MAY 4, 2012 JINKA to MURSI to ARBA MINCH, ETHIOPIA

FRIDAY MAY 4, 2012   JINKA to MURSI to ARBA MINCH

(250 km asphalt and 140 km gravel, 8 hours)

A very early morning for me awake at 4 am in JINKA LODGE so I read for a couple of hours, Terry sat at the computer read the diary (he’s good at correcting my typos!.  We have to take advantage of all the time we have for recharging computers and camera batteries!  As I mentioned last night, it is very damp here - and it had rained overnight so everything felt damp - I had even folded the clothes I was wearing and zipped them inside my bag last night so that they weren’t damp and cold when I put them on this morning!

We were leaving at 6:30 am to head Southwest to where the MURSI people live - these are the people who believe in self scarring (lines and curves of bumps over their chests and arms) for self beautification, and the women wear clay disks in their lower lips and ear lobes - the bigger the clay disk the more beautiful they are considered.  Apparently this tradition started centuries ago - maybe as long ago as the 13th Century when slave trading was in full throttle.  They saw this as a way to frighten away those Africans  and Arabs looking to kidnap them and take them to sell them as slaves.  The young girls do not start with the clay disks until they reach maturity at age 15.

As we left the JINKA Hotel we first made our way over the very muddy road under construction - just imagine how miserable that is with all this rain and damp! This passes right next to the dirt and grass strip used for charter flights from Addis Ababa with Abyssinia Charter Flights.  We soon crossed the Neri River, brown with sediment, a fast flowing river about 30 feet wide with a few local men naked bathing in it.  Women also bathe in the river, but at a different location.  The Neri flows into the much larger Mago River, and then they both are tributaries into the OMO River before it flows into Lake Turkano.

We first drove through the MAGO NATIONAL PARK before reaching the MURSI people, total population approximately 10 - 15,000 located in many villages.  The park is very green with thick bush and scrub so even though there is lots of wild life they are hard to see.  The animals in the park include  leopards, lions, jackals, African wild dogs, spotted hyena, baboons, dik dik antelope and debrasus monkeys - we were lucky enough to see my favourite, several beautiful black and white colobus monkeys, defassa waterback, lesser Kudu, haartebeest, grey duiker, a large family of small mongoose, and lots of birds: hadadab, lesser blue eye starling, yellow necked spurfowl, guinea fowl, black bellied bustard, (male) paradise fly catcher with the beautiful long tail, and black eyed eagle.

We have to pay Park Entrance Fees (but the HQ is 8KM off the main road which we couldn’t get to because the road was too muddy for the Land Cruiser - more about that later).  The fee per person is 180 birr for the Park 150 pp for the Mursi Village, 20 birr for the vehicle, and 100 birr for the Mago Park Scout (+ tip of 100 birr) - the fees continually increase every year.  There was massive road construction (there is a high hill with switchbacks all the way up and then down into the lower OMO valley) with huge construction equipment.  We also saw a couple of very large tractor trailers struggling oh so slowly up the hill - at one point one of the construction front end loaders was behind the tractor trailer helping to push it up the hill.  We discovered that beyond where the MURSI live there is a huge sugar cane factory under construction and these tractor trailers contain materials for the sugar cane factory.  So perhaps next visit there will not only be local gin and Ethiopian wine for sale, perhaps there will be Ethiopian rum as well!  They will be using water from the OMO river at the new sugar cane factory.

MURSI WOMEN - Lower OMO Valley Ethiopia

Around 7:45 am we saw our first 2 Mursi man and woman walking along the road with a shawl thrown over their shoulders, carrying a large package on their head, and one bare breast on the lady - the first of many!  At one point we came across about 8 Mursi men blocking the road wearing almost no clothes, jumping up and down with everything, and I mean everything including his prized possession, waving in the breeze!  They wanted us to go and visit their village (and pay for the photos and entrance fees) but Malcolm had a different village in mind where he felt that the villagers were not grabbing at the tourists so much or trying to get photos taken so that they could be paid.

