For the last four years I have produced the travel TV show “Anthony Bourdain – No Reservations”, ran around the world, ate some funky things and ended up moving from New York City to Berlin, Germany….. I’m a TV Producer, Camera woman, Travel Journalist and now humble foreigner in a new city!
January 10, 2009
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The Ritual
PART ONE ETHIOPIA:
Admitting that I cannot dance is an understatement. Ask any friend of mine and they will wince. I am an embarrassment in clubs, a sore sight at weddings even Bar Mitzvahs are off limits. But what do you do when three men from the Hamar tribe in Ethiopia come carrying Kalashnikovs and invite you and your boyfriend to a midnight dance in the middle of the bush. They don’t speak German, English or even the national language of Ethiopia, Amharic. You’re not even sure that the charades they just performed in front of you mean “let’s dance, my sista”
But let me regress:
For the last four years of my travel job I have willfully embraced fecal matter, bad roads, worse hair days, pollution, third world hospitality…..which means EATING ANYTHING THAT IS PLACED BEFORE YOU and the western luxury of the FREEDOM to travel…after all I am a travel journalist. I travel with Anthony Bourdain, I travel alone and I travel with my friends. But until Ethiopia, I can safely say I have not really scratched the surface of what it means to travel. Which means…leaving the famous chef in his cozy NY apartment, dropping the TV camera and forget about those 5 star hotels at the end of a long shoot day. I attribute this humbling experience to Stefan, who challenges my lofty and excessive travel concepts just by the mere fact that he waited a lifetime for the Berlin wall to tumble so that he could cross the border in his own city. So I guess Ethiopia is my story of how I learned to hate myself for having thought that travel is a god given right. The truth is other people in parallel universes travel in the search of water and food, not for another stamp in their passport. But apparently everyone around the world can shake a tale feather, except me.
THE RITUAL DANCE PARTY:
It’s midnight. We spent all day with a German ethnologist who for the last 35 years has studied and decoded the Hamar people and their language. I’ve been drinking fresh cows milk and I’m covered in flies. It may be the milk, but I’m feeling very peculiar…like I may need to get my groove on. On the other hand, we’ve been only a week in Ethiopia and I’ve already realized that I am a sissy, weak-ass American who has NO SURVIVAL SKILLS.
After dinner, the boy’s from the cattle camp we are staying in decide that they wanna go to a dance. Someone in the camp heard from someone out in the bush that there’s some kinda DANCE going on. We head off with three guys with machine guns and stumble into the night. This is completely surreal to begin with. Stefan walks repeatedly into branches with 3-inch long death-needles attached to them and ends up having to hold the Chiefs hand. Suddenly we stop and listen for the party. I hear nothing, not a peep from the bush. It’s like we are a bunch of 16-year old kids driving around suburbia looking for a house party. Although we don’t hear a sound, we are soon surrounded by a huge group of men. They have come to us in the middle of the night in the middle of the bush. The men form a circle and begin to chant. Stefan is included in this ritual and I am made to watch. They are now hopping up and down and racing towards me in what I assume is some sort of courtship. Soon the girls arrive from a neighboring cattle camp and teach me how to react to these offers. We link arms and hop back in the boys faces as if to say “OH yeah, you think you’re all that?” It’s beautiful and amazing and the best part is I am not holding a camera I am just living inside this moment.
There is just one problem. While Stefan has found his rhythm and can now chant and dance at the same time, I cannot seem to hop at the same time as the ten-year-old girls who are holding my arm. All of my childhood ballet-class fears rush back. Suddenly I am the fat kid again in the pink leotard. The girls teach me over and over again to hop, walk, hop and thrust my pelvis towards the guys. If my grandma saw this she would blush. Eventually after two hours of tribal dancing I finally get it. There are cheers from the group. “We taught the uncoordinated white woman to dance!!!!! Hooray!”
Stefan and I leave the group in silence, amazed by what we just experienced. Now we have an empty, long road to make our way back through alone. The moon has risen and we see a little clearer in the dusty winds and thorny trails. I am dancing all the way back to the cattle camp where we spend the evening under a mosquito net, but better under the Ethiopian sky. As I lay there I imagine my ballet instructor, thin as a rail, pirouetting over to me and pushing my chin up. If I knew how to find her I would call her and tell her I’m ready to dance. I’ve got a few new moves.
