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Another Voice

On the camel trail in Ethiopia: a story, a tragedy and a blessing

Matthew Parris

Thursday, 29th June 2006

Our Ethiopian guide, Solomon Berhe, had asked where they were bound. The next village was their destination. Here they would unload their animals and sell their cargo to a salt merchant. Then they would rest and eat; they had had nothing but bread, sugar and tea throughout their journey, and the hard earth to lie on. The animals too would drink and graze; there had been little grazing for a week, and very little water. But in a few sweet, weary miles their trials would be over. Might we walk those miles with them? They nodded their reply.

My producer, Jeremy Grange, and I were in northern Ethiopia to follow and learn about a trade as ancient as the Athenians: the camel trains which go down from the highlands into the furnace of the Danakil Depression, fetch up the salt which cakes a dead lake down there, and thus supply the Horn of Africa with a precious commodity. We were making a programme about it for Radio Four (about to be broadcast) and were on our way down to the hellhole from which this small camel train was returning.

Many were the tales we were told along the way, and few have we had the space to include. The story we heard when, with camels, donkeys, mules and men, we trudged into the village of Agula half an hour later, was a radio programme in itself.

Agula was no more than a tiny roadside settlement of mud, straw and tin; but there was water nearby, cooling trees in its dusty little square, and an air of domesticity and order. What to us had seemed the middle of nowhere now impressed itself upon us as the centre of many lives — the only place some had ever known. Children ran out excitedly to see the camel train coming in. Mothers stood at their doors. The safe return of such expeditions to Hades was an event in itself and, besides, it was good news for the village. The captains of these ships of the desert, who could choose from many places where to dock, had chosen this small port. They would be paid for their salt, and spend money here. They would have adventures to recount.