We stayed at the village for about 45 minutes arriving at 8:15 am.  The MURSI live with their cattle - lots of cow dung everywhere, and it seems as if each family keeps their own round hut with very small and low door for entrance, with a thorn fence of sorts between them and the next family.  Flies were really bad!  There were also lots of dogs and puppies (they all look the same) but when some MURSI arrived with their dogs there was significant growling, baking and biting between the dogs from the different families - and even the MURSI all jumped away in a hurry to get away from the dogs and not get bitten!  My favourite scene (no photo) was the little naked dark brown baby boy about 12 months old with a warm blanket which the tiny puppy was pulling at - it was quite a long tug of war before the baby boy managed to pull his blanket away from the puppy and wrap himself in it!

MURSI WOMEN, Ethiopia - Lower OMO Valley

The MURSI ladies and children present themselves to you and vie with each other to get their photos taken.  The young girls have no clay discs in their lips, or wooden disc in their ear lobes, until age 15, and there is no scarring for girls until maturity at age 15, and the boys when they feel mature - typically the scarring is for something they did - like killing a wild animal.  The men don’t put anything in their lips but some do put the wooden discs in their ear lobes.  Their idea of beauty is somewhat different than ours!  The shawls on the ladies are often hung down between their breasts so that their breasts show, some wear clothing which is cow skins or bark and decorated with beads and/or metal.  Many of the MURSI wear silver or brass bracelets - some have as many as 20 on each wrist, above the elbows, and around their legs between ankle and knees.    Imagine how you would react to a somewhat shy MURSI woman wearing a decorated goatskin dress over one shoulder, bracelets around her ankles and wrists, carrying a gourd with a brightly coloured straw basket woven around it on top of her head, and an AK47 rifle over her shoulder?  All she wanted was 5brrr for each photo - would you say “NO?”

There was one very pretty young lady with wooden discs in her ear lobes (no lower lip clay disc) and a hat that was made from the white fluffy cottony looking potato sacks and a large strap underneath her chin covered in shells which come from Lake Turkana - she had one wrist with about 20 silver bracelets, the other lower arm with the same number of brass bracelets, and around her biceps there were several coloured beaded bracelets.  Another beautiful young girl had lots of rings on her fingers and a large head strap with two large cow horns hanging down - in the MURSI tribes individuality is most definitely encouraged.  Most of the tiny babies and children have no clothes on at all and we passed many MURSI men on the road wearing a few beads and nothing else.  Donga is the name of stick fighting - by MURSI, SURMA, and BODI all practise stick fighting, and we had 4 MURSI men whose bodies were all painted white (with sand, limestone or sorghum) in varying patterns and were proud to stand together for a photo.

MURSI men can take multiple wives, and they are pastoralists with owning mostly cows.  They do grow limited sorghum and maize on the banks of the Mago river, and a few tobacco leaves which they chew, they also get honey from the hives which they hang in the trees. The time with the MURSI flew by and really until I looked again at my photos it was impossible to absorb everything we had seen.  

The safari drive back through MAGO National Park was pleasant spotting animals and birds, and we stopped for mango juice and cookie after we left the Mursi (not at a roadside stand - we had left before the restaurant opened so brought these along).  At the checkpoint after leaving the Park Malcolm had a heated discussion about why we were paying there for the entrance fees and had not paid at HQ in the Park since we could not get up the road - while this discussion was taking place we were watching the other Park Ranger with rifle over his shoulder selling the Khat leaves to anyone who was interested in buying.  Bale showed us the leaves and how they only chew the very small tender leaves not the larger more mature leaves - so not all the leaves that are sold in the bunch would be enjoyed.

