27-33. Seven men from seven nations. From the top: Thor Heyer-dahl, Norway, leader of the expedition. {Photo: Gosta Glase, Stockholm) (Left) Carlo Mauri, Italy, film photographer. (Right) Santiago Genoves, Mexico, quartermaster. (Left) Norman Baker, U.S.A., navigator. (Right) Georges Sourial, Egypt, underwater expert. (Left) Yuri Senkevitch, Russia, ship's doctor. (Right) Abdullah Djibrine, Chad, papyrus expert.
and on Easter Island. A slightly larger edition, on which a single person could sit, was called a marotcha, while the usual two-part boat, designed for two or more paddlers, was a tanqua. The largest tanqua we saw had nine men on board, but we heard that there were many which carried two or three tons of corn across Lake Tana. Occasionally a tanqua had been blown adrift and lain in the water for more than a week before the crew got it to shore again with the com, which had then begun to sprout. The Abaydar people believed, as the monks did, that after two weeks a tanqua would be completely waterlogged and sink beneath the waves. The hollow hull of the tanqua was so thin that the reed raft undulated like a worm on the swell.
My suspicion was confirmed: Although the elegant shape with the up-curved stern of the Lake Tana tanqua came closest to the lines of the ancient Egyptian vessel, it lacked the rigidity and strength that characterized the kaday on Lake Chad.
Since papyrus and papyrus boatbuilders had vanished from modem Egypt, my best procedure would appear to be to bring papyrus from Lake Tana and boatbuilders from Lake Chad, while using the ancient Egyptian wall paintings as "blueprints" for the vessel I was to build.
Not too far from the village, I stepped ashore in an area that seemed totally devoid of people. Suddenly, a strangely majestic Ethiopian arose from the thicket of reeds along the riverbank. He was wearing a sleeveless cloak and carrying a long spear over his shoulder, like a fishing rod. With his proud bearing, pointed black beard, and sharp profile, he was not unlike Emperor Haile Selassie. His little son proved equally picturesque when he, too, emerged from the reeds, carrying a wicker fish basket on a pole over his shoulder. Ignorant of their language, I grabbed them in a friendly manner and maneuvered them into a suitable position as foreground for a series of papyrus pictures by the photographer. But, when I handed the man a small coin in thanks and prepared to jump back into the boat, he gave me a slyly condescending smile and politely indicated that he wanted to accompany us. And thus, our photo model and his son joined our little expedition down the river and out through the vast reed marshes to the lake. Once there, they both thanked us politely and were about to step ashore when Ali very anxiously got me to take
out my wallet from my hip pocket. He thereupon brazenly withdrew an Ethiopian bank note equivalent to a week's wages and handed it to the bearded man, who smiled modestly and bowed elegantly before vanishing into the reeds with his son as abruptly as they had appeared.
"That was the biggest bandit along this shore/' explained Ali, relieved. "I always give him something to keep him happy."
That night a cloudburst descended on us. We tied the boat to a tree on the bank and pulled our little papyrus tanqua over our heads as a roof. The thunder crashed as it can only crash when the clouds lie low over open water, and the deafening noise, accompanied by blinding flashes of lightning, showed that the storm was right over our heads. The lightning struck both lake and forest. A flash and a crash together, we felt the blast, and a great jungle tree splintered on the shore close to our mooring. The rain spurted in like jets from distant garden hoses. All our possessions were floating around in the boat v^th the day's catch of fish. The cameraman slept. In this weather there was no need for him to lie in wait with the insect spray.
In the deep south of Ethiopia the Rift Valley runs north and south between two mountain ranges in the direction of Kenya. The geologists have shown that this valley, parallel to the Red Sea, was produced by Africa's slow westward shift over many millions of years. A series of large lakes lies like a string of beads down this wide mountain valley. In one of them. Lake Zwai, papyrus boats are built. There is an excellent highway down the valley, and the other lakes are popular resorts for weekend tourists from the capital, Addis Ababa. They come here to hunt, fish and swim. But they do not come to Lake Zwai, the most beautiful of them all. For one thing, no road leads to this lake. But most important, papyrus grows there, and this plant harbors the snail that is host to the dreaded bilharzia worm. No swimmer, therefore, can set foot in this beautiful lake.
