Up Above the World  (in Just Before Dinner, a tribute to Lionel Abrahams, Otterley Press 2010 (http://www.otterley.com/ott/books.htm)

In Addis Ababa, a high-speed athletic city with four lane streets and turquoise 50’s Russian Lada taxi’s, fast, courteous, I talk to Awoke Genetu. We drink coffee in Kaldi’s coffee shop on the Bole Road, just off Meskel Square; Kaldi, the Ethiopian boy who followed his goats and discovered the taste of the red coffee.

“It means New flower, Addis Ababa,” Awoke says, “but there is more than just the new flower in this country, this is an old country, the queen of Sheba lived here and gave birth to King Solomon’s son, the Ark of the Covenant is in Axum; flowers are old, they have been growing forever, and yet every year the flower dies and later a new one grows. Like us, we Ethiopians, we die and we grow again, never more beautiful, just differently beautiful to what we were. Now, you are travelling, let me tell you where to go, my favourite places?”

And so we drive to Awoke Genetu’s favourite places, the highlands north of Addis Ababa, the vast lakes of the Rift and to the south-east, the Bale Mountain range.
The Bale Mountain range, it dominates, the creation of a volcanic eruption that split the land into two, into three, into four and five; green grey, green from the watery mist, grey green grey from the cloud like drops that settle in coiled hair and coat long elegant bodies, the colour of height, a diamond, higher than heaven, a vast colour, it is drawn against the sky. The mountains move up and down, high and low, a high altitude plateau broken by thespian volcanic plugs, the spirits of crystal lakes and tensed spring water streams that sprint into rock-strewn unsteady fissures, moving, running away, running to the lowlands below.

Its epicentre, the Bale Mountains National Park, 2,400 square kilometres in area, ranging in altitude from 1,500 to 4,377 meters; a high, the highest point on which to travel and watch and think that never before will this novelty, this new flower of freshness be worn. Here the Harenna escarpment runs from east to west, it divides the area, north and south, it dissects the land and cuts a bottomless multi-layered gorge into the edge, deeper downwards the ever green moody grey medicinal anti depressant forests. Spindly trees set against the green grey height, wisps of fern and fungus dress them, a fashion show, wraithlike, vaporous, free from roaming hands.

It is midday; the land is swathed in mist; golden mist, silver mist, shroud phantom mist that is never known, never touched as it turns to water when it meets with the warmth of pale pallid dark black flesh, it melts the human bandage of human bondage. Everywhere are small pieces of round water, emerald and sluggish, the weeds that spread out on them are gloomy, overcast curling brown tendrils, the grass around is moist, marshy, clammy, a censors smothering sound.

A bird the size of a goose, a large duck, walks next to the water, the emerald water moves to the sounding of the wind, pirouettes, words in a poem, the feathers of the goose ruffle, showing colours to the earth, blending in, disguised, unmistakable. Most of its feathers are a grey brown, dull grey, a dull grey shelduck, nondescript, grey, an unremarkable colour, brown, the words are uninteresting, or is it the mind that is dull, plain, when it reads the words brown and grey, what does it place in the picture, a grey dirty man who never bathes, a spinster dressed in a comfortable brown skirt, it hardly needs a wash, so sensible. But this bird is a charcoal chocolate feathered goose, exotic, dark and pulsating, chocolate mousse with folded in flecks, indulgent. The goose, a chocolate charcoal feathered shelduck, stands next to a pool, a stream, a marsh, its legs are black, the colour of its beak is black, that perfect little black dress for all occasions, a cocktail party feathered bird. The chocolate goose has a light off white, creamy white, not a no colour, white face and neck, here its feathers flicker as they are caught in the wind, flash white and off white, creamy white, a whiter off brown, off grey, taupe, charcoal, bird, pale is pale is pallid. The blue winged goose endemic to Abyssinian highlands; a mountain bird word.

The goose opens its wings wide, it waves, a light blue marker marks time, a heart beat. Pastel blue upper wing stripes, hardly visible, along the length of the wing bone, as it opens its wings, almost to fly, the blue is brighter, added coverts along the wing side.

A goose walks, into the frame walks another, a mate, a friend, who is who, what are their genders, is it the male goose that flaps its wings violently, claps wings to the tune of the spheres, music that is light years away from a world, something, a piece of space that goes around and around, moving always, stationary. The male goose violently moves its wings, for the goose next to it, the one that saunters, ambles peacefully can only be female, womanly. She makes a sound, ‘quack’, for the sound that she makes is a word, the female goose quacks idly, sounds of meaning, she quacks to the rare Mountain Nyala that stands, head upright, horns that do not move in the fast paced wind, hidden, shy, its coat grey and shaggy, unexceptional, except that it is rare, never found, exciting. The blue winged goose pulls a frog from the reeds of the pond, her beak wraps around its throat, at the end of the beak are two black spots, gently the blood mixes with damp mixes with oily green grey mountain reeds, both of them know that soon the frog will die and become protein, nutrients for a bird, part of a cycle, a chain of food. The male goose flaps his wings again, give me some, he quacks, give me, I am hungry. But then you never can tell, maybe it is the male goose that plucks the frog from the weeds, prepares the meal, and the female goose that flaps its wings, you don’t know.

