This is the second of three
installments by guest contributor J, who wrote this e-mail message describing a
business trip with Walter the consultant to the FH/E project
sites in South Gondar in mid-June 1995.
The
same lines, guards, waiting, checking and rechecking occurred on Wednesday
morning. The plane left four-and-a-half hours late, and the Bahir Dar airport
came into view at noon, twenty-six hours after our trip began. All this for a
35-minute flight! Bahir Dar and the surrounding countryside are quite
breathtaking. Situated on beautiful Lake Tana, the tourist town is very close
to the Blue Nile Falls, Ethiopia’s most famous natural wonder. After eating a
good lunch and arranging a return flight for Saturday, we hopped into the Land
Cruiser and sped on our way to Nefas Mewcha.
With
the exception of a one-mile stretch, the road was lined with rough stones and
gravel. A significant portion of the road was built by the Chinese, when
Ethiopia was still communist, with careful engineering. The mountainous passes
were skillfully carved out and bridges were strategically placed. Small ditches
hugged the road to prevent the annual rainfall from eroding the infrastructure.
Ironically, this engineering feat may have influenced the fall of the Derg
regime in 1991; the road was strategic during the war and as many as 21
burned-out and abandoned military vehicles were scattered among the stones and
rocks along the roadside. According to the Gondar Project forester, Yohannes
(who was also our driver), Mengistu lost a lot of soldiers and equipment in the
hills and valleys served by the Chinese road.
It took
us only one-and-a-half hours to reach Debra Tabor, the capital of South Gondar.
There Yohannes took care of some project business at the hospital, and 75
minutes later we were on the road again.
It was
only 75 kilometers from Debra Tabor to Nefas Mewcha, but the remainder of the
trip took us almost five hours. The roughness of the road had taken its toll on
the tires and in the course of 60 kilometers we had two punctures.
Unfortunately, the Land Cruiser was only equipped with one spare. Yohannes
parked the vehicle on the side of the road and left Walter and myself alone
among the tukuls (grass huts) and villagers while he went off to try to contact
his colleagues at the project site. It quickly grew dark and cold (the
elevation there is about 3,000 meters) and we decided to climb back into the
Land Cruiser with the key in the ignition in case we needed it.
As dusk
became darkness, a figure slowly approached the vehicle. At first we thought
nothing of it, and many folks had passed us carrying water, herding their sheep
or cattle, or hauling plows and yokes. This figure eventually took the shape of
an elderly gentleman carrying a gun. Not noticing the gun, Walter rolled down
his window and inquired (in English) what the man wanted. He replied in clear
Amharic, to which we shrugged our shoulders and I awkwardly replied “Amarinya
yellem” which means, very roughly, “Amharic there is none.” We all laughed, but
I remained a bit nervous. Walter rolled up the window and the elderly man
walked around the Land Cruiser and sat at the side of the road. We kept an eye
on him and after several minutes we agreed to let the man join us in the back
of the vehicle. We had understood just one word he had spoken: “Yohannes.” We
reasoned that our driver must have asked him to be our guard and that if he had
any hostile intentions, an inch of glass probably would not stop him. At the
same moment a group of four men walked toward the “guard” and greeted him. The
men handed us a note from Yohannes stating, “Don’t worry, I sent a guard to
protect you and our base camp has been informed of the situation.” We were
safe.
As the
men continued to talk among themselves they decided they all wanted to come
into the back of the Land Cruiser. It did not seem unreasonable, since it was
cold, yet my mother’s warning about talking to strangers was in the forefront
of my mind. I expected to additional four men to return to their homes after
delivering the message, but they weren’t going anywhere. What to do? I tried to
reason with them. However, after one day of language school I was in no
position to strike up a conversation in Amharic. I said to them, “and, hulett,
sost, arat, amist zebunya?” and shrugged my shoulders – pointing out to them
that “one, two, three, four, five guards?” for two people and a vehicle seemed
a little ridiculous, don’t you think? They laughed (mostly at my Amharic) and
continued to reason with me. Then a breakthrough: I heard one of them say “FH”.
I quickly inquired what FH was an abbreviation for, to get further confirmation
that we were talking about Food for the Hungry. No luck.
Finally,
Walter decided that it was time to let the guard with the gun inside the Land
Cruiser. The guard refused to climb in without his cohorts and proceeded to
offer his gun to Walter as a sign of friendship. Neither of us had ever held a
gun and we both quickly refused. But the tension seemed to have broken and the
five men persuaded us to let them in out of the cold. It turned out that we
were paranoid “ferenj” (foreigners) and the men were guards for an FH nursery
and forestry project site a couple of kilometers up the road. Yohannes returned
twenty minutes later and his translation cleared up any misunderstandings and
potential hard feelings. Rural Ethiopians are very friendly folks and we were
embarrassed not to have trusted them.
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