Upon Reflection

My whole trip turned out to be a study of people. I am especially interested in aspects of different cultures like religion and spirituality, relationships between men and women, the raising of children, relationships with nature and cultural celebrations. I was drawn to villages and fascinated by tribes. I found poverty confronting and challenging and I felt personally insulted by the amount of homophobia driven by ignorance and fear.

I spent days-on-end questioning class difference, suffering, education, racism, corrupt politics and the global economy especially the negative effects of international aid.

Apart from small breaks from people whilst on safari in the Kruger National park and climbing the sand dunes of Sossusvlei, I spent most days engrossed by people, asking them questions, observing how they live, intruding into their spaces. I believe that this is reflected in my writing.

But as much as I was fascinated by the people I met, moved by their stories and swept up in their hardships I also found myself frustrated with them, angered and upset by them, sometimes even revolted.

There are some things I saw in Africa that I would never be at peace with: The way women are treated, the way animals are treated and the way the natural environment is treated.

Of course there are exceptions, and of course each country, each tribe and each individual is different. But generally speaking I witnessed cruelty and dismissiveness toward the suffering of all three that I believe is inexcusable.

This trip tested my patience and my tolerance and I failed both tests.

There is however some things that I saw in Africa that I hope will stay with me forever: The richness of culture and language shared and celebrated through music, dance, spirituality and story. A tendency for Africans to meet, eat and socialise outdoors. A resilience and strength in people that still smile and laugh and love when they are acutely aware of how little they have and how hard they work for the small amount that they do have. I found peace in the notion that most of the Africans I met live in the moment and the day. They wait patiently for things, they take their time talking, asking questions, watching and contemplating life. In poorer areas and villages they focus on the meals of that day, the work that needs to be done that day. They always make time to talk to people, to laugh with family, to see what is going on around them.

When Art had said to me “I never see black but I always feel white” it wasn’t just about colour and race, it was about being acutely self-aware and aware of the differences between my own world and theirs. 

I always felt removed, caught between my life at home; the world as I knew it and between my adventure in Africa, and the insights it shared with me. I was constantly challenged and confronted by the simple, yet still highly intricate existence of people who were at once the same as me and yet totally different.

Mostly I hope that the kindness of the many Africans I met stays with me forever:

From Sammy and Elaine in the poor village in Ghana; Hojo Achianse, who brought me gifts, cooked my food and gave me the name Abra-Kuma. To Assane in Benin who made me tea gave me jewellery and brought me to the Voodoo doctor. To Daniel in Namibia who took us to the north and housed us in his safari park, to the Megameno family who gave me a bed for a night and shared their daughter’s birthday cake. To Chuck and Rudy and their friends in J’Burg who welcomed me as a friend and made one of the most dangerous cities in the world feel like home. To Mattiyus and Daniel who took me dancing and Didli and the other Hamer people who let us take part in their ceremony and everyone in between who kept me safe, alive, shared their culture with me, welcomed me into their homes and opened up to me.

And of course David and Chris and even Michael and Alex; fellow travellers who I shared in the excitement and the adventure with me.

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On the flight back I made a serendipitous connection. I left to fly out to Africa on a Tuesday in early February. In Ghana I was named Abra-Kuma because I was born on a Tuesday and now I was about to land down in Sydney on a Tuesday morning in June. I thought how Abra-Kuma means ‘little Tuesday’ and I thought that there is nothing little about Tuesdays for me!

When the flight attendant told us to prepare for landing I was so nervous that my palms were sweating and my stomach was twisting in knots. I hadn’t slept a wink on that flight.

I put it down to two things. The first, I was excited to see my girlfriend. It had only been four months, but I felt like I was walking into a first date.

The second thing I was nervous about was losing Africa. I was scared that the hustle and bustle of Sydney, my friends, family, work, all of that would wipe away everything I had been through. I wanted to hold onto it. Africa had drained and exhausted me and I hadn’t had time to process it yet. But I still cherished it. I was proud of what I had achieved and the experiences I had thrown myself into. And I had gotten used to the sense of freedom an itinerary-less holiday had. I didn’t want time and distance to take any of that away from me. It was hard to say goodbye.

I was the last person to get off the plane and instead of walking out to the arrivals lounge I hid in the toilets trying to collect my emotions and prepare to move on.

I washed my face and brushed my teeth and reapplied my deodorant. I was trying to cleanse myself trying to tell myself that I was ready to be back home.

When I saw my girlfriend waiting for me my heart jumped into my throat. We gave each other a short hug and I could see that she was as nervous as I was.

I watched the busy streets fly by and the familiar landscapes of cafes I frequent and signs I have always read and I asked her if we could go and get a real cup of espresso coffee with soy milk from a place that is famous for their coffee art – if I was going to be back in Sydney I may as well really be back in Sydney.

We didn’t say much to each other on the way to the coffee shop, or the way home, but I reached out and grabbed her hand and it calmed almost all of my nerves.

My Last Two Days in Africa

The bus I was on actually went all the way to Addis , with an overnight stop over in Abra Minch. All up it was expected to take between 20 and 30 hours. I was dreading it. My clothes were soaked right through and I was shuddering from the cold. My legs were too long for the cramped little space and my bent knees were aching from pressing up against the seat in front of me.

We stopped along the way on several occasions and each time the driver pestered me to sit next to him, eat with him, drink coffee with him. The only way I could get out of eating injera with him was to promise that I would have dinner with him. He insisted that I share his hotel room that night.

In the evening we pulled into Abra Minch and the driver wouldn’t take no for an answer when I told him that I didn’t want to give him my phone number.

I wondered how I’d get out of a night with him and another long day on that bus.

I grabbed my bag and said that I was going to look for a better hotel and instead got directions t the Ethiopian airlines office.

The office was shut but a man sitting out the front had the airlines number.

I rang it and asked the woman at the end of the line if there was a flight to Addis sometime in the next few days.

“The next flight leaves in one hour. It will cost you 56 US dollars”.

WHAT?!

I practically jumped out of my skin. I waved down a tuk-tuk and raced to the airport.

At the airport I bought my ticket, checked in my bags and made it to Addis early that evening without a single hiccup. Luck had been 100% on my side.

