January 4, 2007
A night on a river bank
We knew something was wrong as soon as we saw the line of trucks parked up on the road ahead. As we turned off our engines we could hear the dull roar of a river in full flood, just out of sight over a rocky outcrop. The truck drivers and their passengers were out stretching their legs. Past the outcrop, the river was a brown, swirling mass of water that smashed against boulders and carried whole tree trunks along with its force
We had driven across this river just four hours earlier when it had been a gentle, sandy stream. Four hours later, heavy rain falling somewhere else over the horizon had sent a wall of water down to block the main road into Turmi, a remote town close to the Kenyan border in Ethiopia's tribal Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's Region (aka SNNPR).
It was about 5.30pm, which meant that there was less than an hour of daylight left. There were no villages, no shelters, just a rocky river bank, a load of stranded lorry drivers – and three lean old men squatting down behind a Toyota LandCruiser.
The men were naked apart from thin cotton sheets wrapped loosely around their shoulders. Two carried sticks. One had something like a crown fixed to his forehead, shaped like the front piece of a tiara but made out of mud. They were elders from the Hamer people – one of about 45 "indigenous ethnic groups" that make up the region. They had also been cut off from Turmi by the flash flood.
They looked at us. We looked at them. We wandered around for a bit, trying to do sensible Boy Scout things like collecting boulders and branches for a fire. Someone drove back down the road in search of a distant village and something to eat. And then it got dark.
Sometimes it's good just to throw your guidebooks to one side and revel in the strangeness of it all. About an hour later, the truck came back with a huge goat in the back. The animal gave a single bleat as three of the truck drivers bent over it to cut its throat. The headlights of our 4x4 made the sudden gush of blood look jet black.
The three Hamer elders turned out to be expert butchers. In a matter of minutes, they had strung up the carcass, skinned it, chopped it into the right sections and skewered them on stakes over the fire. About half an hour later we were all gnawing on fresh, fresh charcoaled, barbecued goat meat, wrapped up in old wrappings and copies of the Ethiopian Herald.
The river roared on. The men kept feeding the fire. And conversations trundled along in English, Amharic and Hamer. After that, it was an incredibly uncomfortable night crammed into the back seat of a LandCruiser, ending in one of the most beautiful dawns I have ever seen.
The river had shrunk back down over night. The river bed was still too soft for the vehicles. So we joined the stream of villagers wading across, carrying cameras and equipment over our heads.
I would have named Turmi as one of my 'favourite places in Ethiopia'. The only thing that stopped me is that it is an incredibly uncomfortable place to visit. I don't mean the remoteness or the living conditions. I mean the relationship with the people who live there.
We were in SNNPR's South Omo zone filming the roll out of a region-wide tetanus vaccination campaign. If you're a foreigner, the only other game in town apart from development-related work is tourism. And by tourism I mean people-watching. (I don't want to sound snooty here. This was my second visit to Turmi. The first time a couple of years ago I was out there people-watching with the rest of them.)
The Hamer people, and the SNNPR's other 'Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' are famous for their beautiful, colourful traditions and dress. Just point a camera at one of them, get it vaguely in focus, and you can walk away feeling like a National Geographic staffer. You also walk away leaving a bit of yourself in the bad old days of the 19th century when organised groups of foreign "explorers" toured the continent to gawp at the bare-breasted natives. (Not that it's only the Westerners. Addis Ababans and visitors from other African countries are just as out of place.)
If they want it, the Hamer people and their neighbours are sitting on top of a tourist-powered goldmine. With a bit more infrastructure, and better hotels, they could easily become the Maasai of Ethiopia, pulling in visitors in their thousands for authentic tribal experiences.
But, from what I saw during my short visit, they don't want it. Point your camera at a Hamer woman and she will stare you down with God-given attitude, count every time your finger hits the shutter and charge you a Birr a shot.
Every tribal-tourist encounter is troubled. As we drove out a few days alter we passed a group of young men twisting and waving their machetes at us with ritualised menace. A couple of hours down the road to Jinka there was another gang of small boys in full regal tribal face paint and regalia, chasing after the car with their hands out, begging like the street children at Urael.
Posted by aheavens at January 4, 2007 6:30 AM