In Ethiopia with a Mule

by Dervla Murphy

  Takla Haimanot II was murdered in 1779 and succeeded by his brother Takla Giorgis, who was forcibly exiled to Ambasal in 1784. By 1800 there were said to be six puppet emperors alive and already the royal buildings of Gondar were disintegrating in sympathy with the imperial power. Until the mid-nineteenth century the highlands ran blood as warring nobles strained to manoeuvre themselves closer and closer to the throne. These gentlemen were dominated by the rulers of Tigre, Shoa, Amhara and Gojam; but after the last two had been simultaneously killed in battle it was a newcomer to the struggle who won through – and Kassa, the ex-shifta, was crowned as the Emperor Theodore II. (His father, a minor chieftain, was reputed to be of the royal line. Nor is this incredible, for by then a considerable proportion of the population must have been thus privileged.)

  Theodore moved the capital to Magdala, where he was so soon to commit suicide after his defeat by Lord Napier. And my guidebook – remembering that Theodore is an obligatory hero in modern Ethiopia – tactfully explains that he ‘furthered the decline of Gondar with several punitive attacks on the city, damaging the castles’. In fact Gondar was not at that time in need of punishment, but Theodore was in need of treasure – and had always disliked the city – so on 2 December, 1866, he led his army into the ex-capital, plundered all the churches, drove ten thousand people from their homes and set fire to the whole place. Four out of forty-four churches escaped the blaze and the more solid castles survived. But these were again damaged by the Dervishes in 1888, by the Italians during the Occupation, and by British bombers during the Liberation. So it is surprising that the Royal Compound remains Gondar’s most conspicuous feature.

  It took me half-an-hour to stroll round outside the high, crenellated compound wall, past the twelve ceremonial gateways, which have such evocative names as ‘The Gate of the Judges’, ‘The Gate of the Funeral Commemorations’, ‘The Gate of the Spinners’, ‘The Gate of the Pigeons’, ‘The Gate of the Chiefs’, ‘The Gate of the Secret Chamber’, ‘The Gate of the Treasury of the House of Mary’. Then I entered the compound – buying a three and fourpenny ticket from a nice young man who made no attempt to ‘guide’ me – and for the next two hours I was disturbed by neither faranjs nor locals.

  Most of the Gondarine emperors built elaborately within this enclosure and, while walking through the long, burnt grass from ruin to silent ruin, one is touched by the element of make-believe that permeated those two centuries. Here a library was built, and a chancery, a ‘House of Song’ and a ‘Pavilion of Delight’. Banqueting-halls and palaces were decorated with silks, carpets, ivory, mosaics, porcelain, Venetian glass and China dishes. But all this was as far from the truth of the highlands as Addis Ababa is today. Beyond Gondar, in every direction, hard-riding, hard-fighting noblemen were living in hide tents, tearing at hunks of warm, raw beef, drinking mead out of horn-cups and not being at all impressed by the novel refinements of their static capital. Now these frail though fortified materialisations of kingly dreams lie deserted and despoiled, their irrelevance proven by history.

  This evening the Bank Director and the provincial Chief of Telecommunications took me to a tej-beit beyond the town centre. On our way we passed the market-place, where a public gallows dominates the scene. It is still used regularly and my companions pointed it out with pride, as an indication of how efficiently Law and Order are maintained in modern Ethiopia.

  27 January

  Today I met a compatriot, Nancy O’Brien, who is in charge of the Maternity Department at Gondar’s WHO-run Public Health College. We lunched together, and I spent the afternoon at her clinic, later visiting the hospital – which is not free, or adequately equipped, but is much less dirty and appears to be more efficiently run than a comparable institution would be in India. Mothers are allowed to stay with their sick children, as they wouldn’t bring them otherwise.

  Unlike most peasant communities the highlanders have no traditional village midwives. Instead a woman-friend comes in to deliver the baby, as a neighbourly act of kindness, and even in Gondar, where medical aid is so close, it will be sought, during difficult confinements, only after the sun had set three times since the labour-pains began – if it is sought at all.