I caught a taxi to the Comfort Pension in Addis, I splurged and paid for a room with a western toilet that even came with a toilet seat! The first toilet with a seat that I had used in weeks and the best thing of all was a shower that ran hot water. There was a TV in the room and I turned it on not expecting to even get a picture. To my utmost surprise one channel worked and I lay in bed watching a movie called Red Eye. It was one of the shittest movies I had ever seen, but to lie in bed, comfortable and alone watching a movie in English made me so happy that I definitely went to sleep smiling that night.

When I woke the next day I still had 36 hours until my flight back to Australia.

I had no plans for Addis except grooming in preparation for reuniting with my girlfriend and I still had to get a souvineer for one of my sisters.

Unfortunately I had pms that day, and the persistent store-keepers may have caught the brunt of it.

At one store I got in a fight with a woman over a pair of socks. I just wanted a plain pair of black socks but she refused to sell them to me because they were ‘men’s’ socks.

“They are just socks!” I insisted. “Plain black socks! It doesn’t matter man or woman!”

“NO! Not for you!” She argued back. She waved a pair of short white socks with pink flowers in my face. “These for you! Not these!”

Despite the fact that she probably really needed the money she blatantly refused to sell me the black socks. She chose no sale over the sale of incorrectly gendered socks.

At the next store I told the woman that I needed a pair of plain black socks for my husband. She tried to sell me men’s underwear for him too, and I bought a pair, just so that I could wear them in silent protest over losing the battle over the first pair of socks I tried to buy.

My final day went smoothly, slowly and was uneventful.

For lunch I ordered a toasted sandwich off a menu at a western café. The menu sold it as avocado, tomato and lettuce but when it arrived it had just cabbage and green beans. I chuckled to myself. It was so African, you can order something and still have no idea what you will actually get. Like the time in Turmy I ordered ‘rice and vegetable’ instead I got cabbage and tomatoes. I asked them where the rice was and they just shrugged, or in Jinka when I ordered ‘pea soup’ and instead got goat a piece of goat in broth.

I was happy when the time came to get in a cab and go. I was ready to go home.

On the way to the airport through I was struck with a pang of guilt. I still had Ethiopian birr, and quite a lot of it left. Until the I hadn’t even given it a thought. All day I had passed hundreds of families asleep in the street or begging for money and I had a pocket full of cash that would be totally worthless once I left. On the way to the airport I had even gazed into the eyes of women selling their time to hungry men and snotty nosed kids searching for scraps to eat. And I sat in my taxi, after leaving my cosy hotel with a wad of notes.

On the edge of the airport I told the taxi to stop. There was a woman slumped on the side of the rode so I gave her a handful of notes.

I still had some left so I tipped the taxi driver and then handed the rest to a cashier at the airport.

I sat and waited for my flight thinking about all the money I had gone through and wasted on that trip. The souvenirs I had bought, the meals I never finished, the extra cash I had paid just for a toilet with a seat. It wasn’t fair, none of it was fair. People around me were hungry and cold and their children were sick and possibly dying and yet I could sit in new clothes, in a clean hotel room with good food in my stomach and pay TV in front of me. I could travel the world and know that really, no matter what circumstance I found myself in, I would have a family back home who would wire me cash and keep me going.

Life is simply not fair.

My Night With Bereket

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Bereket and I sat with our beers by the river as the golden sky dissolved into a deep darkness. We sat for hours talking about music and culture our dreams and the future. We talked a lot about his ex-girlfriend, an Israeli woman who nearly moved to Ethiopia to be with him. He talked a lot more than I did, and at times I tuned out and enjoyed the peace and quiet that surrounded us.

After a few beers the mood changed, I could feel that he was wanting to make a move so I told him it was time for me to go to bed.

I stood up and when he followed he leant in to kiss me.

“I have a boyfriend” I reminded him (I had managed to keep the same boyfriend charade up for 4 months) as I turned my face away.

“So? Life is about doing what makes you happy and living in the moment” he replied and he put his hand around my neck and tried to pull me in closer.

“If I was 10, or even 5 years younger I probably would, but I am too old for cheating and late nights out with boys I just met. Especially when I will be seeing my boyfriend again in just a few days”.

And that part was the truth. Although my girlfriend and I had an ‘overseas is ok’ agreement, and both of us had been with other people in the four months that I was away, I was too close to home now to want to be with anyone else. For four months my relationship had been on my mind. Long distance is hard, I would argue even harder for lesbian couples prone to drama. We had had more fights than I could count, there had been plenty of tears and nights when I felt totally alone, lonely and missing home and especially her. Most days I day-dreamed that she had been travelling with me, and I always wondered what the trip would have been like if we had gone to Africa together.

He started begging me to stay out with him longer. I was getting annoyed. I thanked him for the day and left.

In my hotel room I was sure that he would show up on my doorstep and sure enough 5 minutes later there was a knock at my door.

He said that he came to give me his bracelet as a goodbye present. I told him I couldn’t take it, I’d feel bad and that bracelet or no bracelet I wasn’t going to invite him in.

He left again, and again I closed the door.

5 minutes later he knocked again. This time he had two drinks with him. He fed me a few smooth pick up lines and I told him to leave when he kissed me.

To my surprise it wasn’t too bad and so I kissed him back.

It was a stupid mistake on my behalf. It was hard enough getting rid of him before we kissed, it was a lot harder after we did.

Eventually I forceful and literally pushed him away and slammed the door shut.

I hopped into bed and got the first message from Bereket that night (for this blog I fixed the spelling of the words but didn’t change the sentence structure):

‘I still enjoyed my time with you, please just don’t go to bed without talking to me’

My reply:

‘I am already in bed. There really is nothing to talk about. Goodbye and thank you again for the day’.

His reply:

‘Just feel that I am not sure if I can go to bed and I feel the same that you feel the same. I am about to have a drink but I don’t think I could enjoy because I didn’t feel the right to blame whom in this part me, you or to curse the nature for what it shared only for us. I believe anytime soon you will call me, I know that my eyes will not be shut for all night, you think is this fair… I didn’t put a question part because… you tell me or let me know how to deal with this loneliness crazy moment fighting in my mind.’

