by Paul Theroux
‘I go again sometime,’ Tadelle said.
About three hours south of Addis we came to Shashemene.
‘This bad place,’ Tadelle said. ‘Very bad place. Too much thief. They are all termites.’
‘Let’s stop,’ I said. Shashemene was part of my plan.
If Ethiopia was the spiritual home of the Rastafarians, Shashemene was its capital – not Addis, though Addis too was full of un-Ethiopian-looking black men in bulgy bobble hats of multi-colored wool, the Rasta banner of red, yellow and green, which were also the colors of the Ethiopian flag. Haile Selassie had granted some acreage in Shashemene to these devotees to satisfy their desire to return to Africa and have a place to settle. Ethiopians described them as impious and faintly ludicrous. The Muslims called them infidels, the Copts claimed they were misguided Christians. No one took them seriously, and many Ethiopians tended to stare at them, sometimes giggling at the Rasta get-up and the African’ affectations, beaded bracelets, horn necklaces and woven shoulder bags. The dreadlocks were weird to Ethiopians, not African at all, and not the cultural statement Rastas regarded them, but just the epitome of a bad hair day.
As soon as we entered the outskirts of Shashemene I saw this coiffure and these colors and these men, very skinny ones, striding along the roadside.
We had agreed that in return for my paying for my passage I could stop wherever I wanted, within reason. Our aim was to get to the border in three or four days. Tadelle and Wolde drove into town looking for a place to stay, while I nosed around, searching for a Rastafarian to talk to.
Through a succession of chance meetings and introductions I met Gladstone Robinson, one of the earliest pioneers, virtually the first Rastafarian to settle for good in Ethiopia. He was seventy-one, the father of eleven children; his youngest, a one-year-old, was crawling out of his hut. His radiant and smiling young wife – ‘She’s twenty three,’ Gladstone said – was heavily pregnant, so he would soon be father to an even dozen.
Gladstone was friendly, funny and alert, youthful in spite of his age, with a jazz musician’s easy smile and silences. He was skinny but supple, with a knotted stringy beard and gray dreadlocks drooping from beneath his wool hat. His hut was just a cement shed, two rooms. The room we sat in was stacked with files and strewn with papers, some old photos on the wall, the requisite pictures of Haile Selassie and Bob Marley, and a bulging paper bag on the table.
‘You want some herb? You smoke?’
‘Oh, right, flame a jay for me.’
He laughed and fossicked in the bag. Pork and milk are abominations for Rastafarians but marijuana is sacred, which perhaps explains their lean physique and their torpid smile. In general it was a sect of very skinny, spaced-out men and hardworking clearheaded women.
Although Gladstone expertly rolled a doobie he was so busy answering my questions he did not fire it up.
‘My father was a Bado’ – a Barbadian, he explained – ‘and my mother was a Cherokee Indian. But Rastas come from all over. See that picture?’
A blurred snapshot of a group of men standing shoulder to shoulder in a tropical setting hung on the wall in a chipped frame.
‘Those are black Jews from Monserrat. They came over in the 1980s.’
‘Did you say Jews?’
‘Indeed, I did. By the way, there are lots of black Jews in America. We are the true Israelites, not those so-called Jews you get in Israel. They are not true Jews. True Jews are the children of Solomon. We are, and the Falashas. The Falashas carry the ancestry of the father, not the mother.’
I had seen Falashas in Jerusalem. These Ethiopian Jews, who dated their faith from ancient times, had emigrated to Israel, regarding it as a homeland and a refuge. In the event they were a melancholy bunch, sidelined by the Hassidim, squinted at by tourists, unskilled except as farm laborers yet seldom seen on kibbutzes. The irony was that West Indian Rastafarians were arriving in Ethiopia as the Falashas were leaving for Israel.
‘The Falasha high priests were sent with Menelik to Solomon,’ Gladstone said. ‘The key is the Ark of the Covenant – the Ark is at Axum. Whoever has the Ark of the Covenant has God’s blessing. We say that Jesus came as a lamb to the slaughter, but Haile Selassie came as a conquering lion.’
‘What I am wondering is’ – because Gladstone was confusing me with unrelated scriptural snippets and vague historical allusions – ‘how is it that you happened to come here?’
