FIGHTING TRIBES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 297, 16 December 1935, Page 18

FIGHTING TRIBES.

WOMEN'S PLACE.

HARRAR PROVINCE AT WAR

RELIGION AND CONFLICT

(By LAURENCE STALLINGS.)

HARRAR, November 25.

The day that Ilanar actually cleared , its decks for action was its first cloud- i less Sunday, when molten skies signalled ; the last drop of rain for six niontns. I j iirst knew something was afoot when, , travelling down the green hill where our , cameras are sandbagged against The Day, I saw huge flocks of women sitting in shaded groves rapt at the word of priests. As one rarely sees women about their own business, they being ■ here mere beasts of the field for their masters, the gun-bearing, arrogant males, one hastened on to discover the provocation for such a sight as women taking leisure in daylight. But there could be little haste, for the roads were choking with unfit. Literally cripples were leading blind men along dusty ruts towards the southern front; there was an endless procession of filthy, rag-clad beggars and "unemployed'' —this latter term being a euphemism for a man with no slaves and no rifles. Women Must Not Shed Tears. In the town square one saw the proclamation. It was chiefly' notable because it commanded women not to shed tears. Harrar was actually doing what no wartime community in Europe might do—which was to leave no question in a soldier's mind that there were slackers at home. Harrar was divorcing itself of all men. All men were going; it was a Royal command not to be disobeyed by ajiy shepherd, any beggar, any camel boy. There were lepers with great cumbersome feet, and many cripples wheeling their single leg with thrashing side-wise movements along the single trap pole which they use, in this least gifted of countries, as a crutch. The blind carried tins of water. Boys, reaching puberty had ancient rifles discarded by peasantry who were now booned new Mausers —men receiving arms which, in their lifetime of slavery, they would not be able to acquire with a generation's savings. Meanwhile, on the hillsides ranged like parliaments of bird's, women sat dry-eyed listening to Scripture. It was their first mass attendance, and priests in white—they, the pastors of these flocks, at least spotlessly clean —read to them out of the Geez Testament. They were hearing that they must, morning and evening, report to "the priests; that they must on no account accompany their lords to war. A Million Under Arms. There would be, in the Ogaden, nearly 1,000,000 men under anus now. When Dr. Robert Hochmann returned * from Jijiga he had said there were 1,000,000, but one accepted this cum grano salis; it did not seem feasible that Ethiopia, improvident at best, and never saving, could ration so many soldiers. But the proof was in these desert folk returning to the front from the still-green lands which winter had driven them to. Back to the horrors of bush baked violently white by the fierce African sun, they streamed, these folk, along the choking roads, the commissariat for 1,000,000 men. One could see both caravan trails along the Ogaden mountains, and see that they, too, were choking in the dust. Herdsmen were setting forth to go 300 miles with flocks already scant watered. They would drive lamb and goat until the beasts were exhausted, and then butcher them, cure the flesh, and continue onward. These petrol tins of water (sweetened abominably with a honey beer past European savouring, the whole thing tasting firstly of gasoline) would be sold or rationed (or stolen), precious drop by drop. These skins of millet flour would be baked into the thin, hard tortillas of the Gallas, and eaten sparingly, peppered beyond the palate of a Mexican. The rice would be for the Somalis, these least intelligent—and yet somehow most admirable —Of Ethiopians. Watching the procession stream in great ;ganglias and sepfements, each holding its particular village life, I could see in my mind's eve where each caravan was going. Warriors would be in the bush country, from Da?o Burli to Gorahai, from the shabby tents at the swamps guarding the Webi Shebeli River to the rising highlands of. Bale's divine mountains. Ogaden's Burning Bush.

They would be in groups of ten to fifteen, each held in check a patriarch, and all spread like quail in the dusting season across the great stretches of Ogaden's burning bush. The Gallas would be by far the handsomest; straight-backcd black men, unaccountably subject to the feline Amharra with his goatbeard and curled nose, lying in the bush waiting the chance to fight the white men, and nevertheless dreaming of their own king, now two generations outlawed, who perhaps might even be among them. To see the Galla in the Aurussi country, galloping his Galla pony, managing his great sombrero, his folds of chamma and drumming the great lance in his right hand, is to understand that there is a wild freedom in Abyssinia, for all its slavery, which will not easily be lost. The Moslem Galla, under heel of the Amharic Christian, as yet will not permit his daughter to marry the man of the high plateau. The Shoas and Bale man would, not be so closely knit in savage culture. They would be Christians, fearing the dark for the evil spirits it breeds. If below Dage Burli troops would be moving about at night, these would be Gallas and Somalis, who literally have no fears. To them the devil is a snake, and that is all there is to him. If one is careful never to kill a snake, then it is possible to go uprightly, without fear, even in the night.

Prayers For Victory. Meanwhile the women sat on shaded hills listening to the word of God, and praying for victory. While in far-away Ogaden men fondled cartridges, polishing them so that the brass veneer wore away in a day, and the copper alloy J shone red around the rims. These men would be praying for their women. Some to Jehovah, some to Allah, and just a3 many more to the sun—the Bale man will have the sun, the wind and the rain for his Trinity. And, too, they would be drilling small holes in the nose of the cartridge, so that it would come hurtling from the rifle barrel and go tumbling end-over-end with noise of dum-dum-dumming, shattering any flesh it might reach at the end of the flight. Meanwhile the cripples streaming the roads would soon be waiting; hoping for a rifle, and promising the blind man the bayonet. Harrar Province was- really gone to war.—(N.A.N.A.)