I didn’t reply and shortly after he knocked on the door again.

I lay there quietly.

He knocked and knocked and eventually left.

‘I couldn’t get drunk to get lost, so I came down here next to your room, next to your room with no key because I felt like the person to be judged. Number 26. Please come and tell me that you forgive me’.

Next message:

‘I am waiting for you in the morning number 26 room with no door locked’.

I fell asleep and when I woke again it was still dark and the rain was pouring down. It was only 5am but I was afraid of seeing Bereket again and going through the drama all over again. I packed my bags and crept quietly out of the room, still in pitch black darkness.

True to his text messages the door of room 26 right next to mine was wide open but there was no movement inside.

I walked through the streets in the pouring rain, thunder and lightening going off constantly. I was drenched, by bag was drenched, I had a hangover and wanted to crawl back into bed to listen to the storm from somewhere warm and safe.

At the bus station I was relieved to find out that there was a bus leaving that morning for Abra Minch. I still had to stand out in the rain until it was ready to leave but I felt safer there then back in the room beside his.

I waited until I was sitting on the bus, uncomfortably drenched but beginning to move to message Bereket:

‘Sorry for not replying last night. I am on a bus already. Thank you again for a wonderful day, I wish you all the best in life’.

The First White Woman

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Riding out of town on the back of Bereket’s bike he called out over the roar of wind in my ears; “do you like landscapes?”

We rode in the opposite direction to the Mago and the Mursi tribe. We rode into the hills, past small villages and hard working farmers. The hills were lush and green, the breeze was cool, and the further on we rode the more people jumped up and waved furiously at the sight of us. We rode on and on and I had no idea where we were heading.

Neat rows of people ploughing corn fields would all straighten up their stiffened backs. They would wipe the dirty sweat from their brows and squint in the harsh sunlight. They seemed bewildered when they saw my white face and white arms but they always waved. I tried to wave back at them all, but by the time their eyes adjusted and they comprehended what they saw I had already become a dot on their horizon.

Children would run along side the bike, not asking for money, just playing games trying to catch us.

At one stage we stopped for a rest beside an old man sweating over hot coals. We watched as he turned a scrap metal rod into a very sharp knife. He pumped air into the coals via a flat sheet of rubber spread across an empty hole in the ground. After he heated up the rod he would beat it into shape with a metal mallet and a stone. Of course he wanted to sell it to me, and cheap too, but I dint feel comfortable carrying a very large, very sharp knife around in my backpack. Then the man asked for the same amount of money for just watching him do his work. I was peeved, and nearly bought the knife – if I had to pay just to watch I may as well have taken something with me. But then Bereket paid. He insisted on paying even though I tried not to let him. I was confused and suspicious… cautious about what he would want in return.

We kept on riding along rocky dirt paths that I thought should be rode along at no faster than 20km, yet Bereket managed them at 50 and 60km. My body still hurt from the accident the day before, and I think the sweat I was sitting in was produced more from fear than the burning sun.

We were heading toward a village named Beneta. The closer we got to the village the more people stopped in their tracks, and dropped their buckets, babies and jaws. Some of the people we passed just stared, some lifted their palms in nervous half-waves. Most of them look like they’d just seen a ghost.

As we got closer to Beneta we passed more and more people all walking in the same direction and all of them staring in horror as we passed. Bereket warned me it was market day, and that we would soon be riding into a crowd of hundreds.

Sure enough we soon reached a clearing of moving colours. Bright colours. The ground was a hot orange, the sky a contrasting blue, the shade of blue in island travel brochures. The clothes on the hundreds of bodies was of every bright shade of colour that ever existed, greens, reds and purples. Cows and goats were scattered amongst people, trees had large sheets of patterned materials draped in every branch. There was a general murmur and chatter and excitement in the air.

Bereket tried to ride on past the market to park the bike, but no one in front of us would move. People had stopped dead. They look like they were glued to the earth or caught sinking in quick sand. They just stared at me. They nudged their friends in the back, who turned and gasped when they saw me. Some children screamed and started to cry. It was both noisy and silent at once. And I was self-consciously acutely aware of every part of my body, every movement I made, every time I blinked. Bereket gave up trying to drive forward and turned the bike off.

With the help of Bereket I got off the bike. When I stood up straight the people around me jumped back in fright. More and more people flew in closer to have a look as people wondered why the crowd had formed. When I caught someone’s eye they hid behind the person in front of them. Only children dared to come close. One child gingerly touched my arm with her finger and when I moved to touch her back the whole crowed yelped.

We all just stood there, staring at each other. They mumbled amongst themselves and Bereket translated for me;

“What is she? Is she real?” They asked each other and they asked him.

I could spot the few people in the back of the crowd who had seen a white person before. Although they were still curious they didn’t have quite the same look of horror on their face.

More of the ones up the front of the crowd had gathered courage and my arms and clothes were being tugged at and pulled.

Although some of the girls there had painted faces, as usual my tattoos drew the most attention. People stroked them and rubbed at them trying to get them off. They nattered excitedly amongst themselves. They noticed my stretched ears and although some were fascinated looking through to the other side, I heard a few say ‘Mursi Mursi’ which perhaps just confused them even more – certainly no other part of me looked like I came from the Mursi tribe.

Some especially curious women and children pulled back the waist of my shorts and peered in. They tried to raise my shirt up to my head and see what was hidden underneath.

But the funniest reaction was when I poked out my tongue and the glint of silver seemed to blind them. The look of horror and disgust on their faces was priceless. They covered their eyes with their hands and grabbed at their own tongues; “how does she live if she cant eat?” They asked Bereket.

They would poke their tongue out at me, indicating for me to do the same. And when I did they would clutch at their hearts. No matter how many times they saw me poke my tongue out they would react the same, gasping in horror, clutching their hearts and then asking me to do it again.

I tried to walk through the market but it was nearly impossible to move. At all times I had a crowd of between 50 and a 100 people. Women were fighting each other to hold my hand. People had started to notice the tattoo running up the back of my neck and they were eager to see where it spread from. People were unzipping my bag, wondering what treasures I brought with me.

