by Peter Boehm
“A long table is set in the middle of a large room, and benches beside it for a number of guests who are invited. Tables and benches the Portuguese introduced amongst them; but bull hides, spread upon the ground, served them before, as they do in the camp and country now. A cow or a bull, one or more, as the company is numerous, is brought close to the door, and his feet strongly tied. The skin that hangs down under his chin and throat, which I think we call the dew-lap in England, is cut only so deep as to arrive at the fat, of which it totally consists, and, by the separation of a few small blood-vessels, six or seven drops of blood only fall upon the ground. They have no stone, bench, nor altar upon which these cruel assassins lay the animal’s head in this operation. I should beg his pardon indeed for calling him an assassin, as he is not so merciful as to aim at the life, but, on the contrary, to keep the beast alive till he be totally eaten up. Having satisfied the Mosaical law, according to his conception, by pouring these six or seven drops upon the ground, two or more of them fall to work; on the back of the beast, and on each side of the spine, they cut skin-deep; then putting their fingers between the flesh and the skin, they begin to strip the hide of the animal half way down to his ribs, and so on to the buttock, cutting the skin wherever it hinders them commodiously to strip the poor animal bare. All the flesh on the buttocks is cut off then, and in solid, square pieces, without bones, or much effusion of blood; and the prodigious noise the animal makes is a signal for the company to sit down to table.
There are then laid before every guest, instead of plates, round cakes, if I may so call them, about twice as big as a pan-cake, and something thicker and tougher. It is unleavened bread of a sourish taste, far from being disagreeable, and very easily digested, made of a grain called teff. It is of different colours, from black to the colour of the whitest wheat-bread. Three or four of these cakes are generally put uppermost, for the food of the person opposite to whose seat they are placed. Beneath these are four or five of ordinary bread, and of a blackish kind. These serve the master to wipe his fingers upon; and afterwards the servant for bread to his dinner.
Two or three servants then come, each with a square piece of beef in their bare hands, laying it upon the cakes of teff, placed like dishes down the table, without cloth or anything else beneath them. By this time all the guests have knives in their hands, and their men have the large crooked ones, which they put to all sorts of uses during the time of war. The women have small clasped knives, such as the worst of the kind made at Birmingham, sold for a penny each.
The company are so ranged that one man sits between two women; the man with his long knife cuts a thin piece, which would be thought a good beef-steak in England, while you see the motion of the fibres yet perfectly distinct, and alive in the flesh. No man in Abyssinia, of any fashion whatever, feeds himself, or touches his own meat. The women take the steak and cut it length-ways like strings, about the thickness of your little finger, then cross-ways into square pieces, something smaller than dice. This they lay upon a piece of the teff bread, strongly powdered with black pepper, or Cayenne pepper, and fossile-salt; they then wrap it up in the teff bread like a cartridge.
In the meantime, the man having put up his knife, with each hand resting upon his neighbour’s knee, his body stooping, his head low and forward, and mouth open, very like an idiot, turns to the one whose cartridge is first ready, who stuffs the whole of it into his mouth, which is so full that he is in constant danger of being choked. This is a mark of grandeur. The greater the man would seem to be, the larger piece he takes in his mouth; and the more noise he makes in chewing it, the more polite he is thought to be. They have, indeed, a proverb that says, “Beggars and thieves only eat small pieces, or without making a noise.” Having dispatched this morsel, which he does very expeditiously, his next female neighbour holds forth another cartridge, which goes the same way, and so on till he is satisfied. He never drinks till he has finished eating; and, before he begins, in gratitude to the fair ones that fed him, he makes up two small rolls of the same kind and form; each of his neighbours open their mouths at the same time, while with each hand he puts their portion into their mouths. He then falls to drinking out of a large handsome horn; the ladies eat till they are satisfied, and then all drink together, “Vive la Joye et la Jeunesse!” A great deal of mirth and joke goes round, very seldom with any mixture of acrimony or ill-humour.
