Afar: The Ends of Earth

Part 1

We are in Semera, the capital of Afar Region. The heat in the airconless hotel lobby is melting our flesh. We sweat, water dripping out of our fingers like ten taps running concurrently. The one in math class that was supposed to fill a leaking bucket. Why fetch water into a leaking bucket and try to fill it? Or was it a metaphor for how money hits and exists our accounts? Was it a metaphor for all the streams of income we needed for our financial lives to be full?

Our driver is at the reception, trying to settle some bills, and it feels like all is taking forever. Relativity of time, Einstein in the building. A guy in the lobby points towards a large air conditioner. Someone goes over and returns disappointed. It is dysfunctional.

Finally, the driver done with the receptionists, we drag our luggage to the awaiting land cruiser. Gratefully, it is airconditioned and all the waiting is forgiven. There is another passenger in the car, A Japanese nurse with a ready smile. We introduce ourselves, and off we go.

We chitchat with our new travel buddy, catch up on where we have been before, where we plan to go. She is well travelled, especially through Africa. I think how often that happens. I am from Marsabit, and I have been nowhere as a tourist. I see pictures everyday of people touring the Chalbi Desert, Lake Paradise, a crater lake in the heart of Marsabit, the National Park, and the story of Ahmed the Elephant. Because I grew up hearing, I believed I knew, until I looked up one day and realized how much of my hometown, even though within my reach, I haven’t reached out for.

I lean forward and ask the driver how long our trip to the Denakil Depression will be.

“Seven hours.” He says. We all look at each other surprised. Since we have been here, we haven’t received much communication in a manner that would help us prepare in advance. While we were lucky to have brought all our luggage from the hotel, we had assumed the trip would take maybe a few hours yes, but we would return to Semera by end of the day. Talk about not researching.

After about thirty minutes, we stop at the place where another land cruiser awaits, the same party we were with at the hot springs the previous day. Everybody says hi to everybody. We will be heading out together. Just for confirmation, I ask the tour guide, an Oromo guy with whom we have been conversing in Oromiifa, how long the journey will take. Sa’aatii affuur. Four hours. He says. I realize now that he said that to either put our minds at ease, or…I don’t know what the alternative is because he has done this trip hundreds of times he says, and so I am certain he knew the four hours would spill over and consume another three or four.

Our driver overhears me and the guide, and chimes in, excited that we can now speak. Language barrier? Not anymore.

We depart, an entourage, two land cruisers, nine people. We leave the tarmac behind and like true voyagers, take the road less travelled.

I think about language. There are five of us in the vehicle. A Luo, two Oromos, A Kamba, a Japanese. Even T, the driver and I, have barriers in our communication that has been lost through the chains of migration, immigration, birth, and rebirth that has had certain parts of the language buried for me, having to adopt something else in its place. I feel the inadequacy of what I know of my language between me and anyone I have spoken to, and I wonder if it means something, if it should mean something. I think about human beings, and their sense of adventure, and wonder, and innovation, and invention. E, the Japanese traveller, has left all the comforts of her home to be here, where language is a challenge, food is different, and you look around and all there is for miles and miles, is just us in this vehicle. I am a little grateful she is a nurse, just in case we need one.

Why, I ask myself, are we on this trip? Why am I on this trip? Going through this place whose roads are almost imaginary, yet somehow, the driver knows exactly where to aim the steering of the car. If we crashed here, I am sure we will much sooner, be baked by the earth that feels like coal. I think about the English Patient, his crash into the desert. I envision a scenario where we have been rescued by the invisible desert tribe, that only comes to surface in form of an individual walking alone, through the emptiness.

Occasionally, we will see a pool of water, and around it, a few houses of stones, camels, and rarely any people.

We stop briefly, by Lake Afrera/Afdera, one of the salt lakes and observe it from a distance. The salt beds, in different stages of being mined, creates a pattern of patchwork; the green of the water, the white of the cleaner salt and the brown of the unclean salt. Nobody is within vicinity. With the heat, I suspect they do their livelihood earning in the evenings or at night.

We depart, unable to withstand the heat much longer, and having seen all there is to see from here.

“Why do these people live here when they can live anywhere else in this country?” Lizzie asks.

