Liana

Front tooth missing and dark brown hair in hopeless confusion, Liana squirmed over the side of the battered canoe and clomped up the beach in saggy socks and yellow boots to tell me that the water was full of green sea serpents.   Moments before, with her head hung over the side of the boat, with her dad paddling in the back, she saw the creatures swirling among the seaweed.  She was sure I was the one who would want to know, and just in case I missed the importance, she sputtered her story a second time.

Reaching for my hand and steering me to water’s edge she let me in on her other secret, which was that the sand holes that squirted salty water when your boots got too close were alive and your little finger would be sucked right off if you put it in there.

Curled in a blanket on the couch that evening and staring at the flames in the fireplace, Liana alternately described all she had seen that day and sucked her thumb.  The thumb, a holdover from early childhood, would persist for years.  It was comfort when awakened by reoccurring nightmares, and prior to bedtime, the mouth was sometimes just a good holding place.  The stories exhausted, she hugged her bedraggled lion with its stuffing poked through failed seams and leaned into my shoulder, the monster dreams held at bay at least for awhile.

Karen

She kicks off slippers onto the plywood floor and nestles against the headboard in a cocoon of pillows.  Two cats, banished to the foot of the bed due to recent transgressions, crowd together on their hair-encrusted blanket.   The graffiti of discordant paint samples on the wall mar the otherwise harmonious lines of the add-on bedroom.  The drywall she hung over a month ago still smells slightly like damp earth.

The make-shift night stand supports a precarious pyramid of books, an alarm clock blinking 12:00 due to the intermittent and unresolved electrical problem with the breaker box, and a sweating beer bottle.  She yanks the comforter to her shoulders and the Netflix case falls to the floor.  The remote pokes her in the ankle and she gropes for it, finally pinning it between the skewed sheets and the cat blanket.   Bit by bit she repositions herself and again wrestles with the comforter, as the cats fidget to find the center of their blanket.

Her sore butt, a result of this afternoon’s bike ride, vies for attention with her right elbow, tattooed with a bruise from a pipe wrench that she had wrestled with earlier that day.  His comments about her pokiness had lead to a premature end of the bike ride, a request for him to leave, and resumption of her search for a long cheater bar to break loose that corroded pipe.

Over the last months of the house remodel the fit of pajamas had become increasingly tight around her shoulders and forearms.  She shifts to face the floor length mirror, clenches her fist, and flexes her bicep; and then again at a different angle.   Rolling stiffly back onto the pillows she reaches for the beer.  It slips through her hands, soaking the edge of the bed and drowning the remote.  She considers getting up to manually operate the DVD player but instead reaches for the top book on the pile; the Lost Symbol barely wins out over Californication.   She hefts the book into her lap, fingers for the bookmark, and begins with, "Secrets hidden in plain sight …”.  Her eyelids close before she reaches the end of the paragraph.

Nearly

She lies in bed and lifts her hands above her belly to embrace a weightless orb.
Her splayed fingers scarcely sense its olive oil smoothness.
Starlight through the window almost reveals its translucence and empty interior.
She lowers her hands and it rests on the skin of her belly with the slightest hint of warmth.
She withdraws her fingers and a space in her belly opens to accept the orb.
She lies still, determined that this orb remain empty.
Amassed disappointments from the past nearly penetrate and she nudges them away.
Anxiousness about a future of loneliness nearly infiltrates and she gives a shove.
Pregnant with emptiness, she waits for that which she desires to occupy the space.
She nearly knows what it is.

Dust and Money

Thick dust settles on the tidy piles of shirts, dresses, and pants.  Monzal, a slim man of about 25, whisks the dust from the display of children's clothing using a small broom made of wheat stalks.  The narrow road in front of his storefront is dirt so the footsteps of those who pass by, along with the donkey carts and three-wheeled taxis, stir up a tempest of dust.  During this dry season in southern Ethiopia and without a midday wind the dust falls close to the source.  Many times today he will brush off the display. The rains will start in about a month and then he will have other troubles keeping his inventory of clothes clean.

For now the parallel lines of metal-sided shops that front the road disappear into a haze as Monzal sits on a wooden stool in a slightly soiled white shirt staring into the distance.  The dust filters blue from the sunlight and so the remaining spectrum casts the storefronts in pale yellow.

