The Omo Valley, Ethiopia… The region where the weird and the wonderful regularly combine!!!

 

Hello hello,

So we have now after a very rough drive through Northern Kenya made it to Ethiopia. A country which has beaten our expectations by a country mile!!

We started our journey in the Omo Valley, a part of the country which has remained fairly isolated from tourism and western influence until relatively recently. This region is widely known for its many tribes all living very close together in “relative” harmony amongst the hills and valleys of this Southern Ethiopia region. Our first night was spent in the Konso region of the Omo valley, due to being limited on time we didn't really get to explore the villages here, instead just witnessing the stripy, poofy skirts on the women, striped shorts on the men and strange dancing from the children.

Our next stop was the Key Afar market, our trusty Lonely Planet told us this was one of the best markets in the Omo valley to see a variety of tribes all interacting together, and it wasn’t wrong!! The market was a colourful sight with the Banna tribe, the Hammer tribe, the Tsemay and the Aari all doing their weekly shop for everything from butter to beaded jewellery. We had hired a guide for the market, Aman a young but very knowledgeable Banna man to show us the market and he was brilliant showing us the various tribes and helping us negotiate taking pictures. He also proved helpful when Malcolm had 2 different sets of angry locals abusing him for taking down their power lines!! We had heard that some of the Omo tribes could be pretty aggressive and persistent towards tourists but it was hassle free for us (apart from the power lines) and everyone loved it for our first real Omo valley experience.

While in the market our guide told us that a Bull Jumping ceremony was happening about 20km away the next afternoon. The bull jumping ceremony entails a boy who is ready to enter manhood running over the backs of 30 bulls 4 times while his female relatives get whipped to show their love for him. If the boy falls he gets beaten by his female relatives. After a bit of consultation with the group which didn't actually take that long as everyone was keen, we rearranged our itinerary to spend another couple of nights and witness this strange ceremony. The afternoon started with us being welcomed into the tribe with dancing and local beer made of sorghum (with a large amount of flies too). We then moved onto the whipping, for many tribes in the Omo Valley scarification is a form of beautification and is weaved into many of their ceremonies. The females at the ceremony all grabbed sticks and vines and begged to be whipped. We looked on rather alarmed while their wounds bled and they begged for more.. it was very surreal. The day slowly progressed on Africa time, while celebrations; dancing, drinking and face painting continued and more and more people turned up. Finally as darkness came the real event began as the men made a grab for the bulls horns and tails to keep them in an orderly line and the women circled all singing and chanting, we stood by and watched the madness unfold. Countless bulls escaped queue children screaming and me almost having a panic attack but eventually the boy stripped naked and hopped on the bulls to run across not just 4 times but 6 times! What a man hey!!!

Our next stop in the Omo Valley was a town called Jinka, an access point to see the famous Mursi tribe. This is the most well known tribe in the Omo valley mainly for its weird but wonderful lip plates the women wear. The tribe was a 2 hour drive away from Jinka and enroute we encountered one of the best shows of team work I have ever seen. A large truck carrying 30 tonnes of sugar cane was jack knifed across the road, meanwhile around 8 buses loaded up with men heading to the sugar cane factories were all stuck behind it. Now in a western world the police, maybe a fire engine or even a breakdown team would be called upon to pull this truck out, but there was none of that around here. So instead the men proposed to……… pull it out by hand. The scepticals in our group (myself included initially) pronounced they could never do it. But sure enough with a little help from another truck towing him back a little to straighten up, they did it!!!

After the drama of the truck we quickly and rather excitedly arrived at a Mursi village. The Mursi were the tribe we had been warned most about for hassling us to pay for taking their photos and wearing jewellery which the children can pickpocket that kind of thing, so we were slightly sceptical of the visit we had planned. Thankfully we hired a good guide Becky who gave us the best advice; to leave the cameras in the vehicle for a good hour so we can actually interact with the tribe without being harassed. It was a great experience to meet a tribe so far removed from western civilisation, the men all walk around naked apart from a loosely strung blanket from their waist, the women's lips sagged loosely after being stretched to wear their lip plates (another sign of beauty and only worn at ceremonies or for our photos!) and we happily taught the kids clapping games while they held AK47’s over their shoulders! And then it was time for the pictures and all madness descended, we were prodded and pulled in every direction to take photos and subsequently pay them money and once this started within 15 minutes we were done. While this madness ensued another vehicle turned up with 3 or 4 tourists who literally hopped out to get photos for maybe 5 minutes before jumping in their vehicle and driving back to Jinka, a 2 hour drive for pretty much nothing, what a shame!!