  In Asmara and here I have been told, both by Western medical workers and educated Ethiopians, that almost 100 per cent of highland peasant girls have their clitoris excised at the age of eight or nine. The operation is performed by an elderly woman ‘expert’, who uses some crude cutting instrument, but strangely enough complications rarely follow. Highland men are convinced that excision helps to keep women faithful, though a UN seminar on the subject, held in Addis Ababa in December 1960, pronounced that the operation does not diminish a woman’s sexual pleasure, but can cause severe pain during intercourse. The Western-educated Ethiopians with whom I have discussed the subject were agreed that highland women are much less responsive than European or American women. As one of them put it – ‘Ethiopian men don’t know the difference, but in fact they’re biting off their noses to spite their faces.’ Which observation tempted me to amend the old saying, but since it seemed best to keep the conversation on a scientific level I resisted the temptation.

  Ethiopia’s foreign modernisers hope eventually to establish a network of rural Health Centres, staffed by young Ethiopians, which will provide not only treatment for minor ailments but elementary instruction on the isolation of contagious diseases, sanitation and personal hygiene. It would be ridiculous for me to judge the progress made so far on the basis of the Health Centres I’ve seen; but unfortunately none of the Public Health College students with whom I’ve spoken during the past three days gives me any reason to think that either Dawit or Asmare is exceptional. In addition to the difficulty of recruiting intelligent young men, this project is hampered by the highlanders’ resistance to change and by the influence of the debtaras, whose income would decrease if Western-trained medical advisers gained the people’s confidence.*

  28 January

  This evening I dined at the home of the Bank Director, a thirty-six-year-old native of Manz who has eight handsome, high-spirited children between the ages of eleven and two – though his wife looks like a young bride. In Persia, Pakistan or India his counterpart would live in Western style, but here the impact of the West is so recent that most homes remain essentially traditional. This Italian-built house is furnished – sparsely – with European couches and chairs, and at first a highland family gathering in a large, brilliantly-lit room seemed somewhat unnatural. However, I soon realised that the feeling was ‘true’, and our meal was a tukul-supper with all the refinements added, including some of the best tej I’ve yet tasted. Before and after a servant brought a jug of warm water, a tin basin, soap and a spotless towel for handwashings; and the very beautiful injara-stand of coloured wickerwork had a high conical lid, tied with leather thongs. When my host had said grace, wat of various kinds – meat, chicken and vegetables – were ladled on to the injara and we all drew close and set to. The second course consisted of huge lumps of grilled steak on the bone, to be picked up and dissected with one’s teeth, and for the third course large, square hunks of raw beef were laid before each person – with one of those razor-sharp meat-knives which are the only pieces of cutlery ever seen in highland households. To ‘carve’ raw beef experts hold one end of the hunk between their teeth and cut off a mouthful with a swift upward stroke of the knife, which skims their noses by a fraction of an inch. This skill I have made no attempt to acquire.

  During our conversation I again observed that goodwill towards the Italians which seems to be universal among educated Ethiopians. It is based partly on gratitude; as my host said, ‘We would have needed a century to construct the roads and buildings and establish the telephone communications that were provided by the Italians within five years.’ I find it pleasing that people rarely refer to the Italians’ ungenerous motives for thus benefiting Ethiopia; having got rid of their conquerors, the highlanders amiably choose to view the occupation as
an unmixed blessing. But then, those Italian atrocities which so horrified liberal Europeans were, to many highlanders, merely normal wartime behaviour; and it may be that the cruelty of the occupation forces made the Italians seem less alien than other faranjs. Among English-speakers I frequently hear Italians being spoken of almost as adopted cousins, Americans being derided for the usual reasons and Englishmen being praised for their trustworthiness but resented for their aloofness. No one, naturally, has ever heard of the Irish; so by now I have become a fluent lecturer on the history, geography, religion, language, agriculture and government of Ireland.

