Vagabond Rick Travels The World

I am in southern Ethiopia for the second half of this visit. The first half went well other than the lowly hotels and their food – more to come on this topic. Not a lot has gone well this second half. I have partaken in some really bad tourism and this I feel guilty and dirty about. I try my best to be a good tourist. I try to never take advantage of impoverished locals nor allow any poor treatment of wildlife. This tour to southern Ethiopia has unfortunately to cross the boundary a number of times. Yesterday when we arrived at Mago National Park and set up camp, I watched my guide, Fecada, throw food to a baboon. Every other time I have been faced with such behavior I have put an end to it immediately. I knew what he was doing was absolutely wrong with any animal and it is especially wrong with baboons who become monsters when in enough contact with humans. Instead, I pulled out my camera and took a picture of the baboon eating a head of lettuce and then I turned my back on it having other things on my mind. Fecada served up a bunch of things to the baboon before he ran out of things to toss. And then he served me the salad he had made. The baboon stuck around. And just as I was about to eat, the baboon attacked because he wanted it all. He ran at the table where I was seated and I barely had time to stand up before he was reaching to take it all. Let me tell you that this is a scary moment given that an adult male baboon is of good size with very large teeth. We got him to retreat and Fecada told me how that never happens. I told him that was a ridiculous notion because baboons are famous for turning into monsters and I have seen them in truly wild areas with no contact with humans and they are wonderful primates. He had to throw rocks at the baboon to keep him back and I was saying that we needed to leave because this baboon is going to be a problem for dinner and breakfast and possibly in between as well. Just then our armed ranger showed up and he kept the baboon away the rest through the next morning. Fecada then told me how there was only one other baboon that became a problem and he had to be shot. He did not get the idea that feeding baboons had already resulted in one being slaughtered and his actions are just leading to a repeat. Fecada is a bit thick in the skull, you see.

That night at dinner three genets came to the campsite. These are shy mongoose/cat animals that are absolutely beautiful with leopard like coats on their bodies and striped tails. I have seen them before on night game drives, but you only get limited looks due to their shyness and because they are nocturnal. I was thinking this was odd and then realized that Ethiopians would feed them, too, and this is why they are so close. By time dinner was over, Fecada is feeding them, too. He really did not get the connection between his actions in the afternoon and how it applies to all wild animals. Luckily, genets are about the size of a housecat so they won’t be hurting anyone too badly. I just let the whole thing go because there is way too many issues in Ethiopia and frankly saving the genet and baboon in a park and country where wildlife is being wiped out even today seems too ridiculous. But it still made me feel dirty considering I was the reason we were in the park and I chose the operator. But there was also another reason. I was feeling quite down about the previous three days of tourism and how I was involved in human exploitation.

Southern Ethiopia is famous for its tribes. There are tribal people in Ethiopia still living almost the same as they have for hundreds if not thousands of years and they are very different from any other tribes I know about in Africa. Namely, these are the people that you see pictures and videos about because they do bizarre things with makeup, body scarification and body mutilation. When I have visited traditional people in the past in Kenya, Tanzania, Congo and other places, it has always been a good experience where the people receive tourists warmly and they share their way of living with the tourists. In return the tourists pay fees which the tribes use for tangible benefits in their lives such as schools and medical. The tribes welcome photos being taken while they show their homes and how they live and they usually offer crafts that they make for sale at the end. I always buy something feeling it is part of what makes the system work plus they usually make some interesting items. Unfortunately, Ethiopia has no such system in place.

We first visited the Tsemai and Arbore tribes and both visits involved going to a small settlement of a few homes and people. I was immediately greeted by women and children demanding 2 birr (19 US cents) for each photo. Not much by way of hellos or any other niceties. A couple of men were around and they were standoff-ish. I don’t normally pay for photos and usually prefer not to take them of people if they don’t want them taken or if they demand money although I have paid a handful of times if the photo was worth it to me. I came into the tribal area knowing they would want money and I decided that was OK since that is their system. This was a big mistake. I also believed Ethiopian tourism business would have a system in place where they compensated these tribes with the monies I paid. This was another mistake. I also believed this would be an educational cultural experience, but it ended up involving lessons I did not expect. Let’s see… how to describe what unfolded…

The people at the settlement knew my guide and they exchanged greetings while I was being harassed for photos. I took a few and handed out the money. They were not happy with any bills that were not perfect, but I will go inot the Ethiopian money issue later for it is not central to this story. I had to ask my guide to explain what I was seeing as far as their way of life. He seemed more interested in talking to the locals than guiding me. One woman was a bit indignant towards me, but I could not understand what she was talking about and had to demand that my guide pay attention and help me solve whatever problem she was having with me. As I recall, this one wanted me to pay four birr because the baby on her back may have been in the photo. Once translated, I paid. Apparently, they start them young in these parts. My guide was useless, but I asked enough questions to at least learn something. I did feel that he was making some of it up, but I let it pass. We stayed until I ran out of questions. I was quite appalled with their living conditions, the fact that they were all just lounging around including kids who should be in school (more later) and their homes/settlement was atrocious including that their homes also served as the homes for the animals like the goats. I took a couple of photos of the settlement and then we started to depart. And then something happened where an argument broke out between the men and my guide. My guide shrugged it off, but I wanted to know why they appeared to be mad at me. I never really got the answer, but I think it may have been about me not taking enough photos or not paying for non-human pictures. It was not a good experience.

