Of Rivers and Rituals

C M Y K Sxxx,2017-11-05,TR,001,Bs-4C,E1 5 WHERE TO GO NOW The New Orleans of Fats Domino. 2 TRAVEL TIPS Luxurious France done on a budget. 11 36 HOURS Prague has grand architecture, food and shopping. DISCOVERY ADVENTURE ESCAPE SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2017 ANDY HASLAM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES EXPLORER Of Rivers and Rituals the Omo River. A woman, heavily adorned “It’s an at-risk ecosystem, with at-risk com- Sunset over the Touring Ethiopia’s By ANDREW McCARTHY in beads and bracelets, ground sorghum on munities. But it is still a very wild place.” Mr. Omo Valley. The “Your George W. Bush came here two years a large stone in the nearby shade. Men, Jones was born in Nigeria of English par- valley is largely dry Omo Valley, with ago and not a person recognized him.” some carrying AK-47s, sat in clusters. Small ents, raised in East Africa and educated in savanna, with the “No one?” naked children scampered past. Goats and England. “When it came time to put on a Omo River cutting a “No one knew who he was.” cattle roamed freely on the dusty flood suit and go into town,” he said, “I came back nearly 475-mile-long a sustainable “Would they have known Nelson Man- plain. There was no electricity, no running to Africa.” swath down to Lake dela?” water, no cars. Mr. Biwam, who guesses his Mr. Jones, 45, has been creating custom- Turkana on the travel outfitter. “No. No one here would have seen TV. No age to be “about 40,” looked around. “It is a ized tours to the continent for more than 20 Kenya border. one here thinks beyond Omo.” good place,” he said. “The people are true.” years. Wild Philanthropy is his latest ven- I was speaking with Lale Biwa, a member I had come to the Omo Valley with the in- ture — an enterprise designed to build sus- of the Karo people, in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley. novative tourism entrepreneur Will Jones tainable tourism with a mutually beneficial We were surrounded by low, circular huts to get a view into the lives of some of Africa’s exchange between visitors and the people made from sticks, with pitched grass roofs, most traditional tribes. “I’m particularly in- and land they visit. Mr. Jones also operates in his home village of Dus, on the banks of terested in the Omo,” Mr. Jones told me. CONTINUED ON PAGE 6 C M Y K Sxxx,2017-11-05,TR,006,Cs-4C,E1 C M Y K Sxxx,2017-11-05,TR,007,Cs-4C,E1 6 TR THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2017 THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2017 TR 7 EXPLORER ETHIOPIA Of Rivers and Rituals in the Omo Valley CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 The elder kept talking as Mr. Biwa trans- the only permanent tented camp in the Omo lated. “And now is a prayer for rain. For the Valley, not far from Mr. Biwa’s village. women and children. A prayer that all bad This southwestern corner of Ethiopia is feelings be carried off across the river.” Af- home to seven primary tribes who coexist ter each invocation the assembled replied in with varying degrees of peace. The land is a deep, guttural moan. largely dry savanna, with the Omo River Finally, the three men who had carved the cutting a nearly 475-mile-long swath down bull sliced open the only remaining part of to Lake Turkana on the Kenya border. The the animal. They reached in and produced discovery of human remains dating back globs of warm dung and dispersed them. nearly 2.5 million years prompted Unesco Each man began to spread the excrement to dub the Lower Valley a World Heritage over his legs and across his chest in a com- site in 1980. mitment to protect those they love. But today the Omo is a region on the Afterward, I slipped away. But hours lat- precipice. The Ethiopian government has er, in the dusk, I walked back alone from our recently completed the third of five pro- camp and entered the village again. As was posed dams upriver. The dams threaten to usually the case, a small child was the first alter the lives of the communities that have to greet me. The light was fading quickly, as inhabited this valley for millennium and de- it does near the Equator. A group of men pend on the river’s moods for survival. huddled near the Parliament and Ceremony “This was the second year in a row that House, but otherwise the village was quiet. the flood crop failed,” Mr. Jones told me. “It The small boy shadowed me and I began to