The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons

by Glen Chilton

  “That is a house!” he said.

  “Yes, I know it is a house.”

  “That is a rock!”

  “Yes, it is most certainly a rock.”

  “That is a rock!”

  “You are correct. That, too, is a rock.”

  “That is a donkey!”

  I was growing a little tired of the dialogue and decided to try some gentle teasing. “No, it’s a mongoose,” I claimed.

  “What?”

  “It is not a donkey. It is a mongoose.”

  “It is a donkey!”

  “No, it’s a mongoose.”

  “Now you give me 120 birr.”

  “I’ll buy that mongoose for 120 birr.”

  “What?”

  “If you bring me that mongoose, I will give you 120 birr for it.”

  “You want that donkey?”

  “No, I want that mongoose. The one right over there.”

  “Okay. Too much. Now you give me 100 birr.” And so it went.

  On the downhill slide from the peak, we spotted an assortment of cool mammals, including warthogs, mountain nyalas, and a rarely spotted serval cat. At the Bale Mountains National Park headquarters, we spied grey duikers and Menelik’s bushbuck. A sign at the entrance to the park’s headquarters indicated that nine rivers and streams between Adaba and Goba contain rainbow and brown trout. Both species were introduced to Ethiopia in 1967 via Kenya and quickly spread, as introduced species so often do. These trout are now fair game for anglers.

  IT WAS BAMBOO MARKET DAY in Goba. As we drove through town, we were held up by legions of horses and donkeys dragging their loads of bamboo to market from wherever uphill it had been harvested. At a crossroad, the beasts were relieved of their burden and moved off to the side. Cash earned from the sale of bamboo would be spent on essentials and a few luxuries at the weekly market, due to start in a few hours.

  The road passed substantial eucalyptus forests on one side of the road, and juniper and Hagenia forests on the other. For the first time, I saw eucalyptus trees in flower, little starbursts, and it looked as though these trees would erupt in the following few weeks. For now it was just the odd little bright and creamy puff here and there. These eucalypts seemed pretty happy with life, growing straight and strong, and with a sense of smug superiority. This wasn’t so unusual; eucalypts introduced to foreign lands often do much better than they do in Australia, having left behind their natural predators, parasites, and diseases. The soil into which they are introduced is sometimes much more nourishing than the nutrient-poor soil of Australia.

  As the road climbed to the 4,000-metre-high Sanetti Plateau, constituting the northeast portion of Bale Mountains National Park, the landscape lost its thick vegetation and turned to low scrubby brush and bare ground, punctuated by the occasional giant lobelia tree rising a couple of metres. A few lobelia had generated huge phallic structures at their tops, each containing several thousand flowers, with each flower producing several thousand seeds. Pity the poor lobelia; after the plant reproduces, it dies. Lindsay pointed out that you have to admire the strength of anything that manages to survive in the alpine.

  Wherever a depression in the ground had allowed a little water to accumulate, we saw more wildlife, including Blue-winged Geese, an endemic to Abyssinia, and Yellow-billed Ducks. Hassen spotted a giant mole rat, found in the Bale Mountains and nowhere else. The oversized creature lumbered across the landscape, giving us plenty of time to stop the car, get out, wander over, take some pictures … um … poke it with a stick … Giant mole rats do not move quickly. A few minutes later we spotted a fox. The fox did not spot the mole rat. We spied Thekla Larks, Wattled Cranes—a vulnerable species—and Bale Parisoma, found nowhere but the Bale Mountains.

  We continued on to Tullo Deemtu, which at 4,377 metres is the highest peak in the Urgoma Mountains, the second highest in Ethiopia, and among the highest peaks in all of Africa. Any more than a few minutes and the cold wind would have been too much, but it was one of those magical moments when everything else in sight is down. It did seem a bit of a cheat though, driving to the top of a mountain, but there was an automated communications tower at the top, and I suppose it requires periodic servicing.

