the hamar - South Omo Research Center

Arbeiten aus dem Institut für Völkerkunde
der Universität zu Göttingen – Band 12
Jean Lydall
Ivo Strecker
THE HAMAR
OF SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA
I
WORK
JOURNAL
Klaus Renner Verlag – Hohenschäftlarn
Arbeiten aus dem Insitut für Völkerkunde
der Universität zu Göttingen
Band 12
Copyright 1979 by Jean Lydall and Ivo Strecker
ISBN 3-87673-063-5
Distributed by KLAUS RENNER VERLAG
D – 8021 Hohenschäftlarn
Am Sonnenhang 8
German Federal Republic
2
Contents
Orthographic note
Preface
Introduction
4
5
6
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
18
50
56
63
88
133
162
Postscript
General Index
Name Index
(not available in pdf-version)
(not available in pdf-version)
3
Orthographic Note
The transliteration of Hamar names and terms in this book is not standardized.
We have retained the spellings of Hamar words as we originally entered them in the
journal. We tried to write the words as simply as possible and to make them readily
recognizable. By and large our transcriptions correspond with each other. Wherever
they differ they tend to do so in a regular manner. Because we each have a different
first language we hear and spell some sounds differently. This is most apparent in the
case of vowel sounds following w. Whereas Ivo writes Wuancho, Wungabaino,
Worran, Jean writes Wancho, Wangabaino and Waran respectively. We also differ over
the spelling of a certain vowel sound where Ivo writes u and Jean writes o;
Gardu/Gardo, Zubu/Zobo. Furthermore, we regularly write certain consonant sounds
differently; Ivo writes ss, s, dj and sch where Jean writes s, z, j and sh respectively. When
Ivo uses double consonants he does so to indicate a preceding open vowel; Jean, on
the other hand, came to use them to indicate gemination. Hence Ivo writes Omalle
where Jean write Omale. Bearing these few points in mind the reader should have no
difficulty in recognizing the same name and terms even where they have been written
differently.
4
Preface
The fieldwork upon which this book is based was made possible by grants from
the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. We welcome
this opportunity to express our gratitude to these foundations. We are also grateful to
the Institute of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa where the staff have always given us
assistance and allowed us to use their facilities.
Many people have given us support in different ways, but to no-one are we more
indebted than Professor Erhard Schlesier. He not only gave us help and support as we
were preparing and conducting our fieldwork, but has continued to help us ever since
our return, while we have been writing up and preparing the results for publication. We
thank him warmly for all his help. Likewise we wish to thank Professor Hans Paul
Bahrdt without whose support and trust in the worth of our endeavour we would
never have reached Hamar.
It is Professor Asen Balikci whom we must thank for first suggesting that we
might study the Hamar, and we thank him further for the inspiration and
encouragement that he has subsequently afforded us. Our thanks go also to Professor
Raymond Firth who gave us support at a critical point in time, and who furnished us
with some useful comments on our early theories about Hamar.
Of the resident and visiting anthropologists whom we met from time to time in
Addis Ababa we would especially like to mention Alan Hoben and Asmarom Legesse.
Roth of them, each in his own way, gave us intellectual encouragement to continue and
complete our fieldwork.
We are indebted to all those friends and colleagues who read and commented on
the first draft of the work journal, but in particular to Dan Sperber whose enthusiasm
finally made us decide to publish it.
Paul Henley mastered the difficult task of sub-editing the text, Hilary Richmond
and Howard Reid read the proofs and Christine Parker did the typing.
We close our acknowledgments by thanking the Institut für Völkerkunde,
Göttingen, for allowing us to publish the results of our fieldwork in its series, and by
expressing our gratitude to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for helping to cover
the cost of printing.
5
Introduction (Ivo)
When, in the autumn of 1962, the evenings became cold and damp, I used to
climb up the stairs of an old red brick building near the port of Hamburg. On the fifth
floor I found warmth and comfort in the room of a friend. She would make tea, offer
me Roth-Händle cigarettes and teasingly involve me in one of her quick-minded
conversations. They all revolved around the fact that I had recently decided to study
anthropology while she herself had remained loyal to philosophy which, in her view,
was the only right thing to do. In my memory our conversations have now merged into
a single one sounding something like this:
She:
Have you bought yourself some strong boots already?
Ivo:
What for?
She:
Won’t you have to walk a lot? I thought that is mainly what anthropologists do.
Ivo:
Hm, - yes I look forward to walking. Imagine moving on paths where only the
feet of humans and animals have smoothened the ground.
She:
Then you’d better leave quickly lest bulldozers destroy your romantic terrain
before you have ever reached it.
Ivo:
Well, pour me another cup of tea before I hurry off.
She:
O.K., - but tell me, do you really think they still exist?
Ivo:
Who?
She:
You know whom I mean, the Primitives.
Ivo:
Don’t be silly, they won’t be primitive.
She:
Suppose you manage to find them now, won’t they all be gone tomorrow. And
what will you do then?
Ivo:
I don’t care, I live now and it is now that I want to reach them. The farther
away they are the better.
She:
Exactly, that is your madness! As if by going far afield you could reach
anything. And then count people, ask them questions, take an average and
come up with a conclusion about ‘man’. What a waste it is, your ‘anthropology’.
Ivo:
You want me to stay at home and embark, like you, on an internal rather than
an external journey?
She:
Right.
6
Ivo:
I feel incapable of doing that. When I stay put, my mind is like a deep pool of
water, nothing stirs and I can’t see the ground, but when I travel, I become
alive, my mind buzzes and I see what is inside me.
She:
You don’t imagine yourself to be a muddy pond then, full of algae? You hope
your life will be like a stream, I suppose, running joyfully like the river Moldau
over pretty stones which you can see clearly because the water is crystal clear.
Be careful, though, that there are not too many bubbles and that your stream
does not become shallow.
(Pause)
As far as I can see, with this anthropology your stream may even evaporate.
Don’t you see how absurd it is, and besides that, once you have started to
study ‘man’ comparatively, you have logically to include also the one who has
studied him and then the one who has studied the one who has studied him
and so on ad infinitum. It’s bound to end nowhere.
Ivo:
This does not matter. On the contrary, it is movement itself that interests me
most and I see nothing absurd in studying the one who studies others. What is
studying anyway if not a form of communication? As such it certainly goes on
indefinitely. The observer changes, the observed changes, everything influences
everything, all is in flux...
This is how we must have talked and how I developed the approach that eventually
found its way into the doctoral thesis which I wrote later under the supervision of
Professor Erhard Schlesier at the University of Göttingen (see ‘Methodische Probleme
der ethno-soziologischen Beobachtung und Beschreibung’, Göttingen 1969).
I mention the thesis because the present work journal is a direct outcome of it.
In the thesis I had tried to analyse (among other things) the processes involved in
anthropological fieldwork. My starting point was a quotation by J. Maquet who
had written in 1964:
“Many more factual investigations of the relationship between anthropologists
and their studies have to be carried out before we have at our disposal the analytical
tools and categories permitting us to indicate more adequately the variables of the
observer’s situation.”
As I ploughed through the literature I found a genre of writing which I came to
call the ‘subjective account of fieldwork’ and which turned out to provide me with the
best empirical sources when I attempted to construct a sociological model of fieldwork
(see Part I of my thesis). Laura Bohannan’s ‘Return to Laughter’, Casagrande’s ‘In the
7
Company of Man’, Huxley’s ‘Affable Savages’, Read’s ‘High Valley’ and Hortense
Powdermaker’s ‘Stranger and Friend’ were among the ‘subjective accounts’ on which I
relied most heavily. These works go far beyond the few remarks on the ‘conditions of
research’ that one usually finds at the beginning of anthropological monographs and in
a totally new way they help one to understand the complex social processes and mental
experiences involved in fieldwork.
Having discovered the usefulness of the ‘subjective account’ the implications
were obvious: I would have to write something similar myself.
Therefore, when in 1970, Jean Lydall and I set out to do fieldwork together
among the Hamar of southern Ethiopia my mind was much occupied with the
problems involved in writing about one’s own fieldwork. Tentatively I planned to write
an account which would try to fulfill the following four tasks:
1.
To establish the external reality in which Jean and I reflected and worked. This
could be done in a form of writing which one may call ‘naive ethnography’: the nontheoretical description of events we witnessed and personal evaluation or the world
around us. Although unscientific by nature, ‘naive ethnography’ furnishes the basic
orientation without which neither we nor the eventual reader could think about the
society we were to study.
2.
The second task was a special sub-division of the first. It was that of noting
down and reflecting upon the events occurring during our fieldwork which could
throw light on the sociology of our situation as observers. Its purpose was to establish
our ‘micro-history’ within the group and involved making notes about the functional
and symbolic interaction between ‘us’, the observers, and ‘them’, the observed. It was
to be a document of the conditions of the co-operation between us and the Hamar. An
important aspect of this point is the fact that these conditions vary from society to
society and that, therefore, the course that co-operation takes in any particular
fieldwork situation reveals crucial features of the society the anthropologist is trying to
study.
3.
Thirdly, it was important to show the development of our research. When
and how does a fieldworker come to generate certain hypotheses about the culture
and social organization of the society he is studying? How does he first formulate
them?
What methods does he employ to substantiate and test them? If an ethnographer
answers these questions in the daily recordings of a work journal, an intellectual history
of his research can be constructed which permits one to assess his idiosyncracies,
8
achievements and shortcomings. Such an assessment is not only important for the
discipline at large, but also for the ethnographer himself.
4.
Whereas the third task was to reflect upon the process of analysis,
the fourth task was to reflect on deeper levels of meaning, on personal values and
motivation. This would probably have to be done in a way analogous to the
‘automatic writing’ employed by the Surrealists. If radically applied, ‘automatic
writing’ provides a way of arriving at one’s hidden affective problems and
preoccupations. Moreover, since there is no clear dividing line between the affective
states and cognition, ‘automatic writing’ can furnish insight into otherwise obscure
factors that influence one’s perception.
These then were the four main tasks I had set myself. I hoped to tackle them by
means of a diary and by noting my fieldwork reflections separately. Yet, deep inside of
myself I was also sceptical, even scared. Would I be able to learn the language and find
out anything at all about Hamar social organization? Why should I burden myself
additionally with as remote a problem as ‘sociology of fieldwork’? I decided to try and
see how far I could get.
Well, I did not get far. As soon as we had begun our research, I was so
overwhelmed by the practical problems of living and working in a difficult
environment that I was only concerned to get, together with Jean, some of the most
rudimentary research done. I stopped writing my notes about fieldwork and my high
hopes of writing a meaningful ‘subjective account’ collapsed. However, as time went
by and Jean and I had succeeded in doing some of the most basic research, we both
began to feel more confident and happy writing about our fieldwork. Gradually our
diary grew richer. Also, at some point we began to do fieldwork in turns. One of us
would stay in Hamar while the other would look after our children in Addis Ababa. As
we tried to keep each other informed about what we were thinking and what we found
out during our respective stays in the field, we wrote in our diary extensively. In this
way we naturally covered many aspects of the four tasks which I had originally
considered the basis for a ‘subjective account’.
When, after twenty-five months, we had filled sixteen notebooks of two hundred
pages each, we were afraid that the enterprise had after all been a failure: our ‘naive
ethnography’ was extremely repetitive, and the ‘automatic writing’ was unbearably
banal. Only when we subjected the diary to a radical examination in which we threw
out all unnecessary repetitions did it appear that, after all, something valuable
remained. In its reduced form the diary has become a ‘work journal’. It still contains
9
repetitions and banalities, but now the repetitions are measured and meant to
document certain rhythms and linearities which are typical of Hamar society. Only
when they have an obvious bearing upon our fieldwork situation and our general state
of mind are the more banal passages of ‘automatic writing’ included.
Characteristic of the original diary was its lack of internal connectedness. Editing
has exaggerated rather than reduced this problem. As we were writing about people
with whom we became very familiar, we tended to take much background information
for granted and many individuals and events crop up in the text ‘out of the blue’. This
may make it difficult for the reader at times, but what we took for granted and what
not, is exactly the kind of thing which can only be established by means of a work
journal. If we had ordered our experiences retrospectively this would have resulted in a
simple repetition of the ‘subjective accounts’ that exist already in which the authors
look back and evaluate the past, with the result that every event receives its place and
nothing seems arbitrary. The present book is different: it does not look back on the
past but at the present and On to the future. It has sacrificed logical connectedness
and explanation in order to communicate the immediacy of experience and perception.
The journal begins on March 29th 1970 as we arrive at Jinka, the administrative
centre of the Geleb and Hamar Bako sub-province in southern Gamu Gofa. The
entries made during our approach to Hamar were very short and of the little that we
wrote, we have included only those notes which show the almost archetypical features
of an anthropologist’s approach to the field in this part of the world at that time: the
arrival by plane; the meeting of such intermediary social categories as government
officials, hunters, volunteers, missionaries, truck drivers; the problems of transport if
one cannot afford a Land Rover and the blind choice of residence when first entering
the society one wants to study.
On the 9th of May, when we begin to live among the Hamar, the notes in the
journal increase, but only a few of them as yet have the character of a true work
journal. We have, therefore, cut the text at the beginning very heavily, trying to bring
out the following essentials of this early stage:
1. Our first exploration and sensual perception of the environment.
2. Language studies as the backbone of our daily research.
3. Jean’s two periods alone in Hamar whilst I was away to acquire provisions and
a motorcycle and how she managed to look after our little son and do research at the
same time.
10
4. The friendly exchanges of food and drink with the people and the limited
observations which go with it.
5. The problem of finding people who would help us to do some systematic
ethnographic work.
6. The worsening of social relationships and the menace of thieves.
7. The beginning of our friendship with Aike Berinas (Baldambe).
8. The move to Aike Berinas in Dambaiti.
9. The beginning of systematic ethnographic work at Dambaiti.
Our first days in Hamar ended when Jean left the field to give birth to our
second child. On the 18th of November the Italian truck drivers Marco and Pezzani
were passing through Hamar and we traveled with them to Jinka.
Jean went to England and spent the following months writing up a report on the
first seven months fieldwork, the outline of which we had worked out before she left
Ethiopia. I myself returned to Hamar on December 21st together with my brother
Bernhard who had come to spend his holidays in Ethiopia. I had to fulfill a variety of
tasks, but in this book only the most important event is included: the building of a
house in Dambaiti which from now on was to make our life much easier and which in
addition was to symbolize our determination for a new degree of permanence in
Hamar.
On February 27th 1971 my brother and I left Hamar and returned to Europe. At
this time, Robert Gardner contacted us and invited me to come to Harvard to discuss
the possibility of filming in Hamar during the summer. I went to America, agreed to
help Gardner do the filming and by July 5th of 1971 we were all back in Hamar.
A very difficult time followed, during which I was filming with Gardner and Jean
had to do her own research, now with two young children on her hands. This lasted
until Gardner left on September 6th. Yet hardly had we settled down to resume our
systematic ethnographic work, when Jean fell ill with hepatitis and we had to rush to
the Mission station at Dimeka and order a plane from Addis Ababa to bring her to
hospital. As we knew that a long stay in Addis Ababa would be necessary for Jean’s
recovery, we arranged for a friend of ours to bring Baldambe (Aike Berinas) together
with our luggage to Addis Ababa. When our friend and Baldambe arrived, they told us
that on their way they had lost the box which contained all our notes and recordings.
We were upset, but Baldambe smiled and said that he had brought his head along and
that, therefore, nothing was really lost. For some time already we had planned to ask
Baldambe to provide us with a ‘conscious model’ of Hamar social organization and
11
now we realized that our moment had come. I set up the recording equipment the next
day and Baldambe began to tell me what is called in Hamar donko, a learned and wise
narrative, an instructive and coherent description of the customary life of the Hamar.
Upon this Baldambe talked for more than fifteen hours over the next five days and
when he had finished and Jean had recovered a little, we began to transcribe and later
to translate the tapes of which at that time we understood hardly anything.
After a quiet winter in Addis Ababa, we returned to Dambaiti on the 5th of
March 1972. However, I soon had to leave again to collect a Land Rover from Addis
Ababa which the German Research Association (DFG) had offered us. After I had
returned, from April 25th onwards, a productive time followed. Throughout April, May
and June we both kept translating Baldambe’s text which by that time had not only
become the backbone of our research and guideline for inquiries into the hidden
corners of Hamar society, but also seemed to us to be a document which was worthy
of publication itself. When we had finished (for the time being) our studies of the
‘conscious’ and ‘normative’ background of the Hamar social system, we turned to
‘statistical’ data and embarked on an economic and sociological survey of Dambaiti. By
the end of August, we had completed the survey and as we were exhausted both
mentally and physically, we decided to go for a holiday in Europe. Baldambe came with
us, for we had promised to show him our countries just as he had shown us his.
After our return from Europe, we did not do fieldwork together again. Instead,
while one of us was engaged in research, the other would live with the children in
Addis Ababa. This new division of labour led, as I mentioned above, to a new
intensified writing of the diary. Each of us would write for the other and thus the
journal became more explanatory and less redundant than before and, above all, it
became progressively more coherent. As a result, when we came to edit the original, we
found that less and less had to be cut. This is why the eight months following our
return from Europe take up two thirds of the entire journal although they cover only
one third of our total time in Hamar.
I returned to Hamar on April 12th 1973, arriving at the height of the drought
which was affecting the whole of East Africa. This ecological crisis had resulted in
innumerable inter-tribal conflicts. Although social conflict was one of my main
theorectical interests, I realized that now, as the threat of hunger had become very real,
I had to turn my academic research towards a goal that promised some immediate
practical results. Baldambe had once told us that in former times the Hamar would
move to the lowlands during periods of drought, particularly to the Woito valley,
12
where, together with the Arbore and Tsamai, they would use the waters of the river for
irrigation. Because of a general decline in the level of the water and a badly enacted ‘pax
Amharica’, these irrigation works had been neglected. Was it perhaps possible to reactivate the old irrigation channels? To answer this question, I, Baldambe and three of
our closest Hamar friends left for the Woito valley at the beginning of May 1973.
The research proved that the valley had been irrigated and that this work could
be taken up anew if both the people and the Ethiopian government would work
together. An application for government help in the form of food for work and tools
was written and signed by the Hamar and forwarded together with a report. The results
and further developments of this attempt at applied anthropology are not included in
the journal but have been outlined in the postscript.
After the return from the Woito valley, I only stayed in Dambaiti for a few days
and on May the 15th continued my study of the lowlands by making a journey to the
valley of the Lower Omo. I was trying to understand the reasons for the intense
conflicts along and across this big river. These conflicts involved many groups
including the Hamar, Bashada, Banna, Kara, Mogudji, Bume, Murle, Galeba and even
the Arbore. At the same time, I was using the opportunity to carry out comparative
studies among the Kara, whose culture is a variation of that of the Hamar. I spent two
weeks in the Omo valley and after another stay in Dambaiti, I had to return to Addis
Ababa.
On July 12th, Jean arrived in Hamar and stayed for the next three months.
During this time, one of her central tasks was to fill out gaps and amend weak spots in
our existing body of systematic ethnographic data. In addition, she wanted to travel to
the old mountain home of Baldambe’s family where Baldambe’s mother was still alive
and might provide us with historical information that would contribute to a better
understanding of this extraordinary family who had ‘adopted’ us anthropologists. This
was Jean’s first period of solitary anthropology and she had more leisure to reflect
upon Hamar society and upon its values in relation to her own.
In October Jean went back to Addis Ababa and on November 14th, I returned to
Hamar in order to begin an extensive census which we had planned together and which
we hoped might possibly include all of Hamar. By the beginning of January 1974, I had
completed the census for central and southern Hamar (Jean was later to make the
census for northern Hamar), and I decided to complement the newly collected data
with a statistical survey of the cattle camps in the Omo valley. When I had finished this
task I returned to Dambaiti on January 19th. There I found that most of the Hamar had
13
left for a raid on the Arbore. To document what the raid meant for those who had
stayed behind and, later, for those who returned defeated, I recorded on tape most of
the conversations that were then being held among the people of Dambaiti. I had been
attempting to make recordings of Hamar ‘reality’ and ‘conflict’ ever since we had
recorded and translated Baldambe’s ‘idealistic’ and ‘harmonic’ description of Hamar
customary life, but only now I had been able to record the long series of meaningful
and interconnected conversations I had aimed at. After this, a point was reached where
none of us thought it necessary to continue to write a diary, although from time to time
we have both returned to Hamar.
Literature
Bowen, E. (Laura Bohannan); Return to Laughter. London 1954
Casagrande, J. ed.; In the Company of Man. New York 1960
Huxley, F.; Affable Savages. London 1963
Maquet, J.; Objectivity in Anthropology.
Current Anthropology 5: 47-55, 1964
Powdermaker, H.; Stranger and Friend. London 1967
Read, K.E.; The High Valley. New York 1965
14
Chronological Chart
Year
Month
1970
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
1971
January
February
Hamar
Addis Abeba
We prepare for the field.
Departure
We arrive in Turmi
and search for a suitable
fieldsite.
We establish ourselves
at Gabo and begin work.
Reations in Gabo reach a
low ebb.
We move to Baldambe
in Damaiti.
We begin systematic
work in Dambaiti and
establish lasting
friendships with some
Hamar.
We prepare outline of a first
field-work.
Ivo joins Jean. We agree to
film with Robert Gardner in
Hamar.
April
May
September
October
November
December
1972
January
February
Jean returns report on our
to England to deliver our
second child. She works out
the report.
Ivo and his brother
Bernhard build a house
In Dambaiti
March
June
July
August
Europe
Ivo returns to Addis
Ababa and prepares the
film expedition.
We return to
Dambaiti,
accompanied by
Robert Gardner who
films together with Ivo.
Jean pursues
anthropology while
looking after the
children.
We return to Addis Ababa
because Jean is ill with
hepathitis. We are
accompanied by Baldambe
and record and transcribe his
description of Hamar
customs. Jean recovers
and we prepare to go
to the field again
15
March
April
May
June
July
August
We return with our
children to Dambaiti
and begin translation
and annotation of
Baldambe’s text. We
conduct a socioeconomic sample
survey of Dambaiti.
September
October
November
December
1973
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
September
October
November
December
1974
January
We visit Europe,
accompanied by
Baldambe. He speaks
at the London School of
Economics and at the
Institut für Völkerkunde in
Göttingen.
Baldambe and Ivo
We return to Addis Ababa,
return to Dambaiti at
Jean to look after the children
the height of the
and begin an analysis of Hamar
drought. Ivo studies
language.
social conflict and the
possibility of an irrigation project at the Woito
river. He also does comparative studies among
the Kara at the lower
Omo.
Ivo returns to Addis Ababa to
Jean goes back to the
look after the children and
field. She concentrates translate tapes.
on an overall survey
of Dambaiti,
language and kinship
studies. She visits
Baldambe’s mother
in the Hamar mountains.
Jean stays with the children in
Addis Ababa and continues
Ivo returns to Hamar
her linguistic studies with
and conducts a census Berhane who comes from
of central and southern Hamar to help her…
Hamar. Later he makes
a survey of the cattle
camps in the Omo
valley and finally he
records the ‘Conversations
in Dambaiti’…
16
17
Chapter 1
(29. March 1970 - 18. November 1970)
29.3.1970 (Ivo)
Easter Sunday. We arrived with three quintals of luggage at the airfield of Jinka. The
field is wet and green, it has been raining. We move with all our equipment into David
Turton’s former home at the side of the airfield.
30.3.1970
We go on a long walk into the mountains of Bako. The country reminds Jean of New
Guinea, especially the luxurious growth of vegetation.
31.3.1970
I pay a visit to the governor of the sub-province, Makonen Dare. He tells me to come
back the next day. Later during the day, we visit the market and there we meet an eager
and friendly Swedish volunteer who is building schools in this area. He comes and has
tea with us. In the evening we hear the noise of hard working trucks: Marco and
Pezzani are arriving, our hope for a lift down south into Hamar country. Although we
hear their engines in the evening, they do not arrive until next morning.
1.4.1970
The town is full of foreigners: Marco and Pezzani with their lorries, the Swede,
American missionaries and their guests from abroad. The plane brings crocodile
hunters who hunt at the Lower Omo. Their boss seems to be a man called Giovanni.
2.4.1970
We pay a visit to Makonen Dare. We have to wait some time and then are received
only very briefly. But he gives us a letter of introduction for the police at Turmi, the
administrative post in Hamar.
3.4.1970
I ask the head of the police whether there might be any trucks going south soon. No
trucks. But it is said that the governor will drive south in a few days and I go to ask
whether he will take us. He tells me to come back on Monday (i.e. in 3 days’ time).
18
7.4.1970
It rains. The governor comes to tell us that he won’t be able to take us. Many
policemen, however, find room on his truck. Later we hear that their car turned over
and Someone was killed.
8.4.1970
I approach Ato Belay who is the head of the Central Statistical Office which has three
Land Rovers in Jinka. He is nice, but he can’t help us with our transport problem.
9.4.1970
We talk to Marco and Pezzani who tell us to put our hope in Giovanni who would
certainly take us to Hamar with him.
10.4.1970
Father Karl Lythi and his son Peter arrive from the Orno. They are Swiss hunters
who have a safari camp at Murle by the Orno. Much camaraderie and fraternization
at the Johanes bar with a lot of drinking but this does not mean that they will lend us
their Land Rover.
12.4.1970
Giovanni says that he can’t take us. But Mr. Charles Bonk, the missionary from a
station that is just being built at Dirneka on the border between Hamar and Banna,
promises to give Jean and Theo a ride when he returns from Addis Ababa in a few
days time I will then follow with the equipment on Marco’s truck.
15.4.1970
Mr Bonk returns. Hurriedly we pack Jean’s and Theo’s things and off they go.
17.4.1970
I leave with Marco’s and Pezzani’s trucks. At the river outside Jinka, I get a first
impression of our caravan’s rate of progress as it slowly works its way through mud
holes, river beds and over rocks. We do not even reach the settlement of Kai Affir
which lies some forty-five kilometers south of Jinka.
19
18.4.1970
After a long day’s journey we reach the point where a large black rock named Marro
rises on a ridge. Here the track to Konso branches off from the track which leads
south to Hamar and further on to Galeba on the shores of Lake Rudolf. We spend a
second night camping by the fires between the trucks.
19.4.1970
Off go Marco and Pezzani towards Konso while I stay behind with the luggage. After
half a day of lonely waiting, a police truck on its way south picks me up. At Mr Bonk’s
mission station Jean and Thea join us and by the evening we have already reached
Turmi and moved into a termite ridden grass hut.
20.4.1970
We spend most of the day installing ourselves in our flimsy residence among the fiftyodd grass huts of the Turmi police post.
21. 4 .1970
We make a short expedition to a nearby rocky hill from where we look out across a
vast stretch of country, trying to make out where the settlements of the Hamar might
be. We discover circles of old graves.
22.4.1970
I try to reach some Hamar villages which are said to exist to the north, but heavy rains
stop me on my way.
25.4.1970
We go on a long walk to the west, across the dry river bed of a river called Kaeske. We
are trying to reach a village. We see it from a distance, see fields, hear flutes and voices
of people and cow bells, and still can’t reach them. The thorny bush doesn’t let us
through.
26.4.1970
The end of the fasting of the Christian Amhara police among whom we are living here
in Turmi. Everyone indulges in the eating of meat and the Lieutenant in command
invites us to join him.
20
28.4.1970
Ato Getachew Fetene, the governor of Hamar for whom we have been waiting,
arrives. He comes to meet us and says he will help us to get settled in a nearby village.
29.4.1970
We meet Ato Getachew again and he tells us that he wants us to go and stay in Gabo,
the village nearest to Turmi. He says that the most important man there is Garsho, the
second official leader (balabat) of the Hamar, and that he would be a good informant.
He sends a man to ask Garsho to come to Turmi and meet us. We wait all day but
Garsho does not arrive.
30.4.1970
The governor leaves by truck for Arbore where an important political meeting is being
held between the tribesmen and the government. Before he departs, he arranges that
his clerk Ato Abebe Kasa should introduce us to Garsho and help us move to
Gabo.
To make the best use of our time while we are waiting for Garsho, we work, as
we have already been doing for some days, with the interpreter of Ato Getachew, an
old and kind policeman who speaks several local languages including Hamar. His name
is Ato Dagu. As he has already taught us some Hamar, this afternoon we ask him to
dictate to us some simple stories, describing something of what he knows of Hamar
customs. He is imaginative and yet patient and a big help to us.
At night we hear songs corning from far away and such heavy jumping and feetclapping that we think we can feel the earth vibrate.
5.5.1970
Yet another Ethiopian holiday. This time, the emperor’s return to the throne. We take
part in the ceremony at Turmi: a little army of policemen marches up and down the
empty space between the two lines of grass huts – “ha-dj a, ha-dj a!” Flags blow in the
wind; people stand in front of their huts and watch. Then comes a parade in front of
the governor’s office. We are given the places of honor in chairs next to the speaker,
the clerk to Ato Getachew, who reads a long speech.
21
6.5.1970
We still are trying to find Garsho, but there is no trace of him. Ato Dagu thinks that he
is hiding from the police. He would come to Turmi if the governor were here, since his
presence would give Garsho the guarantee, that he would not be imprisoned. As
always, we do linguistic work whilst we wait.
8.5.1970
We get up at 5 a.m. and go with Ato Dagu to the settlement of Gabo. We have decided
to move to Gabo anyway, even though we haven’t talked the matter over with Garsho.
No Garsho, neither in the village nor in the fields. The people are friendly, probably
because of Ato Dagu whom they know well and seem to trust. We tell them that we
will come tomorrow and put up our tent at the border of their village in order to live
among them. On the way back to Turmi, the Hamar greet us from their fields with a
friendly nagaia.
9.5.1970
We pitch our tent on the border of Gabo village. In the evening we kindle a fire and as
the night progresses, more people filter from the dark into the light of the fire. The
girls come closest to us and their iron decorations, rings and beads shine and reflect
the flames.
10.5.1970
We rise with the sun and watch the people and animals spill out of the village and
disperse into the fields and the bush. Then we have breakfast in the company of the
Hamar who watch carefully everything we do. In the evening, standing at the edge of
the village, we watch the people arrive one by one, with small herds of calves, sheep,
kids and agricultural produce, firewood and water. I pick up Theo and go to see how
the cattle and goats are driven into their enclosures.
11.5.1970
We take a walk up the river. The dry river bed seems to be a kind of boulevard of this
country, a main axis of public life, and we meet many people.
The decorated young men remind us of birds, not only because of their clay caps
and the colorful feather arrangements in them, but also because of their strides and
stances. They show a curious casualness towards us and seem to be too proud to be
22
curious. What a difference to Amhara society in which all meetings are framed in
elaborate greeting procedures: The women whom we meet are more simple and
straightforward and more inviting. The girls guard the fields. From their platforms,
built on tall tree stumps, they shout and whistle and shoot stones by means of slings at
the birds and monkeys that invade their fields. Some girls have flutes which fill the air
with melodies, a human contribution to the sounds of the birds.
These flutes consist solely of hollow cylindrical pieces of wood with four holes for the
fingers. There is no mouthpiece. One girl plays for us and hands Theo a colorful head
of a sorghum plant. Later we rest in the shade of a tree and while we rest, more and
more young men come and join us. They talk and do each others’ hair. Slowly we are
getting to know some people better than others.
In the evening by the river we watch boys cover their bodies with white clay
which they dissolve in the water. They turn into living sculptures, the white minerals
on their skin giving their bodies a porous, stone-like surface that breathes coldness
while their faces, eyes, mouths and bodily movements express warmth and life.
12.5.1970
Early in the morning we watch life in the cattle enclosures and the milking. Later we go
on a walk to explore Wonyarki river. It is dry as are all the rivers here, but runs
through more mountainous terrain. Wonderful stone and sand formations and
beautiful trees everywhere. We see many footprints of animals. The large hoof-prints
of cows, the small ones of goats and deer. The great pads of hyenas and the little foot
and hand prints of
baboons whose small waterholes we meet at every corner. We walk for a long time,
until we meet the first people, men and boys who are painting their bodies white with
clay. Tonight, they say, there will be a dance at Borea, a village somewhere north of
here. We reach the fields and meet girls who are fetching water. Quietly the girls
disappear into their fields as they realize we are strangers. With Kalle and Wadu, two
young men, we have a longer conversation full of improvisation. We give them
cigarettes, they bring us fresh sorghum and maize.
23
24
13.5.1970
In the evening we try to do some ethnographic work and ask such impossible questions
as “what do you call your father’s father’s father?” While we are talking, suddenly a
man emerges from the dark. A Porsche racing car is emblazoned on the front of his
shirt. This is Garsho, one of the two balabats of the Hamar and leading male member of
Gabo. This is the man Ato Getachew said would lead us into Hamar culture. He laughs
when he hears our questions. Even the sympathetic girls echo in amazement “pather’s
pather’s pather” (‘p’ and ‘f’f are non-distinct in Hamar).
Still they are delightful and friendly, these girls whose metal decorations produce
bell-like sounds when they move. They are more relaxed and friendly than the men.
When everyone has left and we are almost asleep, we hear from a distance
Garsho’s strong outburst of ridicule: “pather’s pather’s pather!”
15.5.1970 (Jean)
We rise early because we heard last night that a truck had arrived from Kelem. Ivo will
go with it to Jinka, then to Addis Ababa, to collect a motorbike and additional stores
and medicine. We all walk over to Turmi and within a short time Ivo is loaded on the
truck and departs.
We return home, do some odd jobs and then go down to the fields. We give
coffee to a young girl Kaira, who has recently become a good friend. While she is
preparing the coffee, we walk southward to the last field, asking everyone we meet who
they are ad which field they own.
In the evening, we return to the village and watch the little children drink from
the goats. We invite Garsho and an intelligent-looking young man named Gedu who is
with him, to have dinner with us. They come and east vast quantities, but Garsho
doesn’t talk, insists that the half moon is just called moon. Theo is very unhappy, cries
and can’t sleep.
16.5.1970
We go to the fields to visit Dara, the delightful daughter of the oldest man in Gabo,
Muga, and his second wife Zilo. Dara is busy making pancakes (balasha). She mixes
sorghum flour (dile) with water, makes a dough and spreads it with her hands on a flat
stone over the fire, making it smooth with more water. She is also roasting maize
(bokolo) and she offers us some - it is sweet and delicious. When it is ready, she also
25
offers us a balasha and we give her and her mother some coffee. Theo is sleeping on
my back and I am tired, so we go home. Evening soon comes.
All day we have seen the young men, dressed as fancily as ever with new
hairstyles and colorful bands of cloth around their heads, chasing after girls or trying to
steal their mothers’ fresh sorghum, laughing and gallivanting through the sorghum
fields. Now we see them coming home, painted with white clay. They will be going to a
dance.
Garsho comes over in the evening, but says nothing, so I offer him nothing and
he goes away soon.
17.5.1970
In the evening, the girls come to visit. I listen to their gossip rather than talk to them,
slowly the sound becomes familiar, its ‘singsong’ gets into me.
18.5.1970
I went to Kaira and her family’s field and talked to little girls. It is very difficult to
understand their young lisping voices. I meet Kaira’s brother who is getting the logs
for a platform on which the sorghum will be stored when it is harvested. They have
already prepared an open piece of ground, smearing it with cow dung on which to
bang the seed and dry it.
19.5.1970
We spend the morning at our camp. I write and revise Hamar language material and my
notebooks and then clean the place.
After midday we visit the fields. First to Kaira whom we watch grinding the
sorghum (issin). We see the platform for the harvested sorghum which has been built.
We leave to visit other fields, visit Dara, but she is not there.
In the evening there is a dance in Gabo and I go to join the dance. It is very
exciting and curious to be in the midst of the dancers instead of just watching. The
girls look after me, taking my hand and insisting that I join in. After dancing, it was the
little girls who took me into their care, many little hands, friendly hands.
26
20.5.1970
We visit Kaira, talk a little and then I move on to old Muga who is making a stack of
the harvested sorghum for his second wife Zilo. I take a picture of him and the stack,
of the
threshing place, of a house in the fields, of a girl on a platform wielding a sling (rosho),
of Zilo shaking butter in a gourd and of Dara just sitting in front of the house. On my
way home I collect plants to be identified.
At night there is another dance. Dancing begins with vigour. Then a hush falls as
a long stream of white youths march silently into the village. Some girls take my hand
and pull me towards the nearest house. The leaders of the troop carry guns. Old Muga
steps forward and tells the young men that no fighting must take place. Again I find a
girl pulling me, this time towards the dance. The troop of new arrivals came from
Borea. A little later more boys, younger ones, arrive. The dancing proceeds. Later, a
special singing takes place. A large circle is formed by the men, the girls close together
at one end. Individual men dance forward singing their own song and imitating the
shape of horns with their arms. Other men stop them when they have sung long
enough. Meanwhile young girls enter the circle and dance in couples while the solo
singers perform.
21.5.1970
A day of language studies. All morning I looked at the word lists, stories and sentences
which I have collected so far.
22.5.1970
I continue to work on vocabulary, helped by some young men who visit me. They tell
me the names of the plants I have collected. Even though they are already dead, they
recognize them and give me their names.
23.5.1970
Talking and playing, slowly I learn Hamar and little things about their life.
26.5.1970 (Ivo)
I return from my journey to find Jean surrounded by the Hamar, busy treating people
with eye diseases, joking, building a grass hut that will serve as a kitchen. Plants hang
outside on a string, carrying little bandages that bear their names. Jean comes running
27
to say hello. She looks strong, happy and brown. Theo is just waking up, burying his
head in the blankets when he recognizes me. We have a cigarette and tell each other
what has happened during the last twelve days. While we talk, a man called Killekilla
and a relative of his come and greet me. They tell me that we are now one family.
Obviously Jean has established a closer friendship with our neighbors, during my
absence.
30.5.1970
Today I join two young boys, Aike and Kolle, to learn the art of herding goats and
sheep. I get a taste of the slowness and casualness of herding. The boys are fallowing
rather than leading the herds and when they rest, the boys sleep or do some quiet work
like braiding each others’ hair. After five hours of ‘concrete poetry’, I am exhausted
and return.
8.6.1970
Early in the morning inside the kraals we do some exercise in the colour classification
of goats and sheep. Then Jean goes into the fields while I follow a herd of cattle. At a
water-hole in the company of some young men I try to name the different colour
patterns of the animals but my old dilemma persists: I know the names, but cannot
distinguish between the patterns and colours. What I call white, a Hamar may call grey,
and what I
call grey, a Hamar may call brown or yellow…., and what I see as stripes, the Hamar
see as blots. We obviously ‘see’ differently. A young man chases the herds into the
bush and I follow them for an hour and watch them graze. They walk in one direction
only and obviously know where they are going, but I don’t.
9.6.1970
What lies beyond Gabo to the east? We pack and walk off to find out. The bush here
in Hamar is rather different from what we had imagined it to be. From books we know
the desert, the savannah, the steppe and the thorny bushland of such stony and dusty
lands as Somalia. But such a neat, crisp, orchard-like vegetation, such a variety of
plants, of shapes and colours... We had not imagined anything like this. At the first
sight this world looks like Altdorfer’s ‘Paradiesgärtlein’, but then one discovers the spell
which lies over it: the trees look like apple trees or pear or plum trees, yet their fruits
28
are inedible and their branches are armoured with thorns. The red-brown earth is as
hard as stone and the rivers carry sand rather than water.
We walk for about an hour till we reach the fields of an area which is called
Worbasha. We rest in the shade of a little grass hut. There is a girl there who is friendly
but who does not say much. She has never seen a white woman, man or child, but ‘so
what?’ She goes away and soon returns in the company of an old man whom we have
met before at Gabo. He invites us to have coffee with him in his field. On a white cow
hide, we rest in the dark shade of a green tree. We drink large quantities of coffee from
wide calabash bowls and, after giving some tobacco and coffee to our hosts, we leave.
10.6.1970
There is a refreshing wind and Jean and I feel like exploring our environment again,
this time a small mountainous area to the south called Bitta. When we reach the central
dry river bed of Hamar, the Kaeske, we rest and enjoy the enormous stretches of white
sand. We have the impression of being on a beach. An old man shows us the way up
to the fields of the settlement of Bitta. When we reach the fields we rest for a bit but
then, leaving Theo with our Hamar hosts, we climb a nearby rocky peak that stands
out in the lands cape: Mt. Soya. Through thorns and over rocks we reach the top and
have an extraordinary view: we can see the white band of the Kaeske, can see far
across the bush country north to Banna, east to Mt. Assile, south to Kenya and
westward in the haze we can see the silver plate of Lake Rudolf and further north of it
the blue plains of the Lower Omo.
12.6.1970
We are exhausted and out of touch with ‘our’ people. It occurs to us that we could
have a second camp in the bush next to the fields near the river, so that we would
move like the Hamar do, leaving the village in the morning, staying all day in the shade
near the river, coming back to the village in the evening.
13.6.1970
After the usual medical ‘practice’ and economic exchanges in the morning, we take our
axes and knives and go down to the bush next to the river and clear the ground around
a big tree. Soon we have a fine shady place to rest and work. The shade is not only
good because it is cool, but also because it is balm for the eyes, especially for Theo
who suffers much under the glare of the sun. We find hours of real quietness when we
29
can talk about some language puzzles. We have found a new and promising ‘modus
vivendi’ it seems.
16.6.1970
I want to go to the Hamar cattle camps which are said to lie in an area west from us
called Omalle. I have been asking people to show me the way to Omalle, but no one
has been helpful. Our friend Gedu promised to take me there, but when I had packed,
he said he was not going. Yet a little later, he and his friends vanished, leaving me
behind. Now Muga says that he will accompany me to Omalle.
17.6.1970
In the evening, I go to see Muga and remind him of his promise to be my guide. His
wife tells me that he has already left this afternoon. Tomorrow I will go by myself.
18.6.1970
I fry myself some pancakes and depart for Omalle, wherever that may be. I know it lies
beyond Wonyarki but I don’t know the beginning of the path to Wonyarki. I explore
the bush for an hour or so and in the end I find the path. Over Wonyarki the vultures
are hovering and so I know beforehand that there are people slaughtering an animal.
From far away I see the red meat hanging on the grey fences of the goat enclosures.
The skin of a cow is fastened with wooden pegs to the ground in order to dry. A
beautiful girl comes and answers my greeting. When I tell her where I am going, she
shows me which way I should walk. While we are talking, an older man appears and
when he hears of my plans, he tells me seriously not to go. “The paths are bad, you
have no gun...” Still, he is calm and friendly and points to some distant places and gives
me their names: Zauna, Dunka, Omalle. He even shows me where the path starts,
though insisting that I do not go.
I walk a trail which many men and cattle must have used for years. After I have
walked for an hour, suddenly from the bush there emerges a tall, bony and grey-haired
man who with a demanding voice asks me where I am going. I tell him, “over there”.
He talks angrily, a lot of which I cannot understand, but one word which he uses
emphatically and frequently I know: “Return!” I insist: “No, no,” and in the end we go
on together.
30
Later, on a high ridge from where we can see the vast Omo plain, we have a rest
during which I placate my serious companion with some tobacco. He wants me to
sleep now and then return to Gabo, but I refuse and again we proceed together.
In the afternoon we reach a vast and white dry river bed which is here called
Wualle. The banks are green; there are even fields, and hundreds of cattle and sheep
and goats are watered at the water holes. What a surprise! No desert but a nice little
civilization. I have a look at the water holes, the fields etc., drink some water and try to
talk to the men. “Where are the cattle camps?” They don’t answer. I guess they must
be further downstream and as the afternoon progresses I set out again. Slowly, I walk
along the dry river bed. The men watch me for a moment and then they take their
guns and catch up with me: “Where are you going?” I joke, saying I am going to
Turkana and that they should leave me alone after promising to take me to Omalle
and then letting me down. My old companion appears again. An aura of prestige
surrounds him among the young men here and when he again urges me to return, I
find myself in a situation where I cannot go on without offending him. So I give in
and at once the young men are extremely friendly. Kalle especially, whom Jean and I
had met on our walk in Wonyarki river, takes care of me and invites me to have milk
and blood this night in his isolated cattle camp in the bush on a ridge called Zauna.
We walk off together and arrive in the camp as night falls. There is a full moon
and as the cattle, bathed in its light, arrive, I am struck by the lightness of their
colouration: yellow, grey, a grey that is almost blue, light red, white... and their
movement is so relaxed and careful. We sit or lie on cow hides and the men, all of
them young, talk and talk. They use their hands a lot, speak almost with their whole
bodies. I wish I could understand what they are saying. Later, when it is almost
midnight, we are served milk and blood mixed in huge calabashes. When I taste the
smoke with which the calabashes have been cleaned, as I drink the milk and blood
mixture and look across the Omo plain which is coloured red by fires burning on the
steppes below, I have the feeling that I have dropped out of history.
19.6.1970
At dawn we awake and the men start talking again. After the sun has risen, little boys
bring us fresh milk which we drink and then Kalle and I depart for Wonyarki. In the
afternoon, I return to Gabo to find the cow hides laid out in our patch of shade, a
calabash of sour milk hanging in a tree and our notebooks lying on the ground. Then
Jean and Theo appear, both looking well.
31
2.7.1970 (Jean)
lvo packed and left for Jinka, this time on foot to see the country of northern Hamar
and Banna. From Jinka he will fly to Addis Ababa and, hopefully, will return with a
motorcycle. As he left I felt blue, I don’t really know why. The dread of having to
venture alone again into the tough social life of the Hamar. So I spent the day lazily.
At one point I talked to an old man called Irlu and asked him one or two questions.
He told me that Kaira is his second wife! That he took her, did not ask her, and in two
years she would come and live with him as his second wife.
3.7.1970
In the morning Theo and I visit Zilo. The weather is overcast, rain falls in the
mountains and towards the south. We expect rain to fall. Zilo is smearing the threshing
ground with fresh cow dung mixed with the soil of an antheap (duni). She will not beat
the sorghum today because of the rain. We are her guests and she grinds flour to make
balasha. The rain never fell and the night was very, very cold.
4.7.1970
We go to Zilo’s field once more to see her begin threshing the sorghum and store it.
We find her busy. There are clouds in the sky, but the sun is not hidden. She has
already beaten the seeds from the husks and is now sifting the seed from the chaff. The
seed she is preparing is for next year’s planting and she keeps the different kinds
together, filling them into separate gourds. Later Zilo burns the sorghum husks and
puts the ashes into the halves of a pumpkin which will become bowls for food and
drink (sherka).
Later during the day the sky became black. There is thunder over to the west,
wind and threatening rain. But the rain never came here. During the night, someone
came and stole some of our soap.
5.7.1970
I was in an extremely bad mood, and the stealing of the soap became the object of my
anger. The day was grey and overcast and I did not feel like visiting anyone. Also, Theo
was feverish. When I decided he had malaria and tried to give him quinine, he vomited
and then flaked out and slept.
32
6.7.1970
I woke up weeping and in a bad mood once more. I think I must be pregnant. I gave
Theo a large dose of quinine. This time he did not vomit.
8.7.1970
I spend the morning washing clothes. My mood is still tender and I don’t want to do
anything. Eventually, however, we go to visit Kaira.
10.7.1970
I hear that a ritual will be performed in Muga’s field and we go there to find out. We
arrive at the right moment: coffee is being served, and soon the ritual begins. It’s a kind
of
‘baptism’ of a six month old child. The ritual is called gali and I have written about it in
my notebook. The ritual done and more coffee drunk, the group began to disperse.
When I return to our camp, I discover that all our money has gone and the last
dishcloth has been stolen as well as the honey we had.
12.7.1970
Theo complains and then flakes out: fever again. All day he is flat on his back.
13.7.1970
Theo is still feverish and cannot play, only sleep. I spend the day in the shade and give
medicine to a dozen people. I also serve coffee to a number of men who stop over for
a short visit.
14.7.1970
Theo is a little better. Maidi, Muga’s younger brother, comes and tells me he will kill a
goat he is carrying in his arms. He will put the intestines on his little son’s eyes so as to
cure him of the sickness he has been suffering from for a week. We go to see this
ritual. Maidi’s young wife Shosho performs the task, slaughters the kid and puts the
intestines on the eyes of her little son Hailu, who screams and cries in protest. Coffee is
then made and the goat roasted.
All in all, it was another slow day. Anthropology, where are you? Your energy has
left me and I just wonder at the harshness of this society, and know I would not like to
33
live here forever. I decided that it is a society based on the principle of ‘take’ - quite the
opposite of the principle of the ‘gift’, which Mauss made us suppose it would be.
17.7.1970
A day of visiting. I sit and watch Yeshi and Gadi, the two sisters of Kaira. Nothing
much happens. They are alone with the kids who are free to eat the sorghum since it
hasn’t had enough rain to ripen. We talk about Hamar customs, especially marriage,
and I discover that at least the ‘normative’ ideas of marriage are very harsh on women:
their choice is nil, their freedom nil, their right nil. They are married often as little
children and cannot have other man.
18.7.1979
A man arrives with a message from Ivo. Great happiness to hear from him, to know
that ha is all right and on his way. Spend the day peacefully in the field of an amusing
old widow called Bunno.
19.7.1970
A grey day from beginning to end – grey and silent, a breathless gloomy day. I take
Theo in the fields: a picture of desolation. The fields deserted, not a person, the
sorghum ravished, eaten by goats, cattle and donkeys. The houses empty, only ashes
and dust. We wander on and come to a field where two children are playing: a picture
outwardly without time. The day becomes dark, and my spirits sink as no sound of a
motorbike is heard.
20.7.1970
Late in the evening Dara comes to invite me for honey wine at her father’s home. We
go and have a beautiful ritual drink with Muga and his family. He tells me how we are
his family, one blood, one kind and that we must not buy (shana) from each other from
now on, only give to each other when we need.
21.7.1970
We go to Zilo’s field, as invited, to eat food. Zilo and most of Muga’s family are laid
out asleep. They all drank too much last night. Dara, however, is not drunk and
prepares food for us which we enjoy. When night comes I sit and read, trying not to
34
worry about Ivo. Then I hear heavy footsteps, shoes. Looking out I see the thin, long
form of a man hurrying to the camp. It is Ivo, all is well: happiness.
22.7.1970 (lvo)
We rest under our shade tree throughout the day exchanging news. Some men from
Gabo join us and while we drink coffee, we hear that there has been fighting between
the Kara and the Bume down at the Lower Orno.
25.7.1970
Someone has stolen our rice, the rice I had brought under so many adverse
circumstances.
26.7.1970
We decide to bake bread. We prepare the dough and let it rise in the warm sand of the
river. In the afternoon, we put it into an earth oven which we have constructed and as
night falls we have three loaves of bread.
29.7.1970
I stroll through the fields and am struck how dry and deserted they are. Only in some
places has the second crop succeeded in producing plants strong enough to bear seeds.
The huts stand out clearly. A month ago they were hardly visible among the sorghum
of the fields. Now their doors, black patches, can be seen from far away. The stacks of
sorghum which used to stand around the dry and clean threshing ground in front of
the huts have gone; instead, round storage baskets (koda) have appeared. They are
placed off the ground in the forks of trees.
1.8.1970
A day goes by while we are writing in our notebooks the observations we made during
the recent initiation rites at Wonyarki and Borea. It is, like so often, a slow day with
little happening.
3.8.1970
We spend the day talking with people about the difficult problems of marriage classes
and clans. So far we have only names but don’t know what they mean. Also, we start a
special notebook on the composition of the village and its fields.
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4.8.1970
Old Muga, being the ritual leader of Gabo, went this morning together with Irlu, who
is his assistant, into the bush to collect sacred plants: lazi, gumaza, karko and gali. I don’t
know where Muga spent all day, but in the evening, just before sunset, I see him
approach the village with his arms full of magical plants. His assistant Irlu is with him.
They put down the plants at the door of every house and at the gateway of every kraal.
They also place some plants in the middle of the cattle kraal and - what a friendly
gesture - in front of our tent! They do their work in a quiet matter-of-fact way, yet
somewhat intensely and in a hurry. No words, no prayers. On the contrary: a pervasive
silence, only the plants are allowed to ‘speak’. But when all the plants have been
distributed, both men stop beneath a tree and Irlu raises his right arm and shouts a few
sentences which I do not understand.
5.8.1970
Today, after sunset, Muga performs the second stage of the ritual. At the gate of his
goat and sheep enclosure he waits for the people to come and as they quietly step close
to him
one after another, he rubs white butter onto their ‘hearts’ with a cool, smooth black
stone: so that the sickness may leave them, so that their hearts might be as strong as a
stone and their lives be as rich as butter. We are among those who have come to
Muga’s gateway, so he automatically blesses us like all the other villagers. When he rubs
the butter on to my chest, the contrast between the hardness of the stone and the
softness of the butter strikes me.
6.8.1970
The sun has already long set and it is pitch black night when the last part of the ritual is
performed. We meet together with all the people of Gabo outside in the bush. We
stand close together in a silent group and everyone looks in the direction whence in
olden times his ancestors came. Jean and I look, like most of the others, towards the
north. Muga and Irlu, both carrying cactuses, go round our group four times. Finally,
they halt a few meters away from us and we all walk over to them, one by one, and spit
our illness on to the plants which Muga and Irlu then throwaway into the bush.
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11.8.1970
Again people have stolen our food, this time our honey. They broke into the kitchen,
emptied a gourd and took a tin. We tell our neighbours what has happened, but that
does not stop them coming in full force to demand beads, medicine, tobacco, coffee...
We feel they want to exploit us to the last.
16.8.1970
Last night we had Aike Berinas as our guest and he told us odd things about his
greatness and Ethiopia. We had met him before and once at night he stumbled into our
camp, drunk and delightful, carrying a branch of a tree which he called biri. He showed
us the different divisions of the branch and somehow related himself to it, but what he
meant eluded us. After that shadowy encounter, he vanished in the night and now
again he
was here, tall and odd. He took out of his pocket a handkerchief with little medicines
which he said were particular to his clan, Karla. We ate together and then smelled his
various medicines. He likes to talk and he talks well; he seems to know a lot and to be
crazy... we would very much like to get to know him better.
I spend all day in the shade writing in my notebook about ‘fieldwork’: our
frustrations and alienations that have been arising over the past weeks. I try to describe
and explain as exactly as possible why and how the culture of the Hamar offends us.
18.8.1970
Our beads are gone. We left them in a box outside our small tent. This morning the lid
is open and the beads, with which we used to buy milk, honey and millet, are gone. I
tell Garsho of it and, as he seems not to care, I add that if things continue like this, we
would leave and settle in another village of Hamar. Garsho answers cynically that this
might be a good idea. The atmosphere is poisoned and we seek refuge in our shade.
20.8.1970
We decide to go and see Aike Berinas in his settlement Dambaiti. We think we might
move to Aike’s place because Aike is the best ‘anthropologist’ among the Hamar that
we have met. We drive on our motorbike the 12 miles to Dambaiti and at the big rock
that marks the point where the path leads to Aike’s homestead, we leave the bike in the
bush. We find Aike resting on a cow hide in the shade of a hut. He has made himself a
wonderful chain of the beads which we gave him, connecting the big white beads of
37
ours with small orange ones of his own. He looks smart in his decoration and much
younger now that he is wearing only the typical Hamar loin-cloth rather than trousers
and army jacket. He welcomes us and asks us to sit down under the shade tree.
Women, girls and young men come to see us. We have the typical ‘hair-stroking ritual’
and an easy conversation follows which soon turns to ethnographic questions. In a
flash, Aike is in his element and tells us a lot of interesting things. He even asks the
young men to help with his thoughts, something which never has happened to us
before. We drink coffee and then Aike tells us the names of all the Hamar mountains
which we see in the east. He insists that we get the name of each of them.
Then Jean and I walk with some girls down to the waterholes. We check the time
needed to reach the river: 15 minutes. That is not too far should we come to stay in
Dambaiti. We are served again when we return, this time with sorghum food and sour
milk. When we are driving ‘home’, we wonder whether we will move to Dambaiti.
Compared with Gabo, Dambaiti is ‘rural’ and quiet. It has only five huts and it does
not lie at a cross-roads like Gabo - but is Dambaiti not too small a place?
24.8.1970
In the evening we start constructing a thorn fence around our camp, but we don’t
finish it and during the night someone comes again and steals milk, two tea towels and
our last towel.
26.8.1970
Our thorn fence, even when completed, does not stop the Hamar: during the night
they enter the camp from the west and clean out the kitchen, take every bit of meat (we
slaughtered a goat yesterday) and all the sour milk. We don’t say a word to our
neighbours because we know by now that there is no social control with regard to
outsiders. Before, when we told others of the stealing, they had laughed and had
seemed to find this stealing natural since we had been stupid enough not to hide our
possessions carefully and to watch them day and night. How could they possibly
understand that watching our possessions would be an admission on our part of
unsatisfactory social relationships? And why should they do us any favours? Yet,
although we realize that we are to blame, we feel almost physically sick because of the
constant stealing. One packet of spaghetti is still left, 3 tins of fish, I tin of butter, some
lentils, some wheat... not much. Is there no one who would help us to survive in this
den of thieves?
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30.8.1970
At 3 a.m. I wake up because I hear the sound of bare feet on the ground. After some
minutes or staring into the night, I see a figure, a Hamar, on the other side of the thorn
fence just opposite the tent. I can see his clay cap and the round feather ball on his
forehead. For a few minutes he is busy with the branches of the fence and then all is
quiet, the man has disappeared. Suddenly another figure. wearing the ar hairstyle of the
young boys, comes into view and/getting through the thorn fence he crosses our
camp. I get out of the tent and shout some nonsense and the boy shoots past me
through the fence and stomps down into the bush towards the river. We hear another
person run in a similar direction. On the ground next to the fence, we find our heavy
metal box which contains our papers, notebooks, tape recorder, microphones, etc. It
was locked and so they had tried to take it complete. In the morning, we looked at the
footprints and Garsho and Gedu followed them for a while. Gedu says something
about knowing the footprints, i.e. to whom they belong, but when I ask Garsho to do
something about it, he is vague. You have to help yourself in Hamar.
