From My Notebooks In 1974: Ethiopia

On my way south from Lake Hawassa, the first stop was Yavello where I had an extraordinary dinner with two drunken teachers who tried to stuff their food into my mouth. I recorded none of this. Happily, when I came to write the book I remembered every detail, but not with pleasure.

January 1st, 1974

New Year’s Day. Leave Yavello for Mega. Road is mostly very good. Instead of a hard day’s struggle I’m there by midday.

On the road to Mega.

Injera and Wat at small “hotel.” [Injera is a pancake made from a grain called Teff: Wat is a pepper stew of goat meat.]

The hotel at Mega. There were string-beds through the blue door, but I didn’t stay.

Now there’s a battle between two tribeswomen, with plaited hair, and silver beads and bangles, and the hotel women in neat dresses and bandannas. It’s all over two small enamel mugs, which appear to have contained butter. The tribes-ladies wear candy striped shawls, red and gray. Their necklaces, more than a dozen each, like chain mail on their necks. (When they say “yes” in conversations the voice swoops up.)

Now the policeman has been brought, and very neat he is too. Trying to arbitrate between the girls he just gets hopelessly tied up. In the end there’s a tug-of-war with girls pulling each of his arms, and he brushes them off and strides away to save his dignity. The TW’s have sticks with which they polish their teeth. Wear loose fronted garments, like a pinafore across their breasts, and a long shawl wrapped round and over one shoulder which falls to mid-calf. They are the Burani tribe – cattle, sheep, and camels. The battle was over a cup of butter, sold to the hotel for four cents which the Tribe woman says she was still owed. This butter is a waxy-looking paste, but which Bridget [my friend in Addis] says can be made very tasty with various herbs.

I coveted the embroidered wall hangings and could have had them for a song but thank goodness I realised they were much better left where they were.

[An Israeli construction company was in the early stages of building a road from Mega to the border at Moyale.]

Go for a walk to watch road construction. They’re filling in a “wadi” over a concrete spillway. Huge Caterpillar earth movers, swinging around like bumper cars. They grade as they tip. Back to hotel where Vassi Fissaha, the Ethiopian civil engineer working on the road, is waiting to leave for Moyale. He is very fat with a round face, becomes interested as we talk. Says I could get to Moyale that day, road isn’t so bad. He’s going in his VW Moke, expects to be there 5.30 to 6. Mega already seems exhausted for me. I accept the challenge. Meet American from Nairobi, Geoff Probitts, coming into Mega on a Honda 350. First encounter.

[It’s the first time since France that I’ve seen a motorcycle on the open road.]

He says there’s nothing very terrible on the road to Moyale. I tell him the worst is over for him. I think maybe we were both guilty of optimism. Road from Mega to Awasa has some pretty ropy bits. As for Mega to Moyale, it’s better than Metema, but only just.

First long section is red sand, brush and termite pillars which Vassi says are strong enough to winch on. This continues in the plain below Moyale but interrupted by areas of black earth (like asphalt) in which grass looks blue, and then a wide belt of white chalk.

Here the termite mounds are ghostly white, like unfinished Henry Moore’s, for miles. Lot’s Wife. Road is a 20mph average, 2nd and 3rd gear road full of pitfalls, ridges, heaped dust and sand-filled cavities. Some very big bumps probably fractured the pannier rack. Saw little Dick-dicks (many) and a big deer with thin white stripes down its side. Several times uncertain about road, but on the chalk plain the left fork was the proper one. However, without watch or speedometer, [I meant odometer. It had packed up further back, as had my watch] these journeys are a bit hair-raising. No chance of riding this country in dark, and as the sun plunges below hill tops you know you’re not going to make it. I stumbled into Moyale with half an hour’s daylight to spare, and about 20 minutes behind Vassi’s car.

Had contretemps with students at town entrance. They prevented me from entering main street and insisted I must check into police station first (which was untrue). The style of stopping you to do you a favour (real or imaginary, or even spurious) is very strange, involves the most threatening expressions or gestures.

Moyale on the Ethiopian side.

I was fascinated by these huge and apparently weightless Maribou storks.

Approximately 40 per cent of Kenyans were under the age of 15.

Both Mega and Moyale show some return to the more attractive house building styles of Sudan, with mud roofs (fringed with grass or weed) supported on wood poles, rather than tin. Long low rows of these houses – wooden doors, red earth. People in mixture of tribal and Western clothes. But the prize goes to the old village of Moyale in Kenya where a combination of the best of these styles has been brought to the highest point and decorated outside in ochre wash. with flower and animal drawings.

The tribal village at Moyale in 1974.

Vassi had the D.C. [District Commissioner] of Kenya Moyale in his car, and we were asked to drink to the New Year in Kenya with him. So after several beers we set off to breach the frontier in the VW. The soldier wouldn’t let us pass [even though we were carrying his DC. Speaks for the discipline at that time.] and there was much driving up and down in the dark to find the customs man to get a chitty.

People are very vague in their descriptions and instructions, leaving out important details. Their minds don’t seem to follow through the sequence of events predicated by the problem, so that much effort and time is spent fruitlessly.

Eventually we arrived at the New Bar on the Kenya side. Guiness ads, English signs everywhere, big bottles of beer, and noisy convivial atmosphere produce a pleasant illusion of friendliness and intimacy, rather pub like. It is a bit of an illusion though, and falls flat, just as the first impression in Metema [the border town of Ethiopia] led to disappointment. Presumably, after a hard ride, uncertain of what awaits me I have only to be given the merest token customary comfort – i.e. a beer, and a seat, and a little space in which to speak or listen – and I complete the rest of the picture in my imagination. There are enough people here anxious to imitate Western styles to provide a backdrop for this fancy, as banal as the Embassy [cigarette] advertisements used for ‘art pieces’ on the walls.

With William Wa (?) the DC and his friends we got merrily drunk and later returned to Ethiopia.

Next day I arrived, leisurely enough, at customs to find two busloads of Jehovah’s Witnesses being put through a fine mill. I’d known about them yesterday, since Vassi had an aunt and a cousin among them.

[They were treated like prisoners of war. All their goods were spread out on the earth, all their books, pamphlets and other religious materials were confiscated and burnt.]

Next week: The best of British on the equator.

PS: The other night I was wandering through the jumbly forest of my hippocampus when I came across a very wise old hippopotamus called Eisenhower who said BEWARE OF THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.

But that was 65 years ago and nobody iin power paid attention. The arming of America took on a life of its own. The arms industry has been diligent and successful at buying political influence, their message has always played well to national pride, their factories provide jobs, their congressmen and senators have well-funded campaigns.

An arms race is very profitable and the fact that it sucks up the prosperity which might otherwise be used to improve living standards and provide health benefits to poorer Americans is not an issue – or, if it was, it’s well buried.

Speaking now as a European, one of the big talking points around our rupture with the USA has been the relative defencelessness of Europe: As though Europe has been negligent and self-indulgent whereas America has shouldered the burden of defending the free world.

As is well-known America’s military reach is vast and hugely equipped. There are at least 128 major bases in 55 or more countries (including 144 golf courses here and there) inevitably causing China to play the same game.

I wonder who might have already raised the possibility that America has itself invented the dragon we now face.