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.
No comments:
Post a Comment