Monday was an amazing day for all of us.

 

We left our hotel about 8:00 in the morning to repeat our bumpy trip.  Whereas the day before the streets had been full of people swathed in white scarves on their way to church, today was a market day, and commercial activity was in evidence everywhere (much of it spilling into the streets, of course.)  The gravel road section of our trip was especially full of people casually walking the miles from town to town, many or most of the women balancing amazing burdens on the tops of their heads.  (Especially fun to see are the baskets with a trussed chicken sitting on top, looking around from his high perch on some lady’s head.)  We never did figure out how they do this, particularly the ones who would have items stacked two high.  Nor could we understand how the "walking haystacks" got their six-to-eight foot loads up there.  The weight of a haystack may be manageable on one’s head, but how did they pick it up in the first place?

 

There had been no farming on Sunday, as that had been a day of rest (quite a relative term in Ethiopia) but today we saw many men plowing their fields, some with women following close behind spreading seed.  When the rainy season is right around the corner, there is no time to waste.  The plows are simple affairs of a long pole yoked to the two largest cows available; a second pole with a small iron plowshare is attached.  As the oxen pull it everything forward, the farmer presses this second pole into the rocky soil with one hand, while using the other hand to loudly pop a rope whip over the cows’ heads.

 

Our plan this morning would be to meet with the village elders, and get their opinions regarding the needs of Robit.  We would gather in one of the classrooms at the school since there would be no classes that day, not for the Memorial Day holiday America was celebrating, but for the 21st anniversary of the Ethiopian peoples’ overthrow of the puppet dictatorship the Soviets had set up after Hailie Salassie died in the mid-’70s.

 

As the elders began filing in, we noticed one thing right away: owning a gun is a sign of prestige.  While we had seen the occasional rifle carried along the road, by the time the 32 elders had seated themselves, there were no fewer than ten AK-47 assault rifles in the room with us.  Many appeared old, but all seemed well cared-for, and we had little doubt they were loaded.  The chief elder was a man named Fante, who struck a very impressive figure, dressed traditionally with a large white cloth draped over his shoulders and a matching head wrap, his AK-47 sitting casually between his knees.  (I spent the first half of the meeting wondering why he seemed so familiar, until I realized he looks remarkably like a young Danny Glover.)  He is also a great leader; last year he set an example for the others by donating 600 birr (about $36, a huge sum there) to the fund to build the well, even though he himself lives too far out of town to use it.

 

The elders had brought a young woman with them as a translator (a teacher from the school, I think) and were eager to talk with us.  In general, Fante spoke for their group, and Mike for ours.  When we asked what the top three concerns were in the village, there was quite an animated discussion as the elders debated among themselves, trying to limit it to three.

 

There seemed to be general agreement that the biggest need is for a bridge over the river that runs through the village.  When we had seen the river the day before, it was just a stinking fetid stream about five feet wide, and only a few inches deep.  However, during the rainy season it swells to nearly a hundred feet across.  We had seen the remains of a bridge that had been built, washed away, and rebuilt year after year until the people of the village had finally given up.  Right now, the people could wade across, or step carefully across using a couple of logs that had been placed as a foot bridge, but soon the village would be completely divided.  Sometimes, we learned, this separated families for months at a time.  And of course, diseases, many that might be quickly and simply treated on this side of the river, could on the wrong side easily prove fatal with no way to get to the care and medicines only a few hundred yards away.

 

The next concern was for more and better latrines.  Typically a single outdoor pit latrine serves several families.  This works fairly well in dry weather (although it cannot be pleasant.)  But again, the rainy season makes problems, as the river will often overflow its banks and even the berms the government out along the banks at some point, flooding the town and filling the pits to overflowing.  Obviously, it is not a sanitary condition.

