We travelled the same route everyday, twice a day, except on Sunday’s — our day off. The thick clay mud, a fertile loam that burst with green everywhere you looked, made our trek to the worksite a challenging one — an Ethiopian Disney production of “Landcruiser’s on Ice.” There’s a few things I’ve noticed in my travels: Almost any TV can be found to be playing an episode of Law and Order 😂, and most people’s across the world that I’ve encountered want for peace. This hand painted school house, one of the very few in this region, stood as a beacon of this ideal. Young Ethiopian children of the Gamo culture group looked upon the words of Martin Luther King, everyday, as they walked miles and miles to school. To see that his message had made it to these mountains, a place where many people didn’t have access to a post office or even a formal address (for that matter), his words adorning this schoolhouse wall...it was something to behold. It is hard to quantify where the ripples of your goodness, of your peace will travel. I’m quite sure that Martin Luther King never knew, or would have imagined, that his eloquence would cascade into the Guge Mountains of Ethiopia. The stretch of his impact, however, wasn’t the focus. The fact that his action needed to happen, that he was convicted enough to act, that was what was important. Where will your ripples travel? Where will your concentric waves rest? I loved seeing this everyday, twice a day. This photo is very special to me. It was a good day...
Nech Sar National Park: The first night in Arba Minch we stayed in a place overlooking the forrest canopy of Nech Sar. An expanding vista that really illustrated the beauty and wonder of the Fertile Crescent. After working in the mountains for a few weeks, we returned to this place and, on the outset of our trip through the park, we stopped at an overlook that perched us above Lake Chamo. This body of water boasts a teaming population of hippopotami and Nile crocodiles. The hippopotamus is a fierce animal, loyal and protective to their group. They are one of the most deadly mammals on the African continent — forced into more frequent contact with humans via population growth. Lake Chamo is also said to be home to some of the largest Nike crocodiles on the planet. They generally haven’t been hunted or poached since the 70’s which has allowed them to grow and sustain their physical size over time. This all brings us to the ecosystem for which these men are fishing in. As we watched the hippos breach the water, the crocodiles maraud and patrol the lake, a couple of fisherman, merely the very next inlet away from these animals (a couple hundred feet), cast their nets for dinner. It was hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that they would be essentially making available free food to anything else that was hungry around them (at least in my head that’s how it seemed). It was quite a remarkable co-existence. Maybe the crocs just really didn’t want to have anything to do with them. Maybe the hippos were desensitized to their presence over time. Regardless, I was taken by them. Such apparent symbiosis. It was a good day...
Nech Sar National Park: The expanse of this place is amazing. I had looked upon it from the cliffs above Lake Abaya, but now I’m in the belly of it. People still live here. I saw a column of smoke rising from the forest canopy standing on those same cliffs. I saw no one on our trip, however, just vast grasslands and fauna. Greater Kudo cut along on the ridges — large antelope that can stand as tall as 5 feet at the shoulder and weigh upwards of 600lbs+. Dik-Dik’s, on the other end, stand, at best, ~15 inches at the shoulder, obscuring themselves in he bushes. It was the zebras, however, that were the most magnificent to me. They’re such a prominent figure in pop culture, movies, animations, drawings, just the oddity of those stripes and how they contrast with the surrounding landscape, it’s such a repetitive cultural theme, and yet, here they are, in real time, in their natural environment...large, black and white striped horses. We saw a family of them ahead of us so we stopped the Landcruiser, got out on foot and slowly approached — stopping intermittently to see if they’d get comfortable with us. Their skin would quiver, we’d stop, there’d relax, and repeat...they never ran away and so we slowly moved under the trees. Finally, a couple of car lengths away, I pulled out my K7 and began to click away. All of the sudden the whole family turned and began walking towards us, slow and steady, just grazing on the brush as they moved. It was incredible. As I knelt in the dirt, flora above my head, a slight canopy shrouding me, one of the foals turned towards me, their mother close behind...this is the photo above. This young, beautiful animal looking straight at me, curious, a bit afraid I’m sure, but not running away, staying in the safety of their mother, figuring me out — a visitor to their home. It was a good day...
