In the south of Ethiopia the times lie. The people are rope and dried branch and their banana leaves hair. Its looks, infinite, They are manufactured in dead eyes in which the wet earth ferments, the mud. In the south of Ethiopia the fields climb the sky and in their leafy forests the fright is hidden. And voices and languages of other times are heard and in the shadows of people the happiness of crying is guessed. Because those people who survived the future by dodging life with the pride of feeling distant, Very far away.
Dead eyes in which the wet earth ferments
And then one meets the Dorze tribe and their Bambu houses that the termites shrink even. They are elephant -shaped houses, HIGH LIKE THE WIND, that survive the rue mountain. And there they live, In a perennial slope in which women carry firewood and water on their stick shoulders. And the children play abroad to games with rules that were not invented. And the men grazed cattle.
By then we wandered for green stone meadows and we got lost in a halls of leaves that took us to a fourth cataract. Water is rain that slips down the rocks from bottom to top so as not to get lost.
And we left and left that town of men and women who hid from the time of Arbaminch and its two lakes with the feeling of having arrived yesterday at our appointment.
No man nor beast they seemed, They looked like clay molds
And days later went down to Konso and we met by chance with samai. We were seated at a rustic bar when they appeared spectra as I had never contemplated. No man nor beast they seemed, seemed clay molds made little shade. And all the people of Konso began to surround them and watch as you look at the ghosts.
And those men and women of prehistory did not talk to their mouths did it with their eyes. I never looked like a human. They looked like a dead man or hyena. And I also remember your inert hair as acacias branches. And then an old woman passed with her drained chest hanging from her throat and her head folded to the waist. For his figure it seems that he was one hundred thousand years. And everyone was silent and turned away from those shadows. And I was not able to get my camera so as not to bother my shames and fears.
And then we went to the mountains to see Konso's people. We went through a market where thousands of people sold breath and bought blood. And we visited an area of arrow -shaped clay structures in which dozens of their inhabitants who asked us to give them to bile. They were very humble people who formed a handful of pine leaves or a piece of stones or wires.
Thousands of people sold breath and bought blood
And we visited a villa in which our tongue shrunk until we cannot articulate words. I remember the image of a girl about five years old to which the worms swelled her stomach and emptied her soul. The houses were stone and wood fences to protect life without distinction of animals and humans.
Then we go through a strange men's club. There were some elders dressed in rags lying on some rocks. They were parents who had to separate from their women in the first year after childbirth. They cannot live with them by divine mandate and their work is to teach all the boys of 12 a 18 Years of the town, They are also separated from their parents, The millenary culture of their ancestors. Thus generation after generation without allowing anything to move its strict order of defeats and hunger.
Without allowing anything to move its strict order of defeats and hunger
And then they teach you the sacred stone of the oaths where lies and truths are settled. There are the Konso to swear that they have done or have not done under the observance of the elderly. What is said there is good because man did not invent greater punishment than that rock: "If you lied in the trial, swearing on the stone will die in less than a week", They tell us logical beyond our mind. "It's already happened", They confirm us.
And we also leave the Konso with some sadness and respect for their customs. Sadness to see more poverty than in other places and respect to understand that they defend their legacy until death.
That was the end of Ethiopia. It was in Moyale, The city of the double border where we slept in a hole through which the air did not run. Already on Sunday we went to customs where police and channel officials stole us to let us go 20 dollars and two hours of our life. It was then that we looked at the calendar and realized that they owed us a thousand years.