 

Finally, there is of course malaria.  All of us have been taking anti-malarial drugs since we got here, but fortunately the mosquitoes have been few in number (in fact, I have not been bitten once during the entire trip, partly because I’m rooming with Lane the Human Bug Light, who attracts any insects in the area.)  However, after the rainy season, they swarm by the billions, coming into the town from the marshy area only a few miles away.  Mike and Meredith had heard of this marsh on previous trips, but had never seen it, so after the meeting broke up, we arranged to be driven out, hoping optimistically that we would see some simple way to drain a swamp. 

 

We were surprised to find that Robit is much closer to Lake Tana than any of us realized.  Already the largest lake in Ethiopia at about 90 km across, during the rainy season Tana swells out of its shallow banks to flood what was now serving as pasture land for hundreds of cattle.  It was this pasture land that would remain wet and swampy in the months after the rainy season, a perfect breeding ground for malarial mosquitoes as the water slowly recedes.  It was a stark but picturesque scene, with many children alternately driving their cows (how they distinguished their own from the others, we had no idea) or swimming naked among the water birds.

 

As we were walking back to the trucks, I was able to get a close-up view of a team of oxen pulling a plow in an adjoining field.  The farmer was amused that I would be interested in such a mundane activity, but offered to let me try my hand at it.  I was winded after plowing a single crooked furrow, but he good-naturedly (if insincerely) complimented me on my work as I put gave the team back in his experienced hands.

 

We had planned to look around the village a bit more after we returned, but instead it turned out that we had an unexpected treat in store.  Fante owns a "bar" in the village, and invited us to join him for some recreation.  We sipped sodas as a local man sawed away at a "masinko" (a traditional bowed instrument that could be described as a cross between a banjo and a one-string violin) and a woman sang what were (evidently) hilarious songs.  The men (many of them the elders from the meeting, along with Mengiste, the doctor we had met the day before) would call out verses a line at a time, and she would sing them back, as both she and the player danced about in the small room, occasionally joined by one of the spectators.  Once the two had worked up a sweat, people would sometimes come forward and plaster a small bill to their foreheads.  We only caught a word now and then, but we did recognize "ferenji" (foreigner) several times in the ad lib song.  We later found out that she had been singing "I hope the ferenji come back often, so I can make more money with my songs."

 

We enjoyed Fante’s hospitality for about an hour before we had to leave because of gathering clouds.  Fante hitched a ride in the back of the first SUV to the village where the gravel road ends.  Bruhanu, our driver, said that the walk of some 18 kilometers –twelve miles– would have otherwise have taken him about two hours, but that a city person might have needed as much as three.  I’d hate to think how long it would have taken any of us.)  Meredith later said she had tried not to think about the AK-47 sitting behind her every time the truck hit a bump.

 

After lunch at the hotel, Lane and I got a ride back to the marketplace outside Fasilidas’ palace; he was suffering from soccer withdrawal, and desperately wanted to take a ball with him when we made our final visit on Tuesday.  We rode back in one of the tiny "Bajaj" tricycle taxis, which slowed to a crawl trying to get up the mountain to the hotel, but made it all the way.  Dinner that night was with our "Glimmer" hosts at a small local restaurant, where we all ate local food, drank Dashen beer brewed right there in Gondar, listened to masinko music, and enjoyed watching two women and a man doing the popular "G’zsta" dance, in which the participants snap their shoulders back and forth as fast as possible.  At the height of the dance, the young man’s shoulders were no more than a barely visible blur.  (It was this dance that some of us had tried after a few Dashens on one of our first nights in Addis Abeba, only to wake up the next day with sore muscles.)

 

– – – – – – – – –

 

It would have been hard for Tuesday not to have been an anticlimax after such a memorable day, but we enjoyed our last trip anyway.  Since we knew we would be leaving Gondar on Wednesday, several of us we took the opportunity to "lighten our luggage" by leaving those horrid CLIF bars for the hotel staff, and giving Segay, our "Glimmer of Hope" host, a large bag of shirts to distribute as he saw fit.  As we were driving on the gravel road, I saw an old woman with no shoes, and we stopped so I could give her my flip-flops.  She seemed very grateful, especially since the bag of grain she was carrying must have weighed a good fourty pounds.  That road is hard enough to ride on; I can’t imagine walking miles of it with bare feet.

