Proud Colombian Amazon and Horse Waiting to Lead Bullfighters into the Ring

Colombia. Cali. Waiting to lead bullfighters into the ring, this amazon left the mark of her lips on her horse’s face.

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Colombie. Cali. Une  amazone attend le moment de prendre place à la tête du cortège de toréadors qui entrera à l’arène. Elle a marqué de ses lèvres la joue du cheval qu'elle montera.

Tuareg Madonna

Niger. Sahel. Tuareg nomad woman sitting under her tent.

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Niger. Sahel. Femme Touarègue assise sous sa tente.

Adventuring Among The Fierce And Unfriendly Danakil Nomads

Because the geological expedition I had to photograph was being delayed, I traveled to Tendaho, a dusty town at the southern end of the Danakil Depression in the Aussa Danakil sultanate. Here were the fiercest Danakil, and their scrutinizing eyes made me feel virtually naked. It was evident that I must have looked like some freakish blunder of nature.

     In those days a Danakil man wanting to marry still had to kill a man, emasculate him, and offer his trophy to the woman he wanted. It proved his virility, which in this infernal country was indispensable to the survival of a family.

      An Ethiopian official warned me not to leave the village without a letter from the sultan. Unfortunately he was absent. After searching for a possible interpreter, I had to settle on a 53-year-old Moslem named Mahmud, who spoke Danakil and Italian. He did not speak English, but understood some. I did not speak Italian, but understood some. Mahmud went to ask a balabat, or local chieftain, for his protection.

     The next morning there would be an important market in Aisayita, a small town 35 miles (56 kilometers) to the east, which would attract many Danakil. To get there on foot in time we left that very night. The balabat lent us two men to guide us and two two camels to carry our luggage and water.

     Towards 4:00 a.m., five armed Danakil warriors emerged from the darkness to have a close look at me. One of them tested my biceps, commented on the vigor of my handshake, deluged Mahmud with questions about me, the ferengi, or foreigner , and asked us for cigarettes (though a non-smoker, I always carried some). While those men nailed us there for a while, our two guides moved on ahead. Then, with that same man holding my hand, we walked together for a while, though too slowly to catch up with our guides.

     Not long after the five Danakil had finally drifted away, the dark nightmarish desert produced four new warriors--younger and evil-looking.  They too assailed Mahmud with questions as we kept walking. Over the next 15 minutes or so their voices behind me got louder and louder, with the word ferengi bouncing back and forth. And there was disturbing tussle.  Pretending to be unaware of what was happening in my back, I did not allow myself to look around as I kept walking. Doing so would have forced me to interfere, stopping the march, and putting us at even greater risk.

But at some point Mahmud could no long contain his tormentors.

     “Make trouble! Make trouble!” Mahmud cried, his voice shaking with rage and anguish. “I know, Mahmud” I replied. “But please let’s keep calm.” Still, I started wondering whether my manhood would end up hanging in a woman’s tent or from a horse’s bridle, as was the custom.

     When Mahmud was pushed against me, just as our two guides had finally become visible and Mahmud was crying for their help, I turned around to see that one of the men had unsheathed his large curved knife. Fortunately, our two guides, animated by a devilish fury, came rushing back, shouting what must have been insults and perhaps the name of the balabat, our Tendaho protector. Sheepishly, though chuckling to keep face, our tormentors walked away.      

     Mahmud’s face was ashen (I could not see my own), and for an hour or so I could not get anything out of him. Finally, he told me that the Danakil had grabbed our cigarettes and a box of biscuits he was carrying for breakfast. When a man asked him what I carried in my camera bag, Mahmud warned him that my people would seek revenge on him if they harmed me in any way. But he had found this amusing.  “This man carries no gun and has no armed escort,” he said. “He’s a nobody, and no one will come looking for him after we kill him—and you.” When he was going to pull my camera bag from my shoulder, Mahmud hit his hand with the stick that Ethiopians always carry around. At that, the man had pushed him and pulled his knife.