Fortunately, I have thought about this. One would ask, why would anyone live in Marsabit when there are places with water and grass that you don’t need to hunt for, fight other tribes for?

“They have adapted to this environment. You will be amazed by the survival tactics they have invented.” I think about our own survival tactics in Marsabit, especially back when we had no roads and very few amenities.

And the sense of home and belonging. These Denakil people can only belong here in the way they do. Nowhere else, with AC, and flowing water and forests and rivers or better weather will ever hold them the way this place does. Nowhere will be home the way here is home. I know that, almost for sure. And if anybody here, feels like they want to be elsewhere, the Universe finds a way of relocating them.

Secretly, I wish to learn what they know here in this place, just a little bit of it. Place myself at the core of this core of earth and be lost and found at the same time, reveal something that might be hidden within me or hide something that has been revealed that I can do without. There I go, with the romanticizing! I think about Ellen Jasper of James Michener’s Caravans. If you have read everything I have written, you can tell I am a little obsessed with her, or with Caravans maybe? I love that book. My copy is tattered, battered, as if it itself had travelled through those deserts of Afghanistan and beyond, smells a little of smoke, sand and water and secrets only it knows, but I would burn my library to save it. I am kidding. I would never let harm come to any of my books, especially Caravans!

Before I could speak, Dr. Stiglitz said, “Sensible girl. We talked about it the last time I saw her. She said she found great solace in her new faith. Called it ‘a desert faith.’ When I asked her what she meant by that, she said that Christianity had become a convenient ritual for those who overeat on Saturday, commit adultery on Saturday night, and play golf on Sunday.” Ellen’s description, when delivered in French, sounded witty, ugly and profound. “She said she needed a religion much closer to the original sources. One thing she said impressed me. She pointed out that Islam, Christianity and Judaism all started in the desert, where God seems closer, and life and death are more mysterious. She said that we are all essentially desert animals and that life is meant to be harsh…”

With no internet to keep me glued to my phone, and the road too bumpy to read a book, I let my thoughts roam, look beyond what my eyes can, and they return with the discovery, there is life here, if you feel. I know that I wouldn’t last too long here, but in my imagination, I am the leader and the servant of this vastness that I desire to swallow me. Earth really, is big.

I think about Las Vegas, and if it is possible to recreate it here. Maybe not, maybe yes?

At around three pm, we stop at a small makeshift town with all the signs of permanence, for lunch. They serve pasta and sauce, which two Italian ladies in the other vehicle refuse to eat.

“Pasta only in Italy.” They say.

We 4 of car 1 dig in. Our driver, probably roaming the small town, is not within vicinity. Children gather around to watch us and adults too, hover. The servers seem unimpressed, and I know they have seen more than their fair share of foreigners. I desire to ask what they think of it all, the madness of booking a flight ticket, crossing oceans, to come eat here, be here. How they feel living here, their beliefs, their politics. I suppress my urge even though I know I will forever wish I asked.

We order beers, which gratefully, are cold. The heat burns through our skin and I feel my bone marrows flowing like blood. A goat walks up to me and lodges itself between my legs, its head lifted up to my face, I pet her with ease and with familiarity. One prominent chapters in my childhood stories is my herdship; the milking, the herding, the treating, the sweeping of the pen…I was so deep in, it feels like I smelled like goat for many many years even after I had left home.

Lizzie takes pictures of me with the goat. Someone sells salt in water bottles, raw uniodized salt. I ask what it is good for and the guide says only for livestock. Magado horri. I would have bought it in sacks if I could get them to Marsabit. I pass, but my friends get a bottle that they will share among them.

We depart, glad to be back in the vehicle.

After infinity, we stop and a blue bajaj approaches, its white top emerging as if out of the depths of earth. Both drivers and the tour guide alight and discuss what seems important, with the occupants of the bajaj. Our driver comes back into the car and takes out a bundle of money. After a while, everyone gets back into whatever mode of transport they came out of. A guy however, clings to the side of our land cruiser, and we branch off on a road in the middle of the endless space of so dry earth that surrounds us. A while later, we are parked outside a small small village, three houses at most. A man emerges, wrapped in kikoi, a holster with a gun and a knife in a holder.