 

I also gave Bruhanu the last box of my Slim Jims, which I had been sharing with him for the past few days, and which he seemed to enjoy greatly (once he figured out how to open the plastic wrappers, and got over his suspicion that the long thin snacks were actually "snake meat.")

 

Every visit to Robit taught us something new, and this trip was no different.  Visiting the medical extension office, we learned that traditional medicine, while discouraged,  is still sometimes practiced in the village.  For example, diarrhea in small children is sometimes treated by pulling one or two of their baby teeth, which of course can lead to later complications as their adult teeth come in.  And while a single dose of an inexpensive antibiotic would be more effective, the traditional "cure" for an eye infection is to make cuts near the eye and allow blood to flow in; many of the children in the village bore the telltale scars of this questionable treatment.

 

Before we left, Lane got his wish.  Behind the school is a nicely laid-out soccer field, and as soon as he took out the new ball he had bought the night before, boys from the age of eight on up miraculously appeared.  By the time the game was over, there must have been thirty players on each side.  Those of us too old and slow to participate stood on the berm of the river to get a good view, surrounded as always by the small children, who love to hold our hands, examine our wristwatches, see their photos on the digital cameras (they’ve only rarely seen even mirrors, much less photos of themselves) or to furtively reach out and stroke our mysterious white skin.  (One little boy was also fascinated by my very un-Ethiopian pot belly, and would bravely reach out for a poke whenever he thought I wasn’t looking.)

 

Finally the game ended, and Lane awarded the game ball to some of the older players (the schools each have a ball, but the graduates had not had one until now.)   We sadly made our ways back to the SUVs for the last trip back to Gondar, taking last pictures, shaking hands with the adults, and hugging the children.  As always, we were hailed with shouts of "You! You! You!" all the way out of the village. 

 

We may never see Robit again, but it will remain in our memories forever.

 

Monday was an amazing day for all of us.

 

We left our hotel about 8:00 in the morning to repeat our bumpy trip.  Whereas the day before the streets had been full of people swathed in white scarves on their way to church, today was a market day, and commercial activity was in evidence everywhere (much of it spilling into the streets, of course.)  The gravel road section of our trip was especially full of people casually walking the miles from town to town, many or most of the women balancing amazing burdens on the tops of their heads.  (Especially fun to see are the baskets with a trussed chicken sitting on top, looking around from his high perch on some lady’s head.)  We never did figure out how they do this, particularly the ones who would have items stacked two high.  Nor could we understand how the "walking haystacks" got their six-to-eight foot loads up there.  The weight of a haystack may be manageable on one’s head, but how did they pick it up in the first place?

 

There had been no farming on Sunday, as that had been a day of rest (quite a relative term in Ethiopia) but today we saw many men plowing their fields, some with women following close behind spreading seed.  When the rainy season is right around the corner, there is no time to waste.  The plows are simple affairs of a long pole yoked to the two largest cows available; a second pole with a small iron plowshare is attached.  As the oxen pull it everything forward, the farmer presses this second pole into the rocky soil with one hand, while using the other hand to loudly pop a rope whip over the cows’ heads.

 

Our plan this morning would be to meet with the village elders, and get their opinions regarding the needs of Robit.  We would gather in one of the classrooms at the school since there would be no classes that day, not for the Memorial Day holiday America was celebrating, but for the 21st anniversary of the Ethiopian peoples’ overthrow of the puppet dictatorship the Soviets had set up after Hailie Salassie died in the mid-’70s.