All this time the unfortunate victim at the door is bleeding indeed, but bleeding little. As long as they can cut off the flesh from his bones, they do not meddle with the thighs, or the parts where the great arteries are. At last they fall upon the thighs likewise; and soon after the animal, bleeding to death, becomes so tough that the cannibals, who have the rest of it to eat, find very hard work to separate the flesh from the bones with their teeth like dogs.”[5]
In Menelik’s day, and later also in Haile Selassie’s day, the Abyssinian Empire turned towards Europe. Eating bleeding and suffering animals would have been disapproved of there. No-one wanted to watch and listen while an animal was being slaughtered, let alone eat at the same time.
But banquets like this were an integral part of Ethiopian tradition. So was it to be dispensed with at Haile Selassie’s coronation ceremony in 1930?
We can learn, from Evelyn Waugh, how the Emperor avoided embarrassment – “Until a few years ago attendance at a gebbur was part of the entertainement offered to every visitor in Abyssinia. When the time came, however, we found that particular precautions had been taken to exclude all the Europeans from the spectacle. Perhaps because it was felt that the feast might give a false impression of the civilizing pretensions of the Government.”
Only two resolute women – and not journalists – managed to gain access.
“And, by what was felt to be a very base exploitation of racial advantage, the coloured correspondent of a syndicate of Negro newspapers.”
• An African party (Addis Ababa – Lake Langano and back)
I’m even surprised myself, that I’ve since so often wondered how things could have happened as they did. I’ve lived in Africa for over three years. In Nairobi, and elsewhere, I’d rarely been to parties where you didn’t find that black people served and white people consumed. But as I sat by Lake Langano and gradually realised what I had let myself in for, I felt increasingly uncomfortable and was surprised at my own naivety.
It had sounded like pure, guiltless fun. We wanted to go to Lake Langano on Saturday morning, spend the night there, and be back in Addis Ababa by Sunday afternoon. Antonio was throwing a leaving party at Lake Langano. After working for two years with an Italian aid organisation, he was returning to Europe. You could imagine the rest for yourself – some swimming in the lake, lazing around a little, having something to drink, partying a bit. Really just an outdoor party.
Most of the people who would be there I’d already met in Addis Ababa. They were Italian, aged between twenty and thirty. But really you could have found such people all over Europe – easygoing, Celtic tattoos on their arms and legs, they’d sometimes smoke pot, listen to alternative music, travel abroad, but please, no permanent job, no terraced house, and no holidays on Gran Canaria.
I knew all that. But then, many Europeans undergo a strange change in Africa. It’s very hard to resist the temptation that, everywhere and in every situation, you can find someone who will do everything for very little money. And few Africans think anything of doing everything. They even ask for it. This is what they’ve learned from their society. Those who have more help those who have less – they give them work.
So why not succumb to the pressure? It makes everything a lot easier. Yes, it’s the only way of making life in Africa bearable, it’s how it first gains its special quality.
In Africa, every European has done things he’d never have considered possible before. And everyone has renounced principles they’d previously thought were unimpeachable. Africa has corrupted everyone.
In Nairobi, you could have an attendant for just over £40 a mon
th, and if you gave him a room in addition to this, you could feel that you were a philanthropist. Before I moved to Nairobi, I’d thought it out-dated that black people worked as servants for white people. For me, this was a relic of colonial times, which shouldn’t be allowed to happen anymore. But I now had to realise that it’s simply continued.
The cheap servants, however, were very happy to be working for a white family. They paid better and regularly, and white people were also known to beat servants less. I didn’t know a single white family in Nairobi who didn’t employ a security guard, servant, kitchen maid, nanny, gardener, chauffeur or errand boy. And usually several at once.
I had one – Meshak, a cleaner and errand boy in one. He was employed at the first block of flats I’d lived in. The cleaning of the flat was included in the price of the rent. When I moved, I employed him on a part-time basis. He came during his lunch break to do the washing, cleaning and washing-up. And on his way home, he took my cheque for my phone or electricity bill into town.
