I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [190]
To top the thermometer for blasting heat, the Danakil Desert in the Horn of Africa claims the crown. Nomads wander the Danakil, African versions of Native American Comanche and Apache—fearsome warriors. The Afar tribe is legendary. They would share with us three of their extraordinary children—Osis (eleven years old), Zahra (ten), and Hussan (nine)—none of whom had been in an automobile before, much less flown in a jumbo jet to the Big Apple.
Drawing of an Afar warrior’s knife (image credit 19.12)
We pulled it off, but did we have help. To get to the hottest place on earth, you start in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. There, the United States Information Agency, a branch of the State Department, came to our aid, along with assorted NGOs and personal friends. Addis Ababa—“new flower”—the capital of Ethiopia, is an up-and-down town on the side of a mountain. We arrived the day after Ethiopian Christmas, January 8, chock-full of vaccines, yellow fever shots, and malaria pills, and were handed a printed State Department directive: “Visitors shouldn’t drive outside of Addis Ababa, the countryside is riddled with explosive mines, and violence and banditry are rampant.” On arrival at the airport, a jazzed-up version of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” blared from the loudspeakers. Carrie laughed, “Do I hear castanets in that music?” A gentleman from the USIA, Dell Hood, met and mentored us, and introduced us to a bevy of people. Aside from Dell, Isaac Russell, who just arrived from the States, was to be a star on our project. Isaac had been a lawyer in municipal bonds based in Hartford, Connecticut. In his mid-fifties, after putting his youngest child through college, he passed the Foreign Service exam and started a new career. Isaac traveled with us to the Awash region of the Danakil, where a contingent of the Afar were reputed to be encamped. He insisted we carry our own saline solution, because, if needed, a transfusion in a local clinic would most likely kill you.
A charming woman, Tision, representative of the government and assistant to the minister of the arts, was our guide. Aside from our driver, we had a cameraman, Mateos, and hopefully on arrival we would be met by two interpreters, Sisay and Abdu. They had left several days ahead of us to seek out the Afar. We traveled in a Land Rover, first to a town called Nazareth for an overnight. “When the sun goes down, we don’t travel,” Isaac cautioned us. “If you drive after dark you can be in big trouble, or dead. Bandits put barricades across the road, steal the car and its contents, and kill the occupants.” After fitful dreams of mayhem, at dawn we continued on our way.
Our three winners, Zahra, Hussan, and Osis, January 1994 (image credit 19.13)
Our destination was a station (outpost) called Melkased, and, despite no visible roads, we eventually found it. It took us some five hours before we spotted a handful of trees and a few thatched huts. And the Afar—with Sisay and Abdu standing among them, beaming. The warriors were wrapped in white robes, and each had a Kalashnikov draped over his shoulder. Their long stork-like legs and pancake-flat feet were shod in thick leather sandals, and they carried wicked-looking knives shaped as if a straight blade had been bent slightly in the middle, a crook in an elbow. These sinister blades in their scabbards swung groin high, draped on cords from the warriors’ necks. Behind the huts, we spotted some sixteen children waiting. These eight-to-twelve-year-old youngsters auditioned with trepidation. I kept them jumping, bouncing, spinning, switching feet, and spiraling à la Martha Graham. Carrie, with her eye rarely leaving the camera’s viewfinder, was in heaven. Luckily we’d brought a drum with us, and within the first five minutes I zeroed in on the most awkward dancer