1.9.1970
The morning is grey and begins with a new theft. Yesterday I borrowed a stick from
my friend Wadu (friend?) and this morning I put it down next to the tent. A young
man comes to visit us and the stick disappears with him. Later, when Wadu arrives and
asks for his stick, we tell him who the thief must be. He goes off and a couple of hours
later returns with his stick. Sic! You must know how to help yourself.
8.9.1970
We are not getting our teeth into this group. Gabo has become ‘triste’, at least in our
eyes. We aren’t getting the co-operation necessary for our work. The central ‘dramatis
personae’ are missing (Muga, the leading old man of Gabo, is a bore!). The girls and
some of the women are all right, but that is all. We still hope very much to get to Aike’s
settlement.
11.9.1970
I drive to Aike Berinas and when I arrive in Dambaiti, I find Aike just as last time,
sitting on a cow hide in the shade of hi; younger brother’s house. He seems not to be
occupied with work but his brother has just sharpened two axes and soon leaves to cut
the bush for new fields. Aike and I converse a bit and then, as I once again want to test
39
his anthropological inclinations, I ask him about Hamar burial customs, saying that he
should not tell me quickly about it, but slowly so that I may write down what he says in
Hamar. Then we drink vast amounts of coffee and when we both emerge from the
house I look round and ask where, if we would come to Dambaiti, we should pitch our
tent. Baldambe laughs (Aike’s cow name is ‘Baldambe’, which means the ‘father of the
red-brown cow’) and points out to me the place for our tent. Shortly afterwards I ask
him again, seriously this time, whether he would allow us to come and stay as his
guests. He does not answer but takes an axe to cut a path through the bush so that I
will be able to reach Dambaiti on motorbike. Baldambe talks and laughs a lot while we
cut trees and brush thorny branches from our path. For the last hundred meters a
neighbour, a strong looking middle-aged man called Banko, helps us. He seems to be a
nice guy. We wash our hands and say a friendly ‘good-bye’.
15.9.1970
Once more, Jean and I visit Aike Berinas. We want to make sure that he really wants us
in Dambaiti. In his friendly way Aike says that he wants us to come, but he also seems
a little confused about it. We will just have to go and not wait for a more explicit
invitation.
We had left Theo in Gabo with two of our best girl friends, Kaira and Ami.
When we return, we find Theo very happy in the company of these girls. He is eating
sorhum porridge when we arrive. The girls have taught him his first word, ‘ka’ (that).
22.9.1970 (Jean)
What a commotion! But now we have moved to Dambaiti. Today we rise with the sun
and are invited for coffee in the house to the left of our tent which belongs to an old
and deaf man called Kolmo. We get to know his wife Duka and his daughters Omalle,
Adya, Ama, Alima, Gadi and little Assi. In the afternoon we ourselves serve coffee to
our new neighbours and later go to have a wash in the river. We take a wrong path and
find another homestead in the bush. It is charming to come across the hamlets in this
area. The river is beautiful. Green trees such as we have not seen for ages. The water is
near the surface and clear as crystal.
8.10.1970 (Ivo)
The men spend the morning drinking coffee in Gemarro’s and then in Baldambe’s
house. Later Aike and I go over to the shade tree where I cut Aike’s hair and where he
40
produces his usual hotchpotch of information. In the afternoon we serve a big round
of coffee. In the evening, we ask Duka’s daughters to prepare some sorghum food for
us and we ,share it with Aike, eating in the moonlight. Here are all the brothers of Aike
who live in Dambaiti: the older brother Gapha whose cow name is Surrambe, and a
young brother Hailu whose cow name is Kairambe. Also the two other men of our
neighbourhood, Kolmo and the foxy Gemarro are present. There is also a guest from
Kara, a tall old man called Zinu. He was the bond-friend of Aike’s father, Berinas, and
the relationship has continued to the present day.
9.10.1970
Early in the morning, the men have coffee in Gemarro’s house and then move over to
Aike where I join them. Aike is the one who talks the most. His older brother
Surrambe sits quietly, looks depressed and moves his lips as if talking to himself. Nor
does Gemarro say anything. He wears a dark expression and spits occasionally. Zinu,
the old Kara man, speaks at times, but Aike, who addresses himself mostly to Zinu,
dominates him completely. Aike calls for a girl whenever he or anyone else has emptied
his coffee bowl and I am astounded how the girls rush to work for us without any
hesitation. Kolmo does not drink coffee with us, he seems not to be invited and too
timid to invite himself. After coffee, Aike gives me a long description of some ancient
Hamar customs which I record on tape. By midday, everybody retreats to rest (and to
eat?). In the heat of noon, Kairambe emerges from his house carrying a stone in, his
hand. I see his wife Cadi run into the bush and Kuli, Surrambe’s young daughter, dive
into Aike’s house. Kairambe returns to his house and so does his wife. In the
afternoon, Aike asks us to replay the descriptions we recorded during the morning. We
all listen and laugh. The afternoon passes in relaxed talk. Duka’s girls again prepare
food for us and we eat together with Aike.
20.10.1970
Aike has just returned from a journey. He sits down with us and then calls the little
children. They come and he orders them to bring the following over to his house: first
his spear, then his sandals and then his rigema, a stick with which he cleans his teeth.
21.10.1970
A day of work with Baldambe. Early in the morning, we are woken up by Bargi,
Surrambe’s delightful wife. She asks Jean to give her coffee for the men ‘who are
41
thirsty’. The thirstiest of them is, of course, Baldambe. We drink coffee in his house
together with his guests and Kolmo and Kairambe. Later Duka joins us and they all
talk about the building of a shade structure for the initiation ritual of Uri, Kalmo’s
oldest and only son, which should happen in a couple of days. Later we embark with
Baldambe on kinship studies. We don’t progress, our questions are too abstract. In the
end, we start asking Baldambe the names of his actual relatives, both living and dead. I
write down a host of names of his forefathers and their wives and children. When we
get tired, we all have a meal of spaghetti and meat and then rest and sleep. In the
afternoon, two young men pass by driving goats for a burial ritual that will be held
further up in the mountains. They are Baldambe’s kin and he takes the opportunity to
ask the women to make some coffee. When we drink the coffee, there is much
enjoyment and laughter and I note down the text of the initiands’ song: Wollalalallwollalalalall.
22.10.1970
The day begins with coffee in Kairambe’s house. From there we move on to
Gemarro’s house for more coffee and talk. I bring the tape recorder and record. As
usual, only I have the pleasure of drinking coffee with the men. Jean prepares the
breakfast, looks after Theo and deals with the girls who bring us water, wood, milk etc.
and who want to be paid in coffee, salt, beads, medicine. Yes, Jean has to battle. It
would be too hard for her to fight against the whole situation and so she plays her
female role, which is even more difficult for her here in Hamar than in our Western
culture. For me, on the contrary, Hamar is not more difficult but rather more easy to
live in - for who does not like to be served coffee?
24.10.1970 (Jean)
The day of the building of the shade structure for Uri’s initiation ritual. Early in the day
young men begin to cut wood to build the shade. Ivo drinks coffee first with the older
men and then goes off with Baldambe to cut wood. The shade structure gets under way
with about a dozen men working. The girls of Dambaiti are busy doing their hair and
helping Duka put on water and prepare coffee for the builders. Then a group of about
a dozen women with their little babies arrive singing the song which they will sing off
and on during the day as they go about grinding. These women come from what we
call Dambaiti II, a segment of the settlement of Dambaiti, five minutes walk from us.
At the same time Duka’s daughters begin dancing down in the central kraal of their
42
homestead. They are slowly joined by two or three other girls of Dambaiti. I then go
and rest with Theo in our shade. Our shade is the resting place for many people, but
fortunately they let me lie in peace. Ivo continues to spend time with the men
constructing the shade and when this is done, he tapes a talk by some men and the
singing of the women who began grinding. I make a midday meal for Baldambe and
Ivo and us but when we begin to eat, it rains and a dozen people take shelter in our
tent shade. Ivo sleeps while I put on coffee for the ones lucky enough to get it. The
women are unable to grind while it is raining. The rain peters out and as the young men
begin to dance, the women take up grinding again and Theo and I go to see the dance.
For a short spell the older men and women take up dancing; but soon they return to
the shade to drink beer and coffee. As it becomes dark, porridge is served to both
women and men and again the calabashes of beer circulate among the drinkers. Ivo
returns late, and when I have gone to bed he makes a pancake for his friends who will
take him to see a burial ritual tomorrow.
25.10.1970
While we are still in bed we hear shouts, grunts, thumps and smacks coming from
Kairambe’s house. Kairambe shouts, a child howls and then we recognize the groans
and pleadings of his wife Gadi. When Ivo went to have coffee he saw that Gadi had
been severely beaten up by her husband. She is pregnant!
2.11.1970
Uri has entered the phase of his initiation ritual which will soon lead to the jumping
over the cows. Today he goes off to get a sheep skin which he will put on together with
a single string of beads worn across his chest. Early in the morning, Uri’s sisters were
singing a song for him in their cattle kraal, they said it was for no reason, but Bargi later
said it was because Uri had gone to put on the sheep skin.
3.11.1970
Uri leaves in the morning to go to perform a ritual with a man who lives up in Kadja in
the mountains. He takes two goats with him and a small piece of an antelope hide. He
will pay for the ritual service with his goats. The ritual has something to do with a small
amount of cow dung which will be sewn into the hide of the antelope and this
symbolic object, which is referred to as ‘phallus’ will later play an important role in
Uri’s initiation ritual.
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4.11.1970 (Ivo)
The day begins with Omalle singing her song for her brother and dancing. Her sisters
join in. Throughout the morning, they occasionally sing. They sing because their
brother is now performing his ‘phallus’ ritual up in Kadja.
In the morning we work with Baldambe. We finish, for the time being, the
kinship terminology which we got by using Baldambe’s genealogy. Then we move on
to such ethnographic themes as death and legal arbitration.
At noon we eat together and in the afternoon Banko and Haila, Baldambe’s
brother-in-law from Ande, arrive. Haila, seeing Baldambe’s beads, demands them right
away. As an in-law he has powerful claims on the possessions of Baldambe and I can
save Baldambe’s beads only by offering Haila some others. After coffee Banko tells me
about Hamar marriage customs. I record. In the evening we both drink beer in Banko’s
home. We share it with Kula the ‘black’, who is Banko’s friend and age-mate and the
‘land priest’ (gudili) of Dambaiti. After dark, Uri arrives and Jean and I talk with him
and his ‘washer’, Uri’s young ritual assistant. Uri describes to us the ritual he
performed, but he talks so rapidly that we only understand a little.
5.11.1970
At breakfast several women and children from Banko’s homestead pass our home.
They are all dressed up and shine with fresh butter and red ochre. They carry three
gourds of honey, two coffee pots and cow-hides... They are on their way up to Banna
where they will participate in an initiation ritual of a boy of their clan. This is the time
of the year when many rituals are performed, the time after the harvest, the time of
plenty, the
‘social season’.
Uri is off again. This time to Bashada where the maz, the young men who have
recently been initiated, will ‘break his fingers’ to tell him the day when they will ‘cause
him to jump over the cattle’.
In the afternoon we all drink coffee in Kairambe’s house and then Jean leaves us
for a first attempt to tackle the mathematics of the kinship terminology. I stay on and
talk with Baldambe about Hamar environment. I record. In the evening as we make
pancakes, Jean and I discuss when we will leave. Jean’s baby is getting bigger.
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6.11.1970
I have coffee with Baldambe who calls me at 6 a.m.: ‘Father of Theo, have a piss, wash
your hands and come to drink coffee’. He also says that he has some more information
in store for me. So we drink coffee and Baldambe talks and talks and talks. The tape
recorder is really a wonderful instrument in this talkorientated society.
Our initiand, Uri, arrived yesterday evening and this morning he is off again to
inform his kin in Wungabaino of the day of his jumping across the cows. His father,
Kolmo, also leaves to inform kin in Wonyarki, Gabo, Lodjera, etc. Later in the
morning, when Omalle is grinding and singing a song for her brother, Baldambe says:
‘go and record’. I happily follow this advice of our Hamar ‘anthropologist’.
In the afternoon Baldambe leaves for Lodjera. He alludes to a plan of which he
told us the other day: he is going to steal a girl, he wants to have a second wife and he
has already found the girl he wants to marry. But he will be only able to get her by
taking her by force.
11.11.1970
Baldambe leaves again bent on stealing the girl. He whispers to us that ‘magic’ is
involved, the capturing of her footprints....
12.11.1970
Tomorrow Uri will jump over the cattle. The girls and the women of Dambaiti prepare
their hair. Omalle leads the girls in singing and dancing all morning. The ethnographic
work of the past months has exhausted Jean and me and we are hardly able to face all
the lively activities around us. We spend much of the day at the river to recover. When
we return in the moonlight we find that several people have arrived to participate in the
events of tomorrow. Among them are several members of Baldambe’s family,
Surrambe and Baldambe’s cousin Haila (Shalombe) and Bali and Aikenda, the wife of
Baldambe’s younger brother who died several years again a fight with the Arbore.
Gemarro who was away for several days has also returned.
13.11.1970
At sunrise, Omalle is already singing her song again and the first people arrive, among
them the members of Uri’s clan who also sing. The guests are served beer in the cool
of the shade structure which we had built for this day. Uri returns from Ande where he
has performed yet another small ritual, the rubbing of his chest with cow dung. By 11
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a.m. I leave together with Surrambe, Kairambe, Banko, Gemarro, Bargi and Uri’s
sisters for the place where Uri is to jump over the cattle. This place lies across the river
Kaeske in an area which is proper Hamar territory. The Hamar have come to settle
west of the Kaeske only in the past 70 years. Therefore, we have to walk two and a half
hours to reach the ‘sacred’ soil. The meeting place for all the people who are to be
present at the moment when Uri jumps is a romantic spot on the Kaeske.
While waiting for everybody to arrive, the women of the two clans involved, the
clan of Uri (Duma) and of Uri’s mother (Rach) dance and sing. The men rest in the
shade and talk. By about 4 p.m., the maz ‘cause the donkey to jump’. The ceremony is
somewhat improvised and hectic and Uri falls twice when crossing the cattle. We hurry
home in a long and exhausting walk.
Jean has spent the day quietly in Dambaiti but by 7 p.m. more than 100 people have
invaded the place. Everyone settles down in the shade. The women sing and so do the
maz who are also playing lyres. The maz dance a curious and funny dance in the
moonlight. I walk around with my tape recorder but Hamar dance and song does not
lend to recording, there being too many divergent sounds and extremely disparate
sound levels. I drink beer with the men until 2 a.m. in the morning.
14.11.1970
This is the day of feasting and dancing which follows the jumping over the cattle. We
had planned to participate and observe, but we are too exhausted. So we rest beneath
Dambaiti’s biggest shade tree and watch what is happening only from a distance. In the
afternoon there is a sudden outbreak of noise and tumult. The people had been
dancing and drinking beer in the shade, but now they swarm like excited wasps. Men
shout, women cry, “dado, dado, dado!” I see Kairambe run into the bush followed by
young men with guns and sticks. Bali, Baldambe’s younger brother, gets his gun ready,
pushing the bullets into place. Surrambe grabs for a fighting stick. We learn that
Baldambe has rubbed a small girl’s hand with butter (a sign of marriage) and has run
into the bush to escape that rage of the girl’s relatives. Confusion reigns and we think
that at any moment a fight will break out but nothing happens. As Baldambe tells us
later: there were people of so many clans and factions present, that no clear alignment
against the sons of Berinas (Baldambe’s father) could develop. After a while, the
feasting and dancing resumes, but we are too tired to put our minds to it and we fall
asleep with a rich buzz of social life going on around us.
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15.11.1970
Baldambe was away all night but this morning, before the sun rises, he returns from the
bush and with a loud voice angrily alls Kairambe and others to wake up. In a funny
way, he complains that he nearly died of cold in the bush. He quickly dives into the
security of the houses to talk with his friends. Towards the evening the village is quiet
again: Baldambe has taken to the bush to hide from his in-laws.
17.11.1970
During the morning, we visit Duka and ask her to give us a description of her son’s
initiation ritual. Duka is lively and speaks well: ‘we, the Hamar’... After we have
recorded her speech, she says that she feels that she has not been able to reciprocate all
the gifts we have given her over the past months and that she hopes to invite us for
food and drink when Jean returns to Dambaiti, after having given birth to her child in
England. Yes, we have been telling people that we are leaving.
At noon we have coffee in Surrambe’s house and his wife Bargi is serving. I bring
the tape recorder along and ask Bargi to say for us a number of words, the
pronunciation of which is crucial for an understanding of Hamar phonetics. Not only
has Bargi a very clear pronunciation, but she is also lively and intelligent, she does not
simply repeat words; she puts them into phrases and invents little stories to illustrate
the use of a word. The recording is a beautiful bit of co-operation and convinces us
that it will be worthwhile to come back to work in Dambaiti again.
I have a short talk with Baldambe. Drinking coffee in Gemarro’s house, we both
assure each other that everything is well. Baldambe says that now the danger of a
disastrous turn in his ‘marriage by force’ is over. He will go today to Kadja and then to
the cattle camps of Omalle to collect animals for the relatives of the girl who will soon
turn up in Dambaiti to make their claims. He says that when I return in about a month,
he will tell me all that happened during my absence and will be ready to work with me
again.
We spend all afternoon and evening packing.
18.11.1970
In the early morning, Gemarro and Surrambe perform for us the ‘ritual of the road’.
Gemarro sweeps the path on which we will depart with his hands. Then he asks us to
walk across the cleared ground and, as we step across it, he and Surrambe spray their
47
spit over us, calling for ‘good luck’ for us, a safe journey and for us to return again
bringing lots of coffee, cloth, beads etc.
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49
Chapter 2
(21 December 1970 - 27 February 1971)
21.12.1970 (Ivo)
My brother Bernhard and I reach Dambaiti at sunset and are received heartily by Bargi,
Duka and the girls.
22.12.1970
We pitch our tent and look around in Dambaiti: Gemarro and Kairambe are there, but
neither Baldambe nor Surrambe nor any of the younger men like Bali, Berhane, Dube
nor any other brothers or relatives of Baldambe. Baldambe is up in Kadja, we are told,
and Surrambe is down in the cattle camps at Kizo on the Omo plains.
24.12.1970
We had been down by the river and when we return we find Baldambe sitting on a
cow-hide in the shade of Aikenda’s house. We say “nagaia’ and settle down straight
away to some ‘fieldwork’, examining my new map. Coffee under the stars.
29.12.1970
The dry season has begun and people are out of grain. So they embark on distant trade
expeditions. Today Baldambe’s brothers and their wives saddle their donkeys and leave
for Kara down by the Omo where they hope that their old bond-friend Zinu may have
some grain for them.
30.12.1970
Kolmo, Duka, Adja and Ama also leave for a trade expedition and when Baldambe
departs a little later for the southern regions of Hamar to collect yet more goats for his
in-laws, the village is deserted.
12.1.1971
My brother, being an architect, decides that we should build a house and he sets about
it straight away, drawing lines in the dust to show where the walls should be. He also
walks down into Banko’s field and cuts the first beams. In the afternoon, when we are
working on our ‘house’, Baldambe appears, spear in hand. He looks slim because he
went from southern Hamar down to the Omo and acted there as a mediator between
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the Kara and the Bume tribes who have been involved in a series of raids and counterraids. I record.
13.1.1971
We have an early coffee session as usual, but then Bernhard and I set to work on our
house. Little boys and girls come and help us with the digging of holes for the housepoles. We announce that we have beads with which we want to buy wood and soon the
first youngsters come bringing us wood.
14.1.1971
Young men, girls, even older women come to offer us wood in exchange for beads. As
we are paying well, by Hamar standards, a big flow of wood begins to come our way.
We haggle all day and pile up a lot of sticks, poles and beams.
15.1.1971
We sit in the shade and buy wood all day long. What an odd business!
16.1.1971
Long lines of wood-carrying youngsters arrive and in the evening, without us asking for
it, the first girls bring grass for the roof. The Hamar well know what we will need to
complete the house.
17.1.1911
More wood. Now we have enough, all we need is more grass. We begin building.
18.1.1971
Yesterday, Aike, a man from the nearby village of Kole, promised to help build the
house, especially the roof. Today he arrives together with a young and an old man.
They all turn out to be magnificent workmen and we work all day. Even Kairambe and
Gemarro lend a hand and when evening comes the roof has already taken shape.
We give each of our craftsmen a bowl of coffee beans and an aluminium rod and
they leave.
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19.1.1971
Our crew arrives again, though late: they had been drinking our coffee throughout the
morning. Gemarro, Kairambe and Banko, however, don’t show up. A number of other
young men arrive and help after we promise some payment. We buy more grass; the
heap is growing.
20.1.1971
Our work group changes composition. Another old man from Kole arrives and with
him another young man. Again the Hamar know best which materials are needed for
the next stage of our work. This time, they bring a rope-like creeper called bi which is
needed to finish the binding of the roof properly.
Kairambe tells Banko that we are cross that he does not help and later he shows
up and works a lot. He is an expert.
21.1.1971
Again our crew has changed. Two young men from Bashada arrive to work for
payment (beads) and Haila, Baldambe’s brother-in-law comes too. Two other men
from Kole lend a hand and we work on all corners of the house. By evening, all the
walls are standing and the roof is nearly finished. The roof has been trimmed, giving a
clear shape to the house.
22.1.1971
At five in the morning Baldambe is already talking, with Aikenda’s coffee pot on the
boil. We get up and find Banko sitting with him. They are discussing a second grain
expedition to Kara. We work all day on the house; Baldambe helps us.
23.1.1971
The house is ship-shape now. In the evening, we put a clay pot on the fire-place and
invite our neighbours to drink coffee with us. Baldambe, bis old friend Wualle,
Gemarro, Kolmo and Duka are present and Duka’s daughter Ama serves the coffee.
To our surprise, Baldambe begins to chant and the others echo the refrain: they are
blessing our new house.
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30.1.1971
At about 2 a.m., I hear Gadi sighing outside her hut. She is giving birth to her baby. I
listen and hear her calling for Aikenda and Bargi (Baldambe’s cousin and sister of
Shalombe) telling them that the baby has arrived. When I step out into the night, I hear
the baby cry and see Aikenda carry it into Gadils house. Bargi rushes to get wood for
the fire. I enter the house and see Aikenda with the baby. It is a boy. She cleans his
head with slithers of freshly cut wood. When the water is warm, Bargi pours it into a
bowl and Aikenda takes a big mouthful and sprinkles the water over the baby, washing
his hair first, then his face and then his whole body. Next, Bargi brings a gourd
containing butter mixed with red clay and Aikenda rubs this over the baby who, having
been quite white at first now becomes the proper colour for a Hamar, red and brown.
Then Bargi fetches some roasted coffee beans. She crushes them on a cow hide, puts
them into a bowl and then pours water (cold and unboiled) over them. Aikenda takes a
mouthful and feeds the baby from her mouth.
By this time Gadi has already entered the house and settled down in her usual
corner. Aikenda hands over the baby to Gadi and I leave the house to sleep again.
In the morning we have coffee with Baldambe who thinks the child should be
called Sigmund after my father.
I ask whether the child’s umbilical cord was cut with a razor or with an arrow
such as is used to draw blood from the jugular vein of a cow. Aikenda says that it was
cut with a razor of course; the arrow is only a symbolic instrument. At this Baldambe
asks his old friend Wadu who is present as a guest, to perform the ‘arrow’ ritual. Wadu
gets up and I follow him. In Gadi’s house, he takes the child from its mother, asks for
four beans of coffee and cracks them in his mouth. Then, from mouth to mouth, he
feeds the child symbolically and, taking the ‘arrow’ he symbolically cuts the umbilical
cord four times, exclaiming: “May you grow up well, your name shall be Wadu.”
When we return to the coffee pot, Baldambe says that from now on many people
will offer their names to the child but that the one who is most persistent and provides
the most generous gifts will win in the end.
I rest all day because I am exhausted and my heart is knocking against my ribs, at
least it feels like it. This trouble is new. It began a short while ago.
I stay in the cool and quiet house all day, sleeping and writing. When I tell
Baldambe about my state, he answers that my heart is weak because I have become so
thin. Furthermore, my intestines may have become thin. He therefore arranges that I
receive a share of the meat of the sheep that was slaughtered today for Gadi, who,
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having lost blood when giving birth, is in need of new, fresh blood. Baldambe
demonstrates to me how the blood will re-enter Gadi’s veins.
At night, when we have already fallen asleep, the people who had gone on a grain
expedition return. The donkeys and the tinkling sound of the nails on the fringe of the
girl’s wake us up. Later, we see a big fire blazing in front of. Kairambe’s house: a pot of
coffee is put on.
31.1.1971
Baldambe brings a big, smooth piece of wood from the bush which will serve as the
bottom sill of our window- so that one can lean into our house more easily. “We made
the window to look out at the Hamar and they use it to look in at us,” observes my
brother.
16.2.1971
Ginonda is preparing sorghum porridge. She tells me that it is for Gadi who is still in
her house. Gadi lives exclusively on milk, meat, blood and porridge. Only when she has
‘left the house’ will she eat grain food such as balasha, muna or derbada.
26.2.1971
Gadi left her house. She comes to see me and we talk. She says she wants to call her
boy ‘Ivo’, not ‘Sigmund’ as Baldambe suggested. ‘Ivo’ is more like Hamar she says.
In the afternoon Gadi invites me for coffee in her house. I bring the last re beads
I have and some blue ones. My ‘god-son’ is one month old and already quite fit and fat.
Wishing him good health, I give him my name together with the beads.
27.2.1971
My brother and I have to leave Hamar again. Jean will be giving birth to our baby soon
and I want to go and see her in England. So we have a last pot of coffee in Ginonda’s
house. My brother brings his camera along and takes her photo. She laughs and
demands the camera. Then she takes a photo of Bernhard saying that I must bring the
print when I return so that she will have a picture of Bernhard just like he will have a
picture of her at his home.
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Chapter 3
(5 July 1971 - 18 September 1971)
5.7.1971 (Jean)
Dambaiti – Bernhard’s house - with Theo, my little daughter Rosie and Ivo’s mother
‘Meuder’, who has accompanied us into Hamar to help me here in the battle of survival
and work. Ivo away with Bob Gardner to film. Return to Hamar... return to being the
ignorant adult in a foreign culture. In the six months that I was away, I have unlearned
much. The language;- everyone is amazed, I used to be so good, and now! Now my
tongue does not move as it should. I have spent much effort learning German, am still
struggling to speak with Meuder in that language, and this has acted as a barrier to
speaking and understanding Hamar.
6.7.1971
Days of difficulty, children and sick stomachs unaccustomed to water, milk and young
sorghum, maize and beans. Last night, Theo was sick three times in his sleep and Rosie
has a bad stomach and cries, oh what a cryer! But the beauty of Hamar land, of the
geniality around the coffee pot, the fields, the dream world of the bush are here again,
and as Ivo remarks, my feet are back upon the ground. So much for the return, let the
problems remain silent as they are overcome and left behind. From now on I will
report upon our friends and neighbours as I get to know about them.
Banko’s wife, Lalo, gave birth to a son in her field yesterday. The son of Gardu is
dead, one of my best young friends in Dambaiti. He died only a few months old. Theo
was to give his name. Aikenda is pregnant, big with swollen belly. Who is the man?…
Also, Baldambe’s wife Tsasi-inda is about to give birth and Baldambe has gone to the
cattle camps to get a bull to be slaughtered for his wife after she has delivered the baby.
Kairambe is cutting a new field in the bush and Surrambe is herding the cattle.
Berhane, Baldambe’s younger brother, is here - young, intelligent and pleasant,
torn in his obligations and desires. He would like to go to dances and go hunting, but
feels obliged to go and help his mother with the fields and herds up in Kadja, and is
pressured by Baldambe to go to get cattle and goats from debtors etc. Duka’s girls are
playing the flutes in their successful fields. Old Kolmo is looking after their herds.
Gemarro and his family are in their field but I haven’t seen much of them, as
usual they are mysteriously there.
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Many suffer from malaria; I give medicine to fevered bidders non-stop. This
seems to be a year of sickness. Bob and Ivo are trying to film the rituals of ridding the
country of disease.
13.7. 1971
Yesterday evening Ginonda had a fight with her little son Lomoluk. Ginonda gave
Lomoluk a couple of muna. Lomoluk asked for milk and Ginonda said there was none.
So Lomoluk flung the muna at her and one went into her eye; it was so painful that
tears came and kept coming. Ginonda then chased Lomoluk out of the house and
around the homestead trying to hit him with her leather cape, Lomoluk screaming like
a madman. In the end, Ginonda got hold of Lomoluk and nearly strangled him in
revenge. Lomoluk stayed the night in Kairambe’s house and in the morning went with
Aikenda’s daughter, Kuni, to the fields. Only now, this evening, Ginonda saw Lomoluk
again face to face.
14.7.1971
Baldambe had planned to leave days ago; but he is still here. Now he is cleaning the
kraals saying that they stink and are harbouring sickness. He added: “Only children can
leave when they have planned to. A man plans to leave and then looks to see whether
there is an important job to be finished before going.”
18.8.1971
At night I dream that since I cannot be content to be like a Hamar woman, doing the
drudgery and taking second best, I must leave and let Ivo live with Aikenda.
21.8.1971
Baldambe, Gemarro and Makonen (yet another younger brother of Baldambe) drank
beer tonight until they were fuzzy-headed and Baldambe asked what could he do, he
who claims only to speak truth, now speaking rubbish?
6.9.1971 (Ivo)
Baldambe and I had intended to see Bob off at the airstrip at the Mission of Dimeka,
but on our way we get entangled in the mysteries of the Hamar bush; there are so many
plants which I still don’t know. Baldambe and I are inspecting some ‘wild-pig-grass’
when Bob’s aeroplane zooms over us: bye-bye filming! The actual hours of filming
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with Bob were great, absorbed me totally and I got a liking for Bob’s icy temperament
which is so akin to the camera. But now he is gone, taking all the film material with
him.
8.9.1971
We are back to systematic ethnography in Dambaiti. During the morning, Baldambe,
Jean and I begin to work on our dictionary of Hamar. We arrange our card index and
listen to a tape on which Baldambe describes the funeral of a young boy who recently
died in Ande.
9.9.1971
Dambaiti is getting quieter again. We don’t need so much water and wood as we
needed when we were filming here with Bob. We don’t give medicine to people who
are not very close to us and don’t buy milk or other food. We hope to cut down our
social relationships to a number small enough to handle.
Early in the morning Anti jingles into our house and, getting my coffee bowl, tells
us that three young men have come demanding cattle and a gun from Baldambe as a
marriage payment from the girl he stole into marriage. I get my tape recorder ready and
record first the hushed talk in Aikenda’s house where Baldambe and his brothers
discuss how to meet the arguments of the in-laws. Then I record the arguments
between the in-laws and the men of Darnbaiti who speak on behalf of Baldambe. An
‘informal’ talk inside the cattle kraal follows, then an ‘official’ talk (again by the gateway of the cattle kraal) and finally, a noisy and relaxed talk around the coffee pot after
all the negotiations are over. Gemarro once again shows himself to be a magnificent
speaker. He has an inexhaustable sense of drama. Is this why Baldambe hates him? Are
they competing with each other?
12.9.191
We are continuing our language work, but Baldambe is occupied with getting hold of a
gun. Long ago he gave a cow to a trader asking him to bring him a certain type of gun
(the Hamar call it Dimas) and now the trader is bringing it. He has already reached the
nearby village of Ande and has meanwhile sent the spring of the gun to Baldambe as a
sign that he is coming to talk business with him. In the afternoon, Baldambe and
Kairambe go to Ande to meet the trader. When he returns, Baldarnbe tells me that he
showed them in Ande what a great crack shot he is so as to prove that he is still young.
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In the evening the trader appears in Dambaiti. He is young and speaks Hamar
fluently. He has been back and forth between Hamar and Arba Minch innumerable
times. He says that when he crossed the Woito river this time, the water reached up to
his chest. The trader says that he wants thirteen head of cattle should the gun
eventually be bought.
Today the Dambaiti children play with Theo and Rosie more than usual,
especially Kuli, Ginonda’s cheeky daughter. She has been carrying Rosie around all day,
for Jean has gone to bed with something that looks like ‘flu.
13.9.1971
Jean is still not well, but our children play happily with the Dambaitians. As Theo’s
playmates are mainly girls, he likes to wear an old leather hide as his ‘cape’ and like the
girls, he grinds. No Hamar boy would be allowed to do that.
14.9.1971
Throughout the day there is much life on our Dambaiti ‘stage’. In the evening a big fire
is blazing as I sit with Baldambe, his brothers and the guests and record their
‘conversations in Dambaiti’.
Jean is very sick, flu and tonsilitis, upset stomach and aching hack... Luckily, the
children play well. The other children and little Gadi, Duka’s daughter, look after Rosie
most of the day. Jean’s friend Banda visits her, saying that she has heard of her
sickness. I rinse out nappies. I had an odd conversation with Baldambe about the
philosophy of the whip. The whip is good for cattle, goats and women. He laughs
heartily when he tells me how a Hamar man will invite his wife for a journey to a
distant place when he is angry with her. Somewhere in the bush he will grab her, bind
her and ‘bring her flesh to the boil’ by using his whip on her. After such treatment a
woman will be docile, good and bear many children.
15.9.1971
Again there are in-laws at Baldambe’s gateway, this time the leader is Baldambe’s young
wife’s oldest classificatory brother. When I arrive with my tape recorder Baldambe and
his brothers and their marriage-go-between, Baldambe’s old friend Wualle, have just
retreated into the cattle kraal for private consultation. The pattern is as it was last time:
first, the sons of Berinas talk in private together with the marriage-go-between, then
the marriage-go-between meets the affines at the gate-way and the affines negotiate
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with him. Then the Berinas sons retreat again and discuss the matter inside the kraal
and upon this the go-between meets the affines again. He, as well as Gemarro and
other men present, talk first, followed by the affines who make their final statement.
Baldambe then drives a female calf for them through the gateway. This is followed by
further cattle transactions and then the go-between hands Baldambe’s wife’s older
brother a gun, together with a bullet belt and six bullets. Baldambe tells me that his
affines were very eager to receive a gun instead of a large number of cattle, because
they themselves had just married and their own affines were eager to get cattle from
them, having already received a gun. If Baldambe’s affines now would collect a
substantial number of cattle, their own affines would soon be sitting at their gateway.
Sic! that’s Hamar politics: ‘hide and seek’!
16.9.1971
A lively coffee session in Kairambe’s house. Baldambe and Wadu attack Surrambe for
meanness and incompetence... Baldambe’s brothers Lukusse, Makonen and Dube are
present. They are silent throughout most of the conversation. This is the first time that
I am able to record live conflict, abuse and argument. In the late afternoon we hear a
shot: Kairambe has tried his new gun and has killed a wild pig. Three of our girls
disappear into the bush and return with the meat at night.
While the meat is simmering in the clay pots we have a long coffee session. There
are guests from Kara and from southern Hamar and we talk about the impending lack
of food. The Kara say that the Burne and Mursi are out of food just like the Kara are.
The Galeba however, had a rich harvest and the Kara have been on grain expeditions
to Galeba. There they have met Turkana and even Samburu trading animals for grain.
Baldambe tells me that he plans to send his brothers Kairambe, Bali and Dube to
Kara to plant fields along the Omo. He has talked about this already with his old bondfriend Zinu who would welcome these three guns as a protection against the Bume He
would offer land in return. Baldambe is convinced that the Bume do not want to fight
the Hamar. They are only at war with the Banna and the Kara. Baldambe and Wadu
then abuse the Banna as cowards and liars.
17.9.1971
I work with Baldambe throughout the day. He tells me the background to the theft of
his new wife: he had consulted a sandal oracle up in Banna which told him all the
details of how to secure his new wife safely.
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Later, in the light of the evening sun, we sit in front of our house. The sun shines
into Jean’s eyes and suddenly Baldambe leans forward and looks at her intensely. Then
he takes her hand and looks at her skin: - blast! Now we can see it, Jean is yellow:
jaundice, liver troubles...
18.9.1971
We know that we will have to leave but we can’t be off all at once and so Jean rests and
our Hamar hosts prepare their medicine for her: Kairambe and Makonen slaughter a
sheep and cut its stomach open and ask Jean to inhale. While Jean inhales, Duka joins
her bringing along little Assi who has not been feeling well for some time. Duka rubs
her allover with the content of the sheep’s stomach. Before this, Baldambe had laid
some of the intestines over Assi’s eyes and then had cut a small piece of the intestines
and flung it across the thorn fence into the bush, exclaiming: “May the sickness leave
with you!”
In the evening, as Baldambe and I talk and I record his narratives, the project of
our first possible Hamar book takes shape in my head: Baldambe describing his
country, his people, his family, his father and himself. There is so much poetry and
expression in his descriptions. These and the rhythym of his speech should be
reproduced in a book: the fast passages and interludes, the accelerations, the lingering
of his voice. What a job it would be to translate such tapes! But if we were able to
manage the translation without losing the quality of the actual speech, then something
beautiful could result.
At night I give medicine to Ginonda and her son Gino who are both not well and
I again realise that we are getting closer to each other here in Dambaiti through
sickness, sickness which we share. Everybody gets sick at times. Our children, our
Hamar neighbours and now Jean. We all are a ‘community of suffering’ in Turner’s
sense. Baldambe tells me that he was bothered one night when Theo was crying badly.
Why was he crying? He was not ill. He sensed that there was illness coming in his
family. “You see, now Jean has fallen sick.” Theo was like the cattle and goats who also
sense sickness: “When the cattle walk straight home, the bells ringing strongly and
regularly, that’s a good sign, but if the herds don’t want to enter the gateway, when they
have to be driven in by repeated hitting, that’s a bad sign, then there will be illness.”
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Chapter 4
(3 May 1972 - 28 August 1972)
3.5.1972 (Ivo)
We have lost track of the day of the week and the exact time. This means we are truly
back to our routine of ethnographic work.
Yesterday, Baldambe and I were translating his outline of Hamar life and we both
realised that Baldambe’s first description of the initiation ritual was too short, confused
and unsatisfactory to be included in our ‘book’. So we decided to discard this passage
of the original tape and Baldambe dictates the elements of this ritual anew.
The experiment turned out to be quite difficult at the start, because Baldambe
had to drop all the gestures which usually accompany his talk, he had to translate them
into words, which was not easy for him at times. But slowly he managed and we got a
neat piece of dictation done. Perhaps at other points in the recorded narrative, we will
turn again to dictation to clear up complicated points.
Today the greenness of the country around us, its infinite colours and shapes,
have spurred me into starting a series of photos of all Hamar plants that have some
ritual and symbolic significance, of baraza, gali and the many creepers that symbolize
fertility, of the good-smelling plants like karko which symbolize health, of the thorny
plants, of the bitter plants...
At night we drink coffee in Duka’s house where there are guests, who discuss the
topic of Omalle’s departure to her dead husband’s family. I record because I think the
conversations might be interesting. Yet today they are slow and I hardly understand
anything. I understand only words and phrases, but the contextual meaning escapes
me. What points are the speakers making? They definitely make them, but the speeches
of today relate to so many prior events, persons, implied values and judgements, they
contrast with statements made before by the same or another speaker…. To
understand the language you must not only know the culture generally, you must know
every niche and corner of its recent history and the events shaping the interests of the
actors (and speakers). Jean and I wonder whether we’ll ever reach such a point.
Well, at this moment we have our work on the stylized forms of Hamar life, on
ritual, which is the bulk of Baldambe’s narrative which we want to translate during
these days, and this is enough for the time being.
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4.5.1972
At night I sit in front of Ginonda’s house in the company of the Hamar and some
Bume guests. The talk is especially interesting, because it summarizes what is important
in the relationship between the Hamar and the Bume. At some point, Jean came over
and wanted to join the conversation, but felt that the men did not want her (I did not
see her). So when I return, I find Jean up tight and antagonistic and our old fight flares
up, the one which made the Hamar wonder the other night. We have come to battle
with the conflicts and inequalities between Hamar men and Hamar women in our own
way. Somehow the dissonance which surrounds us is carried into our relationship. Jean
regrets that all the dreary and hard work is loaded on to her, that she is always bound to
the house and the children, that her ethnographic work always comes second. I have
the joy of the coffee sessions, I escape to the working chair and table in the shade, I
don’t look after the children, nor do I prepare the meals, nor do I do the washing up.
In Europe it would be easy for us to have an egalitarian setup. If Jean and I had
equally valid work to do, we would take the children in turn and do the cooking just as
our timetables allowed it. Here things are different. Hamar culture strongly rejects any
reversal of female and male roles. The logical possibility that I take over the running of
the house and the children while Jean goes and sits with the men to drink coffee and
work with them does not fit into everyday Hamar life. We are moving under a cloud.
Thunder and flashes of lightning approach us rapidly in the evening, but there is
no rain.
5.5.1972
Jean works with Baldambe all morning translating passages of the ‘narrative’. I repair
the Land Rover.
In the afternoon I take over and Baldambe and I work till late at night. When
we are exhausted, Ginonda calls us to have food which she prepared during the day.
She truly “carries the village on her back”, as Baldambe says.
8.5.1972
Last night a young relative of my ‘mother’ Gadi arrived for a visit and Baldambe asked
him to perform his magic to rid the fields of parasites. The young man is able to
perform this task because he belongs to the magically powerful clan of Gasi. This
morning, when it is still dark, I hear Baldambe’s voice: “Get up, my friend!” When I
step out of the house, I find the young magician and Makonen waiting for me. We walk
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down to the fields and when we reach them, the magician takes off his loin-cloth and
walks naked into the field bending down head after head of the sorghum plants looking
for parasites. When there is none, he shakes the stem of the plant and moves on. After
some time, he finds the parasite. He grabs it, bites off its head and throws it towards
the forest. He encircles all the fields from left to right. I see him pick up only three
parasites. When he has finished his task and we walk back to the homestead, he tells
me that from now on he will not eat from the crops that are growing in these fields.
9.5.1972
Routine ethnography! We don’t join any of the early morning coffee sessions in
Gemarro’s and in Ginonda’s house. We have a lie-in until 7 a.m., then finish our
morning jobs like buying water, wood, milk, etc. from girls and women who bring it.
Was ourselves and the kids, hide our blankets (no property must be shown in Hamar!),
prepare and eat breakfast (wheat porridge wit brown sugar or honey and milk on it, tea
and occasionally bread which Jean bakes). After breakfast we go to work. Jean
translates with Baldambe his marathon tapes and I construct a roof which fits half way
around our decaying shade tree. When my job is finished, it looks like a sail put up for
shade.
Our young magician was fed with honey today after he had per formed his ritual
in the fields for the second time.
10.5.1972
Early in the morning, I sit in the shade of our new ‘sail’ and try to work, while
Baldambe is occupied building fences for the cattle kraal. Again I realise how little
headway I make when Baldambe is not helping me. There are so many words that I
don know and so many things are alluded to of which I don’t have the slightest idea.
Only when Baldambe comes and joins me do I make some progress. We work all
morning. Baldambe’s tapes is truly a frame and guidelines for our research. It contains
much, yet its additional value is that it stimulates further questions to discover details to
fill out the picture.
Example: later this afternoon we work through Baldambe’s description of the
night when the initiand gets his head shaved and becomes a maz. Gemarro sits with us
and listens and suddenly says: “maz (initiated young man) and ma (woman) are one and
the same!” At one point the maz puts on a skin like that of a little girl and he may never
sit on a stool. He may not even piss like a man, he has to sit down like a woman. That’s
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why ethnographic field work can’t be done in a day. The interpretation of symbols and
the meaning of institutions can’t be arrived at in a quick and predictable way. Today,
after almost two years of inquiry, I am given this amazing equation for the first time.
Gernarro gives it spontaneously and without being asked and obviously Baldambe
(who just has turned up) knew this equation well, yet nobody has ever told me about it.
New problems and possibilities are thrown up with this. The maz become more
mysterious than before. Obviously, some of our earlier theories don’t hold now... and I
wonder what more lies hidden and will never be discovered by us, although the Hamar
know about it and would, if stimulated in the right way, happily reveal it to us.
It is a quiet day. Few people come to us and I don’t feel any restraint about
chasing away those who do. Yes, some people know it now: the strangers in Dambaiti
don’t want visitors, they want to sit in the shade and talk with Aike Berinas and write a
book. Choke dropped in at our house on his way back from Simbale. There are two
widows in Simbale, the wives of an older classificatory brother of Choke. Choke’s older
brother Dikera took the elder wife as his mistress and Choke the younger one.
They don’t live with them, but they occasionally visit and sleep with them. The children
born are counted as the children of the dead man. When we went to Addis Ababa, I
had given Choke several things and today I realise that he has given them all away: his
shirt, his blanket, etc. he has passed them on to his age-mate. A ‘political’ move or part
of his general friendliness and social orientation? Probably both. Choke’s father died
early and he grew up as a dependent of his mother’s brother. This probably has
contributed to his friendliness towards everybody (including us ethnographers), his
battle to build himself a basis in Hamar society.
In the evening I again take the camera, the tripod and two lenses (55 and 200
mm) and take photos of plants, my theme remaining the thorns and the lush plants that
are used in rituals: kai, martsu, sobala, wolkanti, kaera, baraza...
13.5.1972
Baldambe and I work all afternoon. We are reaching the end of the chapter about the
initiation ritual.
At night, we hear from afar the singing of men who are returning from a
successful hunt. When they arrive we realise that Kairambe is among them: his five
companions carry the two tusk of an elephant which he killed near the Kizo cattle
camps. The hunters first halt at the dancing ground where they continue to sing until
Gemarro arrives on the scene with his spear. He greets each man by taking his right
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hand and lifting it high above his head. Then the tusks are placed on to the ground and,
pointing his spear towards the tusks on the ground Gemarro leads a chant in which he
and the hunters call for further successful hunting: “May the game die, may it die, may
its eyes get blinded, get blinded...!” After a short pause, the hunters begin to sing again
and while they are singing other men of Dambaiti come and greet them by raising their
weapons in their hands. Slowly the hunters move over to the cattle kraal of Berinas’
sons where Baldambe welcomes them at the gateway with a song. The women also
collect there, greeting the hunters with a shrill elelelele call. When the men have reached
the gateway, Baldambe’s old sister Maiza dances in front of them clapping her iron
rings then she puts her beads around Kairambe’s neck and one after the other all the
women of the homestead decorate Kairambe with their beads, belts and metal
ornaments. A goat is slaughtered and Kairambe washes his hands in its blood.
Meanwhile my ‘mother’ has put on coffee in front of her house and as we all settle
down on cow hides to wait for the coffee and talk, I bring my tape recorder along
because I hope to catch some of the knowledge and spirit of hunting big game. But no
easy conversation develops, because Baldambe is angry that Surrambe had let himself
be persuaded to kill an ox down at the cattle camps to celebrate his younger brother’s
successful hunt. Baldambe is, in fact, enraged. Such a slaughtering of a cow by the killer
himself is not according to custom, he says, and he insists that later he will fine the men
who were responsible. One day he will get his age-mates to agree with him and then he
will ask the men of the Kizo cattle camps to slaughter another ox as retribution for
wrongly demanding and slaughtering one of his.
14.5.1972
Last night’s uneasiness makes me think about Baldambe’s and our position in Hamar.
In spite of our generally good relations with the Hamar a certain rancour exists at
times. This is not surprising, for working almost regular hours, having a project, our
travels, our comparative wealth, our use of modern goods and equipment etc. makes us
different. But not just different, also exclusive, whether we want it or not. We can only
work regularly if we send away people who intrude on us when we want to work. We
can only carry ourselves and very few others in our Land Rover. We can only feed a
very few in our house... and then, after all, we always look at events rather than really
take part in them. This applies to Baldambe as well as to us. I think he always was to a
certain degree an outsider in Hamar, being the son of a deceased great political leader
and having worked at times with the Ethiopian Government in the administration of
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Hamar. His new job as ‘anthropologist’ has not changed this, perhaps it has even
increased his isolation at times, not so much from the outside but, psychologically,
from the inside. That is why (like last night) Baldambe so often has a sharp tongue and
is so critical of Hamar. If the Hamar don’t conform to the true old customs, then they
are bad. Have the old customs become so valuable to him because we are trying to
study them? He does not take the crooks and liars as a matter of course like other
Hamar seem to do: he vehemently asserts that in former times things were better. At
the bottom of his critical views lies, I think, his ambition to control people. But in spite
of his famous name, he has no power beyond his immediate family circle. No Hamar
follows a pattern of submission as the Amhara do for example. Baldambe will never be
able to control the Hamar as he would like to. We have been thinking of accepting
Baldambe’s request to take him to Europe when we go there next. Will that not
alienate him even more? Who knows? We feel that we must not stop half-way, we must
go with Baldambe to Europe, must let him participate in the making of his book to the
end and must help him understand the value of our anthropological work, even if this
may mean that all his gratification will ultimately rest in his own mind.
15.5.1972
As the sun goes down we drink coffee which old Maiza serves to us. While we drink
and talk, Tsasi-inda, Baldambe’s wife, arrives. I am amazed as I often am at the fact
that husband and wife hardly look at each other when meeting even after a long spell
of separation. We have a lively and at times rude conversation. We discuss the difficulty
of finding out the connection between different things of the same name and different
names for the same thing. We take the ‘prick’ as an example, called sama in Hamar,
which also means ‘fat’, the fat tail of a sheep in particular. But what about the fact that
a sama becomes a banzi when it is cut off an enemy? Banzi is also the name of a ritual
object used in the initiation ritual of the young men. I follow this chain of related
meanings up to this point and then Baldambe suddenly has one of his characteristic
‘dictionary’ moments: “Yes, I have thought about this connection between banzi (penis)
and banzi (ritual symbol). There is truly a connection between them because just like
the warrior who has killed an enemy, the initiand who has received the banzi may not
be touched by women. But not only this: the penis of the enemy is sewn onto the tail
of a stolen cow with the bark of the martsu tree whilst the thorns of the martsu tree are
used when the banzi is sewn onto the initiand’s little finger. In both cases, only martsu
may be used!”
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Fieldwork can be really satisfying at times when emotional excitement and
cognitive achievement fall together and such moments occur most often when we
work with Baldambe. For some time I have wanted to write about this, yet it is difficult
to say what I mean: The greatest satisfactions of ethnographic work here in Hamar
have mostly centred around Baldambe. Living in Hamar always means kau (bush). i.e.
confusion and the inability to see far. The customs, ideas, values and most of the
concrete historical events evade us... and then amidst our confusion, we talk to
Baldambe and suddenly things fall into place. Each time when something ‘clicks’, when
separate things suddenly relate, then we are excited and happy and feel more confident
of being able, one day, to ‘look through the forest of Hamar symbols’ (to paraphrase
Turner).
16.5.1972
Today I have reached the preliminary end of the translation of the tapes and dictations
of the initiation ritual. Much still remains obscure, but the skeleton of the rituals has
been put into (bad) English and we and anybody else can now operate with the data. I
worked intensively and it took me about three weeks to arrive at about thirty pages of
text. This may be slow progress considering that Baldambe and I did not work on
anything else besides this. Yet, this is the speed of our work. When we are tired we lie
down and sleep and there are visitors, coffee sessions and rituals which distract us. And
then, of course, sometimes one single page involves a whole morning of discussion.
Often it is I and not Baldambe who gets tired first. The disparity of the information,
the continuous effort to grasp relationships between items exhaust me. No, not just
items, whole sub-systems of Hamar culture. I have to operate with them without
having totally grasped them. Let me explain by means of one such sub-system, the
kinship system: The system is so intricate, I need so much additional information
which qualifies the basic rules... it’s maddening. Take for example the extension of a
clan, the range of classificatory brothers. This always seems to be situational:
sometimes your clan extends very far, sometimes it does not. When Baldambe or
someone else explains something to me, kinship relations and kinship terms always play
a large role and their meaning and content are taken for granted, they are just a part of
the language itself, almost a part of nature. Everybody knows what an aka is, even if
one day she is an old woman and the next day a young girl. Everybody knows how he
relates to his wife’s father, but I don’t understand why one calls him bais one moment
and imba at another... As ethnography is a solitary job, we don’t know whether our
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progress is quick or slow. Would another anthropologist already have cracked the code
of Hamar ritual, would he have understood the Hamar kinship system by now? Well, I
don’t think this really matters, the only thing that counts right now is the quality of
Baldambe’s ‘book’ on which we are working.
17.5.1972
Today there was a public meeting in Dambaiti at Kula’s homestead. No one called us
because, I think, we have been driving away everybody who disturbed our work.
Baldambe has mixed feelings, but we are happy that they leave us alone even if that
means that we have antagonized them a little. It is better that we get some work done
in self-imposed isolation. When the body of the text is translated, we will call the men
again, have coffee and discuss the topics of the book to find out what was forgotten
and what was wrong. Jean works with Baldambe in the morning and I work with him
through the afternoon. We have started a new segment of translation, dealing with
boyhood.
19.5.1972
Jean keeps a close watch on everything that angers her in Hamar, especially the
position of women. Her latest theory: the driving force of early civilization was the
successful enslavement of women by men. Burdening the women with all the work
freed the men to sit and talk, train their imagination and acquire more knowledge...
(Jean) Or, to put it in another way: because women were so capable, because they
could provide all that was necessary for themselves and their children, the men had to
find occupation elsewhere, and at first this was the occupation of invention in the
sphere of words and ritual and later in the sphere of nature…
20.5.1972 (Jean)
While walking around and looking at the country I am struck by the termite hill with its
large holes leading deep into the earth. It seems quite reasonable that the Dogon
should have the myth which says the termite hill was the vagina of the earth. There are
no other holes in the countryside which lead into the earth’s centre quite this way. If
the earth has to have a vagina, quite clearly the termite hill with its deep hole is it. The
children are attracted to these holes and like to put things inside, sticks, stones, their
hands: there is something about them which catches their attention. The Hamar put
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snakes they have killed into these holes and they are said to be the holes snakes go to
hide or to sleep in.
22.5.1972 (Ivo)
We are almost two thirds through Baldambe’s text and when we have completed
translation and annotation, we plan to return to the old style of ‘participant
observation’ plus some census work on Dambaiti. This will be entertaining and bring
us back to our neighbours: genealogies, interviews on economics, raiding, politics, life
histories etc.
31.5.1972
Jean has ‘discovered’ that the power of the word which is so important in blessing and
chanting is closely related to the actual command of men over women. Men always
accompany the activities of the women with a command. A command which is
seemingly unnecessary, yet part of the system of thought and action. If the man refrains
from his (functionally) unnecessary command, the woman refrains from her necessary
action... Such ‘discoveries’ have an odd point. They are, in fact, theories, ethnographic
theories, yet the moment they are put down on paper or are told to someone, they
vanish as simple cultural ‘facts’. Another example: In Hamar there are three kinds of
plants used in ritual: the bitter, the exuberant, the thorny. The bitter is used for rituals
of affliction, the exuberant for rituals of fertility and peace, the thorny for rituals of
aggression. These sound like facts, but these ‘facts’ are nothing but a configuration of
several theories - which are possibly wrong and certainly not exhaustive.
2.6.1972
Jean was insulted twice today by the Hamar, who want to show her where her place is.
Early in the morning, Ginonda calls me for coffee and adds that Jean should stay put
and do her house work. Yesterday I did not join the coffee session of the morning, but
Jean did. To stop this from happening again, today Baldambe has ordered Ginonda to
deliver his cruel message. In the evening, Duka brings us a bowl of food. Without
greeting or any sign of friendship, she hands it to Jean: “This is for Baldambe and Ivo.”
She implicitely excludes Jean who is supposed to eat what is left over. (Jean) I am too
sensitive on these points, but I just can’t stop rejecting the idea that women be denied
social status and rewards. I will never accept it even though I realise that I can’t change
Hamar culture. I am proud, I believe I am as good as anyone else, whether that other
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person has a penis or a vagina! And I deserve to enjoy drinking coffee and talking
about things just as any man does. When this is denied me, I am insulted - I shall
always be insulted, I will even claim that Hamar women are constantly being insulted they don’t take offence as I do because they have been brought up to accept the insult.
4.6.1972 (Ivo)
We keep on with the translation of Baldambe’s tapes. Quietly, the substance of a book
has accumulated. Perhaps by the end of this month we will have finished the job!
7.6.1972
This translation marathon exhausts me and today I read Ulysses. Yet I don’t enjoy it:
Joyce’s richness seems empty to me, at least from my Hamar perspectives. I read with
delight and surprise his discovery of the properties of water and then it lets me down
because it is not a discovery with an internal structure but a gush of mixed and
repeated associations. I wonder which authors I will like to read when we have
returned to Europe. I dream of texts about general themes such as fire, water, wind,
sky, earth, male, female. Texts that structure these generalities, bring to light their
different possibilities and the conditions of these possibilities. I have a great appetite
for good surrealism, surrealism that explores the qualities of symbols of rich and poor,
hard and soft, hot and cold, continuous and discontinous, - surrealism that implicitly
deals with all the symbols contained in our Hamar material.
Surrealists explore symbols by counterposing them. They find the forms in which
symbols exist and then they try to invent them themselves, following the code of those
symbols that already exist. Think of the contrasts between Hamar symbols of peace,
richness, abundance, harmony, temperance etc.: the heart-shaped green, soft, thick
creepers like gali and kalle. Then think of the symbols of aggression: the bright, hard
and pointed spikes of such trees as zaut or sobala. Or the simple ritual action of rubbing
the white and soft fat of a sheep on to someone’s heart by means of a black and hard
stone. I would also like to read books that contain well-written conversations. Joyce
ought to be exactly what I am looking for, yet he doesn’t move me. Perhaps because
his problems are not mine and I am antagonistic towards Freudian psychology?
8.6.1972
I am still not getting on with the job of translating. Europe is in my mind and I talk
with Jean about it. Time has changed, we have changed, but our old social relationships
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haven’t, they are where we left them years ago. Nor have our clothes changed. Will I
don my old donkey jacket again, my grey sweater, the herring-bone tweed suit, the
black Stiller shoes which split on the inside of the left shoe seven years ago? It is unreal
to think of creeping back into old relationships as though they were old clothes - yet
they are the only ones we have ‘up there in Europe’.