‘Tell you how it all began,’ Gladstone said. ‘When Haile Selassie was crowned the words describing him showed his true lineage, from the House of David. His kingship was accepted by seventy-two countries.’
‘What’s the connection with Jamaica?’
‘He went there. The hardest praying people are the Jamaicans and they saw who he truly was.’
Envoys will come from Egypt, they had read in Psalms 68:31.Ethiopia will stretch out her hands to God.
Marcus Garvey, who initiated the Back to Africa Movement, had predicted that a savior would come, Gladstone said. Garvey was a Jamaican, gifted in oratory and an able organizer. He was also an entrepreneur, the founder of Black Star Shipping Lines. The United Negro Improvement Association, which Garvey started in 1914, had been an inspiration to blacks in America and the Caribbean. ‘Ethiopia, Thou land of Our Fathers,’ was Garvey’s hymn. Garvey was Moses, Haile Selassie the Messiah, even if he didn’t know it. Eventually, Garvey became critical of the emperor and his autocratic rule, but Garvey never wavered in his belief that, for the blacks in the West, Ethiopia represented hope and a homeland.
Gladstone showed me a copy of the August 1970 edition of Africa Opinion, with a cover picture of Marcus Garvey and a piece inside about settlers in Shashemene – Gladstone himself mentioned by name in the article.
‘I was chairman of the Ethiopian World Federation,’ Gladstone said. ‘Here is our constitution.’
He passed me a photocopy of a typewritten document. I glanced at the opening.
Ethiopian World Federation – 25 August 1937, New York City. We, the Black Peoples of the World, in order to effect Unity, Solidarity, Liberty, Freedom, and Self-Determination, do hereby affirm –
‘I was in the United States Army – trained as a pharmacist,’ Gladstone said, folding the constitution. ‘During the Korean War I was in Japan, at the Tokyo General Dispensary, with the US Medical Corps. But I dreamed of Africa.
‘After I joined the Ethiopian World Federation, I was put in charge of repatriation.’ He said, ‘We had three options. Integration. Separation. Repatriation. Integration is living together. Separation is the Nation of Islam – and maybe some southern states set aside for blacks, some northern ones for whites. Repatriation was coming back to Africa.’
‘When did you first come here?’ I asked.
‘Sixty-four,’ he said, and picked up an old school notebook, and opened it to a page of neat penmanship. Pasted on the facing page were some browned newspaper clippings.
I read,
June 16, 1964. The two delegates of the African Repatriation Commission left the BOAC terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport, Gladstone Robinson and Noel Scott.
‘That’s my diary of the whole trip. I came here with the first twelve. There are only four left. Brother Wolfe. Brother Waugh. Sister Clark, and me, Brother Robinson.’
There were about fifty Rastafarian families settled now, a hundred or so children, and many people kept a place in Shashemene as a second home, coming and going. Some blacks had come and not liked it; for others it was a refuge, Gladstone said. All this time he was shuffling snapshots: Gladstone in his pharmacy in Addis Ababa, Gladstone in a laboratory smock, Gladstone in glasses, Gladstone in dreadlocks, Gladstone posing with tourists, Gladstone in robes, Gladstone in a suit, Gladstone with some of his many children.
‘My daughter – she’s a New York City cop. Graduated from John Jay. She wears dreads. She went to court when they said she had to cut them off. Rastas were defending her, Rasta lawyers. She’s been here to Shashemene.’
/> ‘You’re happy here, Gladstone?’
‘I am happy. You have to go home – a tree grows better in its own soil. Those first people each got twenty-five acres. We didn’t know what to do with all that land!’
‘What did you do with it?’
‘Built a school, and farmed, and opened up some pharmacies. I was doing all right.’
‘Did the Derg bother you?’
‘The Derg closed me down. Took my land. That was terrible. I worked for two years with Russian and Cuban doctors at the hospital here. They were surgeons. That was okay, but one day the soldiers came and beat up the Ethiopian doctor. They said he had guns.’
‘Weren’t you scared?’
‘Sure was. I said to myself, “Let Uncle Sam kick my butt, I am getting out of here.” Went back to New York until it was over.’
Gladstone, the most genial Rastafarian I met in Shashemene, introduced me to some more immigrants from Jamaica. He said I should understand that there were many black West Indians and Americans who had come for reasons other than Rastafarianism. ‘We have Bobo Shante and Nyabinghi, Ethiopian World Federation, Independents, and Twelve Tribes.’
