HARAR – HAND FED HYENAS, A DEAD POET’S SOCIETY, AND KHAT

Harar, the gateway to eastern Ethiopia and 500 kilometers from the capitol of Addis Ababa, is nearly the perfect walking destination.  The picturesque 7^th century Unesco World Heritage Site (due to its Jugol City Wall and with its 5 entry gates and Faras Magala Old Town) offers an amusingly confused array of twisted alleys, donkey-cart filled streets, narrow dirt lanes, historic buildings, shrines, tombs, shaded dining spots, and 82 small mosques.  With very little alcohol …  not a pleasing condition considering the local heat and humidity!

It has a reputation of being the 4^th holiest city in Islam, after Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.  For centuries it has been the crossroads of trade between the Horn of Africa, Arabia, and Red Sea ports.  Sir Richard Burton – the intrepid 19^th century British explorer – claimed that domesticated coffee began here.  Khat (the flowering shrub that is widely chewed throughout the reaches of the Red Sea and serves as a mild stimulant) is said to have originated here also.

In fact, the production of khat almost completely dominates the economy around Harar.  It is offered to visitors either retail or wholesale by urchin sized salesmen on public streets, learning the family trade.  Open booths offer it freely – including samples. Entire cafes of listless men will be whiling away the hot afternoon hours, fanning themselves and lazily chewing khat between drawled conversations as a means of social intercourse.

Prices for khat or qat (pronounced “chat”) have exploded in the past five years, as demand has rise to the point where women and adolescents now use the dependency inducing herb as well.  This has led to some amusing ripples-on-the-pond effects.  Farmers with fifth grade educations growing the  monamine alkaloid (with an active ingredient called “cathinone”) have gotten so rich that they routinely buy luxury foreign automobiles (which look positively silly when held up in traffic by donkey carts), tourist buses, and mini-van fleets just to have some place to park their money.

Taxi drivers – who can not afford the vehicles – enter into lease or other payment arrangement with the uneducated khat producers.  Usually this is based on some measure of usage.  Which routinely leads to the taxi drivers making a wink and a nod call to their khat farmer or his front man, indicating they “are sick, or the vehicle is broken down and can’t be driven today” … as they casually continue driving me about town.  One can only speculate as a result, how badly the much more sophisticated local bankers probably abuse the khat producers when their turn at the trough arrives.

The influence of khat is not merely local.  It is exported to nearby Red Sea destinations, and flown out in bulk by cargo jets to tolerant countries with relaxed narcotics rules (the US, Canada, Great Britain, and much of the European Union do not allow the importation, growth, or sale of khat).  It is often used as a medium of currency.  Forgot to pay the gas bill?  Behind on your phone balance?  Just make up your payment in khat!

In fact, in a recent dispute between Ethiopia and its tiny neighbor Djibouti, the two sides could not come to terms.  Each side offered the usual cocktail of dark hints and promises to the other.  The Ethiopians did not budge, however.  They merely put a stop to cross-border deliveries of khat for two weeks.  Djibouti negotiators pleaded and threatened but without any comeback of equal gravity.  They quickly came to their senses, and caved completely to Ethiopian terms.

While stumbling through those fascinating alleys and cobbled streets of Harar, I came by accident across “Arthur Rimbaud House,” named after the French poet of renown.  Here was a serendipitous opportunity to learn firsthand about one of the most colorful men of the 20^th century.  He has shown up most recently for example, dressed as an action figure and the whispered inspiration for Sylvester Stallone’s movie series, “Rambo.”

Rimbaud was born in 1854 in the northeast foothills of Ardenne to a French army captain and a stubborn and disciplined mother he called “The Mouth of Darkness.”  His father left at age 6.  He was after that isolated as a young man, restless, and alienated.  But he showed a thirst for learning and an early talent for expression.  His early mentor George Izambard, a professor at Charleville Academy, was forcibly removed from further influence by Rimbaud’s strict Catholic mother after giving the young man access to controversial literature (including “Les Miserables”).

His parting response was to leave Rimbaud keys to the entire library upon his departure.  Rimbaud, a speed reader even as a youth, sent a telegram a week following Izambard’s departure: “I am bored.  Send more.  I have finished them all already!”

Considered a teenaged poetic prodigy, Rimbaud wrote the acclaimed “The Drunken Boat,” plus “A Season in Hell” and “Sleeper in the Valley” about the Franco-Prussian war taking place close to his village of Charleville.  He opined that an artist, particularly a poet, should experience mental and physical pain induced by “long, intimidating, immense and rational derangement of the senses … with enormous suffering” in order to realize artistic transcendence and give honesty to their work.

He went on to Paris at 17, had a notorious affair with the French poet Paul Verlaine (who published Rimbaud’s collected works in 1895), and the two moved on to London where they lived in squalor, perusing the reading room at The British Museum by day but often descending into extended bouts with hashish and absinthe by night.  The affair ended in a very public lover’s quarrel – with Rimbaud getting shot in the wrist in 1873 in Brussels.  Disgraced among his usual circles, Rimbaud quietly returned to London in the company of poet Germain Nouveau, where he wrote his groundbreaking 42-poem series Illuminations.

Yet as suddenly as it began, his fountain of creativity ended.  Some suggested Rimbaud’s very volatility and recklessness had been the catalyst for his work.  In any case he stopped writing by the age of 21.  He then traveled extensively by foot in Europe as a libertine, later obtaining free passage to Indonesia by joining the Dutch Army in 1876.  Four months later he deserted, and narrowly avoided the firing squad in making his way back to France.

