The Ra Expeditions

by Thor Heyerdahl

  visit his fellow believers, the Coptic Laki people. He explained genially that he had a special mode of transport on the lake. He v^ould receive us on Devra Zion, the most important of the islands, if we returned the following week. We should approach the lake from the very opposite side of the Rift Valley where there was a little leper station with a small plastic boat.

  Back to distant Addis Ababa. A few days later, the Jeep loaded with new equipment, we were on the southbound tourist road that runs along the west side of the Rift Valley. From here it was an easier matter to reach Lake Zwai, but this was the wrong side, where there was neither papyrus nor islands. The little leper station was closed, the windows shuttered. Sitting on the steps was a Galla tribesman, elephantiasis swelling one leg, who told us that the plastic boat was in Addis Ababa for repair. There were no other boats on Lake Zwai, he said, apart from small papyrus yevella, which only the Laki people on the islands possessed.

  We tried the Jeep northward along the shore. Impassable. Southward we got a little way along a grass-grown path as far as a small convent school. Also closed and deserted. Further passage was blocked by a deep river, turning into fierce rapids. A sleepy monk sat swaddled on the grassy bank, gazing at a hippopotamus that was dozing with half its head above water in the shade of the hanging foliage of giant trees on the other side.

  Boat? There was none. No one wanted to make boats on this bank, where so many hippos had been wounded by hunters in reed boats. A European and several Laki people had been drowned by hippos the year before. Jeep track? There were none. Not on this side of the lake.

  Back to the main road. Further south along the tourist route. Lake Langana appeared in an open landscape, stone and gravel, no islands, no papyrus, no bilharzia—sv^mming pools, tourist hotels, beer and pop. A sign boasted a plastic boat. We had come to hire it and take it to Lake Zwai. So sorry. It, too, was in Addis Ababa for repair. Back along the main road. Night and tropical cloudbursts. In the village of Adamitullu we found lodgings. A Galla woman had a boarded stall where she sold beer and Ethiopian pancakes filled with peppery spices and meat stuffing. In the back yard were two small bedrooms of planks and corrugated iron, a deep hole in the ground

  for common use, and a barrel of water and an empty tin for anyone who also wanted to wash.

  The cameraman opened his door a crack and inserted one arm and a large spray can of Flit. When he reopened the door he swept out a whole museum collection of lifeless insects. He slept on top of the bedclothes, Flit can in hand. For myself I found a Galla whom I supplied with a flashlight to guard the Jeep and, after clearing the room of everything except the bare iron posts of the metal bed, I lit a fire on the floor with our hostess's incense wood. It smoldered all night and sent sweet-smelling clouds of smoke and all six-legged creatures out of the window opening. Shortly after going to bed, I heard an oath and uproar from the next room. The cameraman rushed through the door and disappeared into the night. Next morning he was lying, curled up and completely consumed by bed bugs, on top of the load in the Jeep. Even there he had not slept a wink, he said, because a strange Negro had kept a light shining in his face all night. My guard reported proudly that it was he—he had taken good care that the tall fellow who had left his bed in the middle of the night had no chance to steal from the Jeep.

  The guard was a find. His tribe happened to live near the south-em end of the lake and he assured us that it was easy to get there, if he could come too. With guide and interpreter we lurched through groves of trees and crossed some sparsely grown wasteland, until we reached the southern continuation of the fierce stream that had stopped us the day before. Some crooked trunks, covered with stone and earth, had been laid as a cattle bridge over the torrent and here, inch by inch, we eased the Jeep across. Then we followed bridle paths, creek beds, clearings in the woods and clayey maize fields from one idyllic Galla village to another. For miles at a time we were followed by racing village children, who beamingly tore a passageway for us through all sorts of fences and filled the deepest gullies with stones and branches. The scenery was varied and beautiful, the bird life as exotic as in a zoo. The Galla tribes south of Zwai live their own lives in their own world, asking for nothing, getting nothing, and needing nothing. Their lives are completely undisturbed, untrammeled, unimproved and unspoiled. These were people who lived close to the earth and not one of them had been tempted to build a boat on the beach.