15.6.1972
Jean and I have worked hard on translation during the past days and today Jean finishes
her 43 page chapter on the women.
Baldambe dictates material to me relating to the maersha and the michere rituals and now
we have almost finished our ‘book’. Jean is going to translate the last chapter, the one
on the fields, while I start our close-up study of Dambaiti. I begin this work by
measuring out the dimensions of Dambaiti’s different ‘stages’: the kraals, the houses,
the dancing ground, etc…. While I walk across these ‘stages’ in the heat of the day
holding my notebook and counting paces, the country around me vibrates with heat:
no sound, no people, no animals, only from afar do I hear the voices of Baldambe and
Jean discussing the rituals of the fields.
18.6.1972
Banko has invited Baldambe and me to join him in the harvesting of his field, so this
morning we three work together cutting his sorghum. It takes me back twenty-five
years to the time when I used to help harvest wheat and barley in Neuenkirchen. The
harvest is something special. The sound of the leaves and stalks as they are cut and put
into bundles, the smell and the colours of the ripe seeds, your own sweat and the heat
of the sun. Furthermore, what we are now harvesting will be the basis for future
happiness. To make the harvest a ‘social’ event, as Jean says, is a way of expressing
one’s happiness and pride at bringing in a good harvest. We stop working at noon and
then drink coffee in Banko’s house. Lalo serves us food.
20.6.1972
Last night there was a lively dance in Dambaiti. At its climax the older men suddenly
appeared from the bush with whips and they whipped and chased away younger ones
like Makonen, Muko etc. After the dance had stopped, rain gradually began to fall a
heavy and steady rain which is rare in Hamar. In the morning we drink coffee in
Aikenda’s house, together with several Dambaitians like old Balle, Kula the ‘black’ and
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Kula the ‘tall’, Gemarro, Baldambe. Kula the ‘black’ tells us of the whipping last night.
He says that tomorrow night they will try to catch Uri, Baldambe’s affine, the younger
brother of Haila. Uri has been wearing the decorations of a killer and has been boasting
about having killed a Mursi. He should be down in the cattle camps protecting the
herds instead of dancing in the village and being spoilt by the girls. Baldambe tells me
later that Uri will by now have heard of the intention of the older men and will leave of
his own accord to do his duty at the cattle camps.
Just for fun I ask Gemarro who called the rain that fell last night and he
spontaneously replies that it was the bitta. “When did he call for the rain?” “The other
day when we sent him the milk container.” Yes, there are always rituals happening,
even when the ethnographers don’t know about it. Tomorrow the milk container
which has been blessed by the bitta is expected in Dambaiti after having passed first
through the settlements of Galgina and Worbasha.
I realise that Ginonda is not around and ask Baldambe where she is. He tells me
that she has gone to her mother’s funeral and adds that her mother hanged herself
yesterday because she no longer got any pleasure from life after having been ill for
many years.
21.6.1972
We have embarked on our ‘Dambaiti Survey’, a systematic inquiry into the social and
economic activities and interrelationships of our neighbours in Dambaiti. We both
began by interviewing our ‘subjects’ at their places of work in the fields and we both
found that they were too busy with other tasks to answer our questions. So we decided
to invite them to our house and our shade tree and it looks as if our survey will again
become a piece of ‘armchair-anthropology’. The ears seem to be more important than
the eyes, at least at this stage of our research.
Finding that Banko is too busy to answer questions, I take a walk through the
fields. When I come to Muko-inda’s field, she laughs and says: “Theo-imba, are you
going naked today?”, meaning that I should carry a stick. She hands me her old
woman’s woko (a stick with a hook) to ‘cover’ myself.
22.6.1972
Kula the ‘tall’ brings the sweet and comforting plants of the bitta after sunset. He
carries them into our part of the village in a wide calabash bowl. The milk container of
the bitta is hung up at the gateway of Kula the ‘black’, our gudili.
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23.6.1972
Jean interviews Duka in the afternoon, this is her beginning of the Dambaiti survey.
24.6.1972
We spend most of the day in our house deciding which questions to include in our
questionnaire.
25.6.1972
Jean spends the afternoon working with Galti and she gets halfway through the
questionnaire in a session of three hours.
I apply the questionnaire to Baldambe and after several hours we have not
reached the end. It is a long questionnaire and it contains some seemingly odd
questions like ‘do you chew tobacco’, but we hope to learn a lot from it. Galti turns out
to be a good informant. She is the sister of Kula our ‘priest’ and Jean has begun
interviewing her because she and Galti are good friends. My age-mate Banko realises
that we have started an interesting enterprise and he says he will answer my questions
tomorrow.
26.6.1972
At 3 p.m. Banko and I begin our interview. It is very pleasant and interesting to talk
to Banko and when after two hours we stop to drink coffee, I have learnt a lot. Later
we continue and old Kalma comes along. He, who is always deaf, can, to my
surprise, suddenly hear and turns out to be a lexicon on Hamar kinship relations. He
knows who is married to whom, who is son or daughter of whom... allover Hamar.
Because he always goes to pick up food and drink on ritual occasions, he seems to
know how people are related to each other. I must explore Kalma’s potential further.
(Jean) While Ivo interviews Banko I interview Galti once again and am busy all day
with intermarriage - it is a very satisfying job.
(Ivo) As we work independently of each other and have to be able to read through
each other’s notes, we decide to re-write each interview after it is held, so that we do
not end up with a host of sheets of notes but instead have a set of duplicated and
ordered interviews. This will slow us down now, but it means that we create a coherent
set of data which, like out ‘book’, will later make analysis easier.
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27.6.1972
I spend the afternoon interviewing Banko. Several men like old Balle and Aike
Burdimbe sit around us and listen.
In the evening my friend Choke visits us. As I have been thinking of getting
some more information about settlements further away from Dambaiti, I ask Choke
a question which I had asked Baldambe already: “Would you go and count houses
and kraals in far away villages for me?” The answer is like Baldambe’s: “No!” People
would get suspicious, talk bad about him and. ruin his name and his health. Choke
prefers to return to his mountain and continue to earn his living with his beehives.
29.6.1972
I continue my interview with Banko. I work till midday and still don’t finish it. We
arrange to talk together again the day after tomorrow. In the evening I arrange with
Gemarro to interview him tomorrow.
30.6.1972
Life is going on around us and our work takes its course and in the midst of it Jean and
I have, as so often before, our own dialogue: we would like to write something about
‘inequality in an egalitarian society’, Yet there are some methodological problems: the
inequality and the struggle for authority is one of the features which we have been
observing since we first arrived in Hamar. Our observation must be true, yet there is no
method in it. The on-going battle for authority simply strikes us, first because we did
not expect it and secondly because we don’t like it... We wonder about this, about how
some things are ‘visible’ and accessible only through our eyes. If we were to ask the
Hamar about them we would get no answer. Why, for example, do young men clap
their sandals violently on the ground when they leave a place? Why do girls and young
boys mumble when they are asked questions by an elder? We see these forms of
behaviour, ask “why?” and intuitively find answers. Answers which will be found to be
true only when the analysis has moved through different stages and the answers have
been substantiated by other kinds of empirical data.…
Other phenomena, like the ‘facts’ of our ‘book’ on Hamar rituals, can only be arrived at
by listening to descriptions and explanations, by listening to the conscious expositions
of someone who at one and the same time is both analyst and actor, men such as
Baldambe, Ogotemmeli, Muchona... And then one moves to the statistical and distant
perspective of the outside observer as we do now in our survey. Will we ever be able to
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show simultaneously the process of our developing perception and the result of it? We
wonder whether we should publish all our material in a single book of nine hundred
and ninety nine pages, starting with the ‘visible’ facts of Hamar culture and moving via
the ‘audible’ to the ‘hidden’. From there we should move on to the statistical level,
drawing on our survey and case material. After all the material had been presented,
connections could be drawn and a piece of Hamar social structure could be woven,
ending with a chapter on our puzzling theme: ‘Inequality in an egalitarian society’.
For the time being, luckily we are free to do whatever we like and the final shape
of our research does not matter. We just follow the internal logic of our inquiry and
undeniably the next logical step after our study of the ‘meta-language’ of ritual is our
economic and social survey of Dambaiti. Not surprisingly the survey brings us close to
the Hamar once more. Getting to know them much better than ever before, we see
them in a new light. Each becomes dearer to us, each gets a new and more complex
identity and each one becomes more lonely the more we get to know him. Jean realises
this first: “In spite of all their kin and neighbours, the Hamar battle on their own, each
in his incomplete, improvised way. And all are quite odd like Gemarro, Duka,
Baldambe, Banko…”
1.7.1972
Jean interviews Duka all day and gets an amazing wealth of data. Duka is very
interested in the work and turns out to be a kind of female Baldambe. She is happy to
hear that she has given Jean more information than any other woman. When night
comes, we hear from afar the singing of men returning from killing a dangerous animal.
Baldambe goes to the gateway of the cattle kraal to welcome them with his song and I
go to the dancing ground to greet them there. When I raise the right hand of the first
and tallest hunter I recognise in the dark my misso Bali. He has killed a buffalo.
Gemarro arrives with his spear. Didn’t Baldambe and I write the rituals of hunting
down in our ‘book’? So I sing happily, together with Gemarro and the other men of
Dambaiti, the song which Baldambe has taught me: Yo-woi-o-o, ... Wungenwulishe ... and
we bury the hooves of the buffalo in the dance ground. Then the hunters move to the
gateway where they are welcomed be Baldambe’s song and the women’s ellellelle.
Baldame’s son Tsasi brings a young goat and the hunting friend of Bali kills it and spills
the blood over Bali’s neck. Later in the cattle kraal Baldambe passes a big calabash
bowl around. It contains milk and water. He drinks from it and sprays it over us,
blessing us: seliseliseli, ‘may the fate of the wild animals be good!’
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2.7.1972
Last night Ginonda returned from her mother’s funeral. This morning her voice is
rough and heavy when she sticks her head through the door to say nagaia. “It is our
habit to cry at a funeral,” she explains to us, “and so my voice got harsh when I walked
through the country crying and singing of my sorrow. When I reached my mother’s
homestead my voice had become rough and after some days of wailing I lost it
altogether. It came back only yesterday.” In spite of the roughness, her voice still
carries normal warmth and power of expression. We used to call Ginonda ‘clown’ and
she truly is one, a substantial one like those of Shakespeare. She certainly did not only
cry about her mother ‘because it is habit’, but because she has an open and warm heart.
She goes straight back into action here in Dambaiti, cutting fresh green leaves for the
goat kids, carrying water and wood, preparing the meals. In the evening all the men and
women drink the coffee she has prepared in front of her house.
Jean and I spend all day writing up our interviews. Getting all these genealogical
data now feels funny, feels ‘professional’, hundred percent ‘anthropological’, for is
there anything more typical of our field than kinship and kinship diagrams? Yes,
perhaps ritual, and we already have buckets-full of that.
3.7.1972 (Jean)
Homework continues. Ivo writes up his interviews of Banko and Baldambe while I
bake bread, wash clothes, buy and sell things with numerous people... Then Gardu
turns up as she said she would and I am happy to continue the interview which I had
begun with her. We go through a lot or her genealogy and she is very good, even better
than Duka in that she points out relationships that are not obvious from the genealogy
and reminds me that there are more children of so-and-so. She distinguishes clearly
between the children of different wives etc. Duka comes by. She is obviously rather
jealous that I should be interviewing Gardu just as I had interviewed her and when we
have finished the tea which I had put on, she says I should give Gardu what she wants
arid send her home, because she is ‘the mother of a young baby’ However, when Duka
has departed, Gardu says she’s not tired and only if I am tired must we halt. She says
she will come again tomorrow after she has finished weeding her field.
4.7.1972 (Ivo)
Today Jean is working with Gardu and I am working with Banko to clarify several
points which are still obscure after our first interviews. As the wind plays with my
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papers outside in the shade I work in our ‘rnen’s-house’. So this morning we shout
from one section of the house to the other: “What is the clan of so-and-so’s second
wife?” etc. The house is turning into a real ‘workshop’ and I think of Evans-Pritchard,
Meyer Fortes etc. as we weave the ‘webs of kinship’ that surround us.
9.7.1972
Early in the morning four young Kara men arrive. They bring a complaint and ask the
Dambaitians for assistance: Gilo’s son from Ande village has taken a gun by force from
one of his Kara guests. Gilo’s son took the gun because the Kara man owed him a
leopard skin.
The Kara have coffee with Baldambe first and later go over to Gemarro’s house
to talk to Kula the ‘black’, Banko, Balle and the others who have arrived there. Then
they go back to talk with Baldambe again. It strikes me that Gemarro, Kula, Balle etc.
do not, however, talk with Baldambe! In the end, the Kara are sent away with the
remark that not all the men of Dambaiti are present today (which is not in fact true)
and that they should return another day. Is this a trick to postpone negotiations and
decisions?
Maybe it is an important principle of Hamar arbitration, but it also seems to
contain an element of competition for power and decision-making. Dambaiti is divided
and it is not clear who is to be the decision-maker. Baldambe (as the Kara seem to
think)? Obviously Gemarro, Kula and Balle think this should not be so. Gemarro has
done his hair recently, has stuck a small white feather in his clay cap and has painted his
face red. What a transformation! He has cleared his homestead and kraal of all weeds
and dirt and has repaired the fences. He looks young and cheerful and cheeky these
days. What is it all about? He used to look scraggy and was such a fox and a loner.
10.7.1972
Jean spends the day writing up. I interview Surrambe. I get a few facts from him, but
then he says he wants to sleep, his mouth hurts from talking.
11. 7 .1972
Early in the morning we have coffee with several guests in Kairambe’s house. The talk
turns around the public meetings which were recently held at the cattle camps of
Omalle. Things are bad there: too many public meetings were held at once and the
speakers talked badly and hurriedly. The result: one man heavily wounded by a buffalo
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and two men laid out by a lion. Nobody minds that there is no linear causal connection
between both. In fact, the men were wounded before the meetings happened, yet this
does not matter. The social and the natural worlds are one.
Later during the day, I interview Kolmo and I realise how important it is to have
time for everybody, the seemingly capable and the seemingly incapable. Surrambe was
barren yesterday, true, but old Kolmo, who by most Dambaitians is regarded as a goon
and ghost (because he is almost deaf), showed me today that behind his shattered
appearance and his handicaps there exists an ego that has been battling on quite
determinedly and fearlessly. With a gun Baldambe killed a lion and two leopards, many
buffalos, giraffes... but old Kolmo killed three dick-dick with stones and one with a
spear! Kolmo makes some surprisingly clear statements about Hamar practices of
hiding and demanding cattle from others and I have a very amusing time with him. He
sends away everyone who disturbs us, saying he is having a serious talk with me.
12.7.1972
Duka invites us for coffee this morning. Ginonda joins us. Duka is pricking herself
with a hot nail to cure the rheumatism in her arms. When the hot nail touches her skin,
it sounds like electricity sparking. This is the sign that the sickness is leaving her.
Ginonda, the eternal clown, tells us the incredible story of a woman who kept on
running away from her husband until in the end he cut a hole through her nose and
fastened a string to it. We laugh and enjoy immensely this coffee session without male
domination. As often before, I have the feeling that for the intelligent underdog the
anthropologist brings relief: does he not by his simple curiosity imply that things could
be other than they are? The world does not end with a single culture. This message is
implied in the anthropologist’s work and I think those who suffer most under their
culture sense this more quickly than those who are ‘in’, rule and do get what they want.
Whatever it is, Hamar women can be fantastic informants. Gardu comes, drops in
almost casually, and then stays for hours to continue her interview with Jean. I write up
my notes on Kolmo’s interview. It takes me a long time because Kolmo hears badly
and has a jumpy way of talking, so my notes are messy.
13.7.1972
I manage to persuade Gemarro to come and answer my questions. He is bright and
quick and amusing and while we drink tea, I get thousands of facts. Time flies and it is
3 p.m. when, after more than five hours, we stop. There were several blind alleys in my
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inquiry into his kin, especially his aekenasnas. I have to go over it again and again. There
is a lot that I don’t know about kinship and which I learn slowly by trying to elicit
Gemarro’s genealogy - but I think there is also some ‘blending’, ‘noise’, ‘confusion’,
‘simplification’ etc. in the far-off areas of aekenas, where actual kin are mixed with
putative kin, where classificatory kin are incorporated into one’s actual kin so as to
leave the ritually important groups of yexa and arak intact. For, as Gemarro says, “a
man is great if he has many kin to participate in his rituals”. Another problem which
makes genealogical work difficult is the free play of generations which is produced by
the marriage pattern of polygamy. A man’s second, third or fourth wife may be a whole
generation younger than his first wife, even two generations. A man may marry a
woman when he is already seventy. When the girl has grown up and can have children,
her husband is probably dead, but her children will be counted as his. So the children
of one man may be of two, even three generations and this confuses the genealogies
(i.e. in the mind of the ethnocentric ethnographer), especially since seniority itself is
important for social ranking and affects the giving and receiving of marriage payment.
Our survey work has shown us that at this stage we should not go far afield. We shall
concentrate instead on a few individuals only and try to get to know as much as
possible about them. Each goat a man owns or herds has a story and each social and
kin relation has a history. These tell us more (at this point) about the working of the
kinship system, about economics, about sickness etc. than any extensive survey could.
There is still too much to learn which is of a qualitative nature. Only when we have
exhausted this intensive inquiry, will we move to extensive surveying.
Banko has invited me to drink honey wine with him and we drink it in the
evening outside his house in the fields. The second crop is green and growing and two
stacks of the harvest stand out like elephants. Although they are in fact quite small, they
look enormous in the light of the moon. As often before, it is nice to be invited by
Banko but after the first pleasant feeling of friendship the situation lets me down. Lalo
contributes much to the disappointment, having no idea what her husband’s friendship
with a foreigner is about. When I leave, saying that I have a field to look after
tomorrow and goats to herd (meaning that I have work to do and therefore must go),
Lalo laughs and when I am already out in the night of the bush I hear her remark: “He
is drunk”! I have observed this before: Some people are so conceited that they cannot
imagine that a foreigner is able to learn their language.
Assuming that he cannot possibly know anything, they don’t make the slightest
effort to understand him. If I talk in metaphors to them, which all the Hamar delight
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in, then they assume I am talking nonsense, am drunk. Sure, my Hamar is bad, people
have to make an effort to understand me. That’s where the special value of friendships
with people such as Baldambe, Choke and Banko is so valuable. These friends are
sympathetic and imaginative and trust that what I am trying to say has some meaning,
even if this meaning is not immediately evident at times.
15.7.1972
Gemarro plays the lyre when the moon is up high. The sound of the lyre is
accompanied by the irregular sounds of the cow bells and when I walk over to listen
closely, I find him resting on a white cow hide next to the fence of the goat kraal which
glistens grey in the moon light. Next to him sit his two little children, Bala and Haila.
Gemarro tells me: “With the sound of the lyre I warm up the homestead and the cattle
and goat kraals.”
16.7.197 2
The house buzzes with questions and answers as Jean and I interview Ginonda and
Gemarro. Later in the afternoon we do the writing up. As usual, Ginonda’s daughters
look after Rosie and Theo plays with his mates Assi, Lomoluk, Haila.
17.7.1972
Choke has come for a visit and while he relates to us the ‘talk of the country’ I observe
what I have often realised before: Baldambe and Gemarro listen to Choke’s (well-told)
accounts and are extremely interested in every detail. If a man is not fully informed of
what is happening around him, who it was who died, who it was who consulted the
intestines of an animal, who had a quarrel... then he is not counted as a full citizen.
Nothing depresses Baldambe or Gemarro more than hearing of an important event
long after it happened. The idea is to hear of an event while it is still going on or
shortly afterwards and then to subject it to one’s own evaluation, criticism, which, I
think, may well feed back into the situation. As Hamar is a society without centralized
institutions of social control, this eagerness of the men to be informed makes sense.
Choke tells us the following: Three days ago in the cattle camps, a young man
shot his age-mate dead. They both were sleeping at night under the cover of a dense
bush. One of then got up in the middle of the night to urinate. When he dived back
into the cover of the bush, the branches made some noise and woke his sleeping mate.
Rising from dreams about the Galeba and mistaking his friend for an enemy, he
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screamed in terror, grabbed his gun and shot. The bullet went into the stomach of his
friend and he died when the sun was rising.
Choke relates more news of killing: The Galeba have raided the Bume and after
killing many of them, they drove away the cattle. The Bume then cut off their route of
return and manned all the waterholes. The dust of the cattle which they drove ‘cut the
throats and blinded the eyes of the Galeba’ and they were easy prey for the Bume who
waited for them at the waterholes. The Bume captured thirteen guns and killed many
more Galeba but they themselves, however, suffered losses which may be as many as a
hundred, most being killed at the first moment of the Galeba attack. The Bume are said
to have gone to Maji for bullets and they are planning a counter-attack very soon.
During the afternoon we interviewed again, Jean working with Ginonda and I with
Gemarro. After two hours, we are both extremely exhausted and each of us goes on a
separate walk to recover.
18.7.1972
We awake and tell each other our dreams:
Jean dreamt that the Hamar have ritual stick-fighting between clans, and that in an
interview Ginonda told her about boys who died in such fights. I dreamed that each
Hamar clan has a totem sign carrying a symbol which is a key to the yedamo relation
which has been puzzling us. It tells the clan members how the yedamo categories are
inherited: different colours show how a yedamo name moves from Karla to Ba to
Worran and other clans... While I am writing these lines I am waiting for Gemarro to
come and finish his interview with me. It has been a painful business with him at
times: he is such an obscurant and he mixes up his role of informant and actor in a
funny way. When I asked him yesterday whether he had ever taken anything from his
bond-friends to whom he had given cattle, he pretended to be disgusted and said he
had not taken anything, he believed in generosity etc…. But then, of course, he had
taken something. He was very reluctant to produce any information on this matter.
Baldambe, by the way, acted similarly! He did not say that it was morally wrong to
demand something from one’s bond-friends, but when I asked him what he had taken
he said “nothing”, as if he did not want to put his mind to it. Then slowly by asking
again and in more detail I found he had, in fact, taken a lot. Another way in which
Gemarro is odd: if I have not understood properly and ask him twice or three or even
four times, he gets angry and annoyed. He does not imply that I am stupid, but rather
he thinks that by not understanding him I am implying that he is stupid and does not
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know how to express himself; “Have I not told you things well? What is wrong with
me that you don’t understand?”
19.7.1972
I dreamt that I shot a huge hyena at Maen. It came across the dry river bed towards me
and I aimed at it with my old Italian rifle. I saw the bullet sink into its chest. I was with
the Hamar on my way to raid cattle in Kenya.
In the afternoon Gemarro and I reach the end of our interview. Like others,
towards the end he gets extremely involved, especially when he tells me all his cases of
sickness, of death in his family, of raiding etc. Like Kolmo he sends away anyone who
dares to interrupt us. At the end, he says jokingly: “Brother-in-law, you will have to pay
me back for my effort Some time, you still owe me cattle for my sister anyway.” Here
he alludes to the fact that Jean is said to belong to Gemarro’s clan, Ba.
20.7.1972
Jean and I spend most of the day writing up interviews. The village is quiet. Baldambe
is here with us, he is slightly at a loss because our survey has brought us close to many
Dambaitians but has put him out of work. When our research reaches a new stage, he
will hopefully again be fully occupied as our ‘teacher’ which, no doubt, will make him
feel at ease with us again. We feel exhausted and go on a walk in the evening and
discuss all sorts of things like how to get a report to the DFG by October and whether
and when to go for a holiday to Europe.
2.8.1972
I am sitting and writing the introduction to Baldambe’s ‘book’ when suddenly a
whirlwind comes and takes off a large part of our roof. Jean and I sit in the open sun and in a mess. When we have removed the chaos and I climb onto the roof to thatch it
again, Anti, who sits in a nearby shade looking for lice in her sister Kuli’s hair, says
laughingly: “The father of Theo will soon be exhausted, for he does not know how to
thatch a roof.” And sure enough, I get exhausted.
3.8.1972
Banko helps me and we finish repairing the roof in the morning. Later I continue with
my introduction to the ‘book’ and Jean finishes correcting the manuscript. The short
period of chaos has demonstrated again how important our little house is. We do most
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of our work these days in its shade and relative quietness. Jean has been feeling
indefinable pains lately; she feels ill yet does not know what is wrong with her. The
children are also not well. Both of them, but especially Rosie, get infected eyes
repeatedly. This is their biggest menace. They play for three, four days happily with
people, plants and animals and then their eyes get infected.
4.8.1972
A quiet, hot and dry day. I try to continue writing the introduction, but I have a
headache and the writing stagnates. Do I get a headache because the writing is so
difficult or does the writing not progress because I have a headache? We feel exhausted
and old and go down to the river to rejuvenate by washing ourselves and our clothes, a
medicine which almost always works.
5.8.1972 (Jean)
Ivo went to bed last night feeling exhausted and today he flakes out on the bed. The
day commences in confusion with Rosie howling and Theo moaning. Rosie’s eyes are
bad, we don’t know why Theo moans.
7.8.1972
Ivo stays in bed and I look after him. Theo is a sad fellow with red pussy eyes which he
can hardly open and he opens his mouth in a dopey way. He lies with Ivo and suffers
quietly. Rosie is off to play because she is well again. Throughout the day everyone in
the village comes singly, even little Gadi, to ask Ivo how he was and wasn’t he better?
9.8.1972 (Ivo)
From the platform where I rest I observe Jean, our children, the Dambaitians. All day
long the house is buzzing with people: they come and go, laugh and cry, bring things,
take them away, relate news, listen to news... and jean moves among them as if in water
and quietly directs everything. In the evening a sheep is slaughtered and cooked in one
of our biggest round clay pots on the fire in front of the house. Later Ginonda stirs the
meat broth for me, the primeval drink which cures all sickness. We all sit around the
fire when we eat late at night and it is once again the same as I have observed before:
suffering turns us into a harmonious and friendly community. Today it’s me who is
sick, tomorrow it will be someone else and we all get drawn closer together by it.
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12.8.1972
I feel better today and spend the morning writing up some of the last interviews of the
Dambaiti Survey. It is a quiet morning of work. How few have our working hours
become!
13.8.1972
I am back in bed with fever and headache. I begin to dream of a holiday in Europe, not
in the distant future but soon. We must just finish those pieces of work which we have
already almost completed: the ‘Dambaiti Survey’ and several topics belonging to
Baldambe’s ‘book’, like collecting the plants of ritual and technological significance,
making a map showing all the place names contained in the ‘book’ and the ‘Survey’.
14.8.1972
In bed.
15.8.1972
Jean is collecting bouquets of exotic branches, leaves and flowers and presses them in
Goody’s ‘Death, Property and the Ancestors’, Griaule’s ‘Conversations with
Ogotemmeli’, Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’.
28.8.1972
The past days have been a slow mental withdrawal from Hamar. The colours of
autumn Europe, the sounds of October rains, the vibrations of the cities have turned
to our minds. We look forward to exploring our world again, exploring our friends.
What do they think? What are they doing? Since we have decided to go we now want
to leave as soon as possible. We have finished our work for the time being, have
stacked away the goods that remain behind, have shared out all the food which we will
not need for the road, have cut the ears of all the kids newly born to our goats...
Tonight we will slaughter a goat and share the meat with the Dambaitians who are
closest to us. Then, tomorrow, we will depart before the sun rises to have a cool
journey across the hot Lake Stephanie plain. Baldambe will be with us, for hadn’t we all
decided long ago that we would travel together on our next trip to Europe?
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87
Chapter 5
(12 April 1973 - 8 June 1973)
12.4.1973 (Ivo)
We saw the Nubian desert below us, the white band of the Nile, blue Mt. Athas in the
grey of soft clouds, the carpets of fields and towns of central Europe... landed in the
cities, immersed ourselves in the life of our friends in Berlin and London... everything
was so easy, there were no hard confrontations... they all had grown older, more
relaxed and experienced in living... they welcomed our teacher and friend Baldambe to
an extent which is hard to describe (I want to write of our journey to Europe later
some day). From the cities we went to the shore of the North Sea and into the forests.
The cold came and snow and ice and mist. Then we left again, to descend now onto
the plain of Lake Stephanie where the air vibrates with heat, where whirlwinds of dust
dance at high noon, where wide plates of yellow grass stretch out before us and we
smell the smoke of fires.
We drive through the dry river bed of the Woito and on the savannah close to
the mountains we meet the first Hamar-speaking herdsman, a Tsamai. Baldambe
converses with him and I watch. The Tsamai not only speaks Hamar, he speaks like a
Hamar. I am struck by the forcefulness of his speech, the decisiveness of his gestures,
the distinct rhythm in the flow of his talk. This fresh impression supports my old
finding that speaking and the ability to speak are here more highly valued than in other
parts of the world that I have seen. There is even an excitement which goes with such
speech encounters, an excitement which has to do not so much with the content of the
speech but with the talking itself, or rather content and form merge and the excitement
of the speaker consists in anticipating how he will say certain things. Watching the two
men I have the feeling that I am watching two fighters, there are even movements and
stances which remind me of fighting. Well, a kind of playful fighting.
We arrive in Dambaiti in the early night. The open spaces of Dambaiti shine
brightly in the light of the new moon. This brightness is typical of the end of the dry
season when everything has been burnt up by the sun. When the Land Rover comes to
a halt, there is a moment of silence at first and then, when the Dambaitians have
realised that it is us, we hear the jingle-jingle of the metal ornaments that are attached
to the skirts of the girls and which ring like tiny bells as they move. First come the girls
and then the boys and after them, the women and men. I am struck by the soil, the red
clay and butter on their hands. The hands that I held to greet my friends in Europe
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during the past months were always washed. No, these hands are not dirty, they are
clean in the Hamar way...
Baldambe filters into the village in a matter of fact way. There is nothing strange
about his arrival from far away: his language and his assured and relaxed movements
demonstrate that he has not become alienated from his people. It is as if we have been
away for no more than a couple of days. Those who come to greet us are old Maiza,
Ginonda, Aikenda, Duka, Gemarro’s wife Katara, Muko-inda and Warka (like Mukoinda widow of old Daina). Of the old men there is only Kolmo, but many of our young
herding boys and young men are there: Gino, Tsasi, Makonen, my hunting-friend Bali,
little Lomoluk, Aikenda’s young boy Wollekibu. The girls, Kuli, Kuni, Adja, Ama,
Alima, Gadi and Dobo, come too, and, of course, the very little ones, Assi, Bala,
Aikenda’s little daughter ‘Susanne’ (named after my sister) and my mago, Ivo.
We have coffee where Aikenda’s house once stood. She has built a new one,
larger than the old, to the left of the original place. This has improved the set of the
‘stage’ of Dambaiti. From our house, all the three houses of the sons of Berinas are
now visible.
Bali relates to us the ‘talk of the country’: there has recently been fighting
between the Hamar, Bume and Kara. First some Bume, who had come for grain, were
killed in Bashada, near the Kizo cattle camps. Then a large number of Bume, who had
been sharing the crops of the Kara, were decimated. Only the Kara at Dus village saved
their guests and sent them home. The Bume returned two days after the killing and
ravished Dus in revenge for their dead. The Kara of the village of Labuk, who had
initiated the killing, were safe in the cover of the dense forest. Bali was present when
the Bume attack happened. Together with some friends he vainly helped to fight them
off. I intend to record his account on tape later, especially as it contains the fact that
Bali saved an old Bume man from the bullets of his age-mates when the killing of
Bume guests started at the Kizo cattle camps. After the account of fighting, Bali tells us
of the situation of the herds and the pasture: a little rain fell recently further to the
north. Gemarro has driven his sheep to Dimeka and Banko and Kula have moved with
their cattle up to Bashada. Uri left with Kolmo’s cattle for Kizo. Kolmo whispers into
my ear: “Your friend Choke is down at Kizo, painted white with clay because his old
loin-cloth has worn out. He hopes to get a new one from you when you return.” Then
there comes the inevitable news of sickness and disease: the dry season had been very
hard and the lack of food had weakened many so that they were not resistant to
sickness. Several politically important men have died, among them Baldambe’s two
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rivals: Amsalaka Banko, who led several big raids to Borana and Kenya, and the war
magician of our territorial segment (Kadja), Bali Mugamoi. Also old Gilo the ‘priest’ of
the neighbouring village of Ande (father of Alma’s pleasant wife!)
During the night it rains heavily.
13.4.1973
Everybody attributes the rain to our coming and we answer that we brought it from
the Arle (the Sagan) whence two days ago we fetched some water. Doesn’t the Hamar
prayer go ‘let the Arle descend, let is descend...’?
My age-mates from the other section of Dambaiti visit us and greet us, Kula the
‘black’, Alma and Banko. In their ‘talk of the country’ we hear that the ‘enemy’, the
Ethiopian police, has ‘raided’ Assile, the southernmost territorial section of Hamar.
The Police arrived in Hamar several months ago in great strength, with about twelve
lorries, several Land Rovers, machine guns etc., and they have been trying to persuade
the Hamar to return the cattle which they raided in 1968 from Borana. At their post at
Turmi, the police managed to collect about five hundred head of cattle from the
territorial segments of Kadja, Wungabaino, Angude and Mirsha. However, they wanted
two thousand and as the leader of Assile kept evading the police and no cattle was
forthcoming, the police took by force all the Hamar cattle which were concentrated
near a watering place by the lower Woito, south of Arbore. I remember Baldambe
telling the Hamar many months ago not to concentrate their cattle in accessible places
as long as the Borana issue was not settled.
Banko tells us that the Hamar and Galeba had been trying to come to terms with
each other far to the south near Fadjedj. These attempts were however disturbed
recently when one faction of the Galeba from across the Orno raided the Hamar at
Dunka, taking a herd of cattle with them. The Hamar followed them, surprised them at
night and after a short gun battle were able to retrieve their cattle. Then, it is said, the
Galeba east of the Orno sided with the Hamar and forced the raiders to pay the fine of
an ox for breaking the peace agreement with the Hamar. I wonder how this peace
agreement came about and who might be able to tell me more about it.
It is interesting to hear that Hamar had an exeptionally plentiful minor rainy
season in September, October and November. This season helped the Hamar over the
unusually hot and dry months that followed.
The drought has come to an end only today.
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14.4.1973
Hamar guests, Baldambe’s age-mates, flood into Dambaiti and he tells them about
Europe: the snow which falls like the flowers of the acacia tree, the rain that turns into
sour milk. The women ask where Jean and the children are. I tell them that they stayed
behind in Addis Ababa where they have a house and are well. I put on Jean’s tape and
we all listen to Jean’s greetings. We hear it once, we hear it twice and in the end
everybody knows the speech by heart, especially the bit where Jean asks the women to
prepare meals of wild salad for me.
16.4.1973
Throughout the day, Baldambe has many guests to whom he relates his stories about
Europe. His accounts slowly get more patterned and stylized as they get repeated again
and again. Others who have heard them already join in when Baldambe tells how the
monkeys smoked and the elephants danced on their hind legs in the Zarazani Circus.
17.4.1973
The men of Dambaiti have arranged for a public meeting to honour Baldambe’s return.
Already by early morning, men from neighbouring settlements, Wuancho, Arbala,
Merrie etc. arrive and there is much drinking of coffee in Aikenda’s, Ginonda’s, Duka’s
and Gemarro’s house. At midday all the men move over to the ridge near Kula’s and
Banko’s homesteads where all public meetings of Dambaiti are held. I am amongst
them, carrying, as usual, my photographic and sound equipment. Hardly have we sat
down and called for rain, when a big cloud moves towards us and heavy drops of rain
begin to fall. Sic! This is the fourth time that I call for rain and it falls. There is a
friendly air and an easiness which I have rarely observed at a public meeting. First,
Wuancho calls for rain and addresses Baldambe, welcoming him back to Hamar. From
there, he moves to a public issue which I don’t understand very well and to problems
relating to the payment of taxes to the Ethiopian Government. Then Gemarro gets up
and takes the spear and talks and after him Merrie follows and then Baldambe.
Baldambe talks assuredly and there is humour in his voice, but he lacks the temper and
powerful stride of the great and successful Hamar speakers. He talks rather more like a
professor than a politician.
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18.4.1973
Countless guests arrive and many pots of coffee are consumed in the various houses.
Baldambe has a large audience and enjoys talking. Among the guests is Baldambe’s
affine Arbala from the southern-most region of Hamar. I ask him to tell me of the
recent peace-making among the Hamar and the Galeba and as Arbala is a great speaker,
I record his descriptions on tape. His talk is pure poetry at times and I envisage
publishing it sometime as an example of ‘analytic poetry’...
Choke arrives and as I have begun to take our long absence as an avenue of
inquiry, I ask Choke what happened during our absence and he tells me of the fighting
between the Burne and the Kara. I record.
Also Berhane arrives and I ask him about the initiation ritual of Dube, his older
brother, which was performed during our stay in Europe. By the time Berhane has
finished his story (which again I record on tape) it is almost midnight and Baldambe
sighs in the background when he hears of the inability of his brothers to organise the
ritual properly.
At one point during the day, Ginonda drops by and we talk a little. She is amiable
and sweet as always but she is exhausted and curses the many guests who make her
work so hard.
19.4.1973
Rain throughout the day over many parts of Hamar, yet none falls in Darnbaiti, where
there are only huge clouds and claps of thunder. Again I am struck by the uneven local
distribution of the rain. Berhane and Choke leave, each to start planting their mothers’
fields. Five men from Dambaiti went today to consult a sandal oracle about how to
ensure that sufficient rain will fall in Dambaiti. The oracle revealed that Kula the
‘black’, our gudili, is still angry with Kula the ‘tall’ and with Korre who planted their
crops last season before the gudili had initiated the planting. It is bad that Kula is still
angry and this endangers the rains. The oracle told Kula to perform a ritual of
reconciliation (kash) tomorrow. Banko tells me this and invites me to join them. Banko
also tells me more about the Bume-Kara war: he went to Kara for grain and arrived
there two days after the Bume attack. The hyenas and scavengers were still eating the
dead and the surviving inhabitants of Dus village were huddling around the small
mission clinic on the banks of the Omo, a mile north of Dus. Banko says that they
were crying, holding their hands in front of their mouths. Old Zinu, who lost four
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members of his family, including proud Dibo, the oldest son, will probably not survive
the shock, Banko says.
20.4.1973
Oita Banko, Baldambe’s cousin and a Hamar spokesman in matters concerning the
Ethiopian Government, arrives when it is still dark and at 5 I can already hear his and
Baldambe’s voices. This is his news: Garsho has given to the police the names of those
Hamar who recently killed the Bume at the Kizo cattle camps, and he has promised to
turn them over to the police together with their guns. At the same time, he and the
men of the territorial segment of Angude have taken the goats and sheep of the killers
by force, divided them up amongst themselves and have either eaten them or used
them as bribes for the police. Oita Banko is now accusing Garsho of neglecting the
opportunity to negotiate with the Bume: instead of eating the goats and appropriating
them, they should have been offered to the Bume as compensation for the killings.
Baldambe makes a point of the fact that only men from Angude have ‘eaten’ the goats.
This facet of the conversation impresses me most: the stress which is laid on the
differences between the various territorial segments of Hamar.
This difference, even antagonism, comes out especially when Oita Banko tells us
that he has signed a statement for the government which says that it was the segments
of Assile, Wungabaino and Mirsha which called for and conducted the Borana raid of
1968. It was they who provided the war magicians and the men who carried the
magical arrow that led the raiders and they, therefore, were solely responsible - not
Kadja (Baldambe’s and Oita Banko’s segment). So Kadja has no ‘thieves’ and, most
important, its spokesman, Oita Banko, cannot be held responsible. Oita Banko did not
deny that some men from Kadja joined the raid but he told the police that these men
were ‘scavengers’ and he did not know their names.
I can see that Oita Banko is pleased with himself for wriggling out of his
problems by stressing an inner differentiation amongst the Hamar. He has come to
Dambaiti to find men to accompany him to the police post of Turmi and he leaves
together with old Kalmo and Aike Burdimbe, two of the most incapable men of
Dambaiti. When I turn to Banko in amazement, he grins: “This is the medicine for the
Ethiopian Government.”
Later in the day, I walk down to the fields to participate in Kula’s ritual. Banko
invites me into his house where Lalo serves us coffee. She repeatedly asks me to take
her son with me to Addis Ababa, he cries too much, she says. This is typical of Lalo,
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incapable, unfinished and girlish as hardly any other Hamar woman is. Banko keeps
quiet and chips away on some piece of wood. He is making a digging stick. He is always
making something and I am sure it is to work out his domestic tensions.
The ritual should have been performed early in the morning, but we wait for two,
three, four hours and nobody shows up. For a long time it is only my two misso
(hunting friends), Banko and Kula the ‘black’ and I who are ready to appease the rains.
After a long wait, only Goiti and Kula the ‘tall’ join us. Particularly awkward is the
absence of Korre. whose misbehaviour threatens to prevent the rains from falling.
Word is sent twice to him, yet still he does not come and Kula and Banko are
obviously frustrated. I am experiencing once again the weakness of Hamar social
organisation in which almost everything functions without being decisively
institutionalised. This weakness may well have its value though, especially as an exercise
in socio-drama in which each individual (I mean male!) is allowed to express himself
and work out his personal frustrations and grievances. Has not the kash been ordered
because Kula was angry about Korre? Now Korre provides Kula with another reason
to be angry - and Kula is not allowed to develop any hostile feelings towards him. This
inversion of guilt and punishment, which has a very human aspect, obviously does not
solve any problem finally; for example, it does not turn Korre into a better citizen;
perhaps it ‘educates’ Kula, but does it not make Korre all the more cunning? Well, I
really don’t know how this Hamar individualism works, or should I call it ‘anarchism’?
The extreme freedom the Hamar allow each other must be moulding people in very
different ways. There must be perpetual tension between individuals’ egocentric and
social potentials. I suppose that a good and complete network of kinship produces a
‘better’ Hamar than an incomplete one would, for it is easier to be a strong individual if
you have a sound base in kinship relations. Competition and anarchic self-assertion: I
have mixed feelings about them. Obviously Hamar anarchism is immensely likable, but
it irritates me, I don’t know how it really works, where it starts, where it ends. In many
areas of Hamar life, there exists nothing but rigid dominance: male over female, old
over young etc., yet in a strictly political sense, all these ‘binding forces’ don’t operate
when men try to influence each other. I leave this theme here and hope to come back
to it when I have some good ideas or data on it. In the end, we are only five men when
Kula performs the reconciliation ritual.
Returning home, I stroll through the fields and talk with men and women on the
way. I meet a young man from Worbasha, or rather he meets me as I am sitting in
front of Galti’s house, playing with her child. He looks at my skin and exclaims in
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disgust: “He has turned bad again, look, he is much too white, one can even see his
veins, only his hands are brown and agreeable.” As one would expect, he is a man who
never liked me, who had always tried to stop me from using my camera or my tape
recorder and who had always shaken his head when he heard me ask odd questions.
The relationship between the ethnographer and the people he studies has, here in
Hamar as anywhere else, a physical aspect. The reassuring complication of this is that
those who like me mentally, like Baldambe, Gemarro, Ginonda, Gardu, Keri etc., also
like me (and Jean) physically.
21.4.1973
In the evening, we drink coffee in Ginonda’s house. There are new guests again and
the conversation is very lively. Baldambe speaks of Europe and I suddenly realise an
odd fact: Baldambe is telling the men what he said on television in Europe. He would
tell them: “I told them I would tell you this and this and this…” So he describes the
course of the sun, the walk of the old and the young, the burial of Scharoun, the
Vietnam demonstration. Self-fulfilling prophecy or a Hamar sense for dramatic speech?
Old Wadu from Kadja arrives and he looks haunted and tense: he lost all his
cattle during the police raid down in the Woito valley. He participates vigorously in
discussions about the recent effects of the Borana raid and I listen closely because I
want to find out whether it is really true that the Hamar have put all the blame of the
raid on the territorial segments of Assile and Wungabaino. Deep cleavages in Hamar
become visible.
23.4.1973
Makonen arrives from a journey to southernmost Hamar and tells us that all the
Galeba guests, who came to Hamar after the peace-making, have returned home
because of the recent raid at Dunka. Three Galeba are said to have returned shortly
after their sudden departure. They had already announced themselves, telling a young
Hamar herdsman that he should go to a settlement near Godena and tell the people
there that they had come for renewed peace talks. But then they seem to have felt
unsafe and withdrew. Yesterday, at Godena, the Hamar consulted the intestines of a
goat and this revealed that there was danger of future fighting, so the Hamar have
begun to drive their herds further up into Hamar to keep them safe from the Galeba.
At night, I talk with Oita Banko, Baldambe and Wadu about my new friendship
with Oita Banko. In the past year, we never got along with one another and it is
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interesting that Oita Banko today refers back to our first months in Gabo as the time
when we stayed with ‘children and girls’. Then he could not make sense of us. Now
that I am with men and have become myself ‘a man’, he thinks I am all right. This
argument is similar to that of Aike Lomeromoi, one of the spokesmen of Angude, who
the other day said to me that I had ‘grown up’, implying that at an earlier stage I was
too young for him to talk to me seriously. This fits the facts quite well and it sheds light
on the order in which people became our friends and when.
24.4.1973
Early in the morning, I am woken up by the heavy talk of men. Every day this is so and
I am getting tired and exhausted I hide from all this talk in a corner of my house and
quietly read ‘Traurige Tropen’ (Tristes Tropiques) by Claude Lévi-Strauss. This is the
right medicine to turn my mind back to the purpose for which I have come. Yes, for
what have I come this time? I told the DFG that I would be studying social conflict as
a counterpart to our preceding analysis of Hamar rituals. But this is not all. At the back
of my mind is the desire to lead a new and more capable life of ‘participant
observation’ which will hopefully allow me to see Hamar life from many different
perspectives and will spark off an understanding of the totality of Hamar culture, an
understanding which, at this point, I painfully lack. One of the paramount questions is
how Hamar politics work.
In the evening, I eat a small meal of sorghum food together with Bali and as our
dish is poor and others have even less to eat, we talk about hunger. Bali says that it is
quite normal to go without food for several days when there are hard times. In fact, for
up to five days he finds an empty stomach quite bearable. He tells me that old Wadu at
times does not eat for up to ten days! This obviously must be a big factor in Hamar
social life: the power of the individual to master his stomach, a power which I find
totally absent in myself. When night comes, I set up my recording gear and Wadu gives
me a comprehensive account of Hamar-Arbore war and peace over a period of more
than twenty years. He remembers every raid and counter-raid and his talk is a neat
document of Hamar verbal art.
25.4.1973
At noon, a whirlwind roars through Dambaiti. It blows the grass roof of my ‘mother’s’
house into the sky and young Kuli quickly brings a bowl of water to ‘cool’ and ‘placate’
the wind by spilling it on the wind’s ‘footprints’. I read ‘Tristes Tropique’ again and
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come to appreciate Lévi-Strauss more and more: he perceives and evaluates all
dimensions of life, he uses his eyes, his ears, his nose, his touch... and he does this
always within time-dimensions, his delight and his distaste are always expressed by
showing them in historical perspective. Fascinated, I read his pages about the sea, the
mountains, the forest. And then there are such lines as: ‘Selbst wenn mir nichts anderes
gelungen wäre, als die Gebräuche zu erahnen, hatte ich sie bereits ihrer Fremdheit,
ihrer Andersartigkeit entkleidet und dann ebensogut zu Hause bleiben können...’
In a way this passage summarizes the aim of my fieldwork, in a reversed way that is.
For isn’t it my aim to be an ethnographer of the Hamar without destroying their
mysteries? This is why I asked Baldambe to construct a model of Hamar society for us
and this is why I have been recording conversations and dialogues on tape, so that the
Hamar identity may simultaneously reveal and hide itself.
Ginonda is doing her hair today. She says that a guest reminded her not to look
‘like the house where the grass has been blown off the roof’.
26.4.1973
Morning coffee and conversation: Banko tells us that Kalle brought the strange story
last night that the Banna have raided the Male and have returned with many cattle.
Baldambe and I are amazed, for haven’t the police just been returning stolen cattle to
Male?
Bali adds another story: The Hamar spokesmen, pressed by the police to hand
over to them the ‘criminals who raided the Borana’ and their guns, took recourse to an
old Hamar custom: they went and pulled out bundles of grass and offering them to the
police they told them to imprison them, kill them - or leave them alone for they would
never be able to get hold of the ‘criminals’ nor their guns. The police told them that
they would accept their plea if they offered them at least three or four guns but they
rejected hands that offered only grass.
It is interesting to hear that the news of the Male raid has not yet reached the
police. We, however, have already heard more about it. Aule, returning from an area
further north, said that the raid consisted of two groups which, when they returned,
entered Hamar and Banna by two different routes. One arrived via Baffo, the other
came via Ururi and Marro. The goats, sheep and cattle have been hidden away in the
bush. After this great success, another group of raiders has again left Banna to attack
the Male.
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27.4.1973
After having asked Berhane about the initiation ritual of Dube, today I ask Gardu to
tell me about it. She participated in the ritual as Dube’s classifactory sister and her
account of her activities gives her version of the ritual. As we end our conversation,
Anti drops in. I ask her whether she would also like to give her version of the ritual and
she, instead of directly saying “yes”, just tells me in her cheeky way (as you would
expect from a daughter of Ginonda) to put on some more tea for her. Then she starts
telling me how she participated in the ritual. Her account is quick, lively and long and
in its internal structure, syntax and factual information, it is more complex than
Gardu’s, - and yet I can understand it well. Certain passages are dramatic, for example
when Anti tells me of her uncle Kairambe hitting her and how she then brought the
whole ritual proceedings to a halt with her vehement weeping.
An idea has been forming in my mind: it would be good to collect several
different descriptions of Dube’s ritual after the fashion of ‘Rashomon’. Each
description will show the event in a different light and the resulting overlap and the
discrepancies will reveal to what extent the same reality is viewed differently by
different actors. How should I put this?
Social reality is simultaneously an ‘objective’ and a ‘subjective’ phenomenon; a
social structure is a ‘cognitive structure within a statistical structure’ and how this works
out in Hamar is my job to discover...
So, later, I get Shalombe and Kuni to give me their accountsas well.
In the late afternoon, Kuli comes to me and reminds me of a promise which I
made yesterday: “Let’s go and pick wild salad together.” So Kuli, Anti, little Gadi,
Djobire and I leave for the bush. This salad expedition takes me back to the years after
1945 when with Meuder we used to pick dandelions and stinging nettles, Sauerampfer,
Hagebutten, Kamille and so on. The girls explore, searching for a particular fruit, a
particular tree, a particular salad, or a particular grass; they stroll about and hunt little
animals, they are at one with their world. A red evening light plays on their decorations,
the rich butter in their hair, the red clay... it’s really beautiful. We return with bowls full
of green salad. I get samples of each kind of plant.
As I was strolling through the bush with the girls, it struck me that they have
become very close to me and I realise that they have grown up a lot since we arrived. I
have been here only a fraction of my life, but I have shared almost a fifth of Kuli’s life,
half of Lomoluk’s life, and I was already around when little Ivo was born. Now he runs
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around, laps milk from the teats of the goats and when I call him, he comes readily and
lets me clean his nose.
28.4.1973
The Banna and Hamar really have raided the Male. Proof: Banko and I are sitting in my
house as I record his account of his part in the 1968 Borana raid and of the Mursi he
killed, when suddenly we hear a cow bellow close to the house. Two boys are driving it
and have lost their way. After we have led them back to the path and they have
departed, we hear them sing their ‘song of pride’ while from Kula’s homestead we hear
the elelelele with which the women greet the successful raiders. The raid must have been
big if cattle even reach us here in the south.
Later in the day I have a quiet conversation with Bali who recently returned from
the cattle camps. I ask him about the political activities there and he tells me: after the
senseless slaying of the Bume at the cattle camps there was a public meeting in which
Oita Banko argued for quick negotiation and renewed peace-making with the Bume,
but the war magician Muga Bali from Angude wrestled the spear from his hand and
called for fighting. Oita Banko then left and refused to eat together with the men. The
next day a second public meeting was held and again the speaker called for war and
again Oita Banko dissociated himself from the idea. But Muga proceeded to perform
his war magic and a few days later, he was dead.
Baldambe has joined us and on hearing this, he laughs: “He no longer had any
barjo, he was already dead the day he performed his magic.” Baldambe is bitter about
the senselessness of the Hamar and he demonstrates this with the following story: after
the Bume were killed at Kizo, one young Hamar ran over and killed a little Bume boy
who was herding his neighbour’s cattle. Yet he merely told the Bume boy whom he had
asked to look after his own herds to run away! The killing of the Bume was sparked off
by an attempt on the life of Longole, Jean’s tall and proud bond-friend who has been
our guest in Dambaiti several times. He was at Orgo, a settlement east of the Kaeske,
when someone fired at him. But the shot missed its mark and other Hamar came and
saved him. They took him to Arbala, one of the spokesmen of Kadja, who arranged for
him to be guided safely back across the Omo.
In the evening, I record Ginonda’s description of Dube’s ritual. She talks in a
gentle manner and yet she is forceful and articulate at the same time. The longer I
watch and listen to her, the more I like her. This is a mad, delicious and intimate
‘interview-theatre’, a form of entertainment and an art of which I have never dreamt
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before. It is as if the tape recorder, the microphones, the wiring, my earphones amplify
the Hamar’s ability to speak.
29.4.19 73
Gemarro has been away to see his herd up in Dimeka and this morning, as his wife
Katara puts on a pot of coffee, grim talk develops: “Usually, about the time that the
Ethiopian police celebrate Easter, the first sorghum ripens and the small children ‘steal’
from it and survive. But look at the fields today. They are empty, a desert! Where can
we go to exchange our goats for grain? There is no more grain in Banna, nor in Tsamai,
nor in Ari. The doors to Galeba and to Arbore are closed and there is hunger there
anyway. We are now slaughtering our goats and those who have none take them by
force. Soon we will run out of animals and then we shall kill each other over them:
‘why don’t you let me have one of your cows?’ and we shall take up spears and kill each
other. Soon there will be nothing but turmoil. There are no fruits in the bush ripe
enough to eat, there is nothing but salad. Times nave never been as hard as this
before.” It is Banko who says this but he adds: “But our hunger is not yet as bad as that
of the Bume.”
To illustrate the desperation of the Bume, he tells me the following story which
once again reveals the divisions amongst the Hamar, at least in so far as their relations
with the Bume are concerned: the men of Angude want to kill them, the men of Kadja
want to let them live.
One night about a week ago, the Kadja men who have a cattle camp close to the
Omo found a young Bume boy among their goats. He had been driven there by
starvation and the Hamar fed him with milk and blood. They even slaughtered a small
goat for him and then led him back to the Omo. A few days later, some Angude men
shot a deer close to the Omo and while they were eating it, a half-dead Bume
approached them asking for food. A young Angude man got up and speared him to
death.
Stunned by the news of conflict and the threat of disaster, I call Baldambe after
our coffee session and tell him that I have decided to turn my research towards
practical ends. I propose to him that we should go and explore the Woito Valley, speak
to the Arbore and Tsamai and find out whether the old irrigation works could be
reactivated. Baldambe, of course, agrees and we decide to drive immediately to Turmi
and discuss the matter with Captain Jonas Haile, the head of the Police and acting
Governor of the Hamar administrative district.
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At Turmi, we join Captain Jonas for the traditional Easter dinner: injera, meat and
beer. I outline my plan for an irrigation project in the Woito valley. At first, Captain
Jonas reacts negatively. He explains that the Hamar have a bad name in the provincial
capital of Arba Minch. Only after they have stopped fighting and raiding, can they
hope for any help from the government, he says. But I argue that they will never stop
raiding until they see some clear alternative and the advantages of intertribal cooperation are convincingly demonstrated to them…
In the end, he relents: “Go ahead and we will see.” I ask him to write me a letter
of introduction to the police at Arbore which could be used to set up a meeting
between Baldambe and Grazmatch Surra Gino, the balabat of the Arbore. Captain
Jonas also agrees to forward to Arba Minch an ‘application for government help’
(which he will write up and get as many Hamar as possible to sign), provided that Surra
agrees to co-operate.
By chance, in Turmi we also meet a number of important Hamar spokesmen,
among them Oita Banko and Aska Woro. Aska Woro is the spokesman of
Wungabaino which has a traditional interest in the lowlands towards the east. This is
the first time I have met Aska Woro. Under the ragged clothes, I can see a great old
warrior. When he talks I realise that he is used to being listened to and that outside
Turmi, in the world of the Hamar, he commands great authority. None of the Hamar
spokesmen say much, but when Baldambe tells them of our plan, they give us their
blessing.
1.5.1973
We pack and leave for Arbore early in the morning. Before we leave, Ginonda brings
us a large container of sour milk and Aikenda two bowls of sorghum food, one of muna
which we eat right away and one of the thick ulde-lacha for the road. Choke, Banko, old
Wadu and Baldambe are to accompany me on this trip. We have a slow but easy
journey and arrive at Arbore just after sunset. The place seems even more isolated and
out of touch with the world than Turmi; some unfulfilled expectations pervade it, it has
something of the air of Kafka’s novel ‘The Castle’. After greeting us, the police
sergeant Ayele sends someone to look for Grazmatch Surra and suddenly I see a lean,
energetic man appear from the dark. Slightly bent and with one damaged eye, you can
see that he has been washed by many waters, by many winds and by much sun, a sun
which the Hamar in this hot valley compare to urine: ‘the heat of the sun in this valley
washes you like the burning urine of the cattle’.
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He speaks and his voice resembles that of Jean-Louis Barrault: strong, soft,
flexible and full of many shades of expression. We stand in a semi-circle but Surra
looks only at me on the left. He does not look at any of my Hamar companions, not
even at Baldambe. I take his hand and greet him, but when Wadu puts out his hand,
Surra rejects it. Then Baldambe stretches out his hand slowly and in a sweet voice
addresses Surra as bel. This is the first time I have seen the term bel (bond-friend) in
action. The term is like magic, it appeals to an existing link of friendship which, being
personal, cannot be destroyed by public affairs, not even by the state of war which
currently exists between the Hamar and the Arbore. So Surra takes his hand, saying
that he will accept only Baldambe’s hand and no other.