The mountain nyala looks away, looks far down the green grey misty valley and wonders why others eat frogs, they are slimy and move their four legs dangling, the mountain nyala, he is not a carnivore, green is good for him, emerald green nutrients, wholesome, colours for words, words for colours.

A goose, is it the larger one, or the smaller, struts around the other, a theatrical performance, it arches its off white, creamy white, head over its chocolate charcoal back and makes another sound, but it is the same sound, ‘quack’, the pale blue is exposed, shown to the sky, compared to the sky, daring the sky to become as blue as it is blue, but the sky remains misty grey, watery, damp, a sanctuary, there is no blue. A courtship, a vain display of blue that is not dull and brown and grey, a rare sighting, a courting goose of which there are only 1500 left in the world, 1500 in the midst of billions of people, its rare to find such a goose, and it does not quack, the sound that it makes is a wind sound, a flute, a penny whistle, whee-whu-whu ….. penk penk penk.

Along the ridge there is a movement, a red movement, chestnut although there are no chestnuts in Ethiopia, but chestnut sounds sophisticated, civilised, they smell of a cold European Christmas, rich; a movement of red, not the glamour of crimson, the crown of royalty, but blood red, a living red, breathing red, the red heart of poverty. A red chestnut fox runs along the side of the road, it moves with two others, the other two are also blood red, not crimson, not rich and chestnut, but the colour of blood tears, they weep for their loss, the loss of their lives, there are only 400 left in these mountains. The fur on their bodies makes a pattern, a woven tapestry, strands of silky hair, elegantly smoothed, sleek, a hint of grease, a tail, a pennant flutters, it does not have a white tip, it will not surrender. Their tears contrast with the green grey misty mist shaped landscape, contrast with the wet and the rain, they forage for meat at their own funeral. The endemic simian mountain fox, some call it a wolf. A fox, it makes a high pitched call, a wolf whistle, another replies, the virtuosity of the soprano, the blue winged goose looks up, she claps her wings at the running performance. The foxes hold their tails above the green and purple heather, sniffing the ground, jumping, running from the hunter, the hunted. There are many rodents here, the biggest being the giant mole-rat, the green grey misty water logged ground heaves with their movements, their hole like homes are open to heaven, then they are filled, filled with the rat, the earth moves as the mole rat hurtles from one hole to another, escaping the jaws of the rare simian mountain fox, a wolf whistle sound. The fox is small, it weighs up to ten kilograms, and yet it is dangerous, endangered, battered by its scarcity, by the quick witted giant mole rat and the mist and the people and the red, but not so red that it can be called crimson, a foxy red of the hunted, the almost extinct.

Nature is comforting; it is a world of repetition and routine, artistic.

Next to the road, half hidden under a giant rock, secretive, walks a single rouget’s rail, it raises its tail, almost touches the clouds. Some described this bird as plain, a plain dark olive, a dull bird with cinnamon under parts; plain, dull, its feathers smell of exotic oriental spice, cinnamon, it tastes of cinnamon, sweet, the heart of a perfume; it has forgotten that it is a god even though it cannot begin to be one as it has no words to speak, in the beginning was the word. It is alone, but you can make it god, you can give it words, shrills, pipes in a symphonic chorus, wreee – creeeuw – dideet.

The vegetation here varies according to the altitude. Around Dinsho, in the north, there are grass riverine plains, bordered by bands of bushes, sagebrush and St. John’s wort. Wild flowers, lobelia, geraniums, red-hot pokers, and Alchemilla, form carpets of colour, bright, dim, different parts of a rainbow spectrum. Higher up royal purple heather appears, small bushes, mature trees, small in the cold, larger in the warmth.

The giant lobelia tree stretches up into the sky, it reaches its green grey lined skeleton body upwards to where the angels sit around a chess board and move the queen, the knight, the rook; it plays their game. Sinewy, it has no colour, no off white or creamy white, no flesh, no feathers, no red fur coat, it stretches its one long stem singly, one stem and one lobelia tree, next to it is another, they are alone, lonely, a memory of being apart, a silhouette, fingers that move behind the shadows of the light, light instrument, a paint brush, the X Ray Man Ray rayograph, the dream stripped bare of the art of painting.

Goba, south to Dolo-Mena, across eastwards to where the sun cannot rise, the Sanetti Plateau, the highest road in Africa, 4,000-metre, it crosses a contour, turns a corner, moves into space, higher, highest. Downwards, a juniper forest, its leaves are green, bright green, emerald, thick and lush. Small round berries scatter along the gravel road, purple, royalty, the heather from the highland, a roman emperor, a bottle of gin, the ruin of a mother.  And further down the depression, a forest of St John’s wart, clinically it does nothing, and nothing is never full, but the words fix you, mend you medically, imagination makes a memory true, the forest of depression, happiness mends, the idiocy of the embroiderer who sews, a drop of red, not crimson, just red, blood, falls from the needle, a blood prick on a finger, a new flower grows.