In Ethiopia with a Mule

by Dervla Murphy

  Then I decided to compromise by offering one dollar – and immediately all three closed around me, gesturing towards the path and yelling ‘Hid! Lalibela! Hid! Lalibela!’ Possibly this was an attempt to cow me; they may have assumed that I would be afraid to spend a night on the mountain. I was about to leave, in a fury, when a tall youth stepped forward from among the debtaras. He spoke a few words of English – with which he tried to soothe me, before turning to the priests and suggesting that they read the Governor’s chit. Apparently none of them was sufficiently literate for this, so he himself laboriously read it aloud; but the voice of officialdom made no impression.

  Meanwhile I had been retrieving my temper. I explained that if the clergy would show a minimum of civility, and unlock the church, I would make a suitable donation on departure; but they obstinately repeated that they wouldn’t open even the enclosure door for less than five dollars. Whereupon I beckoned to poor Giorgis – who had been cowering behind a boulder – and started back up the path. Forgetting my tiredness in my rage, I moved fast – but was checked by shouts from below, offering to open the enclosure for E. $1.50. I was tempted to ignore this haggling, yet I did want to see Imrahanna Kristos. So I returned, handed over the ‘reduced fee’ and was admitted to the cave, with a promise that I would be shown the interior of the building tomorrow morning.

  This 800-year old church has horizontal bands of whitish plaster and black wood which, seen through muted cave-light, surprisingly recall medieval England. The building is only forty-two feet long and its sanctuary is roofed by a low dome, not unlike a Buddhist stupa. It was built by a priest-king, Imrahann Kristos, who reigned from about 1110–1150 and of whom it was written in an ancient manuscript (seen here in the 1520s by Francisco Alvarez) that ‘during the whole life of this King he had not taken dues from his vassals, and that if anyone brought them to him he ordered them to be distributed among the poor’. It seems that these royal ideals have ceased to inspire the local clergy. Walking around the church, past the tombs of the king and his saintly daughter, I noticed another link with Buddhism in the swastika design which decorates some of the very beautiful carved wood and pierced stone windows. And suddenly, in this remote shrine of fossilised sanctity, the moribund religion of modern Ethiopia seemed intensely tragic.

  At the back of the cave, which is roughly half-moon shaped, lies a mysterious mound of scores of disintegrating mummies. Clambering over them through the gloom I found myself breaking a child’s ribs – and its left arm and hand were a few feet away. This embalming effort was so unsuccessful that there are many more skeletons than mummies – though most of them are still partly enclosed in ‘shrouds’ of wickerwork, tied with string, which seems to indicate that they are not very old. No one has any definite information about their origin. The most plausible theory is that they are the remains of a pilgrim group who died here during some epidemic, but it is not clear why they should have been embalmed and deposited in such a sacred spot, instead of being buried like anyone else – unless perhaps they were particularly distinguished pilgrims, whose corpses deserved this special honour.

  When I left the cave one of the younger priests informed me that I could eat and sleep in his tukul on payment of E. $2. I replied acidly that I was in no need of hospitality, gave him E. $1 for Giorgis’ board and lodging and retired to this ledge below the settlement – where I’m overlooking a long, wild valley, now softly filling with dusk.

  It is unfortunate that so many tourists get their only impression of the highland peasantry from meeting priests at such places as Aksum, Gondar and Lalibela. Donald Levine has remarked with restraint that ‘though there are devout and kindly men among them, the Ethiopian priests have never been particularly noted for their moral qualities’. Exercising less restraint, I would add that the highland priesthood seems to attract the worst type of highlander – or rather to breed him, since the priesthood is mainly hereditary.

  It is interesting that the clergy here treated the Governor’s chit with such contempt. During the past thirty years Haile Selassie has been gradually reducing clerical power in the interests of progress, but evidently his reforms have not yet penetrated to Imrahanna Kristos. On this issue the Italian occupation helped the Emperor, for many traitorous priests lost the respect of their flocks and two bishops publicly supported the enemy – one so forcefully that he forbade Christian burial for Patriot fighters. But Haile Selassie’s greatest victory, in his subtle anti-clerical campaign, has been the cutting of the umbilical cord between the Ethiopian Church and the Alexandrian Patriarchate. This victory has flatteringly raised the status of Ethiopia’s own church dignitaries; but it has also given the Emperor complete power over the clergy, who previously – under their Egyptian Abuna – wielded an authority independent of the state.