  29 January

  Today I celebrated the Sabbath by visiting a series of churches, beginning with Debre Berhan Selassie, which lies east of Gondar and escaped Theodore’s holocaust. This small rectangular church was built by Iyasu the Great; Theodore made off with all its portable treasures, but its murals remain – and are even finer than those of Derasghie Mariam.

  Most churches within reach of the road now proudly possess repellent Italian oleographs, beside which the clumsiest local painting looks like a Giotto. These abominations usually represent the Blessed Virgin and are much revered, being protectively shrouded in lengths of dirty cloth.

  In each church compound begging boy-deacons surrounded me. Normally I discourage begging, as the majority of highland children have no need thus to degrade themselves, but I did ‘give cents’ today since these boys are expected to keep themselves, while away from home, partly by begging and partly by making the fibre parasols popular among highland women. Most of them spoke a little English and I asked if they were going to become priests. Only one said ‘yes’; the others hope to attend the state school and apparently no one becomes a priest after receiving a lay-education – not because this disqualifies him, but because the state schools are so enlightening that ex-pupils could not possibly revert to following a priestly path.

  It is interesting that so many Gondare boys still go to church schools before entering the state school. During Gondar’s centuries as capital the static court, with its numerous clerical entourage, did achieve something positive by providing a centre for learning such as the highlands had never known before. This gave the Gondares a special place in the cultural hierarchy – and a reputation for snobbery, physical cowardice and an exceptionally dignified bearing. They also became renowned for their polished and subtle use of the complex Amharic language, and for the fact that a uniquely high proportion of their children learned to read the Psalms of David – which means that they completed the elementary course at the church schools. During this period so many young artists were attracted to Gondar’s schools of religious painting that a large section of the market was reserved for the sale of parchments and pigments. And, though Gondar’s sun has now set, an afterglow remains.

  30 January

  During the past week I have spent hours talking to the local representatives of Ethiopia’s new middle class, who use this hotel as their chief meeting-place. Many of them are very young for the positions they hold, since few Ethiopians over the age of thirty-five have had a modern education; some were trained abroad, but the majority are country-born graduates of Addis colleges, who now deplore their exile to Gondar. As individuals they are likeable enough, yet as a type they are unimpressive. When one sees them sitting at the bar, in their smart suits and pointed shoes, ordering espresso coffee and passing around packets of Craven A, it is startling to remember that a visit to their families usually means a return to a tukul in a compound on a mountainside – where it could as well be 1067 as 1967.

  The majority of students seem emotionally unstable and they admit to living in a state of guilty conflict. Frequently they are mocked, rejected – even whipped – if they return to their homes wearing faranj clothes, imprudently smoking a cigarette to emphasise their emancipation, and voicing outrageous, sinful faranj ideas. Yet enthusiastic – if unimaginative – faranj teachers tell them that it is their duty to preach to their people the gospels of personal liberty, scientific farming, hygiene and community development.

  The nature of the individual’s conflict depends on how deeply he has been influenced by his Western teachers. Some young men have said to me that they feel hypocritical when visiting their families, because fear drives them to simulate a loyalty to tradition which they no longer feel. Then, on returning to the city, they despise themselves for not having upheld their new beliefs, while simultaneously they are saddened to realise that they no longer ‘belong’ at home. Others have said that on holidays they feel relieved to be back in an orderly, comprehensible environment, though the material privations irk them; but these feel doubly guilty when again with faranjs, whom they have betrayed, and while living in an environment where every day they are conscious of defying their inheritance.

  There are countless distressing permutations and combinations of these fundamental emotions; never before have I seen the battle between Old and New leaving so many young people so seriously maimed to such little purpose. Granted this educated minority has been handed the key to Europe’s cultural treasure-chest but few will ever be able to discriminate between coloured pebbles and diamonds. Granted, too, these highlanders now wash regularly, and many can buy watches, transistor radios and television sets, and some can buy cars, and all can buy beer instead of talla. So they are being civilised. And when their numbers have increased their influence will bring the peasantry up to date, into the rat-race and down the drain like the rest of us. Nuclear weapons seem no more terrifying than the zeal with which we are chasing everyone else towards our own materialistic sewer.