I finally knew how it felt to be Lady Gaga.

Not one person asked for money. The whole experience was surreal and innocent. Their curiosity and intrigue summed up how I had been feeling for the past 4 months.

I was caught in one of the best moments of the entire trip, but it was exhausting, and stifling, and after 90 minutes I had to ask Bereket to try to get me out again.

I tried to see the market but it was a disaster when the crowd trampled all the goods spread out for sale. Fights were breaking out about who would hold my hand next. It had the destruction of a stampede, a very, very slow stampede.

We hoped on the bike and rode away. I tried to give my most heart-felt wave, tinged with apology for blowing in from no where, causing chaos and just as quickly leaving again. I wondered what the talk would be for days and weeks to come.

On the ride back to Jinka we stopped for lunch. I willed it to be the last injera I ever ate. I could no longer stomach it. After the meal I washed my hands and when I got back to the table I found out that Bereket had paid for our lunch. Again I was surprised and suspicious.

After lunch he insisted we go to a chat bar to chew together. After injera I really thought I’d vomit if I had to add leaves to the mix. I compromised by drinking chat tea instead, though it turned out to taste even worse than the leaves.

We rode back into Jinka as the sun was setting and he took us straight to the river. It was a good day, and I wasn’t quite ready for it to end. Although I had three days left until my flight this really felt like the end for me, and it was a good note to finish on.

There was a bus, two cars and a heap of motorbikes being washed in the river. There were naked men washing their clothes and their bits and not at all bashfully. Cattle were also being herded through the river, heading home from their day of grazing and the soap from the bathers was foaming on the surface. The water was only knee deep and barely moving yet families were collecting bottles and buckets to drink from. I wouldn’t have wanted to drink that water if I were dying of thirst.

Bereket asked if I would like a beer. When I said yes he whistled and a man wandered over. We handed this guy some cash and he got on a bike and rode off, returning shortly after with a half a dozen cold beers. I wrapped myself in Bereket’s cloth, drank a beer and watched as he bathed naked in the river. I would have gone in myself, but women were meant to shower further down stream and I was perfectly content to sit alone where I was.

Bereket and his Promise.

By the time we got back into Jinka I was exhausted. I had a lot on my mind, I was covered in literally hundreds of itchy little pink bites from Turmy, I was limping and holding my arm and still had dried blood down one side of my body after the motorcycle accident. I was sunburnt and I hadn’t eaten in 24 hours. I was sitting at a little bar in town guzzling a much-needed beer when Bereket, the hotel guy, found me. He had run into Andy who told him I was back and so he asked around town and was directed to where I sat. Argh! I craved anonymity again.

Bereket invited me to join him at the river.

I told him I needed a nap.

“Maybe later” he said.

“I doubt it” I replied.

Instead of a nap I decided to go for a walk up the hill to the north of the town. On the way a twelve-year-old boy who insisted that he was a professional tour guide escorted me all the way to the top.

“You are way too young to be a tour guide” I told him. I also told him that I was just going for a casual walk and didn’t need a guide. I told him that I wasn’t going to give him any money.

“No money, no problem”. He said and continued to follow me up the hill.

I told him again that I wasn’t going to give him money because I did not need a guide. And so when I got to the top and he demanded money I had an overwhelming urge to throw him off the side of the hill.

But when I said no again he looked hurt and cheated by me. I felt so bad I nearly caved and paid him, but then I thought ‘no way! If I give him money now then he will do the same thing to every other tourist that comes after me’.

At the top of the hill I found a tranquil lone house surrounded by perfectly manicured lawns and a view of rolling hills as far as the eye could see, extremely uncommon for Ethiopia, especially this side of it. With  little more exploration it turned out to be a museum.

I wandered in, I was the only person there, and I looked over photos of various people from surrounding tribes. I looked at their jewellery kept in glass cases and read their testimonials shared with researchers. I read that the Hamer women get beaten by their husbands if they don’t have coffee waiting for him when he returns to the village at night. I read that they get beaten if they stay at the markets for too long. I read that they are forced into marriage and forced into sex. I looked at the photos of the scars all over their bodies, proof of the ‘lessons’ they were taught by their husbands and fathers. And I read one very moving piece written about scars, it struck a chord close to my heart:

Scars are symbolic of many things at once. They imply both strife and healing. Scars mark the fissure between inner and outer worlds… Scars present a semblance of permanence, but they evolve and fade with time and are eventually lost, much like the memories stemming from them.

As I walked around the museum grounds I came across a woman I had seen in a restaurant in Turmy. Her name was Bex, she was German and working and living at the museum on an internship. She introduced me to Gail, an American woman also living and working at the museum. They invited me to join them for dinner.

Their ‘helper’ had cooked a vegetarian dinner and set the solid wooden table in the back of the garden overlooking the town bellow and out to the rolling horizon. The food was tasty, the company was pleasant and the surroundings were tranquil.

I left as the sun was setting so as not to get lost in the dark and went back to my hotel. I was coming out of the bathroom when I saw Bereket standing there waiting for me. My first thought was how much he had seen under the huge gap of the doorway.

“Come for a beer with me” he insisted. And finally I caved and agreed to have one, just to get rid of him.

Much to my surprise Bereket turned out to be a very interesting character.

First we talked about the Mursi. He said that they are actually very playful and that money means very little to them. He said that at the end of the day the women line up their notes and see who got more. Whoever had the most notes was the most beautiful and the most clever for tricking the Faranji’s (white people).

Bereket was from the Maale tribe, but he ran away when he was 10. Apparently as kids they are given a bow and arrows to practice shooting birds. When you shoot a bird you smear its blood over your body and go home to be welcomed as a hero.

Every day for months and months he tried to shoot a bird, and finally one day he was out shooting with an older boy in the village and this time he actually shot a bird down. However the bird that Bereket shot down landed closer to the other boy and before he could get to it the boy had smeared the blood of the bird on his own body. When they went back to the village everyone praised this older boy and no one believed that it was really Bereket who shot the bird down. In anger he ran away from the village, and to this day he has never returned.

