Saved by Israelis in the African Wilderness
Thank God for Israeli wanderlust.
I suspect that Israelis enjoy traveling because they miss Israel while they’re away and remember why they left once they come back. Whatever prompted them to leave home, though, I’m glad I found two Israelis in the Ethiopian desert one rainy night.
Renting a chauffeured car had eaten a significant chunk out of my research funds and I was in a foul mood after arguing all morning with the dispatcher. Then I saw the two of them among clumps of acacia trees, standing by the side of the road and hoping for a lift. White people are rare in Ethiopia; we drove past them.
I changed my mind 100 feet later. The couple, who asked for a lift to a nearby town, were Shai and Noah–Israeli students studying at the main campus of Ben Gurion University, my school. We knew several people in common. After explaining my research and where we were headed, they asked to come with us.
I don’t know if they ever regretted that decision, but five hours later we were sitting on the side of a gully with our four-wheel-drive Land Cruiser embedded in the middle of the muck. As we watched shreds of cloud drift east to be caught on the peaks of the Simian Mountains, it became apparent that we would be spending the night outside.
A toothless goatherd appeared, gestured at the shreds of cloud and the mountains and intoned “garem.” I looked at Shai.
“He’s telling us that it’s going to rain,” he said. That was bad. Our driver wasn’t back. He had taken my cell phone, gone over a ridge in search of better service and vanished. Shai, Noah and I, expecting to find him back soon, had eaten a late lunch.
With no real alternative, we decided to abandon the car and stood up. The toothless goatherd looked with concern at our car. Waving his arms, he repeated, “Meukina, meukina!” We attempted to explain the situation in coherent language and found ourselves, a few sentences in, reduced to charades and pidgin phrases.
“Car stuck, no driver.”Shai attempted, demonstrating by shoving his left hand into his right and following that with driving an imaginary vehicle. The goatherd gave no reaction.
We turned to go but the goatherd suddenly decided that if we were playing charades he’d do us one better. Recruiting a few of the many children that we’d attracted and yet another passing goatherd, he enacted what appeared to be the kidnap and murder of what must have been our driver. Shai, Noah and I stood in shocked silence.
“Well,” I said. “Let’s hope he’s not right.”
Forty-five minutes later we were following the trail to Koraro in deepening darkness, the children who followed us having faded back into the Ethiopian bush. The goatherd and his charades partner had also followed us for some time, still concerned about the car. We decided that they had not been attempting to tell us that our driver had been kidnapped, but rather that the car might be washed away in a flash flood. Either way, there was little we could do.
The rain came as a roaring, gray wall of water so thick it obscured every major landmark on the horizon, though we weren’t missing a city skyline. We started running, while attempting to pull on our rain gear. Visibility dropped to less than a foot and we lost the trail completely.
We huddled against a well, shielding ourselves under Noah’s ground mat. She turned to me.
“It was a good story, up to now.”
Ten minutes after the rain stopped we were huddled under the ground mat next to the well. All the washes that surrounded us were full to the brim and flowing. Hearing the noise, we assumed that the rain was still falling.
Upon realizing that the storm had stopped we attempted to continue, but the trail wasn’t there. When Shai nearly fell into a farmer’s rainwater collection pond and speared his leg, we stopped where we were and made camp.
We wanted to make tea, but had no clean water and had to settle for a few bars of Israeli chocolate, courtesy of my new friends. We talked and took advantage of Shai’s portable MP3 player. Eventually, we zipped their two sleeping bags together and squeezed our three selves into their two-and-a-half person tent.
We were awakened at dawn by two farmers discussing in Tigrinya, an indigenous language, what on Earth three white people were doing in the middle of their field.
The next time I’m flying down a dirt road in Ethiopia and see two people standing by the side waiting for a ride, I won’t hesitate to pick them up. They’re probably Israeli and odds are they have chocolate.
