Thursday, September 4, 2014

Being Stoned


I rode away from Lalibela on Sunday morning after mass was completed… Not that I attended the services but I rode out of town as all the white clad people were returning to their homes along the roadside. It took me a couple of hours to negotiate the windy and muddy road (it had rained heavily during the night) back to the paved road 65Km away… Along the way I had a few interactions with some of the local kids…

There is a bad reputation in Ethiopia for motorbike tourers being stoned… The kids throw rocks at you for their own entertainment. I had so far pretty much avoided this problem… Id found that in about 75% of cases I could disarm the situation fairly easily. I found it was usually pretty easy to spot which kids along the roadside were going to have a shot at you by watching their movements… I pretty much always see them before they see me coming and when they do see me then their first reactions are pretty telling… If they reach down to pick up a stone or cock their wrist just so then you know you could have a problem… and its usually about 30m before you get to them… I found that rather than getting stoned and shaking my fist at them after the fact, that if I pre-emptively wave my hand at them in a friendly interactive manner as soon as I see them starting to make the wrong moves, that it tends to stop them mid-motion, and after about a second (you can almost see their mental processes in motion J) they usually change their tune and enthusiastically wave back as I ride by waving J… The only problem is that you end up with a very tired arm from all the waving at all the kids  (and adults… though I never see them throwing stones) in all the little towns along the way.

But its almost never kids in towns that are the problem… there are adults around in the towns and I get the distinct impression that they keep the kids pretty well in line! No, its out in the countryside away from the towns where the kids are spending their whole days just keeping the family herd of sheep or goats from wandering away… The kids understandably get very bored and find ways to amuse themselves… And passing cars are a definite source of entertainment. Many of the kids see a car coming and do some sort of dance and pull silly faces at you etc; looking for a response from the driver etc. Some of the kids pretend to throw a rock or swing a stick at you but they are usually just pretending… again looking for a reaction from the driver. But, out in the country on the back roads where a few kids get together, and the road has a tight curve or a high rise on one side overlooking the road and the cars have to really slow down… That’s where the real problems are… And throwing rocks at cars with the people all hidden and protected inside is far less entertaining than throwing them at the exposed riders of motorbikes…

And so I had a couple of incidents where there were a half dozen kids of age 7-14 who had developed some bad group habits. The first group were on a corner and my waving trick didn’t help much… Probably about 3 of the group decided to throw their stones anyway… and two missed but one hit me right in the hip… It was a good sized stone too (about 5cm in diameter) and though it didn’t really hurt me through my riding gear it could well have caused a real accident if it hit a different spot. So, I stopped the bike as quick as I could in the road… which is pretty slow with the big bike and the slippery dirt road even though I was going slowly. And of course as soon as I start doing this the kids know whats going to happen and scatter off down the hillside and into the bushes… There are of course no fences anywhere to slow them down or obstruct their escape. By the time Im standing where they were throwing the stones, the last of them is disappearing into bushes about 30m down the hill.

Now Im pretty mad of course and there is not much I can do but I have a bit of a shout (which Im sure they are used to J) and hang around for about a minute trying to decide what to do… there are absolutely no adults anywhere around and even if there were they don’t speak any English (in fact the kids all speak it better than the adults because they learn some in school). And the nearest town is several Km away… Shouting and raging is exactly what the kids want from me too. I look at their goats and consider kidnapping (again excuse the pun J) a little one and taking it to the next village… but the goats can easily avoid me clumsily walking over the ragged ground in my riding gear… So in the end I settle for taking their few possessions that are laying around… one pair of sandals, three sticks, five open sided tough plastic bags (used as rain hoods) and a couple of hand-made nylon rope slings (for throwing the stones… actually quite the lethal weapon when used well… ask Goliath of David and Goliath fame!). I shout at the kids that Im taking their stuff and I get back on the bike and ride off again slowly.

I ride through the next village and stop in the one after that. I stop in the road where there are a few adults and kids about (not close to me though) and I say in a loud but not shouted voice, to no one in particular, that I took these things from kids throwing stones at me back up the road. I dump the stuff on the side of the road and then I resume my ride quietly out of town.

I hope that the kids may have learned that there are some consequences, and I hope that the adults do some disciplining… perhaps after the kids have to explain why they don’t have their sandals or rain coats to their parents… But I think what is actually the more likely lesson they learned is that when they throw stones next time, they will make sure they have all their stuff in hand and ready to take with them when they run!... Oh well, what can you do… I did the best that I could.


Then I had the problem again about 15 Km further down the road… This time there was a steep cliff overlooking a tight bend in the road… and there were about 20 kids and I could see it was going to be a real problem… So, I rode up very slowly and waved very nicely and came to a stop right at the corner… And this was not expected and many of the kids stopped and watched with interest… But of course there were some of the kids that still wanted their fun and so they all backed off from the road and a few threw their stones from a safe range… Again most missed. I shouted up to them but not quite in the same ragingway as last time… this time I tried a different tactic (since they could all just pelt me from the high ground and there was literally nothing I could do about it… I hoped that they might understand some English and I attempted to use shame and ridicule and national pride and manly honour… I shouted Is this how brave you are  Where is the man here What cowards… What shame for Ethiopia! What honour do you have What would your Fathers say etc…. I didn’t rage and I diddnt shake my fists or throw stones back… I just used a loud authoritative voice and simple words…And though it had little effect on the smaller boys, I was surprised to see that a couple of the older boys (15yo or so) had clearly heard and understood and they started shouting at the younger boys to stop and threw the odd stone at them… Still a few more stones were sailing my way and one hit me square on the helmet (didn’t hurt at all of course). It wasn’t really going to stop and one of the older boys was telling me to just go while he threw another rock at the boys and shouted at them, so I did as asked and rode slowly off around the bend and out of range as the last of the rocks missed their mark… I think I did better this time and I was amazed that my remarks had made at least some difference…

But that was the last of that problem for the day. I reached the highway and headed on toward the next stop.