He made it to Jinka and lived on the streets, polishing shoes and hustling for survival. He told me he was grateful for the day when a woman taught him to say “youyouyoumoneymoneymoney” (the words were like a knife to my own ears).

He looked up to the older guys who worked as tour guides and he decided that that was his dream. He tried to go to school but never finished and instead dedicated his time to learning English, and sure enough, 14 years later, at the age of 24 Bereket was a tour guide, with close to perfect English.

The next morning Bereket showed up at my hotel door. He said that he wanted to take me somewhere that no tourists ever go to. I told him that I was packing my bags to leave, to head back to Addis, to go home in a few days time.

He promised me that if I spent the day with him I would not regret it. He had borrowed his friend’s motorbike and was ready to take me away from Jinka for the day.

I didn’t really need to head back to Addis that day. I was a day ahead of schedule. But I was also suspicious. I had already had countless bad experiences with tour guides hassling me, ripping me off and expecting sex. But Bereket was a charmer, a smooth talker, and also good-looking, which is why I was so easily persuaded to stay in Jinka an extra day with him.

When I hopped on the back of his bike I wondered if I’d made a big mistake, I wondered how soon it would be before I regretted it.

The Mursi Tribe

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The next morning Elie and I hitched a ride in an already full truck. We wedged ourselves in the back, hugging our knees, bags falling on us and my head rhythmically hitting the cabin side. Elie jumped out somewhere along the way and the men drove me all the way to Jinka. I had nearly ran out of cash, my bankcard wasn’t accepted anywhere in the South of Ethiopia and I was relying on the possibility of a Western Union money transfer from my Mum in Sydney to my next destination in the bottom right corner of Ethiopia: Jinka. The driver of the truck took the last of the cash that I had, leaving me with a few coins, enough for one meal. I didn’t even get a discount for the economy class seats and all the new bruises I had acquired.

At Jinka I booked into the cheapest room at one of the cheapest hotels. The main problem with cheap hotels, apart from the fleas, was the toilets! Western toilets were only found in pricey joints, but for cheap-skates and budget back-packers at the end of their trip, like myself, I only had limited options and that included a shared hole in the ground. Plus, the guy at reception was willing to let me pay the fee the following day. Once again I had found myself penniless in Africa, and begging the universe to help me out before locals had to take the law into their own hands for thieves like I potentially was about to be.

I told the guy at the hotel that I had never had to use a toilet like that before to do… well… a ‘number two’. Of course I didn’t use that expression with him, I politely gestured and raised my eyebrows and he got the point.

Luckily for me I had found a helpful gentleman named Bereket willing to demonstrate for me. He spread his legs hip-width apart and crouched on his haunches; “see! It is easy! Just like you were doing it in a bush or on the street!”

I told him that I never done it on the street before and he was astounded!

That afternoon I did it. I used a hole-in-the-ground toilet for the first time (other than to urinate) and needless to say it was slightly traumatising. Firstly, the door did not lock. Secondly, it didn’t matter anyway considering the gap beneath the door when shut was so high it only covered my face and not all the important parts. Then there was the issue of aim and splash-back… although it felt liberating giving it a go, and being relatively successful, I also hoped that that first experience would also be my last.

That afternoon there was a knock at my door. It was Lalo’s brother. I wondered how he had found me, it wasn’t the first time I had been tracked down in my hotel, and I had that uncomfortable feeling again that every time I stepped foot into a new town whispers spread that a lone and vulnerable young white woman booked in to hotel X. Lalo obviously told his brother I was visiting Jinka, but Lalo didn’t know when, or what hotel I was staying in.

“Lalo said you want to see the orphanage? Come to my office so we can talk business”

I knew what this meant, he wanted me to sign up to the $25 a month.

“I want to see the orphanage” I corrected him.

“Ah yes of course. He replied. But first, the office”.

It frustrated me. If the orphanage was working I would have happily volunteered the sponsorship money, but for them to expect me to sign up to supporting them without even seeing it first not only was frustrating but also infuriating and disappointing.

I declined his offer to see the office and the orphanage.

That night I also got a call from the Bereket inviting me for a drink with him.

“How did you get my number?” I asked. But as soon as I said it I knew. When checking in to the hotel I had to sign in my details, including my mobile number, which I did without question considering that I was asking to pay on check-out. I also declined his offer. But my mobile rang 4 or 5 times that night, each time I ignored his call.

……….

Although Bereket offered to be my tour guide, I went with a guy named Andy. He was Gino’s friend, and seeing as I had no problems with Gino I wasn’t worried about Andy.

Andy picked me up on his rusty red motorbike at 6am. We arrived at Mago National Park, the home of the Mursi tribe, too early to pay the entrance fee, so we just rode straight through the gate.

About 7km into the park a tyre burst, we had no phone reception, of course! We were in the middle of nowhere. So we took it in turns to push the bike back to the park entrance, often uphill.

I was half way up an undoubtedly steep hill, sweat pouring down my face, and breathless I thought “I am actually paying to be doing this right now”. At that point a group of kids ran up to me, they could clearly see the strain I was under and yet without hesitation they all held their hands out and screamed:

 “youyouyouyouyoumoneymoneymoney”

At the park entrance 7 helpful village men made me a cup of tea while each of them huddle around the bike attempting to patch the tyre. The puzzled looks on their faces didn’t exactly fill me with confidence. But after an hour they finished, the tyre looked acceptable, I paid them and off we went again.

Back on the road we passed the point where the tyre had punctured. It was only another 10km along the track into the park when Andy took a corner too fast and before I knew it we were sliding along the ground.

We landed several meters apart, somehow he had flown free and I had landed with the bike on top of my right leg. Andy rushed over to lift the bike off me and help me up. I dusted myself down, told myself that it didn’t hurt and got back on the bike a little shaken.

Andy didn’t say a word. Maybe he was embarrassed. It took him a half an hour to notice the blood running down my leg and dripping off the side of my foot before he said sorry. It was my arm that hurt most though. I didn’t tell him about it, there wasn’t any point.

It wasn’t a good start to the day. At the time I put it down to not having had a coffee. But perhaps I should have taken it as a sign to not go any further.

Despite the puncture and the crash the rest of the ride through the Mago National Park was beautiful. It really felt untouched by tourists, construction and human damage.