Some policemen invite us for honey wine and we enter a small dark hut. Here,
Surra and Baldambe make a modest preliminary attempt at conversation with one
another. At one point, Baldambe explains to Surra who old Wadu is but Surra pretends
not to know him. This infuriates Wadu and he growls, “What’s the use of talking, he
knows me very well.” Clearly the bad feeling runs deep, yet when Surra leaves he says
he intends to send us some milk and, sure enough, a short time later, two containers of
fresh milk are brought to us.
2.5.1973
In the morning, Surra again sends us some milk which we mix with tea and drink with
him. Then I set up my recording equipment in the shade of the tree in the centre of the
‘town’ and we sit down around it in order to begin our first meeting about the Waita
project. Baldambe talks first and Surra answers him. Surra seems to have been thinking
about such a project himself for a long time and he says that the work at the river is a
small job; the big problem will be to get the people to work together peacefully. He
promises to call the elders of Arbore and their chief so that we can have a big meeting
in three days’ time. If the meeting should lead to an agreement, the Arbore would then
show us the places where the water could be diverted. I show my maps to Surra and
Sergeant Ayelle in order to demonstrate that I already have some general knowledge
about the valley and that in principle, I know what I am talking about. At the end of
the meeting, we tell Surra that we will travel on up the valley until we reach Birale,
exploring the valley on the way and talking to the inhabitants. Before we leave, Surra
asks me whether I prefer goat or sheep to eat, for he will make me the gift of an animal
when we return. Never has anyone made me such a generous offer in Hamar. There is
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a definite difference between these societies. An easiness and humour emanates from
Surra which I have never encountered in Hamar.
We leave Arbore at noon and drive north east until we reach the river. It is about
3 m deep and varies from 25 to 30 metres wide. Dense stands of huge shaap trees cover
the banks. But the river is almost completely dry. At some places water is still trapped
in deepholes in the river bed. Baboons, birds and huge salamanders frolic about,
drinking from the holes. After a long siesta in the cool shade of the trees, we drive
north east back to the Hamar Range. In the area of Gimbata, we climb to the top of a
large rock called Labala from where we have a good view over the valley and can
examine the paths of the old watercourses. I am struck by how clearly visible the old
watercourses are and how close they pass to the Hamar mountains. The idea would be
to redirect a part of the Woito waters back along the foot of the mountains...
In the evening we meet a Tsamai man for the first time. He climbs into our car
and leads us across the savannah to the settlement of the ‘chief’ of the Bura Tsamai,
Asmere Mallo. Bura is the name of the territorial segment of the Tsamai which lies
directly to the west of the confluence of the Sagan and the Woito rivers. Traditionally,
this has been the territory of the ‘chief’ of the Tsamai. A sympathetic and intelligent tall
man called Dara points out to us a spot at the foot of the Tsamai hills where the first
Tsamai ‘chief’ used to live.
We pitch our tent close to the compound of a local leader called Laku. Laku
himself does not arrive until after dark and then he only greets us briefly before
disappearing into his house. When we ask for milk, it takes a long time in coming.
Eventually a boy arrives, offering us milk and sorghum food not as a sign of hospitality
but in exchange for some of our coffee. How different it is from Arbore! Choke
comments; “This is the hospitality of the Tsamai. They are known for it. Not only do
they often let you go hungry but sometimes they do not even offer you a cow hide to
sleep on.” This would be unthinkable in Hamar.
3.5.1973
Very early in the morning a quiet murmur of voices wakes me up. I look out of the tent
and am surprised at how many men have gathered. About twenty five are sitting in
front of Laku’s house, engaged in quiet conversation. There is none of the rather
violent form of individual speech-making characteristic of the Hamar - no Oita Banko
taking the stage with everybody else listening.
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We drink our morning tea, then I set up my recording gear and we settle down
for talk. Baldambe opens the meeting and Laku and Dara answer him. They say they
are happy that we have come and that they will show us the place where the waters can
be diverted. But they cannot say yet whether they would be willing to work together
with outsiders at their river, because their ‘chief’ is temporarily away on a journey to the
administration post of Kai Affir. Only the ‘chief’ can make an important decision of
this kind. We reply that we don’t need a quick decision, that we have come only to talk
with them and find out what would benefit all parties at a later date. After the meeting
they appoint a man to show us the way to the homestead of an old man called Bitto
who 1eads us in turn to the point on the river where the Tsamai have traditionally
diverted the water for irrigation. At this place, which is called Silbo, old Bitto shows us
a trench which is about one metre deep and two metres wide and which has obviously
been used as an irrigation channel.
When we have finished looking around we return with Bitto to his homestead and
drink coffee together. Then we thank him and leave.
On our way north to Birale, we decide, as night is falling, to follow a herd of cattle
up towards the foot of the mountains. As we reach the settlement together with the
cattle, the women and children take their calves and kids and run into the bush to hide
from us. They think we are police who have come to take their possessions. Gradually
they drift back into the settlement but it takes some time until finally a spokesman
called Haranas arrives and greets us. He arranges for some milk and sorghum food to
be brought to us. We feel that we have to amend our criticism of Tsamai hospitality.
During the night it rains.
4.5.1973
Once again we wake to discover that quite a few men have quietly gathered. After a
short breakfast, we begin to talk. Baldarnbe informs them of our intentions and of our
interest in finding out more about the Woito river and its various courses. Of the
Tsamai, it is mostly Haranas and a man called Oita Butte who talk. We are surprised to
learn that the Woito does not flow naturally into the Birale basin and Birale lake, but
that the people of Duma (the name of this settlement and territorial segment) have been
diverting the Woito into the Birale basin since time immemorial. Moreover, in years of
heavy rains, when the Birale basin becomes completely full, the overflow runs
south along the Hamar Range all the way to Arbore. Our hosts tell us that their
forefathers arrived only with the digging sticks, adzes with steel blades and axes, used to
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dig the channel during the dry season. A horn would be blown to call the people to
work. Some of these attempts at diverting the river continue to this day. So the Woito
irrigation project already has a long history. Oita Butte and Haranas say that in the past
the Birale basin often fed many different people, all of whom had fields there: the Male,
the Konso, the Ale, the Hamar and the Tsamai. Traditionally, the Birale basin was an
area where cattle peoples met for trading purposes. The meeting ends with a request
from the Tsamai for Baldambe to call for rain and with the milk container he has been
given in his hand Baldambe complies.
Later I talk with the Tsamai about some of their customs and discover that they
have the gudili, the duki and the maersha like the Hamar but with slight variations. For
example, they don’t erect the baba stone on their graves. One fact surprises me: in
Tsamai, the ‘gate of the commoners’ (kaissi kirri) is still intact and the people divide
every year into sinners and non-sinners, like Baldambe told us the Hamar used to do in
times past. Another interesting fact: Tsamai men marry Hamar women, but Hamar
men don’t marry Tsamai women. At first I don’t understand this and I seek an
explanation: “The cattle-jumping initiation ritual is unique to the Hamar. Why
shouldn’t a man who has entered manhood in this way be allowed to take a wife from
where he wants? I could understand it if the Hamar refused their girls to the Tsamai on
the grounds that they were not fully adult as they had never jumped over cattle.” In
answering, Baldambe shows me how detailed one’s ethnographic knowledge has to be
if one wants to avoid misunderstanding things, “That’s not the point. A woman may
be exchanged for cattle in which case she is simply lost. But if a man wants to marry
properly he can’t take just any woman. She must be a girl who has received the sacred
binyere belt which a Hamar initiand, a maz, must have given her.” Remarkable! The
Hamar rituals are so complex that no outsider can easily be incorporated into them and
for this reason women may be ‘given away’ but men always marry within the tribe.
As we drive through Tsamai country, Baldambe points out how peacefully
antelopes and ostriches move among the cattle. The Tsamai don’t hunt them as
mercilessly as the Hamar would do. This fits in with my general observation that the
Tsamai are not aggressive and violent as the Hamar. And this in turn fits well with the
fact that the male-female division is less extreme here than it is in Hamar. This is
revealed in minor incidents: I saw Laku’s old wife sit on the same cow hide as a man,
something that would never happen in Hamar. Also, as Choke observed, “The Tsamai
are so mean, they make you eat from the same bowl as their wives; they don’t give you
a separate one.” Yet another example: Bitto has a young daughter. Yesterday she came
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out of the bush and joined us where we were drinking coffee. In the presence of the
guests, her father hands her a bowl of coffee. She doesn’t just take a sip but keeps the
whole bowl. This would also never happen in Hamar. Later I see her alone amidst a
group of young boys, stick in hand just like them. To carry a stick in Hamar is the
privilege and the symbol of masculinity; never have I seen a girl carry a stick in the
presence of young men or boys. In Hamar, only very old women use walking sticks
whilst young women only use sticks on ritual occasions, for example, the koli.
At noon after a long talk with Haranas and Oita Butte, we leave for the fields of
Duma down below on the Birale plain. Close to the watercourse that leads from the
river to the Biral lake, we arrive at .the irrigation ditches that criss-cross the plains and
lead into the fields. These also have grids of very small ditches. The sorghum has
recently been planted and the first shoots are visible. The water reappeared a few days
ago and Oita leads me to one of its courses, a wide meadow of tall grass through which
the clearest water is filtering.
The Tsamai of Duma say that only one of their channels reaches the Woito
directly at a place called Roko. Between the fields and Roko there is a large, dense
forest which the Tsamai have penetrated with many ditches. The forest seems to act
like, a natural distributor and stops the water from rushing in too quickly and suddenly.
As we rest in the shade of a tree, a couple of young men armed with guns appear
from the bush. They look as wild as any young Hamar man could and it is hard to
believe that they have not been on raids to Borana, to Kenya and so on, but everybody
insists, “their spear is the river”. I continue to try and find out whether there is any way
of reaching Roko, but they say that it is impossible now that the waters have come.
I hear some interesting news of people called the Birale who live on the east of
the Birale mountains, close to the river. The Tsamai refer to them as hajje and consider
them to be powerful magicians. The Birale have very little contact with outsiders and
never invite anyone to visit them. Their economy is based on sorghum, bees and
hunting. They are said to build many kinds of traps and to use spears effectively. Their
women wear skin dresses and have their hair cut like the Tsamai. Their most intriguing
feature is that they speak a language which differs from all the other languages in the
area. All this is hearsay, but music to the ears of an anthropologist. The Birale seem to
be a group like the Mogudji or Murle, who are hidden away geographically and are
submerged culturally and therefore have escaped being noticed as different from the
groups of which they seem to be a part.
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In the evening we take leave of our Tsamai hosts and drive back to Arbore
across the beautiful green savannah. As we cross one of the old river beds close to
Arbore there is a loud crack from somewhere in the Land Rover. It keeps moving and
Iwonder what has gone. This somehow symbolizes the state of my health: I keep
battling on with this travelling and exploration, yet when I look in a mirror, I see a
ghost of myself. My mouth is full of sores, my ears and eyes hurt and I feel extremely
weak. I wonder how much longer I will be able to go on like this.
5.5.1973
We were all exhausted and we slept until late in the morning. Surra comes to tell us
that the Arbore men are not yet ready to meet us and we pass the day resting. At one
point I am woken from my dreams beneath the shade tree by a very dark man with
innumerable ringlets of hair falling over his face and with several brass rings shining on
his arm. He greets me with his left hand whilst in his ring hand and supported by his
shoulder, he carries an immense whipping wand between four and five metres in
length. I fall asleep again and later Wadu tells me that this man was the ‘chief’ of the
Arbore. In the evening Surra slaughters a grey goat for us, but no Arbore elders show
up. As we feast upon the animal, old Wadu grumbles, “This is a Hamar goat, I know
it.”
6.5.1973
Still the elders of the Arbore have not come to us and we wonder why. However,
Surra, the ‘chief’ and another old man feel strong enough to have an ‘official’ meeting
with us. Once again we are joined by Sergeant Ayelle and I record the conversation on
tape. It is interesting that Surra now says he wants to join in the ‘irrigation project’
without the Hamar. He tries to argue that the Hamar have no claim to the plains, that
they belong to the mountains only. I answer that the Hamar have told me a different
story and I leave it at that. My Hamar friends sit quiet and don’t say a word. The
conversation becomes more relaxed. Finally, Surra and the ‘chief’ agree to work
together with the Hamar “as in olden times”.
Last night it rained heavily and Surra waits until the ground has dried before
taking us to the Woito and showing us where he has been digging irrigation channels
for the last few years. He claims that if the main channel is made sufficiently deep and
wide, the waters will make their way past the Arbore settlement down to the Tule basin
and the Hamar mountains. The job of diverting the waters seem to be comparatively
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small and Baldambe points out to me that once again it is not nature but people who
make things difficult. He insists that the ‘chief’ of the Arbore has been trying for some
time to keep the water away from Hamar by magical means. He used the long pointed
thorns of the acacia tree and diverted the water towards Borana. Just to make sure,
trees had been cut down and used as barricades to support the magic. I realise again
that much distrust and hatred pervades Hamar-Arbore relations. As we are about to
leave, we drink honey wine with the Arbore ‘chief’. He tells me that he stands to the
Hamar as a man does to his dog or his child and that it is only because he has blessed
them with the water and the grass that the Hamar have been able to survive in the past.
Wadu tries to answer that it is the Arbore who are dogs but Baldambe tells him to keep
quiet. By the time we leave, it is late afternoon but Wadu shows us the way through the
bush to the old settlement site of Baldambe’s grandfather Beri, at the foot of the
Hamar mountains.
7.5.1973
We leave in the morning after we have inspected the place and have discussed how we
would build a small new settlement here on Beri’s old place if the waters should reach
the mountains again. On our way home, near Assilebaino, we meet a herd of cattle and
goats. The herding boys vanish at first but they return when Choke calls them followed
by four men with guns. There is something cold about their look and we can sense that
something is wrong. Slowly the news comes out: four days ago, at the very time we
were talking of peace with the leaders of the Arbore, some of their number raided the
cattle camps close to the police post of Karabaino. The police joined the Hamar in
fighting the Arbore but the police were slow bringing out their machine-gun and the
Hamar were short of bullets and so the Arbore were able to drive away six herds of
cattle and goats. Four Hamar were killed and one was severely wounded. One Arbore
and a Galeba man who had joined the Arbore in the raid, also died. Banko is furious
when he hears the news and Wadu grumbles; “Now you see what dogs they are.”
Later in the day we stop at the Kaeske to wash ourselves. There are some
herdsmen there who talk with Choke. We get back into the Land Rover and begin to
work our way along the rough track. Suddenly, Choke explodes, “The Hamar are
seeking their own death.” “What is wrong?” Choke explains: the Hamar have again
murdered a number of starving Bume who wanted a share of the game that had been
killed. Choke does not know the whole story yet, but he heard that one of the Bume
was killed by his own gun and the man who carried this gun was Choke’s best friend,
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Wualle Lokarimoi. The killers were all men from Angude and Mirsha. When I hear that
our friend Longole is among the dead, I feel like throwing my cameras and tape
recorder out of the window.
We return to a quiet Dambaiti where we drink coffee in front of Aikenda’s
house. Kolmo joins us and later, reluctantly, Gemarro, to whom Baldambe relates our
story in a long and quiet monologue.
9.5.1973
Over in Aikenda’s house, Baldambe and several guests are talking but I stay in my
house and concentrate on writing up and organising in my mind the several lines of
research that I am pursuing. Firstly, there is my study of social conflict, internal and
external. Next there is the project of recording Hamar conversation in order to arrive
at an empirical basis for a study of their cognitive system. And then there are the tapes
I want to make for the SFB, my photographic work and my new interest in
sociolinguistics. Last but not least, there is my plan to do research among neighbouring
groups, especially the Kara of the Lower Orno.
10.5.1973
Uri has given Baldambe a fuller version of the Bume killing. As Baldambe relates the
story he looks disturbed and haunted. He has inherited from his father the obligation
to ensure the peace between the Hamar and the Bume. But as the leader of Kadja only,
he has no power to control the actions of the men of other territorial segments.
The Hamar shot a buffalo by the banks of the Omo and on hearing the shot, the
Bume turned up on the scene. The Hamar and the Bume shared the food together and
the Bume took some meat with them across the Omo. Before they parted, the Hamar
and the Bume arranged to meet again three days later to talk about matters concerning
the grazing and watering of the Hamar cattle. On the appointed day the Bume arrived
at the Hamar cattle camps. There was not much talk. Someone suggested moving to a
shade tree. As they walked over to the tree, a Hamar man suddenly fired on the only
Bume who was carrying a gun. As the Bume lay dying, Longole called out to the
Hamar: “We are kin, our blood is taboo, we have eaten together...!” Two men tried to
shoot him but their guns jammed. Longole did not attempt to run away: “If you want
to kill your kin, go ahead, go ahead and kill me.” This time the guns did not jam and
Longole died. One Bume boy pleaded to be spared but the Hamar replied by pushing a
spear down his throat. Even so he did not die instantly and he tried to climb a tree to
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escape his own death. Six men died, three ran a short distance and then stood still,
holding their hands in front of their mouths silently watching what was happening.
They knew the Hamar did not have enough bullets to shoot them. When the
nightmare was over they vanished into the bush. Baldambe finishes his account with
the remark, “I would have shot the man who fired first, not the Bume.”
11.5.1973
I was born thirty-three years ago and have spent most of my time preparing for life.
Now I begin to prepare to lose it. All this killing has brought my own death to mind. I
touch my body and wonder where death will enter first. Will it be through the head,
the chest, the stomach? And where, in Hamar, in Addis Ababa, in Europe? On land,
on sea, in the air? Will it be like a dream or like a nightmare? Or a long agony?
Fantasies of death revolve in my mind.
It is night. The day was beautiful. The rain cleared the air and I could see clear
down to Kenya in the south and to Banna in the north. The air was like a magnifying
glass. Countless shades of green and blue now give colour to this country which was
burnt to a cinder when I arrived a month ago. Goats and cows begin to gambol, the air
is filled with the lively jingle of their bells. I walk down to Ginonda’s field. It is nothing
more than a gesture really, it’s so small. But the essential elements are there and
Ginonda and her girls radiate optimism.
A few drops of rain fall in the silver evening sunshine. Their beauty reassures me
for a moment but a little later, around the coffee pot in front of Duka’s house, I hear
more stories of death! Up in Bashada, the intestines of a goat were recently consulted
and they revealed that in the near future many Hamar and Bashada will be killed by the
Mursi on their way up to Ari for grain. The oracle is revealing the guilty conscience or
the Bashada who killed many Mursi during last dry season. Now the Mursi have let the
Bashada know that “your present crop will be eaten only by the baboons”. And while
we are talking old Zinu arrives from Kara and tells us of the deaths of his oldest son,
his wife, his two daughters. Only his youngest son, whom he named after me, and his
mother survived. Part of Zinu’s news is that relations between the Mursi mid the Bume
have gone from bad to worse. The Bume were stealing the crops in the Mursi fields by
the Omo by night.
Barlugai, one of the most important big men of the Mursi, tried to defend his fields,
keeping watch over them at night. One night he fell asleep, gun in hand, and the Bume
shot him. Everybody expects a raid of retaliation by the Mursi. Zinu says that no one is
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as hungry as the Bume. The Bume killed by the Hamar were on the point of starvation
and the Hamar found only blood and grass in the stools which they excreted at the
moment of death.
12.5.1973
There is a beautiful moon and I ask Baldambe to start with a series of recordings
which we have been planning for some time. We wait until the grasshoppers have
quietened down and when it is almost midnight, we move into the cattle kraal.
Baldambe begins to talk to the sound of sneezing and bleating of goats and the tinkling
of their bells. Baldambe speaks and I translate. I had asked him to address himself to
the children he had befriended when we were in Berlin, to Otto, Sylvius, Jan and Fin,
to Karoline and so on, and to tell them how Hamar children grow up and learn to live
and work in Hamar. This theme occurred to me when I was considering how to
produce the programme for the SFB which Hans Peter Kruger has asked me for. I
don’t want to talk rapidly into the microphone myself in the manner of a sports
reporter; infact, I don’t feel like speaking about the Hamar at all. I want the Hamar to
speak for themselves. But if I were to ask Baldambe to describe rituals or historical
events, his speech would probably become so difficul that I would not be able to
translate quickly and the European listeners would not be able to follow. So I ask
Baldambe to speak to children about children, hoping that this would be easy to
translate and easy to understand but would still tell one a lot about the Hamar.
Baldambe warms up quickly and in a beautiful way, he connects his own experience of
Europe with his life in Hamar. We make two tapes which I am sure will delight our
friends in Berlin.
13.5.1973
Several men who will come to Turmi with me today have arrived and I can hear them
talking around Aikenda’s coffee pot. I prepare my camera, tape recorder, notebook etc.
and we all climb into the Land Rover. But Gemarro keeps us waiting. Wasn’t he the
one who kept everyone waiting at the recent public meeting? He’s playing the old game
of making himself important by arriving late. No one objects. When we arrive in
Turmi, an impressive number of Hamar spokesmen emerge from Captain
Jonas’ house: Oita Banko, Aike Gapha, Uri Shada, Guio Sulla, Garsho Shaelo, Bulu
Wangi and Gama Kotza. With all these important men present, the meeting gets going
quickly. We sit down and talk in the shade of an old manzu tree outside Turmi.
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I record and take photos. Oita Banko opens the meeting and he is followed by Aska
Woro and Gama Kotza. Then they hand over to Baldambe and he outlines the work
we have done so far, speaking of our talks with the Arbore and the Tsamai and as he
does so, turning the whole situation into a political issue. Everybody who speaks after
him follows his example and in this way, the discussion is kept on a very general level.
No one seems to be interested in practical matters such as where, exactly, the Hamar
should tap water from the Woito, for example. Baldambe and Choke later reassure me,
telling me that this seemingly empty rhetoric was, infact, a good sign since it showed
that everyone agreed with the project. After the meeting I write out a short application
for government help. The points I make are:
i) The Hamar need an engineer, tools and food for the Woito Project.
ii) I will write a report showing how the Woito was used for irrigation in the past
and how this irrigation work could be reactivated through the co-operative
effort of several tribes.
This application is then signed by all the Hamar elders present (twenty-four). They sign
by making a thumb-print. Afterwards we all celebrate by drinking honey wine.
14.5.1973
We drink coffee in Aikenda’s house in the morning. We hear that some cattle have
entered Ginonda’s field and have eaten some of the freshly planted sorghum.
Baldambe complains and Gemarro joins in, saying that everybody neglects their duties
nowadays. Once again, I am struck by this complaint. It is obviously a mechanism of
social control, but what does it, in fact, achieve? The young men who are sitting with
us continue to drink their coffee and Baldambe makes no move to get up and reinforce
the thorn fence around Ginonda’s field. Hamar life seems to be based on the principle
of minimizing energy expenditure. Look how small the fields and the herds are! All this
is related to the small amount that they have to eat: these days the young ones only get
a tiny amount of goat’s milk every evening and a few roots from trees growing out in
the bush. A man like Baldambe gets three or four pieces of dry sorghum a day and a
cup of milk if he is lucky. That is all there is in his daily menu except for coffee which
he may drink in the morning and in the evening. So Hamar social organisation is
certainly based on a tight control of the stomach. At most times of the year, eating is
almost a secret activitiy and this, I think, is the cause of much of the individual
isolation in Hamar.
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It is not just eating which is kept secret, but also the cleaning of the grain and the
grinding and the cooking. Often these tasks are carried out in the isolation and privacy
of the fields, even at times when there is no other work to be done there. The
consumption of food even erects barriers between friends, kin and bond-friends; it
operates on all levels. Banko, for example, has bought himself a blanket from an
Amhara trader and he plans to exchange this for grain at Kara in the near future. As
old Zinu is our guest in Dambaiti, Banko tells me not to let Zinu know of the blanket,
because Zinu would tell Banko’s bond-friend of it and he would then demand the
blanket from Banko. But Banko intends to sell it to someone who is neither his friend
nor his kin.
After the morning coffee I go down to the dry river to wash my clothes. While
my clothes are soaking in the water I walk on the fresh sand and explore the
topographical changes of the river. It changes each wet season during the floods which
carry off pieces of the bank here and deposit fresh sand there... I enjoy being naked as
I wash. Somehow I feel stronger than I do when I am wearing clothes. The body has
received a unity which it did not have before. And then of course I start to explore the
sociology of nudity: the opposition between hiding and showing the human body is an
element of all cultures. In Hamar it is the male and the healthy who want to and are
allowed to exhibit themselves. For example, the young men wear their loin-cloths as
‘mini-skirts’ so that the tip of their penises are visible but old and sick men are carefully
covered with blankets to hide them from the eye. And women? They always have to
cover themselves.
When the sun has gone down I sit in the cattle kraal and watch Tsasi milking the
cows and Lomoluk and Wollekibu driving the goats into their enclosure. Gino sits
down next to me and so do Tsasi and Djobire. We talk about herding and I realise how
knowledgeable the boys are. Moreover they talk clearly and freely to me, they don’t talk
in the muffled manner in which they usually answer questions of older people and in
which they tend to express their rejection of authority. This is what Gino has to say
about goats: When a young kid loses its mother, it is made to drink from another goat.
The herding boy calls the motherless kid by a specific call and soon the kid learns that
the call means that it will be led to its foster mother. Sometimes a boy finds several
foster mothers for a motherless kid. Just now, we have three such kids in our kraal. I
ask about male goats and Gino says sadly that the strongest and biggest is dead, slain
by a ‘killer’, a male goat whose horns easily wound and kill an opponent in a fight. One
day the strong goat and the ‘killer’ goat started fighting with one another. Gino spent
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all day drawing them apart but in the end, the dangerous one wounded the strong one;
one horn went straight through his neck. Gino treated the wound with the leaves of a
tree and for several days it looked as if the goat were getting better, but then one day,
in the evening, the goat did not return from the bush and was eaten by the hyenas. Did
it not return because it was too sick or because it was too proud (paramo)? Male goats
will turn against you when they are angry, but this is always a bluff, they never really
attack. Cattle, however, do attack and may even kill you. Shalombe was attacked by a
bull which hurled him into the air and opened an immense gash in his thigh. Bali who
was present when Shalombe was attacked took a spear and killed the bull instantly. The
ferocity of cattle is also a great asset, for they can defend themselves and their calves
against the hyenas. Oxen are especially good as guards, for when the hyenas approach
they roar and storm towards them and drive them away. One night, a hyena entered
the cattle kraal of Dambaiti and was dragging away a calf when a young ox saw the
hyena off even before the men arrived. When the ox had successfully rescued the calf,
both the men and the ox inspected the prey of the hyena; the men with their eyes, the
ox with his eyes and his nose: the calf was wounded but survived. This story leads to
more talk about hyenas: the hyena attacks the cow from beneath, it is only interested in
the belly. It drags the wounded animal to a tree and then eats its way into the belly of
the cow. By clinging to the tree it stops the cow from dragging it along the ground. So
it devours a large part of the cow whilst it is still alive. That’s a hyena for you! The
other day at Basho village a hyena opened the door of a goat kraal and drove all the
goats out into the night. Gino laughs: “While the owner was sleeping, the hyenas were
feasting up on Kale mountain.” Gino has a dance goat. He calls it ‘the freckled one’
and he feeds it particularly tasty leaves from special trees calling its name as he does so.
As night falls I ask Baldambe whether we should continue with recordings of his
teaching to the children in Berlin. He answers: “No, now that I have grabbed the snake
by its neck let us do this slowly.”
15.5.1973
I have been planning and preparing a journey to Kara for some time. I have also
contacted Serje Tornay who is working among the Bume and there is a chance that I
may meet him if I drive down to the Omo now. I had invited Choke and Banko to
accompany me and as they are ready to go, we leave today. We reach the Kizo cattle
camps early in the evening and find that the rain has produced an abundance of fresh
green grass. Over the blue Omo plain there are grey-white-silver-black clouds that
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issue billowing curtains of rain through which the evening sun glistens. The dark
silhouettes of the Burne mountains, Mt. Kuras and the mountains of Mursi stand out
in sharp relief. I turn round and look towards Hamar, a full white moon rising in the
blue evening sky, overlooking white cattle in the brown and violet kraals. I take some
photographs but I know that they cannot possibly catch the translucence of this hour.
The children herding the Dambaiti herds come running, calling, ‘Ivo lele, Ivo lele’.
Ginonda’s little son arrives first and I am struck by how professionally he already
carries a spear. Yes, here, at ‘our’ cattle camp I am at home, but when I later walk over
to one of the other nearby camps I feel like a stranger. That’s the effect of Hamar’s
particularized and individualistic social structure.
At night Choke blows the horn of the Land Rover,”The Galeba will think we
have discovered them and they will run home.” At night I hear dancing at a far away
camp. The Hamar dance because of the new grass, which is the ‘sorghum of the cattle’.
16.5.19 73
We leave the Hamar cattle camps behind and drive to Kara. When we arrive we are
welcomed by my ‘father’, Zinu and old Kolompo who is one of the most influential
Kara of Dus. At midday, we drink coffee in Zinu’s house. It is very hot in the grass
house and I can see the sweat running down the bodies of Banko and Choke. Each of
us is probably losing as much liquid as he is taking in. The house looks dusty and poor
inside and Choke says that the Kara houses used to look much better when the Kara
were wealthier, but that since the war with the Bume the “Kara have turned into
dogs”.
Later in the afternoon we drive a mile northwards to the small missionary clinic and
school where I had arranged to meet the Tornays, and indeed they are there. “Hello!”
“Hello!” Immediately we start to talk, so much so that my Hamar friends are
astonished since I usually have little to say when I am with them. We retail to one
another, the when, where, who and how of our respective field projects. Soon
common themes turn up: the suffering fieldwork entails, the way one becomes the
‘object’ of those whom one studies, the need to be strong and to insist on one’s
freedom to be oneself. The Bume call Serje ‘the one who uses his whip’. They gave
him this name because every morning he has to chase away from his door step dozens
of people who are pestering him. There are so many people who wan so many diverse
things from him that he can’t cope with them and as they don’t leave when he asks
them to go politely, he has taken to carrying a whip, a symbol of authority which is
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well understood amongst all the tribes of our area. Martine has been suffering a lot
from the arrogance of the women and girls towards her. How different are the Hamar
in this respect! For example, the girls would not give her water at the waterholes, not
until Serje came along with his whip. Are they living in a situation similar to the one we
had in Gabo?
17.5.1973
Serje, Martine and I drink coffee in the morning, sitting in the shade of Zinu’s sister’s
homestead. Then we move to the shade which the Kara have built for me. We talk
about our respective work for hours but the Kara leave us in peace. They seem to
understand that people have to talk to each other. Serje and Martine have an
informant, host and friend who seem to be rather similar to Baldambe. Like
Baldambe, he is a ‘younger brother’ and somewhat alienated from his own people.
Like Baldambe, he is from a family whose importance has declined. He is slightly
younger than Baldambe and probably does not have such a rock-like character. For
example, he joined the raid on Kara in an effort to be accepted by his people. This is
a way of gaining acceptance that I don’t think Baldambe would ever adopt. Now he
stands in Dus and talks with the Kara as if no fighting had ever happened.
It is interesting that Serje thinks that onJy a few, perhaps ten, Bume were killed in
the Kara fields and that, therefore, the Bume attack was rather disproportional. On the
other hand, Choke says that possibly almost a hundred Bume died and that with the
death of 104 Kara the tribes are now about even. Moreover, Serje thinks that the Bume
became an intolerable burden, eating all the food, and since they would not leave of
their own accord, the Kara killed them off. I still wonder whether there might not be
some truth in my less plausible theory that it was the Banna who, wanting to have a
share of the Kara crops, triggered off the killing.
18.5.1973
During the morning Serje leads a ‘seminar’, asking the Kara the names of their agegrades, names which they have adopted from the Bume. As the Kara speak Bume and
Serje has learned to speak Bume, his work progresses well. I lie exhausted (the heat!)
and watch how Serje works. He uses his tape recorder a lot and with ease. Yesterday I
had sent word to an older man called Maia who is said to be a kind of specialist on
Kara customs and this evening he arrives. He agrees to work with us tomorrow
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19.5.1973
When I begin my interview with Maia in the morning, it is almost a public event. Many
men sit down around us when we begin to talk. I ask Maia to give me an outline of
Kara life and customs. He answers this unstructured request with the statement: “I
don’t know what is in your stomach. Tell me what you want to know.” So I ask
questions based on Baldambe’s model of Hamar society. A lively and informative
session of questions and answers follows in which not only Maia but also other Kara
men participate. Serje, Martine and I spend a quiet afternoon. In the evening I hear
that the Kara will leave on a grain expedition to Galeba and as this will involve almost
all the Kara, I decide to accompany them.
20.5.1973
Martine and Serje leave whilst I continue my inquiry into Kara custom. Maia has
left and this time we are only a small group. Through the participation of Banko
and Choke the interview takes on an interesting dimension because they are
constantly contrasting the Kara institutions, rituals and practices with those of the
Hamar. A woman, the mother of an age-mate of Choke who was killed in the
recent Bume attack, invites Choke and me for an evening meal. I get the
impression that she is especially nice to Choke because she has lost her son and
Choke who, addresses her as ‘mother’, for a moment becomes a substitute for her
dead son. I even have the feeling that old Zinu is particularly pleased when I c.all
him ‘father’. It is just a symbolic connection via my god-child, his son, but it
seems to comfort him.
21.5.1973
Throughout the past days the Kara have been preparing clay pots which they will
exchange in Galeba for grain. Now they are preparing carriers to carry two or three
pots each on their backs. They say that their pots are not as good as those of the
Bashada. When the Bashada come to Kara for grain they bring their pots and the Kara
happily exchange them for grain, since Bashada pots last five to six years while those
of the Kara may die after only one. They trade their pots in Galeba where no such pots
are made and the Galeba hand them on to the Turkana who prefer them to metal pots.
“In metal pots, the fat vanishes”, says Zinu. The pots of the Kara remind me of the
goats of Hamar. In Hamar, goats are relatively plentiful and they are traded for grain to
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Banna. The Banna then trade the same animal to Ari for larger quantities of grain than
they had originally given to the Hamar. Similarly the pots move from Bashada to Kara
and from Kara to Galeba and the price increases on the way.
When I enquire about Kara external conflicts, I hear that the Bume and the
Bashada are ‘kin’ and that they never fight one another. For the same reason, the Bume
and the Hamar of the Kadja territorial segment should never fight one another.
Therefore, the Bume claim that the killings at the Kizo cattle camps must have been
instigated by the Kara. If Hamar were among the killers, they were just ‘thieves’. This
euphemism is, I think, a witness to the fact (or rather to my theory) that warfare here
along the Lower Omo is largely an outcome of the lack of inner social control. Political
arrangements between different groups don’t last long, because those members of the
group who violate the truce are not easily brought into line. This is the price of
anarchy. It only works at some levels; at others, it produces misery. It sounds odd that
anarchy should ‘work’, but does it not produce an enormous levelling of property in
Hamar? No one can rely on hierarchical structures to support him, everyone depends
on himself, his fitness and his network of social relations which carry him as long as he
keeps them alive. Furthermore, anarchy leads to the development of extremely
competent and self-assured personalities. The Hamar herding, the preparation of the
fields, their beekeeping and their trading expeditions are all directed by individual
initiative. That which makes society weak, makes the individual strong.
As we talk, we are joined by two young Kara men wearing the badge of killers. I
ask whether the killing between the Kara and the Bume will go on and they say: “Yes,
till it stinks and then we shall make peace.” Two young girls coming from the river
pass by, carrying water gourds on their heads. I remark that no Hamar could perform
that feat and I learn that these are Bume girls who were saved on the day when many
of the Burne died. Now they have become the ‘children’ of Zinu’s sister.
The two young Kara men tell us that the Mursi just took revenge for the death of
Barlugai in a raid that cost the lives of nine Bume.
As we continue talking, a group of fierce looking people passes our shade; there
are two men carrying spears, whips, fighting sticks and shields and two women with
green sticks which they must have just cut in the bush. As they hurry towards the
village, Zinu remarks dryly, “There will be a fight”, and before I can get my camera
ready, cries are audible from the village. When I arrive, the whole village seems to have
gathered. Excited words fly through the air, but I can’t make out where the different
contending parties have their strongholds. One of the newly arrived men stands alone
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in the crowd, hodling a shield. He has lifted his arm with the whip and is about to
engage. A short moment of suspense and silence follow and then the man and his
fellow attackers charge through the crowd trying to reach their opponents, but they are
stopped by the crowd. I soon realise that the whole scene is meant to express anger by
a show of force and the threat of violence, but it is not actually meant to harm anyone
physically. If the attackers really wanted to harm their victims, they could easily waylay
them in the bush. After the first confusion, the attackers settle down in an open space
in the village and, sitting on their shields and using their sticks to emphasize their
gestures, they publicly formulate their complaints. The other men of the village sit
down around them in a semi-circle. Among them is the defendant, a young man who
soon gets up and answers the charges. The public listens for a while to the arguments
between the contenders and then slowly some men begin to make comments till in the
end all the talk is taken over by the crowd. Kolompo makes the final speech which
concludes the matter for the time being. He says that the two women who came with
the attackers (and who have been sitting quietly apart during the ‘fighting’ and the
arguments) had caused the quarrel and he vehemently criticizes them. The contenders
are all Mogudji, but since they are clients of a kind the matter is settled by the
spokesman of their respective patrons. The two women who have been so severely
criticised belong to Kolompo’s clan. When the arbritration is over, I ask Kolompo to
describe the history of the case to me in detail. I record it and use it to ask a number of
questions about social control and purification rituals in Kara.
When night comes a big dance starts in the village and I count as many as eighteen
killers among the dancers. They all wear the badge of the killer: white straps of goat
skin over their shoulders, on their arms, on their legs and around their heads which are
shaven in front and covered with red clay and butter. Still they are not happy, they tell
me, because they lack the bells that go round the legs, which ring out and tell of their
‘achievement’. They used to get these bells from the Bume and it is they whom they
have been killing. They make me sick and I can’t bring myself to record their rather
magnificent singing and dancing. Many of them are so young, perhaps sixteen,
seventeen... and they have killed little boys and girls and women and even old men
whom they were taught to respect. They are not ‘warriors’ but little anomic killers.
22.5.1973
Watching the Kara dance last night I realised that certain important features serve to
distinguish it from Hamar dances, features which match the difference in the age and
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the male-female opposition. The old-young opposition is drastically enforced with
whips in Hamar. Here in Kara the young stand at the right end of the semi-circle of
the dancers beside the old. They are supposed to dance to the left of the older dancers
as in Hamar, but here no one seems to mind if they also dance to the right. So the
young ones take the old ones into their midst rather than keep them strictly to their
right. This looks to me much more harmonic and balanced, yet I also understand the
message of the Hamar dance which emphasises the difference between the ages. With
regard to the male-female opposition, I note that the men don’t use their whips to
chase away the girls, a feature which is typical of the Hamar dance. Furthermore, whilst
in Hamar the smallest girls dance behind the main body of female dancers, here in
Kara they dance in front or them. So a line of tiny and extremely graceful children
move between the aggressive and heavy males and the leaner lighter and more
defensive female dancers. On the female side, I miss the ‘jingle-jingle’ of the hails that
are fastened to the fringes of the Hamar girls’ skirts and the ‘clang-clang’ of the iron
rings of their legs. It is these sounds which give the Hamar dances their particular
flavour.
Today a group of Banna men has arrived in Dus, they have corne to negotiate
about some grain which the Kara owe them. Later a Galeba arrived and I hear that
many Hamar have gone down to Galeba to get a share of their crop. The Hamar and
Galeba peace motivates Choke to join me on my planned trip accompanying the Kara
to Galeba.
23.5.1973
Early in the morning almost all the people of Dus prepare to leave. They adjust their
sandals, put fat on their bodies, repair broken spear shafts, fasten handles to their
water containers... and then they depart: the women and children in front and the men
behind. The men are too proud (hypocritical) to shoulder their loads inside the village.
Instead they leave the village ‘free’ and a few hundred metres outside it, take over the
loads from their women. There is a colourful morning light which I capture in my
photographic coverage of the exodus. When the Kara have left, I write notes in my
diary while Choke and Banko pull down the terit and pack the car. These friends help
me immensely and I find time to do my ethnographic work instead of constantly
battling with practical problems.
Shortly before noon we climb into the Land Rover and leave the now deserted
village of Dus. We overtake the Kara as they rest at Lapha to escape the heat of noon.
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We wait for them on a ridge above Lake Diba. We rest in the shade of a tree and look
across the misty Omo plain and watch the scavengers in the sky: when they have
caught something they pick up remarkable speed on their way home to feed their
young. One can hear the sound of their speedy flight from miles away. Then the Kara
arrive in a long line, most of them carrying clay pots on their backs. Some wear small
items on their heads, others carry water containers and bowls in their hands. There is a
complex rhythm to the movement, posture and stride of the women. The spears, guns
and sticks of the men give the otherwise rounded features of the people a spiky
outline. Feathers and metal rings flash in the sun. I use my camera to the best of my
ability and then we wave ‘good bye’ to the Kara and drive slowly up to the Hamar
cattle camps.
More rain has fallen and the country around the Kizo cattle camp is greener than
ever. The tableau of grey, yellow, white and almost blue cattle set against a silver
curtain of approaching rain tinged with red and pink by the setting sun reminds me of
Poussain’s allegories. We drink milk and go to sleep early, after we have heard the usual
‘talk of the country’.
24.5.1973
Banko has left us to look after his fields in Dambaiti, so Choke and I continue our
journey to Galeba country alone. For several hours we drive through open grassland
and savannah and meet an abundance of game. At one point we see at least a thousand
gazelle, antelope, oryx, zebra and many more. When we reach the dense bush close to
the Omo we run across the footprints of the Kara and follow them. It is extremely
difficult and slow driving and the heat increases as we battle through the dust. By the
time we reach the Galeba I am physically exhausted and feel totally disinterested in
what is going on just as on the one other occasion that I arrived in Galeba. I can hardly
even bring myself to look at them. They make me feel homeless again. They come and
go, but from where do they come and where do they go? They talk, but what are they
saying? I look at all those symbols that they are wearing, leather straps around their
wrists, fruit in their head-dresses, whips in their hands... what do they mean? As I can’t
converse with them and don’t understand their symbolic language, I immediately want
to turn back to return to Hamar. How right my friend Asen Balikci is: “You only do
fieldwork once”. I also think of my father who could only really paint in Northern
Germany. No, not even that would do; he had to be in his small studio and garden, for
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there he could concentrate, there his problems and his power to solve them were in
accord.
I force myself not to give up too soon and decide just to try to be here, not to
use my camera, not to take any notes. We reach the Omo at the same time as the Kara.
They walked most of last night and throughout this morning and now they rest
exhausted in the shade of the trees by the river.
25.5.1973
Today most Kara have crossed the Omo in an attempt to reach more fields and more
bond-friends. We have pitched our tent at the border of the village close to the east
bank of the Omo.
During the day the settlement was deserted, all its inhabitants staying in their fields to
the south. In the evening, however, they return and we talk with them. A young Kara
man called Dore translates the dialogues which concern the astonishing arrival of
Choke. The Galeba have hardly ever seen a Hamar here alive! Some look at Choke as if
they are contemplating the idea of killing him, others take his hand and seek his
friendship. Each side uses the opportunity to make long speeches.
Dore, Choke and I spend several hours of the night sitting by the fire. Choke
talks with Dore about marriage in Kara: “When we have returned to Dus I will talk to
the men and tell them that they should change their way of marriage.” And Dore,
who gets his point quickly, answers: “Yes, we should marry like the Hamar do,”
meaning that they should not marry all the men of one age-group at one and the same
time, but that each man should marry when it is most convenient for him and his
family. Dore laments that there are too many grown-up men like himself who have not
yet married and may not legitimately claim any children as their own: “It would be
better to hold a child on one’s arm instead of throwing it into the bush.” Dore has had
three unmarried girls as lovers and they all had children whom they had to abandon.
Choke remarks, “After having had children before marriage, the Kara women have
none after they have married.” Do the Kara men stop the young from marrying
because they themselves want the girls? There is more polygyny in Kara than in
Hamar. Zinu and Kolompo, for example, each have four wives. Dore insists that
despite polygyny, there are enough girls in Kara for the young men to marry.
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26.5.1973
Watching Galeba men and women, I am once more struck by the fact that from tribe
to tribe here in southwest Ethiopia the male-female relationship varies. While in
Hamar it is antagonistic, here in Galeba it seems to be playful. Imagine, for example,
the following incidents, impossible in Hamar:
1. A man leans on the shoulder of a woman to whom he is talking.
2. A man and a woman are holding each other’s hands while casually walking and
talking.
3. Women do the bartering in an economic transaction whilst the men stand idly by.
4. The grown-up men hide their penises but show their testicles!
5. The women wear their skirts loosely and casually wrapped around their hips (you
could easily and quickly pull them off!) and if they wear iron rings around arms or
legs, these are lighter than the ones worn in Hamar.
6. An old man sells me his stool. Shortly afterwards his wife comes running and
shouts at him: “I went and got the stool for you, how dare you give it away.”
Dore is quick to translate for me what the old man answers: “One does not eat wood!”
I don’t know enough about the Galeba to reach any conclusions, but on the surface,
they seem to differ markedly from the Hamar.
27.5.1973
The Kara are slowly returning from their trips to far away fields. They have not
received the amount of grain they had hoped for and as their hosts are not feeding
them well, they are feeling disappointed. I hear them say, “It is better to be hungry in
our own country.” They plan to leave tomorrow.
Choke has found a Galeba who wants to become his proper ‘bond-friend’. This
young man, therefore, invites us to his father’s homestead for food. When we arrive at
the homestead in the late morning we find that it shows several signs of nomadic life:
the small conical huts are improvised, the cattle and camels have a slightly ragged look,
as if they have walked long distances... But the huts only look poor from the outside,
for when I enter I find myself enveloped in a golden-red-yellow and mysterious light
which filters through the parchment-like skins that form the roof. For some reason,
the light emphasizes the translucency of the human eye. I have never seen eyes so
precious and alive as in this Galeba house. The light turns the eyes into marbles,
radiant marbles, marbles that are firm and at the same time translucent like water.
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What do I mean? I saw how the eye is a unique part of the body. It takes in and it
emanates, it sees and it makes visible, it is more than just corporeal matter...
After we have sat down to eat, a Kara man crawls into the house. He brings his
gun and although the host asks him to leave it outside, he keeps it in his hands. I am
surprised. Why is he rude? He explains that he has come to protect Choke. The
Galeba-Hamar peace has suddenly come to an end and the Hamar are killing the
Galeba up in Hamar and the Galeba are killing the Hamar here in Galeba. Choke is in
immediate danger and the Kara man, on hearing some Galeba discussing how to kill
Choke has rushed to protect him. Still, we remain seated and accept the sorghum
porridge and the milk which our hosts offer us. The beautiful sister of Choke’s bondfriend sits with us. She is much more open and unrestrained than a Hamar girl would
be on such an occasion. The Hamar girls also laugh and smile, but typically this is more
restrained, even hidden. The way this girl looks and smiles at Choke makes it obvious
that the intimate and personally addressed smile is not hidden and exclusive in Galeba
as it is in Hamar. One has to see for oneself how a Hamar, whether girl or woman or
even a man, smiles at another in such a way that a third party cannot see the smile in
order to believe that this hiding of socialrelationships really goes on. It is not only
things that are hidden in Hamar, but social relationships themselves.
As we take leave of our friendly hosts, Choke remarks that we should depart as
soon as possible and he is quick to pack the car so that we can get going. The Galeba
draw close to us and watch us with dark looks. “Leave!” says Dore and off we drive in
a cloud of dust. When we reach Rate, the place where we had intended to take water
from the Omo, we find the Galeba rounding up sheep and goats and bringing them
across the river to keep them safe from a possible Hamar raid. The guns and spears
and grim looks tell us enough and I steer the Land Rover away from them into the
bush towards Hamar.
It is hard going for the vehicle through the dense bush and across ditches and
holes and broken ground. The driving works off some of our tension and it is in a
relaxed silence that we enter the green savannah leading to the Hamar cattle camps.
When night comes we have reached the flat plain which is called Bakas after three
bakas trees that stand out in the centre of it. We fry pancakes over the fire and
attracted by the smell of the fat, the hyenas arrive and howl and whine and laugh
around us. While we are lying on our backs sleepily looking into the sky, a bright white
light crosses almost half the sky, turns blue, then green and then explodes, its sparks
slowly descending over Mursi country. It is a meteor and Choke says, “Wait, soon we
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will hear its sound and the sound will wake the birds and they will make a noise.” And
sure enough, about five to ten minutes later we hear a heavy blurred sound like a
distant detonation or thunder. Choke laughs and says again, “Now listen to the birds.”
28.5.1973
We arrive at the Kizo cattle camps. Everbody had been very concerned about Choke’s
fate. Would I be able to protect him? They knew I had no gun. Now he is back and of
course, this is just the right occasion for a long ‘talk of the country’. Choke addresses
himself to his friend and ‘older brother’ Wualle Lokarimoi. He faithfully describes
every detail of our journey and of what we have heard and seen. Then Wualle answers
him and a large audience of young herdsmen listens: they heard of the killing last
evening. Three Bashada youths and one Hamar started the malaise. One of them is the
one who recently killed a Mogudji in Kara and the other is the man who shot dead
Galti’s husband in Dambaiti. Both are anomie killers and again they have followed ‘in
the footprints’ of the harmless and have spoilt the peace between the Hamar and
Galeba. All four of them killed Galeba herding boys and the Galeba retaliated quickly
by killing four Hamar who were returning from Galeba with grain. A fifth Hamar
escaped wounded and when he reached Hamar with his bad news, this was the death
sentence for another four Galeba who were staying as guests at the Godena cattle
camps. The news is still uncertain, but it is clear that it was the Bashada who brought
all this unwanted trouble. Wualle formulates the outrage of the Kizo herdsmen (who
keep their herds on the border of Galeba country and carry the main brunt of conflict)
when he refers to the Bashada as “those who herd porridge”. He wants the Bashada to
stick to their own territory and not to trespass onto Hamar territory. But although the
abuse might sound good here at the Kizo camps, it is far from the truth that the
Bashada are living on porridge only. They have, in fact, acquired rather big herds
during the recent past. In olden times they are said to have been ‘exhausted’ (bashada)
and poor but this stereotype no longer has any truth to it.
We soon leave the cattle camps again and continue our drive to Kara. It begins to rain
but the sunlight still plays on the high grass and the zebras, wart-hogs and gazelles
beside the track. We meet ostriches dancing their clownish but real dances, moving in
circles, whirling their wings. Dus is quiet when we arrive. We are invited in by a man
who is Choke’s friend. The Galeba man who arrived a week ago is still staying in Dus
and when he joins us, Choke and he converse amicably about the renewed conflict
between the Hamar and Galeba.
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29.5.1973
The day passes quickly. We rest and I read about the Murle in Lewis’ book. I like the
way he writes, there is ethnographic nourishment in this book. In the afternoon the
‘big man’ of the Mogudji turns up. His name is Karinti. He says that he is bringing me
the greetings of the Mogudji. They are looking forward to having me among them as
their ethnographer. They invite me to study their customs just as I studied those of
their patrons, the Kara. This has never happened to me before the members of a tribe
make it quite clear that they have customs of their own which are worth studying.
Significantly, they are underdogs! We drink tea and record linguistic material and some
facts of Mogudji life. I am struck by two pieces of news:
1. The Mogudji don’t have clans, nor exogamic groups such as the Kara and Hamar
have.
2. They don’t grow a range of different types of sorghum as I had expected. In fact,
they only grow the one type which most Bashada grow.
30.5.1973
Late in the morning the first members of the trading expeditiol return. First a young
man and then another... and then little by little, the women and children. Most of them
carry only tiny amounts of grain. The girls exhibit their loads ostentatiously on their
heads, they know they will not be allowed to eat the food by themselves. The married
women, who have children and husbands to feed, hide the little loads which they have
brought under big loads of fire wood. The returning people drink coffee and a thin
porridge made from sorghum. The village buzzes with conversation. The children and
older womer who had stayed behind welcome the returning members of their families
and unload their burdens. Some people, however, have no one to greet them, and
quietly and alone they cross the village till they reach their houses. My ‘mother’ has
brought some butter from Galeba and the first thing she does upon her arrival is to
rub it over the body of my god-child. In the evening my ‘father’ calls me for coffee and
as we sit there, coffee bowls in hand, he tells me that as far as he knows eighteen
Galeba have died and several Hamar, from whom the Galeba took, all in all, seven
guns. He also hints at raids of retaliation which the Galeba will be launching soon.
31.5.1973
Life consists of infinite phenomena which create a rhythm of perception. A story
heard in Hamar, a symbolic equation between heart and stone reversed, a milk
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container, a song... being an expression and a part of life, they are only understood
(and can only be told) in the way they reveal themselves, in the way they emerge from
the totality of life, become visible, turn into perception. This is why I am happy to
continue my ethnography without ‘theory’, for the theory will show itself later. Not as
something added to the facts, but rather as the element contained in the dramatic
counterposition of the facts. What I mean is: the way in which isolated phenomna
contrast with each other is also the way in which they will eventually have to be
explained. Take for example Baldambe’s ‘Narrative’. He begins with ‘the first’, the
chief, and he contrasts him with the outsiders, the enemies. This counterposition is at
once dramatic and analytic. Don’t tell me that I have lost my ‘objective’ perspective!
1.6.1973
We are off to Dambaiti today, but before we leave we have coffee in my ‘father’s’
house and while we are drinking a contingent of young Galeba men arrive in Dus.
There are eight of them and they are on their way to Ari where they intend to
exchange donkeys for ammunition. I talk with one of them and am struck by his
intelligent frankness and his total lack of timidity. He, like the other Galeba men,
carries a gun and does not seem the least bit afraid of being attacked by the Hamar or
Banna.
We leave Dus in the late morning and drive to the Kizo cattle camps. There, in the
early afternoon, we come across a large public meeting, concerned with the seasonal
whipping of the young men. All the older men are carrying whips, or rather the older
of the younger men, men like Dikera, Choke’s older brother, and Kairambe. They use
their whips in sporadic mock-attacks. These are only gestures of authority and the
young respond to them by running away and submitting. Then the ‘older brothers’ take
their hands and lift them and bless them. The ‘younger brothers’ bring a goat and a
sheep which are slaughtered for the subsequent speech-making. First I feel too
exhausted to be really interested in what is going on, but then, after a short sleep in the
shade of a tree, the power of the meeting grabs me and I prepare my cameras and
recording equipment. It is a medium-size, well conducted meeting. Only a few men
talk. Between their talks there is prolonged singing of the war songs which I record in
almost ideal conditions. The war songs mock the Bume, but the speeches urge the men
both to refrain from killing and to intensify their scouting on the Galeba border, for
soon the Galeba are expected to embark on raids of revenge. At the very end of the
meeting Wualle Lokarimoi gets up and speaks to a number of youngsters. He discusses
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practical arrangements with them and I realise that this is an important part of the
meeting: for it is now that decisions are being taken concerning the composition of the
scouting parties, whether or not to meet again, who should supply goats for such a
meeting, etc. Wualle is not yet a ‘speaker’, but he is certainly one of the most important
men at the Kizo cattle camps in matters of day-to-day politics.
At night I record a group of young men singing and dancing at ‘our’ cattle camp.
When they have finished singing to their dance oxen and dance goats, an intelligent
and comical boy starts to lead a series of dancers in which he satirizes the dances and
songs of his fathers and forefathers. As he leads the singing he improvises jake after
joke which reduce his mates to tears of laughter.
2.6.1973
Everybody comes to listen to the music which I recorded last night. While we listen I
ask questions about the different singers, the songs and their meanings and so on and
everybody is extremely gentle and co-operative, “When you come the next time, we’ll
sing again.” The tape recorder, with its immediate feed-back, is an ideal tool because it
establishes good learning relationships. By playing back a piece of music or speech one
can demonstrate what one is trying to understand and this then turns the ‘objects of
observation’ into ‘teachers’. Of course this reversal happens only for a short period of
time and when one has grasped the indigenous view, one switches back to the distant
attitude of the objective.
Choke leaves me and I drive alone through the ‘honey country’ to Dambaiti. As
the car winds its way along the track through the ‘thorn garden’ of the higher altitudes,
I have the feeling of passing through a three-dimensional medieval painting. The
recent rains have washed away all the footprints of men and animals and this
emphasizes my sense of isolation. When I arrive in Dambaiti in the afternoon the
village breathes quietness. Baldarnbe is sitting on a cow hide in front of our house and
with him is his brother Dube who has just arrived from southern Hamar.
I hear yet another version of the Galeba-Hamar fighting: two young Bashada and
one Hamar ‘followed in the footsteps of those who had gone in search of friendship’
down to Galeba. In Galeba country they caught up with four other Hamar who asked
them why they had come. The young men said they had come to exchange an Alben
gun with the Galeba for a Dubai gun. This seemed plausible and the intentions of the
four Hamar were therefore not suspected. All seven guests stayed at the same Galeba
cattle camp over night. The next morning two of the four Hamar continued on their
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way to Galeba, the two others remained behind. The three killers also left, but they did
not go further south. Instead they followed three young herding boys. They surprised
and killed two of them, the third escaped because his dance ox attacked the Hamar
who was trying to kill him (myth or reality?). He ran and informed the Galeba who
then rushed to attack the two Hamar who were resting in the shade of a tree. One of
them was soundly asleep, but the other had just woken up and when he saw the
Galeba with their hands in front of their mouths, he knew that something was wrong.
But, before he could warn his companion, one of the Galeba speared the sleeping man.
The Hamar who was awake jumped up and dived into the nearby bush. A bullet
shaved off some of the hair of his head. He ran all the way to Galepha and when he
had told his news there almost all Galeba men and women who were staying at Galeba
as guests were slain. Perhaps as many as fifteen died; but another group was saved by
their Hamar host who would not allow his fellow countrymen to kill them. He kept
them for a whole day in his house and then, at night, escorted them back to safety.
