Arba Minch to Jinka

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  Jinka, Ethiopia
Wednesday, February 28, 2007

We spent another day in Arba Minch, where we visited Nechisar National Park in the morning. Again, I felt glad of having rented a 4x4 with the lads as this visit would have been impossible otherwise. We drove for about four hours along one of the worse dirt tracks I've ever seen, through terrain varying from thick bush to leafy green forest to wide, open, golden savannah. Rising over hills we caught superb views of Lakes Abayo and Chamo, which are respectively coloured rusty red and brilliant blue-green. This was my first time to ever see "proper" African wildlife, and I excitedly snapped photos of vervet monkeys, Guenther's Dikdik (a tiny deer, standing only about 3 feet tall), warthogs, Grant's Gazelle, Burchell's Zebra, a family of Greater Kudu, Marabou Storks and a huge bird whose name I forget.

In the afternoon we drove to see a Dorze village, who are a tribe who inhabit the nearby hills

Entrance to Konso Village

. Their huts are of particular interest, standing about three metres tall, and looking somewhat like an elephant from the front (deliberately, in honour of the many elephants who were abundant here until recently) with a curved front porch being the trunk and two windows for ventilation placed on either side looking like ears. The Dorze are famous for weaving, and we saw their work being sold in a wonderful outdoor market we visited. The market was held in a sort of field in the middle of their main village, with vendors sitting down with everything spread out on blankets in front of them. Coffee, barley, hops, sweet potatoes, locally woven blankets, spices, tej (honey wine), talla (a sort of local beer) and arika (a potent spirit, also made locally) were all sold. About twenty young children, who fought amongst themselves to have the honour of holding my hands, accompanied me through the market; at any one time I had about two on each hand with another one or two holding my arms. I felt a bit self-conscious of this, but the adult Dorzes smiled and laughed at my predicament.

We visited a Dorze home, which was a fascinating experience. We were shown into one of the huts, where there was the remains of a fire surrounded by cooking utensils, goat skins hung on the walls, and about a quarter of the interior was reserved for cattle at night. We were shown the preparation of false banana bread. The false banana tree looks just like the banana tree, but bears no fruit. Stalks of the plant have their juices and pulp stripped, leaving only fibres which are used to make rope. The pulp is then buried under ground for three months, after which time it becomes a yellow thick paste which smells and looks rather like a strong cheese. This is then rolled into thin, flat circles, and baked for twenty minutes, and produces a rather tasty unleavened bread. Hats off to whoever thought of this

False Banana Bread

!

The next day we drove on, hoping to reach Jinka, but a blown tyre (our second in two days) combined with an exhaust pipe which came undone meant that we had to stop our travels at Konso, about half way to Jinka. There we visited a village of the Konso people situated on the top of a hill. The village, enclosed by a low fence of sturdy wooden branches and made of circular huts of wood with thatched roofs was one of the most pleasant I have ever visited. The chief of the village (the last remaining Konso chief) was a 39 year old man who made such an impression on me that I hope to return here to talk with him more. He was wise beyond his years, and had a sort of quiet charisma and an aura of a man who should have been a great leader of men had he been born in another time. He spoke excellent English, having trained as a civil engineer in Addis before having to take on his chiefly duties when his father died a few years ago. We visited his ancestors' graveyard, in a forest nearby, where the graves were marked with wooden statues depicting the deceased with generously proportioned penises in full view.

In the afternoon I visited the Konso office of Save the Children, where I spent half an hour chatting with an Ethiopian who seemed to be in charge of the office

Inside the Konso Village

. They are nearing the end of a pilot educational project, where they are trying to improve attendance levels of children (especially girls) in schools in four villages. Usually schooling does not continue after the age of nine or ten, as the children's' hands are needed at home and in the fields. Their means of doing this is by holding "workshops" for parents, having speakers such as influential women who are proof that education can be of benefit to children. They also pay "facilitators", usually themselves training to become teachers to help the school, who teach at hours outside the conventional ones so that if children are needed at home in the morning, for example, they can go to school in the evening. The greatest incentive given is funding given to build or repair schools in the villages, which provides local employment and injects some cash into their community.

In principal this all sounded good, and they said the projects have had reasonable success. In my pessimism, however, I have to point out that I cannot see this project being in any way sustainable. It seems the loss of earnings through not having children working is replaced by the money given for the community for work on school buildings. The facilitator system is good, but unless Save the Children have unlimited funding this is one that could not be rolled out nationally. Basically I see this project working while it is operational, but once the funding is pulled (which it inevitably will be), I can only see things reverting to the way they were. It does not address the issue that the children are needed at work if their economy is to successfully sustain itself, and until this is addressed only richer families will be able to afford to educate their children.