At the settlement for the second tribe, there were less people and only two men. Basically, things started off the same and again my guide was not guiding until I made it clear that I was not comfortable just hanging out with people demanding me to take photos. There was something also going on between the two men and my guide. I went into one of the homes and learned a little more by asking questions of my guide. One of the women had an eight month old baby. She was kind of strange – maybe drunk or not all there mentally? Her baby girl had a horrible looking growth protruding from her groin. I actually thought she was a boy at first because of this growth. We brought it up with her and she said “oh yeah” to the suggestion that she take the girl to the nearby clinic. I do not believe she felt it was a problem and I know she had no intention of taking the baby to the clinic. Once again the men became aggressive when we were leaving. The guide once again shrugged it off. When we got in the vehicle I told him this had to stop and that I was not going to partake in people not wanting me to be at there homestead. I asked him how the payment system works and he explained that the company pays some government office. I pointed out that it was obvious that the money never got out to these people and if any did they are clueless about the tourists being the ones funding it. I could tell that the southern Ethiopian indigenous peoples are really not part of Ethiopia and it is ludicrous to suggest that they are getting some benefit from the tour companies via a government

agency. I explained to him how it works in neighboring countries and how the tribal folk understand very clearly what they get as benefits from tourism and that they are happy and gracious towards tourists and they are not begging for photos and money. We drove to our campsite and I was very disturbed by everything I had seen that day.

The next day was a visit to Turmi village where hundreds of Hamer tribe members come for a market. We had a Hamer male with us to guide and this was definitely a step up from my driver/guide who apparently knows nothing after ten years of visiting these tribes. The Hamer women put red clay in their hair. I asked my driver what they mix the clay with and he told me water. I told him that could not be true because then it would dry into dirt rather stay wet and goopy as I was witnessing. He decided to ask the Hamer guide and then we both learned that they mix it with the butter they produce from their cows (I do not believe they eat the butter) and with frankincense resin that they collect from local trees. Their hair is braided and then coated with the goop. It is also on their faces and shoulders and I suppose on many other things. I assume they mix in the resin to keep the flies away. It is by far the weirdest “beauty aid” I have ever seen or could imagine. If they had pillows (they don’t), I wondered what they would be like each morning. I wondered what their husband’s face looked like after sleeping all night together, but as far as I can tell there is very little contact between men and women in these tribes other than what is necessary for his sexual gratification and her desire to have more children. For the men, their cows are much more important than their wives (multiple if they have enough cows) and children (needed to tend the cows and goats). At the market, the Hamer sell and buy dry clay for the hair, tobacco for chewing and snorting, grains for porridge, clay pots for water, butter for the hair, honey for making beer, hay for house building and a few other odds and ends including wooden sticks and headrests (Egyptian style – hard to explain) that all of the men and boys carry around. I took a few photos of the people selling their wares paying accordingly. But there were also many people wandering about asking for photos for money and I am pretty sure they were just there to make photo money. It became a bit too much with tourists and Hamer models. Probably the worst part is that young girls walk around topless (moreso than the average Hamer woman who has a piece of goat skin hung from her neck kind of covering her – kind of not) and it seems that is their way to sell more photo shots. It’s a freak show involving children as well as adults and it got to a point where I did not feel so great about it. I’m not sure exactly how to explain at what point it went from really interesting to really slimy, but that line definitely was crossed for me. I know what I was seeing was very authentic and it is enjoyable to see these people being themselves and so different from us, but there is a point where voyeurism is overbearing. The nudity (I saw more breasts and penises – the men wear short, short skirts where it all just hangs out when they are seated – in a week than the past 43+ years of my life combined) gets to a point where I wanted to ask them to put something on because of the issue with wanting to pose for photos for older men with cameras. Again, I was part of it and I really cannot explain how I let myself get into that position and at what point I became disgusted with all of us. While most of the Hamer just ignored the presence of the tourists (unless a tourist was trying to get a photo of them), overall I do not think they were too keen on us being there.

