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Up until the moment you meet someone in real time, everything is conjecture. There is so much to learn in that very first moment. I’ve been given a couple of different names for guides and tour operators in Ethiopia from good friends and traveling sisters who I trust. Until the moment Chapy walked into the hostel, he was just one of the guys who I am trying to negotiate a deal with.

Tall, skinny and punctual, he looks exactly like his Facebook photo. He might have had a blue t-shirt on, I can’t recall. All I remember is the bright smile, how tall and straight he seems to stand and the sense of warmth wafting off him. I didn’t need to talk to him. In that very first moment, my instinct had already chosen him to be my guide. He recognizes me right the way and pulls up a chair. Casey, one of the Aussi I meet the afternoon before, and I are having breakfast, he is considering joining me on this trip down south into the Lower Omo Valley. We talk over the adjustment we would need to make in our program if Casey and Dylan are to join us and the cost involved. Chapy could have asked for more money seeing the original price was for me alone but he said that he given me his word and so it is. A man who understands honor, the value of his word and upholds it. I’m sold.

Casey and Dylan is leaving a day earlier than us and we will rendezvous in Awasa before we head for the tribes.

Chapy and I drive south the next morning. Just six-months prior, he had taken Tin, one of my traveling sisters on the same route and they had a great time. Tin has this amazing talent. People fall in love with her within seconds of meeting her and tracing her footsteps over the next ten days is like being friend of a rockstar. Maybe because we already share a mutual love so there was no need to keep his guard up or maybe my habit of asking too many questions and getting under another’s skin works better than I think, it was barely noon when I had Chapy in tears.

It all started innocently enough. I wanted to know how long has he been working as a guide and about his family.

He is the middle child in a family of three, with an older brother who runs an orphanage and a sister who just completed her University degree in Physics. After high school, Chapy joined the army and fought in the latest rendition of the Ethiopian-Somalia War before he became a tour operator. His father died in a drunk driving accident when he was 11 years old. His mom moved back up north to Mek’ele after the accident.

Did you go with your mom when she moved back up north?
No I stayed in Addis.

Why didn’t you go with your mom?
Chapy shakes his head and would only say that she was a hard mom.

His conversational English halters and becomes muffled when he talks about himself. He tells me about how he was “crazy” when he was in the army. He drank too much, smoke too much and was fucked up in the head. The army was a big university for him, he says but now he is okay. It was hard, but now it is okay he says again for emphasis and flashes me the smile of a smuggler. The smile that is meant to mask away all the hurt and brush over all the details that still bleeds when touched. I know that smile, I was a smuggler once too.

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Our coffee came along with the check and I have endless follow up questions. Who did he live with after his mom left him behind? Please don’t think me unkind. Maybe I should have stopped with the line of questioning but when presented with the option of caring or upholding the veil of polite society, I choose to care.

Chapy took a sip of his coffee and told me how he lived on the street for about a year and hustled random jobs. Him and his brother paid for his younger sister to stay in the dorms of a Seven Adventist School. It was really hard he says again, but it is now okay. This little phrase is his mantra. Both an affirmation and a prayer. He covers his eyes with heel of his hands and inhales. I didn’t realize he was on the verge of tears until just then. I saw my younger self in him, in the harsh childhood, the desire to be strong and brave over the hurt.

We drive south.

He pulls over at an Israeli strawberry farm and treats me to a pint of strawberries. Last summer was a summer of cherries. I had cherries everywhere I went as a remote way to participate in Elaine’s yearly Cherry Pie ritual. This is the second pint of delicate strawberries I’ve had this season. Could be the summer of strawberries?

We meet up with Casey and Dylan in Awasa and make plans for the next day. There is an awkwardness of strangers between the four of us. Casey and Dylan are new to me, and most certainly new to Chapy. I can’t tell if the distance is temporary or if it will be problematic for us over the 10 days. Chapy and I shared an order of tibs for dinner. Maybe it was the tears from this morning or maybe it was the act of eating from the same plate but there is something new between us now, a connection of some sort, something that was not here before.

On our way to breakfast the next morning, Chapy sees a friend from the army and pulls over. Mike runs across the street. Watching him with other people has become my favorite past time. Despite of his best efforts he is a novice smuggler. His moods and feelings are as unguarded and lacking in facade as the weather. He is just…open. They hug each other repeatedly. All they saw was each other and never took note of the fergenie in the car or the traffic behind them. What happened to them in Somalia that created this bond? This is love I am witnessing.