Two Swedes in Addis Ababa were able to tell us about this lake and its inhabited islands. One had read about the islanders because he was an ethnologist; the other had been on its shores himself because he made his living in Ethiopia as a birdcatcher. With provisions and camping equipment in a hired Jeep, we left our base
in the capital and raced off on first-class, good, less good and, ultimately, appalling roads. We found lodging for the night at a hospitable Swedish mission-station high up in the hills east of Rift Valley. With a resourceful Ethiopian teacher, Aseffa, as interpreter and a young Galla Negro who "knew the way," we set off in the Jeep next morning for Lake Zwai. A deep gully with a foaming torrent barred all access to the vast plains leading to the lake, and to get across this barrier we first had to struggle fifteen miles south on a swampy mud road under construction. There we left the road, crossed an incredible bridge of boulders and slabs and continued thirty miles northwest, without road or wheel track. We followed narrow bridle paths, animal trails and open glades between the scattered trees, now this way, now that, and we constantly had to get out and walk in front of the Jeep to find a passage. Our "guide" sat stolidly without opening his mouth, and the few times when he did point, he led us astray. There were no wild animals but many old burial mounds, and often we saw Galla Negroes hunting in the woods, spear on shoulder and dog at heel. One boy turned and raised his spear in alarm when we drove the Jeep toward him to ask the way, then ran off as fast as he could and disappeared among the sparse acacia trees.
It was late afternoon when we reached a high rocky headland projecting into Lake Zwai which afforded a splendid view of the eastern shore and two of the distant islands. Up here were a tiny wooden hut and a large tent, the Swedish mission clinic. The nurse who ran the clinic alone was on holiday in Sweden, but a watchman of the Galla tribe lived with his family in a grass hut nearby and allowed us to use the tent. On either side we could see reed or marshes stretching north and south from the foot of the escarpment, and far below us the evening sun shone on a yellow dot that seemed to be moving across the lake. It was a little papyrus boat slowly making its way home to the nearest island.
Again the day dimmed as fast as on a stage, the way it always does only eight degrees from the equator. Then the play began. Monkeys chattered in the trees round about. Hippos lumbered ashore and went champing into the native maize fields. The howls and moans of growing numbers of hyenas came nearer and nearer. Out on the lake, far, far away we could hear drums. From the tent we could see
the light of campfires on the islands. Aseffa said the Copts were celebrating the prelude to their great Maskal feast. I was just stealing out into the dark to watch the panorama when I ran straight into two black and almost invisible figures with spears, standing right in front of the tent door. It was the caretaker from the grass hut with a relative who asked if we would like to see the hyenas. The men had found their mule dead, and now the hyenas were busy eating their fill. We stole into the thicket. From somewhere ahead of us came heart-rending screams, yelps, snarls and barks. Around us in the scrub on every side watchful hyena eyes shone like parking lights. When we switched on the flashlight everything disappeared, inaudibly and invisibly, as at the touch of a wand. Only the mule lay there, bloody and torn. We switched off again and waited. Then all the e}^es lighted up again, pair by pair, on every side, and the beasts howled, moaned and gnawed. After a while we heard crackling among the bushes and boughs, and we switched the light on again. Only half the mule was left; it had been divided into two and the whole hindquarters had disappeared without
trace. We hunted everywhere in the bushes, which were covered with trails of blood, but half the body and both back legs had vanished forever in the night.
Next morning we clambered down to the papyrus lake. Part of the maize field at the foot of the cliff had been trampled by a single hippo which had eaten hundreds of corncobs during the night. The neighbor was busy chasing away monkeys intent on taking over the leavings. Far out on the surface of the water we could see small papyrus boats approaching from the islands. Where we were waiting, a passage had been cleared through the reeds to a narrow landing place on the quaking marshy bank, for here a narrow footpath led down to the lake. We waited with ax and rope and two branches that we had chopped off in readiness, each as thick as a man's arm and twice his height. We had made a plan and now we were only waiting for the papyrus boats to land.