Only now am I coming across this safeguarding of bond-friends and guests and I am
intrigued by it because it lifts the external conflict to a new and tragic level.
As we talk, Ginonda’s beloved, ragged figure moves towards us, emerging from
the background of the Dambaiti ‘stage’. Her stride is slow and reluctant yet powerful.
Once again I observe the phenomenon I had become aware of only when confronted
with the ‘openness’ of the Galeba: the ‘hiding’ of social relationships in Hamar.
Ginonda’s whole figure expresses simultaneously the withdrawal and the presentation
of herself. She has received the tobacco and the salt which I had sent her with Banko.
Now she tells me this with her smile (her eyes and her teeth) and lets me know that she
is grateful and happy, yet it would seem to an outside observer that she has never seen
me before. We ignore each other, which in Hamar is really a very powerful ‘hello’.
Then, after a while, she mumbles, “Theoimba” and I slowly answer, as is Hamar
custom, in the same casual way, “Ginonda”.
We drink coffee and I experience the familiar peacefulness of Dambaiti. But, as a
result of my arrival, the settlement will soon be buzzing with talk and activity again. At
night there is a short heavy downpour which the Dambaitians attribute to the barjo
(good luck) of my arrival. Yes, Lévi-Strauss is right, we travel not only in space. We
also travel in time and, above all, in social hierarchies. Here in Hamar I am associated
with barjo (good luck, creation, the creator, plenty). But in Europe I am an intellectual
proletarian.
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3.6.1973
The talk around Aikenda’s coffee pot wakes me in the morning and when I join the
speakers, Gemarro kisses my cheeks. I feel his scruffy beard which emphasizes his
warm friendliness. He laughs: “I knew, your barjo would bring Choke back from
Galeba safely.” The weeds in his fields are growing tall and he soon leaves to fight
them. Banko is here, looking neat and young with a splendid new clay cap. It strikes
me that it is always after important events like hunting and trading expeditions that
men tend to re-do their hair. This fits in with the main purpose of such ventures: selfglorification. It is important to look good at the moment when one has something new
to relate and talk about, for the listeners do not only lend you their ears, they also
watch you.
In his ‘talk of the country’ Banko tells me an interesting story of conflict and its
solution: the day before Banko returned from Kara to Dambaiti, Kula the ‘black’s’
younger sister Waku was shot at by her young husband. He did not shoot to kill but to
intimidate her. The reason for his anger dated back to a time before Waku had joined
him, when she was living with her mother and sisters and brothers and had a lover
whose child she aborted. Her pregnancy had been known to her husband, but he had
never reacted to this provocation. Only now that Waku was staying with her mother
again, having taken her newly born child with her, had her husband ‘exploded’,
demonstrating his frustrations by shooting at her. And then he went and drove away
the goats of the man whom Banko refers to as the one ‘who consumed the buttermilk’. This was the signal for the men of Dambai ti to act. They accused Waku’s
husband of ‘spoiling the country’ and not only ordered him to return the goats but also
made him pay a fine of one ox. At the public meeting which followed, the two young
men (the husband and the lover) were made to eat together and to call each other
‘hunting-friend’ (misso). Again this case involves the curious contradiction that it was
the one who was wronged and not the wrong-doer who was fined.
The day passes quietly and I rest and consume the sour milk which Ginonda has
been collecting for me during the last couple of days. At night we watch the new moon
as we drink coffee. It stands right above the evening star and Baldambe says this
means there will be trouble ahead. But when I ask old Kolmo what it means he insists
on the contrary: there will be good luck (barjo) in the country. He has something
interesting to say about the public whipping meetings at the Kizo cattle camps: “No
one is serious there, no one really wants to punish those who killed the Bume, the
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older men only want to fill their bellies and so they force the younger men to slaughter
goats for them.”
Baldambe tells me he has heard about new fighting, not with the Galeba but with
the Arbore: a few days ago they clashed at Assilebaino. After the Arbore had raided
them at Karabaino, the Hamar had pulled their herds back into the impenetrable
mountains. But as it had recently rained on the lowland plains there was an abundance
of grass and water and the Hamar could not resist driving their herds into this fertile
area. The Arbore had expected this and had sent a party of raiders into Hamar
territory. But the Hamar too were on the alert and their scouts spotted the raiders, who
had arrived during the night. As it was early in the morning, the Hamar had not yet
driven their herds away from their enclosures and they had time to organise
themselves. They encircled the Arbore and attacked them. Two Arbore were killed and
two wounded. The Arbore retreated in order to carry their wounded to safety. Then
they returned and the fighting continued. Two Hamar received light wounds.
4.6.1973
Merrie and some other men from Zurguma visit us and as we sit in Aikenda’s house
drinking coffee they ask me to relate to them the story of my travels to Kara and
Galeba, especially the story Choke’s ‘escape’ when things turned nasty in Galeba.
This is one of the very few times that men have asked me to speak to them and to
give a long account of something. Usually my verbal exchanges consist only of
asking questions and listening to long stories or alternatively, of short ‘functional’
conversations concerning buying and selling, exchanges of brief pieces of
information etc. But today they ask me to speak and they are prepared to listen,
even though my Hamar is still bad.
8.6.1973
Long before the sun rises we are already sitting around Aikenda’s coffee pot:
Baldambe, Oita Banko, Gemarro, Oita Banko’s younger brother Bodo, a political
leader of southern Hamar called Aike Gapha, Kairambe, Kula the ‘tall’, my hunting
friend Bali... It is an extended morning conversation between politically important
men. I record almost three hours of talk, all of it significant. Typically, the talk ranges
from play to serious declamation, from trivialities to the most important issues of
Hamar politics. Recording the talk I visualize the publication of our ethnographic data
in three segments: firstly, Baldambe’s ‘Narrative’ which gives the general and ideal
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outlines of the social structure; next, specific conversations which validate the general
outline of Baldambe and at the same time show more of the problems, contradictions
and changes going on in Hamar social organisation; finally, our partly completed socioeconomic statistical survey which will furnish a different perspective from that of the
first two bodies of data.
Three times fresh coffee is put on, first by Aikenda, then by Ginonda and finally by
old Maiza. The men talk for more than three hours but I don’t say a single word. I am
totally absorbed in the stories they tell, in the diverse sounds that envelop the
homestead, in the ideas, the associations, the plans and the dreams floating through my
mind. I wished I could stay on now, absorbing myself totally in Dambaiti, talking with
every child, making myself at home in every niche of this small, local, social
configuration, harvesting the riches of everyday life. But I have to keep our overall
ethnographic enterprise going. The DFG which is financing us needs a report soon
and then there are Jean and the children in Addis Ababa. We have to meet and work
out how to co-ordinate our plans so that we both arrive at a satisfactory balance
between fieldwork and writing-up. I want to stay, but I have to go. This dilemma must
be known to many ethnographers: on the one hand, I have to concentrate totally on
Hamar, have to cut my ties with the outside world; on the other hand, I have to be
known to the foundations which finance us, must keep contact with other
anthropologists etc. If I isolate myself too much in Hamar our support will dry up.
And if I engage myself too much in issues outside Hamar, our relationship with the
Hamar and the social conditions of fieldwork will be spoilt.
I decide to leave Dambaiti on June the twelfth but hope to continue this diary
when I return again.
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Chapter 6
(28 June 1973 – 7 October 1973)
28.6.1973 (Ivo)
The Hamar mountains look white and burnt as Jean, Baldambe, my brother Bernhard
and I drive across Lake Stephanie. At the foot of the mountain we don’t meet any
cattle as we used to, only antelopes and zebras. Up in Assile, the sorghum which only
three weeks ago looked promising has been burnt by the sun.
Among the few green stalks that still struggle towards maturation, quiet dark figures
rise. No one lifts an arm to greet us, there is no sound of flutes... these are basho, hard
times.
We find a similar picture in Dambaiti: there has been no rain and the fields have
been burnt. There is a general feeling of helplessness which quickly has its effect on us.
I feel at a loss and frustrated. Will there never be a single month when there is no
hunger in Hamar, when life is like it should be and people relax and enjoy life? The
colour and sounds of affluent seasons are the stuff from which I want to construct a
myth of Hamar life. How should I express this? There are many dimensions to our
ethnographic work. First, of course, there is the analytical side, for example, Jean’s
linguistic studies. Then there is the historiographic and dramatic side well exemplified
by Baldambe’s Narrative. But there is also the attempt to reproduce not the ‘reality’ but
the ‘myth’ of everyday life, as it is contained in a song, a prayer, the undisturbed sound
of a flute, the mutual dressing of hair... Does this sound like bourgeois bullshit? ‘Hoch
an den Laternenpfahl’? Yes, if the ideal is not understood as a ‘social representation’, as
a cultural pattern which counterpoints reality. I can’t understand the totality of Hamar
life if I have not seen the realisation of some of its most basic dreams. Hamar cultural
dreams revolve around sorghum and cattle and if these two foundations of their
culture are absent as they are now, one cannot get close to that which ‘turns the Hamar
on’.
When we reach the Kaeske we have our usual wash at a waterhole and Baldambe
chats with a Hamar age-mate who is watering his goats. We have only been away a
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short time, but as was to be expected in these conflict-ridden times, news of bloodshed
is awaiting us. The Kara harvested the small crop they had planted around the shores
of Lake Diba and then, accompanied by the Banna and the Hamar, crossed the Omo
river and wiped out two Bume villages south of Aiba. The details are not yet clear. The
war party split up into three groups. One of them, led by Wualle Lokarimoi, did not
reach the battle scene in time because it lost its way in the bush. Consequently (sic!),
the men of Kadja who are at Kizo fined him for participating in a war of which the
Kadja do not approve. I bet they would not have fined him if he had returned as a
successful killer. Baldambe remarks that this victory will lead to the end of the Kara as
a politically independent group. The Banna will return to their mountains and so will
the Hamar, and the Kara will be left alone by the Omo where sooner or later the Bume
will wipe them out.
When we drive into Dambaiti, nobody welcomes us; everyone is in the fields to
guard the remnants of the crop from the birds and monkeys. Only the sick and old
such as Surrambe and Maiza and the little ones, Ivo, Susanne, Assi and Gardu’s son,
Aike, greet us. The tableau makes me realise how long we have been in Dambaiti. Now
the old have become very old and a new generation has been born and is growing up.
We hide away the riches we have brought: coffee, sorghum, eleusine, salt, blankets,
beads, cowrie shells. Then the more powerful people arrive: Ginonda, the girls, the
men... When they greet Jean and Bernhard who have not been in Dambaiti for a long
time, I realise that the greeting is somewhat theatrical. The odd thing is that it is via this
‘theatre’ we all reach each other again. This business of meeting after a long period of
absence is slightly artificial, but in as much as both sides manage to play this first game
of etiquette well, the first step towards a more easy and real relationship has been
taken. As we drink coffee at night in front of Kairambe’s house, the slow and silent
figure of Aikenda and my ‘mother’ returning from their fields, emerge from the dark.
Aikenda greets Jean and then Bernhard, whom she greets very heartily for he is a
special old friend. It is strange to see her now, looking scruffy and aged whilst in the
photo which Bernhard took to Berlin two years ago, she looks plump, young and
healthy.
30.6.1973 (Jean)
Everything is indeed extremely familiar; I know everything, I no longer wonder what
the people are about. But never have I seen people so thin and hungry. Last year when
Ivo was in Addis, and I was alone with the children, when the rain was lost and the
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crops were getting burnt up, I suffered with every woman who came to tell me how
she had nothing to eat, how her children were crying and sick, how the fields were lost.
I got utterly sick myself, my emotional energy was exhausted. Will it be like that again or even more - this year? My inclination is to run away, I have nothing to do here.
31.6.1973 (Ivo)
The day of the eclipse of the sun. Jean and Bernhard spend the afternoon in the fields
where they wonder how the people will react to the vanishing of the sun. I myself get
the camera and the tape recorder ready and by 3 p.m. I am sitting there on the empty
‘stage’ of Dambaiti with my gear. At a few minutes after three, Kula the ‘tall’ turns up
and Baldambe rises from his sleep in the shade of Kairambe’s house. Kula and
Baldambe exchange a few words and then Baldambe vanishes into the bush with an
axe to cut branches with fresh leaves for the kids. A woman guest with her small child,
who had been resting in the shade of Ginonda’s house, comes over to Kula and me.
She and Kula talk, first about my tape recorder, then about who lives in which of the
five little houses of our settlement (the woman has never been here before)…The
conversation moves rather slowly and quietly. The sun is now partially eclipsed. I
switch on the tape recorder and successfully record the undisturbed sound of flies
buzzing. As the eclipse progresses we three seem to besuspense. Kula’s speech loses all
precision, he utters a few words at a time but somehow in the middle of each sentence
he becomes insecure as if he did not believe what he is saying. He looks around,
interrupting himself, “Is it going to rain?” He poses the question in a tone that does
not seek an answer. Silence. At the height of the eclipse Kula stand up and looks south
where the sky over Galepha is curious black. “Look, it is raining down there.” Still
Kula’s voice does not carry any conviction and the woman immediately answer with a
firm voice, “No, there is no rain.” Yet she does not give an explanation for why the
sky should look black like this. The mystery of the eclipse hovers at the fringe of their
awareness but never enters it. Baldambe returns from the bush and I whisper, “Have
you seen it?” He nods. When I tell him that the others have not noticed the eclipse he
remarks sarcastically, “They are goats.”
When Jean and Bernhard return from the fields later they tell me that the people
there also did not realize that the sun had eclipsed, thinking that it was merely the
clouds that were darkening the sky. So, there won’t be much follow-up research on the
interpretation of the causes of the eclipse, as I had planned. This is another example of
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the way ethnographic work goes. One can only predict the course one’s research will
take in the roughest way.
In olden times, the Hamar are said to have performed rituals ‘to cause the sun
return’ on the occasion of an eclipse! Is the unawareness of today related to a general
disorientation and lack of confindence? Yesterday, when I heard of the eradication of
the two Bume villages which are inhabited, in fact, mainly by descendents of the
legendary Murle of the Lower Omo, a branch of whom are nowadays living mainly in
the southern Sudan, I thought of writing an essay entitled ‘Eclipse’. In this essay, I
would relate how the last surviving free tribes in this part of the world terminate their
history by collective suicide. Now I could start this macabre tale by relating that the
Hamar do not notice the eclipse of the sun and just as they don’t notice a natural
eclipse they don’t notice their own cultural eclipse.
1.7.1973
There are many groups of people and herds passing through Dambaiti these days.
They are on their way north in search of grass because the pastures are exhausted in
the south. The girls carry milk containers, cow hides and water calabashes on their
backs, the men drive the cattle and the goats. The leader of one such group is an agemate of Baldambe and Baldambe tells him where the best pastures, the waterholes,
ridges to camp on are around here. I join them to listen and learn that this man is Aira
Allamba, the man who saved the only surviving Galeba down in southern Hamar
recently. Aira seems to be a strong, tough person. Heavy scarifications on his chest tell
of his past killings and when I ask him why he saved the Galeba, he merely says: “My
homestead is not one of liars.” Late I discover that in the past he himself had once
been saved by his Galeba bond-friend when the pace between the Galeba and the
Hamar suddenly came to an end overnight.
4.7.1973
A young man from Kara and one from Mogudji are our guests this moring and they
give us the details of the raid on the two Murle villages. We hear all about the massacre
and the rituals the Kara performed before the raid and about the participation of
Hamar… Baldambe remarks that all those who fight with the Bume are digging their
own graves and goes on to say that in olden times the men would have whipped all the
‘thieves’ who joined the raid and would have killed any youngsters who spoilt the
peace agreement without permission. Killing was only allowed in defence of cattle and
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land and, of course, during raids that were ritually licensed by the elders and war
magicians. Those who had raided and killed without permission would hide from
public social control by living with the stolen herds in the bush for a long time. Today,
Baldambe says, people praise any killer without distinction. Cynically, he imitates the
call with which the women welcome the killer home: “Elelelelelelel ele!”
5.7.1973
There are many things which I don’t write in this diary. In particular all the lines of
thought which connect our different actions are missing. For what purpose have we
come this time, Jean, Bernhard and I? I have not written about our different plans and
expectations, yet without them the diary can’t possibly make sense. For example, I
have not written that the three of us intend to have a kind of short holiday here in
Dambaiti together and that Jean would then stay on to do a couple of months solitary
fieldwork in Hamar whilst Bernhard and I go to Konso to study their architecture and
‘landscaping’. From there we will travel to Addis Ababa, Bernhard will return to Berlin
whilst I stay in the town to look after Theo and Rosie and write reports and
applications for money to the DFG.
7.7.1973
A few days ago three brothers were herding their catlle and goats in the south of
Hamar, somewhere near Macho. The oldest was in his twenties, one was about fifteen
years old and the youngest about twelve. The oldest brother was watering the cattle
with the aid of the youngest when he heard a shot. He rushed to where his other
brother had been herding the goats and found him dead. Immediately he drove all the
goats to the waterhole and told his little brother to run and tell the people of the
nearest settlement what had happened. He had finished watering the animals and had
begun driving them home when the people arrived. As they helped him drive the
animals home, he quietly disappeared. He walked all night and by the time it became
light, he had already hidden himself in dense bush close to a Galeba settlement. He
remained hidden all day and just as the sun was setting, he shot dead a passing girl and
escaped into the night.
8.7.1973
During the evening as we sit in front of Ginonda’s house drinking coffee and talking,
grey clouds collect allover Hamar and it begins to rain, heavy rain everywhere. This is
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good for the fields, there will be a harvest after all... But Baldambe and old Zinu, who
are sitting with us, are quick to point out the negative aspect of the rains: While it rains,
the people hide in their houses and the crops become easy prey for the monkeys.
Moreover, if it rains continuously for a long period, the heads of the sorghum plants
will turn bad and will only be usable for beer. The rains are most dangerous for the
cattle and the goats. If a day starts bright and without a sign of rain, the herds are
driven far away so that should heavy rains suddenly begin to fall, they will not be able
to return home because of the roaring floods which quickly fill the dry river beds.
Blocked by the floods, they will have to stay over night in the bush and thus become
an easy prey for the hyenas. Their owner is not able to reach them to protect them
because he himself is cut off from them by the floods. Furthermore, he is unable to
hear their bells because of the roaring of the floods and the drumming of the rain.
In this connection, Baldambe complains about the contemporary settlement
pattern. In the olden days, the homesteads stayed put on the same ridge for many
years. In this way, the cattle would always find their way home. Today, people live
dispersed in the bush and are continually changing their place of residence. So the
cattle never really get used to a place and consequently don’t find their way home
under difficult circumstances. Yet another danger of the rains is that they soften the
thorn fences of the cattle camps, making it easy for the hyenas to enter. After each
prolonged rain down at Kizo, they lose a couple of goats or sheep. This is why the
Hamar don’t like long-lasting, slow rains, although they acknowledge their value for
the fields. What they really like are the thunderstorms in which heavy clouds burst over
a limited area for a limited period of time.
12.7.1973 (Jean)
I am here for at least two months of ‘solitary anthropology’. It is at once exciting and
terrifying. Now I have the prospect of unlimited time to explore and record Hamar
worlds.
13.7.1973
After the dance which went on till 1.30 a.m. I sleep well and am aroused at dawn when
Garda calls me, “Mother of Thea, your misso has called you to come.” I go to the
coffee session and sit and listen. Baldambe talks to Doima (an expert in reading
intestines), and then tells me how the different noises of the goats have meaning.
Before anyone is awake the goats will call as the sun is about to rise, this means “the
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country has awaken ed”. Before the young goats have been let out to graze, they
callout and if there is marked calling at the same time on successive mornings, this is a
sign that the owner’s son or other relative has killed game or done some other
remarkable thing down at the cattle camp area.
I go with Garda to the fields, for Keri sent a message via Garda inviting me to
visit her. On the way, Gardo accuses me of having changed heart since I returned, she
plays a game with me to make me feel that I should give her even more than I already
give, telling me that Ivo gave her large quantities of sorghum. Keri is wonderful and
beautiful and makes we want to weep, her kindness is so immense. She seems to
understand this foreign lady better than anyone else. I take a few photos of children
eating, chasing birds, standing on the watch tower, etc. I ask Keri to make a flute so
that I can tape her playing it. I visit Karni and then Galte who feeds me as usual, but
I don’t know what to talk about. I decide I must plan what to ask of which people. It
seems impossible to me to make a thoroughly rigorous survey. Things keep changing
so fast, people keep coming and going and there is no set time for anything. There are
some people I just don’t want to interview, and others who don’t want to be
interviewed; some have lots to say, some have nothing to say. My previous interviews
are already a year old but I decide to complete the case histories of a group of women
who were selected because they represent cases of a particular kind: a widow, a first
wife, a second wife and so on...
14.7.1973
Yesterday there were hardly any birds in Keri’s field for a change. Today I ask Shawki
if it is the same in her field. No, she explains, her field has delicious male sorghum
which the birds like to eat, whereas Keri’s field is planted with gabo sorghum which is
bitter and which the birds don’t like.
Guderi turns up as I had asked her to. I start my first recording session. Guderi is
sweet and sings again and again until I have worked out how to operate the equipment.
Pitta, Banda’s daughter, joins the session and the two little girls rock to and fro with
their arms around each other, staring at the floor and singing with all their might. Then
they laugh and hug each other with delight when I play back their performance.
15.7.1973
I go and wash at the river. It is so quiet and quite strange. I have no children, I have
no husband, there is nothing I have to do to see the day through, I have only to do
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what I plan, initiate, decide to do. The world is so quiet and nothing happens at the
river, just me washing, alone, only bees buzz around the water which slands in holes
alongside the rocks. Back at the house, Galte visits me and tells me the following story:
The elders of the Garota fields consulted the sandal oracle which declared that the
cooking pot of Wanco’s wife was ‘spoiled’ (mingi) and was causing the insects and birds
to pester the crops. Heads of sorghum infested with insects and the feathers of birds
were put into the pot which was then thrown away in the bush wi th the saying: “May
the pests leave with the setting sun”. Galte independently consulted the same oracle
with regard to her own field which is being pestered by insects and birds. She was told
that her deceased mother-in-law and father-in-law were responsible and she must give
her mother-in-law sorghum and her father-in-law coffee to appease them. She put
some sorghum seeds into a sack made of a gali leaf sewn together with bark and
deposited it in the bush for her mother-in-law.
16.7.1973
I go to Banda’s field where I spend the whole day. I take photos of girls playing the
flute and of Banda making a clay pot. The pottery making is very beautiful. Banda’s
long, sensitive and hard-working hands on which the veins stick out, confidently and
delicately mould from the crumbled dirt of the earth, a sphere of life, a pot for the
water of life.
17.7.1973
Early in the morning Haila comes with his brother Alma to drink coffee in Aikenda’s
house. Maiza, who has some stomach problem, asks Haila to consult the sandals to
find out why she is sick. Before the oracle is consulted, Haila comes to drink tea in my
house. Ginonda, who also comes, tells Haila that the only thing wrong with Maiza is
that she doesn’t do anything and that she leaves her cattle and goats in southern
Hamar to come and sit here. At the sandal oracle, Haila tells Maiza that it is her
husband (deceased) who is angry with her because she has abandoned her cattle and
his home and neglected his posterity. Haila is mild, however, and tells her that if she
spills some coffee, her husband will be appeased. While he threw the sandals it was as
though he deliberately threw them so that one sandal should jump far away. He did
the same throw several times and declared, “You see it jumps away.” To me it was
rather evident that the oracle told what it had been instructed to tell! But Maiza
seemed quite satisfied with the explanation; Hamar women cannot marry a second
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time, they are responsible to their husbands even after the husbands are dead, such is
life.
The day is immensely long and I have unlimited time, I realise that this is an
experience that I will rarely be able to enjoy again. I don’t need to hurry and yet I can
do so much in any day. I could not have made any of the tape recordings nor kept
such an extensive journal before, when the children were here with all the work which
they entail, keeping me busy all day, giving me time only to jot down a few notes here
and there. I tell myself to indulge myself utterly, to enjoy myself completely with this
timeful, timeless time...
19.7.1973
Yesterday Banko showed a relative of his some bush in Garota which he could make
into a field. I wonder why this man from elsewhere gets this preferential help while
Duka returns from Garota saying she found no bush for herself.
21.7.1973
Baldambe has two guests of whom one is Uri, a brother-in-law, who has come with his
new wife to collect goats for their first herd. Baldambe grants a young female goat to
the bride while holding a large gourd bowl in which there is some white butter. He
does not hand over the goat physically but tells her the colour of the goat and then
calls her, “Bel” and she answers, “Bel”. She sips four times from the gourd bowl and
rubs butter on her collar bone; Baldambe sips four times and rubs butter on his
forehead. Aikenda rubs butter and red ochre on the bride’s collar bone and ritual
staffs.
Omaleinda (Duka) comes for the session about which I have high hopes. My
hopes are soon shattered. First, she does not understand the task, i.e. that she should
tell me a little and then pause to let me translate before continuing. I play her a
recording of Ivo’s synchronic translation and she understands. Then the subject, her
marriage, proves impossible to translate, for terms such as aka, maz, binyeri are beyond
my ability to translate. Yet such an exercise should be fluid and easy to listen to. I try
another subject and have the same difficulties I immediately get despondent and feel
exhausted. I realise that Omaleinda’s language is not as familiar to me as Baldambe’s
nor does she explain in simple detail as Baldambe does. I decide not to try this direct
translation which proved so good for lvo. I resolve to record people telling their stories
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uninterrupted instead and to translate afterwards at my own pace and in my own time.
This is the only way I can be accurate and fluent.
In these days people are busy in their fields and so I decide to make a thorough
study of the fields. I will begin with the first field that was cut in Garota, Banko’s field.
I will map and measure and describe and note when and where and by whom the fields
have been made and expanded, used and abandoned and so forth... Later, when the
fields have been cut, I can concentrate on interviews with particular women; but now I
will concentrate on making a complete survey of Dambaiti.
The goats are coming home. Over at Basho I see the cattle forming a white line
as they enter their kraal. Gadi pinches a sip of milk from one of the Birinas goats and is
embarrassed when I look up and see her. All is peaceful and quiet and I am alone, the
lonely stranger, a solitary anthropologist, unconvinced of the importance of her job
and yet determined to do it, quite happy to be here, sceptical, unexcited, clear-headed
and looking forward to the eleusine food and the milk of the evening.
22.7.1973
Taking my sketch pad, pencil and camera, I set off for the fields with my friend Garda
and her little son. Lalo is with us and on the way she and Garda talk about the birds
which pester their fields and make life hard. It is a nice feeling to accompany someone
at the time she usually goes to her dayts work, it’s more like being at one with the
world than when I go later in the day, after each has become settled in her field and is
engaged in the day’s pastimes. Garda puts down her son, hangs up his gourd of butter
milk and the gourd full of eleusine which I have given her to grind and cook for our
evening meal. Ali, Garda’s daughter, has been in the field since dawn to chase away the
birds. Garda commands her ta get leaves for me to sit on. As before, and as in every
household, I am struck by the antagonistic relationship between mother and daughter.
The mother shouting orders, the daughter not responding, the mother abusing the
daughter for her insolence, the daughter only slowly and grudgingly going off to do
what she has been told to do, taking her time, half-doing the job, and the mother then
exclaiming at the poorness of the job and the inadequacy of the girl! I have never heard
or seen anything different; I have never heard praise or the offer of a reward for good
work done. I ask Garda to show me the boundaries of her field and I make a map of it,
but when I have made a circuit my line on the map does not meet its other end! It is
futile, one needs compass, tape and measure to map a field. Garda makes me
wonderful food with butter on top. After I have eaten, I set off downstream to the
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fields which I have never reached and the people I have never seen. There are more
people in Dambaiti than I knew of; Zobo’s homestead consists of many people who
never come to our homestead. I make a sketch of the first cluster of fields and ask
whots who and enjoy going around the fields with a following of children. One boy
leads me on to other fields, Waliso and her daughters Zobo and his wife, Lotala, and
Gadi (sister of Korre). I ask who’s who and everyone answers enthusiastically, offers
me fresh sorghum and invites me to come again as a guest. I return to Gardo’s field
ands just as in the morning, there is the beautiful evening scene of departure - packing
up, seeing that all has been done and going off together through the fields, talking to
friends and bidding farewell. The young adult men are painting themselves - tonight
there will be a big dance. Gardo wants some durra (black salt which is chewed with
tobacco) and wants to get it from Lalo. But Lalo is missing, although her pot is on the
fire and there are greens in her bowl, ready to be cooked. We depart. Gardo is
disturbed at having no durra. I ask her where she usually gets it and she answers that
she usually gets by begging for (that is, demanding) it; she has no idea from where it
originates, it’s one of those mysterious scarce products which one acquires through
begging and which one is always busy seeking.
25.7.1973
In the early morning there is a fantastic wind which howls through the world. I dream
of sailing and that Ivo has disappeared. The wind means bona, dryness or drought.
27.7.1973
Oita Banko turns up at midday. He and Baldambe talk animatedly about the
hopelessness of Hamar. They direct their anger against the people of Angode, Mirsha,
Wangabaino and say that they are cowards (pi i.e. shit) and always have been, running
away from attack instead of holding out against it. Oita wants to have a public meeting
and call all Hamar elders to organise resistance to the Galeba attacks. Over our evening
meal Baldambe and I have a big argument on the same topic. Baldambe wants to
convince me that the people of Angode, Mirsha, etc. are cowards and that those of
Kadja are brave. I argue that the country of Angode, Mirsha, etc. is border country
which has to withstand the attacks of the enemy, whereas Kadja is safe. It’s easy to be
brave if one is not attacked, it’s easy to be afraid if one is bearing the brunt of attacks.
We both shake our heads and say the other doesn’t understand, but we are not angry
with each other, it is good to discuss.
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28.7.1973
Ama just informs me that Omale came home two days ago! I haven’t seen her; such
islife here, so few houses and yet so much coming and going that I am unaware of half
that goes on. A man of Merie’s homestead has died. Not long ago I sat with this man
in Keri’s field. A middle-aged man, thin and black. He was fine yesterday, today he eats
fresh sorghum which brings up the tapeworms and he dies! It is terrible that a man
who is alive and busy today should suddenly be dead and gone tomorrow!
29.7.1973
I go to the fields with Garda. I am the guest of Keri and stay with her all day. At one
point Keri and I go for a walk to Banda’s field. I feel almost as though I belong to the
fields now. People greet me but don’t pester me with requests nor ask me what I am
doing. Banda has guests and has put on coffee, the second round. She hands me milk
to drink and picks fresh sorghum for Keri and myself. Kula the ‘black’s’ mother
is present, she is angry and so is Keri: Wancho, Walko’s son, whilst herding cattle
yesterday, had to separate the calf of Kula’s mother’s cow from its mother and in
doing so he hit the calf too hard upon the kidney and the calf died. Wancho was afraid
and dragged the calf into the bush and hid it. He told no one and came home late at
night. He didn’t even tell his mother. Next morning Kula went looking for the lost calf
and found Wancho’s footprints and the dead calf, the hyenas had not found it. Kula’s
mother was angry because Wancho had not told anyone, because he had left the calf
for the hyenas instead of slaughtering it and eating it himself. She will not ask for
compensation, after all, tomorrow her son may kill a calf by hitting it carelessly. It is
considered an accident and no compensation is demanded.
I come home again with Garda and we talk about local gossip which I have heard
and not fully understood.
30.7.1973
Keri comes with Karni and Walko is my guest. Lots of gossip, and as on other
occasions, I find Walko sitting on my floor jabbering away, telling long intriguing
stories about the people with whom she lives. Today she talks about Haila and Dugi
but as usual I don’t follow adequately. Hamar syntax is tricky, I never know who does
what to whom, whether it is Haila who demands tobacco from Dugi, or Dugi who
demands it from Walko... But I gather that Haila (who is husband to Dugi and adopted
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husband to Walko) is rather crazy and has a difficult time commanding his women;
Dugi has learned to be clever and to outwit Haila.
After my visitors have left, I climb into the loft to get myself some bread and
soup. I hear many jingling women approach so I stay in my hiding place to avoid
having to encounter anyone, I am tired. I go and look at the goats in the evening, it is
peaceful and soul-soothing to stand unbothered among these friendly animals and the
small children who wander around sipping little bits from various goats.
31.7.1973
I go to the river to wash clothes and to be alone. As I dig sand out of the waterhole, I
look up and find little Lomoluk watching me. This quick little fellow is my companion
of the morning. He has helped Gino water cattle and now Gino has gone with the
cattle to take them to eat grass near Kole hill. Lomoluk has no work to do until
afternoon when he will help water the animals again. He plays by talking out loud to
himself. He says what others would say, and then he replies. He pretends the froth of
the soap is butter, he collects it and rubs it on rocks, pretending they are children and
he is their mother. I realise how important imitation is in Hamar language and while I
watch little Lomoluk, I am reminded of Keri and Walko gossiping yesterday. Just like
Lomoluk today, they had said the words of others in the way the others would have
said them. They imitate and thus recreate the situation which they are telling about.
Indirect speech in Hamar is achieved by repeating in imitation what another has said.
There is no construction like “he said he would come”; instead it’s, “I will come he
said”. And this mode of speech is learned in play when the little child is all alone and
must act the other for himself. I sit in the shade at the river and work out a little of the
notes I collected in the fields. Who’s who? Such a simple project, so difficult to
achieve. Who’s who in Dambaiti and with whom does he live and share the jobs of
herding and farming?
6.8.1973
I want to write on language today but am bothered at first by many people and then
waste time reading the Old Testament. A curious book, rather similar in parts to
Hamar narrative and customs: for example, the story of David when he went off on
Saul’s command to slay 200 Philistines and bring back their foreskins! The horn of oil
with which someone is annointed! But the God and Lord is extremely irritating, I
always feel angry with this partisan God who blesses and curses arbitrarily and tells
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people what he is going to do and prove his importance by then doing these things bullshit!
Anyway, I eventually get to look at my writings on language and find them all a
bit poor and far fetched, so I start rethinking things. Baldambe comes in later on in the
morning and we have a good session on nouns: ano, onoa, onna... polo, poloa, polona...
Baldambe tells me the story that when Gino was with Worro looking after Aikenda’s
field yesterday, Gino went to Gadi’s (Ivo’s mother’s) field and found the pot on the
fire, a bowl of flour and a whip lying on the ground. He returned to Worro to call him
to come, to tell him that he had made a find (baat). They returned and made muna,
cooked them and devoured them. Gadi had been whipped by her husband and had
fled to her father’s field. When she returned to find her flour gone, she wailed that it
had been stolen. Baldambe laughs heartily.
7.8.1973
This morning I go with Garda, I carrying Aike, her son, she carrying water, to Keri’s
field for the ritual performance of Goiti’s (Keri’s youngest son’s) gorr. Gorr are bands
which are tied onto a child at about two or three years of age, when he is being weaned
and the mother is preparing to conceive again. Many people come. The mother of
Waliso who is the classificatory grandmother of Goiti, and Kula the ‘black’ are ritually
important figures. Walko, Kalleinda, Anti, Kowle and others are relatives who take the
ritual bowl in order of genealogical importance. I am included as the last one to take
the bowl! When I arrived there had been one huge pot of coffee on the fire and
another pot of water for porridge on another fire. Strips of gumaza bark had already
been brought and hung on the shade structure. As people begin to gather, coffee is
served and Aike Burdimba strips out the inner bark of the gumaza and hands it to the
women to chew. I chew a little, it has an unpleasant taste, it kind of dries up one’s
saliva, and one has to spit out the juice. Various women and men undertake the job of
twisting the chewed fibre into twine. Thin pieces of twine are quickly made and tied
onto the wrists, elbows, ankles and knees of Goiti by his older sister Guderi. The
porridge which has already been made and left to cool off, is now divided into several
bowls and mixed with sour milk. The women ask with whom I will eat, and I say with
them of course. Then stupidly they make a separate bowl of porridge and fresh milk
for me. I object and ask: am I an enemy that you treat me differently? They say that
they thought I wouldn’t like sour milk, that they treated me differently in order to treat
me specially. I object again and they mix my bowl of food with the rest and Keri and I
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eat together with little Goiti. I take dozens of photos. I hope there are some good
pictures. I find Aito, Wancho’s young wife, very attractive, black with marked features,
slender and self-contained, I hope the photos of her portray what I see. The old lady
was beautiful when she took the bowl containing the twine and butter and, holding it
in two hands, offered it to Kula who received it with two hands also. While holding the
bowl she gave a lecture which I did not catch (will I ever be fluent enough?), she spoke
with knowledge, with the weight of years and experience, she spoke seriously, her
words were pronounced and delicate. But through the camera she looks fuzzy and
faded and I doubt if one can see anything of her strength in the photos. Pictures of
Goiti and of his father talking, of food being prepared, of Keri serving coffee... The
bowl went from the old lady to Kula and then from Kula to Keri and from Keri back
to Kula. Keri asked her husband Bale for a cow (but for whom? herself?) and Bale
made a long speech. From Kula, who acted as middle man, the bowl went to each of
the women, each taking it in turn, sipping from it and taking butter from it to rub on
their collar bones. It is clearly an important situation: the holding of the bowl and the
ritual setting provide seriousness and the audience provides the public in front of
which individuals confront others with their demands. The demands must be agreed to
and met with or they can be modified and then agreed to. The audience is witness, the
bowl is sacred, the agreement is insured, certified. Gardo takes the bowl and demands
that I give her beads and I agree. I hold the bowl and demand of Keri that she gives
me her snuff box; she modifies my request and suggests that she get her brother to
make me one. I agree and take the bowl from her to sip and take the butter. A final
ritual step: the men spray Goiti who is held up by Keri so as to be standing in the bowl
of remaining twine. As they spray him the men callout a blessing “bodi, bodi, shati,
shati….” The remaining twine will be stretched out to dry, rubbed with butter and red
ochre and tomorrow Goiti’s older sister will bind them around the neck and waist of
Goiti.
16.8.1973
I’m not sure which day it is. I have spent the past days trying to complete the notes on
Hamar language. It is a tough job. The more I write, the more complex the language
seems to become and an end to the notes gets further away. Today I struggled against
an impulse to burn the notes and start again. Instead I tried to bring them to some sort
of termination so I can put them aside and turn my energies back to other studies. My
mind gets tired, oh so weary, listening, listening to what people say, trying to catch the
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regularities of speech, the grammatical structure - oh it almost makes me scream. The
language is vast and free and flexible, no one says the same sentence twice. Also
Hamar sentences are as long as their lengthy speeches - how can one explain what is
said, how it is said, it’s easier to write down word for word actual speeches and
conversations and leave it at that. This silly white man ambition to analyse and sterilize
and put down in black and white, it drives me on until my head is bursting and my
mind is crying out to escape the torture.
The night before last there was an alarm, from far away came the call announcing
an enemy attack, it came up from Bale’s homestead and passed via Basho over to
Bashada. Gino and Uri went off to find out news about the alarm. They returned next
morning telling that the alarm was false, there was no attack. Yesterday evening a
couple of youngsters from Kizo passed by and said that the Galeba have decided to
attack Hamar and that a group of Galeba had entered Hamar and reached Kizo, had
scouted out the land and returned, taking with them the hair from a Hamar cow (with
which to perform magic). The Hamar only saw their footprints. The Hamar got
together to talk and then the alarm was put out. They decided that everyone who has
come to Omale and Kizo with their cattle should return to their own grazing grounds
(i.e. the people who left Galepha on account of the Galeba attacks there, should
return). The Galeba are ready to attack from any side now, there is no excuse for the
people of Mirsha, Wangabaino, etc. to have their cattle in the overburdened area of
Omale. Today a large herd of sheep came by on it’s way to Galepha. So the country is
truly in a state of alarm, I wonder what will happen next.
25.8.1973
More than a week and I have written no diary - why is that? Well there is no
thoroughness anyway, even when the diary is kept going constantly, whatever is
written is arbitrary. So many things I saw and heard and didn’t write down, so many
things I never saw nor heard. There was news one day of a man in Assile who chopped
off his wife’s head in a rage! I think I forgot to note this down. She left behind her six
children, so everyone exclaims, “How could he do such a thing, who I s going to look
after the children now?” But nothing will be done against him. The other day
Baldambe saw footprints in the sky, that is clouds in the form of a track of footprints
and he predicted that the Galeba would attack. Next day came news of a Marle
(Arbore) attack. Some Hamar were slaughtering a goat when some Mar’e came and
shot one of them dead but the others ran and called for help; more Hamar returned
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and shot two Marle dead. The police got to hear of the fight and came and buried the
three dead.
2.9.1973
This morning Gaito and Sula and Wolli and others turn up and my tea session turns
into a recording session. The latest hits and some ‘goat’ songs; beautiful some of them.
I am happy and joyous in the midst of friends who are also enjoying themselves. I feel
extremely ‘in love’ with Hamar these days and want to blend into the special
Hamarness that is touching me all around and intoxicating me like wine. What is it? Is
falling in love something which requires no specific love-object but rather the ethereal
atmosphere that is generated between and among and around certain communities at
special times? I think it’s what you would call barjo.
6.9.1973
Wednesday morning and there’s late coffee in Ginonda’s house. Berhane is the only
man, there are many women, the golgosho (old women’s) party! While we are chattering
loudly, there comes news that Baldambe has arrived and suddenly we all shut up and
have nothing to say anymore! Funny, that. I go to the river to wash clothes. Berhane
and Tsasi are there. Berhan is like a school boy, roaring his head off with laughter and
talking, talking, talking. He is crazy and I enjoy having crazy people around, it stops me
from woilem kaba (depression) and gives the day a tempo. In the evening I visit
Ginonda in her house and she treats me like a guest and gives me milk and muna. Life
is nice here.
10.9.1973
A funny morning reading people’s hands. My friends declare that I know, that I am an
expert like one who looks at intestines and I see how such an oracle might work. I
know a little about each person to begin with and so when I look at the lines on their
hands, I interpret them in terms which seem to fit the person as I know him or her, the
other then assists by interpreting some things himself. For example: I tell Otte that she
has two hearts and she thinks about this and excitedly confirms this by explaining what
her two hearts are. But after a while I am rather put off; it’s a strangely tiring game and
there’s big danger of offending someone as when I suggested to Aikenda that she has
two people in her life with whom she has had disagreement and she got very upset.
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In the evening I am happy to sit in Aikenda’s house for a while with Garda’s son Aike
and Aikenda’s daughter Susanne climbing allover me. We tryout the food Gardo has
cooked from maize, (handed out by the government for relief) - it is delicious. Garda
and Aikenda get Susanne to insult me, that’s what younger siblings do towards their
older brother’s wife (in this case Ivo’s wife): kazadaino (the one who is fucked)!
13.9.1973
Baldambe decides that he cannot accompany me to Kadja to visit his old mother and
his wife. We planned to go there long ago and he has kept on postponing the event. I
have decided to go without hirn and he has arranged that Berhane accompany me.
Before we leave, Baldambe gives a long speech to Berhane about all he must tell his
mother to tell me! We had risen early and had had coffee, I had drunk a lot of it,
thinking it would keep me in good stead on our journey up to Kadja. We set out, each
with a heavy sack on his back. We don’t go far before we decide we were stupid not to
bring a donkey to carry the stuff, but we laugh and joke and keep on. It is delightful to
walk through a landscape which takes on different shades and forms, different
atmospheres. At Basho there is grass! Something which is entirely absent in Dambaiti.
There are fields, green and thick with pitta (second growth of sorghum). Berhane tells
me that the place is called Basho meaning ‘exhaustion’ because in times of great
hunger people moved there and were able to make fields. We walk and walk and joke
and Berhane talks and talks. The sun is sometimes terrifically hot and then we wait a
little in the shade of trees as we trudge up a long hardsurfaced river bed. Clouds come,
shading the intense heat of the sun and we keep going until we reach an area where
Berhane has an age-mate friend, Duli. We go up to a field and a house and Berhane
gets a warm greeting from the owner of the house, a woman in her middle years,
surrounded by thin, dark children. She puts out cow hides for us and I get the drink of
water which I long for. The woman goes off with her oldest daughter to fetch water;
she has coffee and will put on a pot for us. Tsasi’s son (Baldambe’s second oldest
brother’s son) turns up with Duli, Berhane’s misso. They tell us that they are holding a
harvest dance this very afternoon. We decide that we should stay to watch, that is, so I
can take photos and Berhane can eat and dance. As we sit eating and drinking, it begins
to rain. This spoils the prospect of a dance; it will be tomorrow instead. In the evening
I decide to go to another dance which has been planned. It is a long walk to the dance
ground. I participate in the dancing and fun-making until the end, it is the first dance I
have attended to its close. It is very intriguing to watch this important social activity,
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the expression of the male-female division. There is much warmth and fun involved
but at the same time, the dominance-submission relationship is expressed in every
action: the dance, the whips, the comments, the feeding of the men by the girls...
When we return to the house, I sleep outside but don’t really sleep at all; I’m not used
to the hard hide and it is cool.
14.9.1973
The morning is cold, our hostess puts on coffee, made from the coffee beans of
yesterday. Berhane returns from visiting Duli and tells me that Anti, a girl to whom I
once gave beads, saw me at the dance, and wants to serve me coffee and make food
for me. Berhane plans to have his hair done by Duli and everyone assures me that the
dancing and the feasting which characterize such harvest dances would take place
during the day. I am taken to Anti’s house by Tsasi’s son. It is in striking contrast to
the house of our hostess. Anti’s house has clearly been conceived of and made by man:
there is a shade structure where the girls can grind grain, a sorghum stack with a shade
area beneath, a fence marking a boundary all around, trees left to make shade, a
gateway, and then the neat house, clean and orderly and full of various pieces of
equipment... I am so tired that I sleep in the house while Anti grinds flour and her
mother puts on coffee. The day passes by and the young men and boys hang around
gossiping together; the sun grows hot and it becomes clear that the dance will be later.
A large number of youths are fed by Anti’s mother and then move on to another
house where they will feast yet again. Finally, everyone (all the youths and myself) meet
at my host’s house where Duli and his older brother are fixing the hair of three people.
The evening is coming on. I have taken photos of people but none of the dance which
seems certain to be delayed now until evening.
In the evening light we set off, leaving the head-dressing group to follow when
they have finished. I take photos in the river bed and again up at the dance ground.
half an hour’s march away. When the sun sets I decide to go home, I’m not interested
in dancing tonight. My hosts’ little daughter leads me home where we eat and then the
youngest daughter gets up and puts on a great act. My hostess, myself and the two
daughters sit outside and have real good fun watching the little girl (7 years?) jump and
sing and make the kinds of rude comments one hears at a dance. She acts both the
male and the female roles, holding her cape around her waist so it hangs like a big girls’
rear skirt. We settle down to sleep and I really get to sleep this time, in the house where
it is warm, but this sleep is disturbed with the return of the men. Then the house is full
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and people fart and turn and breathe heavily. At about 2.30 a.m. Berhane asks me
whether we shouldn’t leave. It’s a good idea for us to go in the moonlight and the cool
and we would also avoid the people and commotion of the early morning. Our hostess
exclaims in amazement at our idea but sets us off On our way, then returns to finish
her night’s sleep. We have a beautiful walk up-river, wash in a puddle of water, shiver
under Berhane’s cloth while munching dry, cold and rough sorghum food which
Berhane had stuck in his sack before leaving our hostess. As the sun is rising behind
clouds we leave the river to climb the ascent towards the Kadja meeting ground.
We arrive outside the mountain retreat of the Berinas clan (Baldambe’s family) at 7.30
a.m. It is crazy and beautiful, this Berinas homestead. It is a kind of fortress formed by
the dominating ruins of a stone house built by Berinas and a high wall of cow dung
swept up by the wives of his sons which enclose a large wide cattle kraal, once the
home of hundreds of cattle, the spoils of heroic raiding. I realise much better than ever
the unity of the whole Berinas family and how every member of the family is rather
crazy and odd. They all belong to one story, a story which started long ago, before
Berinas himself, but which was given a definite shape and direction by this big forceful
man who was one of few words and a powerful impact. I want to study the Berinas
clan. The Hamar as a whole is too much for me. The Berinas are fascinating and
numerous enough to keep one intrigued for ever. I really do like each of the different
characters and I sit and watch each one, wondering what it is like to be them, noticing
their differences and their similarities. And the old mother, Wollinda, the one who
produced most of these big men and who is the supreme mother of all; she is a strong,
capable woman, a beautiful grandmother. I am attracted to her at once and like to sit
and watch her as she listens to news which her darling son Berhane tells. Then at a
pause, she calls out to a child to do something in some particular way, before giving a
long detailed speech herself, telling of her news and her situation. She is in command
of the ship, this ancient craft perched high up here on the rock of Kadja.
15.9.1973
So Friday and Saturday become one long day. We arrive just as coffee is being drunk.
Dube and Makonen had been at the dance and had returned at night, so they had
already announced that we would be coming. After coffee Tsasi-inda (Baldambe’s
wife) serves us food in her house: wonderful sour milk which she has saved up for
days in expectation of Baldambe and myself, so good, so delicious and muna which
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were fine. It is truly good to have a tradition of high standards: fine food, fine bowls
and style in every detail of life, including serving guests.
In the morning I sleep in the peaceful retreat of the stone castle. Berhane is out
under the kuz shade tree and I hear him laughing and telling stories about our journey
up here. During the day the women and girls go to the fields or to fetch water.
In the evening we sit in the fading sunlight; it is still cloudy and there are flashes
over towards Buska but it does not seem likely that it will rain here - maybe later on.
As the sun gets lower we move into the kraal to sit on rock seats and watch where the
sun goes down (the point on the horizon where the sun sets is critical in predicting the
welfare of the country). We talk about the months, the rains, the stars, etc. (we being
myself and the Berinas sons, not any of the women who are busy cooking). Then there
is coffee once more, taken outside next to Wollinda’s house. Three younger sons sit
perched up On a level piece of ground above, Hailu and I sit upon a lower level near
to the fire whilst women and children sit around the fire, yet others are in the houses.
The calves are with us inside the enclosed area round the houses. How can I describe it
all? It is for me a kind of dream; it is wonderful that I have been able to have this
adventure into this curious ancient world where time has not become a terrifying
system with which one must fight a senseless battle. There are no constraints on time
here. Time is boundless and free like the bush. Oh, oh, I am filled with a true sweet
happiness.
16.9.19 73
Grey light seeping in through the stone walls of my little retreat, the cattle moo, Awaka
(Baldambe’s son) is milking, I can hear the milk spurting into the wooden milking can,
voices, people making brief comments, commands or exclamations. I get up and taking
my rigema (tooth stick) with me, I join the Berinas sons who sit perched on their stone
seats just as last evening, each with a rigema between his teeth. Watching the cattle, the
calves and the milking there is not much to talk about at this cool early hour. Berhane
calls over his son (older brother’s son) Awaka and looks in his hair for the lice which
prevented him from sleeping. The lice are so many that when I suggest to Berhane that
he shave his son’s head, he agrees and does so, leaving only a small tuft of hair at the
back of Awaka’s head to be k’uli gisha, one which herds the goats. We are called in to
drink coffee, the ritualistic session without which the day would be a failure.
Tsasi-inda calls me to accompany her into the stone house where she gives me a
gourd full of muna and a container full of milk. “Eat a little and hang up the rest for
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later,” she says, as she leaves me alone to feast. I have really come to a holiday resort, I
could not imagine a greater luxury.
In the afternoon there is a meeting across on a nearby ridge. The Berinas men
are called and I go with Berhane to see what’s going on. The problem is that a Hamar
stole a bullock from a Konso trader and the elders have come together to try and
retrieve the bullock. Now they have been talking all day and they need to be fed. The
local people should provide goats and honey. It seems to me that the disputation and
great speeches are all to do with the goats which should be provided to feed the elders
who have come together to solve the problem of theft. Such fine rhetoric and wit, all
to do with food.
17.9.1973
I ask Berhane to tell the story of yesterdays meeting on tape. Dube, Makonen and Baje
(son of Baldambe’s friend Wadu) are there in the stone house as Berhane gives a
succinct account of the meeting and then goes on to talk about thieving as a thing
which Hamar are taught to do as children. The speech turns intc a mighty tirade about
the failure of the Berinas family. This homestead and stone house are symbolic of the
great father and all he achieved: their present dilapidation symbolizes the failure of his
sons to keep up to the same level. It is a catalyst for these people to turn on and
express all their queer frustrations; I listen with curiosity.
18.9.1973
Today Berhane goes down to Baldo. I feel quite sad to see him depart, he has a spark
and craziness which keeps the homestead buzzing and when he has gone this buzzing
fades away in his wake. I turn to Wollinda, to the interviewing I have planned for so
long. She is distant for we do not know each other at all, we know only what each of
us has been told about the other and this acts as a barrier to getting to know each other
properly. As Baldambe foretold, Wollinda can talk in a flow which is like a flood but
she does not tell me the things I want to know about, she cuts the story of her
marriage short and then enter into a long speech about her present frustrations. It is
interesting, however, to hear this speech as it tells me something about this screwed-up
family. I have no energy to redirect the interview and decide to leave it until tomorrow.
I am flat and tired on account of my wounded foot and the new situation and there is
no Berhane to brighten up the world. Evening comes once again and we drink coffee
under the star-filled sky, eat, and then it is time for sleep.
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In the stone house Hailu eats while his wife sits nearby; neither look at the other,
they exchange not a word. Their’s is apparently a paradigm of Hamar marital
relationship; it does not appeal to me at all. I would like to be a Hamar man but I have
no desire to be a Hamar woman. This constitutes a problem for me. I like Hamar a lot
and want to identify with Hamar as closely as possible but I don’t want tp accept a
woman’s lot, yet I cannot adopt all that is a man’s lot because I am not a real man.
Why don’t I like the woman’s lot? Because it is hard work with little freedom for
finding individual expression of one’s self, there is too much subservience and too
much degradation of womanhood. Sometimes it stinks, other times it’s not too bad,
but it is never ideal. As long as I refuse to become a Hamar woman in every way I am
unable to be fully accepted either by Hamar women or by Hamar men; the women are
not interested to serve me as if I were a man yet I need them to serve me if I don’t
want to do all the hard slave jobs which keep their days full. Hamar women get forced
by training and male whip to do these jobs but no one is forcing me, so I don’t do
them and this means I’m left out. Oh, the frustrations of being an anthropologist – one
gets so near but remains so far.
At night the clouds come and drip but it never really rains. What is it that holds
back the rain from this water-starved land?
19.9.1973
Tsasi-inda tells me of her frustration with her husband Baldambe. She says she is fed
up; if she were not a Hamar but an Amhara (who are allowed to get divorced), she
would have left Baldambe long ago. He leaves her to struggle all on her own and gives
her nothing for her struggles and pains. If she is sick, he does not even know it. He
does not know his own children. If he would just give her something, a brass armlet or
beads, some dollars, something for herself... but all he does is send her sorghum. He
cares just enough to keep her alive but not enough to give her anything as a reward for
her troubles. When Baldambe and Ivo returned to Hamar from the trip to Europe,
Tsasi-inda made beer and carried it down to them in Dambaiti. From Dambaiti she
returned to Kadja empty-.handed! She serves Baldambe’s guests when they come to
visit; she gives, gives, gives but what does Baldambe do to help? Nothing!
20.9.1973
While having coffee I ask Wollinda if she will stay to talk with me. At first she says that
she has to go to the field, but I object and say that she can send one of her many
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children or grandchildren, and she agrees to stay. But it proves to be no good. She is an
old lady, I am just a girl. She has no understanding of who I am and what I want to
know. She is involved in her present situation and all its difficulties. She is
overwhelmed by all her guests and she is not really a good informant at all. I try to
pursue an interview but it is pointless. I came here because of her, with great hopes of
recording her life story in detail to provide material for an interesting book. Nothing
like that at all. What do I do now? What use am I stuck up on this rock called Kadja?
There’s no one to talk to about Hamar. There’s no time to find out about all the
inhabitants of this area. It’s a hungry time, everyone is worried about food. I’m out of
place.
Dube takes me up to the ridge to look out over Dawle (the Stephanie Rift valley).
It is a wonderful sight: at the top of the ridge you are met by a great roaring wind and
before you there is a steep drop down, down, down, down to the great rift valley
below. It’s beautiful. I wish I were a bird so that I could fly down. Both Dube and I are
intrigued to watch and wonder at the ayro (rooks) as they wheel around in the wind
without so much as a flap of their wings. There are many graves on the ridge, those of
the Binnas moiety with black stones placed around the central baba stone, those of the
Galabu moiety with white stones. We go to the Gamire boaka (meeting ground), the
one which figures so often in Baldambe’s narrative, where there stands a large zaut tree.
Dube shows me the stones on which the stolen bullock called sarepa is roasted during
the ritual celebration of a successful raid. There are bones of old serapa lying around.
On the tree trunk is the stomach grass that has been smeared there to ensure that the
tree brings good luck to future raids. The tree is a barjo tree.
Anti has put on coffee for us, expecting that we would return thirsty. It is
delicious this Ari coffee and I drink four bowlfuls quite happily. Sleepy afternoon and
then the evening sitting on sun-warmed stones to watch the sun go down and the
cattle come home. As we wait for our evening meal, Dube and I sit crouched side by
side, huddled up against the evening cold talking about the heavens and the earth and
the origins of mankind. Dube tells me many stories.
21. 9.1973
Dube leaves for Baldo to attend to his beehives and now there are no age-mates of
mine left at all. Wollinda talks briefly with me, but it is no good at all, she just ain’t
interested. I feel depressed as I sit up on a flat rock and look out over the world; what
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shall I do with my days here? In the afternoon I go with Anti to fetch water from the
nearest functioning waterhole, one hour’s walk away!
25.9.1973
Early this morning I awake to hear “dobi, dobi... (rain, rain)” being chanted at the kraal
gateway. Once again a ritual is being performed and I have not been told or invited to
come and look. Wollinda got up early this morning, apparently, and demanded that a
new fire be made because the old fire was no good as the rain persistently avoids the
homestead. She spilled out the ashes of the old fire and after the new fire was made,
she put on coffee.
