In Ethiopia with a Mule

by Dervla Murphy

  Meanwhile a distinguished-looking elderly man had joined the worshippers around the main door. He had iron-grey hair, almost black skin, handsome features and tremendous dignity; in his well-tailored suit and snow-white shirt he was conspicuous indeed among this filthy, barefooted throng. Having completed his ritual devotions he withdrew from the mob, carrying highly-polished shoes, and stood erect and motionless for over an hour in the shade of a nearby bell-tower, staring intently at the church and praying sotto voce. He was still there when I left.

  This afternoon I bought ten pounds of imported emergency rations – dried fruit, and tins of cheese and fish. The prices were astronomical, for in addition to freight charges there are import duties of 65 per cent to 100 per cent on all foreign goods. These taxes may seem unreasonable, but they are the Government’s chief source of revenue and the faranjs who buy most of the imported goods can better afford to pay taxes than can the Ethiopians. At present Ethiopia desperately needs more money, because in many ways this is the least advanced African country – a result of never having been colonised and a sore point among the few Ethiopians who can bring themselves to face the Empire’s backwardness.

  In general, relations between the Eritreans and the Italian colony seem to be excellent. The majority of the resident Italians have been born here and the fact that they chose to remain, after the union with Ethiopia, proves that to them Eritrea is ‘home’. All the locals to whom I have spoken declare that the Italians are their favourite faranjs; but a regrettable bond between the settlers and the Eritreans is their shared contempt for the rest of the Emperor’s ‘uncivilised’ subjects.

  During the past few days the weather has been quite cool. This plateau has an extraordinary even temperature. In May, the hottest month, the Asmara average is 65ºF and in December, the coldest month, it is 58ºF. Yet the Danakil desert, immediately west of the tableland, is one of the hottest places in the world. The mountains which make things so pleasant up here also bring to the highlands the Indian Ocean monsoon, from June to September.

  24 December

  Today’s mule-buying effort also failed. The servant reported that though he had seen a few good animals the prices were exorbitant – two hundred dollars, which is thirty pounds. He therefore advised buying at a smaller market, where it should be possible to get an equally good animal for half the price. This development coincided with an announcement by Major Bromley that on the twenty-sixth he must take two vehicles to Makalle; so we decided to make a minor expedition of it, Mrs Bromley (known as Peter) and myself going by car, the Major and the children by Land-Rover.

  In Makalle lives Her Highness Leilt (Princess) Aida Desta, eldest grandchild of the Emperor. She is an old friend of the Bromleys, who say that she will be happy to help me buy a good mule at a reasonable price. I can then spend a few days getting acquainted with the animal, and start trekking from Makalle when my foot is completely re-soled.

  My original route did not include Makalle, which lies south-east of the Asmara–Adua–Aksum trail that I had planned to take on my way to the Semien Mountains. I’ll now have to walk north-east to Adowa, before turning due south towards the Takazze Gorge, which divides the provinces of Tigre and Begemdir.

  25 December

  Having two children in the house – Christopher and Nicola Bromley – gives some point to the tedious ballyhoo of our modern Western Christmas. Ethiopian Christians celebrate this feast on 7 January, by which time I hope to be celebrating with them in the middle of nowhere.

  26 December. Makalle

  On our drive from Asmara my first glimpse of the highlands overwhelmed me. Their magnificent, ferocious beauty is beyond all expectation, imagination or exaggeration – even to think of it makes my heart pound again.

  We left Asmara at 10.30 and immediately outside the city were on an arid, red-brown plain, with low hills ahead and high mountains to the east. Then, beyond Decamere, the road swooped down and up for many miles through mountains whose configuration was so extraordinary that I felt I must be dreaming. Often we were driving on the verge of immense chasms, which lay between escarpments of pink or yellow rock that had been eroded to the most grotesque contrasts – and this tormented splendour is sustained for hundreds of miles.

