlight that we were on a level, scrub-covered plateau. Here the driver produced as my guide an awe-stricken, speechless youth – whose name I later discovered to be Marcos – and then he bounded down to the track, while Leilt Aida and I yelled final goodbyes.

Ten minutes later, as we were being led along a narrow path, I saw the car jolting slowly away towards Makalle, which was visible as a cluster of dim lights on a plateau level with this. Across all the intervening countryside no other lights glimmered, though there must be many settlements among these hills, and the dwindling headlights of the Mercedes seemed pleasingly symbolic.

When we reached this compound it, too, was in darkness – apart from the flicker of a dying wood-fire in the smallest of the three stone huts – and it took me fifteen minutes to unload Jock. (It was the measure of today’s disorganisation that my torch lay at the bottom of a sack and could only be got at after the untying of countless complicated knots.) Marcos must be used to unloading mules, but he seemed to have been mentally numbed by astonishment – or else he believes that there is some special mystique connected with
faranj
-owned pack-animals. He made no attempt to help until I had somehow induced everything to come to pieces; then, while I fumbled through the sacks for food, torch,
insecticide-powder
and notebook, he led Jock to a shelter, before carrying my load into the smallest hut. This was round and solidly built, with a pointed grass roof and two-foot thick walls. A quarter of the floor space was taken up by a mud ‘stove’, some eighteen inches high, another quarter by two six-foot mud-
and-wicker
grain storage bins, and the rest by an uneven mud couch, covered with a stiff cow-hide and raised two feet above the floor. Marcos dumped my load on this bed, bent down to blow the embers and, when a handful of twigs had begun to blaze, gave me an uneasy, sideways glance. I grinned cheerfully in
reply – without saying anything, since my earlier attempts at communication had seemed only to scare him. He was a handsome youth, with a broad brow, a straight nose, slightly prominent cheek-bones and fine eyes. Beneath his unease I sensed a nice nature and now he responded to my grin with a quick, shy smile, before adding more twigs to the fire and putting a rusty basin of water to heat. I wondered if some beverage would in due course be produced from the basin; but instead, when the water was hot, Marcos began to remove my boots and socks, keeping his head respectfully bent. For the next ten minutes he violently massaged my legs from knees to toes, pouring water over them before each attack. Even without today’s severe sunburn – just where he was concentrating on my calf-muscles – such treatment would have been trying enough; but now my legs feel comfortably relaxed.

While replacing my boots I heard voices, and then saw, through the low doorway, a few vague shapes wrapped in
shammas
. The arrival of his family had an interesting effect on Marcos. He leaped up, his face shining with delighted relief, and only then did I realise that he had been seriously frightened of me. I hope this Italian-bred fear of
faranjs
is not common throughout Tigre, since fear can express itself in many ways.

As Marcos told his news three men and two women crowded up to see me, the women half-hiding behind their menfolk, covering the lower part of their faces with their
shammas
.

Released from the strain of my undiluted company, Marcos beamed at me in a proprietary way, as though my presence here were all his own work, and began self-importantly to make free with my possessions, which earlier he had dropped as if they might bite him. He held up my sleeping-bag and bucket to be admired – but was at once sharply reprimanded by his father for unnecessarily touching a guest’s belongings. By now the men had edged into the
tukal
and we were all sitting close together on the bed, while outside the women excitedly discussed me. Soon they had decided that I must be transferred to the main dwelling-house – a rectangular, high-ceilinged, single-storey building, which consists of one large room, where several tree-trunks support the wooden beams of the mud roof and many grain bins take up most of the floor-space. Here the mud bed – which has been sacrificed to me – is about three feet high and built four feet out from the wall. The younger members of the family sleep on the floor around the fire and the poultry roost on crude shelves directly above the bed.

When Marcos began to move my luggage I tried to stop him; but everyone insisted that it must remain beside me, so it has been stacked at the end of the
bed. This attitude seems to indicate an endemic lack of trust. In similar
circumstances
elsewhere a host would store my kit in the most convenient spot – not necessarily anywhere near my sleeping quarters – after assuring me that it would be safe.

Having recovered from the initial shock, everyone wanted to talk to me. Marcos’ parents speak a little Italian and I do too; but a little Italian, spoken with strong Tigrean and Irish accents, doesn’t really facilitate conversation and we soon gave up. However, mutual attempts to communicate always warm the atmosphere and now I don’t feel at all excluded from the family circle, though I’ve been writing non-stop while everyone else chatters away ninety to the dozen. Just occasionally someone looks at me and laughs kindly at my dumbness, or Marcos leans over to count the pages I’ve written, or his mother urges me to move closer to the fire.

It is almost thirteen months since I last stayed in a peasant’s hut. That was in Nepal, and now it is somehow reassuring to be in similar surroundings on another continent, following the old routine of writing by firelight with
wood-smoke
in my eyes and sleepy hens clucking beside me and a variety of footloose vermin swarming over my body.

Bug-wise, last night was hell. My insecticide powder proved unequal to the occasion and repeatedly I woke from a restless doze to scratch. These African devils seem even more vicious than their Asian cousins and my body is now covered with inflamed lumps.