Here they were. They were unlike those of the monks on Lake Tana, and more like the boats of Lake Chad, with shorn-off stern and just the prow curved up into a point. But they were small. There was room for only one man on each.
The first two to arrive had come from the islands to barter with the Gallas on land. One had grayish brown corn beer in a clay jar
and in the dried shell of a bottle gourd. The other had freshly caught fish. Soon the third came in too and began to drag his papyrus boat ashore. We stopped them. We offered to trade and soon we had hired the three small boats. We placed them side by side and lashed them together with our rope, reinforced by the two solid branches which we bound crosswise. This was our plan of campaign. We knew this was the only way of getting out to the islands. For out there lived the Laki people, the only people who had boats of any type on Lake Zwai, and by ancient custom they made them so small that no great number of invaders could use them to force an entry to their age-old retreat on the islands.
The Laki people were not related to the Negroid Galla, who lived all round the shores of the lake. The Galla were typical Africans who lived exclusively by agriculture and cattle farming. Their feet were solidly planted in the soil and they never attempted to build boats or rafts to venture out on the water. But the Laki people based their entire existence on papyrus boats. They cultivated the soil, but were also fishermen and traders. Despite their black skins, the Laki people were not at all Negroid. Like most Ethiopians, they had sharp, fine features, with profiles reminiscent of peoples in the Bible lands. Like the monks on Lake Tana in the north, they had migrated from the area near the source of the Nile. And like them they had also brought along the art of building papyrus boats when they fled into isolation on remote islands. As late as 1520-35 they had set out on their long journey to the Rift Valley, where they settled on the islands in Lake Zwai with all their religious treasures and ancient Coptic manuscripts. The manuscripts were said to be still out there, because, despite over four centuries of hostility with the Galla people on the shore, none of these landlubbers had ever succeeded in invading the islands. In recent years the enmity had died out, barter had gained the upper hand, and a few Laki families had moved to the mainland; but true to tradition not a single boat was built on the lake even now that could carry more than one passenger in addition to the oarsman. And there was so little room for the one poor passenger on the slender bundle of reeds that it would overturn unless he sat as still as a mouse, balancing either with his legs straight forward or straddling the bundles with water up to his knees.
So it was with pride that we regarded our own finished work, a
stable raft of three Laki vessels lashed together. We collected the equipment and were about to board and set off for those alluring islands when we saw that one Laki tribesman was silently occupied in untying the knots and removing his own boat. He explained to Aseffa that he had come in from the island to collect wood for the Maskal lire, but now he had remembered that there was better wood somewhere else. A polite salutation and he hurried off with his vital third of our little raft.
It was late in the afternoon before we succeeded in hailing another Laki who was paddling along the shore and casting his net. There was a sparkle of leaping silver almost every time he hauled in the net. We bought the catch, twenty-one delicate tulumu fish, grilled one each over live embers and made the fisherman a present of the rest. The trade included hire of the boat and this time we made haste to shove off as soon as the raft was ready. It floated admirably with the two of us as well as the film equipment perched on a tripod; so Aseffa crept gingerly aboard to come with us as interpreter.
Around us the banks were covered vdth short rushes, but we could see no papyrus. The water was choppy and we paddled as fast we could until the mainland was far away and the green hills of the nearest island rose above us. We had come so close that we could clearly see picturesque round straw huts scattered among the foliage of large trees on the slopes. Then a tiny boat appeared from behind a headland and steered resolutely toward us. We were amazed to see a grave, dignified man in a sort of khaki uniform, paddling along astride the papyrus, with his legs deep in the water. He flipped the boat round and parked neatly straight in front of our prow. Through Aseffa we were given to understand that the man claimed to be some kind of sheriff or chief of this island, which was called Tadecha, and that he demanded to see our papers before allowing us to land. With the brisk official perched on a papyrus bundle, his behind wet and his uniform trousers up to the knees in water, the effect of the ceremony was undeniably comic. Aseffa asked if I had any papers; anything at all would do. I pulled out of my shirt pocket a letter from the Norwegian Foreign Minister, in French, one intended for use in the Chad Republic. Aseffa did not know a word of French, but standing on our raft he read aloud and wdth feeling a lengthy tirade in Galla of which I understood only the name of the Emperor Haile
go THE RA EXPEDITIONS
Selassie, which recurred constantly. What Aseflfa had concocted only he and the sheriflp knew, but the stern official raised his hand to his head in a confused sort of salute, put his precarious craft into reverse and disappeared again toward the headland from which he had come, while we made for the nearest inlet in the grass-covered island.
