SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA PART III - ARI PEOPLE

The Ari people live in villages around the town of Jinka in Southern Ethiopia. They wear mostly western style clothing. The women plait their hair and the men wear a short shaved haircut. Our guide took us to one of their largest villages where we spent most of the morning watching as the villagers went about their daily lives.

The Ari are mainly maize farmers; but, like all Southern Ethiopians, they keep a small herd of cattle and goats. They are friendly, open and industrious. From the maize they distill corn liquor. They gave John and I samples of this clear liquid when we visited their small still. It was pretty smooth, with a somewhat eathy smoke flavor due to the dung they used for fuel.

They are also known for their wonderful pottery. We watched a young woman take red clay that was gathered nearby and fashion a flat plate used for roasting coffee (buna) beans. There are several social classes among the Ari. Only women are potters and only pottery families can intermarry. The same marriage restriction holds for the blacksmith who hand forges knives and uses his animal hide bellows to bring oxygen to the fire. The blacksmith that we watched, told us that he has been training his daughter, the first woman Ari blacksmith, to carry on his trade.

An Ari woman taught Ann how to pour injera batter onto the hot injera pan and let us taste fresh corn injera. Injera can be made from several plants - tef and corn are the main ones. Injera is the traditional Ethiopian flat large round "bread" that provides the plate for eating all of the special Ethiopian dishes like "Tibs" - small chunks of meat fried with fat, garlic, onion and tomato. Injera is traditionally served and eaten communally. The main dish is placed in the centre of the injera with small portions of other foods surrounding it - a bit of each in front of every person. Cutlery is not used. Thus, the first step before eating, is to wash one's hands. The hostess brings a pitcher of water and a small wash basin. She pours water over the hands of each person at the table. After everyone has washed, the injera is uncovered and everyone can start eating. With only the right hand one breaks off small pieces of injera and uses them to pick up the food. Ethiopians love hot, spicy food and always have a variety of chile pastes or powders at every meal.

Like many other parts of Ethiopia, the Ari also make another form of "bread", kocho, a highly nutritious soft cake made from the pulp of the false banana or enset. In one of the pictures above, John and Sammy, our guide, stand before an enset plant. Later in our journeys we watched the making of kocho.

Pictures: Ari girl clutching a 1 Birr note(the cost of taking her picture); John and Sammy with the enset plant; Ari woman making pottery;Making injera;
Ari blacksmith; Ari women plaiting hair and nursing

SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA PART II - BENNA MARKET

John and I visited several open air markets while traveling in Southern Ethiopia. Our first market was the "Benna Market", located in the village of KeyAfer (red earth). Every Thursday, the Benna, Tsemay and Erbore people bring their goods to market. Almost everyone walks to market carrying their foodstuffs, crafts, clothing, housewares, pottery, gourd containers or fabric. A few travel by bus or truck. As we approached the town, we saw many people carrying large heavy loads, walking towards town. The market starts at noon, allowing time for the vendors to make their way to KeyAfer. They come from their villages up to 50 kilometers away. They also bring any extra livestock and sell it at a nearby market. And, then before sundown, they start the treck back to their villages laden with their market buys.

Market day is the time to dress up, socialize, and purchase or barter for necessary supplies. One of the more interesting sights were the women who carry a wooden bowl used to drink water or eat from by turning it upside down and wearing it as a hat. Some tribes wear westernized clothing, others like the Benna dress traditionally.

Benna females of all ages wear highly decorated hide skirts, swirling collars of cowrie shells, and cover their arms and legs with multiple bracelets. Almost all of the materials used for decoration are natural except for the metal and glass beads acquired from far places thanks to a chain of markets connecting the Lower Omo region with the outside world. The cowrie shells come from the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. The hairstyle changes with your age generation. Young women partially shave their heads and wear beaded headbands. Older women ochre and plait their hair into a dutch boy style. Traditionally dressed Benna males wear feathers on their partially shaved heads, carry walking sticks and wear a miniskirt made of colorful cloth. Whether wearing traditional clothing or not, the typical Southern Ethiopian, male or female, wears sandles made out of old tires.

Pictures: Older Benna woman; John with two young Benna girls; KeyAfar "Benna Market" scene with golden jerry cans used to carry water all over Africa; A vendors blanket filled with traditional clothing, jewelry and crafts.

SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA PART I

In mid-November 2010, John and I embarked on a 2 week trip to Ethiopia with 10 of those days traveling to Southern Ethiopia almost to the borders of Kenya and Sudan. We traveled in a Green Land Tours 2007 Toyota Landcruiser driven by our fabulous driver/guide, Sammy. It was an arduous trip, with 10-hour days of driving over rough roads, avoiding cattle and people every inch of the way. We went because we wanted to experience the myriad of cultures present in this land.

There are almost 80 million people living in Ethiopia and there are 86 different languages/cultures. Fiftysix of these tribes live in the southern part of the country. The largest tribe is the Oromo with about 32 million people. We also visited one of the smallest, the Karo tribe, with less than 500 people. Southern Ethiopia is home to some of the most primitive tribes in Africa and we wanted to experience their lifestyle and visit their countryside. We were able to visit about 16 tribes, 8 villages in depth and attended four market days. Many of the villages are very isolated. And, walking is, for many the only form of transportation.

We encountered a wide range of geography in our travels. We saw scrub desert and semi-desert with lots of acacia trees, savannahs, productive river bank lands, rolling hills covered with fields of maize (corn), large plateaus, a string of large brown lakes and a myriad of waterfowl, and high mountains with terraced hillsides. All of the tribes we visited raised beef, sheep and goats. Those lucky enough to have productive land also farmed. It was amazing to see with our own eyes the way these people use every available resource to its fullest.