 

As the elders began filing in, we noticed one thing right away: owning a gun is a sign of prestige.  While we had seen the occasional rifle carried along the road, by the time the 32 elders had seated themselves, there were no fewer than ten AK-47 assault rifles in the room with us.  Many appeared old, but all seemed well cared-for, and we had little doubt they were loaded.  The chief elder was a man named Fante, who struck a very impressive figure, dressed traditionally with a large white cloth draped over his shoulders and a matching head wrap, his AK-47 sitting casually between his knees.  (I spent the first half of the meeting wondering why he seemed so familiar, until I realized he looks remarkably like a young Danny Glover.)  He is also a great leader; last year he set an example for the others by donating 600 birr (about $36, a huge sum there) to the fund to build the well, even though he himself lives too far out of town to use it.

 

The elders had brought a young woman with them as a translator (a teacher from the school, I think) and were eager to talk with us.  In general, Fante spoke for their group, and Mike for ours.  When we asked what the top three concerns were in the village, there was quite an animated discussion as the elders debated among themselves, trying to limit it to three.

 

There seemed to be general agreement that the biggest need is for a bridge over the river that runs through the village.  When we had seen the river the day before, it was just a stinking fetid stream about five feet wide, and only a few inches deep.  However, during the rainy season it swells to nearly a hundred feet across.  We had seen the remains of a bridge that had been built, washed away, and rebuilt year after year until the people of the village had finally given up.  Right now, the people could wade across, or step carefully across using a couple of logs that had been placed as a foot bridge, but soon the village would be completely divided.  Sometimes, we learned, this separated families for months at a time.  And of course, diseases, many that might be quickly and simply treated on this side of the river, could on the wrong side easily prove fatal with no way to get to the care and medicines only a few hundred yards away.

 

The next concern was for more and better latrines.  Typically a single outdoor pit latrine serves several families.  This works fairly well in dry weather (although it cannot be pleasant.)  But again, the rainy season makes problems, as the river will often overflow its banks and even the berms the government out along the banks at some point, flooding the town and filling the pits to overflowing.  Obviously, it is not a sanitary condition.

 

Finally, there is of course malaria.  All of us have been taking anti-malarial drugs since we got here, but fortunately the mosquitoes have been few in number (in fact, I have not been bitten once during the entire trip, partly because I’m rooming with Lane the Human Bug Light, who attracts any insects in the area.)  However, after the rainy season, they swarm by the billions, coming into the town from the marshy area only a few miles away.  Mike and Meredith had heard of this marsh on previous trips, but had never seen it, so after the meeting broke up, we arranged to be driven out, hoping optimistically that we would see some simple way to drain a swamp. 

 

We were surprised to find that Robit is much closer to Lake Tana than any of us realized.  Already the largest lake in Ethiopia at about 90 km across, during the rainy season Tana swells out of its shallow banks to flood what was now serving as pasture land for hundreds of cattle.  It was this pasture land that would remain wet and swampy in the months after the rainy season, a perfect breeding ground for malarial mosquitoes as the water slowly recedes.  It was a stark but picturesque scene, with many children alternately driving their cows (how they distinguished their own from the others, we had no idea) or swimming naked among the water birds.

 

As we were walking back to the trucks, I was able to get a close-up view of a team of oxen pulling a plow in an adjoining field.  The farmer was amused that I would be interested in such a mundane activity, but offered to let me try my hand at it.  I was winded after plowing a single crooked furrow, but he good-naturedly (if insincerely) complimented me on my work as I put gave the team back in his experienced hands.

 

We had planned to look around the village a bit more after we returned, but instead it turned out that we had an unexpected treat in store.  Fante owns a "bar" in the village, and invited us to join him for some recreation.  We sipped sodas as a local man sawed away at a "masinko" (a traditional bowed instrument that could be described as a cross between a banjo and a one-string violin) and a woman sang what were (evidently) hilarious songs.  The men (many of them the elders from the meeting, along with Mengiste, the doctor we had met the day before) would call out verses a line at a time, and she would sing them back, as both she and the player danced about in the small room, occasionally joined by one of the spectators.  Once the two had worked up a sweat, people would sometimes come forward and plaster a small bill to their foreheads.  We only caught a word now and then, but we did recognize "ferenji" (foreigner) several times in the ad lib song.  We later found out that she had been singing "I hope the ferenji come back often, so I can make more money with my songs."

