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There’s a cloud over Lake Tana that reminds me of summer and a day in a boat when Amara took me looking for hippos.  The rains had been ferocious the night before but this morning the lake was calm while flamingoes helped the fishermen in their red papyrus boats look for the freshest fish of the day.

“Don’t move at all or the ripples will disturb her” Amara said when he saw the female hippo bathing with her two young calves.  I didn’t move an eyelash and could barely breathe.  She spotted us from a distance and wriggled her ears, came closer to her young and then all three gracefully turned under the water like Disney ballet dancers accidentally marooned in 21^st century reality.  Amara waited a while before putting the engine back on, in case the mammals were under the boat but we started to move north soon and I watched as the birds followed us.  Bright yellow, green, purple and pink birds that I had never seen before and didn’t know the names of and still don’t.  Later we stopped again, this time for our picnic of mangos, bread and fried chicken and we spent the entire day with just one sentence between us “don’t move at all or the ripples will disturb her”.

By sunset the lake had changed and Amara was concerned that we should stop and rest before it got too dark.  The equatorial sunset reflected on the water and the source of the Blue Nile was stiller than it had been all day.  As we came closer to the shore I could see some women collecting water from the lake in their bright orange plastic containers while some children bathed and swam and laughed.  The children waved at me and called out “hello foreigner” and I waved and shouted back at them “hello Ethiopians”.

Amara smiled at this interaction and asked me again “why don’t you have any children?”  I shrugged and tried to explain again that I neither knew why or how I didn’t have any children, that it had never been a conscious choice at any time and that now it was too late as I was too old.  I wasn’t sad about it as I didn’t usually think about it much and normally people in Europe didn’t question me.  Only in Ethiopia was it a topic to raise such interest.  He frowned and replied “everyone should have children” as if this were an absolute and well documented truth of life.

We tied the boat ropes to a lime tree and walked the short way back to his home.  Outside his house we sat and drank some beers and honey wine and smoked cigarettes and ate injeera with lamb.  We talked about his work and his life and his son who lived with relatives in a nearby town because his wife had died and Amara couldn’t take care of him alone.  But it wasn’t long before we came back to his fascination with my life without children.

“Why don’t you take my son back to Europe with you, give him an education, let him live with you.  This would be very good for him.  And also very good for you” Amara suggested with a casualness usually reserved for asking someone the time or what their favourite colour is.

“You serious?”

“Sure, why not?”

I couldn’t think of a reply so I finished my beer and went inside his house and crawled under the mosquito net we’d bought the day before at the cattle market.  The rains began again and splashed down onto the corrugated iron rooftop with surprisingly subtle synchronicity and eventually I fell asleep to those sounds while he stayed outside finishing the honey wine and the last of the cigarettes.  He was watching the lake and watching the bright night lightening storm and might even have been watching as a female hippopotamus took care of her young and wriggled her ears.

Don’t move at all or the ripples will disturb her.

 

Yak Cabaret

In this one you are sitting in a ger with your new herders’ boots on, showing Batmunk a map of Monoglia from the Lonely Planet.  “It’s very beautiful” he tells you, but his smile implies a lack of belief.  In this one you are tired after your day with the horses, the milk mutton soup and the sunset.  Batmunk has been practising his English with you for an hour and you are pleased with his improvements.  He wants to see other photos from the guide book too and on page 91 he thinks he sees one of his cousins from Kazakstan.  He marvels at the photos of the people in the city eating pizza, talking on cell phones and going to discos and he tells you that next year he’ll go to the city to buy Calvin Klein underwear and a new pair of jeans.

Even at sleep time his fascination with dogs continues “do you really keep dogs in the house in your country, and you bath them, and you buy them different flavoured tinned food, and they have appointments at the vet?”  He doesn’t love his dog.  His dog works and has a job to do.  How can you love a dog?  He starts to laugh again remembering your earlier linguistic mistake when you tried to ask him to “hold the dog” but told him to “hold the husband” instead.  He’s laughing uncontrollably now as he repeats the mistake “hold the husband”, “hold the husband”.

“You come from a strange, mysterious and exotic country” he says to you.

You are from the ghosts of Treharris and the uncle who died.  He is from a circle home made of felt and camels with two backs.  You are from the steel and the mines and the park bench overlooking the stream.  He is from a statue of Ghengis Khan and mare’s milk.  You are from a woman with red-lipstick waiting for the bus to Blackpool.  He is from the delights of delusion and days of delays.  You are a herder’s daughter, he is your own memory and trapped like a marmot.

The outside darkness encourages Batmunk’s silence so it is you who starts the new questions.  “What do you want to do after you finish school?” you ask the question dreaded by children everywhere but he doesn’t seem to mind.  “I’m going to have over one hundred horses” he says “and then I’ll buy a motorbike.  After that I will marry a beautiful girl who can sing.  She will have two children, the boy will help me with the herd and the girl will finish school and become a doctor, or a teacher like you.  I want her to be a teacher like you”.

The only sound you can hear now is the dog barking itself to sleep, the sound of Batmunk sleeping and the fire crackling at the end of another day.  In this one, you are aware of the moment and the outside of the frame, the gaze beyond the photographer’s eye-line.  In this one, for once, your own perception of reality matches the second of the snap and click.  You remember the feeling of those new boots, the smell of the fire and the milk in your belly.   You can see Batmunk clearly sleeping in the tiny bed with you with no one around for a hundred miles and you can hear his breath.  You can hear the groans of the yaks on the mountains getting quieter as the night sky takes control of the steppe and you remember the mystery of not being lonely.  The sound of a yak cabaret under the azure night and a moment of a picture you’ll never have again.