Ethiopia X: The Dasenech and the Hamar

“Take your passports,” Bayuh warned us on September 4, 2019.  This morning we drove south to Oronate, the customs town 35 km from the Kenya border.  We descended the steep slopes of the wide, brown Omo River and saw two dugout canoes waiting for us there.  We gingerly arranged ourselves in the canoes, each propelled by a single rower with a long pole.  Our local guide had filled the dugouts with leaves as a cushion.  The water was just 10” below the rims of the canoes as we rowed across, without life jackets, with the dugout gently listing back and forth.  The local guide acknowledged that there were crocodiles in the river, but they liked the still, shady areas and not this thoroughfare across the river.

When we reached the other side, we hiked for a quarter mile to the Dasenesch village.  The Dasenesch are pastoralists who move from place to place.  This tribe seemed as impoverished as the Mursi.  They lived in round huts made from layers of tin and branches.  The huts were close together and there were no trees.  The spot seemed utterly God forsaken.

 Despite how depressing the Dasenech village seemed to us, there were lots of happy people.

 Villagers held a dance for us, jumping and singing.

  The highlight of my visit to the Denesch was my conversation with a young man who spoke amazingly good English.  He was 15 and will soon attend his last year of high school in the town of Oronate.  He will then take his college entrance exam and hopes to become a doctor.  “I will then work for the government and save up for more school,” he said.  He needs to pay 2000 bir ($60) per year for school fees (labs and computers), which he makes from tourists and “mechanic jobs” in town.  His mother had eight children, of which he is the youngest.  He took his mother to the town clinic when she got yellow fever, but she died.  His father was a polygamist with two wives, and the second wife helped raise him after his mother died.  I gave him 100 bir to help pay for his schooling.  As we drank pineapple Fantas with Bayuh and the local guides at a restaurant across the river from the village, after our tour of the village was through, Bayuh confirmed with the guides that the boy I spoke with was a member of the village.  “Maybe some of what he told you was true,” Bayuh said.

            

 We returned to Buska Lodge for lunch and a nap before venturing out at 5 p.m. to visit the Hamar tribe.  “I like this tribe,” Bayuh said, and we did, too.  Compared to the Densch’s marginal existence, the Hamar village was spacious, with the dirt compound swept clean and the cows, sheep, and goats corralled hygienically far from the villagers’ homes.  All was neatly organized.

 We watched one young woman dye another woman’s hair with butter and ochre clay.

The babies in the village were adorable.  One little boy, no more than two years old, took my hand and walked with me throughout the village, fighting off other babies who wanted to hold my hand, as well.  Finally, he got scared (or missed his grandma, who had agreed he could follow us).  Without a goodbye, he ran off to join the rest of his clan.

           

 Our guide negotiated the cost of a photo with so many people in it.

 The knob on this woman's necklace indicates she is a first wife.

 We watched the men arrive home from the fields with the cows, and the sunset blaze across the sky.  We then drove back to Buska Lodge and crawled inside our mosquito nets.

Ethiopia IX: The Kara Tribe and the Turmi Market

We drove south this morning, September 3, 2019, to tour a Kara village.  We stopped on the way to explore a field of termite mounds, some 10 feet or more tall.  As we examined them closely, we could see that they were their own ecosystems, teeming with ants and tiny white insects, as well as the termites.  Throughout this trip, hazy memories of my years in Ethiopia have become clearer.  I remember riding in a crowded bus across the Ogaden (or was it the Danakil Desert?) when our car broke down, and I remember exploring termite mounds.  But where in Ethiopia my family was, when those memories occurred, I’m not quite sure. (Note:  Virtually all the photographs of Ethiopia were taken by Mike.)

“Every tribe has something different, in its customs and dress,” Bayuh reminded us.  The Kara tribe, which we visited today, does body painting.  As we entered the village, some villagers already wore white paint on their faces and others retreated to their tukuls to apply white stripes to their faces and whole bodies.  “I’m trying to limit the number of bosoms I include in my pictures,” Mike said, in response to the many topless women we saw in the villages. 

We also loved watching the little children.  Many of them walked around naked until they were 4 or 5.  Bayuh explained that many children nursed until they were 2 or 3.  We watched one little boy climbing under his mother’s elaborate neckpiece to get a drink, as she sat unconcernedly on the ground.  Another little boy rode in this African version of a "Snugli".

We never did learn the significance of the full-length feathers tucked into women's hats.  Probably just a fashion statement.

Another typical fashion statement was layers and layers of necklaces.  I felt right at home, thinking of my 350 strands of necklaces back in SLC.

For the men, having a twig hang out of your chin was considered attractive, as was body scarring.

After visiting the Kara, we stopped at a market near Turmi, frequented mostly by Benna and Hamar tribesmen.  

We reached the market in the early afternoon and went first to the cattle market, where tribesmen were selling their animals to better dressed fellows from larger towns.  Bayuh pointed to a man in a leather jacket and said, “He might be buying meat for Jinka, or else buying steers to breed.”  The new owners brought ropes to lead the cattle to their new homes.  The man selling his cows, above, looks very suspicious of the well-dressed buyer!

There was a large group of tribesmen with beaded headbands and blanket sarongs lined up at the cellphone repair shop, and another group in the cellphone charging area.

We could tell which tribes the shoppers belonged to from the ochre (reddish) mud which dyed the women’s hair.   The red mud was mixed with butter and applied like hair dye.  The typical Benna or Hamar hairstyle was a fringe of tiny braids hanging around the women’s faces in a “bowl” cut.  First wives wore a necklace with a special knob indicating their status.

After the tribesmen finished their buying and selling, they relaxed in the area that looked like an open air bar!

Bees and bee products are important in Ethiopia.  The liquor drunk in the markets is "tej", made from fermented honey.

The typical stein was an empty gourd, with a twig to stir with.

We saw these tuk-tuks all over rural and small town Ethiopia, although they are banned in Addis Ababa, a city of five million people that has serious traffic problems.  Villagers piled in, paid a few bir, and didn't have to walk home.

Internet, electricity, and hot water.  Those are the modern essentials we look for in our “luxury” African hotels.  We assume the rooms in our hotels will be clean and private, with comfortable beds (and they are).  As we arrived at the Buska lodge in Turmi, less than 100 miles from the Kenya border, we listened with hope as the clerk told us that there would be internet and electricity from 6 to 11 p.m. and from 6 to 8 a.m. in our rooms, the restaurant, and the lobby, and hot water all the time.  We then tried out the internet and, predictably, it didn’t work in the bedrooms and only sporadically in the restaurant and lobby.  

The food was great, though.  “We’ll call it a ‘Buska Lodge special’ whenever we receive a lavish restaurant meal,” Camille laughed.  We alternate, for lunch and dinner, between Ethiopian dishes and spaghetti.  The Buska Lodge special was a large round of injera, onto which the waitress scooped half-cups of beef “tibs,” including a boiled egg, chickpea stew, meat sauce mixed with torn-up bits of injera, and mixed vegetables.  We washed it down with papaya juice.