We head for the fish market in Awasa and a swarm of children surrounds us, ferengie, ferengie!!! Chapy talks briefly to a kid and he runs off. I wonder what is the kid getting for him. A single cigarette as it turns out. I thought you quiet smoking? A sly smile, well….this is just one. Chapy stays close to me, I feel his protective presence. It didn’t take long for him to see that I am okay in the crowd, in the dirt, amongst the flying fish scales and guts.

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Coming to Ethiopia was a last minute decision. I swapped out Tanzania for Ethiopia on the itinerary after talking to Tin who has spend the last two winters in these parts. I arrived with no expectations but the image of the starving famine child covered in flies from the 90’s is still the only image I have on file in the memory bank. We stopped on the side of the road somewhere between Awasa and Arba Minch and all I see is lush green valley moving towards even greener mountains. All I see is green green and more green. I never thought it would look like this.

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The roads are filled with random pot-holes and nearly always crowded with livestock. I want to drive. I can feel the rally pulsing in me still and I want to drive! We are suck listening to the random unmarked CDs filled with pirated western music. There is an auxiliary jack but we don’t have a cable to plug our iPods in. P!nk plays on repeat and all four of us sing the chours “you got get up and try and try and try.” I never thought Ethiopia would be sound tracked to P!nk.

Everywhere we go, I watch how people greet Chapy. He is loved. People like him. My comprehension of the language extends no further than coffee, okay and hello but I don’t need words to see what others thought of him. There is a sense of openness in the people here. Be it the kids on the side road or the adults in the villages or the tribals in the Omo Valley. No matter how hostile their initial looks are; if you smile and radiate, without fail, the hostility is gone within seconds and they return with an open smile.

We camp under mango trees in Tumi and have every one of our meals at the shabby Tourist Hotel. There is an expensive lodge in this tiny town most tourists’ stay at. The Tourist Hotel is a budget option that caters mostly to the tour operators. It’s runs on generator power at night, complete with an outhouse and I’m pretty sure it has no running water. Chapy feels at home here.

Every day his mood gets a little darker, he is a little more withdrawn but he finds ways to unfolds another bit of himself to me. He doesn’t ask me questions. This is about him needing to be heard and witnessed. We progress from one cigarette a day to three to ever more. I gladly indulge my own habits and arbitrary rule on smoking by bumming drags off his smoke. We share meals and cigarettes. He no longer stands beside me in the protective posture as that day in Awsas. He walks beside me as a friend which translates to me paying local prices while Casey and Dylan are being charged foreigner’s rate.

The generator didn’t come on this night at the campsite. The moon is waxing towards full and I am alone for the first time in days. I stand by the dry riverbed and listen to the life sounds of night. Chapy comes back to camp with Casey and lights a cigarette. There is a lot of chatter about nothing much. Casey is doing most of the talking and I feel Chapy’s silence. One cigarette after another. Suddenly, Chapy start to tell us about how he broke his left arm in Somalia. A fight broke out, they were caught off guard, the building collapsed and he broke his arm, they were being shot at, his arm was just dangling there as he was trying to grab his rifle. A friend came to give him cover and was shot dead. It all came rambling out as we sat under the mango tree, unprompted. Was it the darkness that triggered this? Was it the chain smoking? He is crying. I put my hand on his arm and say nothing but I hold on.

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There are two little boys here in Tumi who adores Chapy. The boys are about 3 and 6 and I think they are semi-orphans. There is no real clear answer on where their parents are. They are being taken care of by whoever will have them for the night. Every day for the three days we camped at Tumi, the youngest kid would wait at the entrance of the driveway for Chapy. He would buy the kid a soda, an excises book for school, feed him a meal from his own plate or when both of the boys are there, he would buy a meal for the both of them.

He is different when he is with the boys. He lights up from the inside and the darkness that chased him to tears under the mango tree is gone.

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In between the markets, visiting the tribes and witnessing the bull jumping ceremony of the Hammer tribe, we hang out at the concrete patio at the Tourist Hotel. Ayto is a tribal guide and full of swagger. Both Ayto and Chapy’s phone rings non-stop and judging by intonation and body language, all the calls are girls looking for Ayto and Chapy is playing defense for him. Boys will be boys. The ritual of courtship changes little. How many girlfriends do you have Ayto? Twenty. Ayto replies in full confidence. No wonder your phone is blowing up. How can you possibly keep twenty girls satisfied I tease. Ayto retracts his boast and tells me that he doesn’t have any girlfriend but there is this one girl who is friends with them all and she is the one who is keep on calling. My mama is a Shaman and when I was borne she put a spell on me. Any girl who touches me will fall in love with me. Ayto says. Really!? I stick out my hand. Try me!