  We covered 200 miles today, and one gets such a confused impression from a car that already I’ve forgotten where we saw what. I think we were near Adigrat when the Semiens first appeared, some eighty miles away to the south-west – a fantastic array of powder-blue ruggedness, their 12 to 15,000-foot summits seeming deceptively near and clear. Never have I seen such strange mountains; they look like peaks in a cartoon film. We were then on a 9,000-foot plateau and between us and the Semiens lay this fissured wilderness of gorges, cliffs and lesser mountains. In the middle distance was a curiously perfect cone, and there were several solitary, flat-topped, steep-sided ambas, rising abruptly from a surrounding area of level ground. These ambas form almost impregnable natural fortresses and their rôle in Ethiopian history has been so important that one looks at them with awe, rather as though they were the venerable veterans of some remote and famous battle.

  My map marks six ‘important’ towns between Asmara and Makalle, yet none of them seems more than a large, shoddy village. Those in Eritrea were important once, but since the Italians left the bigger houses have become roofless ruins, on which faint lettering indicates that thirty or forty years ago Italian grocers, barbers and hotel-keepers were in residence. The locals never moved into these comparatively solid and spacious houses, preferring to live on in their own rickety, cramped, tin-roofed shacks. Here corrugated-tin roofs are not merely a status-symbol, as in Nepal, but a means of collecting precious rain; and in such a barren region the use of every raindrop justifies even this ugliness.

  Though we were driving on one of Northern Ethiopia’s only two motor-roads we passed no other private cars and saw not more than six or seven trucks. Between Decamere and Senafé a convoy of nine buses approached us, escorted by two smart army vehicles, bristling with machine-guns. This is the hub of the shifta country, where private cars rarely travel unescorted unless flying a flag that denotes diplomatic privileges. I noticed that here even Peter, who has nerves of steel, was slightly tensed up, despite the large Union Jack fluttering conspiciously on our bonnet. But she assured me that the danger was minimal as shifta specialise in buses; if the owners of Transport Companies don’t regularly pay a protection fee their vehicles are pushed over precipices.

  Makalle lies west of the road and previously it was necessary to overshoot it and then turn back north from Quiha; but a few years ago Leilt Aida’s husband, HH Leul Ras Mangasha Seyoum, the Governor-General of Tigre, designed a direct ten-mile jeep track to the town, and did most of the construction work himself with a bulldozer and tractors.

  As we hairpinned steeply down the mountainside I had my first glimpse of Tigre’s provincial capital – a little town sheltered by eucalyptus trees on the edge of a wide and windswept plain. My guidebook claims that Makalle ‘gives the impression of a boom town’ – and perhaps it does, to those who knew it ten years ago. To me it gives the impression of a neat feudal settlement, gathered happily around the somewhat misleadingly named ‘palace’ of the Emperor Yohannes IV. It has such an atmosphere of remote tranquillity that neither the turmoils of its past nor the progress of its present are easily credited. We drove straight to the new tourist hotel, a converted eighty-year-old castle, managed by Indians, which stands small and square on a low hill. Here prices are reasonable (about twenty-five shillings for bed and breakfast) and, though tourist hotels are not my natural habitat, I find the wall-to-wall carpeting and the pink-tiled bathroom sufficiently compensated for by eccentric electricity and a moody water supply. When countless servants had pitted themselves against the plumbing for over an hour we achieved baths, before setting off to dine at the palace – me in my Husky outfit, which seemed one degree less removed from palatial evening-wear than a pair of ill-fitting Cairo-tailored shorts.
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  At present Ras Mangasha is away in the mountains, building another road, so Leilt Aida appeared alone in the courtyard to receive us. It can be disconcerting to meet a princess who seems like a princess; one feels as though a fairy-tale had come true – especially with a background of high turrets standing out blackly against a moon-blue sky. Haile Selassie’s eldest grandchild is very elegant and very beautiful – olive skinned, with a triangular face, large and lovely eyes and the finest of bones. The likeness to her grandfather is at first quite intimidating, but is soon countered by a subtle sense of humour and a kindly graciousness. Clearly she is going to be a wonderful ally – concerned for my safety, but only to a sensible extent. She has not opposed my setting out through the Tembien sans guide, sans guard, though she insists on giving me letters to the various district governors, who are being instructed to help me if I’m in difficulty.