  By the afternoon we had come so far that the largest Laki island was just opposite us. Its green hills were higher than any of the crests along the mainland coast. Soon only a broad sound separated us from Devra Zion, where Bishop Luke was supposed to be. We reached a Galla village on an open plateau. No one had a boat, but they all knew that Bishop Luke was out on the island now. He had been picked up in an extra large obolu, the Laki people's name for a papyrus boat which had been specially widened by lashing a shorter bundle of reeds on either side. What we had seen until now were simply common craft, so narrow that they overturned at the slightest careless move. In the Laki tongue they were called shafat, but the Galla people called them yevella.

  We thanked them for the information and drove down a steep, tv^'isting path to the shore, where we hooted until an inquisitive Laki came paddling across the sound in his little shafat. It was less than two miles from the spit of land to the island. We sent the man back to report that we had an invitation from Bishop Luke and must have an obolu. Not long afterward the cameraman and the interpreter were sitting with a Laki paddler on the bishop's wide papyrus boat. I myself rode pillion on an ordinary shafat, back to back with a Laki who kept the reed boat balanced with his paddle and taught me to sit with my knees straight out and my back pressed to his, in order not to overturn. The camera equipment was carried by a third Laki on his own shafat.

  The papyrus on our shafat was carelessly bundled together with strips of bark that proved to be old and half rotten. About midway, I tried to support myself on the papyrus with my hands in order to raise my seat a little, since it seemed to have sunk uncomfortably low in the bilharzia-ridden water. Two of the bark lashings burst and at once the whole shafat was in the process of breaking up. The rowers on all three boats showed serious alarm, roaring incomprehensible orders to us and to each other in Laki and paddling in close formation in case we disintegrated altogether. We tried to keep our reeds together with arms and feet. It was easy to realize that if we sank it would be futile to try to board the other boats, which would overturn at once.

  The island that had been so near suddenly seemed infinitely far away and I sat stock-still, hanging onto both sides of the papyrus

  bundle to prevent more of the bark strips from splitting. I could feel the seat of my trousers sinking steadily deeper into the lukewarm ripples, the happy hunting grounds of the insidious worms. Perhaps they were already on their way through the thin khaki trousers. Seldom have twenty minutes seemed so long.

  The days of our shafat were over when we dragged the gaping papyrus wreck up on the grass on the far bank, but we were now ashore on Devra Zion and it was well worth the discomfort. From the reed belt, grassland stretched toward the hills like an open park, v^th great, ancient trees. Further in, weathered rocks rose like the carved pillars and terraces of a ruined castle, overgrown with flowering evergreens, creepers, cactus and strange trees. We trotted and walked at a brisk pace along the almost imperceptible rock path, seeing no signs of life other than monkeys and gaudy birds. We had circled a good deal of the south side of the island without seeing cultivated fields, huts or men, when we found ourselves standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down into a deep horseshoe-shaped valley. The whole area down there was grass-green marshland, covered with papyrus and other reeds, and teeming with tall wading birds and long-tailed monkeys.

  On a dry sandbank by the lakeshore we saw Bishop Luke, leading a score of Lakis in the building of an extraordinary house. As we approached, it looked like a big two-story bird cage built of fresh-cut branches. The bishop, who greete
d us with a mixture of heartiness and astonishment, explained that when the sticks and branches were covered with clay this would be a house where the Laki people could receive visitors from the mainland in the future. We stared at the marshland of this uninhabited and desolate valley. Steam rose from a hot spring that ran out into the lake a little farther off.

  The bishop was obviously in a hurry to open his own food parcel, and to our embarrassment he insisted that we alone were to eat the best of the biscuits and fruit he had brought for himself. At the same time, he explained with ill-concealed anxiety that as soon as we had eaten we must start back again, because there was great danger from the hippos on the lake at night. We explained that we would have liked to sleep on the island. That was completely impossible, the bishop assured us, and now he became earnestly, though politely, intent on getting rid of us.

