The Afar moved like wraiths and within minutes our group was spread over a vast area of the slope, hidden from each other by massive boulders. Irene was out of my sight and I was questioning the importance of our being there. In the velvety blankness, Moussa would disappear for minutes at a time and then my headlamp would pick him up, squatting on top of a boulder, eyeing me like a cat ready to pounce.
My breath came harder with each step, which I chalked up to advancing age and three plus decades of remote exploration, but after two more hours I could go no further and collapsed, sucking air in great gasps. I assumed it was a heart attack and remember looking up at the stars as the earth rumbled beneath me thinking it was such a beautiful place to die. I don’t remember how long I laid there and I may have passed out until I focused on the barrel of an automatic rifle aimed between my eyes. Moussa was straddling me, poking me with his Kalashnikov. From my haze, I vaguely recall saying a prayer for Irene and waiting for Moussa to pull the trigger.
At that moment, he laid down on the ground next to me, rifle under his head, wrapped himself in his robe, and within a minute he was snoring louder than the mountain. The absurdity of the situation hit me and I burst out laughing.
I was dying on the side of a convulsing volcano in a remote desert, next to a sleeping nomadic gunman, while my wife rode off into the night on a camel. You can’t make stuff like that up! It would be one of my greatest stories and no one would ever know it happened! It would die with me! I laughed until I was gasping for air and that awakened Moussa. Standing over us was the camel he had brought down from the summit; Irene’s camel, and only then did it hit me that she was safe at the top and that Moussa had come looking for me when I did not show up. My murderous gunman had come to my rescue.
He helped me to my feet, holding me upright, both hands on my shoulders, and held my gaze in his own for several seconds, asking without words if I was okay to continue. I felt no pain but my breath was drawing hard and there was no place to go but up. I looked ahead and saw the red glow of the summit, like a dancing aurora, no more than 100 yards away. I waved off the camel as it would have taken more effort to mount than to walk the final route. If it killed me it would be an appropriate death.
Together, arm in arm, we walked drunkenly toward the crest, and for a second I imagined us as Hillary and Tenzing summiting Everest together, not that our journey was even a fraction so epic, and in hindsight I realize the absurdity of such a comparison, but that was my state of mind at the time.
We stood at the volcano’s edge for only a few seconds, gazing into the churning stew of liquid earth belching up from far below. Gas bubbles exploded like fireworks showering burning, liquid confetti in all directions. Under better circumstances, it would have been the light show of a lifetime. Irene found me in the dark and I staggered into her arms as Moussa directed both of us into a grass hut and I drifted off to sleep wondering why anyone would have built a grass hut at the edge of a live volcano.
It seemed only minutes later that Moussa was prodding me again with his rifle and I heard our party yelling to pack up fast. Dawn was just beginning to break when a gunshot ended the night. I was still in a blank haze and not thinking rationally at all when Moussa waved us down the trail and Irene led me off on foot. Within a hundred yards two more shots rang out. This time we heard the zing as the bullets passed overhead and we dove for cover.
When you are being shot at you do not think. It might take a second for the whine of the bullet to register for what it is, but once it does, life becomes extremely intense and you merge with the ground, becoming a part of it. In this instance, the ground was flesh-lacerating magma.
Moussa was yelling and frantically waving us downward while aiming his rifle uphill when Irene stood up and fell over. At first I thought she had been hit, but her foot had lodged in a rock crevice and it twisted her ankle so severely she could not stand. In an instant, Moussa was there with the camel and together we pushed her on top with no saddle, smacked it hard on the butt, and sent her careening down the trail away from the gunfire.
I descended fast as I could with Moussa at my side, my breath coming in short gasps. Every few seconds he would whirl backwards, his rifle leveled to fire, but there was no more shooting, and after a while he seemed to relax. I had no way of asking him what had happened and doubt that he would have told me if he could. Perhaps the Afar were simply letting off steam, or having fun at our expense, or just maybe, one or two hotheads decided that killing us was preferable to guiding us as the money would be the same.
The next few hours are a hazy memory that seems like a dream recalled. I mechanically put one foot in front of the other and it took no effort to keep my mind blank. There was no sense of movement over the vast desolation, it was just too immense. My breaths still came with difficulty, like when someone has punched you in the stomach, but I was alive and in no pain so I just could not allow myself to consider any more than that. Each step was one closer to Irene.
Hours and many miles later, I collapsed again in a hut back at Dodom. My electrolytes were depleted and my body was involuntarily cramping into a fetal position. Irene, sure that I was dying, forced dry Gatorade down my throat that revived me enough to stand and helped me to the Rover. In my haze, I was looking for Moussa to thank him and to offer him more money when the other Afar started yelling and I heard magazines being slammed into rifle breaches. I was pushed into the Rover and we took off with tires spinning, sending a rooster tail of sand into the air. No one shot at us as we drove away.
