Ethiopia XI: The Konso and the Droze

We spent the morning of September 5, 2019 driving north, over dirt roads, bumpy pavement, and an occasional, exhilarating stretch of new pavement.  Ethiopia already has one freeway, stretching east from Addis Ababa to its most-used port at Djiboui, and it is slowly building a better road system. At noon, we climbed an escarpment to Karat-Konso, the main market town for the Konso tribe.  We wandered through the market, which was authentic—no souvenirs.  There were piles and piles of tires, from which sandals were being made, and piles and piles of bright-colored, cheap clothes.  There was also an area where special pedal-operated sewing machines were set up, with tailors attaching bright borders of embroidery to white shawls, to create custom outfits as women looked on.

David finally bought some tire sandals to take home with him.

We then visited the Konso village, where our local guide led us through the three concentric circles of houses constituting the village, with the inner circle surrounding the top of the hill/mountain, occupied by the wealthiest members of the community.  Each circle was organized with private homes, community houses, and open areas.  Young men leave their parents’ home and stay in the community houses once they are 12.  

One of the customs is for young men wanting to get married to lift an extremely heavy stone and throw it over their heads.  Mike lifts weights, and he was able to lift the stone, with great effort, up to his waist.

Konso towns erect high monuments, with a branch added each year, to indicate how old the town is.

We kept driving north.  We paused to admire the view from a mountainside down to Lake Chamo, one of the southernmost lakes on the floor of the Rift Valley, and then to see eight cylindrical Ethiopian beehives perched in the branches of an acacia tree.  Honey is one of Ethiopia’s beloved products, served at every breakfast and made into the national alcoholic drink, tej.

Finally, we arrived at the spectacular Haile Hotel in Aber Minch, with a view of Lake Chamo and Lake Abaya, connected by “God’s bridge.” It would have been an elegant hotel anywhere in the world, with a marble-floored lobby and a wall of two-story windows looking out at the lake, two swimming pools, and air conditioned rooms with marble showers and comfortable, modern beds.  We wallowed in its richness.

We ate a delicious buffet of Ethiopian food at the Zebra Restaurant.  The guests at the hotel were mostly rich Ethiopian families.  Bayuh explained that this is where Ethiopian politicians, businessmen, and professionals come for vacations.  Since Ethiopians are usually very family-centered, they bring their children with them.

Our last tribal visit, on September 6, 2019, was to the Droze, who live at the top of a mountain 35 kilometers from Aber Minch.  Our local Droze guide came from the village but spoke good English, since he was on his summer vacation from a tourism program at a university in Addis.  He led us into his parents’ home, a very tall tukul shaped to look like an elephant—a style from 200 or more years ago, when there were elephants in this area.  

There were two rooms in the dark, dirt-floored tukul—an anteroom with a fabric-covered bed for guests, and a main room divided between space for people and space for animals.  We peeked into the animal section of the room and saw two cows and five sheep and goats!

  We met our guide’s mother, who was spinning yarn from the cotton from the family’s lowland farm.  She gave Camille and me each a chance to turn the spindle and make yarn.  

Our guide also described the many uses of the false banana tree growing next to the house.  The leaves are used for umbrellas and to cut up and feed to the house animals.  The trunks are scraped, with the scrapings fermented for three weeks, and then made into a sort of bread.  The roots are roasted and sliced, as for potatoes.   We watched as our guide’s sister scraped stalks from the false banana tree into a paste to ferment.  We watched her chop up a mess of fermented banana stalk paste to cut the heavy fibers.  We then watched her cook the paste on a large, round, ceramic slab like that used to cook injera.  Finally, we went to the fabric showroom, where we ate bits of the banana stalk pancake with honey and berbere. “The Droze are Ethiopia’s best weavers,” Bayuh told us, and we were entranced with the beautiful, colorful scarves and table runners.  

On Mike's and Camille's final day in Ethiopia, September 7, 2019, we stopped at  a national park near Lake Langano, a day's drive north of Aber Minch.  We walked with a park ranger into the acacia-covered park and immediately saw Grant’s gazelles, ostriches, and warthogs in the distance.  

We walked closer and closer, until the ostriches were just 10 to 15 feet away, raising and lowering their long necks to eat bugs (or leaves?) on the ground and in the trees. 

With his telephoto lens, Mike took winsome pictures of the warthogs, with their large curved tusks, watching us warily.  They looked tough, but they turned and ran at the slightest provocation, their fat buttocks wagging and their tails held straight up into the sky.  

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.