27.9.1973
When the rain abates, I creep out of my house in the cold grey dawn. Hailu has spent
the night folded up inside his cow hide, his cloth is damp but otherwise he has kept
dry. The lower end of the cattle kraal has become a lake and the cattle stand huddled
on the slope next to the fence, the calves stand under the eaves of Wollinda’s house,
sticking their noses into the house. We go in to get warm. Tsasi-inda’s house leaked a
lot and everyone is rather damp, but happy. Wollinda is like a new person as she comes
down from the loft where she slept to organize the world.
In the afternoon there is more rain and we (the women and children) rush for
shelter in the two houses. Here in Wollinda’s house, Anti grinds away and the
continuous motion and sound makes me sleepy. I smoke a home-made cigarette to
keep awake, it tastes good. But I don’t talk much these days. I am, after all, just a
stranger once again, yet not so much a stranger that I need to ask what’s what, only
stranger enough not to know who’s who, where’s where and when’s when, to be able
to talk about news of the country or to participate in gossip. I sit and listen and watch.
I realise that I am not keen to make a new residence in Hamar. In Dambaiti there are
enough people now who understand that I want to be told stories, who will relate me
events in detail if I inquire. Here my questions are answered in monosyllables or with
uninformative comments and Wollinda drives me mad by speaking the awful pidgin
Hamar which I never speak these days. She’s too old to be able to stop herself: I am a
foreigner after all. I am tired; already, after only three months, I need a rest from the
strain of being a learner and watcher, I need now to go somewhere where I can speak
my thoughts with ease and do things, instead of just watching others doing their
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things. My holiday here in the mountains is a delightful holiday but it makes me keen
to do some work, do something where I make headway and produce results.
28.9.1973
While others discuss the recent raid to Arbore, my thoughts turn to other regions, I am
miles away in other worlds, I remember past moments, sweet and dear episodes which
I re-enact in my mind. I’ve had so much time for contemplation in the past days and
months. Have my thoughts changed, am I different? The male-female struggle which
has tormented me the past year or more has become independent of me. My spirit is
no longer raving and raging against a feeling of male domination with no escape; the
problem has become something that I observe and which I begin to understand, how
it happens and persists. It is something that is a reality, but I am existing in a world that
is abstract from reality. I live a socially anomalous existence anyway. I am neither male
nor female for I fit neither category here in Hamar. So the Hamar worlds of male and
female are both separate from my world and I can observe the conflict between them
without it touching me at all. And the world to which I belong? Which has been so
distant that I have not thought upon it? I have forgotten and know not how I should
feel about it. It is something like tomorrow, it remains beyond today and is to be
tackled when it comes. Ivo writes: “I wonder what you think of my thoughts?” I only
wonder what he means by this. How am I to know what his thoughts are? Certainly I
don’t think about them, I have no idea what they are and I am not bothered; I don’t
want to creep into his mind and heart; let him be curious and separate as any of the
other persons with whom I want my world filled. It is a new enjoyment to be excited
and inspired by what is unobtainable, wild and free but the game requires one to step
quietly, one must not let the other become tame, one must remain unfamiliar. Once
one gets too close, the game is lost and a new chase has to be initiated. The Hamar
play this game between men and women: the shyness that girls express when males
gather in a group, the communication through insults and blows, things which keep
the distance and keep it buzzing. It is the strangeness and non-communion which is
satisfying and pleasing. Intangibility, illusion and make-believe provide the real
satisfaction where one becomes at one with oneself and keeps on going - hmm. And
here I sit in between, neither truly man nor truly woman and so the excitement of this
‘otherness’ game evades me. At moments I would like to be whipped, to put on heavy
iron rings and to slave away at making food and babies; at other moments I want to be
a boy with a single piece of cloth and a spear to go raiding down in Arbore, to hunger
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and thirst and sweat and return to feast and boast. But I reach neither, they are both
impossible for me and this, this is my frustration! This is what I have learned, what I
now know and understand: in Hamar I can never be anything but a guest for my desire
to identify completely with either the men or the women is not realisable. I will always
remain the quiet guest who looks on and listens but does nothing other than consume
what she is served and what she asks for. And who doesn’t like being a guest? But one
can’t be a guest for ever, the host gets to dislike the persistent guest, whilst the guest
loses attractiveness if he has done nothing to talk about. I cannot be the boastful,
triumphant warrior or traveller guest, I am not male and don’t have the chance to hunt,
fight or travel far and wide. I had better go and adventure in ways and lands where I
have the means and ways to do so. Then I could return to Hamar to tell of my
adventures and be an attractive guest.
5.10.1973
What has been happening all this while that stopped me writing the diary? A beautiful
trip down from Kadja to Dambaiti with Tsasi-inda charging ahead bearing gifts for all:
sorghum, flour tobacco, milk for me and sour milk for Boloa her little daughter who
tripped along, often losing heart only to be teased back into a trot by her indefatigable
mother. The two Antis, Ginonda’s daughter and another Karla girl, keep the donkeys
on the right track while silent Bali brings up the rear, carrying his heavy gun across his
shoulders. The sun is hot. We don’t halt but keep on going, going. The long sandy
river highway, our little band of quiet travellers marching through the heat. We find
water at a small waterhole and drink its cool waters. At Dambaiti we are greeted by
Maiza who is looking girlish as she goes off to fetch water. I’ve never seen her fetch
water before! Aikenda is frail and sick: her son has recovered from his sickness and is
off in the field to watch over the growing sorghum. No Baldambe, no Berhane and no
Dube. A quiet, pleasant return. The whole ridge looks different. Grass covers the
ground with a green carpet, the bushes have thickened out with leaves. A good deal of
rain has fallen here and people are optimistic about getting a second crop.
6.10.1973
I go and wash clothes with Bali; we slowly get talking and I find this other brother to
be another dear person. Truly, I think I love them all, even Gapha the poor tormented
eldest failure, he laughs when he sees me watching him and he knows that I see what’s
going on. Even Makonen who remains an adolescent although he is my age at least.
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Each one is dear and odd, each one is a friend. Like the Strecker family, the Berimba
family is for me a specially beloved group within which I know no hatred nor spite. I
am happy to be in the company of any member and want to know about the welfare of
each. And the dear women of these brothers, even the peripheral Lukusainda, even the
rejected Meyno-inda, are for me sweet, dear persons who talk to me as an accepted
friend. We have been truly accepted by this family and it is large and curious enough to
keep us intrigued for a life time. Then there are those who are attached to the family:
Garda and her funny, gnomish man; Omale-inda and her laughing girls; Gemarro and
his self-contained nuclear family; Wadu, Baldambe best friend; Wale, his marriage-gobetween...
7.10.1973
Baldambe returns from a meeting concerning Sula’s gun. It is beautiful to see my dear
friend: “misso - misso!” We drink coffee in the afternoon and Baldambe describes his
adventures to me. He describes with keenness and detail and is quite different from
anyone else in the way he likes to inform and instruct and let one know what there is
to be known. Most people only like to tell gossip and they don’t tell me because I
usually don’t know the people involved. I would like to make a trip to the cattle camps
while I am here on my own, for I realise that only when I am on my own do I have the
privilege of the ambiguous position of being neither male nor female, allowing me to
venture as widely as I want. When Ivo is around, I would disturb his masculine status if
I went about acting like a boy. When he is present, I should be static and with the
women; I am not even accepted at the morning coffee sessions. Funny, but I’ve
reached a stage where it seems better to be alone, single and not fixed in a definite
social category.
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Chapter 7
(14 November 1973 - 24 January 1974)
14.11.1973 (Ivo)
Once again I have arrived in Dambaiti. As night falls and we have drunk coffee in
front of Ginonda’s house I automatically draw out a notebook to start writing my diary
before going to sleep. I don’t know what to write however. Should I continue to keep
track of the connection between the progress of work and our relation to the people
around us? Or should I confine myself more to daily events in Dambaiti? Should I
reflect inwardly in order to bring out more clearly than before the background and the
meaning of my activity as an anthropologist?
15.11.1973
Not being sure of myself, I lay down last night and fell asleep. Today I feel the diary
should again be a record of what I do, of the progress of the research, and of how I
relate to the people around me.
The central theme of the diary should be to show how I perceive events so that
in the end, the results of the research won’t stand as disembodied knowledge, but
rather as a form of contextualized knowledge related to my (our) particular existential
situation.
I have planned to use this stay in Hamar mainly to conduct an extensive census.
Jean and I discussed this census with Asmarom Legesse and worked out a limited
questionnaire. I am now trying to decide how to proceed. The main question is what
should be the central unit of analysis: the family or the settlement? As the problem of
the census is paramount in my mind, I mention it here before I move into the narrative
of everyday life.
When I arrived, once again there was the familiar welcome of Ginonda.
Baldambe comes back from a wash at the river. We kiss each other’s cheeks and then
settle down for coffee in front of Ginonda’s house and begin to exchange our news.
Baldambe returned from the Kizo cattle camps only two days ago. There the men of
Kadja held a series of public meetings in which they tried to work out a way to end the
Galeba war. Three oxen and many goats were slaughtered. Baldambe says that never
before has he attended such a magnificent series of speeches. They chased away Aike
Lomeromoi and other ‘hawks’ and told the young men to leave the Galeba alone and
only to look after their own cattle.
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Everyone looks healthy and plump today in Dambaiti, Ginonda and Aikenda
particularly, are relaxed and joyful. No, not everybody. Kuli, Ginonda’s daughter, feels
sick. She is lying down because her back hurts. She looks ragged, her hair is dry and
bushy and her body looks dirty and old. One would expect sick people to be washed
and rubbed with butter and then placed on a clean cow hide and so on. This is
certainly not the case. If you are strong and healthy you get what is rich and clean, if
you are sick you get the dirt and what is poor. Thus there is a great psychological
incentive to stay healthy. On the other hand, if you have worked very hard and are
exhausted, the only legitimate way of getting a rest is by seeking refuge in sickness.
There was an interesting point in Baldambe’s description of the public meetings
at the cattle camps: he and other speakers told the young men that if they went to
Galeba or to Bume to kill, the way in front of them would be bright but that if they
returned, everything in front of them would be dark. I have often wondered about the
role of cynicism in social control. Instead of just saying, “Don’t go,” the elders said,
“Go and see what happens.”
Another example of this way of speaking occurred in a case which took place
shortly after the public meetings. A Bume boy came into Hamar territory, driven by
hunger. He was picked up by some young Hamar men who brought him to an elder.
The elder called all the young men of the neighbouring area together and said to them:
“Kill him!” This was his way of emphasizing the taboo on killing him, for hadn’t the
speaker of Kadja just explicitly forbidden the killing? Baldambe stresses the point that
at the recent meetings only the Kadja men “had the word” and they insisted that Kizo
was Kadja territory. The men of Angude, Mirsha, Wungabaino and so on, were
allowed to keep their herds there but they were not allowed to act against Kadja’s
interest, which includes, amongst other things, keeping peace with the Bume. By
forbidding the killing of humans the speakers explicitly blessed the killing of animals:
“May the lion die from a single shot, may the buffalo die from a single shot...” And so,
the next day, Baldambe says, it took the hunters no more than one shot to kill lions
and buffalo.
Today starts quietly around Aikenda’s coffee pot. Banko and several other men
of Dambaiti arrive and they all tell me that today there will be a public meeting in
Ande. The background is this: Sulla, Gaito’s nephew and resident of Dambaiti and a
young man called Wualle from Ande returned yesterday from a small raid into Galeba.
They did not kill nor did they drive away cattle but the men of Kadja are infuriated.
Hadn’t they just forbidden all attacks on the Galeba? Several young men from
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Dambaiti and Worbasha caught Sulla yesterday at his home and today other men are
trying to catch Wualle at Ande. Sulla has already agreed to pay a goat as a fine and now
there will be a public meeting and speech-making in Ande. The men leave and tell me
they will inform me when the meeting is about to begin.
16.11.1973
Ginonda wakes me early, standing in front of me, grinning and clicking her tongue,
“Your friend is here!” I join Banko at Aikenda’s coffee pot. He tells me that Wualle
escaped. He was driving some goats down to Warbasha when the men came looking
for him. His mother did not tell them his whereabouts and when Wualle returned
home, she warned him and he took his gun and left for a region in the north of
Hamar. Someone saw him on his way through the bush, throwing his sandals all on his
own, asking them whether he should continue his flight or return and give himself up
to the men. I wonder whether this comic episod is true or not. It is interesting that a
small boy who accompanied Sulla and Wualle is not being fined, he is considered to be
too young to be responsible for what he did.
The meeting is not going to start until the afternoon, so I spend the morning
thinking about how to start my census. As there are several guests from nearby
settlements on their way to the meeting in Ande who are killing the morning by
drinking coffee with Baldambe, I ask them into my house and we discuss my problem
over a pot of tea. I begin by asking them about who lives in their respective
settlements. This inquiry proceeds faster than expected and it assures me that by
interviewing a limited number of informants, I will be able to get at least a rough
estimate of the number of married men in the various settlements. It is also easy to
discover their clans and territorial affiliations.
We leave for Ande at noon but when we arrive the meeting is already in progress.
Small, energetic old Bume who opened the meeting is calling for rain. I set up my
recording equipment and sit down among my age-mates and listen. After Bume, Aike
Lomeromoi takes the spear. He talks as he always does: fast, wild and excited. Old
Lomale from Zale follows, then Merrie and then Aike Lomeromoi again. Next
Baldambe takes the spear and he talks in his quiet and humorous way. He is followed
by old Sago. Bume delivers the final speech in which he accuses the other speakers of
not ostracizing the ‘thieves’ enough and he asks the young men to catch Wualle. The
whole meeting is an example of the crucial problem of internal social control. My
theory is still that the prevalence of external conflict in Hamar is related to the
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weakness in internal social control. It will be interesting therefore to translate all the
speeches in detail.
17.11.1973
A day of many notes on ritual and conflict. It starts early in the morning as we drink
coffee in Aikenda’s house and continues throughout the day till after the evening
coffee in front of Ginonda’s house. Finally I leave, exhausted from a flood of details
on ritual, symbols and principles of social organisation which I have never heard of
before.
18.11.1973
Baldarnbe has left for Kadja and without him the day is uninspiring. We are an
unorganised lot and nobody has anything interesting to say. In the evening Berhane
tells me that the men of Dambaiti told Baldambe today that some elephant tusks
which he had put up on branches of a shade structure in the homestead have been
stopping the rains from falling. Baldambe replied that the tusks were put into the cow
dung of the cattle kraal shortly after Kairarnbe brought them to Dambaiti and that his
father used to keep them in cow dung to give them the golden look which is so highly
valued by the traders. As his father used to keep them in cow dung, the tusks could not
possibly be stopping the rains. A little later Berhane refers back to the tusks in
explaining the word tuchi. It transpires that the tusks had been resting on the shade
structure until four days ago. Then Baldambe heard of the accusation that they were
stopping the rains from falling and he quietly buried them. When the men came today
and publicly accused him, he told them his clever lie (tuchi) and no man would stand up
and say that he recently saw the tusks on the shade structure. Berhane implies that the
whole accusation was aimed at humiliating the spokesman Baldambe but that once
again he showed them that they are no match for him.His quick-wittedness and his
effective lying makes him now seem all the more powerful to the Hamar. Berhane
makes an odd remark. He and Baldambe used to cry on many occasions, mostly
without apparent reason, when they were young. And then they grew up and became
clever and learned. Berhane says that old Wadu was his teacher in tuchi techniques.
19.11.1973
I spend the morning filling some of the missing data of our ‘Dambaiti Survey’. I
interview Alma, Kula the ‘black’, Kula the ‘tall’, Aike Burdimbe, Korre, Haila and Aule.
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The questionnaire work turns into discussions and note-taking about sociolinguistics,
especially about the secret language of the initiands and their classification of objects
and social roles.
At noon, when I am tired of talking and writing I try to sleep but sleep will not
come. There is a profound quietness inside the house. Only the wind whispers through
the grass of the roof. There is a murmur of insects. Lizards crawl along the walls, birds
whistle outside. I gaze without thinking and as time passes the quietness fosters that
old inner sadness: I came here in an intellectual and emotional attempt to bridge the
apparent gap between modernity and archaism. But can one ever achieve unity? I
doubt it, unity is either within oneself or it isn’t.
20.11.1973
We drink our morning coffee and the conversation is soon dominated by a grotesque
argument between Berhane and old Maiza. Maiza is trying to explain why she does not
do any grinding nor any work in the fields. As she sets about painting a picture of her
own importance, referring constantly to the eminence of her father, Berimba, Berhane
breaks in to say that she is spineless and that she relies on her brothers and sisters to
keep her on her feet - and she exclaims then that she is the tallest and strongest of the
lot of them... This makes everybody laugh and Berhane takes the opportunity to repeat
what he said a couple more times until Banko tells him that he is overdoing it. This
does not mean that Banko tries to stop him; on the contrary, during the course of the
conversation Banko frequently prompts and encourages Berhane, shattering the public
image which poor Maiza, stigmatised by barrenness, wants to project.
I spend much of the day on census work with Baldambe and two other men who
give me the names of married men of several settlements in Kadja. Again the work
proceeds much faster and the information is much more detailed than I had expected.
When the men have left, Gardu comes to me and tells me that she knows the people
of the settlements in which she grew up. Don’t I want to write down what she has to
tell me? Of course I do and she gives me her information quickly and clearly. In
addition to details of personal names, clans and territorial segments, I also record data
about fields and herds. My census is getting off to a good start. I had thought I would
have to visit all the many settlements myself but now I collect all the necessary data
without moving from my own home. I intend to invite men from all the different
regions, from Assile, from Wungabaino, Mirsha etc. and interview them about the
population of the settlements they know best.
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In the evening I converse a bit with Uri, and I am amazed about how excited I
can still get when I hear something new or something old in a new way. Uri tells me
about bees and honey and then about herding. This season Duka did not have a good
harvest and so Uri has brought their herd of ten head of cattle and about fifty goats up
from Kizo where they are normally herded by a brother of Korre. They have three
main reasons for keeping the herds in Dambaiti:
1. The Hamar have abandoned the whole of the southern region of their territory
because of the threat from the Galeba.
2. Grass is relatively abundant in our area at this time of the year.
3. The family does not have much grain to eat and milk forms an important part of
their diet.
This centralization of herds is a good example of how the Hamar economy works.
Normally the resources are split up to allow the herds to survive and multiply, but they
are always there either to provide food when it is needed or as movable capital with
which to pay debts or buy up gain in Banna. Uri wants to send the goats back to the
south as soon as possible, to the region where the grass is rich with salt and where the
hides of the goats ‘get shiny’.
21.11.1973
During the morning coffee session I watch the gestures of the speakers and for the
first time I begin to develop a series of symbols to note down the different gestures. I
want to arrive at a system of signs which covers all the gestures of the Hamar.
23.11.1973
Some friends arrive. As they climb out of their Land Rover I am struck by the rashness
of their movements and later, by their manner of speaking, the way they shout loudly
over a great distance strikes me particularly. I had become aware of these features
before, when other Europeans visited me, but today is the first time I have noted it
down. In some ways the Hamar are less naive than Europeans. Life here is far too
precarious and one’s word far too precious for one to dare to spill it out allover the
place. The Hamar do callout messages over a great distance at times, but under these
circumstances the message is always meant for everyone. They never talk privately in
public, as it were. I become aware of the heaviness of the Europeans’ walk, their
carelessness (boots!) and lack of fluidity. When night comes, white torchlight beams
poke into everything, playing over the coffee bowls and the places where men and
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women are sitting. This light has nothing of the gentleness of the fires that light Hamar
at night, fires that reveal and hide at one and the same time. And then there is the
multitude of meaningless items with which the Europeans surround themselves, a
cacophony of unrelated sounds and colours: tins and bottles, boxes and tissues...
28.11.1973
The time spent around the coffee pot continues to be my most informative hour. This
morning Berhane addresses himself to Nyakurumba, his mother’s brother and a
perfect listener. Berhane tells him how the fighting started in the Marle fields a year
and a half ago. A wealth of detail turns up, together with a number of generalisations
which put the Arbore-Hamar conflict into a new light for me. The description is given
from a strictly individual point of view, and spontaneous and lively as it is, it will
hopefully find its way into the planned book, ‘Conversations in Dambaiti’. I like to
listen to a conversation and know at the same time that it is being recorded. This
allows me to anticipate its analytic and documentary importance and to evaluate the
insight it gives into the hearts of the speakers and the listeners.
29.11.1973
All morning Berhane and a friend of his who knows the mountain areas of Kadja,
Magalo and Sati extremely well gives me the names of the married men who live in
these far off parts. As they know much more about each individual than I had
expected, I have also started to include in the census age, number of wives and the
locations of cattle camps etc. I think I will be able to rely on these data if I cross-check
them with other informants and compare them with the data which I already have. I
have already begun to do this.
In the evening I record conversations around the coffee pot again. When I look
into the dark mirror of my coffee bowl, I see the reflection of the crescent moon.
Tonight’s recordings show how a conversation turns into teaching the anthropologist
and then moves back to the talk of everyday life.
At one point an odd little drama takes place: Lomoluk had vanished. Kuni and
Kuli saw him lapping milk from a cow when the cattle had come to be watered at the
waterhole during the afternoon. They tried to catch and beat him but he ran away.
They called out to him that he would get a beating when he came home tonight.
Consequently he did not show up tonight and as the evening progressed, Ginonda got
worried and began looking for him, first in and around our homestead and then in the
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cattle and goat enclosures of the neighbours. Later everyone became worried and the
girls and old Maiza walked out into the open and called his name. Ginonda finally
found him amongst the participants in a dance that had started on the dancing ground.
She returned with him at her side and the girls received him warmly and touched his
cheek and stroked his hair, saying, “Come in now, we’ll beat you tomorrow.”
30.11.1973
As we are sitting and drinking coffee in the morning, someone comes and tells us that
a young man, an affine of the newly married Dube, has arrived and has taken his stand
by the gateway of the cattle kraal, demanding marriage payment for his ‘sister’. No one
hurries, for Baldambe and Surrambe, the two heads of the family, are away. After
coffee all the men present move over to the gateway where Laesho, who is the oldest
neighbour present, takes the word and tells the young man that he should come
another day. After an initial show of aggressiveness the young man agrees to return
when either Baldambe or Surrambe have returned and we all settle down for a second
pot of coffee and a conversation in Aikenda’s house. As usual, I record all the
negotiations and the conversations. I spend most of the day interviewing in connection
with my census.
1.12.1973
In the morning I am sitting at my table writing when Zubu enters and asks me for
some coffee. He tells me that he has quarreled with the men in his part of Dambaiti. In
the fields a few days ago he hit his son and when his mother tried to stop him he was
so angry that he whipped her. At this, Gaito, Kula the ‘tall’, Korre and Guito and Sulla
tried to catch him in order to give him a beating. But he escaped, so his assailants
cursed him instead: “Let him get lost with the sun, let him disappear to Bume, beyond
Galeba...!” To settle the quarrel Zubu then went to Ande where he asked an old man
called Argule to act as a go-between for him. Meanwhile the men of our part of
Dambaiti, Kula the ‘black’ and Banko and Alma heard of the event and got angry
because they didn’t approve of the curse. They are now saying that only after Gaito
and his men have paid a fine can the quarrel with Zubu be settled. I still don’t
understand much of the story, but I am sure I will hear more about it at the ritual of
reconciliation to be held at Zubu’s homestead. It is for this occasion that Zubu needs
the coffee.
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I spend all day working on the census, developing a set of conventions to
simplify the noting down of information. In the late evening Banko invites me to join
the gore ritual of his little son tomorrow. He has called his son after our boy Theo.
2.12.1973
Before sunrise Kairambe and I are already on our way to Banko’s home. From far
away we can hear the sounds of voices and when we arrive, we find Banko’s house full
of people. Many are sitting outside, close to the door, so as to catch what is being said
inside. Inside, Banko’s mother is serving coffee. Banko invites me to sit next to him, so
I face all the guests. They are in order of seniority from right to left: old Balle, Alma,
Kula the ‘black’, Kairambe, Haila (Gaito’s brother) and Banko’s mother’s brother’s
son. Further to the left are the women, Ali (Banko’s adopted wife), Lalo (his wife),
Galti, Alma’s wife and a classificatory sister of Banko. We all drink coffee and there is
lively talk, mainly directed by elegant old Balle. At one point, our ‘priest’ Kula gets up
and returns with strips of bark from the gumaza tree. The men strip off the inside of
the bark and hand it to the women to chew. With the softened fibres, Haila and Alma’s
wife braid cords. While the cords are being made, the men are served boiled maize.
Some of it is handed on to the women and the children. As the cords near completion,
Lalo settles down in the centre of the house where she is given a large calabash bowl
containing a spoonful of butter and the braided cords. It is Kula who hands her the
bowl, but he does so only after Lalo has placed the ritual head-dress of Banko’s
mother on her head. Having taken the bowl, Lalo sips from it three times
(symbolically), dipping her fingers into the butter and rubbing it on her forehead and
her right leg. Then Kula hands the bowl to Ali. While Kula and Ali are both holding
the bowl, Ali looks at Banko expectantly, but Banko keeps talking to Balle, apparently
ignoring her. But Ali keeps on watching him, confident of success. In the end Banko
has to acknowledge her gaze and he asks what she wants. She answers back that he
knows very well what she wants. But Banko pretends he does not and at this point
Lalo starts jabbering away in a highpitched voice. She is not directly addressing Ali nor
Banko but her almost hysterical speech makes me feel that she is objecting to Ali’s
demand. Ali lets her go on and when Lala calms down, Ali says she wants a cow from
Banko. He asks her which one she wants but she answers that it is up to him to decide.
Banko tells her that a certain calf is hers and only then does Ali sip from the bowl and
rub herself with butter. The bowl moves on from Kula to the women. No one else
asks Banko for a gift. When Kula finally hands the bowl to Banko’s mother, Banko
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asks them to keep holding the bowl for a moment and gives a short speech which I
don’t understand. I gather that it has to do with his older brother and the fact that he is
not present at the ritual. Alma interrupts him and accuses him of not doing things
properly. Again I don’t fully understand but get the impression that matters are still
unresolved when Banko’s mother takes a sip and finally hands back the bowl. Now it is
the men’s turn and we each sip from it four times and then rub our foreheads with
butter. Next we spit mouthfuls of coffee over Theo, who is standing on the butter and
the remaining strips of bark inside the bowl. As we do so, we bless him, calling out:
“bodi-bodi, gembala-gembala, shati-shati!” The bark cords are then tied around Theo’s
wrists, elbows, ankles and knees and the ritual is over.
On our way back Kairambe ventures to say that it had been a bad gore ritual.
Banko should have gone with his wife and his son to his older brother’s home to
perform the ritual there, or had the older brother come to his own home. A gore in
which a friend rather than a father or older brother hands the sacred bowl around is
bad. Not only bad because it is bad manners and in insult to the older brother, but also
bad for the son because he will be negatively affected by a badly conducted ritual.
Kairambe reminds me of how long the Berinas sons waited to perform the gali and gore
rituals when Surrambe was ill. Only when he had recovered and had returned to Kadja,
to the home of the female head of the family, did he and Baldambe and Aikenda
embark on the rituals of welfare for their young children, for Susanne, Ivo and
Göttingen (Baldambe called his little daughter after the place where he gave his first
formal talk in Europe, in Professor Schlesier’s seminar in Göttingen). All these names
reveal the imprint of an anthropologist! There are now six children in Hamar who
were directly or indirectly named after us. Kairambe tells me that at Susanne’s gali, he
gave a cow hide to Aikenda (Kairambe is the genitor of Susanne) and at Ivo’s gali, his
old mother gave a cow to my ‘mother’. These gifts acknowledge the achievement of a
woman who has given birth to a child, they are a sort of payment and a contribution to
the growth of the child. I wonder if Banko really made a mistake, and if so, why
nobody warned him beforehand. Instead of stopping him, all his friends come and
then criticise him in the course of the ritual. Is this typical of Hamar politics? Does
everybody always make a lot of other people’s mistakes? Is this the way Hamar
‘anarchy’ works? During the ritual I made a curious observation: Alma and his wife not
only like each other but even allow.others to see this. They talk and joke with one
another, even exchange smiles. I don’t know any other Hamar couple that does this.
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Midday is quiet and after feasting on sour milk and sorghum food, I spend
several hours tidying up my census notes and rewriting them systematically. By now I
have started work on thirty-one settlements.
2.12.1973
Berhane looks at my worn-out body and exclaims, “Theo-imba, you will be old by the
time you return to your age-mates!” This remark seems to hurt at first, but then makes
me happy because this is exactly what I want. I want to live during my fieldwork, live
fully and grow in the process of it. I don’t care if I get scars or get worn out. I don’t
want to shelter from the impact of Hamar culture, nor from the sun or the dust and
wind, nor from the food or lack of it, even if this takes its toll and leaves me worn-out.
3.12.1973
I sit with Kula the ‘black’ in Gardu’s house drinking coffee, discussing Zubu’s case. I
understand that Zubu’s mother has sided with her son and is insisting now that the
other men have nothing to do with their fight. Kula now agrees that an intra-familial
conflict does not concern the public and Zubu should not be fined. It is the men who
cursed Zubu and the women of his homestead who should be fined. I learn that when
the men cursed Zubu, they wished away several women whose social conduct they
don’t approve of at the same time, including the mother of Kula the ‘tall’ and old
Lotolla’s wife. Kula says that never before has he heard of women being sent away as
punishment: “The punishment of women is the whip” and in extreme cases, a husband
may be forced to pay a fine for the misbehaviour of his wife.
4.12.1973
I record a slow, dragged-out morning conversation in the hope of gaining some insight
into Hamar social organisation. It’s like deep-sea trawling! But in the end I make a
splendid catch: Berhane discusses pidgin Hamar and gives some examples of this
distortion of the Hamar language. He also discusses regional variations in Hamar
speech: He insists that the purest Hamar is spoken in the mountains and in the south
of the country. I am excited because this is the first time I have recorded someone
seeaking about speaking.
My European guests visited me again in Dambaiti on their way back to Addis
Ababa. I try to follow them in my mind and I realise that I would like to go with them.
On the other hand, my work here is a powerful magnet. Why should I want to go?
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Isn’t life here satisfying? Yes, but if there were not the work I would not stay here
because one essential fact of life is missing. I mean the way you can feel your social
boundaries. On the other hand there are hardly any limitations; I can do or say almost
anything, it will not be openly opposed. On the other hand, this means that I don’t
belong here and nobody ever stands up to the rough and tumble of my self-assertion,
an essential part of being accepted as a fully-fledged member of the society. In the
social world I came from I share common limitations and barriers, for example
linguistic ones, and I realise, enjoy and suffer all at once when someone manages to
break through the barrier. This dialectic is missing in the fieldwork situation. Just think
of the gusto with which I would say ‘verflixt’ in an academic seminar in Europe, or
dress more neatly or less neatly than is expected of me... There is no manipulable sign
language of this sort here for me and I feel I can’t live without it for the rest of my life.
In the past, the counterpoint between myself and my social milieu has been an
everyday part of my reasons for living. My interest in anthropology is probably just a
variation on this theme writ large. I can’t avoid the conclusion that without social
boundaries and their transcendence, life is without meaning. I am often troubled at
odd moments by my hopes of grasping some sort of wisdom. Wisdom about what?
Doesn’t the notion of ‘wisdom’ imply a static and contemplative life in which truth is
separated from falsehood by quiet and detached consideration and some authority
which prevents the cynical and supercilious abandonment of any revealed truth?
The country is rapidly drying up around Dambaiti and I hear that up in the Kadja
mountains people have to dig deep wells to get to water. On the other hand, there are
little pockets in the region where showers of rain have fallen and where a second crop
is now growing.
Although the families of the sons of Berinas have no grain now, no one is complaining
of hunger. They all seem to get enough food from a fig-like fruit called gorphak. Before
the gorphak ripened, everybody was picking the fruit of the baraza tree. These fruits and
a cup of milk finish the evening meal.
5.12.1973
Today is Zubu’s ritual of reconciliation. Kairambe and I walk to Zubu’s homestead
after dark. We are the first to arrive and settle down on cowhides which have been
spread out for us next to the goat kraal. We lie down for a while until the strong, quiet
figures of five men arrive in the moonlight. The light gives their heads and the exposed
parts of their bodies a metallic quality which goes well with their stoic silence. The
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women pull out more cowhides for them. This makes a harsh and sudden noise which
contrasts with the quiet atmosphere created by the men. The newcomers sit down and
slowly I distinguish them: Banko, Alma, Kula the ‘black’, Haila and another man
whom I don’t know. Shortly afterwards another group arrives, led by the bald-headed,
icy Gaito (the grey hair at his temples always reminds me of ice, he also has a cool,
intense, frozen look). With him are Kula the ‘tall’ and Sulla, Kuli, Guito and Korre.
Zubu’s go-between, Argule, had been sitting next to Zubu’s house, apart from the
other participants. But now that all the men have arrived, he comes over to us and
speaks in a low voice to the men. Zubu is then ordered to bring a young male goat
from the kraal which Argule offers to Gaito. Gaito takes the right front leg of the goat
to acknowledge the gift and to lead the chanting of the blessing that follows. Zubu is
virtually embracing the goat and when all the men extend their spread-out hands, spray
their spit over the pair of them, and chant, I suddenly realise that Zubu is implicitly
identified with the goat and that it is not only the goat but also he who is receiving the
blessing. The goat bleats amidst the rhythmic sounds of the voices. As the blessing
proceeds, this group huddled together in the moonlight emerges and sets itself apart
from the dark night that surrounds it. I have never felt the nature-culture opposition
appear in such a gradual way. Usually I experience it as a sudden and drastic contrast.
But tonight, through the drama of ritual, the distinction emerges as a cumulative effect
of the event. After the blessing Zubu brings the goat back to the kraal because this
goat will not be slaughtered now. Once it has been blessed, it will be allowed to grow
up and fertilize females. Only when it has grown old will it be castrated and only once
it has grown fat will men demand to eat it. It was Gaito who led the blessing, because
he is of the ‘cool’ clan, Ba, which has great powers of reconciliation and good luck.
Zubu returns with a sheep from the kraal and after Gaito has taken its foreleg the
sheep is slaughtered and the young men roast it over a fire. By now the coffee is ready
in Zubu’s house and all the men are called in. We bless Zubu. Argule leads the
chanting first and then old Lotolla, who is the opposite moiety to Argule. I record the
blessing and the conversation, hoping to show by means of this recording how verbal
exchanges move from ritual matters to topics of everyday life, from the sacred to the
profane... The tape begins with chanting and ritualized speech and ends with Gaito and
Alma discussing problems concerning the sharing of grazing grounds and the conflicts
between herdsmen and the owners of fields. By the time Gaito and Alma have finished
their talk, the meat is ready outside and we all sit down around the semi-circle of fresh
leaves on which the meat is placed. I count twenty-three persons all in all, including the
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young herding boys. As the food comes to an end, old Balle gets up and begins to
speak. I hurry to set up my recording gear but Balle stops to give me time to get
everything ready. All this is part of the ritual of reconciliation. They are accepting
Zubu back into their group; the message of the ritual is that no one should be
excluded, and this even affects my status somehow. I am also included, am no longer
an outsider and I must therefore be given time to adjust my recording equipment. Or
is there a more mundane reason for the pause in Balle’s speech? He gets up and says,
“Let me have a piss, whilst you are fiddling about.” This remark is greeted with
laughter. But once Balle has begun, he quickly adopts the grave tone which is typical of
this kind of situation. He speaks slowly and with a clear voice almost like a
schoolmaster. There are a number of other speakers but only Balle stands up while
speaking, the others remain seated. This is very different from other public meetings: it
is quieter, slower and more personal. The speeches have something of the quality of an
interconnected argument, almost as if this were an academic seminar. Each man says
something to a specific member of the group, but what he says is meant to be heard
and evaluated by all. In the end Kula the ‘black’ says forcefully, “That’s enough, we
have heard it all now, don’t overdo the talking!”
After the meeting we all try to get some sleep but by 4 a.m. we are all gathered around
Zubu’s coffee pot again. A strange atmosphere; the yawning men and women in the
fire-lit house at such an early hour. This morning the talk of this little community is
much more serious than it was last night. Zubu’s mother, surrounded by an almost
perfect circle of men and women sitting close to the wall of the hut, is the centre of
attention. When the coffee is served, we spray it over her and her son, blessing and
chanting at the same time. The blessing is followed by a series of serious reprimands
and warnings addressed to Zubu. At times he tries to defend himself but is stopped
immediately by Kula the ‘black’. I record and think it will be good material for the
central theme of my research: conflict and ritual as a mechanism of social control. I
have corne to recognise the special gift of Kula the ‘black’. He is a great decisionmaker and is most articulate in these semi-public situations. Talk is almost like a
physical fight for him, both a form of entertainment and a show of strength. Again it is
he who tries to stop the talking. He declares that everything has been said. But,
contrary to last night, this is only partially accepted. Gaito admits that there is a danger
of destroying the barjo which has been created by good speaking, but he assures Kula
that nothing bad will be said - and the talk continues. Zubu’s mother is also
reprimanded, but the reprimand takes the form of questioning her once again about
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the case. I get the impression that the implicit purpose of asking her to describe the
event in public is to make her see and acknowledge the social rights and wrongs of the
event. We end the ritual with a final blessing of Zubu’ mother.
12.12.1973
Baldambe, Choke and I sit in front of my house at night under an immense sky. They
describe to me the meaning of the movements and constellations of the stars. I record.
13.12.1973
In the afternoon I ask Baldambe and Choke to tell me about the cattle exchanged in
bond-friend relationships. The ‘seminar’ turns out to be as informative and lively as
last night’s instruction on the stars. Their account will furnish a ‘conscious model’ of
this system of distribution and insurance. But the recording is interesting at more than
the purely normative level; both my teachers recount examples of how the system
works in practice. Moreover, at one point Baldambe explicitly relates the system to the
anarchy of Hamar life. I have now reached a new stage of fieldwork. The skill consists
of choosing the right situations of ‘live’ talk and the right topics for group interviews,
each with the aim of getting normative accounts of social phenomena that are still
problematic and need more adequate documentation. It is the wealth of information
that lies in small linguistic details that excites me and leads me to use the tape recorder
so extensively. At school literary criticism was my forte, and I envisage that much of
my writing-up will be in the same vein. First I will translate many of these rich texts
and then embark on exegesis.
The weather has become very dry. At noon there was an extremely strong wind which
is the greatest enemy of the plants, drying them up more quickly than the sun does.
The grass has vanished around Dambaiti and the goats and cattle leave early in the
morning and return only after dark. The goats are giving birth, Gino returned this
evening with eight kids hanging over his shoulders and in his arms. Choke tells me that
many families of southern Hamar have been moving north recently, partly in search of
new pastures and partly because of the Galeba threat.
14.12.1973
The advent of the dry season manifests itself as early as five in the morning. A strong
wind begins to blow and Baldambe rises from his cowhide and walks over to
Kairambe’s house where my ‘mother’ has put on a pot of coffee. Everyone rises early
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now. Animals graze whilst it is still cool and people try to finish most of their daily
tasks before it gets too hot. Moreover, both people and animals have to go further to
find what they need. The herds have to go farther afield to find pasture; the people
have to go further for water and to mount expeditions in search of grain. In addition,
it’s the time of year for working hard in the fields. Ginonda accepted my gift of a goat
to pay people to work in her field. All this has reduced the number of daily visitors
remarkably.
But there is yet another reason why fewer people swarm over Dambaiti these days.
Formerly we used to buy milk and water, goats and ethnographic artifacts and give opt
medicines and cloth. We built a house and made a film... All this used to attract people
who only marginally helped us get on with our main job. Now I have brought nothing,
will buy nothing and have no spectacular project on hand. So Dambaiti has quietened
down and with the help of my closest friends -Baldambe, Choke, Banko and Wadu - I
can work without being continually distracted This is one of my central
preoccupations: the process of gaining intimacy with people one studies only to
distance oneself later. This process operates on several different levels. For example:
over time I have moved away from men like Kula the ‘black’, Kairambe and Kolmo’s
and Gemarro’s families. I no longer participate in their daily lives as much, hardly see
them and never visit them in their fields. On the other hand, I have become closer to
Choke, Banko, Berhane and (if that is possible) to Baldambe. We spend most of our
time either in my house drinking tea or in or about one of the Berinas’ houses drinking
coffee. We are a small exclusive group of specialists, always well fed and animated. I
am sure that men like Kula hate us for that. I wouldn’t like this situation if I had not
worked towards it, knowing that this was the only way to progress in my work. If I
want to understand how Hamar society fits together as a whole in any depth, I have to
concentrate on a limited number of intelligent individuals. These people become close
friends in the process. As they watch me learning and are aware of the knowledge I
have accumulated, they feed me new information accordingly and become true
teachers. Not only this: becoming aware of the limitations of their own knowledge of
Hamar, they point out the men who can tell me more and who should therefore join
our group of specialists. For example, Baldambe said we should consult old Sago about
the stars and Choke told me that he spoke to the parko, a magician of Bashada, who
would be willing to reveal things which no one else could tell.
I spend the morning going through my notes about verbal behaviour. I am
interested in how the Hamar evaluate different ways of speaking. I have discovered
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almost thirty different terms for what one might call ‘bending the truth’! In addition, I
find that the Hamar draw an interesting distinction between mental capacity (i.e.
whether a man is intelligent or not) and moral character. I ask Baldambe to explain to
me once again the meaning of each of the terms and we record with a hot wind
throwing up clouds of dust around the house.
Later we seek refuge in a sheltered corner of the house and while Baldambe sleeps, I
read Shakespeare. I am struck by the amount of linguistic games which pervade his
plays, in particular by the power of metaphors such as ‘my sweet lord’ which yoke
together terms denoting sensual qualities with terms denoting status... There is great
beauty in the distant yet clearly once extremely lively language. Reading the plays
makes me feel rather lonely, for they portray lives acted out for the most part within
social boundaries which are transcended by exceptional people and unusual events. I
have referred to this before. The dramatic quality of Shakespeare’s characters derives
from the fact that they are continuously playing with the conventions which surround
them. Look at the antics of the fool. The solitary anthropologist who has ripped
himself free of his own social world can laugh at himself but there are no fellow
players to echo his wit. I wonder whether the comparatively long isolation from a
secure social world that is involved in fieldwork serves to intensify the generally
conservative character of anthropologists. Hasn’t one to be conservative before one
can legitimately become ‘progressive’ and ‘destructive’? I mean that one has to perceive
and understand existing social chains before one can cast them asunder. But what
about the anthropologist who has created a social vacuum for himself? After years of
isolation he probably needs a long time to find his way back into his former world.
Instead of trying to shake off social chains, he wants to feel them in his attempt to
belong again. How contrary to the sociologist who is more than at home in his society,
who is literally ‘fed up’ and therefore, more disposed to contemplate change than to
adapt to the world around him.
Adja jingles into the house saying, “These are Ivo’s girls, the ones with cowry
shells and beads. That’s what the people at the waterhole call us, so write it down”.
And what did Baldambe tell me? “I came up to Kadja and when I arrived I sat down
under the shade tree and my little daughter Göttingen came running. She looked at me
and ran back to her mother saying that ‘Ivo’ had arrived.” Baldambe is so frequently
away with me that his little daughter got us confused. How about that? So, after all, I
seem to belong here. Yet all these relationships are fragile, more of a myth than a
reality; they don’t provide me with energy and motivation.
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In the evening Gino and Ginonda arrive with twelve newly born kids on their arms.
They even have goats strung around their shoulders. This is the way the goats respond
to the beginning of the dry season. The kids are of very different sizes, indicating that
their mothers must have given birth to them almost by common decision, for they all
must have been at different stages of pregnancy. Gino expects more kids tomorrow
but after that the number of newborn kids will fall off rapidly.
15.12.1973
The bees swarm to wherever there is water. I find them drowning themselves in
countless numbers in the waterhole at the Pere. There is yet another sign that the dry
season has arrived. The glut of newborn kids, which need much attention, had thrown
the little Dambaiti crew of herdsmen into chaos, especially since Tsasi and Gino are
virtually out of action because of colds. Ginonda and Kairambe led their herds all the
way to the Kaeske where there is still good pasture. Ginonda looked funny as she
limped into the village at sunset, exaggerating her tiredness and sore feet.
The dry, strong winds and the hot sun during the day make Baldambe worried, not for
himself, but for the ‘yellow land’, which is a metaphor for the country and its
inhabitants. I have come to appreciate his sighs and lamentations more than I used to.
He is really sincere. He is a born leader, like his father Berinas, and has a capacity for
compassion which goes beyond the normal egocentric concern for one’s fellow men.
The sincerity of his worry strikes me most forcibly tonight as Baldambe talks with old
Sago whose sincerity is also beyond doubt. In the dark moonless night, coffee bowls in
hand, they join in each other’s lamentations about the harshness of the season. Before,
I always used to listen to Baldambe’s lamentations with the feeling that he was blowing
himself up, for he would show concern about matters that were beyond anybody’s
control, such as the weather. Tonight I see that Baldambe is genuinely concerned for
his fellow human beings and knows what suffering in the dry season means. The
thought that one should not talk about it because one cannot change the situation
would be alien to him. It is typical of his complex nature that, having evoked a dark
picture of the future, he points to the dry leaves on the ground saying, “Look here, the
goats will clean all this up, it’s their food; they will sweep up the leaves in every corner
of the bush, they will always find something to eat.” The day passes quietly. I extend
my census even further with the help of Gardu. Actually it is not so much an extension
as an amplification: I have decided to get some more information on a small number
of villages in order to find out more about Hamar adopted wives or ‘mistresses’. I want
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to know what percentage of the women are ‘mistresses’ and the typical characteristics
of the men who have them. I thought that Gardu, who is married in little more than
name and is a bit of a flirt herself would know about such ‘liaisons’. How right I was
and we have fun mapping out the love affairs of the villages of Arimba, Zale, Borea
and Lodjera. I am sure she could have told me more about the various cases, but I am
only interested in the statistics of the matter at this stage. It turns out that men of my
own age have the largest number of mistresses. “Because their axe is still sharp,”
Baldambe explains crisply.
In the dark of the night old Sago arrives. A fire is burning in front of my
‘mother’s’ house and we slowly settle down to drink coffee. Once again, of course, my
tape recorder is with me and I think I catch some interesting passages of Sago’s
‘talk of the country’. There is a long sequence in which he describes how and why a
purification ritual was performed in Omalle recently. It’s this kind of recording that I
have in mind when I say that the ‘Conversations in Dambaiti’ will eventually validate
Baldambe’s normative model of Hamar society.
16.12.1973
It is still night when Baldambe and Sago rise to settle down again for coffee and
conversation. Baldambe tells Sago what was said during the big public meetings at
Kizo where he and the other spokesmen of Kadja stopped the fighting with the
Galeba. This is my favourite theme again: sociolinguistic awareness, speaking about
speaking, the intellectual background of the use and manipulation of language in
politically important situations. Both Baldambe’s and Sago’s command of the
language is great. They delight in recreating all the single features of an argument which
they have heard about, re-enacting the situation so that you can visualise them
listening, answering, shouting, rising, sitting down, corning to conclusions, leaving
something in the air...
When the conversation has run on uninterrupted for a long while, the same thing
happens as last night: the coffee being almost finished, Ginonda is called to join the
coffee drinkers. Not as a serious talker, but rather as ‘fool’ or ‘clown’ who gives the
serious play a funny ending.
Later during the day Banko returns from a trip to Banna. On his way back he
passed through Dimeka and the Bonks of the Mission station gave him letters for me.
As so often before, they leave me disturbed by the speed and contrariness of life
outside Hamar. Here my life is structured by the logical order and pace of my work;
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outside the modern world scurries between the poles of its own contradictions.
Irritated as I am, I pick up the volume of Shakespeare again and read throughout the
heat of the day.
The night brings relief from everything, from the heat, from my turbulent
thoughts and from the bright light of day which has begun to hurt my eyes more and
more. I relax and look at the sky. I look at the stars with more interest now that I have
understood the celestial wisdom of the Hamar. As we sit in front of Ginonda’s house,
Baldambe talks about what his father-in-law Barto used to tell him; if I had heard him
talking, I would have fallen sick with laughter. Gradually Baldambe’s talk takes the
form which is so typical of expert Hamar conversation: he tells me what Barto used to
say about Berinas - and soon we reach the point where Baldambe tells me what Barto
told him Berinas had said... I don’t record because I want to save my tapes for
conversations which are not dominated by Baldambe.
17.12.1973
I am back at my work and I spend all morning looking through my sociolinguistic
material. Then I write a first draft of my contribution to the book ‘Current Trends in
Ethiopian Linguistics’. My main concern now is with ‘style as a weapon in social
competition’ and I try to outline the various Hamar styles of speaking.
At noon a guest arrives, a relative of Baldambe from the far south, an area called
Galepha. He talks with Baldambe while Gardu puts on a pot of coffee for him. As the
guest drinks the coffee by himself, Baldambe comes to my table and laughs, ‘We will
prepare a field with him!” He means that we can get good information for our census
from this man. In the afternoon we begin working with our new informant and as he is
rather slow, we do not exhaust his knowledge before the sun goes down. He wants to
leave, but I persuade him to stay overnight, giving him sorghum and coffee to feed
himself and his family. We work far into the night. Wadu arrives from Kadja. I had
sent word to him, asking him to contribute his extensive knowledge of Assile and
Kadja to my census. We greet each other warmly.
18.12.1973
This morning I observe what I was often painfully aware of in England, namely that a
close and intensive dialogue can be used to exclude a third party. Last night a travelling
Amhara trader arrived in Dambaiti, hoping to get Baldambe to pay back an old debt. It
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is obvious during the morning conversation by the coffee pot that Baldambe does not
want to talk to the trader and he embarks upon a violent and serious conversation with
Wadu. Wadu ‘echoes’ more than usual and Baldambe frowns and complains and
laments to an almost grotesque degree. When the trader tries to get a word in, Wadu
tells him to keep quiet because their talk is so very serious. Baldambe is clearly in a
weak position since he is the debtor. But he plays this down by creating an atmosphere
in which something else, of which obviously only he and Wadu know, is infinitely
more important than this small, momentary debt. It needs at least two people to play
such a game and both partners have to know each other’s style of speaking well so that
they can understand the implicit meanings of what is said and what is not said, of
allusions, of metaphors and so on. Thus, a tight dialogue in which a third party has no
place has a double effect: it makes the aspirant participant aware of his impotence
whilst at the same time it creates and enhances a feeling of omnipotence in the
speakers.
I had asked Kula to tell Gaito that I wanted to talk to him and he visits me after
coffee. I ask him about his herds. He has one of the largest herds in Dambaiti even
though he is a ‘younger brother’ and has not inherited his wealth. I am interested
therefore in how he managed to acquire his wealth. Gaito is a relaxed, beautiful man
and we have an interesting conversation throughout the morning in which I note
down all his arrangements with bond-friends.
In the afternoon Wadu and I embark on the census of Assile. Wadu is a quick
and easy informant and we get a lot of work done. I don’t participate in the coffee
session tonight because I need the time to re-write notes and organise my data to
continue my census work with Wadu tomorrow.
What is happening in the village these days? The dry season progresses. The cattle are
only watered every second day as they have to walk great distances to get to the
pastures. The goats have all had their kids by now, making herding easier again. Gino
and Tsasi have still not recovered completely from ‘flu’ and we try to cure them with
honey. Aikenda went up to Banna to visit her relatives and she has not yet returned.
Kuni and Gardu are the strongest and most energetic women around, they carry most
of the water, do most of the grinding during the day etc. My ‘mother’ is about, smiling,
friendly and slightly incompetent as usual. Cheeky Kuli is here and there, always useful
to everybody, always ordered around and often simply a nuisance. Old Maiza leads her
shadowy existence, thriving on tobacco, abuse and histrionic conversations when she
can find a sympathetic audience. Lomoluk and Wollekibu have become great friends
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and great speakers. Lomoluk did not talk much a year ago, but now I often hear him
tell Wollekibu stories with exactly the same sound and rhythm as his father. Then there
is the lively trio consisting of Gardu’s little son Aike, Susanne and Ivo. They spend
most of the day with Kuli, Kuni and Maiza. The best part of the day for them is when
the goats return from the bush in the evening. Then they run to welcome them and
compete with the kids to suckle the nanny goats. There is milk allover the place when
that happens. The world about us turns progressively whiter. At night we see bright
fires in the bush where fields are being prepared. To the west and the east, there is a
soft red glow in the sky, the reflection of big grass fires on the plains of the Omo and
the Woito rivers. During the day there is a white canopy of heat all over Hamar. I
thrive on this dry season atmosphere, it has a mad rhythm and a characteristic smell.
There is something unreal and dangerous about it, yet embedded within it there is the
promise of better times to come. The pitiless sun is hot and dry and the wind blows
with all its might. But there is something good about it, like a European winter with a
good fall of snow. Doesn’t such a winter promise a warm and plentiful summer?
19.12.1973
I wake up with a feeling of total aversion to the idea of spending hour after hour going
through the names of the married men of Assile, writing down their fathers’ names,
their clans, their territorial segments, their ages, wives, lovers, sons, cattle, goats,
donkeys, fields, offices and goodness knows what else. So I don’t join the morning
coffee session but read Shakespeare instead. Shakespeare at eight in the morning! But I
find the plots ridiculous and it’s not long before I put the plays aside. At nine Wadu
and I return to the grindstone. The hours tick by. Sometimes I almost fall asleep. Only
Wadu’s cheeriness saves the day.
During the heat of the day everyone sleeps, but I relapse into a more general
torpor. I’ve lost my enthusiasm for fieldwork and there is still so much to be done.
Again it is the night that refreshes us. After dark I join Baldambe and Wadu by the fire
to record the odd stories they have in stock, stories about thievery and quarrelling. The
cool of the night and the funny stories cheer me up, particularly Ginonda’s long
clownish speech about somebody’s problems bringing his wife home... As so often
before the conversation moves from strictly male talk to talk that includes women and
as usual, the talk of the women includes jokes, laughter and ridicule. True to form,
Maiza is given a hard time of it. Suddenly it’s obvious: the talking has a therapeutic
value, it creates order and calm, it satisfies. A well spoken and well acted speech sets
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things right for the speaker, not only mentally but also physically, for he uses his
breath, his limbs and much of his body as he talks. Moreover, the social drama around
the coffee pot plays an important part in social control. Look at Maiza who is so often
stopped from speaking. When she finds an audience, she is one of the greatest and
most violent speakers that I have ever heard. And what a great deal of damage she has
to repair! She is the oldest daughter of the famed Berinas and yet she is barren. But
when she is in full flood, speaking to an audience, she becomes her own therapist
speaking out and acting out her condition until she feels better, for the time being at
least. All this has probably something to do with the ‘anarchic’ structure of Hamar
society: in reality, speaking and the invisible bonds of ritual govern the apparently
‘anarchic’ situation.
20.12.1973
Before going to sleep last night I read a little, Shakespeare: too many words. Joyce: too
many.words. Lévi-Strauss’ ‘Tristes Tropique’: that I again liked very much. It conveys
what it says in a meandering linearity which is akin to my way of thinking. Of course
there is more to it. I also share the author’s dreams and have undergone some similar
real-life experiences. This brings the book very close to me. It often says things which
I would like to say myself such as: “So wirken die Tropen weniger exotisch als
altmodisch.” But then there is a passage in the Introduction to which my fieldwork is
going to be an answer. He writes that ethnographie are necessarily always false: “Weil
der Erzähler, der Berichterstatter, so ehrlich er auch sein mag, sie uns nicht - nicht
mehr - in authentischer Form übermitteln kann. Damit wir uns bereitfinden, sie
aufzunehmen, muss der Erzähler seine Erinnerungen sortieren und sieben - ein
Prozeß, der bei den Aufrichtigsten bestensfalls unbewußt ist - und das Erlebte durch
die Schablone ersetzen.’’
He is right, much of our ethnographic literature has become sterile in this way.
Yet despite this, I hope to catch something of the authenticity of Hamar life by putting
my analysis and description behind and not in front of my data. I am talking, of course,
of Baldambe’s model and my long and continuing effort to record live conversations,
the drama of which will later be visible in its authentic form, even if it has gone
through the transformation from pure sound and gesture to script.
During the morning Wadu and I plough through the population of the southern
Hamar mountains again. When we are exhausted I prepare pancakes and tea. Having
refreshed ourselves, we start again by drawing out my aerial photographic map of
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Hamar and filling in the names of the sixty-two settlements about which I have census
data. Baldambe puts on my father’s glasses and delights in reading the map. With a
piece of dry grass, he follows the course of the dry rivers and remarks that reading a
map is like reading the intestines of a goat.
When night comes I sit in the goat kraal and watch the usual turmoil of goats,
kids and children. Watching Ginonda I realise that she has become slim. Still she likes
herding the goats. It feeds her with experiences that go beyond the small homestead
and every evening when she returns she has new stories to tell which she picked up
whilst herding and watering the goats.
Under the clear, starry sky we drink coffee. I do some of the talking for a change
and describe how light and sound travel. Then I get on to a theme which interests me
very much: I say that customs are like language, arbitrary and beyond good or bad.
Wadu likes the sweet part of it, the one that implies that Hamar customs should not be
criticised. But the part which implies that no one’s metaphysical constructs should be
taken seriously, he finds sour and disagreeable. He has heard of the Christian gospel
which the Bonks of Dimeka mission are spreading and he thinks that if the old Hamar
customs are questionable, then the Christian story of the Resurrection of the soul may
well be right. It’s the same old story: its much easier to exchange one outright lie for
another than a lie for a declaration of ignorance. Baldambe insists that there is more
than just talk to metaphysics, because the falling stars so obviously predict disaster. He
argues that one day I myself will come to read the language of the stars and this will
persuade me to acknowledge that there is a mysterious cause to all that is happening in
the world around us.