We started and ended our trip in Addis Ababa, the capital, which has a population of over 3 million and is located at 7,000 feet above sea level. Many Djiboutians escape the summer heat by fleeing to Addis. We have been to Addis several times. It is only an hour away by plane. The one drawback is the poor air quality on work days due to the exhaust from so many old autos. However, for all of its people, Addis and countryside of Ethiopia is overall a very clean country. John and I really enjoy the Ethiopian people in and around Addis. After we returned from our road trip to Southern Ethiopia, we spent 5 days in Addis. We rested, ate great food, went to the movies (something Djibouti does not have), had a great couples massage, listened to some good music, purchased some more beautiful silver jewelry and spent a lovely afternoon with our Ethiopian friends.

Agriculture is the pillar of the Ethiopian economy. On our travels to the south we saw many different types of agriculture. We drove by very large flower farms with row after row of huge greenhouses which were owned and operated by the Dutch. Small family farms and larger community owned fields were plentiful in the non-arid parts of the countryside. Everywhere we went we encountered beehives hanging from the acacia trees. Ethiopia is Africa's premier honey producer and is fourth in the world. Cattle raising is the second largest source of foreign currency. Cattle are everywhere and all of them Angus.

Pictures: (1) John and Sammy, our Green Land Tours driver/guide; (2) cattle grazing; (3) fields of teff, wheat and barley just south of Addis; (4)fields of corn and food storage; (5) beehives hanging from an acacia tree

TRUCK WRECK IN DJIBOUTI

HUMMMMMMM! On the main highway between Djibouti City and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia there are many truck/trailer accidents. Most are one vehicle crashes, probably caused by excessive sleepiness (36-48 hours on the road without sleeping), alcohol or khat.

Many of these are roll overs caused by excessive speed around the corners or wheels leaving the road and flipping the trailers. Some are head on collisions between two trucks/trailers or truck/trailer and minibus. Most of these collisions occur on blind curves, where no one bothers to have a clear line of sight before attempting to pass.

The picture above shows a truck with its trailer that left the road, front tires hitting the ditch just right and flipping the truck up on its end. One of the strangest accidents we have come upon was a trailer off the road with its truck chasse flipped upright perched on top of the container on the truck's trailer. It looked as if the truck was riding atop the container.

We drive defensively in Djibouti. Between the animals on and alongside the road (goats, sheep, camels, donkeys and a few baboons), pedestrians who walk down the middle of the road or cross without looking and the wayward trucks with their trailers, a lone driver in a Toyota Hylux truck needs to be observant, quick and agile just to survive. However, our Hylux trucks do have an advantage. Because these trucks are small and have 4 WD, we can go offroad to go around alot of the pileups and weave our way through the long lines of trucks/trailers whose engines are too small to carry their heavy loads.

SUNRISE AT THE GHOUBBET KAROB

Sunrise at the Ghoubbet Karob, Djibouti (11 degrees north of the equator, about the same latitude as the coast of Venezuela, South Vietnam or southern India) comes and goes in a heartbeat. This spectacular sunrise happened ten days ago and lasted an entire 15 minutes from start to finish. It was the most gorgeous sunrise I have yet to see here and it happened just over the back wall of our little house.

POURING CONCRETE IN DJIBOUTI

In Djibouti, many building projects are completed totally by hand. This is happening currently right next to our offices in Djibouti City. Because there is a real scarcity of any wood or wood products in Djibouti, all of the buildings are made from concrete block and the floors are poured concrete. The owners of a property to the right and behind us purchased the lot right next to us. They first built a concrete block wall around the outside of the property and then proceeded to knock large holes in the original house and are adding on a huge addition. They have left some room on the lot for secure interior parking.

Everyday beginning at 6 am there are 50-75 day laborers pounding and banging, singing as they work. They sing especially rhythmically and loudly when they form a bucket brigade to pour the concrete for the building's floors. These pictures were taken from the second floor of our office and show the buckets, empty and full, flying thru the air as the bucket brigade works and sings together.

BURIAL GROUNDS

Djibouti Muslim burial sites are simple mounds of dirt, surrounded by stones. Whenever a person dies, they must be buried within 24 hours, according to tradition. There is no embalming and no cremation. Then three days afterwards, there is a coming together of family and friends to morn the deceased. There are exceptions to the three day after gathering, if the family needs to travel from out of the country or needs time to assemble.

The cost of burial and the feast that comes with the gathering after the burial must be paid for by the family of the person who died. For poorer Djiboutians, a gift of money to help with the burial and gathering afterward would usually be accepted and appreciated. However, that would never be offered to a family with means. Many after death gatherings happen under large tents erected in the streets or near the home of the family. Depending upon how important the deceased was, these gatherings can last for several days. Friends and family come during the day and evening, pray, read from the Koran, eat and visit.

The notion of human death here is hard for a westerner to fathom. The mourning period here is short if non-existent. It is considered "God's will". And, life continues as if nothing happened. It doesn't seem to matter if the death was expected or sudden. While a person is living, there is much family caring and sympathy for the ill one, especially a parent. But, once death comes, there is a stoic acceptance of the inevitable, as if humans have no power over this or any other aspect of one's life.

Traditionally in Djibouti, there is no such thing as brining food to the family of the deceased or "pot luck". When one is invited to a Djiboutian's home for dinner or a wedding ceremony or an after-burial gathering, it is considered impolite to bring food or host gifts, etc. It is considered an afront to even suggest that you might want to do such a thing. If you are invited to a Djiboutian's home, no matter how modest or grand, the guest always arrives empty handed. The host provides all food and drink. It is the tradition.