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We are heading north now. Jinka, then Kay Afar before we are back in Arba Minch and Addis Ababa again. You can always feel the internal clock in you click over when you’ve pass the halfway point. We arrived in Jinka and the boys want to be alone, close quarters for too many days on end. I should stay in my room and write except I can feel the life outside and I want to see the town living. Chapy and I do around of car maintenance: fuel, air filter cleaned and we stop by the river bed to wash some of the red dirt off the car. We sit by the riverside just watch. There is a truck that is being washed. Women doing laundry. Men bathing. Children swimming. Cows crossing the river. Kids filling up plastic bottles with the river water to carry home. We didn’t talk much and smoke a little. I love this moment and moments like these. There is nothing breath taking, no tribes, no history, no natural wonders…just life being lived.

It is dusk when we head back to the hotel. The scene in front of me is shrouded in a pink dusk with the mist rising off the mountains straight ahead. There is private air-field that is seldom used to the right and there are guys playing soccer, cows grazing and people meandering about. I inhale, feel life, feel love and wish I could hold on to this moment.

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Chapy is not right this morning. He was insomniac the night before. He was quiet in the car and there is a sense of resentment towards the boys. We get to Kay Afar for the weekly market where four different tribes come together. The Hammer, Ari, Banna and Karo. He is not feeling well and sends me off with a local boy instead of coming with me himself. Casey is curious about all things agriculture and he joins Ekay and I. The shooting has been hard here in the Omo Valley. The tribes are used to asking foreigners for money in exchange for their photographs. I could go on about my thoughts on this practice but not here. Irrespective to payment or none payment, the very essence of documentary photography requires the subject to be somewhat unaware of the photographer’s presence. I am finding increasingly difficult to make my presence minimal. I am meet with unprecedented hostility in the market at Kay Afar, the first time ever in 15 years of shooting.IMG_4908

Ekay takes us to the local honey wine bar jet betoch after and we I hide ourselves in a corner. We want to draw as little attention to ourselves as possible. We just want to watch. A couple of kids play with my hair while Casey and I talk on. I’m not really paying attention to the kids who are playing with my hair and it is not until she triumphantly hand my braids back to me did I realize she had used a liberal amount of spit to help her braid my hair!

Where have you been!? Chapy runs up to us. His sense of panic had less to do with our where about than something else. After all, Kay Afar is not that big of a town and he sent us off with someone he trusts. I wash the spit out of my hair with a cold bucket shower and have a very late lunch. After we ate, Casey stares at me as if I am supposed to entertain him somehow. Do you want to go for a walk with me Chapy? No. The town is full of drunk tribals tonight, lets go for a drive.

We pull off the side of the road about a mile of out town and park. I climb on top of the car and see the switch back roads, the hills that hide Kay Afar on the other side and the mountains all around. The moon is already pretty high up in the dusky night and it is almost full. A kid wonders by us, looking lost and dejected. He had lost a goat and he is trying to find it. Sorry kid, we’ve not seen a lost goat wandering about. Trucks ride their breaks down the switchback and I wonder if Chapy will be the talk of the town tomorrow. Sitting on the side of the road with a ferengie!

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I can feel the clouds in him dissipate. I ask him about the boys at Tumi. The hotel owner kind of takes care of them and runs a tab for their needs, which Chapy pays for whenever he is down south with clients. I had no idea. It is okay. As long as I have work, then I can afford to pay for the boys. To live for someone, isn’t that what life is about?

He tells me about how he lives by the airport in Addis and he can see the runway and all the flights taking off. Sometime I think about leaving. I would like to see the world first before I settle my life he says. I wonder if he too has the soul of a pirate like me, like you, or maybe he is the pirate’s apprentice. Can he know of his pirate nature when he has never been out to sea? The moon light sooths over everything and makes it all right. The hills, the road ahead, the road behind, the hut in the distance, and him. I came out here for the tribes and the markets; I never thought the thing that would get under my skin in Ethiopia would be this man.

Back at the hotel, he gives me a hug. Thank you. I feel better.

I didn’t pay really close attention to the original itinerary we had discussed before I got Ethiopia. Every couple of days he would tell me what is to come but honestly I didn’t spent a lot of time fussing over it. I know it will be something different each day and that is about all. Dorza, a village on the mountaintop at 2500km is where we are heading on this second to last day. Dylan has found Internet and stayed behind. Casey is so tired of the children asking him for money that he rode with us to Dorza but stayed in the car.

