Ethiopia VIII: Jinka and the Mursis

On September 1, 2019, we flew from Lalibela in northern Ethiopia, through Addis Ababa, and south to Jinka, a couple of hundred miles from the Kenya border.  For nearly a week, we would visit tribes in one of most remote areas of Africa.

We picked up our local guide, Danny, and drove for 15 or 20 minutes to a village of the Arsi tribe.  This group of people was quite urbanized.  They wore western clothing but still slept in tukuls--round thatched huts.  A crowd of children pursued us and Danny kept them at bay.  He mock-growled at them and chased them with a tiny whip.  They’d retreat to a safe distance and wave.  When we stopped at a tukul to watch a villager distill liquor, the children crept through the cornfield next to the tukul and peered out at us through the corn stalks!  We also watched a blacksmith forge a knife.

We watched an Arsi woman pour injera batter onto a large ceramic skillet set above a fire.  Camille and I each got a chance to pour batter in a circular motion from outside to inside of the skillet, and then to taste the sour, spongy pancake that we made.

We walked back to our two Toyota Land Cruisers by way of the town water pump, where  the village children filled their yellow plastic cans full of water to carry back to the village.

 As we we returned to our rooms at the Jinka Eco-Lodge, Camille said, “I have to get my head around that room.  I reminded myself that I was just fine at girl’s camp, which had rooms like that.”  We each had a tent with no windows, and a bed encircled with a mosquito net.  There was a very basic bathroom at the back of each tent.  There was hot water from 6 to 9 at night and from 6 to 8 in the morning.

The Eco-Lodge clerk gave us ear plugs to wear at night “in case the church next door is too loud.”  I woke up at 2:30 a.m. to hear chanting, and it continued, off and on, until 5:45 a.m.  I drifted in and out of sleep, treating the chants as a lullaby, but Camille said she couldn’t go back to sleep once the chanting started.  “I would prefer that my native cultural experiences not be at night,” she sighed.

On September 2, 2019, our Land Cruisers drove to the town through which we entered the Omo Valley, where most of the tribes are located.  We waited for half an hour or more in the town.  “There is unrest between the tribes,” Bayuh said.  He explained that sometimes there is a murder or other dispute, and the government fears a revenge killing.  Finally, a truck filled with government soldiers armed with AK47s arrived and led a convoy of trucks and a few SUVs, such as ours, into the valley.  We soon turned off onto a dirt road leading to the Mursi village.  That was the last we saw of our armed guards, and we were fine.  (Sorry, but the above photo is from Google Images.  I didn't quite dare take photos of all the real soldiers with their guns.)

The first people we saw at the Mursi village were two little boys, 4 or 5 years old, stark naked.  They examined us curiously but without any embarrassment.  As we entered the village, we came across a group of women and children, sitting around a huge, half-skinned, half-eaten animal leg, with a hoof on one end of it.  The leg was red and bloody, and they were carving off pieces of it.  Bayuh explained that the Mursis drink raw animal blood, eat raw meat, and then dry leftovers to eat later as jerky.

The women swarmed around us, stretched-out pieces of skin hanging in loops from their mouths to their breasts.  They inserted round ceramic disks within those loops.  A slit is cut in each teenage girl’s chin, just beneath her mouth, and a disk is inserted.  Larger and larger disks stretch that area until it is loose enough for a 5” decorated pottery or wooden disk to be inserted.  The women tried to sell us decorated pottery disks and metal bracelets made from discarded bullets and other scrap metal.

Dave and I bought one disk and Camille bought a handful of them.  “Maybe my girls will like these for platters to put earrings and other jewelry on,” Camille speculated.

The older men were in the fields on this weekday, but there were some younger guys lounging around (protecting?) the village.

Some women were pregnant, swollen beneath the blue blankets they wrapped around themselves.  Some carried babies, strapped to their chests.  One baby, who must have been at least a year old, eyed us curiously and took a swig from his mother’s breast now and then, as if sipping a cup of coffee!

Some women had pierced ears and decorative scarring (see this woman's arm).

 Michael and Camille were in heaven, taking photographs.  The tribes people were very friendly.  They supplement their farming income by selling crafts to the tourists and charging for photographs.  In some villages, our guides negotiated a blanket photography fee, and in others, Mike and Camille paid 10 bir (25 cents) per photo.  Several young bachelors, in their blue robes, posed with Michael, and they also tried out Mike’s and Camille's cameras, taking shots.  That's Danny, our guide for both the Mursi and Arsi tribes, with Camille.  A group of little boys, ages 6 to 10 or so, gathered around me, pushing the buttons on my Fitbit.  The watch obligingly flashed the time, English words, and various icons for exercise, food, and heartbeat in kaleidoscopic settings.  I didn’t know there were so many screens on my watch, or that they flashed so many shapes and colors!  I was glad I could give the children something besides the candy, money, t-shirts, and pens that they clamored for.