All in all our visit was a success we can see why the Mursi have the reputation they do but while tourists like those we saw stay for just 5 minutes to take photos, pay them and leave is it really any wonder they act like they do? For us, thanks to our guide Becky we all felt we got a lot out of the day learning and interacting with the Mursi whilst also getting a few photos in the process.

Sadly the Mursi was our last stop in the Omo Valley before heading out to the bustling capital of Addis Ababa, for me and Malcolm and I think for many of the group it was a real highlight of our time in Africa and it sent us on our way through Ethiopia with high expectations of all that was to come….

Much love

Grace X

P.S. Yes that’s right Malcolm is holding a real AK in that photo!!

The road less travelled but a lot more bumpy!!!

 

So after another great visit to Uganda and Rwanda and the kids and Edison at the Lake Bunyonyi orphanage it was time to head North through Kenya and into Ethiopia….hopefully, the only thing that led in the way was the notorious road north. One I had heard many people talk about while working for Oasis, it is meant to be one of the roughest in Africa….definitely on this trip. Known for hours and hours of teeth jarring corrugations and bandits….bad men with guns that have made a living for many years robbing people on the road.

                                          

So we headed from Nairobi north, though Marsabit and onto Moyale.

In the past the only way to do the stretch from Nairobi to Ethiopia was with an armed convoy. Things have got a little better of late but problems still happen a lot on the road. There are also many tribes that live in the area and they have, for hundreds of years, stolen cattle off each other and fought over it. When a young man wants to get married he needs to meet the bride price with cattle, if he doesn’t have them, he will steal them. This wasn’t so bad with old traditional weapons, not too much could go too wrong. But with a readily available supply of guns from Somalia, Uganda and Southern Sudan, what used to be a bit of tribal fighting has turned into sometimes all out war.

Recently the police tried to step in and sort out some cattle that had been stolen and 42 policemen were killed so it is serious business. The area we are driving through is very barren, with very little rain fall and the people living there are nomadic. They have goats, sheep and cattle which they mainly use for milk. They survive on very little, moving to find grass for the stock, their main food being milk and some rice that is donated by the government. One thing they do not have a lack of is camels. There are hundreds and hundreds of Camels just along the road, there are thousands off in the distance. They drink the milk from them but that is all. They do not kill them, eat them or sell them. The more camels you have the richer you are, people are very proud of their camels and protect them so.

They live in small settlements of around 5 – 15 huts, they are very basic. As it doesn’t rain and is warm they don’t need much protection and as they are nomadic they need to be easy to take down and move. Water is very hard to come by and people walk very far to get it. There are a few bore holes that the government has built that people can get water from. A Chinese company is building a new road and has built many more bore holes that people can now use and they will stay after the road is finished.      

Camels on the road and the nomads huts.

With all of this ahead of us we left Nairobi and headed north, but not before we had the front spring out of the truck and watched the All Blacks French game and the lions game. Out of Nairobi is the super highway, beautiful road, we bushed camped near the road and had many drunk visitors who all told us they owned the land and we had to pay them. The land had many owners and we payed none of them. The next day we travelled very close to Mount Kenya, the area looking like the country side of England, with fields and fields of crops and rolling hills (Grace loved it). We got up to about 2500m above sea level, then very quickly dropped down to the dry hot plains. Dropped about 1800m in 15 kms.

Spring out with help from Chris and Kyle, what happens when you fall asleep.

When we got to our first road block I went to sign in and asked the police officer if there was any trouble on the road north. He laughed and said “no no no, everything is fine, the road is very good today….if you came yesterday there was a lot of trouble and tribes fighting….but today it is good”. Haha makes us feel way better…..we decided to tell the pax that after we got to Ethiopia. We started to see some of the Samburu tribe, a very colourful and beautiful tribe, walking along the road. Grace had just fallen asleep when the good road just stopped and the gravel started. We dropped from 80 kmph down to anywhere between 5 and 20 kmph. After 20kms and 2 hours on the road we made it to Laisamis. It was around 4pm and with the next town 80kms in front of us and the policeman saying camping outside town is not safe we looked for a campsite.

