Spear Chuckers
Trip Start
Nov 15, 2006
1
181
228
Trip End
Jul 15, 2008
Loading Map
Awasa,
Ethiopia
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Awasa, Ethiopia
Today we drive from Konso to Awasa and spend the night at the Buraa Pension for 70 birr with en suite. Konso is basically just a round-about where three roads meet. But wherever there is a round-about there are policemen making sure you go around properly. As we were leaving this morning Illias noticed that one of his tires was soft so he turned around and drove off the road to a tire repair shop. A young police officer trying to build up points for his promotion stopped him and tried to give him a ticket for not going back around the round-about. It was early morning with virtually no traffic and the roads are just some dirt tracks. It was unreal, but Illias talked the idiot out of the ticket and we got out of town around 7 AM. At around 9 AM we stopped in Arba Minch, where we've been before, for a breakfast of scrambled eggs and dou bo bread with delicious Ethiopian coffee. Then we drove on. The road is paved along here, but it is used by the people carrying loads on their backs and herding their cattle and sheep down the middle of the road so progress is slow. At times it looks like those photos of refugees crowding the roads escaping from a war zone.
Somewhere along here as we slowed down to pass through a flock of sheep a boy on the side of the road chucked a stick fashioned into a spear through Irina's open window striking her in the forehead. Illias stopped the Land Cruiser and threw it into reverse. The boy was still standing by the side of the road, but when the vehicle started backing up he ran through an opening in the thorn branch fence that acted at a barrier between the road and his house.
02-01
Illias jumped out and chased the boy. Irina got out and followed him. The boy ran around the house and headed into the trackless bush; Illias followed him but was not able to find the kid in the bush. By the time everyone had returned to the Land Cruiser a large crowd had formed around the vehicle. Irina showed everyone the stick, where it had struck her and the red mark it left. A neighbor girl said the boy was bad. Some adults said the parents had gone to the market in town and left the boy at home. Soon we were back on the road again. The incident gave us something to talk about for a long ways and when a man herding cows down the road cracked his whip near Willim's window he dived for cover. Arvid was mostly silent the rest of the day and seemed to be lost in thought.Over a week later, we were back in Addis waiting to leave for Kenya when we chanced to hear what might have been the rest of the story; we have no direct knowledge so we can't guarantee this is what happened: We were back at the Baro hotel, where you'll find all sorts of travelers passing through, when we overheard an old Africa hand telling about having broken down in the same village where the incident happened. We're not sure of the spelling of the old man's name but it sounded something like Marlow. He had to wait several days for repairs to his vehicle and had gotten to know the village well. The people were quite excited about a recent incident in which a local boy struck a ferangi women with a small spear. As Marlow told the story we realized he was talking about us, but he was with another group at the far end of the veranda so we did not interrupt.
02-02
According to Marlow the locals related a strange and fanciful tale of how a boy, who they knew well and called Meutfo, had chucked a stick through the window of a tour vehicle, and how the driver and the woman chased the boy, and curiously, of seeing an old man get out of the Land Cruiser, walk up to the boy's house and make some marks on the door frame. At this point Irina looked at Arvid with a questioning look, but Arvid just kept sipping his beer and listening to the man. Marlow continued the tale he had heard from the villagers, perhaps with some embellishments. They told how Meutfo had run off into the bush and had found his usual hiding place in a shaded depression where he lay watching the spots of sun light filtering through the leaves and moving across the clumps of dry grass and black dirt around him. In the random patterns of shadows and light he kept seeing the face of the ferangi lady just as she was when his spear struck her. When he was sure his parents had returned from the market he returned to his house. It was a substantial single story house with the walls made of woven tree branches covered with dark brown mud mixed with straw. But the roof was covered in shiny corrugated metal unlike the houses of most of the neighbors who had thatched roofs. The boy's mother was especially proud of the roof because she had earned much of the cost of it by selling the large earthen ware pots she made and fired in the back yard. Most weeks she was able to produce four of these large vessels which she sold at the market.
02-05
Everyone said her pots were the best and no one had returned any complaining they broke from the heat of their cooking fire. As they returned from the market the woman and her husband were only a short distance from home when the neighbor girl ran up to them with the news of what Meutfo had done. When bad boy got home he noticed the strange marks on the door jamb and stopped on the path; a shiver ran through his body and he could feel the prickling of goose flesh. The husband heard the boy approaching and suddenly opened the door and hauled the boy in by his shirt front. Confronted by what the neighbor girl had told them the boy lied to his parents and said that the farangis had tried to kidnap him to sell his body parts and that he had escaped by running into the bush. His mother covered her face and wept; not because she believed him, but because she knew he was lying as he had often done. This child had brought pain and shame to her since the day he had been born. Her oldest had been her and her husband's pride. The older son had been a cheerful worker around the farm and had excelled in school so that now he was a teacher in a village in Omo Valley. Meutfo was different and she blamed herself because his father was not her husband; something she had kept secret from everyone but the village priest. The man struck Meutfo but his mother pulled the boy away and sent him to his bed in the side room. The boy was pleased thinking his mother had believed his story and would protect him.
02-06
He gloated as he lay on his mat on the bare earth. But he could not get to sleep; he kept seeing the ferangi woman with her blond hair smiling at the people and animals on the road ahead. Then the look on her face as his spear struck her. When the vision of the woman disappeared he could see nothing before his eyes in that dark room except the strange mark on the door jamb. Again a cold chill came over him and he began to shiver. He pulled a wool blanket over himself and he began to sweat as if he were burning with fever. His mother heard his movements and kneeled beside him, but he could not raise his arms to her, in fact he could not move at all. He went unconscious in his mother's arms. While unconscious he was constantly tormented by the vision of the beautiful innocent face of the ferangi woman in the white Toyota, in his mind it was like the icons painted in the church depicting the Madonna. Then he felt the terror of the woman when his spear struck her forehead. After three days he regained consciousness. He made a great show of praying to the Virgin in thanks and told his mother that he was a new boy and would never cause her shame again. He did not tell her about the ferangi woman in his dreams nor did he mention the sign on the door jamb. In fact his parents hadn't mentioned it either, which he thought strange and when he looked for it the mark was gone. When he regained his strength the first thing he intended to do was to kill the girl next door who had told on him. He would wait for her and throw a large stone at her head which he was sure would do to the job. On the following Sunday he told his mother he was feeling too ill to go to church. As he had planned he stood behind the thorn branch fence waiting for the girl to pass on her way to church. When he heard her footsteps he picked up a rock about the size of a papaya, and as he did, for some reason, he looked at the door of his house and saw the mark again. A searing pain tore through his chest and the rock dropped from his hand. There was a blinding light in his head and he fell to the ground dead. The girl heard the noise, found his lifeless body, and ran to the church to tell the boy's mother. Marlow took another pull on his beer and said that was all he had found out. The group around him peppered him with questions, doubting the veracity of the story; but he said they could take it for what it was worth. Irina whispered to Arvid, "No one's going to believe that bullshit." Arvid just shrugged. 