Young men roam the side roads of this town with no apparent destination. They are among the many that are unemployed and have left family farms either out of necessity or boredom.  If it were not for the shop he inherited from his father Monzal might be among them.  He doesn't sell much these days--other shops also sell children's clothing and customers are few, especially since the currency devaluation.  Also, the flood of used clothing that western countries donate to Ethiopia hurts his business.  The unintended consequence of their benevolence is to reduce the demand for the new clothing that is made and sold in his country.  One young man passes by the shop wearing a t-shirt with a logo that reads Texas A&M Aggies and his companion sports a pink t-shirt that reads Run for the Cure.  The logos puzzle Monzal.

The shop provides enough income for him to rent a nearby room and buy food.  He puts the remainder into a savings account for his two young sisters.  His sisters were taken in by a neighboring family when his father died and they now work for them as servants.  They help take care of the livestock and no longer go to school.  Monzal's oldest brother made this arrangement and receives 1000 Birr a year for their servitude.  This angers Monzal and he intends to buy back his sisters by paying his brother the annual 1000 Birr.  So far he has been able to put only 650 Birr into the account.  He will probably be able to purchase their freedom next year but is unsure how he would then afford to rent a second room and their school fees.

This afternoon his best friend, Ibsaa, stops by.  Ibsaa is a recent college graduate but works twelve hours a day as a cook at a hotel along the main road.  Ibsaa’s shirt is stained red with the splatters of meat sauce and the yellow of teft flour.  He has strong opinions about politics which he openly expresses.  Monzal worries about Ibsaa.  The federal police have their informants and those critical of the government can disappear for years with no explanation.  Ibsaa talks about the Chinese engineers who showed up three years ago and hired Ethiopians to rebuild the potholed road that leads to the east.  The road scaling a high mountain pass and dropping to the fertile eastern plateau was once narrow and surfaced with dirt and rock and so took eight hours by local bus.  The rebuilt road is wide and paved with asphalt.  And to everyone's relief the bus now takes only three hours.  Large trucks loaded with bags of wheat barrel west on the improved road and about ten times an hour Monzal can hear their growling brakes as they lumber through town.

Ibsaa tells Monzal that many of the trucks bypass Ethiopia's cities and instead end up at the edge of the Red Sea where the wheat is loaded onto ships bound for China.  “Government officials in Addis Ababa are orchestrating secret 100-year leases on prime Ethiopian farmland” he says.  He goes on:  “The public works projects funded by the Chinese during the last decade are part of a scheme to bilk eastern Africa of its grain.  They are after a long-term food supply for China.”  Monzal feels uncomfortable when Ibsaa goes off on these conspiracy theories.  Such talk could get Ibsaa in trouble.

Sure, nobody in town likes the Chinese engineers.  The stories are rampant -- the Chinese eat the dogs, bed the local women, and pick fights in the bars when drunk.  Monzal suspects that few of these stories are true since there is no lack of dogs roaming this town, most women marry young and are Muslim, and he rarely sees the Chinese engineers leaving their fenced compounds except when they are working.

Still, Monzal thinks, Ibsaa may have a point about China’s intentions.  Why would the Chinese fund a telecommunications system that allows for inexpensive cell phone service and pave most of the main roads in Ethiopia if there wasn't something in it for them?  Monzal admits to Ibsaa that he benefits from the Chinese projects.  “The clothes I buy for resale cost less since transportation costs are now lower.  And I can turn on my cell phone and call in an order at any time.  Yet I can't imagine the government letting the Chinese access to Ethiopia's best farmland -- not when the country is unable to feed its own people.”

Ibsaa starts in on how government officials pocket much of the foreign aid money that floats the country's economy.  Monzal’s discomfort rises and he looks around to see who might be listening.  In a lowered voice he asks Ibsaa, “Where do you get this information?”  Ibsaa tells him that groups operate outside the country and have roving web sites that can be read at the town's internet cafes.  “The only problem” he goes on but now louder, “is that the government monitors internet activity and will block these internet sites when detected.  In response, the opposition groups change the web site addresses in order to get around the censoring.”   “And can you believe it” he snarls, “the Chinese provide the software to monitor internet activity”.