I never found out who had fired the shots at the summit or why, and I never saw Moussa again. My malevolent gunmen proved to be a guardian angel who has haunted my dreams ever since. Many times I have awakened at night, gasping for air while staring into a rifle barrel. If ever a debt was left unpaid, it is mine to this man, and all I can do now is pay it forward in the future.
Returning home we found that Irene had a fractured fibula and spent a month in a walking boot. I had multiple blood clots in both legs and lungs that accounted for my faux heart attack. Three different doctors told me I should have died on the volcano. It took me one year to recover. The scientists got their data, and I got a great story.
A few months later, nine trekkers were awakened from a sound sleep inside the same grass huts on the summit of Erta Ale. According to the BBC, they were manhandled outside where five of them; German, Hungarian, and Austrian, were lined up and executed with AK47 Kalashnikov automatic rifles. The other four disappeared into the desert night.
Responsibility was claimed by the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Front Militia, the same tribal faction that Moussa was from.
The author with his ancestors
Conversations with a Caveman
Mdu squatted on a large blood-stained rock, his chin resting on his knees as he prodded the cooking fire with a small tree branch. His eyes held mine as he stoked the embers, studying me as he had done all day on the hunt. He was somewhat feral but with that same gleam in the eye that betrays deep intelligence.
His kinsmen stood behind me as the bloody baboon meat crackled and sizzled directly on the open flame. They waited respectfully for me to take the first bite, offered by their leader, as my mind raced with endless mistakes I might commit as a guest in such a situation. Ancient societies live by ceremony and I was learning those of the Hadzabe in real time as I went.
I looked around at those wiry men the color of wet mud with their baggy shorts held up with braided roots and took in the highway system of veins that stood out on their whippet thin arms and legs. They are men who pull bows that can drop an elephant and shoot birds on the wing; they hit their target on the run and can run all day. I was now sitting among them, about to eat seared baboon that two hours prior might have killed me.
When I first arrived, Mdu was standing on an outcropping of granite boulders in front of a cave entrance from which issued the sweet smell of a wet wood fire. The cold granite glistened from its fine
coating of rain and the mud tried to suck off my boots. His head was encircled with a halo of baboon hair that I assumed was his mantle of power as none of the others wore such decoration. He pounded his chest twice with a fist and spread his arms wide, as if to say, “This is my land,” implying the vast panorama of the Manyara highlands that enveloped us in western Tanzania. His enormous bow, slung across his thin shoulders was taller than he was and I could not help noticing various animal skins spread over rocks to dry in the sun. He was an impressive sight with the Great Rift Wall behind him.
I lowered my head, acknowledging his dominance and with that he beckoned me inside the entrance where his diminutive kinsmen eyed me warily, and where my attention went immediately to the enormous bush knives they were using to slice meat on the open fire. Simply allowing me to approach was a personal coup but I would also be tested. Mdu stamped out the small fire with a leathery foot and walked me through the ceremony of making a new one with two sticks, kindling, and some steel. To record this momentous occasion for prosperity I set my mini-tripod on a rock, set the camera timer, and ran back to make fire. Their looks of incomprehension at my actions made me feel quite stupid, but I admit to never hesitating to make a fool of myself to record a good story.
After three failed attempts, a tiny puff of flame sprang to life and apparently it was sufficient, because after that, I was handed a carved bone pipe stuffed with local weed. Mdu lit it for me with a burning twig he took from the fire with a bare hand. I took a short draw before handing it back to him. It was potent and went straight to my head. I did not want to be stoned in this situation, but it was necessary if I was to enter their society. They all laughed as I hacked and coughed.
Having no common reference points, I reminded myself that I was among people attuned to the rhythm of the earth. They lived by the cycles of nature. For them, there was no division between the spiritual and material worlds and suddenly, there I was, a creature from a different planet. They did not smoke weed to get high but to reach an altered state of consciousness beyond my current comprehension, a state I was unused to entering myself. I had to cast aside all preconceived ideas, think on my feet, and react to them in the moment if I was to penetrate their society; all of that while being jacked on local ganja.
The Hadzabe are true Bushmen who, like their Saan cousins from Namibia who became unwitting film stars in The Gods Must Be Crazy, speak the Khoisan click language. They are not just nomadic, but only build temporary shelters for the most dire of weather conditions, preferring to sleep on the ground or in caves, and when they make a significant kill, the entire village will relocate to feast upon it. They use iron tools thanks to their willingness to trade meat with the local Barbaig people who are master blacksmiths, but the Hadzabe themselves have never reached that level of sophisticated toolmaking. They wear beaded jewelry that they have traded for with the Maasai, warriors who surround them in this valley, outnumbering them by 300 to one. While most of the estimated 3,000 existing Hadzabe have assimilated into cities to live on government subsidies, this isolated pocket of hunter/ gatherers, estimated to number less than 300, is barely removed from the Stone Age, and they have no desire to join the present world.
