Heading South: A Night Under the Stars
The word travel traces back to the Middle-English word travailen, meaning to journey, labor, strive and most importantly, to torment. Much of traveling does feel a little like torment and as the strange bug bites, desperate trips to the bathroom and embarrassing cultural misunderstandings mount (who knew that blowing raspberries was one of the rudest things you can do in traditional Ethiopian culture?) I often wonder how I’ve found myself so far away from home.
I would say that the last four days my colleagues described fall firmly in the category of travailen and those stories of flat tires, sleepless nights avoiding lions in the bush and meals of curdled milk are the type that most often make their way back home as proof of true intrepid grit.
Which is why I’m embarrassed to admit that by the time I joined them in southern Ethiopia, they had figured out most of the hard stuff, allowing me to be absorbed by the overwhelming beauty of the place and the quiet hospitality of the people.
Youyouyouyouyou! Shout tiny little kids at our beat-up land rover as it races down the arrow-straight road from Yabello, slowing occasionally for dust devils and herds of annoyed camels.
We’re on our way to Dillo, to report on some of the most extreme water scarcity problems in the country. I’m trying to focus on my notes, all of the interviews and statistics I’ll need to contextualize the interviews we have set up and the long-distance water walk we’ll be participating in the following morning.
Problem is there are too many distractions.
The teardrop nests of Weaver birds hang like crude little ornaments from umbrella trees, pairs of mammoth-black Abyssynian hornbills amble together along the side of the road, occasionally I glimpse a frightened antelope or kudu with delicate white stripes sprinting in a warbling silhouette through far-off heat waves.
Bright, metallic blue flashes of swooping birds sporadically streak past the car windows, a shocking breath of color in a dry monochromatic landscape.
As the day and the heat wear on, we turn off at a local camel market onto a dusty road and begin picking up hitchhikers, nomadic Borena people returning to their small semi-permanent villages after adventures selling tea in the nearest town or cutting hay up in the hills.
First we meet an older Borena couple, the man clutching his kalashi (many of the pastoralists here are armed with ancient Kalashnikovs, to protect precious cattle from hyenas and occasionally other tribes) and his joking wife who compares her homemade metal jewelry with mine and wonders at our blaring pop music.
Next two Borena women in loose scarf dresses flag us down. They’ve been cutting grain and looking for water all day, and are relieved to tie their huge bundles to the top of the car and drink our cool bottled water while they discuss the diminishing rain through our good-natured (and Celine Dion loving) translator Ali.
We reach Dillo, a one road town 40 miles from the Kenyan border as the sun is fading. The Assistant Administrator examines our paperwork and greets us heartily by saying with an enthusiastic smile “You are welcome, you are welcome, we have no place for you to stay!”
In our excitement to reach far-flung Dillo (and for the scoop, of course) we’d neglected to take into account how few Ramada Inns there are in the area. Shrugging our shoulders, we say we’ll all five sleep in the car, already knowing that the friendly administrator and the crowd of curious onlookers we’ve attracted will never allow it.
A team of young men borrow worn mattresses from around town and drag them to the marginal shelter of a partially constructed health center on the edge of Dillo (despite our uber-polite Seattle-style protests “no please, we’re fine in the car, really”).
We head for a small hut on the main road that serves as a restaurant, tea shop and general gathering spot as our accommodations are arranged.
As we wait Ali tells me the story of his family’s hardships during the years of Ethiopia’s oppressive communist government (referred to as the Derg) over impossibly sweet, scalding hot tea served in little thimble glasses.
Jessica hears the faint singing of kids down the road and heads off, her microphone swinging.
Alex, after scaring the kids of Dillo half to death by trying to take pictures of them, has now attracted them all back. At least two dozen clamor for a spot around him, begging him to endlessly continue scrolling through his photos on the little play back screen.
He squats in the middle of the road, a big bearded guy being climbed by a mob of kids. At least six are sitting in his lap at once and the faint blue light of the screen softly illuminates all of their faces.
I hear Jessica from the dark beyond the teashop. “Sarah you’ve got to see this.”
It sounds urgent and I step quickly out into the now deep night.
“Look,” she says pointing upwards.
Alex comes too, the kids drop away disappointed.
As I look up I almost fall backwards.
There is a riot of stars swimming in inky black.
There’s no city for hundreds of miles in any direction and the sky is a crowd of constellations. I’m so dizzy I feel like they’re moving towards us.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Alex whispers.
“Stars!” he shouts pointing above his head.
The few remaining kids follow his gaze, look back at us confused, and point in turn at the camera in his hand.
Ali laughs at us and says our rooms are ready.
As we head to the health center a big lopsided moon is rising fast on the dead flat horizon. We’re not used to such big empty spaces and the jaundiced light spooks us with the strange midnight shadows it creates.
We’re headed for bed. There’s some travailing ahead of us as we follow the story in the morning, in retrospect I know there’s much more hard traveling beyond that--but it hardly seems worth mentioning now.
This story is part of a five-part series about the travels of a group of reporters who headed to the impoverished southern Ethiopian community of Dillo while reporting on East Africa.
Read more about Sarah's and the rest of The Common Language Project's reporting at www.clpmag.org
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