A well-dressed woman pauses at his stall, shuffles through a pile of small dresses, and pulls out one that is sky blue.  Monzal interrupts Ibsaa to attend to her.  She asks the price and he begins with a high figure with hope that she has little idea what the dress is worth.  But she counters with half his quote.  They settle on an amount about midway but which still allows him some profit.
 
Monzal plops back onto the stool, sorts the money, and stuffs the dirt-stained wad into a tin lock box.  Ibssa is going on but Monzal quits listening.  He again picks up the broom and whacks at the dust on the piles of clothes.  I have to keep this business alive, he thinks.  I need to buy back my sisters.

Ship Pack Better Without a Saddle

Bekele's three children call out to each other across the valley, sometimes in short bursts of song.  They tend the family's sheep, goats, and cows, even though they are all under the age of ten.  This morning, like most, each child was sent out with a portion of the grazing herd.  Palatable vegetation is scarce this time of year so the animals rove far.  Before nightfall, before the hyenas are active, each child will guide their share of animals back to the house and inside the fence of woven tree branches and spiked cactus. 

The gaunt goats and cows are food for Bekele and his family.  Also, the cows are worth about 300 birr each and the goats 175 when sold in the nearby town of Robe on market day.  But the sheep are the most valuable.  After they are sold they will end up over a thousand miles from the mountain slopes where they were born and tended.  Today, twelve sheep start their journey.

Bekele finds his youngest daughter and most of the sheep on the higher slopes where the forest thins and becomes grassland.  She helps him sort out twelve of the larger males, making sure that each walks without a limp or any other defect.  Bekele heads down the valley with the select sheep and after a few miles stops at his brother's house to borrow his four horses.  He also gathers up blankets and rope.  

Bekele funnels the wandering band of sheep and horses down the main trail and out of the valley.  He wants to get them to town by afternoon.  A truck leaves the next morning and his sheep will fetch a premium if they are on it.  This truck of sheep will be one of many that wind their way along Ethiopian roads and end up at the port country of Djibouti along the Red Sea.  From there the sheep will be taken on ships to other Arab countries and arrive in time for religious observances that take place within the month.  Their worth is in their spilled blood and not in the meat and wool. 

The trail turns to rutted dirt road and then intercepts the busy paved road to town.  The last five miles along the paved road is the problem.  Trucks and busses are too numerous for him to safely herd the sheep from side to side of the road.  So he corners them into the shadow of a grove of sweet-smelling eucalyptus and one by one tackles each sheep, tying together the front legs and then the back legs.  He tosses a blanket over one of the horses and heaves a bound sheep onto its back.  He lifts two more of the smelly sheep onto the horse and quickly winds a rope around the belly of the horse, thereby securing the squirming mass.   He repeats the same with the other nine sheep and three horses.   Hands now softened by wrestling the lanolin-laced sheep, he leads the packed horses along the side of the road, each bridled to the one in front.

Bekele will not get back home until after dark because he will have to walk with the horses instead of riding one.  He didn't bring a saddle which would have allowed him to comfortably ride one of the horses and thereby pick up the pace.  He didn't bring a saddle because it would have gotten in the way of the loaded sheep.  Sheep pack better without a saddle.

Alea

Alea fills the three kerosene lanterns and since the sun has set I hold a flashlight for her. This is one of two tasks that she has yet to finish before she will slip through the cattle fence to the nearby hut where her family lives. The lanterns are old and finicky. She wrestles with the stuck cap and then with two small sticks fishes for a wick that has somehow fallen into the fuel well. She coughs often, not because of the foul smell of kerosene, but because of what seems to me a bad case of bronchitis. Her mother has the same cough, only worse, and today she walked to the clinic down the valley to be diagnosed by a slightly qualified nurse. If she needs medicine the nearest town is 15 miles further down the valley. Neither the clinic or medicine are free.