  Yohannes IV’s stone palace-fortress was constructed by an Italian workman, named Giuseppe Naretti, and its practical solidity fittingly commemorates one of Ethiopia’s greatest warrior Emperors. But the many cavernous reception rooms are not very suitable for a family of eleven and innumerable servants, so an inconspicuous bungalow has recently been built on to the south wing.

  As I write a fiendish gale is tearing around the hotel, incessantly howling, whining, rattling and roaring. Makalle is renowned for these strong, cold winds, which rise during the late afternoon and continue until dawn.

  27 December

  This morning I mentioned mule-buying to Leilt Aida – and such is the Imperial Magic that within twenty minutes no less than six pack-mules were being paraded before me, by hopeful owners, in the stable-yard behind the palace.

  My choice was quickly made, for one animal looked much superior to the rest. He is about thee years old, with perfect feet, a good coat and an apparently docile nature. It seemed auspicious that he meekly allowed me to open his mouth and pick up his feet, and when I took the halter he followed me around the yard like a lamb. He is dark grey, with a black off-foreleg, a white saucer-sized spot on the withers, a large chestnut patch on the near flank and a few white stripes on his belly. But the most important – and surprising – thing is his endearing expression. It had never occurred to me that one could be on more than civil terms with a mule, yet I can foresee myself becoming fond of this creature, for whom I willingly paid 105 dollars (fifteen guineas). The owner was an affable character, who considerately admitted that his animal had never seen a motor vehicle until today, and would therefore be inclined to ballet-dance on main roads.

  I immediately named my new comrade ‘Jock’, in honour of a friend of mine who is noted for his kind dependability and capacity for overworking every day of the year – qualities which one hopes will be encouraged in Jock II by this talisman of a mutual name. I trust the friend in question will appreciate the compliment of having a mule named after him. As compliments go it is perhaps a trifle opaque at first sight.

  Watering Jock in the stable-yard proved to be a little difficult; he had never before drunk from anything save a stream and was shy of both tank and bucket. When he had at last followed the example of a palace mule, I led him into a stable and left him settling down to a feed of barley. The buying of accessories was postponed till tomorrow, as Leilt Aida had arranged to take us to the Leul’s road-building camp for a picnic lunch.

  The age when arrogant, energetic highland princes were the de facto rulers of their provinces has passed, but one can see traces of it in Ras Mangasha’s career as Governor-General of Tigre. His position is a curious one. Officially he is a senior civil servant in a centralised bureaucracy; actually he remains the hereditary prince of the Tigreans – a people to whom bureaucrats mean nothing and feudal lords everything. This vigorous great-grandson of Yohannes IV has shown a traditional independence in organising his latest project. Instead of submitting his scheme to the relevant procrastinating ministry in Addis he designed the road himself (though without academic training as an engineer), appealed to the peasants to help him, took off his shirt – literally – and got on with it. The peasants are now willingly contributing unpaid labour, though if an unknown official from Addis requested this sort of co-operation he would get a stony stare from these same people. The work has been in progress for only fifteen days, yet ten miles of road have been completed; and it must give Ras Mangasha considerable satisfaction personally to lead the peasants in this communal effort as his forefathers led their forefathers in battle.

  At 11 a.m. we left Makalle in a battered chauffeur-driven Mercedes and followed the main road towards Addis for an hour and a quarter, seeing no traffic except large mule and camel caravans on their way to the Danakil Desert to fetch salt. When we turned off the main road to begin our nine-mile climb the new track rounded many well engineered hairpin bends and near the summit of the range’s highest mountain we stopped at a tiny caravan – Ras Mangasha’s temporary home. Today’s work-party was visible at the end of the road, and soon the Leul came slithering expertly down a cliff to greet us – stocky, self-confident and dark-skinned, with bright, enthusiastic eyes and work-roughened hands. He has none of his wife’s calm depth and his conversation at once reveals a certain naïvety of approach to this complex transition period in Ethiopian history; but one feels that he genuinely loves his people and that they love him.