Desmond and Patrick, both Jamaicans, were members of the Twelve Tribes. Desmond was fifty and rather haggard, but talkative and open. He had been in Ethiopia for twenty-five years. He came ‘because this is a place of refuge’, and stayed on through the worst years of the Derg, ‘when Mengistu was dragging young boys out of the villages and making them fight.’
Patrick was young and very intense, wearing a jacket of Rasta colors, fluent and apparently knowledgeable. While Desmond in his beret and shabby velvet jacket was happy to put his feet up and smoke a joint, Patrick – who did not smoke herb – was just visiting, but planning a future here, buying a house and moving with his large family.
‘I come and go, but I tell you this is my home. Jamaica is not my home. My roots are here. I am African,’ Patrick said. ‘We were taken as slaves from here – and now I am back. We are the Twelve Tribes of Israel.’ He raised a slender finger to make his point. ‘But we are not Israelis, making ethnic distinctions and coming from wherever and pretending we are people of the desert. We are really African. We want no special favors – just a home here.’
‘What place does Haile Selassie occupy in your theology?’
‘His Majesty,’ Patrick said, correcting me, ‘is a direct descendant of the House of David. Look at the Bible – it’s all there, the short version. King of Kings, Ras Tafari.’
Much is made by Rastafarians of the titles Ras Tafari assumed when he became emperor. His coronation was mocked by Evelyn Waugh in his travel book, Remote People, but it marked the beginning of Haile Selassie as a symbol of redemption to blacks in Jamaica and elsewhere. The emperor himself seemed to claim a strong Biblical link. On Megabit 25, 1922 (corresponding to April 3, 1931), Ras Tafari issued a proclamation saying that His Majesty, King Tafari Makonnen, would be emperor, crowned His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie the First, King of Kings, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God, Emperor of Ethiopia.
His Majesty ended the proclamation, ‘Trader, trade! Farmer, plough! I shall govern you by the law and ordinance that has come to me, handed down by my fathers.’
Because Haile Selassie was styled the Lion of Judah and claimed Solomon as an ancestor, he inserted himself into the Bible. The Ethiopian monarchy traces its origins to Menelik the First, who was the son of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon. It’s all there in Kings and Chronicles, as the Rastafarians say. Well, not exactly. What is clear in scripture is only the visit of Sheba to Solomon. A subsequent visit to Solomon, and the birth of Sheba’s son Menelik, is depicted in the Ethiopian epic the Kebra Nagast, described by Nicholas Clapp in Sheba, the account of his quest, as ‘a document claimed to have been discovered in the library of Constantinople’s cathedral of Santa Sofia in the Third Century A.D. but it is more likely a fourteenth-century compilation of Ethiopian oral history.’ Clapp’s entire book, his sound scholarship and wide travel, is the history of this shadowy queen who flits in and out of the Bible. His conclusion is that she could be any one of eleven historical or mythological figures. And by the way, she was not named Sheba. This enigmatic woman was the unnamed queen of a country called Sheba, or Saba.
Patrick said, ‘His Majesty is a spiritual descendant – not a god. We don’t worship him, but we see that His Majesty has many of the qualities of Jesus.’
‘For example?’
‘For example, the Italians tried to take over this country many times. They were terrible, but His Majesty did not condemn them. He forgave them. He was merciful. It is the mercy that is written in the Bible. He is that man who was foretold. What month were you born?’
I told him April. He said, ‘There is one tribe for each month. April is Reuben. Very important for the eyes. Your sign is silver.’
Why did this man’s zealotry make me so uneasy? He seemed a kind fellow, he specifically said he accepted everyone, ‘even white people,’ he was a musician. He said, ‘Some of our message is in our music.’ But he did not listen, he was a true believer. His zealotry worried me just because it was zealotry. Zealots never listen.
Desmond, older, rather easy going, was admiring of him, and said Patrick fasted on the Sabbath, read the Bible, did not smoke herb. ‘He is young, he is pure.’
‘Read the Bible,’ Patrick said. ‘A chapter a day keep the devil away’
‘Me, I smoke ganja,’ Desmond said. ‘We grow it but’ – with a hand gesture – ‘under, you see what I’m saying, because the government don’t like it and some Ethiopians make trouble for us.’