  The parchment books? Could we see them?

  The bishop hastily consulted a tall, thin man with intelligent eyes, a beak of a nose and a pointed beard. They nodded. But we would have to follow the tall man at the double, up to the temple and straight down again to the boats. Hasty but hearty good-bys were said. Our new long-legged guide was introduced as Bru Machinjo, chieftain of all the Laki people, who numbered some twenty-five hundred individuals on the five islands in Lake Zwai. With chieftain Bru in front and a train of Laki men behind, we trotted as long as we had breath up the hillside among boulders and cactus-like trees and arrived utterly exhausted, having staggered in single file for the last mile, at the island's highest peak. The landscape opened out into a magnificent view over the lake, the islands, the mainland shores and distant mountains. Below us, some one thousand feet above the level of the lake, we saw the round straw roofs of a village built in steps down the hillside. Above us lay a very small, square wooden hut, painted blue and green. Bru told us that this was the new monastery, where Bishop Luke lived during his visits. We were admitted by a monk and on a rough wooden shelf in the empty room lay a great heap of ancient manuscripts and books made of parchment, yellow with age, with and without bindings, helter-skelter, without order or system. Bru explained proudly that the Laki people's forefathers had carried them on their long migration from the north, many centuries ago. I rummaged at random in the heap and pulled out the largest book. The pages were nearly two feet tall, of treated goatskin, magnificently illuminated with pictures of the ancient fathers of the church, painted with colored cloaks and peculiar tiny feet. The text alone was a work of art: incomprehensible Ethiopian script, painted with delicate scrolls and decorations in black and red. Any library in the world would have locked such a work behind glass as an irreplaceable treasure.

  The monk pulled out two big antique silver dishes with the Apostles engraved on the inside, which had also been carried on the migration. Here we were interrupted by exhortations to get down to the landing stage, for the sun was low on the horizon. We wanted to stay the night and delayed deliberately. We suggested sending a shafat over to the Jeep for food and sleeping bags. Impossible. No Laki would venture out again in the darkness. We must sleep on

  the mainland with the Galla people and come out again the next day.

  Now I was really curious. What was going on out here, if no stranger except Bishop Luke was allowed to sleep on the island? It was twilight. I muttered something to the cameraman, and in the confusion as everyone scattered and ran down the hill I hid behind a stone slab. There I sat while the whole company ran on down the terraces and disappeared. Silence fell. Only the wind murmured in the treetops. I sat alone, feeling as if I were sitting on the roof of Africa. Far below I caught a glimpse of our two reed boats paddling away from the island while shadows spread over the distant lowlands. The huge lake swallowed the sun and the surface of the water glowed for a time like hot metal before it cooled, turning dark blue and then black, while darkness rolled on from the shore, up over the endless woods, over hill, over dale, in an unbroken wave to the world's end. Africa by night. I could no longer see the round straw roofs of the village below me. I could see nothing. I listened to an extraordinary warbling yodel mingled with the sounds of a religious choir somewhere down in the village. It was too dark to move. I had to sit and absorb impressions with ears and nose. Bats. Rustling in the grass. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Chief Bru, who silently took me by the arm and made a signal for me to follow him. He held me in a friendly grip and led me like a blind man down an invisible path between boulders and rock terraces. We did not speak, for we had no common language. Since the interpreter had gone back across the sound there was no human being on the whole island with whom I could exchange a single word. The chieftain knew every step of the way and saw to it that I came down unscathed.

  We passed the first beehive huts and continued down a few more terraces to an assembly hut that was larger than the others. Light shone from the low doorway, and it was from there that the peculiar singing had come. Bru drew me in among the elders of the tribe, who sat on low, carved stools and wood blocks near the door. An oil wick was burning in a bowl, throwing huge flickering shadows of many men on the round, clay-daubed walls. Farther in stood a row of young women in long white garments, bowing rhythmically and clapping their hands, while one yodeled and the others sang, monotonously and without accompaniment. In the half light behind the white-clad