21.12.1973
This morning there is an argument between Haila (Gaito’s brother) and Kalle. Haila
should have cleared up an old argument today by bringing a young sheep to Kalle for
which the latter would have given Haila a cow that he owed him. The sheep would
have signified that the cow was to be Haila’s indisputable property and that Kalle
would have no right to any of its offspring. But Haila has not brought the sheep. Does
he want to receive the cow as the sign of the establishment of a bond-friend
relationship with Kalle? The men of Dambaiti who gather at Kalle’s homestead urge
him to act as if this were the case. I record the interminable argument and conclude
that it furnishes yet another example of how ritual, language and social control are
interwoven, being the stuff of day-to-day politics. Language protects a disputant, like a
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suit of armour. Anyone who wants something from someone else has to talk himself
through a barrier of reasonable and argumentative men. If someone attacks wrongly he
exposes himself and furnishes an opportunity for third parties to embark on long
lectures and speeches. Kula the ‘black’, Alma and Banko, who are close friends and
age-mates of Haila, have not come this morning. This seems to be significant; knowing
Haila’s weak position, perhaps they were not eager to speak against him. When Banko
visits me later, I ask him why he did not come and he answers that someone came to
see him about a debt. Yet, not long afterwards Wadu joins us and lets the cat out of
the bag. The trusty tape recorder records that in actual fact, Banko advised Haila what
to do this morning. But Haila did not accept Banko’s advice, so Banko washed his
hands of the affair. Banko says that Haila is often intractable and relates how he had
recently offended Balle by taking some goats that Balle owed him by force. In this
connection, it is interesting to note that Balle was one of the principal critics of Haila.
The importance of precedents is becoming increasingly clear to me. When someone is
being criticised, the talk moves back and forth between general formulations of basic
moral axioms and specific cases in the past which serve as examples.
22.12.1973
I have decided to use the census to get some more information on intermarriage. My
aim is to determine whether there is any tendency towards preferential marriage
between certain clans. Aided by Wadu, I soon detect a certain asymmetry in the
marriages of the Assile men. For example the men of the Mais clan take women from
the Ba clan but not vice-versa. This leads me back to normative statements and long
discussions with my three theorists: Baldambe, Wadu and Choke. Their main point is
that precedents of marriage are crucial. If two clans have not intermarried, people are
reluctant to do so, because they don’t know what the results will be. If there is a
precedent which brought good luck to the couple, their children and their herds, then
people are eager to repeat such marriages. Precedents of bad luck discourage them,
persistent bad luck may even lead to a taboo on certain forms of marriage. But
interestingly, bad luck is not always thought of as symmetrically distributed. It may
bring good luck if a man of clan A marries a woman of clan B, but bad luck if a man of
clan B marries a woman of clan A. The attempt to find anything resembling ‘circles’ in
the form of an A - B - C - A...giving of wives only leads to confusion. There is an odd
disparity between the two moieties, Binnas and Galabu. Binnas is completely
exogamous, none of its clans intermarry. Galabu on the other hand is partially
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endogamous; some Galabu clans intermarry even though others marry with members
of the Binnas moiety. Hamar certainly does not have a neat segmentary system. This
fits with my theory of Hamar ‘anarchism’. No clan is given a status and authority ‘a
priori’, it has to show its value in terms of fertility continuously or it will cease to be
accepted as wife-giver.
At night, drinking Ouzo, I continue the kinship seminar with Baldambe, Wadu
and Choke. I am unable to describe fully how inspiring it is to work with these three
men. They are imprinting my enterprise with their own character, they lead me
intellectually through the labyrinth of their institutions, they are also teaching me
something about their own morality. For example, throughout our discussions they
show a curious recklessness and lack of false concern which I have come to appreciate
very much. Death, equality, honesty: all these I was taught to fear and esteem. But
these men teach me the value not of life or death, but of good fighting or good resting,
not of honesty but of lively arguments and entertaining tales, not of equality but of
rewarding social encounters...
The affine of Dube is at the gate-way once again, demanding marriage payment in a
provocative manner. Baldambe argues that he should get together with the girl’s father
to work out what may be due to him. The boy rejects this idea and a violent argument
ensues, bringing to light the precarious relationship between affines. Once again the
everyday life of Hamar seems to be on the verge of anarchy. The argument is laced
with threats. The boy threatens to take what he wants by force. Not today and not here
in the homestead but at some future date he will take a cow or two from the herds of
the sons of Berinas, he will take them when the herds are out in the bush. Baldambe,
on the other hand, implies that his family is strong and ruthless and would not mind
killing off an affine who dares to provoke them. In the end, after Wadu has severely
admonished him, the boy gives in and, intimidated, he sits among the men who settle
down to drink their morning coffee and talk and talk and talk.
I hide in my house throughout the day. I am exhausted and my eyes cannot take
the bright light any more. An old shoulder injury is giving me pain.
Kairambe leaves today. Baldambe has sent him to collect cattle from some bondfriends in order to pay the debt of the trader who has been pestering him. This is yet
another example of how the system of bond-friendship is related to capital
accumulation. This is not a form of capital which one uses indiscriminately, but rather
one which one lays up against unwelcome surprises. Whenever Baldambe is suddenly
in need of ‘cash’, he starts thinking of his bond-friends. Many of them he has inherited
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from his father. Calculating which of them he has left in peace for longest and which
may have a cow at his disposal, he decides which bond-friend to bother on any specific
occasion. Over the course of time, in this system you can receive an infinite number of
cattle as a return on an original investment of a single cow. This system works because
all Hamar participate in it and because there is a time factor involved. The institution
appears to be aimed at distributing the cattle evenly amongst those who are most
capable of herding them and whose need for them is greatest at any given moment.
24.12.1973
Last night a guest from Mirsha arrived and this morning Baldambe, the anthropologist,
laughs and says, “We will catch him,” meaning that we will persuade him to give us the
information we want about the married men of his settlement area. As work begins,
Alma, who is recovering from a cold and is not yet fit to work in his fields, turns up
and entertains himself by listening to our census work. The three men exchange news
and gossip about the people we mention. This shows me on the one hand how little of
the individual lives my census is able to catch, on the other it furnishes me with some
interesting general information. For example: the Galeba have been using the Kaeske
river as their approach route into Hamar country. The river provides them with water
to drink and its banks with dense bush to hide in. This is the reason why Mirsha, which
is bounded to the south by the Kaeske, has been suffering most during the recent
Galeba wars. In peacetime the men of southern Mirsha concentrate their herds along
the lower Kaeske near Macho where the herds never have to move far from the
permanent settlements. Now, not only have the herds been moved, but the villages of
southern Mirsha have been deserted, the inhabitants having moved north to cut new
fields in areas not easily reached by the Galeba. So the census is very much a dry
season and wartime census! The census therefore looks more interesting than a rainy
season or peacetime census would have been, since under those conditions, the herds
would all have been concentrated around the settlements. It is the southern regions
which are most affected by the two dangers the Hamar fear most: drought and war.
As the census progresses, I get increasingly excited about it. I have now covered the
whole south-western fringe of Hamar, from Bashada to Assile. I think that the census
will probably show the absence of any strict organisational pattern; optional territorial
affiliation, dispersed clans, no dominant marriage preferences, only a couple of
restrictions on marriage, no strong differentiations in wealth, etc. The absence of any
strong organisational pattern would be just as significant as the presence of such. I
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write my guesses down here because it will be interesting to see where the completed
census will contradict them. One matter that has particularly awoken my interest is the
average size of a residential group – such groups share a common locality and a priest
and form a loose political unit. There seems to be an average of twelve to fifteen
married men per ‘settlement’ or ‘neighbourhood’. Why are there no larger residential
groups? Probably because of the limitations of natural resources such as water,
cultivable land and pasture. And why are the Hamar not even more dispersed?
Probably because everyone relies to some extent on the protection afforded by
neighbours in ‘anarchic’ Hamar society. Think of the recent cases in Dambaiti in which
the local men protected the accused individual, demonstrating their role in the settling
of disputes. In order to answer my question about the size of Hamar settlements, I
poke into Hamar history. Noone is more enthusiastic about answering my questions
than Baldambe. His father taught him about Hamar history so that he might use it in
political debate. I summarize the general picture he gives: once the Hamar used to be
concentrated in the highest parts of the Hamar range to the north, bordering on the
territory of the Tsamai and the Banna. They were also settled on the relatively high
plains of Lala and Shanko. In those days the population was distributed along the ridge
of the mountains, south to Kadja and then to Mirsha, Wungabaino, Angude and Assile
The last four territories were then counted as one, had only one ritual meeting ground
and no more than a few villages. In the lowlands towards the Kaeske there were no
permanent settlements until after 1920! Before the Amhara arrived, Kadja was the
most powerful territorial segment. The men of Kadja used to come down from the
populous centres at Mutsulu and Kalle in the mountains to fight the Bume. The Korre
used to come occasionally, bringing ‘war and cattle’ and the men of Kadja would fight
them too. The magicians of Kadja would perform their magic against them. When the
Korre had retreated, the Hamar would visit the Galeba for food and so forth.
Baldambe informs me that for a long time it was Kadja that was the southernmost
province of Hamar. Together with Simbale and Margala, it was under the direction of
the ritual leader (bitta) Elto. Later, men of the northern provinces moved to
Wungabaino, Assile and so on. It turns out that these men, moving through the Woito
plains in eastern Hamar territory (which were cultivated by the Arbore in those days),
outflanked the Kadja and settled to the south of them. In fact, instead of there being
three territories (two under the ritual leader Banki Maro and one under the ritual
leader Elto), Hamar now has only two:
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Sketch I
Sketch II
Subsequently Menelik’s troops decimated and enslaved a large part of northern Hamar.
Those who escaped, together with the population living further to the south, fled to
Galeba by Lake Rudolph, to Kara by the Omo and to the plains of the Woito Valley.
After 1915 - 1920 the Hamar began to return and since then the lower plains east and
west of the Kaeske have been permanently occupied by the Hamar. The population
began to increase; Wonyarki and Dunia expanded and slowly the areas of Arimba,
Zale, Ande, Dambaiti etc. were settled. However Dambaiti and these other settlements
have only been on the increase since the thirties.
The return to ancestral Hamar does not appear to be fully completed yet. When I
visisted the area of the highest mountains in northern Hamar once, I saw many traces
of earlier cultivation there, terracing, secondary forest and so on. But the area was
hardly populated and was no longer being cultivated, so I am sure that the Hamar will
settle there again, especially given the fact that the Amhara have recently left their
mountain settlement at Buska and have moved to Dimeka. Another interesting point
comes up: the graves of the Korre can be found all over the lowlands west of the
Kaeske and it is for that reason that the Hamar don’t bury their dead there but in the
Hamar mountains. It would anger the dead if they were placed in the soil in which
their enemies rest. The spirits of the ancestors are alive a grave is not just a heap of
stones... So the Hamar carry their dead across the Kaeske not because of any respect
for the sacredness of their own country as I had thought up until now, but rather
because of the fear of mingling antagonistic spirits in the same soil.
At night Baldambe and I lie in front of our house and watch the sky. I tell
Baldambe that it is now Christmas Eve in Europe and that Meuder, Baka, Ali and
others must be thinking of us resting on our cowhides exactly as we are doing. We
recall memories of last year when we were in Europe and participated in the rituals of
the Christmas tree. Baldambe comments that the lights symbolized how the hearts of
the people should burn, they represented the flames of their lives. We enumerate in
detail the food we ate, the drinks we drank, whom we were with... But we give up our
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reflection, realising that it is impossible fully to understand the reality of another
culture. Hamar is too much for me, Europe is too much for Baldambe. The only thing
that is true and tangible is our friendship which has moved through and become strong
in each of our separate worlds. After a while I slowly pick up the conversation again,
embarking on an odd epistemological theme. As with everything abstract I have to use
metaphors to explain myself: if you are born in a hole, you think that you know much
and are ignorant of very little. When you move out of your hole and find yourself in a
valley, you think that you know more now, but also realise that there’s a lot you don’t
know. When you then climb a mountain and see the world around you, you hardly
think of what you know anymore, but are impressed by what you don’t know. Does
Baldambe understand what I want to say? I think he does and we say to one another
that one has to be strong to continue in the path of knowledge since it is a path with
no end. This makes me think of my sensitive, tired eyes, my aching shoulder, my
bleeding gums... and from there my thoughts wander to Thomas Mann. I tell
Baldambe that there was an older brother of Sigmund who would not tell stories like
the Hamar do, but would write them down. The point of his stories was that sickness
and good talk are complementary rather than contradictory together. I say that
Thomas Mann would tell of a raid preceded by a public meeting in which two men
were talking. One of them had malaria but despite his weakness, he said the right
things, whilst the other, strong and healthy as he was, spoke badly... At this point
Baldambe interrupts me, “Just as in Hamar!” He adds, “We say that the strong and the
young are blunt and stupid. But we don’t think that the sick are wise. It’s the old who
are wise, the ones who have survived all sickness, those who have grown thin and
weak from a long life of suffer ing.” So Baldambe transforms Thomas Mann’s
distinction between health and disease into a distinction between youth and age. This
pleases me very much since I was trying to bring together two separate strands when I
used the term ‘good talk’. Good talk is an art and it is art to which Mann’s distinction
between health and disease refers. But ‘good talk’ also represents wisdom or ‘science’
and it is to this that Baldambe’s distinction between youth and age refers.
25.12.1973
I start the day with census work. At noon I feel hungry and Baldambe and I feast on
some dry muna and two cups of milk. How satisfying this simple food is! It is my daily
fare but I feel that this meagre diet is a gain rather than a loss. Somehow I experience a
stronger rhythm of emptyness and fullness, of hunger and satisfaction. I start thinking
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about our modern eating habits: for sure, we are children of a past in which oral
satisfaction was a matter of pomp and circumstance. All that packing, all that waste;
never hungry, never satisfied... The Hamar would be as infantile as we are, always
sucking at the breasts of Knorr, Libby, Unilever. But they can’t and so they gain
something which they would never think of as a gain. That’s history for you!
As we chew our muna, I reflect on my attempt to work during the morning. I sigh
and tell Baldambe that if I were a proper anthropologist, I would be writing from now
on, writing without respite, so that the books would grow fat whilst I myself grew thin.
My youth would go into the books and my eyes would darken, I would need glasses,
my hair would grow white and with a whisper I would talk to my students. I imitate the
speech mannerisms of an old professor talking Hamar: “Nanato, kami wodimate...” I
relate what I would say about Hamar and when I reach the institution of bond
friendship, pointing out that it is in this way that a young man builds up his capital,
Baldambe suddenly interrupts my imaginary lecture. “And by giving his cattle away to
his bond-friends, he makes sure that none of his relatives and affines comes and takes
them away from him unexpectedly.” I had always thought that this ‘hiding’ was one of
the most important reasons for the institution but I had never heard a Hamar state this
clearly. “Thank you, misso Ogotemmeli!”
In the heat of the day Baldambe and I chase bats with whips and stones. It is a
grotesque chase as if I am acting in a Beckett play. We don’t like the nervous noises
and movements of the bats that have recently invaded our house. We drink tea and
whilst Baldambe sleeps, I begin writing a report for the DFG envying the ease with
which Baldambe will later rise and begin talking again. The way Europeans write is
absurd. Here I sit and think and write a line and think and write again and after an
hour, when a page is filled, I tear it up and throw it away. What kind of feat is this, in
which there is no spontaneous communication, in which words and sentences are
measured by invisible meters, in which there is agonizing precision and density? This is
certainly one of the most basic differences between a society with and a society
without writing: the art ofspeaking is spontaneous, the art of writing consists of
endless reflection and reformulation (Flaubert!).
Later in the afternoon I work with Gardu on the census again. She really knows
the people of Arimba, Borea, Lodjera, Zale etc. well. When I ‘discover’ after a while
that there has been a lot of intermarriage between these villages, she laughs, “But of
course.” These people know so much about each other that I don’t know! I decide to
widen the scope of the census yet again and include not only the clans of wives but
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also the names and the residences of their fathers. I will try to get a complete picture of
the marriage pattern in Baldo, the large settlement area which forms our part of
western Hamar. As I talk with Gardu, I can hardly manage to look at my census sheets
for the lid of my left eye is twitching violently and I feel sick and exhausted. Sleep,
sleep. Three times during the day I fall into a deep sleep and in between Ginonda
comes and serves me a large bowl of meat broth, primeval medicine. I drink it all.
Dreams? None.
The sun is still up but the new moon is already visible when I see Ginonda walk
across the Dambaiti ‘stage’. When she sees the moon, she increases her pace and
coughs energetically and spits all the sickness which she can conjure up towards the
new moon. It is spontaneous and heart-felt. There is nothing ritualistic about her
behaviour. Her children have been sick and she wants to get rid of the sickness:
“njarsh!” So seeing the new moon and greeting it with this gesture become one. That’s
the dramatic and expressive genesis of ritual. At night Ginonda brings me meat broth
for a second time. We recall the other times when she cured me with this medicine, the
Hamar cure-all. We talk of the time when Bernhard was here three years ago, when it
was dry season like it is now.
27.12.1973
Sick. At night I open a bottle of wine and Baldambe and I drink it warm. The taste
reminds me of the bottles we drank almost twenty years ago with Giftzwerg in the
Harz mountains, at the place where we wanted to build an igloo in the snow. Freezing,
we stamped about in circles, drinking the wine while Giftzwerg told us of hot summer
days in Spain.
28.12.1973
Fever, fever which makes the head so clear. I lie awake most of the night. Is it the
increased heart rate which provides my brain with more blood than usual? If not, why
is my head so clear and why do my thoughts roam so widely when I have fever? It is
not I, though, who is thinking, it is someone else who thinks and tells me all those
stories. In one night, I re-live and pre-live innumerable hours. I watch the multiplicity
of thoughts with fascination. Outside there is this quiet night, only a slight wind blows,
whilst inside my mind this mad activity, this torrent of images and dialogues.
Everything important to me comes back again and again, every time in a different
guise. So much for my fever.
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I have already spent a long time in Hamar and there is still a lot to be learnt:
basic information, the ‘bricks of custom’. What else should I call these units of
stereotyped ritual action? They are like the vocabulary of the language, there seems no
end to them. As for example the other day, when some hunters came singing into
Dambaiti. Ginonda said to me: “If they had killed a man, we would not get any share
of the meat of the goat that is slaughtered for them; we, the women, would go hungry.
Furthermore the skin of the goat would be taboo for us, we would have to throw it
into the bush. Today, though, most people take any skin, even one which is taboo. The
man who has killed a human being is unclean and must be cleaned with the blood of a
goat, and that is why we women must not touch the meat of the goat, nor the skin…”
Baldambe adds later that it is not only the goat used to cleanse a killer which is taboo
for women but so too are the goats slaughtered for hunters who have killed rhino,
elephant or leopard. This basic information is different from the kind of statistical
information which I am eliciting these days, it cannot be gathered exhaustively simply
by direct questioning. As if to prove this point, Mukoinda comes to me while I am
writing. She asks me for food for her grandchild, saying that the calf of the cow from
which the child used to drink has died. But why doesn’t the child drink from its
mother? “Because this is taboo for the child after it has grown its first teeth.” I have
often asked to be told the taboos of all the different clans, but nobody ever mentioned
this one!
29.12.1973
This month is called barrae. The sterm barr means ‘mad’ and this may throw light on
the way the Hamar perceive madness. In this ‘mad’ month people walk a lot, disperse
abruptly, tsarr as the Hamar say. The burning sun, the roaring wind and the lack of
food are the reasons for this. So, madness equals dispersion, separation, walking. The
point that mad people walk a lot without purpose has been made to me often, usually
in connection with the description of what happens when one breaks a taboo. Every
morning I am reminded of barrae because a group of women from Shaele village passes
by on its way to the Pere where they now have to fetch water, their own waterhole
having dried up. There have recently been some clouds and a few localised showers of
rain have fallen, accompanied by thunder and lightning. The rain, or rather the
possibility of rain, was enough to make Alma hurry and set fire to his field even though
Ginonda’s field, which borders his, has not yet been completely cut. Ginonda pointed
this out to him, but Alma went ahead with burning his field. And then the fire did not
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burn well. Baldambe attributes this to the fact that Alma did not consult the sandal
oracle which would have determined the right day to burn the field. So, the sandal
oracle always comes in when there are important decisions to make. Perhaps its
function is mainly to obstruct rash decision-making. It seems to me like an
institutionalized pause for reflection before action. Usually therefore this reflection
involves not only the actor but other people as well. This latent conflict relating to the
fields makes me reflect on the comparative strength of the office of ‘priest’ (gudili),
even today when other offices, such as the parko for example, have become less
significant. The ‘priest’s’ function consists mainly of blessing the fields and ensuring
the rains and the growth of the crops. But he also blesses the people. Why do they
need his blessing? Not only because of their individual sufferings and illnesses, but also
because of these latentconflicts perhaps. The fields bring together people who
otherwise live apart and their mutually conflicting interests give rise to quarrels and
anger at times, as for example, in the definition of borders, the timing of the burning
of freshly cut bush; the stealing of crops, the timing of letting the herds into the fields
to eat the dry sorghum stalks and so on.
30.12.1973
Fever, fever, all night, all day. No lively, galloping thoughts drawing together things
which never met before, no being ‘turned on’, no mental dances. I am knocked out;
the blood pounds heavily in my head and my thoughts revolve as slowly as my aching
body. Yesterday afternoon I felt better and prepared census sheets on intermarriages
between ten villages. Baldambe and I talked about the history of the various
settlements and about population movements till almost midnight. Then the fever
arrived and it has been holding me ever since.
During the day Baldambe stands by the platform on which I rest and his friendly
face turns into a mask of compassion. Aikenda takes a brush and sweeps the house
inside and out - a ritual to fend off my sickness? Then Ginonda comes in and sits
down clutching her skirts of hide. She pretends to be embarking on a lecture and her
funny look makes me laugh which makes my chest hurt and this in turn makes her
laugh again. Banko also comes to see how his misso is and I hear Baldambe call to Adja
as she strolls across the Dambaiti ‘stage’ that I am sick and that she should come and
say hello to me. So she comes, jingle, jingle. She is so free and beautiful these days. She
has good taste and always makes herself the most beautiful skin dresses, but today
somehow, her dress and her personality match more closely than ever before. She now
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has reached perfection as a Hamar anza (a girl who has not yet joined her husband).
Never will she be so confident and at ease as she is now. Soon she will join her
husband and then good luck to her; there are very few happy and relaxed young wives
in Hamar. We talk and then off she goes and I am alone again.
As evening comes I sit outside in front of the house on my cowhide. Soon the
goats will corne and later the cattle. Already even before it really gets dark, the moon
and the male and female stars become visible. They have been ‘sitting in a semi-circle
as in a public meeting’ and that means trouble. They would not sit together like this if
everything in the country were fine, for then there would be no reason to hold a
meeting. In the silence of the night Baldambe, contemplating some deep-seated
conflict with his brothers, suddenly exclaims, “The hyena - its son is a lion; the lion its son is a hyena!”
31.12.1973
The Dambaitians are preparing a grain expedition and Baldambe and Banko spend
much of the day cutting sandals for the women. They improvise them from cowhides.
As you would expect, only a few women own sandals. Women are supposed to be
permanently static; it’s the men who should move. Not every man, though, has
sandals. Some people have such hard feet that they use sandals only for decoration,
they carry them in their hands most of the time. Lying on my bed inside the house I
overhear Banko outside enumerating the men who have soft feet. It is almost as if soft
feet are a sign of nobility, of sensitivity and distinction. So Raila, the sandal oracle
specialist, is said never to take a step without his sandals. I wish I could have recorded
this splendid piece of conversation. Would cobblers in Berlin or Dublin talk of the
softness of so-and-so’s feet? In olden times gone by they would have and it would be a
lot of fun and very interesting to have these conversations on tape and to be able to
listen to them. Today will always be interesting tomorrow. Oh, I want to get on with
my book ‘Conversations in Dambaiti’. Now I have left my platform of disease inside
the house and have put up the camp bed outside on the ‘veranda’ from where I want
to greet the New Year tomorrow as the sun rises over Mamadunta.
1.1.1974
I lie awake all night and watch the silent silhouette of the four houses that huddle
around the Berimba kraal. Behind it lies the sky which slowly turns towards me. First
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irer and then its southern counterpart rises, then Orion and finally, hours later, the
Southern Cross.
When at last the morning arrives, Ginonda stalks over to Aikenda’s house and
calls Kuni to rise. Then she continues and wakes up Gardu... My eyes burn, they can’t
take even the gentle lines of night. The fever did not come, but rather a feeling of total
weakness and an incapacity to sleep. So dreams, images and memories whirl again
through my mind. I dream of Alice. She reads a letter to me, speaks with the voice that
I know so well: the quick passages and the odd pauses, the straightforward
expressions. She gives me a book of drawings for children which I am to take with me
to Hamar. It’s about the life of Eskimo children. Drawings of snow and rain, fish
and sledges, igloos and one of a sunset low on the horizon. I laugh in anticipation of
the fun it will be to listen to the Hamar’s conversation about the Eskimos. In between
my dreams I hear the lions roar from down by the Kaeske. The wind carries the sound
and this is the first time I hear them. I think about this diary and of what use it may
possibly be. If I really were able to show the path of my perception over time, then the
diary could become a text worth publishing. That is, after I have thrown out all
unnecessary ballast and have re-written what is unclear and clumsy. But I would like to
add nothing so that the diary remains little more than raw dates and as such, retains the
rough and incomplete quality that it inevitably possesses.
In the morning we have coffee in Aikenda’s house. Baldambe is absent, but there are
guests like Choke’s friend Wualle Lokarimoi and Kula the ‘black’. They say that the
position of the stars indicates hard times ahead. While listening to the conversation, it
strikes me that Hamar astronomical knowledge is mainly related to the period just
before sunrise and just after sunset. It would appear that the position which the stars
occupy then is decisive. The points at which the sun appears and disappears are also
crucial because the ‘holes’ where the sun ‘rests’, predict the plenitude or scarcity of
future rains. A second point is how individualized all astronomical knowledge is.
Everyone has particular observations to make. Each man puts them forward with
much force and mystique, yet no one attempts any systematic account of the various
astral phenomena. For me, this reflects the social structure. Knowledge is generally
individualized and specific. Hiding and mystique cloud the channels of information so
that no unified body of social knowledge can be acquired and maintained. The same
individualization seems to affect ritual and almost all levels of social organisation. Is
‘individualization’ the right word? What I mean is free individual choice in the
application of general principles. As for example in intermarriage: there are clans but
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no segmentary structures nor obvious marriage patterns. There are distinctions of age,
but no operational age-set system; there is leadership but no clearly defined office,
there are differences in wealth, but these are drastically levelled through the institution
of bond-friendship... I think the census will show in the end that there is a large degree
of ‘randomness’ in the application of general principles. But once this is shown, the
‘randomness’ will no longer be random but rather a typical feature of individualistic
Hamar social organisation in which everyone works towards a maximization of choices
in any particular social situation. Because of the strong rejection of authority amongst
the Hamar, I have been referring to Hamar society as ‘anarchic’, but I propose to use
the term ‘individualization’ for the time being on account of the fact that this term has
fewer general connotations. Only at the writing-up stage must I arrive at a definitive set
of valid general terms.
2.1.1974
Barrae, a ‘mad’ month and a month of reduced social control, since the men who
actually supervise life in the settlements have gone on grain expeditions. In the small
portion or Dambaiti around me (I am still lying on my camp bed), there is more angry
shouting than usual. The girls are provoking old Maiza a lot and she has started
complaining and speaking out loudly. I ask her to tell me what is wrong. She informs
me that Kuni has said that Baldambe will beat her up when he returns. Maiza insists
that Baldarnbe could not possibly beat her for she is his sister and not his wife. After
that she comes round to her favourite topic: how good everything was when her father
Berimba was still alive, when the herds were large and she was happy. In the end she
says that now she has told me of her troubles, she will not complain any more.
Several groups pass through Dambaiti on their way north to Banna in search of
grain. At this early stage of the dry season these expeditions appear to be joyful
enterprises, full of the promise of adventure and of a return journey loaded with grain.
Grain is still cheap, the distances to walk short and everyone is still in relatively good
shape. Yet, later there will be a second and possibly a third trip and distances will grow
longer and the outcome of each expedition will become less certain. People will have
to exchange their animals for almost nothing with the result that they will use up the
grain even before they reach home.
In the evening, as we drink coffee in front of Ginonda’s house, Banko emerges
from the dark. He leans on his spear and stands and waits. How much power can
emanate from someone who just stands! Everyone knows that this stance constitutes a
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powerful command, so a cowhide is brought and coffee is served to him with speed
and respect. He gives me the ‘talk of the country’: fighting between the Galeba and
Bume has been heavy. The Galeba attacked the Bume at Nakua and drove away three
herds of cattle. As the fighting continued, the Ethiopian police arrived on the scene
and requested that the Galeba withdraw. But the Galeba replied by firing on the police,
killing two of them. Just as last year, the Bume overtook the Galeba and collected at
the waterholes where they waited for them, guns in hand. It is said that many Galeba
died and that the Bume pursued them all the way into Galeba country, where they
retrieved their own cattle and took some of the Ga1eba’s as well. Some fifteen Kara
men and, even more interestingly, some Arbore joined in the Galeba raid. So, that’s
where those two ‘snakes’ the Kara and the Arbore, meet - in Galeba!
This makes me think of an interesting parallel between these two small river
peoples and their two large antagonistic neighbours. Like the Hamar and the Arbore,
the Kara and the Bume have been fighting over the crops that grow by the river. The
Bume’s successful self-defence action makes the Kara uneasy and they now expect the
Bume to attack them any time, especially since the Omo is running low and it is easy to
cross by foot. The Kara have been buying as much ammunition as possible; they even
buy some from the Hamar with sorghum. At night the Kara and their Hamar guests
watch the ford close to the Kara settlement where the Bume can cross the river. The
crops are ripening now and the Kara cut any ripe grain quickly, remove it from the
fields and hide it in the bush. Everyone believes that the Bume meant what they said
when they came to the river once to announce that they would soon come on a '’visit’
after which they would not be concerned about the survivors for there would not be
many. Banko also tells of a rumour that the men of Assilc raided the Galeba and
returned with twenty-five head of cattle.
In Hamar the ‘mad’ month asserts itself: Irlu’s daughter, who has not yet joined
her husband, has become pregnant and her enraged husband stormed into Gabo
yesterday looking for his wife’s lover. He could not find him. So he fired several shots
into some empty houses and left. The case was discussed by the men of Gabo who
requisitioned seven goats from the girl’s lover and a cow from her father and sent old
Muga, their ‘priest’, with these animals and the unlucky bride to her husband’s father’s
homestead.
Another ‘mad’ event: at a waterhole near Lodjera, where there is now very little water,
two women got into a fight during which one hit the other with her digging stick so
hard that she broke the other woman’s arm. Her angry husband then took a piece of
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quartz and threw it into the waterhole. This act automatically causes the waterhole to
dry up. The men of Lodjera retaliated by threatening to curse the man and his
wounded wife. So he had to give in. He offered a goat to the men of Lodjera and the
men went to the waterhole with a small lamb, pulled out the quartz, killed the lamb
and dropped the content of its stomach and its fat into the waterhole, thereby ensuring
that the water would continue to flow. The mad’ month has just begun!
6.1.1974
It is the afternoon. A bank of rain clouds which ‘stood’ over Simbale and emptied
itself there, found its way to Dambaiti and scattered a few drops here. The moist
ground sparkles, the birds call and there is a beautiful afternoon light. To the south,
towards Assile and Galapha, the sky is black and heavy thunder grumbles
continuously. Kairambe had put a piece of thick buffalo skin into the soil to soften.
Now the rain water has speeded up the softening process and he is beating the leather
with a stone. He will cut sandals for his son Lukusse whose feet have been ‘burnt by
the hot soil of Dunka’. Kairambe had left this piece of leather to dry for a whole year.
He explains that the longer leather dries, the softer the sandals made from it. Kairambe
calls to me in between the thunder, “Tomorrow they will be planting their fields in
Assile and Galapha!” He adds that such early rain is particularly good for the southern
regions because if the rains come late, the fields in the south often dry up before the
crops have time to ripen. Kairambe does not know whether he should go ahead with
the burning of his field or not. There has been rain now in some parts of Hamar, but
learned old Sago has said that there won’t be much early rain since the male star has
moved south of his wife’s position “to protect her from the dangers of the south”,
from drought, from hunger and from war.
During the last days I have managed to get some census work done and although
the malaria has exhausted me a lot, I am feeling well again. I think of Malinowski.
Wasn’t he obsessed with his health when he was doing fieldwork? If so, I understand
him well, especially since I imagine that he realised that he was getting unique
ethnographic data, full of theoretical and methodological implications. So the longer he
stayed, the more eager he became to continue. But the main danger and threat to this
continuation of fieldwork was his health. My situation is rather like his. Health has
been the greatest threat to my fieldwork, not money, nor politics, nor ecological crises,
nor personal problems - just plain physical health. Still, illness has never kept me out of
action for very long!
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Yesterday evening ended with two poisonous events:
1. Warka had come after dark to pester Gardu for durra, the black salt which is chewed
with tobacco. Gardu had replied that it was dark and that she would not be able to find
the durra. Warka, however, kept begging. In the end Gardu asked her little daughter Ali
to go and get some from the sack where it is usually kept. Ali returned from the house
screaming: a scorpion had bitten her while she was groping in the dark for the durra.
Warka got the message and left without a word and without getting what she had
asked for. Yet the waves of the event moved on for some time. Gardu, who told me
the story right after it had happened, implied that Warka’s persistent begging brings
bad luck to everyone concerned. Here is one of the reasons why Warka is frequently
accused of having the evil eye. She always turns up when she is unwelcome - but then
she is never welcome. She has such an unpleasant, wet, sponge-like manner. Women
like Mukoinda or Kallenda rarely come to ask for anything, but when they do, the
people are happy to give what they have. With Warka it is the reverse. But one
shouldn’t think that it is merely incessant begging that causes aversion. The logic of the
evil eve accusation works differently: the generally unpleasant disposition of the actor
makes him incapable of asking or demanding anything in an acceptable manner. Warka
certainly suffers from this negative feed-back. Being unpleasant, she pretends to be
pleasant and everyone pretends to be pleasant to her, but this only deepens the general
uneasiness. Anything given is given reluctantly and when this feeling of resentment
accumulates and external factors unleash anxieties (factors such as sickness, accidents
etc.), then one gets the accusation of the evil eye. The problem is from where the initial
unpleasant disposition derives. I think it stems from a combination of physical and
social weaknesses. As the Hamar say, “People’s stomachs are different; some need
much food, others only a little. Only bad parents make a fuss about this. Give much to
those who need much and little to those who need little. So some get hungry quicker
than others and when hunger is not checked by a strong internalization of social
discipline, a personality results which is unacceptable in Hamar. The Hamar describe a
great man or woman as someone who can control his stomach. Indeed, a really great
man cannot only go hungry for a long time without complaint or intrusion on others,
but he can also eat a lot in times of plenty.
2. At night when Gardu and I are working on the census, we suddenly hear screaming
and hurried footsteps in Kolmo’s homestead. Gardu laughs and says, “It’s a mouse.” I
wonder why a mouse should stir up such commotion but we continue with our work.
This morning Duka comes to me and complains that no one came to ask why they
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screamed. A huge black snake had appeared in the moonlight in front of the house.
When it approached, Duka thought it was a whirlwind. But a whirlwind at night? And
then it sounded like rain, yet there were no clouds. And then they saw the snake. It was
as thick as the central pole of the house and several metres long. “To look at it makes
you sick; if it bites you, you die in an instant.” Duka grabbed her little daughter Assi
and ran. Adja dived into the house and climbed onto the platform. The others just ran.
Only deaf old Kolmo kept sleeping on his cowhide. The snaketurned and left the
turmoil which it had created. “When it moved over a tree trunk as it retreated, it
sounded like bells.” Duka says that such a snake doesn’t come to you just like that,
there must be a reason and this she will find out by divination. I give her some coffee
and immediately she leaves for a specialist, a woman in Ande, who rubs her arm with
butter, massages it and tells her that it was Kolmo’s father who had sent the snake. She
prescribes the following ritual of placation: take four coffee beans and put them on the
ground in front of the gateway of the cattle kraal. Pour a mixture of milk and water
over it and seal the gateway with a bunch of wild pig grass. Slaughter a ram as soon
as possible and offer it to Kolmo’s father.
While Duka is telling me the story of her frightful experience, Ginonda enters my
house. For a long time these two women have not talked to one another; they
always evaded each other because of a conflict between Kolmo’s family and the
Berinas family (Dube tried to get Omalle, whose husband is dead, to be his ‘mistress’
but Omalle refused). But today Duka tells Ginonda in detail what happened, she even
complains to her that no one came to find out what was happening. Crisis may divide
but it can also unite. How beautiful it would have been if the Berinas family., forgetting
all the old quarrels, had come running to show sympathy when the snake appeared.
But they did not, and now Duka dramatises the event to get the sympathy she needs.
Choke recently spent a long time in northern Hamar, on the border with Banna. Today
he returns and is eager to tell me how different various customs are up in the north. I
switch on the tape recorder and listen: this material is superb, it makes a new step on
my road, shows how knowledge generates knowledge. Here I am, trying to understand
the Hamar and Choke has slowly understood what I am after. He knows how Hamar
society works and what I know about it. He also knows the limits of my knowledge.
Not only this, he is also aware of the limits of his own sociological knowledge. So he
‘researches’ and by doing so, makes visible a new category of facts. This new category
is identified by his surprise that certain customs can be different from those of
southern Hamar. Choke points out true differences and not those which are only
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apparent; what may look different to the eye of an outside observer may be of no
significance to the actors. This is why Choke’s indigenous comparisons are so exciting.
Choke tells me of several differences in the Banna symbolic system: for example, since
many of them have no cattle, they may take the fruits of the garranti bush and ‘jump’
across them instead. But all this has a practical aspect as well: I get the feeling that
Choke will use this new knowledge himself one day, should he be cornered by some
ritual problem and the Banna way of dojng things offers him a new way out.
After Choke has related to me his sociological ‘talk of the country’, we settle down to
do some census work and I again enlarge my questionnaire. I have developed a graphic
scale for measuring wealth. It consists of showing five circles of different sizes. I ask
Choke to identify all the individual men of the villages he knows best with anyone of
these circles, the rich with the large circles, the poor with the small circles. My aim is to
discover how certain structural features of Hamar society are perceived by the actors.
The way that Choke carries out the task shows that he perceives Hamar as rather
egalitarian. He enumerates as many poor as rich. After he has applied this scale to
relative wealth, I ask Choke to apply it to the relative size of clans. It is interesting to
see where the ‘objective’ data collected in the census deviate from Choke’s judgement.
I wonder whether I will ever be able to answer the question about the
relationship between wealth and speaking, for there may be a time dimension invoved
here. People may be allowed to speak publicly because their fathers were once wealthy.
Could it be that the herds of wealthy fathers provide the sons with a good economic
basis for exercising social influence? The son of a rich man is the one who supervises
the herds andfor this reason, quite frequently initiates actions like moving camp,
watering, scouting etc. If his leadership comes to be recognised in this way, he
becomes a ‘speaker’. But as a ‘speaker’ he has to be generous, and gradually he is
divested of his wealth as he tries to keep his supporters. Lomale, the most important
‘speaker’ of western Hamar, is the son of a rich father. So is old Bume, who has almost
the same prestige as Lomale and who is said to have been rich in cattle and goats in
times gone by. Today Choke counts them amongst the poorest of Hamar.
7.1.1974
Raised voices in Aikenda’s house wake me before sunrise. The abbreviations, the
pauses, the pace, the quick echoing responses, the varying levels of tone - all these tell
me that great speakers have arrived. I can also tell where they come from only the men
of southern Hamar speak so powerfully. So I am not surprised to find Arbale Lomotor
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sitting next to the coffee pot. He, however, does not talk; he leaves the word to an old,
grey haired man.
The old man, like many of those whom I meet from the south, has a strength
and confidence and ruthlessness which I attribute to the environment of the wide open
spaces of the south and their proximity to hostile neighbours. The south seems to
select for strong and rich people. The south offers a regal way of life: large herds,
especially herds of goats, periodically exchanged for grain in Banna, Kara, Tsamai. In
the south, no poor man can survive. That is why the census shows more poor people
the further one moves north. In Hamar terms, ‘poor’ means lacking herds of cattle and
goats. In some ways, wealth and oral competence go together, or more exactly, oral
competence and the ownership of herds! A remark of Choke’s comes to my mind: he
said that in the south everybody talks at the public meetings. He implies that this is
bad, because it prohibits clear decision-making, “Look at Assile, Wungabaino, Mirsha.
the men of those places never stop fighting and raiding. Everybody does what he
wants, nobody is listened to. Look at Angude and Kadja, those men only allow a small
number of selected people to speak, and they stick to the decisions of those speakers.”
I wonder whether I will ever be able to answer the question concerning the
relationship between speaking and wealth and I start thinking about wealth in general:
how has the distribution of wealth in Hamar developed over time? It may well have
changed considerably during the past generations. The Hamar theory is that wealth
used to be concentrated in the hands of only a couple of families just two, or even only
one generation ago. All the other people used to herd cattle which they had been given
by the wealthy within a bond-friend relationship. It is said that when the wealthy
brought their cattle to the waterhole, no one else would approach. But doesn’t the
indigenous account always tend to simplify the past? Just as a large number of
ancestors are edited out of the account, so too are most wealthy men and all past
wealth is said to have been concentrated in the hands of only a few. The Marxist model
of progressive concentration of wealth in only a few hands is the exact opposite of the
Hamar model. I must explore these models of wealth more closely sometime! Why do
the Hamar see wealth as moving from concentration to dispersion rather than vice
versa? Because this is how the wealthy individual’s life cycle operates? Because the old
people who have the greatest command over wealth always lose their hold when they
die? Or does the theory refer to the time when the Hamar were recuperating
economically from Menelik’s invasion? At that time warriors such as Berimba
accumulated a great deal of wealth in their hands after successful raids on the Borana,
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Gabare etc. Perhaps it looked then as if wealth was, in fact, accumulating progressively
in the hands of only a few.
Animated by the good oratory of our guests, I talk with Baldambe about
speaking. Baldambe remarks that the Bume are great orators because they always
repeat what the other has said. In this way they never forget what has been said to
them. I reply that I thought the ‘echoing’ was a typical Hamar custom. No, this is not
so, traditionally the Hamar answered the speaker only with a repeated ‘hm’, ‘hm’..., the
‘echoing’ they have learnt from the Bume. This means oratorical customs travel just
like any other customs and manners! It must be so for everything, even for such traits
as walking, standing, carrying loads, spitting. Doesn’t Baldambe always laugh when he
sees a Konso or Borana carry his spear on his shoulder? A Hamar would never do this,
but perhaps it will become fashionable in the future.
During the morning conversation new stories of ‘killing’ waterholes by throwing
quartz stones into them crop up. In the mountains of Angude there used to be a deep,
perpetual waterhole. Up to seven men could climb into it and pass up the water. One
day one man was mysteriously killed in it and consequently, the local ‘priest’ cursed it
with a quartz stone. There is also a story of a quartz stone falling by accident into a
waterhole and the men rushing hurriedly to the scene to slaughter a lamb and hence
revitalize the power of the waterhole.
Typically, the men of the south bring news of recent raiding: The men of Assile
did not raid the Galeba, they raided the Gabare in Kenya instead. Only six men went
and they returned with about a hundred head of cattle. The guests delight in the defeat
of the Galeba in their recent attack on the Bume. The Bume are the heroes of the day
and the men expect them to attack the Kara soon. They are said to have come to the
Omo shouting to the Kara that they should ‘put on a pot of coffee, a very big one’,
because they would come in big numbers. They also said the Kara should not waste
their time guarding the ford near their settlement, because they would cross further
south and then, approaching from the mountains, would drive the Kara into the waters
of the Omo. The Kara, on the other hand, are saying that this is only an attempt to
intimidate them and they feel strong with the backing of the Hamar whom they are
feeding in their fields.
By now, I have almost finished the census and will be able to go down to the
cattle camps to make a detailed census of them too. As a fist sign of my intention I
repair a flat tyre on the Land Rover.
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In the evening Baldambe and I decide to write a letter to our friend Erich in
Berlin. I ask Baldambe to dictate the letter to me and he, as so often before, draws
together what is good and important and provides us all with that additional spark
which makes life worth living.
“Misso Erich, ich bin gerade von einer Reise zurück und mein Herz ist kalt. Aber
da ist nichts Schlechtes im Lande. Sieh, da ist die Sonne, da war vorher der Regen und
darum haben wir jetzt mit der Sonne Gras und das essen die Kühe. Die Ziegen essen
etwas Gras. Wir laufen und erhandeln uns Hirse und essen ein wenig (Lachen). Wir,
mein Freund, Theos Vater, Kairambe, unsere Frauen Aikenda und Ginonda und
Lukusseinda und unsere kleinen Kinder - unser Atem ist gesund. Theos Mutter, Thea,
Dambaiti und Berhane sind oben in Addis Abeba. Das Land, in dem wir sind, ist
gesund, ist gut für das Auge zum Ansehen. Meinen misso Erich, laß ihn zu uns
kommen. So wie Ottos Vater soll er kommen und mit uns spielen, für einen Monat,
bis wir gesättigt sind. Und wenn er dann wieder von uns aufbricht, laß ihn dann Hans
Peter unser Wort bringen. Mein Freund Erich soll kommen, damit hier die Kinder ihn
so kennen, wie mich die Kinder in Berlin kennen. Seine Gesundheit, sein Spiel und
sein Gelächter, davon habe ich hier meinen Altersgenossen allen erzählt.
Misso, wie wir so an Dich schreiben, ist das so, als ab Du hier wärest. Bitte komm
zu uns, damit wir zusammen spielen. Wir sind nicht im Hause, sondern sitzen im
Freien unterm Himmel, auch des Nachts und wir bitten Gott, daß Dein Weg eben ist,
auf dem Du zu uns kammst. Dir Kaffee aufsetzend und Dir eine Kuhhaut ausbreitend
warten wir auf Dich. Das ist genug. Großvater! Großvater! Großvater! (Lachen).
Baldambe.”
9.1.1974
I lie on my back and watch the life on the Dambaiti ‘stage’ as it develops throughout
the morning hours. I see absolutely nothing new. Baldambe, Kairambe and Choke sit
in Aikenda’s house drinking coffee, the cattle leave early, just as the sun rises, and
shortly afterwards Woro leaves with the goats. My ‘mother’, with an axe in her hand,
goes to cut fresh branches with leaves for the kids and lambs. Maiza stalks towards
where the coffee is and Ginonda and Aikenda sweep the goat and cattle kraals. The
sun rises higher and now there is hardly anything to see. Those whom I saw this
morning have left for the fields. The small children? I can’t see them, they are hiding
from the sun. The coffee drinkers? They are still talking. I lie on my camp bed under
the extended roof of my house. No one disturbs me. I just lie and watch. I have
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reached a stage where I am fading out of the picture, have no exotic value any more
and, therefore, can watch without being disturbed. Or, rather, I can be present in the
routine of every day life without being noticed and without creating responses. This all
comes to my mind when Aule crosses the open space which divides me from the
Dambaiti ‘stage’. He is coming from Ande and is going to his homestead which lies
beyond the houses of the Berinas sons. He walks with a quick stride and when he
looks towards me and sees me lying in the shade, he does not stop, he just nods a
greeting and continues his walk at the same pace. Can a non-ethnographer imagine
how great it feels to have achieved some social invisibility? In our own world where we
are the actors we all try to be visible, we are afraid of anonymity and the isolation
which goes with it. The ethnographer in his attempt to become ‘visible’ at home has to
attempt the greatest possible ‘invisibility’ in the field. What a lot of circles we go
through!
In the early evening by the coffee pot I record a long talk of Baldambe’s. I have
gradually become an expert in developing the interview into a conversation. If I ask
someone to relate a story, I am told only the barest details. But if I have a group of
Hamar around me and ask someone to relate a story or an historic event or the form
and content of a custom, the speaker will quickly move from addressing me to
addressing his more responsive and understanding fellow Hamar and this gives his
speech a rhythm and richness of detail which it never has when directed towards an
outsider only. Baldambe talks and talks and talks; the sun goes down, a thunderstorm
passes over-head and still he talks, of the history of Hamar after the arrival of
Menelik’s troops, of the myth of the exodus and the return of the Hamar, of the
background to the rise of his great father Berimba. I try to grasp what is being said but
at times my mind wanders to the question of the ethnographic value of this kind of
recording. Will they be as great on paper as they sound live? Do I labour under an
illusion or is my ‘discovery’ of the ethnographic value of recording live conversation
really something new and exciting? And what about my stress on ‘pure’ ethnography,
on ethnography that admits only one constraint: that all observations must have a
social perspective, that only when an observed event has an inherent social meaning
should it be recorded? It requires a creative act on the part of the ethnographer to see
this meaning. But he doesn’t set out to prove nor to disprove anything, he only
generates questions, and they show him his road. It was in this way that I became
interested in the story Baldambe has just been telling it was because I asked myself
what might underlie the outstanding authority of certain speakers. I guessed that
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history might play a role in this matter, so I have been digging into history and in doing
so, have found a wealth of data which, as one might expect, not only throws light on
certain problems but also makes me aware of yet deeper layers of understanding which
are still beyond my grasp. In short, questions always beget questions.
Sweet and rough Tsasi-inda arrives from Kadja and we talk to each other late at
night. She tells me of her friendship with Jean and how they had fun together (in
Kadja), how Jean gave her so much and how she ‘became a Hamar’.
10.1.1974
Yesterday two women of Baldambe’s clan Karla arrived at Dambaiti asking Baldambe
to help them to claim payment for one of their daughters. For the first time I see clan
solidarity in a different light. To date the most impressive expression of this solidarity
that I have witnessed has been the way in which clan members use the marriage of one
of their women to blackmail the family of the husband into giving them goats and
cattle. Today, I am seeing this solidarity from a different angle: a woman’s classificatory
brothers are the main allies of her family should the latter receive no adequate payment
for her marriage. Clan members try to keep out of such matters, leaving all the
appropriate economic transactions to the families directly involved. But if a woman’s
family is slow in making the legitimate demands, then the other members of her clan
come into the picture.
I have the feeling that if the members of the woman’s clan detect a weakness in
the husband’s family, they later exploit this weakness to their own advantage,
blackmailing the other side into unnecessary payments. In this way, in-laws can
become a real threat. This threat operates dialectically in everyday life; relations
between affines are generally good precisely because this relation is potentially bad. If a
potentially bad relationship is turned into a good one, this is considered a true social
achievement. Baldambe turned his affines, Haila and Wadu, into his best friends. This
is probably a general feature of social life: friendship and alliance can produce very
close relationships when they bridge potentially dangerous gaps such as those between
social classes, castes, colour bars…
Duka invites Chokes for coffee early in the morning. This is typical of her: she
likes to present her perfection to young men. In her playful way Ginonda does exactly
the same, virtually flirting with Choke in a charming way. Choke says to her, “I’ll cut
your field for you, if you pay me in the evening.” Ginonda laughs and answers, “You
mean the way the old woman paid that man in Ulde?” Choke joins her laughter; she
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does not have to say more, for she refers to a story which they both know well. Only I
am left in the dark. This often happens and I get the impression that there are many
such tales almost mythical in nature, which summarise what one may want to say in a
specific situation. Or are these stories more like precedents epitomising fundamental
human experiences? Baldambe is one of those who constantly refer to such
‘precedents’. But he is also one of those who create them. He does this by elevating an
event to the status of precedent. He keeps coming back, let us say, to the story of how
a Hamar killed another Hamar’s Bume ‘servant’ and told his own ‘servant’ to run away.
This summarizes the ruthless individualism of the Hamar and as such becomes an
historical epitome, a point of orientation, a ‘precedent’... This field of knowlede is an
example of how really difficult it is to understand Hamar society. If you ask them to
tell their stories, you may hear two or three but the bulk remains inaccessible to you
because they are situational. Specific occasions bring them to mind: they are not told
and re-told systematically at clearly defined intervals. The stories are also changing
constantly: old ones get lost - new ones are being created.
But to get back to the subject of flirtation: there is also a certain dialectic to the
way that some women flirt. Omalleinda and Ginonda, for example, have both just
passed menopause and are able and attractive mothers of young daughters. They know
everything there is to know about love and flirtation and the fruit it bears, about
dreams, reality, about the transience of youth. This flirtation with young men, redolent
with the charm of accumulated experience, seems to me to be a farewell gesture to
their youth. Ginonda tries to make it plain: “Now we are old. But you can still see that
we were once young. Here we are and here are our children. Weren’t we once ripe?” Is
she really saying this or am I reading something into her words? It’s the usual problem:
something important is revealed, not directly, but through imagery and allusion, so as
not to destroy the subtlety of the point, and this opens all the doors of
misunderstanding. Yet Ginonda said something and I take it to have meant: “Today I
still laugh and flirt with Choke because one can still believe that I was once capable of
making love and was ready for all the romance and flirtation that goes with it. Here are
my young children, the fruits of that passion... But later I will look so old and ragged
that to flirt would be nothing but a bad joke, for nobody will believe that I was ever
young.” She adds (and this is easy to understand), “When I no longer ripen on the
outside”, (i.e. when I am no longer attractive), “I will become a man, and will act like
one.”
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As Baldambe has left for Zurguma and Choke is drinking coffee in Omalle-inda’s
house, there are only four in Aikenda’s house, around the coffee pot: Kairambe, Tsasiinda, Ginonda and I. Tsasi-inda talks about Jean and Ginonda quickly echoes her.
They have developed a special way of imitating Jean. They always refer to her
energetic, elastic walk, the movement of her hands and her head, contrasting this with
the slowness of the movements of Hamar women.
When he returns from Zurguma, Baldambe tells me that his trip was successful;
he got four sheep for the two Karla women. One was given to Djobire who had
accompanied the women to Dambaiti today and had acted as an armed guard, bringing
a couple of fighting sticks with him. Baldambe also carried his weapons, a heavy
hippopotamus whip and his long, prestigious spear. The negotiations had developed
quickly and well, says Baldambe, because he had a good barjo in that Merrie and Wualle
Lokarimoi were there to act as sympathisers. There you go: the other day the men of
Dambaiti protected Kalle against Haila and today they ‘lobby’ at Zurguma with a pair
of outsiders. It is certainly not territorial affiliation that decides the outcome of this
kind of situation, no single factor ever does; that’s Hamar. Power results from the
historical relationship between individuals. There are no static categories nor principles
to decide anything. Principles and categories are used and manipulated by individuals,
in themselves they are nothing, no one can trust in their inherent value.
In the late afternoon I pack the Land Rover and, accompanied by Banko and
Choke, I leave for the Omo valley where I want to conduct my final census of the
cattle camps.
How often have I travelled with these friends? Travelling is one of the things that
has brought us closer and closer over time. We journey towards the cattle camps by
driving across the hills of the ‘honey country’ and when the moon rises we camp
behind the black rocks of U’ana. It’s back to the usual routine: Banko strolls into the
bush to collect fire-wood, Choke goes to collect stones for the fire-place and I put up
my chair and table to write. Banko and I drink the beer which Tsasi-inda gave us for
the road whilst Choke, who hates beer, prepares himself some strong black tea.
11.1.1974
As we breakfast on tea and dry sorghum food, we look across to the Bashada
mountains. Choke points to the highest ridge, farthest to the west, “That’s Aida, where
the Bashada originally lived. You can still see the high walls of their cattle kraals.” Then
I learn that the Bashada used to be a small but strong group, proud and rich in cattle.
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They would raid the Hamar (Lala) and the Banna (Baffa) together with the Kara. Then
one day they came to Simbale and stole honey and raped a couple of girls. The bitta
Elto was so enraged that he cursed the Bashada and they began to die of sleeping
sickness. From Bashada, this sickness spread to the lowlands, first to the Kara and
then to all the other groups by the Omo. It was so bad that Bashada fled from their
country, to Ari, to Banna, Hamar, Galeba and to Kara. Sometime later their bitta went
to Elto and made peace with him. Then he built a fire on the highest mountain of
Bashada and the people who saw this fire returned again. They then settled further
east, in the area where the Bashada now live. So this myth contradicts the one which
tells that the Bashada are no more than a branch of the Hamar that split off and
migrated west. Perhaps Bashada, Kara, Banna and Hamar are all the product of a single
decisive migration.
On the other hand all these groups may well have lived somewhat apart for a
long time in their respective strongholds in the mountains or down by the river. The
differences between them may even have been greater in the past. Perhaps the
similarity between Hamar and Bashada is the result of mutual influence rather than the
consequence of a common historical origin as I have always imagined!
We crossed the Kizo river and drive out into the open grass plains where we
meet a large group of young men. Almost all have their foreheads painted with red
clay! (So that’s what all those new guns and ammunition which have recently been
brought in by the traders were used for!) The young men are sitting in the shade of a
mighty kalle tree, around old Karchamba who is consulting the sandals for them. I
have seldom seen people so engrossed in the sandal oracle and I have never seen so
many people present at a consultation. But I only stop briefly. We say hello and tell
them that we are on our way our misso Lokangere at Dunka, to see the cattle and do
some game watching.
At this late stage of fieldwork, I just can’t bring myself to join any social situation
that presents itself. I must know the people and the background, then my observations
and participation in the situation, my questioning and my recording make sense.
While I am still trying to decide what to do, Choke says: “If we had arrived last night, if
we had joined with the men as they started the consultation, it would have been good
to stop and see everything. But now we ‘step on them’ and are obviously on our way to
somewhere else, lets look at it another time when we arrive early enough to know
what’s going on...” I agree with him, especially as I know by now that one thing always
leads to another. At this point it’s better to leave rather than to stay on and make a fool
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of myself, giving rise to the feeling of being an outsider. So the only result of this
meeting is that I now add one more item to my short list of goals I want to achieve
before leaving: to record a large public consultation of the sandal oracle. I will talk to
Karchamba and ask him to invite me when another round of consultations is
approaching.