  12 March. Lalibela

  It was dark when I woke this morning, yet the priests were already celebrating the Eucharist. I lay warmly in my flea-bag, gazing up at a starry highway running between black mountain massifs and listening to that antique, solemnly beautiful chanting, which has been so strangely preserved amidst the decay of church buildings, doctrines and morals. Ten minutes later day came – at first faintly, to the crests high above, then with a quick flood of light that poured gold into the valley.

  At 6.30 we entered the cave but to my indignant surprise I was again refused admission to the church, by a group of sullen debtaras who were obviously acting on orders from the priests. I waited until the service was over but the priests didn’t leave the church immediately, as is usual. Then the debtaras rudely pushed Giorgis and me towards the enclosure gate, pointing up the Lalibela path and looking ‘Hid!’ without actually saying it. Poor Giorgis had been in a state of mingled fear and embarrassment ever since we arrived yesterday, and now he indicated that it would be best for us to go. So we went, with my main objective unachieved.

  I suspect these priests of having recently illegally sold some church treasures to a faranj. This trade has become fairly common and in an effort to curb it the Government is aided by reputable foreign experts who, on visiting a church, take an inventory of all its treasures. It is a pity that I am not recognisable as probably the greatest non-expert on church treasures ever to visit Imrahanna Kristos.

  I felt so much fitter today that I was only half-tired when we arrived here at three o’clock; and Jock looks quite rejuvenated, so off we go in the morning.

  13 March. Kulmask

  Today we were following the jeep-track (my guide book elegantly terms it a ‘provisory road’) that links Lalibela with the Asmara–Dessie–Addis motor road. About once a month a vehicle uses this track (the 130-mile journey takes ten or eleven hours) and it seems miraculous that even a jeep can cope. Last week a WHO Malaria Eradication team left Lalibela and today the tyre marks were still discernible – luckily, since I was often dependent on them to guide me over stretches where nothing else indicated that here lay a track.

  From Lalibela we descended to a wide, hot, arid valley and during the next two hours I found myself becoming depressed by my surroundings, for the first time in these highlands. This valley is still inhabited and we passed several settlements, two small herds of emaciated cattle, and a few neglected, unploughed fields from which the last thin teff crop has long since been harvested. Yet I saw not even one shepherd-boy, and as we walked between endless low, grey-brown hills, disfigured with dead scrub, the whole sun-plagued scene reeked of misery. The junipers, which somehow contrive to look freshly green everywhere else, were withered here and even the cacti hung limply. One felt that the remaining population had accepted the nearness of death and were sitting dully in their tukuls, not trying any more. Deserted, uninhabited landscapes delight me but the memory of that still, suffering valley will haunt me for a long time to come.

  A gradual two-hour climb took us to a higher valley – long, broad, well-cultivated and walled by tremendous chunky ranges. I paused at the rectangular rock church of Geneta Mariam, which has an unexpected, magn
ificent colonnade under a sloping roof; but no keeper-of-the-keys was to be found in the nearby settlement.

  During the afternoon the steady breeze became a strong wind, which by six o’clock had risen to gale force and blackly clouded the sky. We arrived at this little town half-an-hour after sunset and when I saw a young man in a Western suit standing at the lamp-lit doorway of a shack I guessed, correctly, that he was a teacher. I am now installed in his room and Jock is audibly munching corn at the other side of the wall.

  For the past two hours my host and I have been conversing in shouts above the welcome drumming of heavy rain on the tin roof. Hailu is Addis-born and full of grumbles about having been forced by the Government to come to this godforsaken town for two years. There are five other teachers here, two of whom are women, which is unusual.

