by Tariku Teshale (Dr.)
If you want to see what pitch dark means, come to Aregash Lodge (Tranquility Lodge) in Yirgalem, Southern Ethiopia, and wake up at four o clock in the morning! This same pitch dark night will also define what a starry night should look like. On the Ethiopian sky, on a clear night, you can almost touch or …even pluck the stars like daffodils!
Well, at least you feel so when you see them winking and flirting with you – and only you! (If you cannot see anyone, then you must be alone, said Schrödinger’s cat with a sarcastic grin, playing with its phantom whiskers!)
This blanket of darkness helps compose a kind of silence, difficult to explain because it is full of sound, both astral/ancient and contemporary/nascent.
The sound of Zegba and Tid trees swaying like graciously chanting Orthodox priests, their thin needle leaves brushing the wind; the sound of birds, small and large, singing turn by turn in divine symphony; the sound of branches breaking in the woods as midaquas scratch their backs on unreliable twigs; the occasional thuds when ripe avocados rain down on the grass when the Gureza apes jump from tree to tree …
The sum of all this, where one sound cancels the other, creates a silence, a harmony, a tranquility that immediately embraces you and makes you inseparable from the sky, the wind, the birds, the midaquas and the trees.
Unfortunately, good things are usually ephemeral and at four o’clock, a cacophonic giggle of a hyena followed by repeated, noisy howls breaks this envelope of silence! (At the risk of being labelled a racist, I say the hyena race and the crocodiles should be ostracized from the animal kingdom.
They have mean faces, well, a croc has no face at all; it is just jaws. Besides their noise, nobody appreciates being eyed by them as a definite supper; since that is the only thing they think about all the time, their raison d’être, these despicable beasts! )
Incidentally, maybe that is the meaning of life, our raison d’être too – that we are eating-machines, hyena style, gluttonous, without ever moving the focus from our belly button!
At least this seems to be the case if you happen to pass by one of the kitfo houses in Addis, with hundreds of consumers under the huge tents. Seen in eagle eye´s view from far above, they sure look like they were at war, meticulously attacking an already dead animal- like hyenas!
(This reminds me of the shameless anecdote from the Korean war- Ethiopian voluntary soldiers eating raw meat, sitting on an enemy soldier they have just killed! Oh God, are we fighting against cannibals? )
Watching the kitfo house clients’ enthusiasm, the frenzied intensity of their activity, one can´t help wonder what it is all about. The art of dexterously slicing raw goat meat into small morsels/cubes, the way they study this cube holding it between two fingers lovingly and playfully, before they dip it into the spicy pepper-butter-tedj mix and then carefully delivering it to the mouth; the way their faces glow as saliva flushes the mouth at the crushing sound of the tender meat cube…the jovial chit-chat mixed with the sound of the razor sharp knives resting on the white ceramic plate before the next slice, the next piquant bite… the watery mouth…
(If you want to experience the original atmosphere, you should read, Parlesak´s detailed narration in his book, Habešská Odyssea, on the grand banquet the king hosts, the Gibir Mablat – with an etymologically connotation of paying back the collected tax/Gibir?)
From outside, this campaign by a battalion of effective carnivorous scavengers makes you wish you were a vegetarian! But if you are inside, trust me, you’ll enjoy every minute of this social feast!
