The Skyland post. [volume] (West Jefferson, N.C.) 193?-1988, 1935-12-19
Correspondent
Describes People
Italians Fight

1 AANSs
A British correspondent spent a
day and night with one while in
Ethiopia-and he reports that the
life is simple, a bit odoriferous,
highly spiced and undoubtedly
monotonous. Here is the correspon-
dents account:
The towns are broken up into
compounds, or small sections, COM
posed of five or six families, each
living in separate house but all
using the same entrance from the
street. This entrance is a species of
alley, often filed with refuse and
generally used as sewer.
The houses are stone plastered
with mud. One room is two stories
high, about 81 feet. The other two
are built one on the other.
A ladder leads from the main
room to the upper room. It is safe
to say that the rungs of the ladder
are two and half feet apart. The
one in our house-of-a-day had the
bottom rung missing, so we had to
leap for it.
Walls Mud Plastered
The inside of the house in plas-
tered with mud. The floor is of mud
pounded hard by generations of
feet.
Window there are none. Small
openings near the ceiling let in the
Air. There is no fireplace, but
small concave spot in one corner of
the big room permits the building
Of a fire. The smoke generall-but
not always-rises to the openings
near the ceiling.
The cooking is usually done on an
over of hard-packed mud outside
the house and belonging to several
families of the compound. A hut of
thorn bushes covers it.
The Ethiopian eats well, but hot.
The food served to us was good--if
you had tongue of asbestos. 9th
erwise it is SO highly-spiced that
each mouthful must be accompani-
ed by drink of water.
They served us Zirniy, or chicken
stew, with peppers. Our good hos
tess, a grinning, good-natured wom-
an who did her best to make her
self understood in the one language
she kne wsaid that she had put in
only a few peppers. But she had
evidently put in 10 times too many.
Each mouthful made us gap. L
Bread Is Good
The bread is good. There are sew
eral kinds-Bakuta, made of -four
and water kneaded into dough and
baked in an open fire; Gera, slab
an inch thick and two feet in diam
eter made Of the same dough and
ornamented with designs;
and taft, a thin rubbery kind of
bread that f1ops and flaps like
thirsty dogs tongue.
The drink is either tez, which is
the strong potion-not SO strong at
that-made of honey and water fer
mented, or suwa, a kind of beer
made of dark grain.
The Ethiopian sleeps on slightly
raised portions of the floor that
follow the line of the wall about a
foot and a half wide. His mattress
is wadding an eighth of an inch
thick. His coverings are the sacking
he uses for clothes.
His work is mostly in the field
but farmhOuses are unknown. Iso-
lated farmhouses would be too
much temptation for bandits. Each
morning early he leaves the town
and goes to the fields and returns
at dusk. He never ventures forth at
night. After dusk an Ethiopian
town becomes apparently desert
ed village.
His wife goes with him. If she
has baby she straps it to her back.
If she has children able to walk
they are also able to work. They ac-
company their father and mother
and help them in the fields.
The Ethiopian farmer is a kind
of miser. He does not like to sell his
produce or cattle, even at a good
price. He relishes looking at his
crops and his livestock holdings
with the same joy a miser has in
gloating over his sack of gold or
handbook. He is, in fact, required to
sell hit little If ho does NOT uyonf IN