However when Andy pulled off the pathway and slowed down at the edge of a Mursi village the first thing that I noticed was three large and obnoxious white Land Drovers.

Standing at the bonnet of each eyesore were six Farangi’s (white people) all with their camera’s poised ready to shoot.

Before Andy had even switched off the ignition a herd of black bodies had enveloped us.

“photo,photo,photo” They said as they swarmed in.

I slipped through them, I needed air, I needed to get my bearings.

The people that had surrounded me were quite exceptional to look at, though the aggression with which they had swarmed around me and demanded money had dampened any excitement I could have felt by marvelling at their adornments.

Some of them had white painted markings all over their bodies. Some had bullhorns swinging from their ears, many were draped entirely in heavy sets of beads and jewellery. The most amazing sight though were the plates worn in some of the women’s lips, the size of tea saucers, brown with etched lines of decoration. Their lower lips sat perfectly round well bellow their chins.

I sidled up to edge of a Land Rover.

“Now this is touristy!” I lamented. “How much are they asking for a photo?”

“5 birr… we’ve only taken 1” drawled out the high-pitched thick American accent.

I watched as they came closer to me again, lining themselves up and posing for the camera. Some of them had a woven basket under their armpit, and in the basket was a pile of 1,2 and 5 birr notes.

I was repulsed. Not by these people dressed up and posing for photos, but repulsed by us. By the line of white people facing them like it were a rugby scrum, cameras poised like weapons. I was repulsed by money itself, dirty pieces of paper, doing irreparable damage to the life of people who as far as I could tell had very little use for it. And I was repulsed by myself: What had I come here for? What massive global problem was I contributing to just by being there. I had become a part of this money-making scheme that is destroying the essence of a culture already on the brink of extinction. Of course I was curious, dying to see and learn something about these exotic people, just like people visiting a zoo to see wild animals from worlds away. But just like a zoo, in order for us to gawk and giggle, some beings have to suffer, trapped and exposed, stared at and judged.

Andy pulled me from the shooting line, insisting I walk around their village and look at where they live. Of course we were followed; “photophotophoto”.

The village was so small it felt like a movie set. It was just a few stick huts and there were no cattle, and it made me think that maybe this was all a tourist-ploy, a money-making set up. And that actually made me a little happier. I hoped that their real village, their home and their sanctuary was hidden from the eyes and cameras of us tourists.

Two of the women that followed us insisted I take a photo of them. One had a baby strapped to her back, and both of them had large protruding lip plates. I agreed and snapped a few shots, paying the obligatory fee. Through the lens of my camera I studied their blank faces, I was dying to know what they were thinking. The baby was covered in snot and flies and hung loosely off his mother’s back.

Then they took the plates right out of their lips and handed them over; “moneymoneymoney”.

The loop of their limp purple lips sagged even lower. Swinging down to their throat, like damp wet washing slung from a clothesline.

I bought both lip plates. ‘Why not go all the way with exploitation?’ I thought to myself. They were surprisingly light and made of clay. I wondered how many more generations of women would wear plates like this in their lip? Would these women’s grandchildren be giving up these delicately patterned plates for Adidas t-shirts and Ray-Ban sunglasses?

Several more people emerged through the clearing “photophotophoto”. They were grabbing at my arms and trying to open my bag.

There was a human moment though when they all stopped to study my own stretched ears, tattoos and visible scars. They laughed and chattered amongst themselves. It must have been odd for them, to see this foreigner marked similarly to them. Potentially I was the first white visitor with ears that mimicked their own.

When I poked out my tongue to show them my piercing they all gasped in horror. One girl tried to grab my tongue and they all stepped up for a closer look. How ironic it was that my tongue stud amazed them so much. I had travelled a long way to be shocked by their bullhorn ears and plate-stretched lips, and it was me who was astounding them!

When the shock had worn off them they started up again “photophotophoto”. I told Andy I wanted to leave. “Now?” he didn’t understand. “Yup now.”

I had been there all of ten minutes and it had been 8 minutes too long already. I wanted to get out of there, and I wanted to get out of there right away.

When I had dreamed of being there I had dreamed of talking to them, asking them about their lives and why they wore their plates. I had been dreaming in a naive lala-land. These people didn’t want to sit down and explain their life to me and share their stories with me, and why would they? They had most likely been harassed and probed and examined by foreigners all their life.

On the ride back through the beautiful Mago I had a lot to think about. About travel in general, about various societies and globalisation, and I also thought about my sore arm and leg, throbbing relentlessly since the bike had crashed.

Along the path back to Jinka clouds of butterflies swept up around us, lovely of course, except for the sharp sting of the ones that hit my face, caught in the speed of the bike. We saw monkeys and the most beautiful coloured birds I had seen since David Attenborough’s Life DVD. I silently wished that the Mursi tribe will magically be left alone to live in peace and that the Mago will stay as untouched and as beautiful as it was then.

The Miji Orphanage

When Elie and I got back to Turmy after two full days with the Hamer people I was dying for a shower and a beer and he was dying to eat a whole chicken.

Art the American Mormon joined us and so did Gino our guide, one of his friends, Didli whose village we stayed in and his sister-in-law. It didn’t take long for Didli and the sister in law to get drunk, but when they did they excused themselves and left. We couldn’t converse with them, but it was fun having them their, giggling to themselves and staring at us with curiosity.

I grew to like Art, though he remained creepy. He was worldly and intelligent, but I couldn’t figure out why on earth he was there. He said that he was writing a Hamer-English translation book, but had been there for a year and had never spent a single night in a Hamer village, and when I invited him to join me on my trip to see the Mursi tribe he said that he would love to but wouldn’t know how to get back without me. I suggested he catch a mini-bus like everyone else and he was horrified at the thought of it. It was then that I found out that he had been hiring private cars to chauffeur him between Addis and Turmy. He was nearly sevently, had a pacemaker and an internal defibrillator, so I guess that was a bit of a hindrance, but then why live in this tiny little village in the South of Ethiopia in the first place? I advised him to stop sleeping with 19-year-old local girls, in case his defibrillator started going off and ran out of batteries.

