In Ethiopia with a Mule by Dervla Murphy Read Free Book Online Page B

before adding more twigs to the fire and putting a rusty basin of water to heat. I wondered if some beverage would in due course be produced from the basin; but instead, when the water was hot, Marcos began to remove my boots and socks, keeping his head respectfully bent. For the next ten minutes he violently massaged my legs from knees to toes, pouring water over them before each attack. Even without today’s severe sunburn – just where he was concentrating on my calf-muscles – such treatment would have been trying enough; but now my legs feel comfortably relaxed.
    While replacing my boots I heard voices, and then saw, through the low doorway, a few vague shapes wrapped in shammas . The arrival of his family had an interesting effect on Marcos. He leaped up, his face shining with delighted relief, and only then did I realise that he had been seriously frightened of me. I hope this Italian-bred fear of faranjs is not common throughout Tigre, since fear can express itself in many ways.
    As Marcos told his news three men and two women crowded up to see me, the women half-hiding behind their menfolk, covering the lower part of their faces with their shammas .
    Released from the strain of my undiluted company, Marcos beamed at me in a proprietary way, as though my presence here were all his own work, and began self-importantly to make free with my possessions, which earlier he had dropped as if they might bite him. He held up my sleeping-bag and bucket to be admired – but was at once sharply reprimanded by his father for unnecessarily touching a guest’s belongings. By now the men had edged into the tukal and we were all sitting close together on the bed, while outside the women excitedly discussed me. Soon they had decided that I must be transferred to the main dwelling-house – a rectangular, high-ceilinged, single-storey building, which consists of one large room, where several tree-trunks support the wooden beams of the mud roof and many grain bins take up most of the floor-space. Here the mud bed – which has been sacrificed to me – is about three feet high and built four feet out from the wall. The younger members of the family sleep on the floor around the fire and the poultry roost on crude shelves directly above the bed.
    When Marcos began to move my luggage I tried to stop him; but everyone insisted that it must remain beside me, so it has been stacked at the end of thebed. This attitude seems to indicate an endemic lack of trust. In similar circumstances elsewhere a host would store my kit in the most convenient spot – not necessarily anywhere near my sleeping quarters – after assuring me that it would be safe.
    Having recovered from the initial shock, everyone wanted to talk to me. Marcos’ parents speak a little Italian and I do too; but a little Italian, spoken with strong Tigrean and Irish accents, doesn’t really facilitate conversation and we soon gave up. However, mutual attempts to communicate always warm the atmosphere and now I don’t feel at all excluded from the family circle, though I’ve been writing non-stop while everyone else chatters away ninety to the dozen. Just occasionally someone looks at me and laughs kindly at my dumbness, or Marcos leans over to count the pages I’ve written, or his mother urges me to move closer to the fire.
    It is almost thirteen months since I last stayed in a peasant’s hut. That was in Nepal, and now it is somehow reassuring to be in similar surroundings on another continent, following the old routine of writing by firelight with wood-smoke in my eyes and sleepy hens clucking beside me and a variety of footloose vermin swarming over my body.
30 December. Migua Selassie
    Bug-wise, last night was hell. My insecticide powder proved unequal to the occasion and repeatedly I woke from a restless doze to scratch. These African devils seem even more vicious than their Asian cousins and my body is now covered with inflamed lumps.
    I was on the trail by 6.30,