and mossy rocks.
‘You need to be as close to your land as possible,’ Mandy said. ‘That’s what we’re taught.’
Fascinated, Louise wanted to understand more about Mandy’s thinking.
‘As soon as us kids are able to sit up, we’re taught to look at the animals and birds and draw them in the sand. My grandma taught me, so I learned all about the animals in the bush. This makes us smart and strong. They don’t teach you this at school.’
Mandy’s talk about drawing animals in the sand making you smart and strong didn’t make much sense to Louise, but Mandy spoke with great feeling and Louise felt inspired.
‘This earth is part of our past,’ Mandy continued as they looked down on the quilted field. On this grey day the landscape was fascinating to look at because the greens and yellows glowed.
As rain fell on her friend’s face, Louise noticed the velvet sheen of her skin. The girls exchanged shy glances. It was now one o’clock.
It would take over an hour to get back to the farmhouse. But Louise was keen to reach the hills that she’d only ever seen from a distance so returning in time for lunch didn’t matter. Sheep grazed under drizzly rain. The girls ate their chocolate beneath a big red gum tree.
‘It’s amazing, but I’ve never been to these hills before,’ said Louise. ‘I feel different now I’m here. You’re right, this land is special– it’s kind of strange.’ She thought about Mandy’s people, once living there – people whose land Louise’s grandfather and great-grandfather had stripped of trees.
At the top of the hill, Mandy pointed out scant creeks and leeward-leaning windswept trees in a gully below. ‘These trees have sour berries that my people eat,’ she said proudly.
‘I can’t understand, I really can’t … why we haven’t been taught all this about your people at school?’
‘Because nobody wants to know us.’
‘But why not? Tell me why not?’
‘Because they don’t like us, I s’pose … But let’s not talk about it, we don’t have much time left.’
Louise pictured the hills, inhabited, and the dry creek rippling and flowing to the sea.
Eventually, they turned and walked back to the farm. It was almost 2.30. Margaret was glad to see them as she’d begun to worry. Louise wanted to meet Mandy again, learn more about a person’s inner world, about camp fires, the bush and people sitting on the ground telling stories or dancing.
But the meeting was not to be. Louise heard, on her next visit to her grandparents’ farm, that Mandy had gone back to Oodnadatta. No one was sure when, or if, she would return.
3: Exploring and Learning
Bada Ridge Camp Site
AFTER ZENO’s ROADSIDE stop, the next stage southwards was expected to take about four hours, depending on the state of the roads. Louise and Carmen leaned back on their pillows in the 4WD and made themselves as comfortable as possible in the cramped conditions. Beyond them now, lay the pastoral and arable lands of the south where sudden torrential rains would turn pastures into a sea of mud and where a day or two later burning sun would shrivel flowing streams into stagnant pools. In low gear, they struggled up a steep gravel track shaded by straggly acacia and eucalyptus.
After almost four hours along a bumpy pot-holed road with Abebe wrestling the steering wheel, they turned sharply, drove up an even steeper track, and parked on a plateau area on which were erected a dozen substantial tents, each with a wooden platform base. Degu parked alongside. An unpainted breeze-block, drop-toilet ablutions block and simple kitchen were the only permanent buildings.
A deep wide valley spread below them, dotted with distant villages. Louise looked across a spur of the plateau. It had been raining and from the plateau’s edge runnels scoured the slopes.
‘I’ll bet you haven’t seen anything quite like this,’ Zeno said proudly to his students, as he stood alongside Louise and Carmen.
Louise walked to the edge of the plateau and gazed on a distant village, a sensation of wonder spreading from the back of her head into her eyes and then into the pit of her stomach. She breathed in the fragrance of acacia and eucalypt. She saw streams carving out little ravines and spreading silt on the flood plain floor, where fields and gardens were cultivated.
‘It’s like falling in love – we’ll never forget this,’ she said to Carmen, as she contemplated her first encounter with Oromo village people.
Meanwhile Abebe and Degu collected wood and arranged the fireplace. Water and food were carried in from the vehicles. A petrol generator provided limited lighting and some power for refrigeration. Abebe cooked expertly over three gas rings and prepared the evening meal of vegetable and goat meat stew. The atmosphere was intoxicating, a compelling mixture of people: experienced and inexperienced, black and white, Ethiopian, American, Australian, Arab, English and German – an exciting collision of values and cultures. Watching Abebe, Degu and Zeno, Louise realised how these different men were very much at home. She stared at them, aware she was beginning a new life.
‘Enebla, enebla!’ Abebe called to tell them that food was ready. The cool air hung in stillness over their site and after such a long day they were all hungry. They sat in two groups. In the centre of each was a single large bowl containing the thick stew. Before each person was a thin injera pancake. Louise watched Zeno and Abebe as they scooped food from the central bowl with their pancakes. The students did likewise, gingerly. Louise enjoyed the slight sour taste of the soft injera as she mopped up the stew’s rich juices. Zeno looked at her and smiled.
Zeno sat next to Carmen, opposite Louise and Rick the American. Eating and drinking while talking to students about Ethiopia was natural for Zeno. He and Rick spoke of people practising permaculture on terraced fields; of small boys keeping birds away from crops of sorghum; of women walking great distances to collect water for their village and of nomadic herdsmen protecting goat and cattle herds from hyenas, cheetahs or sometimes leopards.
‘And so there it is, our first fieldwork site,’ said Zeno pointing to the valley below. ‘Villagers will talk to you about their work, their family life. We’ll get a picture of a community’s health, particularly of women and children. The more you listen to the women, the more information you’ll uncover.’
The students murmured acknowledgement as they sat at the meal table on packing cases and a few old canvas-backed captain’s chairs.
‘Surviving in this country is what these people do every day. They are strong, never forget that. They are one thread in a vast tapestry.’ Louise couldn’t help gazing at Zeno. Distracted and silent, she imagined spending time alone with him. She made herself look away.
Zeno continued, ‘Remember also, people subsist, there is no safety net for them.’ Louise wondered what this land was like during the big drought and what happened to the people.
Zeno spoke softly as if reading Louise’s thoughts. ‘In the droughts the land forgot itself and because I was well fed, I felt like a foreigner in my own country. Pasture land broke into huge cracks and then came the dust, the endless dust … During the recent famine, everywhere, and particularly in the north, people hoped, but sank in the dust of their starving world.’ Zeno