  Scooting downhill, it wasn’t long before we came to a Jawa at the side of the road. Or at least it looked like a Jawa. It unfolded itself to reveal a small child, perhaps six or seven years old, bundled up against the cold wind. Legese passed the child a few biscuits and a banana, while I contemplated where in the world the child’s parents might be. Ethiopian wolves and African hunting dogs are rare in the Bale Mountains, but it still seemed pretty chancy to me. Legese pointed out a herd of goats and cows crossing the plateau below us about a kilometre away and speculated that the child’s parents must be herding them. Sparsely populated, the Sanetti Plateau has long attracted herders, and the tradition continues despite the region’s designation as a national park.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY was one that I had not been looking forward to since booking the trip. Legese had not built it up as anything more than it was—a very long drive from Goba back to Addis Ababa for a flight north the next day. Over the horrid road we had travelled just two days before, Hassen set some sort of record by getting us from Goba to Sheshemene in just six hours. Highway 6 north is as significant as any road gets in Ethiopia, serving as the major route between the Kenyan border and Addis Ababa. It is nicely paved except where it isn’t. Imagine the 401 through Toronto redesigned as a carnival ride. Users of the highway include cattle, goats, horses, donkeys, horse-drawn carts, donkey-drawn carts, tractors, and a few motorized vehicles. Competing hitchhikers wouldn’t stand a chance if they stood politely at the side of the road, and so they positioned themselves in the middle of the lane they hoped to travel in. Not content with the universal extended thumb, they used semaphore, without the flags, until the moment before death by collision became inevitable. As we sailed by, we got a lot of looks of resignation but also a lot of gestures that I can only assume were rude.

  Lindsay toured the grounds of our Addis Ababa hotel. I sipped a gin and tonic in the hotel bar while writing up my notes. The bar was pretty full since the hotel was hosting a conference of ministers. After ninety minutes, I tried without success to catch the eye of my server to get another drink. Then, sitting at a table by herself, a young woman started to wave coquettishly, smile, and wink at me. Well, obviously not at me, but at someone who must have been standing behind me. I casually looked over my shoulder and found that I was alone. I looked back at the woman, who continued to gesture and nod in a way that suggested “Yes, you!” Why me? I knew only a handful of people in Africa, and I was pretty sure that she wasn’t one of them. She most definitely seemed to be gesturing at me.

  And then I had a dreadful thought. Could it be that this woman was a prostitute? Was I being propositioned? Was I being utterly stupid? I looked around the bar and saw only one other woman sitting by herself. She was trying to catch my eye too, but a little less obviously. I had my guidebook with me, and I checked the index under “prostitution” and then tried “sex trade,” but found nothing.

  Then a man with a convention badge, presumably a minister, sat down at the table with the first woman. Ah, see—she isn’t a prostitute, just someone at the conference trying to get the attention of her colleague, and shame on me for thinking that the situation was anything more sordid than that. Even so, I was left with the impression that the couple at the table were negotiating, and after a few minutes, having failed to come to a resolution, he got up and walked away. She resumed winking at me. I gave up on trying to find my server, walked to the bar, paid for my drink, gave the seated woman a polite smile, and received a very nice offer for sins-of-the-flesh at a very modest price. I high-tailed it back to the room. Alone.

  WE WERE DROPPED AT THE AIRPORT ninety minutes before our flight. This might be cutting it close at O’Hare or Frankfurt, but in Ethiopia it was about eight-eight minutes early. We were eventually waved over to the chec
k-in desk and issued boarding cards that were entirely blank; no names, no flight number, no destination, nothing. “They are blank,” we were told by the check-in clerk when he saw us staring at them. “Don’t worry.”

  An old and crowded Fokker delivered us to Axum, home to 70,000 people. The fields around the town were rocky but carefully plowed, waiting for the rains that were now two weeks overdue. Our guide, Testeye, told us that the land was very fertile, and anything would grow in it. I sincerely hoped that it would, and soon. I looked for eucalyptus trees. They had been rather rare in Ethiopia’s far south, and I hoped to find them in greater abundance in the country’s far north. Nothing … nothing … Ah, there’s one. And there’s two, and a bunch more. By the time we got to Axum, finding a eucalyptus was as challenging as finding my elbows in a brightly lit room, and to my great joy, they were in full flower. No one will ever suggest that eucalyptus flowers become the next big thing on Valentine’s Day, but the little starbursts were a treat to me.