 

We enjoyed Fante’s hospitality for about an hour before we had to leave because of gathering clouds.  Fante hitched a ride in the back of the first SUV to the village where the gravel road ends.  Bruhanu, our driver, said that the walk of some 18 kilometers –twelve miles– would have otherwise have taken him about two hours, but that a city person might have needed as much as three.  I’d hate to think how long it would have taken any of us.)  Meredith later said she had tried not to think about the AK-47 sitting behind her every time the truck hit a bump.

 

After lunch at the hotel, Lane and I got a ride back to the marketplace outside Fasilidas’ palace; he was suffering from soccer withdrawal, and desperately wanted to take a ball with him when we made our final visit on Tuesday.  We rode back in one of the tiny "Bajaj" tricycle taxis, which slowed to a crawl trying to get up the mountain to the hotel, but made it all the way.  Dinner that night was with our "Glimmer" hosts at a small local restaurant, where we all ate local food, drank Dashen beer brewed right there in Gondar, listened to masinko music, and enjoyed watching two women and a man doing the popular "G’zsta" dance, in which the participants snap their shoulders back and forth as fast as possible.  At the height of the dance, the young man’s shoulders were no more than a barely visible blur.  (It was this dance that some of us had tried after a few Dashens on one of our first nights in Addis Abeba, only to wake up the next day with sore muscles.)

 

– – – – – – – – –

 

It would have been hard for Tuesday not to have been an anticlimax after such a memorable day, but we enjoyed our last trip anyway.  Since we knew we would be leaving Gondar on Wednesday, several of us we took the opportunity to "lighten our luggage" by leaving those horrid CLIF bars for the hotel staff, and giving Segay, our "Glimmer of Hope" host, a large bag of shirts to distribute as he saw fit.  As we were driving on the gravel road, I saw an old woman with no shoes, and we stopped so I could give her my flip-flops.  She seemed very grateful, especially since the bag of grain she was carrying must have weighed a good fourty pounds.  That road is hard enough to ride on; I can’t imagine walking miles of it with bare feet.

 

I also gave Bruhanu the last box of my Slim Jims, which I had been sharing with him for the past few days, and which he seemed to enjoy greatly (once he figured out how to open the plastic wrappers, and got over his suspicion that the long thin snacks were actually "snake meat.")

 

Every visit to Robit taught us something new, and this trip was no different.  Visiting the medical extension office, we learned that traditional medicine, while discouraged,  is still sometimes practiced in the village.  For example, diarrhea in small children is sometimes treated by pulling one or two of their baby teeth, which of course can lead to later complications as their adult teeth come in.  And while a single dose of an inexpensive antibiotic would be more effective, the traditional "cure" for an eye infection is to make cuts near the eye and allow blood to flow in; many of the children in the village bore the telltale scars of this questionable treatment.

 

Before we left, Lane got his wish.  Behind the school is a nicely laid-out soccer field, and as soon as he took out the new ball he had bought the night before, boys from the age of eight on up miraculously appeared.  By the time the game was over, there must have been thirty players on each side.  Those of us too old and slow to participate stood on the berm of the river to get a good view, surrounded as always by the small children, who love to hold our hands, examine our wristwatches, see their photos on the digital cameras (they’ve only rarely seen even mirrors, much less photos of themselves) or to furtively reach out and stroke our mysterious white skin.  (One little boy was also fascinated by my very un-Ethiopian pot belly, and would bravely reach out for a poke whenever he thought I wasn’t looking.)

 

Finally the game ended, and Lane awarded the game ball to some of the older players (the schools each have a ball, but the graduates had not had one until now.)   We sadly made our ways back to the SUVs for the last trip back to Gondar, taking last pictures, shaking hands with the adults, and hugging the children.  As always, we were hailed with shouts of "You! You! You!" all the way out of the village. 

 

We may never see Robit again, but it will remain in our memories forever.