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Published: October 16th 2011
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Suddenly, voices break through the crackling static. Unintelligible, but clearly voices. Then a moment later, they are gone. White noise again. I go back to probing the radio’s circuit board with the two tiny wires while slowly adjusting the tuner knob. Ten or fifteen children and a couple of adults have gathered to watch and seem greatly encouraged by the short burst of audible evidence. We may be in a rural Ethiopian village a days walk from any working electricity, but there had been voices. Technology had happened! It could happen again! But, I knew better. Rearranging the D batteries had not solved the problem, and a lifetime of mechanical ineptitude guaranteed that I wasn’t going to be able to do much with the two wires unsoldered from the circuit board. I figured fiddling might make magic happen, but it isn’t happening. Nico is no help. He’s joined the curious onlookers and finds my flailing amusing. He is right. It is. I don’t know have a fucking clue what I am doing.
We’d started the morning in Lalibela and joined the motley crew of white gabi draped Christmas pilgrims streaming out of the city returning to the mountains. Most were
lugging some of the miracles of the market back to their not-much-changed-in-a thousand-years villages. For a couple hours, the trail climbs steeply, snaking up the sheer basalt cliffs before emerging onto the plateau. Tiny villages of tukuls, cylindrical huts made of wood and mud with conical roofs like the hats of Asian rice farmers, sit perched on the arid rocky edges of the escarpment. Smaller trails branch from the main, running toward distant clusters of huts tucked amongst a patchwork of hard scrabbled golds, browns, and greens.
Once up on the plateau, the foot highway winds gently north towards Abuna Yosef, Ethiopia’s third highest massif at 4200 meters (roughly 13,800 feet). Though we don’t have a map, locals point toward the summit poking above the folds of the land in the distance. They assure us there is nothing up there, but that is where we are going. Many hours later, as the shadows climb the flanks of the mountains and the day begins to die, we crest yet another rise. Below, wispy tendrils of cooking smoke snake skyward from the thatched roofs of a tiny village of tukuls. Out from the dusk of surrounding fields, flip flopped children stream
towards us from all directions, the cry of “ferenji” cascading down and across the terraced hills. Ten feet from us, they abruptly stop. Suddenly shy, they huddle together whispering in hushed tones and stare. A few tentatively wave. As their numbers swell, the brave break from the pack, running towards us to shake our hands before scurrying back to the safety of their friends. Finally, an intrepid few press forward and lead us into the village. There, somehow, Nico conveys the message that we want to stay. He is useful like that.
In general, aid workers and tourists follow roads, so ferenjis don’t make it out this way very often. Consequently, for the locals, we are something of a Christmas miracle, or at least, a Christmas curiosity. All of the children and many of the adults in the village come down and stare over the little rock wall as we set up our tent. Like most Ethiopian villagers, the family we’d approached are magnanimous and falling over themselves to be gracious and accommodating. They soon shepherd us inside and feed us roasted potatoes and barley cooked over a smoldering fire of twigs and eucalyptus leaves. As night falls, the
family’s livestock- some cows, goats, and a donkey or two- are driven in through the front door and into the stockade ringing the inside of the tukul. Sitting in the dark gloom, heavy with the smell of animals and wood smoke, we drink dirty yellowish tela, a home brewed beer made from grains, out of prized plastic cups while making ridiculous attempts at conversation.
The next morning, it is a three or four hour climb through the seussian landscape of labela trees up to the craggy peak of Abuna Yosef. As expected, getting to the top is lung burning misery, but worth it once we are sitting on the bare rocks at the top eating oranges in the warm sun and listening to the rush of immense lammergeyers riding the thermals up and over our heads. In all directions, the deeply gorged Ethiopian highlands ripple outward like some immense coral, disappearing eventually into the purplish blue of the horizon. Along the flanks of the mountain, we watch vainly for the rumored troops of Gelada baboons, but they are not around, so we head back down to the village.
In the village, a kid is waiting with his radio.
The radio repair failure does little to diminish faith in the ferenjis, and another kid babbles at us, points at his face, and babbles some more. I think we are supposed to do something about the wart on his chin. Though we can’t possibly, Nico commits a critical error and reaches for the med kit. It is largely useless (a tube of Neosporin, a couple of Ibuprofin, a few Band Aids, and a bottle of ten-year old iodine tablets) but to the villagers, it is a magic bag containing the potential of the miracles of modern medicine. Nico ceremoniously wipes some Neosporin on the kid’s chin and adds an incantation and a band-aid for good measure. Then shit gets heavy.
Having witnessed the anointing of healing unctions, a woman approaches. She says something we don’t understand and then unceremoniously digs her left breast out of her dress. It looks like a saggy bag of marbles. She gesticulates with the thing toward Nico and the med kit. Nico starts sputtering a little and groping for Amharic words, but there is no schadenfreude in Nico’s squirming. We are in way way over our heads. There is no magic in the med
kit for what she’s got.
Luckily, no one holds it against us that we are successful only in the totality of our failure to fix both electronics and people. Clearly, we are not the useful kind of ferenjis. After all, we walked all the way up here only to climb to the top of that mountain. All of the villagers seem to agree that there is little sense in that. Despite our ineptitude, we are treated with amazing hospitality and warmth by these people who have almost nothing. This is what is truly magic. The next morning, waved away by our hosts and led by children, we walk out of the village and back toward Lalibela.
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
ABUNA JOSEF
As I am blogging Ethiopia at the moment I enjoy your blogs...I also relate to the limitations of our medical kits. Whenever we are moved to try some treatment of infected limbs etc, we wonder if we have provided more than encouragement...I hope so.