He liked this arrangement. His salary from his work at the block of flats wasn’t enough, on its own, to live on. And it would have made no economic sense for me to do the work myself, if someone would do it so cheaply.
Meshak was my age, but he always called me “Mister Peter”. I found that embarrassing. I liked him. Through his eyes, I saw something of everyday Nairobi, which was so far removed from my life. He was often my source for “normal Kenyans”, or for a Swahili word I didn’t know.
I always wanted to tell him, “Meshak, you don’t need to call me ‘Mister’”. But I never did, because I found it embarrassing to talk to him about it.
After a while, however, I was pleased that I hadn’t done it, although I was lucky with Meshak in this. Comparatively speaking, he was very reliable. He only occasionally didn’t turn up without letting me know, or needed an advance on his salary, which threatened to keep increasing month by month. The fact that he might have run rings around me were it not for my authoritarian appearance was one of my sad realisations during my time in Africa.
There were other arrangements – other master and servant symbioses. The European wheelchair user, for instance, and his maid. I learned about this arrangement because I was to take over his house – and whatever else went with it. He was returning to his home country. I was looking for something new, and wondered about renting the now empty house. A journalist colleague knew him, and took me around the property. He was also the one who told me about the arrangement with the maid. She was young and pretty, and gave us a furtive glance as we looked around the kitchen. The previous tenant would have been very keen for me to keep her on once I’d moved in. “But she’s paid to clean”, my colleague said, and laughed sarcastically.
And then there were the others who saw their servants’ financial situation – the usual final stages! – as a constant appeal to their charitable nature. Those who drew up savings plans with them for building dams in their villages, and who paid their hospital bills for a sick child, only to then be surprised that the servants couldn’t or just didn’t want to pay their share.
I’m sure of it – before they went to Africa, none of them could have imagined the demands which would be made of them and which they would accept. They’d only moved their because of their job – in much the same way you might move to Paris or Brussels. No-one had prepared them for the changes Africa would require of them.
But you can only know this with the benefit of hindsight. When you’re right in the middle of it all, your mind is on all kinds of other things. And besides, at the outset our trip to Lake Langano hadn’t looked anything like the African arrangement. There were four of us Europeans in the car. In a suburb of Addis Ababa, we stopped to buy lemonade and biscuits for breakfast, and matches for a fire. I’d done all this countless times during European summers. We were on our way to a long picnic, to an outdoor party. But then Africa caught up with me again.
As a European in Africa, you have to quickly learn to ignore the urge to rush outside into nature as soon as the sun shines – which it does every day here. That’s one of the first lessons the continent holds for you. Even if it’s nice to look at, the nature is always dangerous and hostile. You have to beware of it, you have to be prepared. There are a lot of insects, diseases, perhaps even wild animals, or scavengers who are armed. On the other hand, there are no roads, there’s no infrastructure, and there’s no real police force.
We were, however, still fortunate with Lake Langano. It’s in the East African Rift Valley, on a tarmac road just three hours to the south of Addis Ababa. Special minerals are dissolved in its water meaning that, exceptionally, it doesn’t have any bilharzias carriers, such as you find in all other bodies of standing water in Africa. So you can swim there without any risk, but in spite of this it will never become a lake for swimming.
The women from the surrounding villages go there every day to wash clothes in the soapy water, and to load up their donkeys with drinking water. And the herdsmen take their cows and goats there to drink. The entire bank is covered in cow and goat dung. Because of this dung, the shallow spots near the bank are overgrown with algae. And because we weren’t alone at the lake – couldn’t be alone – because we’d intruded into its daily cycle, we had to keep watch and protect our camp from the lake’s everyday users.
This is usually the next surprise which Africa has in store for newcomers. Formerly slightly fearful, comfortable townies can very quickly become devoted nature lovers out here. Although it would have been sufficient if everyone had brought a tent and some food and drink with them – we wanted to spend a night here! – Antonio had organised the equipment for a two-week bush camp – a four-wheel drive with an electricity generator, a hi-fi system, strings of lights, maps, blankets, five tents, four sheep, cooking equipment, pots and pans, and lots of servants to put it all to use. And all this for just ten expats who needed to be cooked for and entertained.