  After a quick lunch, we were picked up by Testeye and our driver for the three-hour tour of the sights and sounds of Axum. To understand Axum, it is necessary to know four things about it. First, the community was hopping and bopping at least 300 years before Christ and became the capital of the mighty Axumite empire. Second, Axum is the pillar of Orthodox Christianity in Ethiopia and home to the largest and oldest Christian sanctuary in the country. Third, while the city was a big deal then, and is a big deal today, it has had the living daylights beaten out of it several times over the millennia. Finally, Axum is really, really close to the border with Eritrea, the width of my thumbnail on the map, and despite earlier close relations, tensions run high, particularly after a major and bloody border conflict just a decade before. Our families would have been anxious if they had known exactly where we were. It was a good thing we hadn’t told them; we wouldn’t have wanted them to worry.

  We started our tour with the stelae field for which Axum is most famous. I gather that Axumite rulers had carved-stone monoliths erected to signify their power or majesty, or perhaps their manliness. The largest of the lot is attributed to King Remhai, who ruled the region in the third century. It lies on its side, in pieces. Having dragged the ten-metre-long, 500-tonne monstrosity four kilometres from the quarry, it fell and broke while workers struggled to put it up. The chief engineer’s next words were probably his last. The highlight of the collection was probably the stela that had recently been repatriated from Rome following its theft by Mussolini’s troops. Besides returning it, the Italians were paying for it to be put back up, piece by piece. While most buildings in Ethiopia are erected using rickety scaffolding made of eucalyptus poles, this monolith was being re-erected using a frame that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the International Space Station.

  We drove to the bathing pool of Queen Sheba, mother of Menelik I. Testeye was very frank in pointing out that there was no good reason to believe that the site had anything to do with Queen Sheba, or that Queen Sheba had even existed. Naughty young boys dove and swam naked in the reservoir, and women gathered drinking water from stone steps. Given how vile the water looked, it may have been safer to drink pee.

  We continued to the hilltop tombs of Kaleb and Gebre Meskel. The crypts had fluorescent lighting but no power, so we used thin candles to light our way. The traditional interpretation is that palaces of the sixth-century father-and-son emperors once stood on the site, but only the tombs remain. This interpretation isn’t helped by counterclaims that Kaleb is buried at a monastery five kilometres out of town, and that Gebre Meskel is buried eighty kilometres away in Debre Damo Debir.

  Lindsay and I looked north. Testeye told us that great historical and religious sites lay between Axum and Eritrea. Largely unknown to the Western world, they will probably soon be major tourist destinations. Testeye also explained that part of the reason for the demise of the Axumite empire was the demolition of the region’s great forests to meet demand for timber in Egypt and China. These tall trees had moderated the climate, and their destruction had made the region much hotter and drier. Some of the surrounding hillsides were now covered with eucalyptus forests, and for the first time, I heard something negative said about them. Testeye claimed that they drew a lot of water from the soil, making it less suitable for crops. Great for building and burning, they were not so great for the landscape.

  But is the claim that eucalypts are harmful to soil legitimate? Australian soils are among the oldest in the world, and have lost many of their inorganic nutrients, particularly phosphorus, essential for plant growth. Having evolved under these circumstances, eucalypts are well suited to deal with that problem. Much of Australia is dry, and although eucalypts are not impervious to drought, many are at least tolerant of periods of water shortage. It is strange, then, that when planted in foreign lands, they might be accused of taking too many soil nutrients and utilizing too much water.

  The care and cultivation of eucalyptus forests is a field of considerable interest. Experts try to determine which species should be used in establishing plantations in foreign lands. After finding species that are well suited to local conditions, it is important to choose types that grow as quickly as possible. Silviculturalists attempt to establish whether eucalypt forests are particularly flammable, study ways to harvest eucalypts forests in an environmentally sustainable way, and determine whether or not eucalypt plantations deplete soil nutrients or use excessive water.