  Now the servant is unrolling my flea-bag on a cowhide on the earthen floor – to Hailu’s distress, for he wants the guest to have his bed. It is very agreeable to be in a country where one needn’t hesitate about sharing a bedroom with a young man whose face one hasn’t even seen clearly. Whatever the other hazards of highland travel, a woman knows that as a woman she can trust every man in every circumstance. This remarkable chivalry is so integral a part of the highland atmosphere that I had come to take it for granted – until it was underlined recently by the behaviour of an ostensibly civilised faranj, who was also staying at Lalibela and who never suffered from the hotel-manager’s initial delusion. His attempts to make me drunk, and then to invade my room, provided much food for thought on the subject of Comparative Civilisations.

  Cynics like to explain away the highlanders’ code of chivalry by referring to their habitually varied sex-lives. However, even in Ethiopia variety is not easily obtainable in settlements or villages and an explanation which appeals to me much more was given by Colonel Aziz. He said that traditionally the highlanders regard unknown women as representatives of the Virgin Mary, and he added – with a realism which acted as a splendid foil to this romanticism – that if any unknown woman indicated that she would appreciate some relaxation on her way then the local men would be happy to oblige; but the initiative must be hers. Here the cynics may scoff, yet my own experience of the highlanders’ behaviour convinces me that Colonel Aziz’s explanation is essentially true.

  14 March. A Compound in a Valley

  When we left Kulmask this morning the air was sharply fresh, running water sang on every slope, the track was deep in sticky mud and it seemed that the valley below Lalibela must surely be a thousand miles away.

  From Kulmask to Waldia the ‘provisory road’ goes a long way round, so we followed the old track through high ranges that were utterly different from anything else I’ve seen in Ethiopia. This fertile region is thickly populated and we were crossing irrigated fields and richly moist ploughland, or walking between bright slopes that swept greenly down in unbroken lines from the grey jaggedness of high escarpments. On these generous pastures grazed many herds of cattle, horses and goats; and at midday we reached sheep-level, where there were few settlements or fields.

  Here a piercingly cold gale opposed us from the east and by 1.30 surly purple clouds were hanging low above us, and thunder was incessantly crackling and roaring around the nearby summits and with its echoes producing a strange, wildly beautiful rhythm. Then hail briefly scourged this high plateau with such violence that I took refuge beneath Jock’s belly.

  Ten minutes later we stepped on to the edge of the tableland and below us, to north and south, lay stairways of lower mountains, their giant steps gleaming white. For a moment I imagined that it had been snowing; then I realised that this was where the hailstorm had spent itself. Here the sun shone again and the lighting was almost intolerably beautiful. Beyond these sparkling ledges were motionless layers of dove-grey or navy-blue clouds, half concealing rough summits, and far, far beneath, in a golden valley, ripe grain glistened like a silken carpet.

  While Jock grazed I sat on a rock and looked with joy at all this loveliness; but soon after we had begun the descent I was regretting not having looked more intelligently at the precipice and less ecstatically at the loveliness.

  This 500-foot escarpment provided a new kind of wrack for my nerves. It was almost sheer and it jutted out over the valley – which lay another 1,500 feet below, with nothing but good fresh air in between. Even Jock took a pessimistic view and had to be led. Then, a third of the way down, I lost my nerve and we got stuck. Looking about in wild surmise I saw that we had taken the wrong route, for directly below the top there had been no definite path. Now, however, the correct route was visible – two hundred yards away, separated from us by a wide, perpendicular crack in the cliff-face.

  When I decided to return to the crest to make a fresh start I discovered that Jock couldn’t turn. Never before have I been so near to panic. This was completely irrational, as a drop of 2,000 feet is no more dangerous than one of 500, but I shuddered at the sight of the ground so very far below and at the extreme insecurity of this friable precipice; and Jock’s trembling appeared to justify my own jitters. Yet we couldn’t spend the rest of our days like carvings on a cliff-face so I set about regaining my nerve by gazing steadily down at the valley floor, in the hope that familiarity would breed sufficient contempt for me to be able to continue calmly. Then I moved forward, and Jock reluctantly followed. For the next forty slow minutes we were descending – with occasional ascents, necessitated by deep gullies or insurmountable outcrops of rock. Half the stones I trod on went hurtling into space: the loose clay crumbled at every step: a minor landslide started if I leant on my dula: the thorny scrub ‘came away in me ’and’ if I despairingly grabbed it. And all the time I was waiting for the worst to happen to Jock.