The drivers alight again, and a negotiation of sort ensues. Outside, children try to communicate with us in sign language. We engage them, uncertain if we understand each other.

“Must be a powerful man this one, if we have to drive all this way to him.” I whisper.

Everyone nods in agreement.

Finally the bundle of money is handed over, and the man walks away, and then promptly returns and demands bottles of water. Agitatedly, our driver retrieves three litres from the back, in which now has hoped a man, Mohammed, who will be our tour guide and security I suppose.

We depart for Erta Ale, the volcano to which we are headed. There is nothing in sight but chunks of earth with patterns of a giraffe. You could feel the dryness of it, the sharpness of the edges of the chunks. Whenever we have stepped out of the airconditioned car, the heat had sent us right back in.

The Denakil Depression is one of the hottest places on earth, the most inhabitable place they say. So the presence of a small villages in the middle of it surprised us, and the places we had stopped over too, had life going on. I guess inhabitable my foot?

The sun is setting when we arrive at the base camp. The heat has surprisingly abated. We get out of the vehicles to wait for the night, so we can begin the trek up to the volcano.

We take pictures of the setting sun, with the setting sun. We have been on the bumpy road since morning and this being able to finally stop, allows my organs to return to their right places, my breath to find a way into my lungs, my blood to flow.

“You know the shake well before use instruction on syrup medication? I feel like I am being shaken in preparation for use.” I had remarked at one point.

It had earned me a laugh, but I meant it.

I walk towards the edge of the base camp and take in the nothingness. Bare bare earth that goes on forever. Nothing but solitude lurks. I feel like I have felt this same feeling of solitary, but elsewhere. I desire to be engulfed, consumed, taken in. I desire to disappear here as I have many other places, and I wonder why I am always trying to get away. I feel my organs return to their proper locations. The heart dislodges from the rib and into the chest cavity, it returns, the lung shakes its shoulders and stretches back into the diaphragm, the intestines detangle and ease out.

I am summoned from my escape, to join a group photo and the feeling of solitude recedes with the quickness of sand by the ocean. I stumble into the photo.

“Who built this road?” one of us asks.

“The prime minister was visiting Erta Ale and the road was made because of that. Before, the base camp was much further down and you had to hike four hours up to the volcano instead of the one hour.” One of the tour guide explains. I can’t remember which prime minister did. The road is not a smooth tarmac that spits you at the mouth of the volcano, but rather, they moved aside the large rocks, cleaned the dry earth, unveiling an even drier earth that is a little more streamlined and level.

The base camp has two rock structures which could act as shelter but we are shown where we will sleep, in the open air.

“Is it safe here?” I ask in the manner of a sheltered child. I might have grown up and lived with the ricocheting of the bullet but I have always had a home to hide in. This being in the open, is somewhat new although not entirely. When I had gone to visit my grandmother when the goats had gone to fora, any place that had more grass and water that they had had to relocate to, we had slept in the open, on hides, but we had had gunmen around and here, I see no guns. A lot of people say they feel insecure in the presence of a gun but for me, it had always meant security.

Going to high school atop a lorry from Marsabit to Isiolo, we always had a gunman or two up there with us, the AK-47 on their laps. Bandits frequently attacked the lorries for the cows and goats they ferried, and often, human beings would be injured or killed in the scuffle. They would first shoot the tires of the lorries and when it had slowed down or veered off the road, they would jump in, even robbing the passengers in the wake. So a guard meant lesser chances of being attacked, or at least fighting back and making it past the danger zone.

“Very safe.” Mohammed, our new addition responds. He is the one that will lead us to Erta Ale later.

“Why? Are you afraid?” he asks.

“Just curious.” I say. “There are no wild animals?”

“No.” he says with the unwarranted finality of tone I have heard repeatedly since I have been here, which I have come to understand, is not rude.

I figured as much. The place is a furnace by day and a freezer by night. Even the ubiquitous microorganisms might think twice about inhabiting this place although I am certain they won’t.

We hang around the base camp, waiting for nightfall. I get into a push-up contest, we empty our bladders behind the piled rocks of the camp, we drink water, change into hiking shoes, and just hang around in a manner that people do when they can do nothing but wait.