A special ceremony was happening later in the day at a Hamer home and the tourists were invited for a fee. I assumed the fee meant we would be welcomed. That was far from the truth. The family collected the money which helped defray the cost of their party, but most of the 200 or so guests (extended family members and friends) were not so happy with us being there snapping photos and gawking. The ceremony is called the bull jump and it involves initiation of a boy becoming a man so that he can soon be married (arranged by parents). The mother’s family is in one are and the father’s family is in another – I get the impression they mix about as much as the husband and wife do. There is also very little mixing of the women and men which by now did not surprise me. They drink homemade honey beer, drink copious amounts of coffee (made from the coffee bean shells – I guess the actual beans are too expensive) and they also do something very interesting. The boy’s sisters are beaten with tree branches by his best friends in order to show their love for their brother. Oh yeah, you read that right! Yes, the girls want to be beaten on the back with the sticks because they love their brother so much. I read interviews with women and they actually believe this is good. At the market I saw all kinds of bare backs with permanent scars from these beatings and many wounds that had not healed. Now at the ceremony I saw the women getting beaten and their backs were bleeding (I have photos of all this weirdness that I promise will be put online before I leave the States in January – stay tuned). Some rubbed butter on the wounds to help… I guess. Sounds like a good way to get an infection to me. The strangest part about it is that the girls volunteered easily for the lashings and they never flinched. An NFL linebacker would be on his knees crying with this abuse!!! I believe they did not show any pain because they truly believe this is their duty and honor. I cannot emphasize enough how normal this activity seemed to be for these people and how painful one lashing would be for any of us, but understand that the skin was broken with each hit, they withstood many hits and the wounds stretched across a great amount of their backs. It was so unbelievable and surrealistic that I didn’t even get grossed out by it and I really did not stand there and judge the stupidity of it all. A dance started up shortly after the last lashing session and they slaughtered a goat which was quite interesting to watch. They pulled out the liver and gave it to the boy. I am not sure what he did with it, but I was told that it was offered to keep bad luck away. Maybe it becomes a momento to give to his future bride?

And then the big event started around sunset. We all gathered in a circle around a herd of cattle many of which had big horns (understand that a Texas Longhorn would be mighty short in comparison to many of the African cattle breeds). Brave or foolish men and women whipped and pulled and pushed the cattle into submission with their goal being to get them very confused and lined up side to side. I can tell you that I would love to have brought a PETA member to this goat-slaughtering-cattle-abusing event! And then the boy disrobed completely and after some thought he proceeds to jump onto the back of the first bull and keep jumping until he crosses all of them and jumps back onto the ground. Seeing someone able to jump 1 1/2 meters straight up onto the back is interesting enough, but the fact that he was naked and flopping all around was absolutely ridiculous. Everyone cheered. And then he repeated the whole thing three more times maintaining all of his parts when he was done. I say that he earned himself a fine woman for his first wife and he is all man. All of the tourists left at this point and the tribal folks stayed on to party for another day. Overall, this experience was interesting, but we really were not wanted other than by the immediate family and only then to fund their party and that really tainted it.

The next day we visited the homestead of the Hamer guide and it was not very informative unless I asked questions. I asked away, of course, but eventually that petered out because their lives really are not very interesting. They have no beliefs in anything beyond their current existance (this did not seem to jive with the goat liver offering to keep bad luck away), their homes are the simplest I have ever seen with few possessions, their cattle and goats only generate so much interesting discussion and they do very little farming. The wife was eight months pregnant and she was doing all of the work which is pretty typical since the men really just go out with their cattle and all other chores are the wife’s. Understand that a “good wife” in these parts is one that slaves for her husband and always has coffee ready for whenever he might return from the fields. The kids were cute as they usually are and this was the highlight. The lowlight was being at the neighbor’s place where a woman with her five day old baby were in their extremely dirty hut and the husband came home. He did the usual grunts and gave the not-to-welcoming glances. He did not look into the hut to see how is wife and newborn baby were doing. A couple of local women showed up and I presume they were there to help the woman with her chores while she rested. Like many of the men, the husband carried an AK-47 (more on the guns later). He was fiddling with it and I was disturbed because it was pointed towards me and the kids a number of times. My guide looked at the gun and found that no bullets were in it. He said that was for the safety of the kids, but I am sure it was more likely due to no money for bullets. I can’t say for sure, but the whole vibe of the place makes that more likely in my mind with wealthfare of children not being very important for the fathers. I did not ask to take his photo fearing one bullet might be around. I was glad to leave.