is the only time anyone can remember that hear a loose kind of chanting. I turned to- the river never rose.” ward the sound. There was a soft breeze in The area has also fallen victim to hit-and- the gloaming; the heat was finally off the run tourism — people driving down from day. Then the unmistakable register of an Addis Ababa, storming into villages, cam- AK-47 rang out. eras blazing, then leaving in a cloud of dust. I leapt into the air. My head snapped in all I encountered one such scrum at a local fes- directions, looking for the origin of the gun- tival. Witnessing the feverish pursuit for fire. Was I going to be shot as an intruder in Right, a parliament documentation of “otherness” reflected the night? My young companion laughed at and ceremony house back at me my own motives for being there. me. He looked directly up into the sky, indi- in the village of Dus. It is an issue every traveler to remote or in- cating the direction of the shot. I tried to Below that, members digenous regions needs to reconcile. smile, and, more slowly now, continued to- of the Karo tribe, left, “There is a circuit of exploitation here,” ward the sound of the crowd. My small and Daasanach tribe, Mr. Jones told me. “It’s one of the reasons friend reached up and took my hand. The right. Below that, the we cultivate relationships with the local voices became more insistent. It was nearly Omo River. people, trading with them, trying to create a dark. Then I heard it again — this time, a mutually beneficial exchange. And it’s why PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDY HASLAM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES rapid barrage of gunfire. Then another. The we’re primarily using the river as our road. boy smiled in reassurance. I dropped his The river allows us access to villages inac- hand and beat it back to the campsite. cessible any other way.” In the six days we The next morning, as we loaded the boat spent on the river we saw one other motor- for our trip farther downriver, I learned that ized boat — carrying supplies for an NGO a village elder had died suddenly and the downriver. gunfire had been part of the mourning With Mr. Biwa as our guide, we headed to process. a small village inhabited by the Hamar peo- We set out before the heat of the day. For ple. The Hamar, numbering 45,000 through- seven hours heavy bush lined the banks. out the valley, are known to be pastoralists. Occasionally children splashed in the croco- The village was overflowing with cattle. As dile-infested water and villages were visi- in Dus, the dwellings were simple, built of ble through the foliage. Baboons scampered sticks and grass, and well ordered. Young up the steep banks. A rare Pel’s fishing owl men tended cattle while a woman skinned swept overhead. At the dire river outpost of and butchered a goat with the help of her Omorate, we had our passports inspected, toddler, who hung pieces of the animal on a paid the local graft and carried on. fence beside an AK-47 and a belt of ammo. “It’s a bit of a no man’s land from here to “The AK-47 has replaced the spear,” Mr. Lake Turkana,” Mr. Jones told me. Jones said. The heavy bush yielded to a more open Mr. Biwa nodded. “As long as you have flood plane. Large villages of the AK, you are respected,” he said. “Your fam- Daasanach people, whom we had come to ily feels safe and proud. Someone with no see, began to line the river. These villages AK, people look down on them. If you do not differed from others we had seen in the bi- have AK your family will go to someone zarre-seeming platforms, 10 feet off the who does.” ground, that had been constructed to store They were American-made, I was told, and protect the sorghum crop from the an- gathered during the war in neighboring Su- nual flooding — flooding now in jeopardy dan. because of the damming upriver. But they are not cheap,” Mr. Biwa said. We set up camp on a high bank. The local “How much do they cost?” I asked. villagers assumed free run of our site and “Five cows,” he said. we were absorbed into daily life. Dugout ca- Beside firearms, I witnessed few other noes, listing and overfull with people, were accommodations to the contemporary constantly crossing and recrossing the world in the Omo. Yet for a place so far off river. Voices carried back and forth across the grid, news traveled fast throughout the the water long after dark.

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