Sunday, June 04, 2006

June 5

In early 2004, in the Ethiopian hill town of Lalibela, we met a small boy called Yayo. Yayo was our unofficial guide and gatekeeper for 5 days and would sit on small stool in the corner of our room at night until he fell asleep and had to be sent home. He accompanied us down into the valley on a futile chat-chase, defending us to the best of his nine-year- old ability against the horde of other (slightly bigger) small boys that we acquired as we went, bony calculating children wearing frayed shorts and flattened sandals, carrying sticks and leaping from rock to rock, chanting and prodding and never taking their eyes from us. He accompanied us to the tej bet and sat unobtrusively in the corner with a coke while we watched the masinko players and iskista dancers, ducking outside occasionally to bring us back fried fuul. He accompanied us to the stone churches, and waited patiently at the gate when he wasn't allowed inside. He accompanied us to the cafe for our morning macchiato and disappeared politely at dinnertime in order not to put us in the position of having to feed him. When we left we bought him a pair of shoes from the market, brand new Dunlop sneakers slightly too big (he would grow into them).
Later, the other small boys of the town came enmasse to our door, demanding we buy them shoes too- none of them needed shoes any less than Yayo, and some probably needed them more. We bought them for him because we knew him, because we liked him, and most of all because he didn't expect them. Moral of the story? Make it up yourself- I belive in reader responsibility.