He did say one thing that really ran true for me, though I hadn’t put it into words, he said:

“I always feel white here but I never see black”

I totally agreed.

Elie was sweet but very young. He outed me to the Gino and his friend and when I blew up about it he said; “I didn’t know homophobia existed!... though I used to hate gay people”. He also said at one point that he doesn’t like Muslims.

It made me miss Chris, back in Namibia, probably the best travel buddy I had ever found.

I decided that night that I was determined to take a bus the next day to Jinka. In Jinka I would try to find the orphanage for the babies who were left to be fed to the hyena’s. From Jinka I would find someone to take me to see the Mursi tribe. Although I knew that they were one of the most famous tribes in the world, all I knew was that they had big stretched lips and ears with massive disks in them, and that the comparatively tiny stretched ears I had probably came directly from their culture.

I was tipsy and tired and said my goodbyes to go to bed.

I was just crawling into bed when Gino came knocking on my door. He had just seen the man who runs the orphanage in Jinka pull into the hotel and go into the room directly beside mine. I could not believe the odds! It was too coincidental to be true.

But sure enough Gino was not lying to me, and he had already invited the man to come and have a drink with us.

The man’s name is Lalo. He had founded the orphanage with an American guy, he too now lives and studies in the US. Originally he is Hamer.

He told us the story of when he was twelve years old and he watched his sister get drowned in the river by one of the elder women in his tribe. This was the second sister he had lost in the same way. From that moment on, at the age of 12, he decided that he wanted to put a stop to this practice. He explained that there are three reasons why babies and young children are considered miji (meaning cursed). The first is if they are born out of wedlock. The second is if their top teeth come through before their bottom teeth and the third is if a child falls and breaks one of their teeth before the age of 5. He said that these babies were killed to prevent the whole village from being cursed.

Lalo had made it his job to try to talk to the villagers and try to convince them that these babies are not a curse but a blessing.

There are now seven saved children in his orphanage, but it is impossible to know how many babies are killed in this way.

He said his plan is to send the children back to their village to live. I told him that I didn’t understand why he would want them to go back and live with a family who actively wanted them dead. He said that if he could show the family that these children were not cursed than perhaps those tribes would stop the practice of infanticide.

He told a story about a young couple who had fled from their village through the night into town to find him and give him their baby before it was killed by their parents. They were not married, but they were in love and had conceived a child. They had not fed the baby when they fled again back to their village. He spent the night with a hungry screaming baby, trying to find it some milk in a small village that was still asleep. The baby was a young child now, and Lalo was ready to send that child home again.

I told him that I wanted to visit the orphanage in Jinka, and he said that I could. But he also said that each visitor had to pay the equivalent of US$25 a month for a year. I wanted to go to the orphanage, and if I had seen that it was working I would have probably given money to support it anyway, but I was sceptical. I wanted to see the orphanage first before I signed up to anything, but he seemed to want the business deal the other way around. I got the details of the orphanage, arranged to meet his brother there the next day and went to bed tired, drunk and a little dis-heartened by the whole Ethiopian money thing.

The Jumping of The Bulls Continued

After all the beatings were over it was time for the jumping of the bull.

Slowly people drifted out of the clearing and got back on the same road. The bulls were supposedly waiting in another clearing not so far away.

On the road back we asked Gino to explain what was happening.

Apparently the Jumping of the Bulls is a boy’s initiation into manhood. A herd of bulls are brought together and held in place, lined up side-by-side, by the other men of the village. To prove that he is a man he must run up and jump on the back of the line of bulls, run across their backs and make it to the other side without falling off. If he makes it, he is a man. If not, he is shamed.

“So where does the beating of the women fit into all of this?” I asked.

Gino explained that by the women taking the beatings from men they are showing that they love this man whose initiation day it is, whether it is their son, their brother or their cousin. The more beatings they endure for him, the more they love him.

We got to the second clearing and took our seats to watch the spectacle. A man offered me his little wooden stool. This stool is usually for men to sit on only, women were to sit on the ground and not a stool. I had the face paint already, usually reserved for men only, so the stool kind of finished off that initiation.

The women continued to jump around, blowing their bull-horns and shaking the bells strapped to their legs. As about 25 bulls were herded in I was disappointed, not even a dozen were actually bulls, the rest were cows. But even so, they looked fierce, and fair enough too considering the beatings that they were copping. The cows had patterned scars decorating their bodies, and decorative pieces cut out of their ears, I could not shake the thought that these people were cruel to brand animals like this, to inflict pain on them for their own decorative purposes. But then again, I suppose if the women are willing to take beatings and wear scars for their men, then it isn’t a far cry for them to think the cows can also take beatings and wear scars for them too. The women had moved on from tormenting the men with their horns and instead began tormenting the cows. They were trying to riel them up, and were doing a good job of it. They blew the horns in their ears and pushed them and teased them, preparing them for the show.

At one stage ten or so men formed a tight little circle to have their ‘coming of age ceremony’. I wasn’t allowed to watch this one it was strictly men’s business. But all reports from Elie suggest that I didn’t miss out on anything. They do something symbolic with sticks, and that was about all I understood. It wasn’t nearly as dramatic as getting whipped or jumping over a bulls back, so my interest was quickly lost.

The animal cruelty magnified when it was time to try to get the cows in one straight line, I watched in horror as the men pulled them by their horns, their tails and their mouths, hooking their hands around their teeth even, yanking them in place and holding them down. The cows bellowed in agony and mooed in protest and for that it was beaten more, several times I had to cover my eyes with my hands, it was unbearable to watch.

The original plan was apparently to get 8 bulls in line, but the men had such difficulty getting them in place that they decided 4 was enough.

The man of honour stood at the edge of the circle, wearing absolutely nothing. I watched as he psyched himself up, I could almost see the pressure weighing down on his shoulders. ‘It’s only 4 cows’ I thought to myself, but I knew that it wasn’t the animals he was afraid of; I could imagine the shame brought to him if he didn’t jump those cows. I could picture him watching all of those women nursing their fresh wounds, reminding him that it was all for nothing.

