Not really the right job for a chap with a collection of trophy penises
Pitch it in your imagination, somewhere between Louis XIV on his couch at Versailles and a down-and-out on his cardboard litter under the railway arches at Charing Cross. Now come with me to a wide shallow salt lake 80 feet below sea level at the southern end of the Danakil desert, a vast depression in the north of Ethiopia.
I was there this week in a village by the lake’s salt-caked shore. The village, which bears the lake’s name, Afrera, is the only settlement of any size for hundreds of miles. Though the backdrop is of arid and desolate magnificence — jagged black basalt mountains, a turquoise lake framed in white salt, and on the skyline a range of volcanoes, one still smoking — Afrera itself is a shantytown. Huts are being thrown up all over the place, goats and camels wander freely, and the new hotel is all corrugated iron roofs and reed mat walls, with a bar, a blaring television, and a carambola table where young Ethiopians play a game which resembles bowls on what appears to be a pool table.
Afrera is in the grip of the saline equivalent of a gold rush. You could call it a salt rush. Speculators are crowding in to stake their claims in a burgeoning new industry. The marriage of a super-saturated salt lake, dry desert air, intense sunlight, intense heat (by day it is 40°C in midwinter; in summer it is 55°C) makes evaporation easy: all you need is mud-walled drying pans, rakes, arrows and cheap labour. From these shores the salt leaves on lorries along the new road towards Addis Ababa. From the northern shores it leaves on camel trains. We hope to join one after climbing the volcano.
So Afrera, though shabby, is prospering. The new wealth, however, is not to the universal advantage of the original inhabitants. These are the Afar people, a tribe who inhabit the whole Danakil depression and desert, and who for centuries, with their camels, goats and cattle, and their tiny round huts of wood and hide, have lived a life at the very edge of human possibility, scratching what living they may from the clumps of thorn and occasional dribbles of fresh water which they alone know how to find. They are not adapting well to industry and commerce. ‘Most of the people working on the salt here at Afrera,’ an Ethiopian told me, ‘are from the highlands. The Afars own this lake but they do not want to work on it. They take rent, and let the outsiders collect the salt.’ They are beautiful people, the Afars: quite small, spare, very black, with fine aquiline features and elegant long eyelashes. Their curls are Byronic rather than tight. In the past they have enjoyed a fearsome reputation. Wilfred Thesiger, who travelled here about 70 years ago, reports that the Afars were wont to amputate the penis and scrotum of men they killed in combat, keeping them as shrivelled mementoes — some say in necklaces around their wives’ or their own necks. Even today, other Ethiopians regard the Afars as a difficult people, hard to read but quick to fight. Not for them the raking of salt in the hot sun. It isn’t the kind of activity a chap with a collection of trophy penises would stoop to. But in title and theory at least, the Afars are the boss tribe down here in the Danakils. Sufficiently so, anyway, for our excellent Ethiopian guide, Solomon, who is organising our expedition, to propose that we pay a visit to their local chief to offer our respects and tell him our plans.
‘It isn’t really necessary from the bureaucratic point of view,’ Solomon said, ‘because I have obtained permission — and two armed guards — from the police. But it would be polite to visit the chief. He does not have so much power as before because he is not appointed by the government or elected. The tribal Afars do not have the idea of democracy so much. The older generation respect their chief but some of the younger ones, they don’t.’ ‘Then what does he do?’ we asked. ‘What are his powers?’ ‘He is like a judge or a king,’ said Solomon. ‘If there is a dispute between people they consult the chief and he tells them the rules of the tribe.’ ‘When he sees us,’ Solomon added, ‘we should have some questions to ask him. It is polite to ask his opinions.’ We set out at dusk, the eight of us, in two Toyota trucks. Solomon asked a bystander the way to the chief’s house, and sounded surprised at the answer. ‘He has moved into the village,’ he told us. ‘Last time I saw him he lived in a rock house with camel meat hanging from the ceiling. It was interesting. I am sorry you will not see it.’ In fact we need not have driven, for soon, on the edge of the village, we were at his compound. There was a tractor parked outside. The house was anything but grand; it looked prefabricated. As we swung in, our headlights picked out a curious scene. In front of the house, a fat old man in a skirt and dirty T-shirt, with tousled hair, was lying on a stained mattress. In front of the mattress, on the manure-strewn sand, a straw mat had been laid. Some of the chief’s children and grandchildren sat on the mattress with him. A group of inquisitive locals had gathered. We sat cross-legged in front of him.
‘Ask him how old he is,’ suggested Solomon. We did. Solomon translated into Amharic, the chief’s interpreter translated into Afar, and finally the answer came back. Seventy. ‘But he may not know,’ said Solomon. Goats bleated, donkeys brayed, the sun set, and to us the chief and his little boy with a cotton-top haircut became silhouettes against a red-burning dusk. The chief began to cough, a gurgling bronchial cough, then spat, his children moving with practised speed to dodge the flying spittle. We inquired about his health. ‘We Afars do not believe in going to and from doctors,’ he said. ‘We drink camel’s milk and goat’s milk for health and if it is Allah’s will that we die, we accept.’ We asked about family. He has 14 children and had had seven wives ‘but only four at any one time: our laws do not permit more’. We asked if his son would succeed him. There was embarrassment among the audience. He replied that times were changing but he intended that his oldest son should become chief.
After we left, Solomon took one of us aside. ‘The chief inquired,’ he said, ‘but indirectly, whether you had any medicine for itching skin.’ We contemplated recommending camel’s milk and Allah’s blessing, but sent him some moisturising cream.
Matthew Parris is a political columnist of the Times.
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