In JINKA we returned to the JINKA hotel (it was still raining there) and enjoyed a toilet break and coffee of our choice (I had machiatto) before continuing the drive heading North to Arba Minch - retracing our steps - yes, our trip home was starting.  On the way we passed lots of young children who wanted money, candy, pens, teeshirts, photos or anything.  We didn’t stop but they are very clever and funny - they stand on their hands and dance upside down - or the right way up!  They will wiggle their hips and shoulders and are very funny as you drive up the highway towards them.  We frequently travel fast (for these roads) up to 100 km per hour -but even 60 km per hour can be very fast when there are so many people and animals on the roads, and needless to say any photos at that speed are usually blurred!  

It was Friday afternoon so everyone seemed to be on the road heading into the village, or heading home from the market,  and the KONSO are the ladies who wear the two tiered skirts which are so cheerful.  We made it KONSO for lunch at 1:45 pm at the KANTA LODGE - we repeated the tomato soup and spaghetti bolognese which was so good last time, and just as tasty this time.  We ate pretty quickly on the terrace (we still had some miles to do) but there were lots of flies this time and I had a couple of bites. 

The miles to Arba Minch flew by with us spotting blue naped mouse birds, colobus monkeys, tawny eagles, cattle egrets, chanting goshawks, white winged black tits, fantailed ravens and black and white magpie starlings along dead sea fruit bushes all along the side of the highway (poisonous fruits to us).  We also passed a huge cotton farm.

DORZE house which looks like an elephant

Before checking back into the Paradise Hotel for the night, we managed to take the 50 minute drive from 1500metres altitude at Arba Minch to 2500m up the mountains to see the DORZE peoples in the CHEACHA Village.  The DORZE (population around 1 million) are called Mountain People and are smart - they have set up several homes into which they will take the tourists and show you how they make their cotton from the raw cotton balls and how they weave.  They are living in a large plateau at 2500m which we arrived at after we had taken the switchbacks and the DORZE are famous for the brightly coloured and varied design hats, as well as the beautifully coloured shawls and scarfs, which they also sell, 250 brr for the fine cotton scarfs and from 500 brr ($30) for the fancier fine scarfs.

COCHO - False Banana Bread
with chili paste and fresh honey

They also make the bread from the false bananas for which they are famous, first shredding the leaves, storing the paste under leaves underground for 3 to 9 months to ferment - it then smells like very ripe cheese.  They then take the fermented paste, roll it into a ball with a little water, then press into a flat pancake - which is again put in between two banana leaves and baked on a pan sitting on charcoal open fire for about 5 minutes both sides.  This is then eaten (we had it warm) with chili paste - VERY HOT chili paste, and fresh honey.  The false banana bread is called  Kocho and is a little sour (do NOT think sweet Banana bread in North America which is actually cake made from real bananas) and we also had a shot of the 50 proof local brew made from sorghum and water called Ghaka (or Araki) - very potent!  They wear skins (leopard, goat etc) when singing and dancing but we did not see this.

Outside this village, the local kids tried to sell us more shawls, coffee pots, necklaces made from seeds, carvings and the like - again surrounding us as we climbed back into the Land Cruiser.  It was close to 6 pm by now and we headed down the mountain.  The DORZE mostly walk up and down this mountain - and you could see the women struggling up with huge bundles of firewood on their back, as well as the women who had taken produce to sell at the bottom of the mountain on the main road, carrying back up everything they did not sell at the end of their long day - no wonder they are all so fit and skinny.

The road into Arba Minch was very busy and hundreds of the students were walking together, sitting in couples in a quiet spot in the fields, or gathering in larger groups drinking coffee in all the outdoor coffee shops (think a few wooden planks and open charcoal fires for roasting the coffee on) in front of the University.  We checked in and headed for dinner after a quick freshen up, ordering dinner and our G&T at the same time - glad to say they ordered more gin after we cleaned them out 4 days previously (and we’d only had 2 G&T’s that night!).

The internet was working but incredibly slow - so I spent 3 hours downloading over 700 emails and trying to delete the majority which were unimportant but still have to be checked over first to be sure.  We fell into bed around 10:30 pm - a long but very interesting day - again!