JUMPING THE BULL
​by Maureen Magee

​Maureen Magee took an original journey to Ethiopia as part of the television series Off the Map.  ​Below are excerpts from her new book Jumping the Bull recalling her adventures in Ethiopia.

Chapter 1: Beyond the Guide-books
December, 1999. Karo Country, Southwestern Ethiopia

I wasn’t expecting an open-armed welcome from the Karo tribe; I had met them before and let’s just say they were not going to make my Christmas card list. It was the Mursi tribal culture that people had warned me about. Visits to them required being accompanied by a Kalashnikov-armed guard. But I liked the Mursi; as long as we were polite to them, they gave us no trouble.

No, of all the Ethiopian tribes I had met, I had the most difficulty warming up to the Karo. Perhaps that was due to the advice our guide Mageru gave us on our first visit to Karo country, three months earlier.

“Tonight we should hire guards,” he said when we stopped for a break. “There are bad people at our next campsite.”

Mageru was not a man given to exaggeration. He’d spent years guiding in this part of the country, and I respected his knowledge and calmness in difficult situations. If Mageru said the Karo were bad–then I believed him. And so, on that first trip, we hired guards. Although the tribal people were mostly unpleasant and some of their behavior could certainly have been interpreted as threatening, we had no serious issues with them.

Still, on my second trip through the south part of the country, I hoped we could avoid them altogether. But in this part of Ethiopia, an overnight stop in Karo country is unavoidable.

So here I was once more, surrounded by spear-toting men and hissing women, asking permission to camp on their land. They were heavily painted, some to resemble guinea fowl–a perfectly innocuous bird, but it had the frightening effect of wiping their faces clear of any human features.

The temperature was 42 degrees Celsius. The dry air was thick with both dust and Karo antipathy as they stared, shouted and gestured demands for medicine. Dozens of wounds were thrust into my face–some far beyond any help I carried in my first aid kit. Whatever I had could never be enough. What could I offer–one or two of my precious generic antibiotics? Pepto-Bismol? My lack of medical preparedness did not impress them and we were at a standoff immediately.

None of the other tribal people I had met were as aggressive as these ones. Perhaps a local guidebook warned the Karo about us?

‘Be careful with the Canadians, for they are always exposing their teeth as if happy to see you, but are stingy with pharmaceuticals. Act aggressively and they will depart soon.  Over time, the Karo must have thought that the only thing tourists were good for was bringing money to camp on their land and take photographs. If they robbed us, we would not come back. If they merely scared us, we would pay one of them to protect us. The rest of the tribe could not jeopardize the guard’s income, so they restricted themselves to looking fierce, angry and disgusted–casting comments our way when they sauntered close to us, too close, just to taunt. Looking like, at any moment, they would be happy to disassemble us.

Mageru found a man to hire as a guard. Relieved at the guard’s unpainted face, I lay back in the camping chair, closed my eyes to block out the glaring looks from others, and took the first relaxed breath I’d had in the several hours since we’d arrived. The two men spoke quietly in Amharic and because I didn’t know the language it was a lulling sound. With my limbs splayed hoping for a breeze to dry my sweat and prevent mould, I drifted into daydreams of water. My mind filled with the opaque, chocolate-milk coloured Lake Langano, a great swimming spot. I fantasized about the bubbling little Neri River in Mago Park which was safe to bathe in if one stayed around the active water sections. I imagined dropping into the deep, extra-long bathtubs at the Ghion Hotel in Addis Ababa. The only water I wasn’t dreaming about was the water right next to us–the muddy, sluggish Omo River which stirred only when the snout of a Nile crocodile skimmed through the surface to check out its next potential victim.

English words broke through my reverie. “I do not know,” said Mageru. “I will have to ask.”

“Ask me what?” I kept my head back in the chair and my eyes closed, ready to swim back into some new moist dream, perhaps standing under the Blue Nile Falls, washing away the grime, sweat and . . .

“This man, he wishes to ask for something.”

Nothing new about that. Ethiopians were not shy about requesting things–it might be anything from simple money to highly-valued bars of soap, or t-shirts, ball caps or school uniforms. Two naked tribal women once suggested in sign language that I donate my bra to them. Requests ranged all the way up to having an infant thrust into my hands or being asked to fly a whole family back to Canada and find them jobs, husbands, wives and/or university educations. It never hurt to ask.

Mageru knew how to handle all these things, yet he seemed to be stumped for an answer.

“What does he want?” I asked.

There was a long silence. I opened my eyes and found Mageru’s face focussed carefully on mine, with a look I could not interpret.

“He wishes to borrow you for the evening.”