     At Aisayita, which was crowded with heavily armed Danakil men, I photographed many. Ignoring their suspicious eyes, and working quickly from one man to the next, I pretended it was the most normal thing in the world and got away with it. Later I would spend some time documenting the daily life of some Danakil encampments.

     When I returned to Makale once more, I found the geologists installed at the hotel. I thought I was safe now. But my recklessness would see to it that my adventures were only just beginning. I’ll tell you about them in other posts.

View photos below, following French translation.

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Comme l’expédition géologique que je devais photographier n’arrivait pas, je voyageai à Tendaho, un gros village poussiéreux au sud de la dépression Danakil dans le sultanat des Danakil Aussa. Beaucoup de ces Danakil pratiquaient encore la fâcheuse coutume qui exigeait de l’homme en quête d’épouse de tuer d’abord un autre homme, de l’émasculer et d’offrir à sa bien-aimée le trophée qui prouverait sa virilité, indispensable pour assurer la survie d’une famille dans ce pays infernal.

     A Tendaho les hommes Danakil, armés de vieux fusils et d’énormes couteaux courbes, m’entouraient de toutes parts. M’observant avec des yeux peu amicaux et hésitant à me céder le pas sur les allées de sable, ils me faisaient sentir  aussi nu qu’à la naissance. Il était évident que je devais être à leurs yeux une sérieuse anomalie de la nature—blond, yeux bleus, rouge de la brulure du soleil… (Un an plus tard, chez les Dayak de la jungle de Bornéo, mes yeux bleus me donneraient une certaine aura. Mais pas ici).    

     Un fonctionnaire éthiopien m’avertit que je mettrais ma vie en danger si j’abandonnais le village sans une lettre de recommendation du sultan. Mais le sultan était absent. Le fonctionnaire me présenta un Musulman de 53 ans qui parlait le Danakil et l’Italien. Il ne parlait pas l’Anglais, mais le comprenait un peu. Je parlais l’Anglais et comprenais un peu l’Italien. En fait d’interprète, je ne trouverais pas mieux à Tendaho et l’acceptai.

     Mahmud me conduisit chez un balabat, un chef local. Le balabat me déclara sous sa protection et me trouva deux hommes Danakil pour nous guider dans le désert et deux chameaux pour transporter nos bagages et notre eau.

     Nous partîmes à pied la nuit même--pour éviter la chaleur du jour, mais aussi pour arriver à Asayita, 56 kilomètres à l’est de Tendaho, le matin suivant. Un grand marché nous y attendait, visité par de nombreux Danakil.

     Vers quatre heures du matin, cinq guerriers Danakil émergèrent de la nuit. Commentant bruyamment notre rencontre, ils assommèrent Mahmud de questions à mon sujet et demandèrent des cigarettes (quoique non-fumeur j’en avais toujours avec moi). L’un des hommes tata mes biceps et se déclara satisfait de la vigueur de ma main, qu’il ne lâcha pas.  Finalement, nous ayant fait perdre beaucoup de temps sur place tandis que nos deux guides Danakil continuaient leur chemin, bien en avant dans la nuit opaque, nous reprîmes la marche tous ensemble, moi main dans la main du bonhomme, quoique trop  lentement pour rattraper nos guides

     Au bout de 20 minutes nos cinq Danakil nous quittèrent. Mais bientôt en apparurent quatre autres, plus jeunes et  l’air beaucoup plus sauvage et agressif. Il devint tout de suite évident que les choses n’iraient plus aussi facilement. Mais cette fois je ne m’arrêtai pas, ni ralentis la marche. Derrière moi les questions des Danakil, ou le mot  ferengi  (étranger) rebondissait constamment, sonnait avec une violence croissante. Je me rendais compte qu’on se bousculait dans mon dos, mais prétendais ne pas le savoir. J’espérais donner l’impression d’être trop important pour avoir á me préoccuper de ma sécurité. Mais espérant rejoindre nos guides, je m’efforçais d’allonger le pas sans y attirer l’attention. Avec eux nous serions quatre contre quatre, quoique non armés nous-mêmes. Par contre, m’arrêter de marcher pour me mêler à la dispute nous ferait perdre encore davantage de terrain sur nos guides. Finalement, Mahmud n’en put plus.