Two years later he journeyed to Cypress, where he worked as a quarry foreman.  Within 24 months he had relocated to Aden (Yemen), working as an employee for a firm in Harar that allowed him to set up shop here as a merchant on his own in 1884.  During that time, Rimbaud befriended the Governor of Harar, Ras Makonnen (father of the future emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie) and also King Menelik II.  His offices were established in the present day Arthur Rimbaud House.

He became the first western coffee merchant in Harar.  Also a trader, well-known photographer, explorer, arms smuggler, and some say … spy for Menelik II. His early photographs of 19^th century Harar on display upstairs in the Arthur Rimbaud Museum are stunning, even by today’s equipment and standards.  Rimbaud became a Sufi and an Arabist, changing his name to Abidurabouh.  An Arabic stamp was made with this adopted name of the formerly devout Catholic, which literally read: “Service of Allah.” He married an Ethiopian woman, Asha, and sired a son by her.  He later took a second wife, Miriam.

In February 1891 back in Aden, Rimbaud developed what was initially thought to be arthritis in his right knee.  By March the condition had become extremely painful. Rimbaud remained in Aden until May to set his financial affairs in order, then caught the steamer L'Amazone back to France for more sophisticated treatment.  The voyage took 13-days. On arrival in Marseille he was immediately admitted to the hospital where his right leg was amputated on May 27^th. The post-operative diagnosis was bone cancer.

Following a short stay at the family farm in Roche, Rimbaud attempted to travel back to Africa, but en route his health deteriorated, and he was returned to the Hospital de la Conception in Marseilles.  He spent additional time there in great pain, attended by his sister Isabelle, before dying on November  10^th,1891 at the age of 37. On his deathbed, he sent 4000 francs back to Harar to provide for his wife and son.  He was interred in Charleville.

“His genius, its flowering explosion, and sudden extinction, still astonishes” is the epitaph offered Rimbaud by contemporary writer Cecil Hackett, characterizing the mercurial poet’s sudden rise and fall.  French poet Paul Valery stated that "all known literature is written in the language of common sense—except Rimbaud's".  His poetry influenced the symbolists, dadaists, and surrealists.  Later artists adopted not only some of his themes, but his inventive use of form and language.   

Among those influenced  by Rimbaud’s writing (as well as his bohemian life) were many 20th century writers, musicians and artists, including: artist Pablo Picasso, poet Dylan Thomas, writers Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, Vladimir Nabokov and Henry Miller, and singers Van Morrison, Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan.

Despite Rimbaud’s luminosity, the real attraction in Harar takes place outside the city walls nightly shortly following dusk.  Throughout the day, virtually everybody in town (if they are not offering you khat) asks if you have a guide yet?  “Guide for what,” I respond.  “To the feeding,” they respond.  “Oh, THAT …” and then go on to negotiate my best terms for what has to be one of the strangest spectacles on the planet.

Each night (except when it is raining heavily), in two separate locations slightly downhill from the Jugol City Walls, a jolly mix of hundreds of tourists and locals gather for what is definitely not your garden variety “dog and pony show.”  Far from it.  The pageant as it were, begins with a handler walking down an inclined road leading away from the walls toward several gullies out of sight below.  He calls out in some strange, guttural pitch.  Followed by several high-pitched whistles. Words of encouragement occasionally follow.

Shortly after 7:30 PM, after it is fully dark, he suddenly reappears, staff in hand and looking all the part of the Pied Piper.  But instead of leading children, what follows is a  leery band of spotted hyenas.  Despite the fact this procession has taken place since the 1950s, they take one halting step at a time, swing their heads cautiously from side to side, and follow at a safe distance.  The handler then sets up shop in the middle of a dirt square, armed with two baskets of stringy meat set up nearby.  Several cars drive near and position their headlights on him.  The hyenas gradually approach.

At first, the handler has to induce the hyenas to come closer by throwing meat their way.  He then narrows his range.  The meat is tossed or eventually dropped ever closer to his perch.  Eventually, after much confidence building, the hyenas are within reaching distance.  Then the handler does something inexplicable.  He puts the meat on a stick, holds the stick in his mouth, and leans toward the nearest hyena as if to give them a kiss.

Since the hyenas lunge at the last second when grabbing for the meat, this practice requires great steadiness and nerves of steel on the part of the handler.  The hyenas have more crushing force in their jaws pound for pound than lions. A group of hyenas can easily take a lion, or chase it away from a fresh kill. Thus feeding mistakes are not taken lightly here. Both tenders and hyenas approach each other very carefully at first. The most fun derived from this was watching baby and juvenile hyenas being introduced to this nightly tradition. have more crushing force in their jaws pound for pound than lions.  A group of hyenas can easily take a solo lion, or chase one away from a fresh kill.  Thus feeding mistakes are not taken lightly here.  Both tenders and hyenas engage in this ritual very carefully.  A lack of sudden movements on the part of the human is noticeably evident.

The most fun for me was derived from this watching baby and juvenile hyenas being introduced to the process, and observing some of the bolder ones become more and more confident in their meal snatching.

Of course, snatching of a different sort follows.  As the crowd dissipates, the handler sends out his minions, who badger onlookers for fees and donations -- whether a guide has brought them along for an agreed fee or not.  Sometimes they are nearly as gutsy as the handler with meat hanging from his teeth.  When money is displayed in your wallet and reasonability discussions ensue, they snatch righteously at the colorful bills.  All of them.  Counting apparently is to come later.

This occasionally requires a hand slap, or in some cases, a gentle shove to remind them of the sovereignty of a pocketbook.  One fellow in particular persisted in this for two blocks, complaining that I “owed” him more money.  Only a threat to draw in the police resulted in his eventual withdrawal.