  We sat on a boulder, and were served with injara, wat, talla and tej while watching a giant bulldozer edging its way along a precipice, pushing over the verge tons of rock already loosened by the herculean endeavours of ill-equipped peasants. It was thrilling to see and hear these colossal chunks of mountain go rolling and rumbling through the undergrowth into the invisible depths of the valley below. Apart from the workers, scores of men, women and children walk for miles every day just to watch, and they feel that this machine which moves mountains must be operated by some high-powered magic, lately discovered through the cleverness and virtue of their Prince. Frequently, during our picnic, Ras Mangasha leaped to his feet and yelled frantic warnings at open-mouthed onlookers who had chosen to stand and stare in the path of lethal boulders. As Leilt Aida remarked, these recurrent dramas were very bad for everyone’s digestion. Not to mention the fact that from our angle the bulldozer itself looked in imminent danger of following the rocks.

  Despite the bulldozer, the tractors and the Mercedes this scene was essentially of another age. As we ate, several peasants approached Ras Mangasha to present gifts of bread. They came towards us bent double, holding out the leaf-wrapped loaves with both hands and not daring to raise their eyes; but when a servant had accepted the gift some of the bolder spirits came closer and, after a moment’s hesitation, reverently touched the muddy princely boot with their fingertips.

  Archbishop Mathew has remarked that until the accession of Yohannes IV ‘the sustained element of the picturesque, which was so marked a feature of court life in Ethiopia, was lacking in the viceroyalty of the Tigre. … These viceroys were without a sense of dynasty, armed chief had followed armed chief. … There could be nothing withdrawn or sacred in such a feudal history.’ However, since the reign of Ethiopia’s only Tigrean Emperor this province has adopted the rigid, stylised etiquette that for so many centuries regulated the behaviour of the Gondarine and Shoan courts – though the differing traditions are remarkably reflected in the personalities of Leilt Aida Desta and Leul Ras Mangasha Seyoum. Yet neither is pure-blooded, for theirs is not the first marriage alliance between the rival royal houses of Tigre and Shoa. When Yohannes IV was dying on the battlefield of Gallabat he named as his heir Ras Mangasha, an illegitimate son by his brother’s wife (his legitimate heir had already been poisoned), and this man became the future Emperor Menelik’s only serious competitor. Soon Menelik had vanquished the Tigrean prince on the battlefield and he then compelled Ras Mangasha to divorce his wife and marry a niece of the Empress Taitu. It was after this Mangasha’s son – Seyoum – had been killed in the 1960 revolution that the present Leul became head of the family.r />
  As I watched the peasants paying homage to their Prince I thought of all this tangled background – which partly explains why Ras Mangasha maintains no royal aloofness. His noted accessibility is a reversion to type, though it bewilders the Tigrean peasants, who know little of their own history and have long since accepted the formal Amharic code.

  When we got back to the palace I hurried out to see Jock, who was looking a little forlorn in his new quarters. We took a short stroll, and I then decided that since both my feet feel comfortably re-skinned we can start our trek on the twenty-ninth.

  For dinner Leilt Aida provided us with a sheep roasted whole on a spit. It looked romantic and tasted delicious.

  28 December

  This morning I woke at 6.30 to see Christopher and Nicola standing by my bed, pleading to come with me as far as Aksum. They are a tough pair – born and bred in Southern Ethiopia – so I said that of course they could come, if parental permission were granted. But in the end this daydream was reduced to Christopher’s accompanying me on tomorrow’s stage and being retrieved in the evening by a palace car.

  When the other Bromleys had left for home Christopher and I went to the open-air market, where I hoped to find a suitable walking-stick. The market-place covers about two acres and scores of villagers from surrounding districts – the majority women suckling babies – sat on the dusty ground behind small piles of eggs, grain or unfamiliar herbs. All these highlanders wear rags and look filthy beyond description – which is hardly surprising, with water so scarce.