The next day we drove for eight hours on a bumpy dirt track to Jinka, passing first through the red-brown terraced Konso hills, scattered with green trees with silver-grey rocks winking in between, and then down into the Omo valley, a more arid, dry place, with yellow grass and low leafless thorny trees

Statues at grave of last Konso Chief

. Now we were truly in tribal lands, first passing though the Tsemai territory. Topless women, wearing only skirts and colourful beaded jewellery walked by the road, carrying water or huge bundles of firewood. Men wore only a tiny wrap of coloured cloth around their nether regions, often so short that their scrotum could be seen underneath, and carried spears or guns. We visited a village, where at first many people were wearing torn and worn western clothes, until they quickly rushed into their huts to change into more traditional garb for photos, which cost E0.20 a pop. There was something incredibly artificial about the whole interaction, they lined up in front of us waiting to be selected for a photo, and it all felt a little too much like a zoo to my liking. I have decided not to take more than three paid photos in all my time in this region. Firstly, I feel the interaction between tourist and tribespeople is horribly soured by this payment for photos, and has come about because of a culture of white men coming in and snapping furiously as if studying some exotic animal. Secondly, the money generated through this is somewhat artificial, and may eventually become enough so that the locals no longer see it necessary to farm the land and keep animals (an attitude that is already growing, thanks to excessive UN food rations being given in this area). Thirdly, much of the money spent is on alcohol, and has started to cause a serious drinking problem among the men in many of the villages.

I was also dismayed to hear that the whole village had recently been "saved" and converted to Protestantism. The tradition of missionaries in Africa sickens me. I cannot understand why bible-belt Americans feel it necessary to leave their comfort zone to rape ancient cultures and relieve them of beliefs which were grown naturally in relation to the environment in which the local people live

View of a village on the road to Jinka

.

In Jinka I spoke for half an hour with a man who has set up a local NGO with funding from USAID and PACT. He hopes to resolve local tribal conflicts over things such as disputed grazing land through mediation by bringing together elders and chiefs from the involved tribes. There is a big problem with inter-tribal fighting here, only two days ago two men (from the Buna tribe, I think) were killed for walking cattle through the territory of another tribe. These killings always spawn retaliation, and often end in a bloody war. The man (who I won't name) also hopes to work on integrating tourism into the area, and to address some of the problems I outlined above. Although he has only started work on this project he hopes to be successful as he has been working in local tourism for nine years and feels he has earned the respect of tribal elders.

I was happy to see that these issues were being addressed by an NGO, a worthwhile cause, I felt, and even happier to see that the project was being run and managed locally, so that the short sightedness of a large bureaucratic organization wouldn't make a mess of such sensitive, local issues. I did, however, wonder what drove this man to do this coming from his background (he had handed me his tourism business card within minutes and tried to convince me to stay in his campsite in Turmi), and questioned if any of the generous funding he was to receive would be used to help his business (for example, to buy 4x4s for the NGO, which could be hired to tourists, if "not being used"). My suspicions were somewhat confirmed to be correct by a local man I spoke to later that day, who said he is known to be a ruthless, greedy operator, only interested in making money as quickly as possible.

It is an interesting problem, that of whether or not to fund a locally established NGO. When done, the money must be entrusted to someone who may not have the best of interests at heart, but if done correctly it should surely be far more effective as it would be run by those who far better understand the sensitivities of the issues involved than white men who sit in air-conditioned offices in a far-away city.

At dinner that evening I met a UNESCO worker, who was visiting local health clinics to see if their demanded supplies were in fact really needed before he fills out the necessary paperwork and orders them (from Western countries - God forbid that this UN money would be ploughed back into Africa), a process which, by his own admission, will leave the clinics waiting for months for these (presumably urgently needed) medical supplies. He told me of a project they had run recently in the South, trying to increase school attendance levels. Less subtly than Save the Children, however, they simply gave money to the communities involved. So, my arguments above would still stand, only that now the incentive is almost a bribe, which would probably not be shared out as equally as in the case of giving local employment. He also told me of workshops held (to which people were enticed with promises of free food) where they attempted to educate them about female circumcision, a practice that is still widely done in Ethiopia. He claimed that once people had been to these workshops that this tradition had been completely stopped, a fact I find hard to believe. I apologize if I am extremely negative in my discussion of this meeting, but the man's arrogance and apparent complete lack of understanding of the problems with which he was dealing coupled with his laughing off any of my carefully put criticisms really frustrated and angered me. On a completely off-topic note, he told us that a woman had recently been raped by a monkey near Arba Minch, producing a half-monkey, half man spawn. Hilarious...

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