These are not my photos as the Samburu do not like you to take their photo but this is very like some of the people we saw.

The town was a very small wild west like town and a campsite could not be found so we headed to the police station. They were very friendly and let us camp in their grounds for the night and unlocked the ‘nice’ drop toilet for us. We had a lot of kids come visit us that we managed to run off but not before they tried to steal our stools. We left early in the morning with a police car going in front of us the clear the road. The 80kms to Marsibit took us about 7 hours. It included some of the worst roads I have ever been on and a lot of bumps and even more dust!!!!!

More camels, the good road and the start of the bad and a magic sunrise.

The afternoon included a very small piece of new road…it was magic. Built by the Chinese, in 3 to 4 years the whole road north will be all tar seal. We spent most of the day on diversions, even one that went through a dry river bed….that we got stuck in. Managed to get out with sand matts and head back to the old road. The next thing, we are driving along fine and all of a sudden the truck sounds like a boy racer car. I stop and get out to find out to find the muffler has fallen off with all the bumps. We go back and find it….only to see I had driven straight over it and it is flat as a pancake. I left it there and we are still a boy racer truck. The road was a mixture of very rocky, very bumpy, very very dusty, like powder dust. All over the barren landscape was camels and camel herders, wondering along with a gun over their shoulder looking after their camels. There was very little traffic, we saw about 10 cattle trucks in the day, all loaded up with people sitting on top on the truck, the safest way to travel is in large numbers so the drivers pick up as many people as possible all the way. There was volcanic rock everywhere and not anywhere to get off the road. We passed many small nomadic camps and signs of ones that had been there in the past.

The road and lots and lots of dust, everyone in the back turned brown.

We soon realized we weren’t going to make it to the next town to camp and couldn’t camp in the middle of nowhere out there. Rocks everywhere and bandits….plus the nomadic tribes have had a hard life and do not trust easily. They have also had trouble with bandits, so each wee camp has 4 – 8 men trained by the army to protect them. They would not have taken well to us trying to camp on the road side. We got a little worried as we didn’t have many options…..but then in the distance we saw what looks like a cell tower….maybe it had security. It ended up being a Chinese road working camping site in the middle of nowhere. We asked one of the 10-12 security guards with AK47s if we can camp and he says it should be fine but just have to wait for management. Inside the camp was a basketball court with two young chinese men playing and a wee Chinese lady walking around with an apron on and we could smell noodles. All very weird in Northern Kenya. They let us camp for the night and looked after us very well. We cooked all our food over a campfire, in the morning the Kenyan workers come to check us out and were amazed we cooked on fire. Mzungu’s (Travelling people/ tourists or white people) are meant to cook on electricity they said.

Where we got stuck top left, the road, the Chinese road workers camp and a dusty greasy driver!!!!!!

We gave a policeman a ride to the next town and I learnt a lot about the area. He said a lot of the bandits are coming down from Ethiopia. They are fighting for their own country separate from Ethiopia and have been pushed south into Kenya. But he says a lot of time they are just looking for food and water and they will not target tourists as it is very important to everyone to look after guests of the country. There are also some from Somalia as well but this has got less since Kenya and the African Union has entered Somalia to try and defect the warlords there. He did say that men came into the small town he is a policeman in 8 years ago and killed 56 children and left. They took nothing and never gave a reason for it. Kenya is trying to do its best to control the region but it is so vast and so lawless still that the police can only do so much.

Camels and more camels, Joseph the policeman and a full local truck.

We made it to the Ethiopian border one muffler less and very dusty and tired, looking forward to a shower/ bucket of water. 350kms has taken us the best part of three full days, driving from 6am till around 7pm with a lunch stop in the middle. But we were happy to go somewhere many don’t and see a region like nothing I have ever seen, where the outside world hasn’t yet made a big impact and nomadic people are still going about their lives like they have for hundreds of years. Only time will tell what a new big road will do to change that. It will make it a lot easier to get north but it won’t be as fun and we all feel like we have really earned Ethiopia now.

Malc