by Dervla Murphy
This book appears for Geography of Africa in the Mater Amabilis™ Lesson 5 plans.
Originally I picked it up because I thought my son might enjoy it more than The Flame Trees of Thika and Out of Africa, being of a more adventuresome nature. It is certainly more adventurous. Dervla Murphy is a travel writer from Ireland who started her career with a book on her bike ride from Ireland to India. She wrote In Ethiopia with a Mule after hiking through Ethiopia in late 1966 and early 1967. She walked, climbed, and tumbled more than 1,000 miles in just over three months, then lived in the capital another six weeks.
Ms. Murphy arrived in Ethiopia from Ireland with more money in her pocket than most Ethiopians will ever see, as well as the support of local dignitaries, but she depends on the people of the country as she travels through lands without hotels, sleeping in homes she finds along the way and leading a mule she cannot load. Her descriptions are lively, beautiful, and often humorous.
On the last lap I passed a big British War Cemetery and gazed into it enviously, feeling that a cemetery rather than a hotel was the obvious resting place for anyone in my condition.Ethiopia's landscape is intimately learned when traveling by foot. Ms. Murphy often traveled by barely perceptible tracks through mountain passes and river valleys. Her joy was as much in the physical struggle to trek each day as it was in the physical beauty surrounding her.
Then quickly a faint pink flowed up from the hidden horizon -- giving mountains and valley a new, soft, shadowed beauty -- and soon this had deepened to a red-gold glow which seemed briefly to hold all the splendour of all the dawns that ever were. To lie beneath such a sky, surrounded by such peaks, brings an almost intolerably intense awareness of the duality of our nature. We belong to intimately and joyously and tragically to this physical world, and by its own laws we soon must leave it. Yet during these moments one knows, too, with humility and certainty, that each human spirit is immortal -- for time cannot destroy whatever element within us reverences the glory of a dawn in the mountains.Later, as she travels around Lake Tana, her descriptions are reminiscent of the treks through Africa by the likes of Stanley and Livingstone.
Twenty minutes later I had discovered that the 'grassy plain' was a peculiarly hellish semi-swamp. Apart from patches of black mud, in which we occasionally sank to our knees, the vegetation was diabolical. Thick, wiry grass grew shadow-high, the stiff, dense reeds were seven to nine feet tall, and a slim, five-foot growth, which looked dead, had such powerfully resilient thorny branches that I soon began to imagine it was deliberately thwarting me.Ms. Murphy is at her best when she writes of her lonely hikes and the harsh beauty of Ethiopia. Her forays into religion and culture are more difficult to reconcile to a modern reader. Though she is less colonial than earlier writers, the 1960s are still a long way to the modern conception of equality. It's difficult to know how much of her comments on Ethiopia arise from her own impressions and assumptions and how much might be accurate if we looked at economic development and historical records of the 1960s.
She often writes disparagingly of the efforts to bring Ethiopia into the modern world with technology and education. Though I personally found her statements bemoaning these efforts to be excessive, I think there is room to consider what the relationship between a more technologically advanced society and one less so should be. How lovely it would be to share what is good and beneficial and somehow withhold that which is polluting or alienating. Ms. Murphy seems to think every bit of shared culture will only inflict damage on the people of Ethiopia.
What damage are we doing, blindly and swiftly, to those races who are being taught that because we are materially richer we must be emulated without question? What compels us to infect everyone else with our own sick urgency to change, soften and standardize? How can we have the effrontery to lord it over peoples who retain what we have lost -- a sane awareness that what matters most is immeasurable?I heard something similar in our local town recently, though I think precluding participation in a world economy is not possible, even if it were preferable. More to the point, Ms. Murphy's own experiences, however, dramatically show the suffering of Ethiopian people without access to sanitation and health care. It seems inconceivable that she would really insist we withhold such medical and institutional advances that might improve health and well-being.
If you are considering sharing this book with your students, be aware Ms. Murphy has some disparaging comments on the Ethiopians Church. For example:
Lamas rarely encourage bigotry and racial arrogance -- as Ethiopian Coptic priests frequently do, by teaching that Ethiopian Christians are the only true Christians in the whole world. This defect is not exclusive to Coptic priests, but it is extra-pernicious in such a remote land, where a pathetic national superiority complex tends to run wild for lack of sobering comparisons with other nations.She admits ignorance of the church, but comments on it anyway. She also describes the celebration of a church feast that, according to the author, included widespread and accepted infidelity. True? Misconception? Misunderstanding? There's no way to know.
There are a few other unconventional situations, such as that of a joint temporary wife, who "seems happy in her new role."
The n-word appears once, as a descriptive adjective for a color. The author engages frequently in rather unsafe behavior, like eating wild mushroom even after local children told her they were poisonous. She is robbed multiple times and is often in physical danger.
This is one of the alternate books for Geography - either as a substitute for the travel or adventure memoir or as free-reading to bulk up the course. Apparently I love geography because I have bulked up our course substantially with mapping exercises and three assigned books in addition to the travel and earth studies books. I think this book would be a good replacement for The Flame Trees of Thika, if you had a mature student more interested in high adventure than a child's memoir, especially for someone with hiking and climbing experience. In general, I prefer The Flame Trees of Thika. I think it's an easier read for students who might feel overwhelmed by the heavy Mater Amabilis™ schedule. It also seemed less critical of life in Africa, more just descriptive and accepting. While In Ethiopia with a Mule introduces some interesting topics for discussion like economic development in Africa, it does so in a brash and derogatory way, often sentimentally praising the traditional life of the Ethiopians while simultaneously presenting it as filthy and unhealthy. It is a complicated book.
For our homeschool, I'm going to keep Four Years in Paradise as our travel or adventure memoir. In Ethiopia with a Mule will be listed as a third term read. My student can choose between it, The Flame Trees of Thika, and Out of Africa. These are recorded only in a reading journal with brief notes for each chapter (who did what and sometimes why). I'm fairly certain First Son will choose The Flame Trees of Thika based solely on the size of the printing and the number of pages. First Daughter may happily read all of the above.
I have received nothing in exchange for this honest review. I purchased In Ethiopia with a Mule used. Links above to Amazon are affiliate links.