I think of how I might be helpful, more helpful than holding a flashlight, while she squats in the grass and manhandles the lanterns. I come up with nothing. She moves quickly and her hands end up coated to the wrists with kerosene. Some of the smell will dissipate when she gets to her last task of the evening - washing all the dishes that we have managed to smear with rice, lentils, and spiced tomato sauce. The next morning Alea will also wash the breakfast dishes, clean the sheets we used, and haul water on her back, 50 pounds at a time, from the stream to this trekking hut perched on a high terrace surrounded by giant juniper and hardwood trees. She also has to clean up after the cows that have somehow broken through the fence that surrounds the trekking hut, leaving shit behind. She likely has chores at home that fill any remaining hours of the day.

For her work here the family receives $3 per person per day. This night there are two of us and a hired guide who doesn't need to pay

Alea is ten years old. Her hair is long and braided into corn rows. She loosely wears a head scarf because, like most people in these high mountains of southeast Ethiopia, her family is Muslim. A green shawl hangs over her shoulders as she works into the cold night which, at this elevation, can leave frost on the grass by morning. A long skirt of dark worn fabric and plastic shoes with no socks complete her outfit. Her main defense against cold is to keep moving. This seems to me less than adequate when she is washing dishes in a tub of cold water long after sunset. Apart from her alarming cough, Alia is healthy and strong. Families mainly graze cattle, sheep, and goats at this altitude in the Bale Mountains. And a meat-based diet can keep a kid in good health. Her family occasionally trades livestock for barley and wheat, some of which she brought to us this morning in the form of freshly-baked flat bread. For these we pay an extra 18 cents.

Alea knows a few words of English and it is enough for me to awkwardly express my gratitude for her hard work. What can't be said I mime. I slip Alea a generous tip before leaving hoping that this would be hers to keep but I find out through the guide that she has divulged the extra money to her family and it will likely be shared all around.

I grasp her hands in thanks and I get in return the most beautiful smile this side of the Bale Mountains.

Sunday

I step into the flow of people walking towards the Ethiopian Orthodox Church set on a rise.  On any other day a swarm of trucks and minibuses on this road would be belching out diesel exhaust.  On this Sunday only the waft of cooking fires and the acrid street dust kicked up by footsteps hangs in the air.  The procession of white head scarves ahead is as a river of whitewater.  Marring the peace in the distance is the off-key chanting of the clerics at the church, made worse by the cheap amplifier.

Beggars, mostly old women and disabled men, line the sidewalk leading up to the church.  They beg in silence.  Draped in gray coarse cloth which functions as both blanket and coat on this cold morning, they sit on the irregular cobblestones with a piece of cardboard in front of them where the generous place small coins.  A well-dressed man pulls small loafs of bread from a bag and places one on each piece of cardboard until the bag is empty.  Some in their hunger, immediately gnaw on the freshly-baked bread.

I am entrained in the informal procession, an unbeliever among believers.  The route leads across a bridge and I glance at the putrid water below.   Soap suds gather in eddies, evidence of clothes washed the evening before.  Plastic bags by the hundreds create intermittent dams which pool water that provide places to bathe.

We reach the far end of the bridge and begin the last incline,  joining others who have taken alternative routes that converge at the church.  Now tightly packed together, bumping gently into one another, I am but one drop of water in the flow.

Filix

Filix hates goats.  Donkey carts, not much better.
He lays on the horn. Goats and carts scatter.
Three small boys dash across the road.
The brakes howl.  The overloaded grain truck shudders.
I close my eyes and groan.
Much too close.
"No worry", he says, flashing me a smile.

Filix is set on getting this wheat to Addis by midnight.
That morning he had picked me up alongside the road.  
This, the only connecting road in southeast Ethiopia.

With no seat belt my anchor is the backpack wedged between my legs.
We sail through the potholes.

Animals, people, and carts litter the road.
What doesn't move aside we weave around.
A goat vanishes under the bumper.
It pops out to the right, unscathed.

The road is mud and rocks.
We crest a hill.  I flinch.
A truck, also overloaded, approaches head-on.
Filix veers left.  The oncoming truck slips right.
We pass another truck, this one mired in the ditch with a toppled load of pipe.
No stopping to help.  Too steep.

Filix switches on the tape player.
He doesn't chew quat to stay awake.
Most truck drivers do.
Makes me feel tense, he says.
He owns this truck so much is at stake.

Cows fill the road ahead.
Filix blasts the horn non-stop and pushes through.