  The problem seems to be one of expectation. Eucalypts are planted because they grow quickly, but growing trees use a lot of water and nutrients; eucalypts are probably no worse than any other group of trees. Eucalypts are popular, in part, because they can be harvested not so many years after planting, given the right conditions. However, it is in the first decade or so that these trees extract the most water and nutrients from the soil. If harvesters were a bit more patient, felling the trees at a greater age, soil depletion would be less severe. Also, in many countries, the leaf “litter” that accumulates under the trees is taken away. In doing so, many of the nutrients that would eventually be returned to the soil by decomposition are lost. The bottom line is that you don’t get anything for nothing.

  We drove back downhill to the compound of the Cathedral of Tsion Maryam, or St. Mary of Zion. Testeye pointed out the building where the Ark of the Covenant is said to reside, guarded year in and year out by a priest. Fans of Indiana Jones will remember that the Ark is the chest that the Hebrews used to hold the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments. I asked Testeye if he believed that the Ark really was inside. After a pause, he said that he really did believe for three reasons. First, if it weren’t there, why would so many thousands of people make a pilgrimage to the site every year? Second, why use the word “Zion” if the contents of the building did not have some formal link to Israel? Finally, why would a priest dedicate his entire life to the protection of the Ark if it didn’t really exist?

  We then descended to a museum that housed some really fabulous historical artifacts. Among these were the robes and crowns of all the Ethiopian emperors dating back as far as these things go. I crossed my fingers and asked if the robe of Emperor Menelik II, the man who had brought eucalypts to Ethiopia, was there. “Absolutely,” I was told. I was delighted to find that Menelik’s robe was deep red and lavishly decorated in gold. Unless Menelik had dragged his robes across the dusty ground, then he must have been a really tall chap. I pushed my luck and asked about Menelik’s crown. “Why certainly, right over here,” I was told. It was solid gold and monstrously large. Menelik must have had a great chiropractor. No one could explain to me why the crown has earflaps. Despite their immense value, the artifacts were protected by nothing more than the cheapest of sliding glass doors and locks. While the Axum airport is guarded by military personnel with machine guns, these treasures are guarded by a young woman and an old man, both with archaic metal-detecting wands. A gang of thieves wouldn’t have to be particularly well organized to stroll off with whatever the
y wanted.

  AS I FLEW NORTH over the Sahara Desert, I reflected on my time with Lindsay. The bad things in Ethiopia are twice as bad as I have summarized, but the good things are five times better than I could possibly describe. Ethiopia is not a travel destination for the faint of heart. Outside the compounds of the few hotels with many stars, Ethiopia is a gritty place. Lindsay seemed surprised when I said that I didn’t think Lisa was tough enough for an adventure like ours. Indeed, I am not sure how many other friends I would have wanted beside me on this trip.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Geothermal Heating and Diabolical Clichés

  REASON NUMBER THIRTEEN FOR INTRODUCING A FOREIGN SPECIES: BECAUSE ALL OF MY SOIL IS BLOWING AWAY.

  ROBIN JONES DIDN’T MAKE me love him at the Icelandair check-in desk. The snotty woman behind the counter said that she wasn’t going to let him board the flight. Apparently, the name on his passport didn’t match the name on his ticket. When he asked me to book our trip, Robin had failed to inform me that his real name was Leslie. Robin pulled at his eyebrows as he always does when he is at all nervous. This tugging can go on for ten minutes without a break. Surprisingly, he still has intact woolly eyebrows. After some sweet talk that stuck in my throat, Robin was finally permitted to board.

  Robin latched onto my guidebook to Iceland like one of those fish that glom onto passing sharks. I had been assigned a window seat, but somehow I wound up in the middle seat so that Robin, a committed photographer, could snap away during takeoff and landing.

  Robin and I were off to Iceland in search of lupines. Not just any lupine—we wanted to see the Nootka lupine. Big, beautiful lupines with masses of purple flowers and an optimistic outlook. Who doesn’t like lupines? Well, it seems that Icelanders don’t, and they are regretting their decision to introduce them. They are now thinking of clever ways to get rid of them.