We drive southwest across the yellow-white, dry Kizo plains till we reach the
mouth of the Dunka river. We see hardly any game, it has gone, together with the
green grass. Choke says the game is now concentrating further north, towards Mago.
As we purr along the smooth river bed, Choke is seated on the bonnet of the Land
Rover. Suddenly he jumps down and gets within 25m of an oryx but misses. I am sure
that it’s not because he’s unlucky. The guns are bad and the Hamar have no practice.
Hunting probably serves to train the Hamar as warriors. When the elders told the
young men not to raid Galeba anymore but to hunt dangerous game instead, this
probably meant not only that they should find compensation in hunting, but also that
they should remain alert and in good shape so that they would be good warriors when
called upon in the future.
Choke may not be much of a shot, but he’s certainly got a talent for curing.
When I told him that my left shoulder was constantly hurting and asked him what the
Hamar medicine would be he confidently proposed to massage it. So for two evenings
he has massaged it, first in Dambaiti and then last night. Whenever I (or Jean) have
been treated by the people we are supposed to be studying, the treatments seem so
right in a social sense that the medical aspect hardly matters anymore. When Ginonda
serves me bowls of heavy, fatty meat broth, I don’t care whether it turns out to be very
difficult to digest and that it weakens me even more rather than curing my malaria; the
way she stirs the broth and hands me the steaming bowl tells me that I will get better
when I drink it. So it is with Choke’s massage. It’s not really a massage but a neat,
confident movement of my bones, a check on whether they articulate properly with
one another. Before he begins to rub butter on my shoulder he spits on his hands to
bless them and does the same when he is finished. Perhaps the most striking thing
about his treatment is the relative force with which he presses the shoulder with his
fingers, with which he pulls and pushes the elbow to test it. But the force does not
imply lack of concern or amateurishness. He is certainly an expert and, in Hamar
terms, knows what he is doing. The confidence with which he handles his patient
reveals that a Hamar ‘physician’ ignores little pains and the possibility of wrong
treatment. Take my case: either my arm is slightly dislocated, in which case I can be
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cured by putting it back where it belongs, or I have some disease which is incurable
within Hamar medicine anyway. So the only thing that Choke can do is to treat me as
if I have (or recently had) a dislocated shoulder and this treatment means a certain
disconcern for the pains of the patient.
We stop in the shade of a large sabala tree in order to rest during the hottest
hours of the day. I set up my table and chair and write this diary.
12.1.1974
In the late afternoon we continue our drive up the dry river bed. Just before we reach
the waterhole at Dunka, a group of youngsters emerge from the green shadows along
the river. Choke points to the teeth of one of them who pokes his head into the
window of the Land Rover. “You have been eating meat.”
Not long afterwards, when we reach the ridge where the cattle camps lie, we
learn where the meat came from. Bali walks slowly and heavily towards us and greets
us. I can see the muscles of his face twitching as he says, “The Galeba have raided my
cattle.” They came two nights ago, the night on which we in Dambaiti saw a
thunderstorm move towards Dunka and Galeba. That night Bali and all the men of the
eleven kraals that huddle together on the ridge close to the Dunka waterhole had gone
to sleep in the dense bush by the river. The heavy winds and the clouds caused Bali to
lie awake for a long while, then feeling that something was wrong, he got up. But
nobody had heard the Galeba who had opened the fence of one kraal and had driven
away fifteen cattle. In driving away the cattle, the Galeba passed within 10 metres of a
bush under which a couple of Hamar were sleeping. But they did their job in the midst
of the storm and the Hamar only realised what had happened in the early morning
when it was already too late. Bali tells us that he and some other Hamar followed the
footprints all the way to Galeba, to Rate opposite Kalem, but they returned emptyhanded. At night we hear more about the background to the incident.
Karchamba the diviner had sent word some weeks ago that the herdsmen in
Dunka were in danger of losing some of their cattle but it was clear that he had ‘lied’
because he had said that the daytime was the dangerous period. So the Hamar had kept
a sharp look-out during the day but had been lax at night. A diviner from the
mountains had warned them that they should move or two unpleasant things would
happen together. He had said this to Bali and the same night Bali had informed his
age-mates. But his age-mates had said the diviner was a ‘liar’. But what he said had
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come true: first, an old woman died. She was buried in the afternoon and the following
night the Galeba stole the cattle.
Yesterday everyone rested and a cow was slaughtered to feed the large numbers
of men who had returned exhausted from following Bali to Galeba. While the meat
was eaten, a decision was taken to leave Dunka for the time being, the best defence
being retreat and thus make attacks by the Galeba more difficult. Although the cattle
had been taken from Bali’s camp, in fact only one belonged to his family. Nevertheless
he still feels responsible and is extremely tense and depressed. He says that he is ‘sick’
and will only recover when he has his cattle back from the Galeba. Imagine the
peaceful Bali saying that! Never had any of his cattle been stolen before. I am
interested to see whether he will really embark on a raid of retribution.
At night while Bali speaks to us sitting on our cowhides, nore and more young
men join us and listen with quiet intensity I get the same feeling I had the other night
when Banko stood silently before us. An audience materializes almost inaudibly,
making the speaker feel that he is saying something which they value highly. And then
slowly the members of the audience sitting in darkness start to speak themselves. Their
speeches are long and are listened to by the assembled company. They constantly
invoke the ‘old’, the ‘fathers’, the ‘older brothers’ and refer to the ‘precedents’ of which
I have talked above. There is a confidence and trust in the old and the established
which has never seemed to me quite so marked before (although I realise now that it
has always been there). I suddenly realize that here may lie one of the keys to
understanding Hamar ‘conservatism’ and (paradoxically?) its ‘anarchy’. The cattle
camps play a big part in the socialization of the young men. Here, to a large extent,
they are free from the strict domination of the elders. Here they have to make their
own decisions and these decisions are made on the basis of precedents, by referring to
what the great men of the past would have done in such-and-such a situation. By
invoking a precedent the speaker almost becomes the historical person himself, so by
invoking historical authority they reject the present authority of others. One might
argue that Hamar anarchy is a result of the fact that everybody rejects a living person’s
decision if it is based on purely individual and contemporary judgment. Outright
individual cleverness and power are taboo and no one may openly aspire to them.
Instead one must make a precedent of an incident in the historic past which will be
acknowledged by others as offering the appropriate answer to a specific problem in the
present. Whatever the truth of these ideas, it is clear that the young here in the cattle
camps don’t set themselves apart from the old and try to be different from them.
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Rather, they are quite uninhibited in the way they imitate their elders. Another point in
favour of the theory that the cattle camps are a sort of school for public speaking is
that there is nothing much else to do and there is a constant sense of insecurity which
provides a psychological stimulus for public oratory. As Choke points out, the threat
of danger is the reason for the increased interest in astronomy at the cattle camps. It is
in this world of herding that the young learn to interpret the signs of the sky. As Choke
explains this, we are watching three quite strange phenomena simultaneously: a huge
white comet deep down in the southwest over Galeba. A white ‘star’ low above the
high dark trees of Dunka, emitting a strange white flash at intervals of about 6-7
seconds. After five minutes it disappears. Banko sees it first, then all of us! A ‘moving
star’ (satellite) rather far away to the south, moving along the horizon towards Galeba.
No question about it - all these signs mean danger. It is time to leave Dunka.
I spend all day counting cattle and kraals and people. As I have the backing and
support of the Berimba family there is good co-operation and in one long and busy day
I am able to account for almost the whole of the present population of Dunka (about
one hundred people), their names and ages, clans and interrelationships, territorial
affiliations, the time they have spent in co-residence and the time they have herded
their herds together. I find the only way I can count the cattle is to stand at the gateway
and count them as they leave in the morning or return in the evening.
Shortly after dark, as I lie exhausted on my camp bed, Choke, Banko and Bali,
who slept for several hours during the day, talk animatedly with a boy who has just
come from Kizo: Karchamba consulted the sandals because the Hamar found
evidence of Bume down near Bulkai. A metal rod and a bottle wrapped in elephant
grass had been hung in a tree. How is one to answer this magic? Karchamba found out
that one has to destroy the sign. Other news: at Golla, the Marle murdered a young
Hamar who had killed a wild pig and was caught cutting up its meat. He lost his life
but what made it even worse in Hamar terms was that his gun was also lost. I fall
asleep but when the moon is up, a loud voice wakes me. A public meeting is taking
place close by. It is decided that the camps will move back towards Kallae the day after
tomorrow. The meeting ends with a boy standing up and calling out loud the decisions
of the meeting. I always knew that this shouting (kaerapha) existed, but I had never
witnessed it before. I like the casual, almost comic way in which the group of speakers
tell the boy to call out certain details such fts who will go scouting tomorrow and
which route he will take. This change from seriousness to comedy is surprising; I find
it very unlike the Hamar. But why? Because I still have not learned enough.
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13.1.1974
I count cattle in the morning and spend a long quiet afternoon writing in the deep
shade by the river. Gradually I get to know some of the central figures around me.
14.1.1974
Yesterday Muli Darsha and other young men from Assile arrived. They have brought a
string with three knots: in three days, the men of Assile will lead a raid on Arbore. The
preparations for this raid were finished some time ago, but now, after the recent killing
of the Hamar youngster, the Assile men seem to have decided that it is time to move.
So they are calling on all the guns of Hamar to join them on the raid. This invitation to
join in resolves the problem of whether to move or stay for the Dunka herdsmen. As
the men of Arbore and the Galeba are friends, the raid on Arbore will be an indirect
form of retribution for the recent theft of Hamar cattle by the Galeba. Furthermore,
the Arbore raid will certainly lead to further fighting between the Hamar and the
Galeba and Dunka will be even less safe than it is now. So this morning the cattle are
watered at Dunka for the last time and then herds and people move out. I am just able
to finish my census work before the reality which I had tried so hard to put on to
paper simply vanishes.
All the cattle, except Bali’s, move up the Dunka river to Walle. Bali sends his
herd to Kallae. He himself joins Choke, Banko and me. We spend the middle part of
the day going through my census data and clarifying certain points. When I have
finished work on my Dunka notes, we drink huge bowls of hot tea and then depart
also.
15.1.1974
The hot dry wind dries up the ink. It’s afternoon. We are on our way to Kara and
during the noon hours we have been resting in the shade while Choke and Banko
prepare the nyaile and the nyamunyo, specially cut and shaped feathers of the ostrich. We
are on an open plain, slightly northeast of Kara in the Mago valley. I have never been
this far before. The silence and the space are immense. As they prepare the feathers,
Choke and Banko are humming tunes, Bume tunes. Lokangare sleeps on a cowhide.
At night: The savannah had been yellow and violet during the day; yellow the
grass, violet the sea of acacia trees in the low-lying basins of the Omo river. The sky
over the plains was white in the heat of day; a glowing red at sunset and increasingly
black as night fell. Now we are camped on a plain above Diba. We hear the antelope
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grazing, sometimes galloping and fighting; we hear the lions from the forest of Lake
Diba, the hyenas that come close to us and howl... and then around midnight the
moon rises and turns the plain that was yellow during the day into silvery white.
We lie around the fire and talk. The conversation moves to past fights between
the Kara and the Hamar. The same as the other day when we talked about Bashada,
the stimulus for the discussion stems from the fact that we are camping in an area
where we have never been together before.
17.1.1974
Morning in the cool shades of tall trees at Dus by the Omo. We came here yesterday
evening when we had run out of water. The Omo is now low and its slow-moving
waters are clear, pleasant to wash in and good for our black tea. Dus is deserted,
everybody is in the fields. Only Lokaribuk shows up. He asks his wife to bring us
honey wine and sorghum rood. We feast and then Lokaribuk embarks on a long
lamentation deploring the state of war, the continual state of anxiety and uncertainty
and the imminence of fighting between the Hamar and Arbore, Hamar and Galeba,
Kara and Bume etc.
Choke answers him in the same lamenting tone. I get the impression that this
lamentation stems from two sources. First, a true social concern for the well-being of
everybody, but secondly - and probably more directly - an attempt to absolve oneself
of responsibility for what is happening and yet to retain a recognizable claim on the
control of public affairs. I can see how Lokaribuk and Choke would both like to be
‘real’ men who have effective control over public affairs. But the reality of Hamar
social life makes this impossible.
Hamar-is a vigorously individualistic society, that is clear. I too have learnt this in
going about my everyday life in Hamar. I am not integrated into the whole Hamar
community. Rather I am related to a small number of people very closely, to the
Berimba family, to Choke, Banko, Bajjeimba.… and this closeness and exclusiveness is
counterposed by a certain degree of.alienation from other Hamar.
When other Hamar talk about me (or Jean) to one of the Berimba family, they
refer to me as yente (‘he who is yours’, or more briefly, ‘yours’)? “Is ‘yours’ at home?”
Not that the Hamar are not one people, but there are social distances dividing them
from one another, even if they are close kin.
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So Choke, Banko and Lokangare hide away all their ostrich feathers as we arrive
at Kara. They are not afraid of the Kara, they can refuse them. They are afraid of
Hamar guests who might be their ‘relatives’ and whom they therefore can’t refuse...
So they hide the feathers so as to preserve the lie that they would be pleased to give
them away.
While the lamentation was going on last night, there were many references to
barjo and I suddenly realised that the strength of the notion of barjo lies in its generality.
It has such a general meaning that it can be applied to any specific situation. In its
general sense it means a good act of creation, a good event, good luck, well being. Take
a case that happened this morning. I put the car under a tree last night. This morning
Choke realised that one set of wheels had just passed between two extremely hard and
jagged tree stumps which would have cut the tyres open if I had driven over them.
Choke points to the tread mark between the stumps, “You always ask what barjo
means. This is barjo.” The flexibility the Hamar show in the application of this general
notion to particular social actions and actors seems to fit well with their tendency to
reject authority. Barjo is accessible to anybody at any time, if he is physically and
mentally capable of aspiring to it. Often it is probably seen by others as no more than
an indication of the general competence of an actor. I look forward to spreading my
data on barjo out in front of me in order to attempt to out1ine its different elements.
The basic idea will be to see how the notion of barjo articulates with the practice of
Hamar anarchy and to examine its relationship to the patterns of thought that will
confront the Hamar in the future and to epistemology in general. As usual I feel, that
my lack of historical knowledge is a great limitation. What was the notion of barjo like
2-3 generations ago in Hamar? Was Hamar social organization more disciplined than it
is today? Were the settlements really more compact and larger then? Did powerful agesets exist? And did the seasonal meetings at the various territorial gathering points
(boaka) result in greater social uniformity and solidarity? Or are these fragments of
history which reach us today projections and images that were never actually realised?
The same question arises with respect to barjo. Perhaps the notion was more specific in
the past, more closely related to ancestor worship or to the authority exercised by
those appointed as public speakers (ayo).
While I have been writing, the sun has been rising higher. Choke emerges from
the green-grey-white sorghum fields flooded with sunlight, bringing me a bowl of
coffee. He wears his blanket like a Roman toga and walks slowly and upright, the
feathers of his red and violet clay cup are sparkling, “Theo-imba, this is coffee whoch
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Lokaribuk has sent you.” Being ‘on the road’, detached from normal social life, we are
continually doing things for one another without ever questioning one another’s
independence. Hamar men like Choke and Lokangere and Banko have never been
made to question their power to manage their own lives, they are confident and
competent and that’s why doing ethnographic work with them is so satisfying. Not that
this is without social costs as well; it is the ‘price’ the Hamar have to pay for their
individualism that is one of my central themes. I have just become aware of another
cost that some Hamar have to pay: stuttering! I sensed long ago that the socially
competitive use of language may drive the unsuccessful into stuttering. I was first
struck by Kairambe’s and Gapha’s stuttering which contrasted so drastically with
Baldambe’s eloquence. But I have continued to meet stutterers in Hamar and now I
believe that Hamar has a disproportional incidence of stuttering. As I now have census
data, I will be able to estimate the percentage of stutterers in Hamar and compare this
with data from other societies. If the percentage is significantly higher in Hamar, then
we have here yet another cost. Could it be genetically determined? Certainly not, for
then women would also stutter a lot, but I am sure they don’t. I look forward to getting
back to Dambaiti in order to check this matter. Choke stutters slightly and he says that
stutterers are frequent in Hamar. “There are as many as there are blades of grass,” says
Lokangere (who does not stutter).
The hours of noon we spend in old Zinu’s field, und the little shade structure
overlooking the Omo. Zinu and Kolompo, whose ‘guests’ we are, are miserable. Either
they really didn’t have any crops or they are hiding them. They certainly don’t offer any
sorghum to Bali who is ‘representative’ amongst us of the Berimba family. Choke
remarks that the Kara are ‘mean’ and we all leave pretty quickly, felling rather disgusted
that Zinu doesn’t give us any of his tobacco freely. Hasn’t he taken so many things
from the members of the Berimba family? The bond-friend relationship between Zinu
and Aike was inherited by them from their fathers. But now as Zinu’s family is almost
extinguished (war!) and – on the other side – Berimba’s family is growing, the bondfriendship seems to have come to an end. I have the impression that there is a great
difference between the ‘bond-friendship’ within Hamar (banne-wak) and the one which
reaches into the neighbouring tribes. While the friendship within Hamar is based on
differences in wealth (in theory), the external bond-friendship is based on equality of
wealth. That is why one man will give to another at the time of the year that his crops
or cattle are doing well, but when the seasons change the giver will become the receiver
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and the former will be in the position to give as generously as he received. Both rich
and poor exchange in this way.
We leave Dus and the Omo and go game-watching again. We follow elephant
and buffalo tracks up north towards the Mago valley. A herd of zebra lures us into
thick forest and we battle through the bush for a long time. The bush is hard on our
tyres and the only return for our effort is a few handfuls of the ripe red fruits of the
dongo tree. No game at all. Bufallo and antelope have moved south to drink at night
from the waters of Lake Diba. Elephant and giraffe have moved farther north (that’s
what Banko says). So we return south and just before the sun goes down we find
ourselves again in the midst of hundreds of antelope grazing on the plain, above Lake
Diba. (This plain is known as sutana torre, literally the ‘sipping plain’, because after rain
water collects in small pans all over it.) My friends are not tempted to hunt these
animals because Choke has the original idea of eating a big pot of milk-rice.
18.1.1974
Early morning on the yellow plain in the long shade of the Land Rover: the recent
intimacy with my friends has become too much! I want to be alone, just by myself. I
am sad. I realize once again that our intimacy exists only on one level: that of
adventure, ethnographic co-operation, the sharing of food, caring for one another etc.
That’s great and beautiful - but there is also another level, one on which we are so
infinitely separate, the level of general concepts of understanding. I still have not
grasped the really fundamental intellectual concepts of the Hamar; I mean those
general notions that are related to the social cosmos of the past and present and future,
concepts like barjo and rukunti, ideas relating, to the ancestors, the sky…and to the
precedents of countless rituals... Similarly, the Hamar don’t share my abstract concepts,
such as the dialectic for example, nor my interest in tracing perceptual processes,
showing counterpoints in the development of thought. This all came to mind when
Choke and I were talking last night after Banko and Lokangere had fallen asleep. We
talked about greeting and the variability of greeting customs. Choke told me how he
and Lokangere observed greeting customs in Addis Ababa. He certainly has a great
interest in this and I don’t doubt that his observations are governed by an implicit
theory about greeting behaviour. But this theory is very different from mine and I just
can’t put my theory into Hamar words. How does one say that social life is an
interconnected whole where the hidden shows itself through the obvious, i.e. shows
itself to those who have discovered the interconnections? After all, anthropology is a
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highly specialized European enterprise, it bridges big gaps at times, but the bridges
cover only certain points - and even they lapse with time, crumble away.
My father’s eyes come to mind. How warm and mild they used to look when he
watched us children, and how cold and sharp and devastating when he directed them
at the objects, apples, stones, pots, flowers, glasses that were the subjects of his stilllifes. Would any Hamar understand this look? Yes, in his terms. But he could not
possibly know that my father was examining the relationships between the objects in
front of him, and not only this, that he was examining these relationships and
transforming them into the two-dimensional totality of a picture existing independently
of the objects. Two-dimensional? No, multi-dimensional, because there are the
dimensions of colour, temperature and intensity, light and heavy... The dialectic of
visual contrasts, of ‘a priori’ forms and individual historical experiences... How am I to
share this with my friends, friends who through common experience and interest have
become extremely close to me? In theory, the gulf is not unbridgeable, but practice
works against it. Now it is almost four years since I first came to Hamar and still with
each new phase of achieving intimacy with the Hamar I become aware of another
abyss that separates us.
Later during the day we drift almost aimlessly through the savannah, gamewatching has become irrelevant somehow since we met some Hamar herdsmen at
Nauamur who told us that almost all the ‘guns’ of Kizo have left to join the raid on
Arbore. The date set for the raid is supposed to be tomorrow. To get more news, we
drive down to the point where the Hamar water their goats and sheep. We find the
herds and herding boys drinking from the Omo. I take some photos, remembering
that David Turton did not include us in his register of research being carried out in the
Omo valley because he claimed to have thought that the Hamar lived only up in the
mountains. Well, they don’t; they are always extending and contracting, occupying
territories way beyond the mountain tops where some people wish they would stay.
We drive around Lake Diba and from the ridge that borders it on the north, we can see
the loop of the Omo river and Lake Diba and the inlet to the lake. The ridge is called
Korcho and the cultivated area is called Lapha, the name which is also given to the
watering places of the most northern herds of Hamar goats and sheep. We walk down
to Lake Diba and for the first time the idea that it has fed many people with its fish
and hippopotamus in times of drought becomes credible. The water is constantly
moving because of the life within it. From far away, the lake looked small but when I
reach it I can see that, in fact, it is big by Hamar dimensions. As it dries up, the
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exposed shores offer enough room for cultivations, big enough to feed all the Kara as
well as many Hamar and Bume and so forth. Did I write before that one generation
ago it was Diba which saved the Kara and many Hamar and Bume? Zinu told me
about this.
19.1.1974
We returned to the cattle camps at Kizo late in the evening. The Arbore raid seems to
have become a really big enterprise and it pulls me back to Dambaiti because I want to
see the development of events from there. A couple of days ago, when I first heard of
the planned raid I thought for a moment of interfering, but then I realised that I didn’t
even really know what it was that I was thinking of interfering with. How big was the
raid to be? Was it really going to happen? If I tried to stop the raid, if I tried to
interfere I would only make my powerlessness obvious. On the other hand, to pretend
that I was not against the raid and rush to Assile in order just to try and see what was
happening would be to make a fool of myself. One cannot study warfare in the way
one studies ‘harmless’ customs and counts cattle. So it seems to me that the best thing
to do would be to return to Dambaiti quickly, set up my recording gear next to the
coffee pot and listen.
The camps are empty. I went from camp to camp in the evening and did not see
more than two guns although I estimate that the six camps I visited normally have at
least fifteen guns. Everybody has left in spite of Kalle Gaia’s public meeting three days
ago. Kalle Gaia had a sick cow slaughtered and talked and urged the men not to go to
Arbore. There have been four big Hamar raids since the Italians left - and every time
the Arbore have repulsed the Hamar.
Lokangere laughs and says that in one raid about eighty men died. The
impending raid, he says, will also bring no luck to the Hamar, they will run and die.
Late at night I ask which of the Dambaiti elders will not have joined the raid.
Banko counts Alma, Balle, Lotolla and Zubu. Lokangere laughs again, “Old Kolmo
will probably go, that’s the way he looks for his death. Once before I told him to
return home when I met him on his way to join a raid on Arbore...” Still, in spite of
their disgust, even Lokangere and Choke are worried about the raid. When the
morning reveals the clouds lying in big ‘rows’, from north to south, they frown and
say, “That looks bad, it means that the Arbore have built big thorn fences, that there
are obstacles in the way of the raiders.” But Banko adds, “It is good if the clouds lie in
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rows that point towards the enemy, then the raiders move unhindered through spaces
between the clouds.”
When we drive into Dambaiti only the smallest children, those, born during our
period of fieldwork, welcome us by standing on a little ant-hill and waving their hands:
Aike, Sardo, Ivo, Assi, Natal. I am so touched by this little new generation that
immediately after we have moved our gear into the house, I feed all of them with the
water we have brought from the Omo. I know that it is a Hamar custom to feed
children who are slow in speaking with waters of a running river so that their talk may
become fluid and clear. So I feed the children according to my understanding - and
this shows itself once again to be limited, because one has to feed the children early in
the morning to make the cure really effective. I should have anticipated this, because I
ought to know by now that it is always the few hours of dawn and of sunset which are
thought to have the greatest ritual power in Hamar.
Banko asks me for some of the water to feed to his two sons tomorrow. Only
some while after the children have greeted us, do the girls Anti and Kuni, old Maiza
and an old female guest (who calls herself Baldambe’s oldest sister) show up. Not one
male is in sight: even Tsasi and Woro have left to join the raid on Arbore. Choke
remarks that this is the biggest ‘spear’ (war) since I started fieldwork in Hamar in 1970.
On our way up to the Hamar mountain-plain we did not meet a single man, nor did we
in Baldo. Moreover, last night a few drops of rain fell, extinguishing old footprints but there were hardly any new ones: “Nobody has been here today, everybody has left,
and tomorrow we will hear the firing of guns from the other side or the Hamar
mountains; we will hear them like we heard the shooting when the Galeba attacked the
Hamar at Galti.”
Some time after I have given water to the children, a cloud crosses Dambaiti and
lets fall a light shower of rain. “That’s because we brought the waters from the Omo,”
says Banko, “we brought it in a calabash and showed the water the way; now that we
have brought it, the rain falls.”
So! That’s the logic of the ritual in which the bitta of the Ari fetches water from
the Kako river and carries it in a white calabash all the way to Bashada! It is interesting
to see this mode of thought show itself in the course of actual life.
The water ritual brings conversations with Suneet Chorpa at Russell Square to
mind. Exploring the logic of Tallensi myths, he had discovered that water was used as
a symbol for static phenomena and reckoned that this was because the Tallensi,
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(like the Hamar) fetch their water from waterholes. It seems to me that the Hamar also
perceive the water in waterholes as being static but contrasting this with the dynamic
property of the waters of running rivers, for ritual and symbolic purposes.
Anti serves us coffee in Aikenda’s house. When we have finished, Baldambe
arrives and we all sit outside on the boaka and exchange our first ‘talk of the country’.
Baldambe evokes an insane picture of himself walking home, meeting countless people
going in the opposite direction to join the raid: here our Ogotemmeli, anthropologist,
intellectual, son of a great leader and warrior, walking alone against the stream of his
people who pass him by on their way to fighting: madness and confusion! In the
villages he passes, he meets only three old men who do not join the rush to the war.
Women callout to him, “Where are you going?” Baldambe answers them, “Well,
someone has to make the fire while all the other bulls have gone.” “Oh, yes, make fire,
make fire!” To “make fire” is an euphemism for to “fuck”. Tears run from Baldambe’s
eyes as he tells us this. He always laughs so much that tears fall.
The girls put on another pot of coffee for Baldambe. When it is ready
Baldambe, Choke and I sit down and exchange our respective news in detail - and I
record.
Am I deluded or is it really a great recording? Baldambe describes what he did
while we were away and everything revolves around raids and culminates in the
impending Arbore war. He talks about the way the news of the Galeba raid reached
him and how this news merged with two other recent raids to Kenya and with the
preparations for the Arbore war. I get a lot of background information in this talk,
exactly the kind of information I am looking for. And then Choke relates the story of
our trip to Dunka, to Kara, our meeting and our return. This story is punctuated with
references to the raids of the recent past. This recording will be interesting as a
counterpart to the diary. It’s an example of how differently the writing anthropologist
and his speaking informant describe the same events.
As always happens when I have been on a short journey, Ginonda has collected
Nyebir’s milk for me and we feast on a big bowl of sorghum food (derbada) and sour
milk.
I sleep outside again. I have come to like the open. I once spent many months on
the deck of a cutter. In those days I couldn’t get enough of this sleeping under the
stars. That was when I first read Fustel de Coulanges and Frazer and the other classics.
They built their theories on material produced by ‘naive ethnographers’, not by
‘professional’ anthropologists. Will there be anyone who wants to make use of my
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‘naive ethnography’? Will anybody ever be interested in such a detailed documentation
of a discussion of raiding as that which I am now attempting to achieve?
20.1.1974
Even before sunrise I am up and about and armed with my tape recorder, for I know
that Baldambe and Choke will be watching the early morning sky to decipher what it
augurs about the raid. Baldambe points to the sky and asserts that the Hamar have
attacked because the sky over Ulde is white and the clouds are dispersed. The raiding
party would still be sitting talking if the clouds were dense and rounded. Such clouds
indicate a public meeting. This is the sky that prompted Baldambe’s interpretation:
I continue my recording when we settle down for coffee. Again and again the talk
comes back to the raid - and I hear a couple of new details about the rituals of warfare.
As one would expect, these rituals refer to the period of anxiety between the time
when the raiders leave and the time they return. All the time the raid is euphemistically
referred to as ‘hunting’ (adama), But of course!
The world around us is extremely quiet: Uri, Kalle, Aule, Muko, Tsasi, Woro,
Anombe, Kula, everybody close to us seems to have gone and so have those who live
farther away. Baldambe lists the following members of the Berimba family amongst
those who have joined the raid: Tsasi the old, Lokusse, Dube, Makonen, Woro,
Djobire, Tsasi the young. I feel tired and upset about the Hamar’s situation and lie
down to sleep out the morning, just like Baldarnbe. Choke and Banko are preparing
their feathers down in Banko’s homestead.
I join them at noon and we spend an hour together in total conformity to the
Hamar ideology of friendship, Lalo has been saving sour milk for our return. The three
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of us who have returned from the journey sit together and drink coffee and talk (about
the raid of course) and then Lalo serves us food. Choke and Banko look great now
that their feather head-dresses are
complete. They have no inhibitions about wearing the feathers today because there are
no men around to demand them.
The afternoon is peaceful and there is an almost epic quality about the early
evening: the herds arrive at sunsel but only girls and small children welcome them.
There is a quietness about the country which would be extremely beautiful if it were
not for its opposite beyond the mountains. When I walked over to Banko’s homestead
on the public path (Banko and Choke had taken a short cut), I saw only one line of
footprints when I turned around, my own. Banko says that Goiti and Korre, Aike
Burdimbe and Gaito joined the raid. It’s pointless to count those who have gone. It’s
easier to count those who stayed: Baldambe the loner, Kolmo the deaf, Lotolla the
cripple and Balle the aged fox. And then there is the quick and ruthless Zubu. Didn’t
Banko predict that he would stay? Why did he not join the raid? This puzzles me.
Choke and I went to wash at the Pere this afternoon: not a single man, the girls were
watering the cattle and several women came from as far as Ande to fetch lots of water.
It’s for the raiders who are expected back tomorrow. So then there will be a great deal
of commotion. Gapha has left for Kadja because he might be needed there to perform
the rituals for the returning killers (?) or bless the stolen cattle....
Omalle-inda calls Choke and me for evening coffee and naturally I take my taperecorder with me. Choke embarks on a long account of Hamar raids into Borana. The
story was triggered off by a remark which he had made earlier in the evening,
“The Arbore used to be fine people, they once lured the Borana into Hamar across the
Woito and then they and the Hamar killed them off.” I ask Choke to tell me more
about this and there is no end to his stories. He took part himself in some of the raids
he describes. The most striking fact is the periodicity of the raiding. It seems that one
successful raid generates a couple of subsequent raids till luck changes and then there
is a period of peace. Another noticeable feature is the increasing violence of raids.
Choke stresses that the early Borana raids were peaceful. The Borana (and Gabare)
were not armed with guns and the Hamar just sent them away with signs of their hands
- and then drove the cattle home. Once they even stole a herd of goats from the
Gabare together with two girls who were herding them. They brought the girls to
Hamar and fed them and sent them home once they had reached Hamar territory
safely. Choke’s brother got rich by stealing cattle and Choke and Omalle-inda both
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stress that everybody who has joined the Arbore raid hopes to get hold of a cow or
two.
While we talk in Omalle-inda’s house, old Wualle Lokarimoi and another aged
guest arrive. Later Baldambe tells me two interesting bits of their conversation:
Lokarimoi is angry that so many people have joined the Arbore raid. This means that
they are only concerned with cattle. But the Arbore don’t have that many cattle and
anyway, the fighting should not concentrate on booty so much as on killing as many
Arbore as possible. They are ‘snakes’ and have to be shown ‘the language of metal’.
This could be best achieved by a small number of real warriors. In the eyes of
Baldambe and Lokarimoi the Hamar are too many and too weak to achieve anything
really worthwhile Baldambe predicts a rather high number of dead Hamar. He insists
that we should ‘beg barjo’ that, today at least, the Hamar will be ‘males’, above all the
troubles which the raid will bring. “All raids are bad, but a good one is better than
a bad one.”
Didn’t I predict that general social stress will bring the Berimba and the Kolma
families together again? I thought Kolmo’s family would move first but today
Baldambe asked me to act for him as a kind of ‘go-between’ and tell Omalle-inda that
she should send Assi to stay with ‘our’ children Ivo, Aike and Susanne during the day.
The background to this is a still obscure threat that some Banna man is lurking in the
bush and plans to steal Assi for a wife. Baldambe heard of this from Gardu and he
wants to offer Omalle-inda some help in protecting Assi, but he doesn’t want to talk to
her about this himself so he chooses the anthropologist as go-between. I didn’t
mention this matter to Omalle-inda tonight because I want to hear more about the
Banna man from Gardu first.
The second point which Baldambe mentioned when talking of his conversation
with Lokarimoi is that there is rumour that Lala is preparing for a grand Mursi raid.
This is still the month called barrae, the mad month, the month of much walking and
confusion and separation. I will hear more of madness tomorrow - and record it.
21.1.1974
Last night a small boy passed through Dambaiti and proved Baldambe’s and Choke’s
reading of the clouds to be wrong: the raiders did not attack yesterday. There was talk
instead and all the weak and young were sent home. The raid is to happen now, this
morning. This conforms ominously with my dreams: Choke and I are passing through
the streets of Chelsea when we meet a group of violent-looking young Hamar. One is
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without a shirt and he is tall and strong and there is blood on his chest but he himself
is not wounded. Choke asks how things are and the tall man says that the ‘calves’ have
entered the country and that those with bells will return tomorrow. (In the dream I
understand that the raiders will be driving home a herd of cattle later.) One of the
group has a wounded arm and Choke looks at it and massages it until the bullet
appears with a small stream of blood and drops down onto the pavement of the street;
I can hear the light metallic sound.
The Hamar move on and we find ourselves in a flat. In London or in Berlin? The dead
Zubu, the oldest son of Barto who was killed in the Mursi raid exactly four years ago
(the mad month) sits there and talks to people. I can see his face in every detail and I
am amazed, for isn’t Zubu dead? He looks like one of the young men that spoke at the
public meeting at Kizo when I recorded the war songs. When I woke briefly, I heard
Choke saying in his sleep, “Ande, Ande...”
Just before sunrise the sky is extremely red over Arbore to the east. The fading red
sickle of the ‘mad moon’ also hangs low over Arbore. Baldambe and the two old men
who stayed as guests overnight move as black figures on the backdrop of the red sky.
Baldambe holds Wualle’s hands, then points to the clouds and interprets them for
Wualle. I can’t hear what he is saying; only when they turn around to dive into the
house for coffee, do I hear Baldambe say, “If that which I have said is not true, I am
not the son of Berinas.”
I join the men for coffee and listen and record the conversation. At first, we talk
about the Arbore raid and the smaller Mursi raid (raiders from Lala left for Mursi
before the people were called to join the Arbore raid!). Then the talk reaches the Ado
precedent. It is I who drops in the reference and Baldambe picks it up enthusiastically.
A very odd conversation develops: we are all agreed that old Wualle who participated
in the Ado raid forty years ago should relate the event, but he gives only the barest
outlines. So Baldambe jumps in and gives the full story, even though he is too young
to have participated in the raid. So the great speaker re-creates an event which through
hearsay he knows even better than an eye-witness.
After the morning coffee I embark on survey work, or more strictly speaking, I
present my scale for measuring relative wealth, the power of speaking and the size of
clans to Wualle. Later I present the scale to Baldambe and Banko. With Baldambe
particularly, I discuss the time dimensions of wealth and I note down the splitting and
merging of the Berimba herds over a period of about fifty years. These diachronic data
fit well with the synchronic ones that I collected when I was down in Dunka.
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Then we spend about an hour collecting names of stutterers with the help of
Baldambe, Banko, Gardu and Shalombe. I get the names of about twenty men and
almost as many women and I am told that there are more to come! Yes, many women
stutter and the data show clearly that stuttering is inherited, quite the contrary to what I
had predicted. Women stutter as much as men and brothers and sisters stutter.
Baldambe talks of particular families as stutterers.
Despite the obvious influence of genetic inheritance, I can’t rule out social
influences on stuttering, but the picture is certainly not as simple as lance thought. Is
there much inbreeding and has it resulted in this strange strain of ‘versatile speakers’
on the one hand and ‘stutterers’ on the other? That sounds improbable. But what if
there is a high potential for ‘stuttering’ in any society? Might not such a general
tendency get amplified by a social structure like that of the Hamar? The topic eludes
me.
It’s night now and Dambaiti lies silent, no sound, no wind. Throughout the day
the sky was white and misty. A few clouds climbed over Mamadunta and these were
quickly interpreted and re-interpreted by Wualle and Baldambe. But I can’t bring
myself to care anymore. The misty haze and the heat, the continuing suspense, the
feeling that I should be doing something but don’t know what... the secret presence of
the raid is overwhelming and makes me tense, irritated and keen to leave this country.
What is really important here? What is really important anywhere? Certainly not
anthropology. Isn’t my enterprise totally irrelevant, just an epiphenomenon of the
general affluence of a given society at a certain time? Things like murder come first
everywhere. Anthropology is just a pleasant cul-de-sac, leading nowhere, reflecting
everything, affecting nothing. Yet the day ends with a pleasant conversation in front of
Ginonda’s house. Banko concludes, “lt’s good to talk like this (i.e. about goats and
fields etc.) because it stops you thinking about over there.” (i.e. the raid).
I haven’t written that Gardu appears to be in bad shape. She says it’s the evil eye
and I get the impression that she is right in that her troubles are partly of social origin.
She is such a nice, strong person, yet not really capable of mastering her life on her
own without a strong (and rich) husband. Without cattle and goats and without any
stored grain, she just doesn’t manage to feed herself and her three children properly.
Labuko, her husband, is away and doesn’t help her make a field, doesn’t attend to
beehives, doesn’t collect goats. For Gardu the future therefore looks rather bleak and I
think that’s why she has joined the Berimba family and me. But the Berimba family are
a tough lot and know that despite my presence, they hardly have enough to survive on
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themselves. So they don’t extend a general welcome to Gardu and don’t hand food out
to her frequently... I have been insisting that the grain I gave should be shared and it
has been - but in a way that meant that Gardu only got a little. Now that she is sick, all
this lies heavily on her and I can see tears in her eyes when today I prepare tea for her
for a second time, give her medicine and hand her daughter Ali a gourd of maize.
22.1.1974
This is truly the last day of the ‘mad’ month. One thin, red sickle of a moon
appeared just before sunrise and it vanished in the brightening sky a couple of
minutes after it appeared. Yes, I have caught the Hamar obsession with the sky. I
refer to the desire to extract something of personal significance from the signs of
the sky. The sky speaks of death this morning. I don’t look at the sky to understand
it ‘objectively’ and I don’t try to compare the ‘objective’ traits of the sky with the
Hamar system of classification... The Hamar taught me that no such system exists
and that one has to decipher the sky in an individual and creative manner. One has
to create categories of meaning as the interpretation develops. He who is most
imaginative and sees the most striking correlations between the configurations of
the sky and the events of the day will gain in stature and increase this power to
control social affairs. Not only Baldambe and Wualle but also Choke and Banko
have repeatedly referred to Berimba as someone who became a great leader because
he could read the sky. People would keep their herds close to him because,
observing the sky, he could predict what was going to happen. Wualle made an odd
comment in this connection: not only would Berimba watch the sky before a raid,
but he would also go and quietly watch the dances. The way the young man danced
would tell him wether they were ready to fight well or not!
Baldambe leaves early whilst it is still night. He goes to Dimeka to inform the
government of the Galeba raid and the theft of thirteen of his cattle. He also has to
settle a debt of two cows with the trader Mesfin. During the day I sleep, rest and wait
for things to happen. As time goes by I begin to feel tense. I want to move away. The
quietness of Dambaiti has become more and more unnatural. I now feel that I don’t
belong here. The odd thing is that the Dambaitians feel exactly the opposite. They also
feel tense and I hear Gardu and Aikenda talking about the problems of food. But later
they tell me how good it is that I have “become a Hamar”. “But I haven’t!” “Yes, you
have. Look at the house you have built and the things you have brought. You are not
just a passing guest.” “Well, I have stayed a long time, but I am still a guest and if I say
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anything, nobody in Hamar will really care. Look how Baldambe and I went down to
Arbore and tried to find out how one could grow food there as in days gone by. We
asked the Hamar to stay away from the Arbore and urged them to make friends with
them again. We wanted to draw water, but the Hamar have now gone to draw blood...”
The women don’t want me to talk like this, “We have nothing to do with it.” They like
the tea, the cool shade of the house, the food I bring and the general animation of the
village, guests, talk, which my presence produces. They will miss us when we have
finally gone, I am sure. And we? I realise that I won’t miss Hamar as it really is. I will
miss specific friends and specific situations - but the core of the whole enterprise is still
the anthropological work and that will be with me in the future even when I am not in
Hamar.
Well, I can’t leave immediately, so I pick up the ‘Brothers Karamazov’ and drift
into the Russian world. The story and the setting are distant, but there is something
peculiarly familiar about it. It takes me a while to realise: it is Dostoyevsky’s capacity to
embrace contrarities. This is splendidly demonstrated when he describes old
Karamazov, or rather lets him act. Dostoyevsky never gets stuck with one static
characterization, he always creates the contrasts that make up the dynamics of any real
individual personality. On a psychological level, he does what a great anthropologist
would do on a cultural level. Read the chapter “The old Buffoon” and you will know
what I mean. A capacity like Dostoyevsky’s is most important for ethnographic
writing. You need detachment and the ability to see the actual as just one manifestation
of the potential. Furthermore, you have to show the lines along which the actual can
develop. Not only this: you also have to show what it is in terms of what it is not, not
now, not yet, possibly never will be, yet potentially always can be. This negative aspect
of the actual is always hidden. Will anyone ever produce such an ethnography? I tried it
here and there, for example when I said that Baldambe has close relations with those
who are potentially distant (his in-laws).
As the day goes on I ask Kula-inda as she returns from fetching water, “Aren’t
you begging barjo for your son Kula?” She answers boldly: “If he does not have his
own barjo, I can’t give it to him.” That’s how old people talk, they hardly ever give barjo
the meaning of an external force that governs the fate of individuals. They invoke the
state of barjo and carry it in themselves. The state of barjo can be achieved through the
proper performance of all one’s rituals. But, as I understand Hamar, someone could
well neglect all rituals, laugh at them and yet still have barjo. It would be his barjo that he
could do so. Normally, however, he who has good barjo automatically knows how to
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perform his rituals in a given situation. For example, the Berimba family does not
adhere to the taboos connected with the absence of the raiders. Kuli tells me that the
Kolmo girls have not swept out the goat kraal today. Nor have they brought the ashes
out of the fireplace since Uri left. They haven’t even cleaned his milk container.
Berimba did away with these taboos and yet his family fared well: that was Berimba’s
barjo.
Another observation that stimulates my interest once again is the way that
Kuli sucks Aikenda’s breasts to tease littleSusanne. She calls her kanya-nas (vagina
child) and little Susanne repeats the insult in tears. The scene is merely one phase of a
joint attempt to make Susanne independent of her mother. The Dambaitians compare
her with Rosie who used to cling to Jean. Susanne is good without her mother, says
everyone, “and miserable and quick to cry when Aikenda is around.” That’s why Kuli
sucks Aikenda’s breasts, demonstrating to Susanne that Aikenda does not belong
exclusively to her...
The socializing aspects are evident and this is not what strikes me. It is the fact that
Kuli really sucks the breasts and swallows some of the milk and then with a slight,
abrupt gesture of disgust spits out what has remained in her mouth. On account of my
breast-orientated European background, I am horrified. But how ridiculous, why
shouldn’t you suck your uncle’s wife’s breasts for fun?
In the evening old Laesho turns up. He is exhausted and thirsty and asks me for
a cup of tea. I serve it to him and I use the opportunity to get him to rank people and
clans on my scales of assessment. But first I listen to his story: he left for Kako three
days ago, but when he reached Alduba, people told him to return because it was
unsafe to go any further. Near Kako some Banna had attacked some Male who were
coming to the market. One Male died and soon the Male turned up at the police post
itself looking for Banna and Hamar to kill. They fired at a couple of Hamar and Banna
but it seems that no one got killed. I will hear more about this when Baldambe returns
but there is certainly no doubt that yet another door has been shut for the Hamar.
When night falls I spend a beautiful quiet hour among the herds in the kraal
together with the young children, Gino, and the girls. I am the undisputed ‘elder’ of
the evening. Is it jest or are they sincere? When we are sitting around the coffee pot,
the women turn me into the male they need in order to make up the necessary
complement of social roles. We talk, Ginonda tells stories, I bless by spraying coffee
from my lips and listen. Nothing eventful happens, everybody is relaxed and enjoys a
flow of diverse small talk. No one seems to think much about the raiders. Do they
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hide their feelings or do they really not care? I guess they care in an antagonistic way:
the raid is totally out of their control, strictly a male enterprise and as such they don’t
care for it. But then the outcome of the raid will ultimately affect them, so they hope
that the raiders will return with cattle, goats, beads, iron rings... But they are also afraid
that they may return crippled or be left behind as dead, thus bringing more hardship
to their lives. We all expect the raiders back tomorrow.
23.1.1974
Two shots wake me from my sleep. Automatically I pick up my recording gear and
move out into the open. I knew it would be either this or the sound of singing from far
away. So this was the outcome: death. Wailing and the angry shouts of men drift
through the clear morning to us. The stars are still out as Ginonda, Gardu, my ‘mother’
and Aikenda and then the girls and Duka draw together and listen in the darkness.
They exchange a few words before Ginonda puts forward the hope that something
else could be the matter and walks off to see what has happened.
I follow right behind her and find a dense group of wailing women at Kula’s
homestead. They are being held and pacified by men who sit around them holding
their heads and shoulders. Kula-inda is extremely frenetic in her crying. At times she
gets up and shouts the ox names of her son in the way a warrior shouts when he kills
or is killed. But she doesn’t wear her proud head-dress any more for it is her son who
has died, Aike from Worbasha. I just watch from a distance and soon Ginonda, our
other women and I leave. On our way back I hear the first scraps of information
about the raid: the attack happened yesterday after the Hamar had crossed the Woito
river far to the south. When they reached the Arbore settlements, there was much
fighting. The Hamar do not seem to have been able to drive away any cattle. When we
have reached the Berimba homestead, the world around us lapses back into its
unnatural peacefulness, with children playing, the bells of cattle and goats...
The tears of Ginonda, Aikenda and Gardu which they shed amidst the general
wailing (and probably also out of anger and frustration) dry up quickly. Someone else
has died, not one of them (or at least these first bad tidings have not affected them
personally) and I can see the momentary relief which they feel. That’s typical of the
Hamar; social solidarity is situational.
Duka is intensely worried. She wears her head-dress like a queen and in a long
flowing leather cape, she walks slowly across the open space of Darnbaiti listening to
the few words which Ginonda, Gardu and others are exchanging about the raid. The
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picture she presents impresses me because it summarises and amplifies the state we are
all in this early morning. She walks from homestead to homestead to hear more news.
Uri, her only son, has joined the raid.
Several women along with Shalombe and Laesho meet around the coffee pot a little
later. I join them and record the women’s conversation. The women don’t want to talk
about the raid and yet do, are drawn to it again and again, till one woman says, “Stop,
there’s no point in talking until we know the facts.” Ginonda picks this up and explains
to me the danger of uncontrolled speaking. It is this kind of data that I am looking for
and that’s why I keep the tape recorder going continuously. As the coffee session
comes to an end, Baldambe returns from Dimeka. This produces a good opportunity
to record Ginonda’s description of what happened this morning. Ginonda tells
Baldambe of the rumour that Gaito has died and Baldambe frowns. Before long we
know for certain: Uri returns and tells us that many Hamar have died, among them
Gaito, the bald-headed speaker and elder, leader of rituals, the ‘cool’ man of the clan
Ba, Baldambe’s best friend. He died without having fired a single shot. His nephew
Sulla took his gun and bullet belt and brought them home.
Uri relates how the Hamar crossed the Woito river, wading for hours in deep
water; how they attacked the cattle camps; how they drove away the cattle and were
then overtaken by the Arbore who killed many Hamar. Baldambe’s brothers and sons
are all well and are said to have met up in Kadja. This is a great relief for everybody.
Baldambe blesses: “Pssssss...” I and life goes on as if nothing had happened. Uri tells us
that the raiders split into two groups. The men from Bonkale approached the Arbore
on this side of the river, those from Assile crossed the river. The men of Assile
attacked first, followed later during the same day (yesterday) by the men of Bonkale.
Both were driven back. A striking feature of Uri’s description of the events is his
disgust that so many incapable men (too old or too young) joined the raid. I get the
impression that the whole raid was viewed almost like a big dance, a feast which
nobody wanted to miss. Don’t the Hamar say ‘fighting is something that tastes’? For
me the whole event is unreal, a bad dream. The elegant body of Gaito was shot
through the belly and by now they have castrated him and the hyenas and scavengers
have devoured him; he with his bald head, ice-grey hair at the temples; who led the
blessing that night when the men of Dambaiti were creating peace in Zubu’s home; he
with his heavy, fixed look and slow questioning voice... gone.
And my hunting friend Kula. He used to be called the ‘black’, but exhaustion and
grief about his brother have turned his face almost white. I looked at him this morning
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and did not recognize him. Only when some women came to kiss him and lift his face
up, did he look at me and only then did I realise that this distorted face was Kula’s.
With his look he told me, “Yes, friend, when you had gone away, we went on this
bloody raid.” I turned away and left, but his look remains vividly in my mind. Kula has
always been a contradictory man, close yet very distant, open but then secretive, hard
but then sensitive, honest and yet a liar. And now in his present condition although he
never cared for me, he is wondering what figure he cuts in my eyes.
Towards noon the land becomes extremely hot and quiet, ‘dead’ quiet. During the
day I seek refuge in statistics, countingclans, sorting out census data. But it's no good. I
try to sleep like Baldambe does. Also no good. So I put on my sandals, take my stick
and stool and go for a walk. Even that is no good.
Returning from my solitary walk I feel the urge to set myself apart from Hamar. I
open a bottle of red wine, and as the sun is setting and the herds are returning I sit and
write my diary. Baldambe returns from his ‘crying’ at Kula’s mother’s homestead. We
are both irritated but the misery around us alienates us from the others and thus brings
us close together. Baldambe frowns and as I watch him do so I realise once again the
complexity of his personality: for though he may reject the behaviour of the Hamar, he
also implicitly accepts it, accepts it in the way he consents to everything alive, be it
reasonable or mad...
24.1.1974
Last night I hardly slept. I gazed at the dark silhouette of the cluster of huts around the
Berimba kraal. I watched the dark sky and the red glow from Aikenda’s house when
tink, the very early morning, arrived. But somehow all this has lost the meaning it used
to have. The shapes and colours emanate sleep and remoteness but I don’t activate
them anymore, don’t imagine them to be full of the meaning which I want to extract
from them. If there is any meaning, well, let it be hidden, let it remain hidden, I will
not push myself into dark corners anymore. As the land still lay in shadow, a jet, high
in the sky and sparkling brightly in the light of the early sun, crossed over Dambaiti. It
electrified me tremendously: I want to plunge back into the electronic world.
More shots have been fired at Kula’s homestead and then at Gaito’s. Everyone is
crying about the dead. That stupid raid. It makes me sick and I just can’t bring myself
to go and watch the ritual in which the binyere necklace of Aike’s wife is cut off her
neck and a black goat is killed with the sharpened sticks of the zargana tree. I couldn’t
care less whether the dead goat is thrown away towards the rising or the setting sun.
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To hell with Hamar! Gaito is dead and so are several other ‘bulls’, those ‘brilliant’ men
for whom, as the Hamar say, the Arbore have reserved their bullets.
We hear the whole story of the raid from Anombe who arrived this morning.
Baldambe and I listen to his account for two hours as I record. The details are very
interesting because they reveal so much about Hamar social organization, but the story
makes me feel utterly helpless and miserable. Everything is on tape, so I note down
here only one puzzling point: the Hamar don’t see the economics of the raid clearly, or
if they do, they don’t attribute much importance to them. They are mainly concerned
with re-capturing the cattle and goats which they lost when Karabaino was raided. But
such obvious motives of revenge which might have led ninety per cent of the men to
join the raid are not the cause of it. Wasn’t it the moara of Assile who had called for the
raid? And hadn’t one of his arguments been that the Arbore had stopped the rain from
falling? Well, the Arbore have not stopped the rain, but they have nevertheless stopped
the Hamar from reaching the water and, consequently, from utilizing the rich grazing
grounds of the eastern border areas. I feel sure that the urgent desire of the Hamar to
have access to the waters that are controlled by the Arbore was the real cause of the
raid. I am amazed that the Hamar don’t express this clearly, or, rather, that they only
mention this in passing and then move onto the aspects that seem less important to
me, dwelling on them at length.
I keep drinking this cheap Altavilla wine. Three months ago I brought ten bottles
of it and since then I have only drunk one yesterday and the day when I tried to cure
my ‘malaria’. I always felt that the wine did not fit in well with Dambaiti. Now that I
want to set myself apart, things are different. The table, the bottle, the glasses, it all
looks unreal. But that is what I want now. I want to leave Hamar. I lift the glass and
greet the mountains and what lies beyond them. I am curious, I want to move, my
mind is not in Dambaiti any more. Later in the evening my eyes wander around our
house. The paths which Jean and I and the Hamar have trodden so often have been
polished by constant use. Everything has its place and function. The house looks like a
ship turned upside down. I look at it - the neat thatch of the roof, the platforms, the
walls smoothly plastered with clay and cowdung, and aluminium Zarges boxes in their
places, the milk containers on their hooks oh the wall opposite me - I feel like saying
good-bye to all this and I do so. But there are those pictures by Cimabue, Piero de la
Francesco, Delacroix, my father. They mix in such an odd way with the ancient
elements of Hamar as well as with modern elements such as tripods, cameras, tape
recorders etc. that I feel they contradict any finality. If I leave now, I will return to
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Hamar. Isn’t Delacroix’s painting called “Ovid among the Scythians”? And Piero Della
Francesca, did he not paint long before Hamar existed? And don’t his paintings tell of
myths which originated thousands of years ago? I remember these pictures from
Neuenkirchen when we were small, right after the war. On long winter evenings, after
we had drunk our peppermint tea and had eaten bread and treacle, we would gaze at
paintings of the Italian Renaissance whilst Meuder played the clavichord. She wrote in
her diary, “Will my children hear this music when they see these paintings in later life?”
And sure enough, when, in later life, I saw the originals in London, Florence, Berlin
and Paris, I could hear my mother playing Bach’s fugues and Kurt Weil’s ‘Mac the
Knife’. At the National Gallery in London, I bought photographs of these paintings
which I brought with me to Hamar. Now I have been sitting here, exploring the
puzzles of ancient European mythology as I look at a faun. This amalgamation of
apparently separate elements, the surprising unity of them, which has emerged slowly
during the course of my fieldwork, asserts: you will go and return, there is no past, no
future, everything is present. Only your human perspective produces in you the illusion
of time passing. Time is a social convention and as such it blinds you, creating myths
that divide things which essentially belong together. I have always been in Hamar and
there can never be any good-bye to it.
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Postscript (Ivo)
On January 26th Baldambe and I left Hamar. In February Jean returned to complete
the census for northern Hamar and to do linguistic research among the Mogudji at the
Lower Omo. A period of evaluation of our data followed and in the autumn of 1974 I
spent two months in Hamar engaged in the translation of tapes and specializing on
studies of colour classification and ethno-musicology.
Then, at the beginning of 1975, our applied research bore its first fruits when,
after the revolution, I was asked by the new Ethiopian Government to organise and
supervise the ‘food and tools for work’ project which we had planned with Baldambe.
As a result, during the highly critical ‘mad month’ of 1975
the Hamar did not fight with their neighbours, but rather worked together with
members of such diverse and antagonistic groups as the Arbore, Borana, Galeba and
so forth.
From October 1975 until February 1976, while Jean was writing up fieldwork
results at the London School of Economics, I was jack in Hamar again. My objective
was to translate and annotate a variety of tapes, most importantly those containing the
‘social drama’ of the raid on Arbore. These I had decided to publish as a document for
the study of conflict and as a mirror of the ‘heart of the Hamar’. Besides this I wanted
to film the initiation rite of Berhane in order to give a better account of the nature of
this important ritual which Robert Gardner had only dealt with briefly in his film
‘Rivers of Sand’.
Finally, I wanted to record the personal history of Baldambe. He had been our
main intellectual guide and teacher, the author f our first indigenous model of Hamar
society and the main speaker in the ‘social drama’. In every sense he had become the
core of our Hamar studies. A better understanding of his social position in time and
space had, therefore, become indispensable. A first step towards this was a life history
told by himself. On October 14th he began to tell me this history. However, he did not
only tell me about his own personal life, but also about that of his father Berinas, his
abcestors and the Hamar as a whole. In more than ten nightly sessions his verbal art
and acuteness of mind once again created a document which we feel has to be
published by itself in its entirety.
Hopefully, with this ‘corpus inscriptionis’ and the statistical surveys, we have
now come close to achieving our aim of establishing an ethnographic basis on which
not only we but also others may theorize fruitfully about the Hamar in the future.
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