There is a quick temperature drop at this altitude. I don’t have my parka with me and it is starting to rain. I head into the market with the local guide, Thay. My heart fills at the first sight of this market!

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The red hill slops upward and is dotted with hundreds of vendor with plastic tarps and umbrellas. There are horses everywhere, each of them have the reins tied to their front leg, hobbling them so their owner can find them later. I wrap my camera in my scarf and curse myself for having only taken one camera with me. Thay and I hide under the overhang with the locals for the rain to ease. After the heat of the plains, this cool rain feels so good on my skin. Thay and I walk around, sliding around on the red mud, and I shoot conservatively. I only have 20 frames of film on me and the iPhone. That is all. Sister! Sister! The women vendors call to me. You are beautiful, I say to them. Can I have a photo?!  Thay is trying to tell me about all the things they grow here in Dorza but I am no stranger to produce and I just want to shoot. Do you know this guy? Thay asks me. I turn around and see Chapy. I hug him tight. Thank you! Thank you. This is beautiful!

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I run through the short 20 frames of film and we head into a local spot for raw meat and honey wine for lunch. Chapy dips the raw meat in chili powder; this is love he says. Love and truth all in one, he points to the chili powder. We have a splendid lunch on wooden benches and dirt floor. In this moment I am one of them. A friend not a ferengie. Our mouths are on fire from the chili and Chapy buys a length of sugar cane from one of the kids. The sugar offsets the heat and when we had enough he give the rest to a child walking past.

Our last night is in Arba Minch before the long drive back to Addis. I have been trying to kick the onset of flu for a couple of days and am feeling feverish. The power is out and I hear Chapy sitting outside talking. The fever makes me want to put my head down next to someone. I sit down on the cold tile next to him and the lady at the hotel who adores Chapy says something to him about me. I don’t need to understand Amharic to know what she said. How many cows am I worth? I ask Chapy. I can give you ten cows! You don’t have ten cows and I’m worth more than that. I can sell my car and then I would have ten cows! I put my head on his shoulder. He feels like medicine, cooling my fever. I sit with him until I can feel the drowsiness from the Codine before I cocoon myself into the mosquito net fort I’ve built and sleep.

We arrive back in Addis Ababa and I say good-bye Casey and Dylan. There is an inexplicable rush of adrenaline. Safe travels boys. Chapy drops me off at my hostel and we make plans for dinner the next night. I know this is not goodbye, I am in Ethiopia for another week and I will see him again before I leave the country but I feel the distance multiply. Maybe that is the reason for the adrenaline rush. A last ditch effort to bend time and space to stay under the mango tree, on the porch of the hotel in Arba Minch, as his friend. Back in Addis, I am a different person to him than the one who sat on the roof of his car and listened. Here in the city, I am a foreigner who is spending the afternoon paying for WiFi in the Hilton lobby as my life beckons and requiring my attention.

I never really know how these conversations start. They just do. His half sister (from his mom’s first marriage) is in Addis and wants to see him. She just got married and there is family function that he has been asked to attend. As always when he talks about family and his past, his English becomes muffled and out comes rage and abandon that I’ve not seen before. There is understandable anger towards a mother that didn’t protect him and now wants love and devotion. His voice cracks and he digs the heel of his palm into his eyes, as he is about to cry. I never fully saw how self-made he is until now. Abandon to hustle the streets to finishing school to seeing your friends get killed in front of you in the army to working a decent career for himself. He should be proud. I look into his eyes and tell him without a doubt that I think he did good. He did real good. Tears. I wish he could see himself as I see him. A handsome guy with a smile that lights up the room and a heart of gold.

I wondered if he was a landlocked pirate but never expect for him to be one of the lost boys.

I leave Addis tomorrow and I wonder what I’ve done. My curiosity prompted Chapy to open his heart and unfold. I listened and I told him the truth as I know it. I witnessed his beauty and I try to affirm the person he is. I cannot fix him. Nor can I take away the hurt. Yet leaving seems irresponsible somehow. Then I think about all the aid workers here in Africa and our comings and goings. Is it fair and right that we come and ask to be let in only to leave eventually? Have I cheapened what Chapy shared with me in private by telling you this story?

Stockard Channings’ characters in Six Degree of Separation protests echoes in my mind, “I will not turn him into an anecdote!”

It is never really the attraction itself that stays with me, what I hold dear. The sights and the programs are merely a conduit for an experience, a revelation; a chance to connect…the thing is never the thing.

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