That night I stayed at another dirty motel in Jinka (more on Ethiopian hotels later, too!). I was kept up all night by monkeys on the roof or so I thought. They were running around all night. I was tired and confused when I came up with the monkey theory. When I went out the next morning I knew monkeys did not stay up at night. I saw that the building I was in had a large space between the ceiling and the roof and that the back of the building was a maintenance shed. I knew right away that I had been kept up by rats running around in the attic area. I told the manager and he could not give a damn which is truly Ethiopian of him. These had to be huge rats and I was just grossed out. Upon hearing from other guests that the two other buildings did not have this problem, I told my guide that he needs to make sure his guests stay in those buldings. I don’t think he cared either. This day we were headed into Mago NP (where the animal feeding would take place) to see the even more bizarre people called Mursi. These folks do all kinds of body scarification and painting and are famous for the women cutting their lower lips and placing disks in them to stretch them. It would turn out to be the biggest freak show of my life. When I arrived there were about six other tourist vehicles there and the dozen or so tourists were surrounded by Mursi women and children presumably asking for photos while the Mursi men sat off to the side. As soon as I got out of the car I was surrounded by people pulling at me and begging for photos and money. I nearly juimped back into the car, but my guide got them to back up. A few photos later and I walked over the most primitive huts I have seen except for the Ba’Aka pygmy leaf “igloos” of which these looked very similar except for the use of grass rather than broad leafs for the outside cover. I was continuously hounded for photos and there was to be no education about how these people live. Just a bunch of very dirty weird looking folk pawing at me for photos. It would be like going to the zoo and getting in the monkey cage. It became so much that I think all of the tourists were just stupified by it. The mutilation of the women with lips cut and hanging below their chins or with clay disks up to 15 centimeters in diameter was absolutely freaky. I wanted to leave as soon as two girls aproacehed me for photos with their lips cut and no disks, but with a brass bracelet linking their lips. This was definitely the moment when that gray area was crossed and we entered into the land of human exploitation and I was sure I was now in some old-fashioned traveling carnival freak show.

That night is when we went to the dirtiest hotel ever in Konso. I decided I had enough with my tour of southern Ethiopia and after blowing off steam at my guide about the disgusting hotel I told him that we were going back to Addis Ababa and cutting the tour short by two days. He promised me that Yabello town/hotel and the Boreno tribe would be really good and we should go there as planned. But my guide book made it very clear that Yabello was worse than Konso (Konso being “positively luxurious by comparison with anything in Yabello”) and I told him that plus I was sick of their horrible tribal tourism. Instead we drove half way back to Addis and stayed at another lousy government hotel although it was on some nice grounds with big trees, hills, birds and monkeys. I went out late that afternoon to find monkeys and I immediately saw some. I walked over and there were vervet and black-and-white colobus that were down on the ground near people. Colobus do not do this and I was quite excited. But when I approached I realized that a hotel employee was feeding them injera (local tortilla-like bread made from fermented endemic tef grain). I was furious and I was just about to give him a piece of my mind when it started to rain. Not water, monkey piss!!!!! I am sure the monkeys knew I was going to ruin their little human food frenzy and exacted their toll on me. Monkeys are that smart and devilish! I had just showered and now I was headed back into the shower with my clothes on. After I was in a rage and went to the front desk and told them that feeding human food to monkeys is bad and since they have a statement of ethical service sign hanging everywhere I pointed out how stupid it is. The manager first claimed that they did not feed the monkeys, but then he told me that the local people are cutting down the monkey food trees so they do it to help the monkeys. I asked him if he has ever seen a monkey in a tree eating injera! He thanked me for pointing out their wrong ways. I left knowing they would not change these ways at all.

A couple from Holland that I had been seeing through the whole southern trip showed up at the hotel. I did not expect to see them until my last night in Addis, but my change of plans changed that. We often compared notes about the tours and the experiences. They told me that they had to stay at the same dump in Konso because their vehicle broke down for a bit and not because their tour company planned it. Only my tour company made those plans! They told me that it was the worst hotel they could ever have imagined and we shared some qualified laughs and many yucks. They did stay in Yabello and visited the Boreno tribe. They told me Yabello and the hotel were almost as gross as Konso and they told me the Boreno tribe experience was the worst of the lot. It included more hostilities between the tribe and the tourists over something to do with photos, but they were not privy to exactly what was wrong. As I have learned, most of the tourists were having the same bad experiences as I was having and I really am not sure if there is a tour company that does things right and I doubt there is since the whole system is wrong and they are just part of the system. After hearing their stories I absolutely knew that I had made the right decision to abort this whole mess and I only wish I had done so a couple of days earlier. Another case of hindsight being 20/20. We were really laughing hard when they told me about these two Dutch couples they had met in Yabello that were talking about what a great drive they had and how the food was good. They have six weeks in Ethiopia and we were imagining how they would be talking in two more weeks of horrible roads, disgusting food and bad hotels with four more weeks to go. I called them Ethiopian tourist virgins and pitied them! The only thing I can really add is that I think tourists should stop going to southern Ethiopia until Ethiopia starts doing things right. I have a lot more to say about general tourism in Ethiopia – positive and negative – but this was the absolute worst