  nymphs I glimpsed some round jars, so large that each could easily have held two grown men. A clay oven was smoldering, but there was no smoke under the high roof, which was supported by a pole with branches like the spokes of an umbrella. Together with the most aged of them all, a real Moses with a long white beard, Bru and I were placed inside the semicircle of men on elegantly carved stools, and a little table covered with a cone-shaped wicker lid was brought to us in the ancient Ethiopian manner. Under the cover lay enormous waty a staple food resembling pancakes as thick as foam rubber, in two layers, spread with morsels of fried fish. A cocoa-colored powder, which made pepper taste.like candy, lay in a heap in the middle. In this you were supposed to dip the pieces you had torn off. Everyone was invited to wash their hands before we attacked the common meal with our fingers, and Bru spent his time tearing off the best pieces to place before his unknown guest. In a flash my hosts had turned a mute stowaway into a guest of honor. While the chorus of women swayed and kept up their strange incessant psalm-singing, a silent man went round filling all the mugs with sweet maize beer and finally with a very powerful sugar brandy. As the tongues of most of the men were loosened they engaged one another in an exchange of solemn monologues in Laki. I myself sat dumb as a post until I remembered the tape-recorder slung over my shoulder.

  At first there was sheer consternation, because the women's choir began to yodel full voice while the women themselves were enjoying a break, and the men choked because they heard themselves speaking while they were actually drinking. The evening was saved, the tape-recorder was my ventriloquist, conversing with everyone in Laki and bursting into shouts of laughter as if it understood all the jokes and everything that was being sung and said in the meeting hut.

  In the end it was the eldest who rose, and remained standing when he felt the time had come to stop. All the women walked out first in line, yodeling in chorus with a warbling note like a night owl's as they left us, and from the darkness the owl sounds came back to us individually until the women had all disappeared into their respective huts. The chief took me by the arm and led me to his own house, which was exactly like the round assembly hut, but smaller. By the faint light of the oil lamp I glimpsed the outline of someone packing up bundles of clothes and carrying them out so that I could

  I

  AMONG BLACK MONKS AT THE SOURCE OF THE NILE QQ

  make use of the hut's one bed. It was useless to refuse. Bru sat his guest down on the bed, which was of the same type as the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh's beds in Cairo Museum: a wooden frame on legs, holding an open net of interwoven strips of leather. Bru and his family moved out their own mats and headrests to lie on the fl
oor in another hut, spreading clean skins and a home-woven cover on their own bed and signaling to me to lie down. I pulled off my long jungle boots while the chieftain sat at the bedside and directed his son to bring a basin and wash my feet. When they were thoroughly washed and dried, the boy bowed deeply and kissed my toes before he and the others were told to leave the hut. Here on Devra Zion the Bible story lived on in reality.

  Fully clothed, but with clean, bare feet, I rolled up in the bed where I lay wondering why Bru and his wife were still muttering as its foot. They were consulting together irresolutely in hushed voices and kept looking at their guest in the bed, as though uncertain if I were all right or if there were anything else to be done. Then I saw that they were not alone. At the other side of the bed-end a vague figure was standing in the darkness. The oil wick was burning so low behind the roof pole that its outlines were barely visible. It was a young woman. She turned almost imperceptibly and as the soft light shone behind her profile I could see that she was beautiful. She must be one of Bru's own daughters. All three stood there for a long time, then the parents bowed and disappeared through the doorway. The lamp shed scarcely any light now and for a while I was uncertain whether the figure at the foot of the bed was still there or not. But then I saw her silhouette again. There she stood, almost without stirring. What now? Here I was in the chieftain's bed, his son had washed my feet and now his daughter was standing like a guardian angel at the bedside. It was then that I heard the cameraman's voice far away in the silence of the night. He was calling my name. I did not answer, in order not to break the spell. But the cameraman would not give up. The shouts came steadily closer, until he was standing in the doorway with Bru and his wife. He had grown anxious about me, he said, and he and the interpreter had paddled back alone to the island in the bishop's obolu. They, too, were served now with maize beer and fish-covered waf, and skins were laid on the floor for the newcomers.