It was a remarkably beautiful island, lush green, with rolling meadows and neat fields of maize. Naked boys were fishing in the inlet, women in home-woven garments made their way down to the landing place with jars on their heads, a man was walking up the slope with his slender papyrus boat on his shoulder, while chickens and a medley of colorful wild birds were fluttering everywhere. At the top of the ridge a cluster of sugar-loaf huts formed an open and orderly little village. They were covered with high conical straw roofs and the low walls were built in rings of stone and half-timber, daubed with clay and painted in simple patterns. Against most of the huts at least one, and often two or three snub-nosed reed boats had been propped to dry in the sun. We were beckoned in by a handsome and polite couple who offered us a bowl of freshly brewed mddr, or maize beer. The man's name was Dagaga and the woman's Helu. The hut had a trodden clay floor, neat and clean, with a standing loom and enormous sealed ceramic jars, contents unknown. Bottle-gourd vessels and a few home-made tools hung from the crooked beams on the walls; the bed was of skins and the pillow the same little curved wooden neck rest that was used in ancient Egypt. Dagaga and Helu were carefree; they had a minimum of possessions but a maximum of time in which to enjoy them. No refrigerator, but no bills either. No car, but no rush either. What they lacked we would have missed, but not they. What they had was what they needed and what we strive to limit ourselves to when our vacations from the office let us. When, sometime in the near future, the modern world reaches them they will learn much from us and we nothing from them, but that is tragedy for both sides, for both sides assume that we who have the most are wisest, noblest, happiest. Are we?
I sat philosophizing in the shade inside the doorway while beautiful Helu of the intelligent eyes graciously served her unknown guests. Dark-skinned, with sharp profile and narrow lips, there was something noble about her bearing. Dagaga, with a baby goat in his a
rms, was obviously delighted to be able to offer beer and hot
roasted maize. It tasted extraordinarily good. The view from the door, looking toward the green hills, was splendid. I would have like to lie there on the skins enjoying the play of colors on the lake as the sun went down and the last reed boats came home. Then I saw a flash on the horizon and heard a faint rumble. Black clouds were gathering. The film equipment! And all our things lying loose in the tent on the other side! If we were to reach the other shore before the storm broke we would have to hurry. The sun was low. Our wristwatches frightened us. There were no clocks in the house we were leaving; time was not in short supply and need not be measured there. We ran in long strides down the hill and shoved off in our three-part papyrus raft. Soon the island was slipping away behind us, its outlines blurred in the twilight. The last we glimpsed of it before the first drops obscured all vision were some subdued points of light high up on the ridge. Our Laki friends were sitting safe in their warm huts, calmly lighting the wicks in the bowls of their oil lamps.
The day after that was the Coptic Maskal feast, the most important day of the year, when all Christian Ethiopians celebrated what they called "the discovery of the True Cross." From our outcrop we could see great fires scattered over the islands. We had thought of going out again to ask the Laki people a few more questions about their experience of papyrus boats, but we were disappointed. Not a single Laki showed himself on the lake in a reed boat that day, and next day we saw only one or two fishing boats keeping their distance well out in the middle of the lake. Perhaps it was the sheriff who had hit on this method of avoiding a repeat visit.
We loaded the Jeep and set off for home. The return journey was simple. Even though it had been pouring rain, we could still see our own tracks. We had already left most of the plain behind us when we saw another Jeep through the trees. It was following our old track, but coming toward us. The Jeep was full of dark Ethiopians, with one sturdily built giant half a head taller than the others. We all climbed out and shook hands. The big man's elegant embroidered tunic was covered down to his chest by a bushy white beard and a large Coptic cross dangled against his stomach. Aseffa kissed the cross and explained that this amiable giant was the highest prelate of the Ethiopian church. Bishop Luke. Now he was on his way to Lake Zwai to
The Ra Expeditions Page 11