  Unfortunately it is not difficult to chase young highlanders in this direction. Their craving for educational opportunities – preferably abroad – rarely signifies a love of knowledge; it usually means that education is seen to be the only possible route towards an improvement in their material and social positions. Always one of their first questions is ‘What degree do you have?’ – and they are astounded to hear that I left school at fourteen. How, in that case, can I afford to travel? Then they ask what my job is, and on hearing that I write books the whole thing becomes preposterous – for how could anybody write books without a degree? Many conclude that I must be a nobleman’s daughter (heavily disguised), or the child of some very learned debtara.

  Most of these young men are violently patriotic, and supersensitive to criticism of anything Ethiopian. However, too often their patriotism is based on illusions – such as Ethiopia being the leader of modern Africa, the most advanced African state, or the only truly Christian country in the world. This dream-image of the Empire’s greatness contents them, and they seem unwilling to deflect any particle of their energies towards the betterment of Ethiopian agriculture or public health.* (Agriculture is in any case neglected by the Government, which prefers to ‘get with it’ and encourage industry – a basic error not unknown in Ireland.)

  This afternoon I went on a shopping-spree, which is quite possible in Gondar, where the Arab-owned stores surrounding the piazza display goods ranging from German lanterns and Japanese tennis shoes to resin and cowrie-shells. I restocked on tinned emergency rations, dried fruit, matches, candles, insecticide, Biros and duplicate books – made in Britain. From the chemist I cadged a large empty pill-box to hold my coinage, for I have been advised that in the regions ahead paper money will not be accepted.

  One of my Gondar benefactors – Colonel Aziz, second in command at the Provincial Police Headquarters – has gone to a lot of trouble to find an old Italian pack-saddle which, in theory, will solve my loading problem. The heavy contraption looks appallingly complicated; but at least these complications are European-devised, so by straining my intelligence to its limits I may eventually come to terms with them.

  * Wherever Western settlers create a demand for green vegetables, root vegetables and fruit, these can be grown successfully in the highlands, but the locals consider all such foods inferior and never cultivate them for home consumption. Yet the highlan
d diet is healthier than ours in some respects. It is rich in calcium – as anyone can see by looking at the people’s teeth – and teff alone compensates for many deficiencies. This unique cereal is extraordinarily rich in iron, which explains why highlanders don’t show the usual symptoms of worm-infestation; their systems contain enough surplus iron to nourish parasites without any great ill-effects.

  * However, Donald Levine points out that ‘The public health worker is in a position to inherit some of the awe felt for the learned debtara, especially since the health teams operate out of centres which provide therapy as well as instruction, which gives them the benefit of association with the quasi-magical powers attributed to one who performs successful treatment. In addition, he can be aided by the Amhara peasant’s personal devotion to someone who has helped him and won his confidence. Whether this devotion can be stimulated depends, in the last analysis, on the character and resourcefulness of the public health workers themselves. Those who are able to communicate in a dignified manner with the peasants, who avoid dealing with them as an inferior and backward people, who refrain from flouting the most important norms, and who are on good terms with local authorities and public men, have a substantial chance of being accepted after an initial period of suspicion and alienation … Despite his idyllic conception of paradise and his frequent contention that life on earth is something of little value, the Amhara wants to avoid death … The expressions for greeting and farewell stress health. Most of the prayers and vows offered have to do with achieving health. Long, painful pilgrimages are made for cures, and much money is spent for the remedies of native practitioners and for amulets to ward off illness. This powerful desire for health and life operates as a lever to overcome the resistance to change … [and] … the view of the Amhara peasantry as incorrigibly recalcitrant and reactionary is a rather shallow one. Amhara peasant culture contains potentialities for change that are as real as its most rigid beliefs and its substantial antipathy to change.’