     « Make trouble ! Make trouble ! » cria-t-il dans son Anglais rudimentaire. « Je sais, » lui répondis-je sans me retourner ni ralentir le pas. « Mais garde le calme si tu peux.» Cependant je commençais à me demander si ma virilité terminerait bientôt accrochée dans la tente d’une femme ou à l’encolure d’un cheval, ou ces articles terminaient généralement.

     Quand un Danakil poussa Mahmud violemment contre moi, je n’eus  d’autre option que de me retourner. Un Danakil avait dégainé son énorme couteau, large comme ma main. Cette fois, d’une voix  angoissée, Mahmud appela nos guides. Heureusement, et quoiqu’invisibles dans l’obscurité, ils n’étaient plus loin. Abandonnant leurs chameaux ils vinrent á grands cris nous arracher des mains de ces sauvages. Ce qu’ils crièrent à nos tourmenteurs leur quitta immédiatement toute arrogance, et penauds ils retournèrent à la nuit.

     Le visage du pauvre Mahmud était de cendre (je ne pourrais dire de quelle couleur était le mien, moi qui n’avais pas vu le danger d’aussi près que lui). Durant une heure il ne put ouvrir la bouche. Finalement il parla.

     D’abord les Danakil avaient arraché de ses mains nos cigarettes et les biscuits que nous nous réservions pour la faim. Quand plus tard l’un d’eux allait s’emparer aussi de la sacoche photographique qui pendait de mon épaule Mahmud le frappa de son bâton, ce qui les mit tous en colère. Mahmud leur prédit des représailles féroces de la part de mes gens s’ils me faisaient du mal. Mais ses paroles les avaient amusés. « Un homme qui voyage sans escorte et sans armes ne peut être qu’un pauvre diable. » dirent-ils.  « Nous allons tuer cet homme, et toi avec lui, et personne ne se donnera la peine de vous chercher. »

     Je passai la journée suivante au marché à photographier les Danakil, tous fortement armés. Ignorant leurs regards méfiants, j’agis comme si c’était la chose la plus normale du monde, mais passant d’un homme a l’autre très rapidement. Plus tard je documenterais la vie quotidienne de quelques campements. De retour à Makale, je trouvai les géologues installés à l’hôtel. 

     Je croyais mes aventures terminées, mais j’étais bien trop insouciant m’en livrer si tôt. En fait elles n’avaient que commence Je les  raconterai prochainement.

Doesn't She Look Wise Beyond Her Few Years--Buddha-like?

Malaysia. Borneo. Sabah. Papar. Chinese girl.

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Decorum is as Old as Humanity

Brazil. Amazon rain forest. Under a thatch of white bird's down a Yanomami herald who came to invite a neighboring clan to a plantain soup feast waits in the center of the vast communal house's interior courtyard to be received by an elder. He has laid down his bow and arrows next to him.

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Nature Breeds Natural Grace

Niger. Sahel. Wodaabe girls waiting for their turn at the well

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Streetwise, Fearless, and Ready to Conquer the World

Peru. Lima. Villa Salvador shantytown on outskirts of the city. 

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Amazon Indians Never Kill Young Animals

To eat, the Indians of the Amazon rain forest must hunt. However, they never take from the forest more than what they need. We, too, kill animals to eat. We kill cows, sheep, and pigs. And not always humanely. We also kill wild animals to grace our walls with their heads or use their skins or tusks. We even kill calves and lambs. The Indians never kill young animals. After hunting down their mothers, they adopt them as lifelong pets, never to end as food. Women will go as far as breast-feed the youngest animals. 