Antonio had spent two years leading an aid project in a small town to the south of Addis Ababa. His employees from there – chauffeurs, guards, cleaners, secretaries – did all the work, guarded the camp, prepared the food, and we – the white people, his guests – did what was expected of us. We enjoyed ourselves. Well, as far as the situation allowed, anyway.
I, however, took in with growing horror the surroundings and the camp where I’d now be staying for a while. And the scenic beauty of the lake and the Arsi Mountains surrounding it, the green savannah with its gnarled acacia trees, the calm water, the guards and the stupid red leather blanket we were lying on while being served are stuck in my mind simply as mocking commentaries of the entirely failed party.
The preparations for our evening meal attracted a crowd of hungry people. The first two sheep had been slaughtered, and the women were busy mincing the raw meat. The children, who had come with their mothers to wash, put their rags back on and peered over at us, curiously. For today, they kept their distance. The next day, however, they got bolder.
But then this was why we had the guards. A boy of perhaps eight years old suddenly screamed as though he’d been stabbed. The first heads turned towards him, and someone on the leather blanket said a guard had hit the boy.
Even though no-one had touched him, he did a very good impression of an injured creature’s cry of pain. But as the boy was now looking in our direction and crying – so doing precisely what the guards should have prevented him doing, namely drawing our attention to him, bothering us – he now had a thrashing. Antonio had to step in and call the guard back. But the boy’s plan didn’t work out. He didn’t get anything to eat.
In the meantime, all kinds of other hungry creatures had been encircling our evening meal ever more closely. Mangy stray dogs had smelt the meat roasting, and buzzards were circling overhead. Throwing stones at the dogs didn’t chase them away. One of them discovered a dropped bone with a little meat and set about devouring it. A cook saw it and, in a rage, threw a stone at the wretched creature from twelve fee
t away, certainly hard enough to shatter a couple of ribs. But the dog didn’t budge. It had waited a long time for its bone. It didn’t move an inch, just looked up briefly from its meal, and then immediately returned to it. We were able, just in time, to stop the cook from throwing a second stone.
By now, dinner was finally ready. We had to get up and, as is usual at an Amharic celebration, the roasted meat was brought out to singing and rhythmic clapping.
After the meal, countless photos were then taken. The bosses with the project workers, the project workers on their own, the bosses on their own, and then all the guests together. When there were just a few people in the photo, two young women would kneel in the foreground, stretch out their hands, and create a neat frame with their arms – a human decoration.
And so to sleep again. Then it’ll soon be over...
Through model railway country (Addis Ababa – Aksum)
And then, yet again, I found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time. My arrival in Mek’ele, the capital of the Tigray Region, almost 400 miles north of Addis Ababa coincided exactly with “Lakatit”, the anniversary of the founding of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The Front has ruled Ethiopia since its victory in the civil war in 1991.
The city was flooded with the victorious army’s celebrating soldiers, who had driven the Eritrean troops out of the country a good six months earlier. The state TV channel was full of idyllic scenes of the good old days of the guerrilla war against the Ethiopian central government. A pronounced warrior culture developed in Tigray and Eritrea during these two decades of conflict.
Without understanding a single word, I knew exactly what was going on – the guerrilla fighters are sitting around a pool, in their camouflage uniforms and their obligatory Afro hairstyles. They’re eating together. Cut. A man and a woman washing up together. They’re in love. Should they marry, or would it be better to put the common battle above their love? In Tigray and Eritrea, many guerrilleros did, in fact, marry and fight together in the bush. Cut. The group is training, taking Kalashnikovs apart and putting them back together again. After a tiring day, everyone needs some time off – the warriors dance and sing, and wave their weapons gleefully above their heads. The dance strikes me as familiar. I’d seen it once already, during the most recent war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. On Eritrean TV.