Ochollo Mulato: There are certain things I’ve found that span time and space, language and culture: Food is one of them. The other is laughter and horseplay. Hiloo and I found each other, without language, but with the unspoken bond that comes from goofing around and pranking each other (a process I’ve honed over my years in the firehouse). Knelt over a 5’x5’ section of grid on the archaeology site we worked on, we poked each other with sticks and then looked the other way, we threw dirt on each other (by accident, of course), lobbed small pebbles in each other’s direction, switched the back of each other’s legs with small twigs and then ran away, and basically anything else that friends do to jerk each other around. He was my friend. We couldn’t speak directly, but I consider him my brother. Through him I was able to try the freshest of honey scooped right out of the hive, comb, bee parts, and all — much of the Ethiopian honey I tried had a distinct smokey flavor which made it really unique and rich. He brought me fresh boiled eggs from his chickens. He often wore a wide brimmed cowboy hat and I sported a hand woven fedora that displayed the colors of the Gamo people (black, yellow, and red), we switched from time to time, a show of solidarity between brothers. On this day, the clouds rested into the valley below and then worked their way up the mountain side as the sun crested coronally above our heads. We were awash in a thick sheet of white and grey. The mountain climbing fog provided a stark contrast to the vibrant greens of the hillside. For his picture, he wanted to wear my hat. It truly makes me happy to see him wear it in this photo. My good friend Hiloo. A friend for whom I never spoke a word, but built memories with that I’ll take with me into my final moments on this pale blue dot. It was a good day...
Near Zefine: Many parts of Ethiopia still exist under a caste system. It takes different forms in different places. Here, in the highlands of the Gamo-Gofa region, people are born into one of two castes: Mala (citizens) and Tsoma (non-citizens) which includes Degala, Mana/Chinasha. The Mala own land and work as leaders, farmers, and weavers. I own a hat with the Gamo colors of black, yellow, and red. I love it. The Degala, Mana/Chinasa work as potters, stone workers/knappers, and hide workers. They live on the outskirts of the towns in homes like the ones you see in the photograph. They make ~$15-$20 a year. The castes are not allowed to have relations across caste lines for fear of that it will make the Degala infertile. I was here as an budding anthropologist, an archaeology student. I intended to observe things as they are. Still, I was still who I was. I had my own agency, my own me. I have my own culture and it’s hard to justify this existence in my head. It seems harsh and unforgiving. I also can’t help but to see some less overt comparisons of this in my own culture. Not at all as rigid, not a proper caste system, but still. I too am struck by the lush environment of this place. Smoke creeps through the straw roofs like fog rising from an early morning lake. People live and work in the same hyperbolic abodes. Hides dry in stacks next to family beds and are scraped clean as they hang from the center posts of these houses. It’s sticky, fatty, sinewy work. Children run along hillsides in the green. The air is cool and wet. We continue to walk between houses, greeted by onlookers, followed by curious little ones. I just exist in the present. It was another good day... . . What is your privilege? How have you been afforded more opportunity than your fellow human? What perspective can you gain from those who live and love under constraints unimaginable to your own? How do you find peace in the present while extending compassion to those that exist in a very different now? . . Follow my professors and mentors John Arthur and Kathryne Weedman Arthur and learn more about our world... Weedman, K. J. (n.d.). An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Stone Scrapers Among
Zefine: I’m the outlier. I’m a tall, white, lanky American guy in a country of people who have a long lineage that have lived much closer to the equator than I have. Children in these mountains like to touch my skin because they’ve never seen something so pasty before. They’re curious if it feels the same. They poke me in the way that people tap the windows of a kitten display at a pet store. I don’t mind. I don’t have to mind. My skin has been privileged and is generally not seen as a negative throughout the world. My ancestor’s reputation precedes me. The havoc that people who look like me ran throughout human populations across the earth placed me into a power structure I didn’t even know I was born into. And so, it seems like people are interested in me more so than they’re scared. They find it funny that my skin is pale. They congregate around us when we walk into town. When we were invited into the clay walls of this home by our hosts, the rest of the town showed up. We were an interesting spectacle. I didn’t feel judged, I just felt interesting. I felt like the kitten on the other side of the plexiglass, somewhat revered, but also curious, something that one would like to elicit a response from — just tap the glass, poke the skin, “Come here, come here! Look at me!” It’s an interesting and humbling experience. It’s uncomfortable and it’s also a slight window into being “othered.” I don’t catch the negative fall out that many others suffer that have varying skin shades different from my own, but it’s an experience to be the minority, the spectacle. The walls of the home were warm and inviting. They were covered in B-movie posters and package wrappers as decoration, plastered on the walls like wallpaper. It’s an interesting sight and I haven’t fully made sense of the broader socioeconomic/cultural implications of this. What are people in these mountains getting from the people from whom these posters and packaging originate? Are there aspects of cargo cults going on here? Curious...just like me. It was another good day... . . Where are you the outlier? How do you take yourself out of your bubble? What can be gained from this process? . . #Ethiopia #People #Humans #Contrast #Culture #Africa #RyanMitchellLives