Desmond told me of his conversion. ‘We had a prophet in Jamaica, Gyad’ – but he might have been saying ‘God’ the Jamaican way – ‘who said, “His Majesty will leave the scene of action.” Those were his words. He prophesied that His Majesty will pass on.
‘I came here immediately after that, with my wife. We had four children. My wife, now, she didn’t like it. I said, “Go! I can find another wife but I can’t find another Ethiopia.” I take an Ethiopian wife and have four more children.’
Seeing me, correctly, as a profound skeptic, Patrick explained that I should pay close attention to world events. The catastrophes worldwide were signs of an end time.
‘The Millennium came and went,’ I said.
‘The Millennium hasn’t come yet,’ he said. ‘The Ethiopian calendar is behind by seven years and eight months, so the Millennium is coming in about six years. You will see. The earth was destroyed by water. It will be fire next time. The Rift Valley will be spared – it will be the safest place in the world when the fire comes. You can come and be a refugee here. Bring your family.’
I thanked him and walking out to the main road I reflected on how Africa, being incomplete and so empty, was a place for people to create personal myths and indulge themselves in fantasies of atonement and redemption, melodramas of suffering, of strength – binding up wounds, feeding the hungry, looking after refugees, driving expensive Land-Rovers, even living out a whole cosmology of creation and destruction, rewriting the Bible as an African epic of survival.
That night at a grim hotel in Shashemene, Tadelle seemed resentful that we had to stay and was in a bad mood. He saw some Rastas loping along, bulgy-hatted.
‘Why these people come here?’ he said. ‘Where is the country of Jamaica? They have no work there?’
The next day, driving south, Tadelle told me he hated Ethiopia. He hated the army. ‘They are all termites.’ Where had he learned this expression? He said it a lot. Politicians were termites, soldiers were termites, policemen were termites.
He wanted to leave so badly he could not understand why anyone would willingly come to Ethiopia to live. He was saying this as we drove through the pretty town of Awasa, and its lakeshore, where we stopped for lunch and I went bird-watching and saw herons and hornbills. In the afternoon, still heading south, I could see mountains and the empty plain ahead, as green as As
troturf, with a suggestion of more lakes and more mountains beyond them, and fertile valleys bursting with pineapple fields. Boys were selling the fruit by the side of the road. We stopped and I bought eight for the equivalent of a dollar. I learned the Amharic word for pineapple: ananas, as in Italian. On we went down the twisting road to the town of Dila.
Late afternoon was the time to stop. It was not a good idea to travel at dusk, it was unthinkable to travel after dark. Dila was a crowded town, huddled on the main road, in a coffee-growing area; a market town in the Mendebo Mountains. There was not much in the market except little piles of dusty fruit, no food in the shops, only soap, shirts and Chinese goods that were all infringements of copyright – ‘Lax’ soap and fake Nike, Reebok and Gap merchandise.
Wolde followed me around the dusty lanes of the town as I went in search of a hat. The temperature was in the nineties, the sky cloudless, the sun unremitting. The heat in such a place persisted until midnight. Oromo women in orange robes and beads squatted by the roadside howling at passersby, howling at me, too, as their children pestered me for money.
A useful word in Amharic was yellem, meaning ‘There is nothing’ or simply ‘Forget it.’ Wolde laughed at the effect it had on the importuning Oromos.
I said, ‘We’re going to stay here?’
Tadelle smiled apologetically. The hotel, the Get Smart, was terrible, but it was the only place to stay. We were not welcomed.
‘We have no room,’ the clerk said.
‘Maybe you could check?’
There was a desultory fuss, he flipped pages in a scrappy school exercise book that was the hotel’s guest book.
‘No room with water.’
‘That’s fine’ – more than fine, I thought, since the water would be corrosive.
He was still flipping pages: ‘Okay, room with water, in the back.’
The room was dirty, very hot and vile smelling, much worse than the one at Shashemene, but at the Ethiopian equivalent of $2.50 excellent value. After I had drunk three bottles of beer and written my notes on a wobbly table I felt optimistic and happy, for here I was in a flop-house in a remote town in southern Ethiopia, within striking distance (420 km) of the Kenyan border. With luck we might be there tomorrow.