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Who is this Teddy Afro and what does he have to do with me, you may very well ask. Well, he plays reggae and I love reggae, he is an Ethiopian musician (and some kind of hero in his country - check the Net if you are interested) and I was in Ethiopia and got to know his music, AND: I went to a disco in Awasa with “the boys” (thank you for taking me!) where they had live music and also played some songs of Teddy Afro and it was packed and hot and fun and everyone danced and shouted the lyrics and smiled at me (the only white person in the room!) and women hugged me and said “welcome”, and I just danced and danced and danced …

Henok, Dani, Malarku and Masvin, aka “the boys” or rather our drivers and our cook, all had Teddy Afro on their I-pods or USB sticks which they could put into the cigarette lighters of their cars so I had already heard him on the road and was familiar with some of the songs. Not that I understood any of the lyrics, but let me tell you, anyone can hum (or shout!) along with “Lambadina”.


A different title for this blog could have been “Adventures in Two-Birr-Country”. Birr are the Ethiopian currency and two birr (about 0,20 USD) is what, as a rule, you pay for photos of people in the south. Ethiopia has 85 different ethnic groups and a lot of them still live - and dress - in a very traditional way. The landscape in the south is very beautiful, too, but what people come for, me included, is to take photos of the people living there, their houses, their dress, the decorations of their bodies. Especially the region around the Omo river has often been described as a living museum, and don’t we very often have to pay an entrance fee when we visit a museum at home, too, at least for special exhibitions? We tourists want to take photos and the locals are willing to have these photos taken, for a fee. For a lot of them charging this fee is very often the only way to make any kind of money. Poverty is apparent all around and even famine can strike any time.

But there is another side to this situation. Some tribes - the Mursi especially (everyone, of course, wants to photograph the Mursi women who split their lower lips and decorate them with clay plates of up to 15cm circumference) - have become extremely aggressive when it comes to collecting their fee. They grab your arm, push you, pull at your shirt, jump into a picture you are just trying to take so that they can collect on their two birr as well … the situation can become very stressful.

Who’s to blame? Is it the ultimate question once again: who came first, the chicken or the egg? If one should happen to observe the tourists' picture-taking frenzy from a distance one might begin to wonder, especially if it also happens when there is no demand for money, when the “victim” is just an unsuspecting passer-by, who is turned around to face the sun because that will result in a better photograph.


Enough of the critical thoughts. Did I mention that it was extremely hot along the Omo river: 40 to 45 degrees Celsius? And dusty? Or that the delicious mangos were in season? That during an Ethiopian coffee ceremony salted popcorn is served? Or that a lukewarm Coke makes a very refreshing change from the eternal mineral water? That false banana bread to me doesn't taste a whole lot better than the national staple Injera (made of a kind of sorghum called teff). That hippos and crocodiles inhabit Lake Chamo and people still fish there in flimsy papyrus boats? (A lot of them do get killed every year.) And that I met the king of the Konso tribe? And went to the disco in Awasa and had soooo much fun?

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