  When at last we rejoined the path our route was clear, though awkward. We continued along the base of the escarpment, away from the golden valley, before again descending into a deep gorge where a river flowed strongly through dense, dark green forest.

  Sometimes the kaleidoscopic quality of these highlands seems dreamlike. Beyond this swirling brown river we walked beneath a twilit tangle of trees, creepers and ferns – then we were in a hot, wet valley where young wheat and lush pastures glittered emerald, the air was gay with the rushing of flood waters and around the many compounds grew tall cacti, their brilliant clumps of coral-pink berries like brooches pinned on the breast of the earth. Yet only this morning we had been on a cold, austere plateau of close-cropped turf and rough granite, and less than thirty-six hours ago we crossed that shrivelled, colourless, waterless ‘Valley of Death’.

  This luxuriant landscape made walking difficult. For a few miles our track was the bed of a two-foot deep stream that raced downhill over round, slippery stones. Next came gradually sloping pastures, where I sank to my ankles at every step while poor Jock slithered miserably on the black mud – and here the load slipped, though it is now so light and compact. Luckily we were by then meeting many mule and donkey caravans, on their way home from Waldia market, and two kind men paused to help.

  For the last hour we followed the river through a wide ravine between wooded cliffs. Repeatedly we had to cross the swift, cold, dark-brown flood, but it was never deep. As we approached this five-tukul compound, on the outskirts of a village, dusk was thickening to darkness and the sky had again clouded over. I’m now installed in the main tukul, which is bigger than average – and it would need to be, for at night it shelters seven adults, four children, three donkeys, a mule and sundry poultry.

  This evening I’m anxious about Jock. Despite his improved working conditions he seems in poor shape after today’s twenty-six miles, even though they were easy, apart from that precipice.

  15 March. Waldia

  Last night must go among the Top Ten of hellish vigils. Within moments of entering that tukul I had realised that it was uncommonly well-stocked with fleas, bugs and body-lice – a new plague. These lice tend to induce an unpleasant fever so it was disconcerting to find that my last tin of in
secticide had all leaked away. Then a violent thunderstorm broke and the force of the rain on the thatched roof loosened showers of large and very peculiar insects, who stampeded over me vigorously but elusively. This double downpour continued until 2.30 a.m., by which time the stench of animal urine was so strong that it might reasonably have been expected to asphyxiate any number of insects. But unhappily it did not.

  Soon after 10 p.m. the fire was covered, everyone curled up beneath cow-hides and I began my eight-hour ordeal. However, there were diversions. A mirthfully inebriated all-night party was being held in the next-door tukul and we were treated to one donkey-fight and one cock-fight. The kicking, biting, squealing donkeys wakened everyone; and an hour after they had been separated, and tied to opposite walls, the populace again rose as one man to intervene between a pair of apoplectic cocks, one of whom was imprisoned, with difficulty, in a sack. The other then returned sulkily to his roost, some two feet above my head, and at about 3 a.m. he caused me to leap like a shot rabbit when he made a machine-gun-like noise with his wings before beginning to crow stridently. During the rest of the night he crowed every ten or fifteen minutes. If I had been capable of feeling anything at 6 a.m. I would have felt glad that the sun had risen.

  My host was also coming to Waldia, bringing three donkeys loaded with hides, and at 6.45 we joined a caravan of nineteen other donkeys and seven men. The sky was clear, but I have never anywhere encountered so much or such slippery mud. For an hour we were slithering into and out of a series of flooded ravines; then suddenly we were beyond the area of last night’s storm and the track went winding over bare, grey hills that looked as though they hadn’t had rain for a decade. A tough climb up a forested mountain brought Waldia’s blue-gums within sight and by eleven o’clock we had arrived at this dreary little town.