Brazil. Amazon rain forest. Yanomami Indian brothers with pet opossums.

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A Good Way to Hide Bad Teeth

Kenya. Near Lake Turkana. Turkana nomad elder.

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The Amazon: Eden or Green Hell? It’s our Choice

Of all the many hundreds of children I have photographed around the world, those of the Yanomami Indians of the Amazon rain forest may well be the happiest and freest. They had no toys but for those they built themselves. Only the boys built them, and they were mostly bows and arrows. The children’s games copied their parents’ activities, though on a smaller scale. They learned by watching.

The boys hunted small game and fished. The girls painted each other with roucou or baked tiny manioc flat breads instead of the pancakes-sized ones their mothers prepared. All the kids climbed trees to pick wild fruits. They also climbed the tall posts of their yanos, or communal houses, pretending to flee from jaguars, played by other kids. They played many games and never got bored. They lived in a world of their own where I never saw adults intervene.

Boys and girls mimicked the presentation dances that a clan offers on arriving at a neighboring yano when invited to share in a harvest in the form of a plantain, or manioc, or peach palm soup. The boys rolled in mud or plunged down from high branches into the Tootobi River. Boys and girls occasionally played war too, but always in good humor. Never did I see a child beat another or even shout at one. On the contrary, the bigger children always cared for the younger ones.

The Yanomami had dogs, and they treated them well. The kids' pets included the young progeny of the animals their fathers had hunted for food--monkeys, sloths, opossums, parrots, and other colorful birds. Those animals would remain pets and die of old age, never to be eaten.

The children under four accompanied their mothers to the forest gardens. An older child sometimes followed them to watch over the younger sibling while the mother dug out manioc, slashed down plantain or bananas, used a long stick to bring down some papayas, or hacked wood for the fire. The younger children also went along on gathering expeditions. On those, several women joined to hunt frogs, sweet-water crabs, termites, grubs, or mushrooms.

The surrounding forest was like you would imagine the biblical Garden of Eden. It was nothing like the Green Hell of some authors. Unless, perhaps, you had wandered through it, lost and hungry for weeks, fearing you would die there alone, like a wounded animal, unable ever to find your way out of it. This happens, of course, But the Indians never get lost in the forest. And they live very comfortably in it, working only an average of two and a half hours a day. I lived comfortably in it myself while in their company.

That was a long time ago. Since then, the Yanomami have seen their land invaded by heavily armed gold miners who have polluted the rivers with mercury and caused many deaths by spreading diseases against which the Indians had no natural defenses. In that way, the Amazon could indeed become a green hell, as it once was, when Indians were enslaved by rubber barons.

For more pictures of Yanomami children, please go to http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/victorenglebert, click on Galleries, and then click on the picture of a Yanomami girl at the bottom of the screen. Clicking on the picture of a Yanomami woman at the top of the screen will open to you the world of the whole Yanomami society.

Uncommon Pets: From Around the World

Rare are the people, anywhere in the world, who do not own pets. We may hunt or raise animals for food or labor, but we also need them for love. And you can't get more love sometimes than from a pet. 

For all the reasons we know, dogs and cats have long been the favorite of people everywhere. I love both, but have a sweeter spot for dogs, even though I have a few stories to tell about the dangerous dogs I have faced in my travels.

So I’ll concentrate today on uncommon pets. Farmers' kids sometimes adopt goats or chickens as pets. Like other animals, when young they are more adorable than the most expensive teddy bears. And how many societies can afford or even find teddy bears to buy? Those baby animals may lose their fluffiness as they grow up, but by then they are safe from the butcher's knife.

 

The same happens with the desert nomad kid who adopts a white baby camel or kid as his or her own personal toy and companion. 

Amazon forest Indians, who must hunt for food, have enough respect, and even regret, for the animals they must kill to feed their families, that that they adopt any progeny the dead animals may leave behind. 

Now family pets, those monkeys, sloths, opossums, birds, and others, will be fed and allowed to die of old age.