Read Online In Ethiopia with a Mule by Dervla Murphy - Free Book Online
Authors: Dervla Murphy
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Chief Clerk of the Governor of Abbi Addi.
The senior policeman was the linguist; he said urgently – ‘Hurry! Quick! Big hurry! Much quick!’ I had no idea why the hurry was big, but since these unfortunates had apparently been walking all night on my behalf I felt obliged to be much quick. So I hurled everything into those confounded sacks and when Jock had been loaded, in the odd, ‘stagey’ glow of mingled moonlight and dawnlight, we turned towards the north-west trail.
Our party was led by a tall, handsome police lieutenant, carrying his rifle at the ready and followed by me. Next came the Chief Clerk’s armed servant, leading Jock, then a group of five armed local men, on their way to an animal-market at Abbi Addi, then the portly Chief Clerk on his riding mule (which he had gallantly offered to me) and finally the junior policeman. The locals take shifta * very seriously and were delighted to have police protection this morning. It seems odd that most Asians, and apparently most highland Ethiopians, are so much more jittery than we are about dangers of this sort; if they lived in Europe they would probably refuse to drive trucks after dark lest they should be hijacked.
Our walk was extremely frustrating; had I been alone I could have spent a day on this stretch, but we kept going non-stop until 10.30 a.m.
For a few miles we were crossing recently harvested, level fields. Then came a gradual descent, followed by a steep climb up a forested ridge, with a gloriously deep valley on our right and beyond it an array of jagged, tumbled mountains. (A ‘forest’ in the highlands usually means an area covered not with tall, green, shady trees, but with thick, thorny bush and scrub and low acacia trees.)
At the top of this ridge we were on the edge of a thousand-foot drop, overlooking miles of volcanic chaos – harsh, magnificent, unreal – and all around were violent colours and unbelievable contours. From the base of the escarpment savagely broken land fell away for another thousand feet and in the distance Abbi Addi’s tin roofs glinted on the plain. Even the highlanders, born and bred amidst geological dramas, paused here for a moment and smiled wryly at me, making gestures to indicate that they considered this a bloody awful stretch of country.
I would have thought it impossible for any non-mountaineer to tackle such a precipice; yet down we plunged, Jock and the riding-mule leading the party, lest they should concuss us with dislodged rocks, and myself thinking how much more dangerous this was than any shifta attack. Deep grey or red dust concealed round stones and pebbles that moved beneath our feet at every step and never before has my sense of balance – or power of regaining balance – been so severely tested. The locals, who are accustomed to this route, leaped down like baboons; but the police were perceptibly apprehensive and the Chief Clerk was soon a nervous wreck. Thorny scrub reaches out over the path – which, understandably,is not much used – and I was too busy avoiding a lethal slip to avoid the thorns, so this evening my painfully sunburnt legs are badly torn. Yet these barbs give only surface scratches to the highlanders’ tough skins.
At the base we waited for the Chief Clerk and the junior policeman, who were holding hands like a pair of frightened children as they came slowly slithering down in a cloud of dust. A moment before the sun had reached the top of the escarpment, and I gazed up with joy at those grotesquely eroded pinnacles, now looking as though freshly drenched in burgundy.
During the next half-hour we were crossing an already-too-hot area of black lava-beds, interspersed with deep, powdery, white ash and bluish chunks of rock which made a tinkling cinder-sound beneath our feet. Then came a steep descent, through an unexpected tangle of lush greenery, into the shadowed, narrow ravine of a dry river bed. Here walking was made difficult by unsteady stones lying hidden
The senior policeman was the linguist; he said urgently – ‘Hurry! Quick! Big hurry! Much quick!’ I had no idea why the hurry was big, but since these unfortunates had apparently been walking all night on my behalf I felt obliged to be much quick. So I hurled everything into those confounded sacks and when Jock had been loaded, in the odd, ‘stagey’ glow of mingled moonlight and dawnlight, we turned towards the north-west trail.
Our party was led by a tall, handsome police lieutenant, carrying his rifle at the ready and followed by me. Next came the Chief Clerk’s armed servant, leading Jock, then a group of five armed local men, on their way to an animal-market at Abbi Addi, then the portly Chief Clerk on his riding mule (which he had gallantly offered to me) and finally the junior policeman. The locals take shifta * very seriously and were delighted to have police protection this morning. It seems odd that most Asians, and apparently most highland Ethiopians, are so much more jittery than we are about dangers of this sort; if they lived in Europe they would probably refuse to drive trucks after dark lest they should be hijacked.
Our walk was extremely frustrating; had I been alone I could have spent a day on this stretch, but we kept going non-stop until 10.30 a.m.
For a few miles we were crossing recently harvested, level fields. Then came a gradual descent, followed by a steep climb up a forested ridge, with a gloriously deep valley on our right and beyond it an array of jagged, tumbled mountains. (A ‘forest’ in the highlands usually means an area covered not with tall, green, shady trees, but with thick, thorny bush and scrub and low acacia trees.)
At the top of this ridge we were on the edge of a thousand-foot drop, overlooking miles of volcanic chaos – harsh, magnificent, unreal – and all around were violent colours and unbelievable contours. From the base of the escarpment savagely broken land fell away for another thousand feet and in the distance Abbi Addi’s tin roofs glinted on the plain. Even the highlanders, born and bred amidst geological dramas, paused here for a moment and smiled wryly at me, making gestures to indicate that they considered this a bloody awful stretch of country.
I would have thought it impossible for any non-mountaineer to tackle such a precipice; yet down we plunged, Jock and the riding-mule leading the party, lest they should concuss us with dislodged rocks, and myself thinking how much more dangerous this was than any shifta attack. Deep grey or red dust concealed round stones and pebbles that moved beneath our feet at every step and never before has my sense of balance – or power of regaining balance – been so severely tested. The locals, who are accustomed to this route, leaped down like baboons; but the police were perceptibly apprehensive and the Chief Clerk was soon a nervous wreck. Thorny scrub reaches out over the path – which, understandably,is not much used – and I was too busy avoiding a lethal slip to avoid the thorns, so this evening my painfully sunburnt legs are badly torn. Yet these barbs give only surface scratches to the highlanders’ tough skins.
At the base we waited for the Chief Clerk and the junior policeman, who were holding hands like a pair of frightened children as they came slowly slithering down in a cloud of dust. A moment before the sun had reached the top of the escarpment, and I gazed up with joy at those grotesquely eroded pinnacles, now looking as though freshly drenched in burgundy.
During the next half-hour we were crossing an already-too-hot area of black lava-beds, interspersed with deep, powdery, white ash and bluish chunks of rock which made a tinkling cinder-sound beneath our feet. Then came a steep descent, through an unexpected tangle of lush greenery, into the shadowed, narrow ravine of a dry river bed. Here walking was made difficult by unsteady stones lying hidden
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