So while early man and I sat staring at each other I felt a physical presence creeping upon me like a ground fog. Perhaps it was the collective consciousness of mankind that permeated the land since Mdus’s forefathers sat where he was, or maybe it was just too much history and emotion for this traveler to absorb. Sitting around a fire with a clan of cave men was not just extremely cool, but physically intimidating and emotionally exhausting. I had removed my watch and ring before arriving to prevent them from becoming talismans or being appropriated as unwilling gifts, but Mdu was still fascinated by the buttons and zippers of my clothing. He ran his fingers over both like a blind person seeing through touch. He ran his hands over my arms and through my hair while turning to comment to his clansmen as though delivering a medical lecture about a specimen. He pointed at objects around the fire, naming them in clicks and seemed amused when I repeated his words as though I were a quick learning pet. The others seemed to have little or no interest in me; I was simply there and had no bearing on their lives. However without my knowledge, I was about play a much larger role.
Suddenly, Mdu stood up so I did too. He grabbed his bow and arrows and we exited the cave, trotting down a muddy trail into thick bush. Mdu would stop and squat, pointing out minute scratches in the soil or bent leaves that I assumed were signs of an animals passing, and he watched me intently to make sure I was taking it all in. Sometimes he froze in mid-stride and sniffed the air, and at any little sound his bow was instantly knocked with an arrow.
He melted into the surroundings, silently, as much a part of the forest as the trees or animals and he pointed at things in branches I could not see until I realized that he was talking to me like a teacher to a small child. Why else would I have approached him if not to learn? I was happy to be his student.
He would squat there in the dirt staring at me, unmoving as I tried to enter his mind. I lost track of time and miles as I walked by his side, conscious of passing through time before recorded history. Hundreds of generations of Hadzabe had walked that trail, but I may very well have been the first white man. Language was not necessary as the moment was pure emotion and experience as Mdu passed on to me a sense of complete merging with not only the spiritual, but with the natural environment as well. In his presence I reached a mental state I have rarely achieved on my own. As we continued in silence, I wondered if I really was what men like him would become in a thousand years’ time.
He clicked away as we walked, seemingly oblivious to what I may or not have understood. I pointed out a contrail in the overhead sky and wondered if it meant anything to him other than a bird or spirit. At that point, he gave a great sigh as though I was just not getting it and began a lengthy bout of clicks mixed with words that I found fascinating. He was gesturing all about him and was quite the orator, making me think that he was giving me a grand lesson on the universe but I was just not smart enough to take it all in. He finished with a foot stomp to emphasize all that he had said was final. With that he turned and walked away. It was quite a tirade and I thought perhaps I had just heard the Big Bang Theory from someone whose oral histories began with it.
He would disappear into thick brush then pop back out and beckon me to follow. I always found him crouched, observing a small creature that was unaware of his presence and unworthy of his arrow. One of those times I lost him for several minutes and he did not reappear. It was then that I thought I heard him coming through the undergrowth and was surprised at how much noise he was suddenly making. I froze in place just as a large and very enraged baboon broke cover no more than 20 feet from me. It was shrieking and stomping its foot, its hands balled into tight fists. It should be noted here that baboons are fierce predators who will not hesitate to attack a man. They are the main diet of the Hadzabe and react accordingly when approached.
The next few seconds are related as if in a dream because I froze in the moment and only recall flashes of memory. Before I could move, I heard the dull thud as the points of two arrows pierced the animal’s neck. Suddenly, the baboon, who moments before was poised to rip me to shreds, lay before me twitching from the neurotoxin on the arrows that was ending its life. Both were clean kill shots. Mdu stood to my right while his man was on my left; both already had arrows knocked in their bows. I had not heard either one of them nor was I aware that they were that close.
Mdu’s man had trailed us without me realizing it and Mdu had used me as bait to draw the baboon out. They had me covered the entire time and had demonstrated a perfect example of a coordinated hunt. The realization that he had used me like a tool was slowly being tattooed on my memory. With adrenalin pulsing, I had no time to be angry at what might have cost me my life. At the same time, the writer in me was already thinking, “What a story! Who will believe this? “I WAS THE BAIT!�
��
I watched in stunned silence as Mdu pulled his knife and severed the animal’s head, then gutted its innards with deft strokes, while his wingman shouldered the dead beast like a backpack and took off down the trail. Mdu approached and streaked my cheeks with the creature’s blood; acknowledging my part in the hunt, then he knelt to spread the dirt until no sign of the kill was left in evidence. He handed me his bow to carry on the long walk back to the cave and I considered that an honor. That night the baboon skull would hang in a tree with the bow suspended from it in order to take the animal’s power for the next hunt.
I felt tears through the drying blood on my cheeks as emotion took over; not only from a wild animal attack, but also my dramatic rescue, and my acceptance by this hunter/gatherer clan. My day was an avalanche of emotion, from expectation to anxiety, to comradery, fear, and pure joy, and after we climbed the small rise back to the cave entrance, I slumped to the ground in a heap, spent in body and spirit. I reached for a notebook to record my thoughts but found my hands shaking too much to write. How do you describe something you are certain no one else has experienced?
Baboons for Lunch Page 9