The naked man of honour took his run up and jumped effortlessly onto the back of the first cow. He teetered on the edge, balancing on one foot for a second before he ran across the rest of the cows, arms outstretched for balance, wobbling only slightly before landing back on solid ground at the end of it.

He jumped back up and did it again, four times in total, each time he was successful. At another point he stood and paused, full frontal nudity, arms outstretched, the sun behind him, and I thought it was a breath-taking image.

He made it look so easy, I can only assume that it wasn’t, and that there was at least some level of skill involved. However, if I had a choice between leap-frogging cows and getting beaten until blood was trickling down my legs like the women did, I’d choose the cows.

Although the bull jump was not so spectacular, the whole day had been. It was surreal, so surreal it felt normal, and I am aware that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But as we packed up to go I wondered if some things are so hard for the mind to process that it just shuts down a bit and normalises everything.

We all got back onto the long winding road through nothing. A handsome and shirtless young Hamer man took my hand and we walked in silence side-by-side, hand-in-hand the whole way home. Elie had found an AK-47 and was wearing it across is chest. Hundreds of people littered the road, walking in the same direction. It was another stunning moment, watching the bright coloured beads and dull coloured animal skins around me. Listening to the jingling bells on a hundred women’s legs and listening to twenty-five tired cows mooing as the sun was setting on all of us. 

The Jumping of the Bulls

The next day we walked along that same empty road heading back in the direction of Turmy. From kilometres away we could hear the celebrations drifting over on the breeze. At first the sounds just flirted with our instincts, horns hooting mostly, but frequently enough to feel a sense of fervour. As we got closer the sounds teased us even more, we began to make out the rattle of bells jingling and people cheering. There was an unmistakable energy in the air and it was seductive and enchanting.

When we stepped through the clearing we found ourselves standing just meters away from hundreds of brown sweaty bodies. It was mostly the jingling of the bells that echoed around us, they were strapped to the legs of fifty or so women all jumping up and down on the spot in front of us. A few of the women were blowing the horns that cut through the continuous jingle of bells.

The women were wearing cow-skin skirts laced with coloured beads, their red-clay dreads were hopping up and down on top of their heads. They wore cotton shirts lifted above their stomachs and tucked under their breasts exposing their backs that were already proudly displaying the raised welts and bleeding wounds from the lashes they had been copping from the men and their sticks.

The men sat on the slope in front of them, perched on little wooden stools. They too were dressed for the occasion, coloured beads on their heads and in their ears and draped around their necks and waists. They all wore brightly coloured skirts tucked up well above the top of their thighs. As ‘traditional’ as they looked they all had western boxer shorts slipping out underneath, except for one old man, who didn’t seem bothered at all that his most precious assets were baking in the sun.

One or two at a time the women would jump up to one of the men. She would stand in front of him jumping on the spot, thrusting her pelvis toward him, back and forth, blowing her horn, and it seemed to me that her sole intention was to annoy him; annoy him enough to get him up off his little stool and drag him to the centre of the clearing.

In his hand the man held a long, thin, flexible stick.

The woman would stand less than a meter in front of him, still jumping up and down, her little bells jingling, and staring him in the eyes, daring him to hit her.

And sure enough he would.

He would raise his arm high and swing it down hard. Every muscle in his tightly toned and fat-less body would tense. The whip would crack through the air, wrap around the woman and snap across her back. The woman would not even flinch. Not a single woman that I saw that day flinched when she was struck.

When the stick broke the man would toss it away and go back to his seat. The grass was covered in broken sticks. The woman would stop bouncing, her bells would stop jingling and she would join her friends who stood behind her celebrating by jumping up and down and blowing their horns.

The blood trickled down some women’s backs. Some of the gashes were pussing and oozing a yellow fluid. And yet not one of them looked to be in the slightest bit of pain.

And the strangest thing was that the women kept presenting themselves for more. Even when they were hit so much that their backs were white and red they still went back for more. New lashes on fresh wounds, and still none of them winced with pain.

‘How barbaric!’ I thought as I sat in both awe and repulsion.

It was so barbaric and repulsive that I wanted a turn.

Gino got me up and led me to the centre. The only problem was finding a man who would hit me. The men all cheered and laughed but none of them were willing to hit a Western woman.

“She cannot handle it!” They explained to Gino. ‘Our women are strong here, but white women are not. It will kill her.” They kept telling Gino.

I insisted that I wanted to be hit.

Finally they found a boy who would do it. He was probably only 14 or 15, but not one of the men was prepared to strike me.

The women continued to bounce somewhere behind me, their bells filling my ears and my head. I kept my t-shirt on, not because I was cheating out of the pain, but simply because I was shy. And I didn’t jump on the spot either. I just stood their, face clenched tightly, waiting to feel the blow.

The boy stood in front of me, he looked more scared than I was, but he dutifully raised the stick and landed it down across my arm.

I barely felt a thing.

“Come on!” I yelled out. “Hit me properly!” and I gestured for him to strike me again.

He raised the same stick up (it hadn’t broken the first time so was still in good shape). And again he hit me and again I felt nothing.

“Hit me again!” I yelled and this time I was so determined for him to do it right that I stared him down and kept a straight face, I wasn’t showing any fear this time, I was showing him a challenge.

He raised his arm, and held the stick high, and then he brought it down.

I felt a sharp sting across the top of my back. It sent a shock through my body and my legs buckled slightly.

He definitely got me that time.

I laughed but I am pretty sure that my eyes welled up with tears. All around me the people laughed and I resumed my spot on the hill beside Elie, I decided just once was enough. Some of the men shook my hand and gave me high-fives one old man even hugged me.

The women resumed their spot in centre stage and one at a time they stood and accepted the beatings from the men.

The sting along my back did not subside, I relished the burning sensation and when I lifted my shirt to show Elie I felt a sense of pride when he described a purple line that spread from my left arm all the way along to my right shoulder blade.

The boy who hit me approached me with some coloured mud and with the tips of his fingers he gently painted lines around my face.

Only men had painted faces but I guess they made an exception for me. Another man painted Elie’s face, his lines were far more detailed than mine, but it was a man’s honour after all. Men got the warrior face paint, and women got the scars.

…To be continued…