As the packed mini-bus that brought us to Key Afer sped into the distance it felt like we had been stranded in the middle of nowhere. A tiny back water town in the heart of South Omo it is a meeting point of tribal and modern life. A handful of cement buildings line the sole road which leads to Jinka, the back streets however are made up of mud and wood structures. The town sits alone in the vastness of the Rift Valley, surrounded only by tribal villages hidden in the staggering Omo landscape. People in tribal wear and modern clothing mingle freely throughout town giving it a curious yet decidedly cosmopolitan feel.
Key Afer is an important place for trade and commerce with a market every Thursday drawing people from far and wide. It is also notorious for the socialising that goes on afterwards! The market drew us too, set away from the main road a sprawling selection of goods are bought and sold by tribesmen and townsmen alike. Tribeswomen gather supplies in their calabash handbags and sell the produce they have brought from their villages, including, moringa, moonshine and firewood. Traditional beads, bowls and bells sit stall by stall with plastic jelly shoes and polyester blankets. It was an novel experience to haggle with a tribesmen and we came away with a great exchange!
After people have had their fill of buying, selling and browsing everybody heads to the tej (honey wine) house. We had made friends with Andy, a young local guide who showed us the most popular spots in town and together we embarked on a night of revelry. Tej is a fermented honey drink which slips down as easily as a cocktail. The sweet yellow nectar is sold by the litre and it is impossible to have just one, in fact it is custom to order your second whilst pouring the first! Glasses are never allowed to empty and in traditional Ethiopian style are filled to the very brim.
After enjoying our first tej with some grilled tibs (meat) under the stars (not a street light in sight) we headed to what can only be described as a tej nightclub. A small dirty room plastered in pictures of the angel Gabriel pulsated with music bringing many men and a few hotel women to the central dance floor. From serious humping and grinding to traditional shoulder shaking you can bring whatever shapes you want. Those not dancing sit on benches around the edge of the room facing inwards to catch the action whilst drinking endless bottles of tej. People often buy each other and strangers bottles as a mark of friendship and it is custom to respond by pretending to spit the first sip on the benefactors hand or head! Nights here can get quite wild especially when you throw a rotund, elderly prostitute and a young tribal buck into the mix! Drunk on tej and dancing to Akon with beaded tribesmen has to be one of our best moments in Ethiopia!
We not only boozed with the tribes but also went to visit a traditional homestead and celebrated a rite of passage with them (but that’s a whole other story!) The Banna people dominate the area around Key Afer and live in scattered huts that make up villages. A 100 meters apart and surrounded by fields of sorghum and maize each homestead can feel quite isolated but they are very idyllic in their rural solitude. Life revolves around livestock so much so that people will up and move their villages in search of grass.
We were welcomed into one hut, home to two wives, their husband and a newborn baby. When the first wife failed to conceive for seven years the husband took a younger second wife. We were told that this would usually happen much sooner however in this case the man really loved his first wife. The new baby now belongs to the first wife although it looked like they were sharing the responsibility. This family dynamic was one we struggled to get our heads around but one that seemed to be working nonetheless. The two wives offered us freshly picked and roasted corn on the cob and local coffee (made from the husks of the beans) as we sat on a cow skin and played with their niece and nephew.
Everything was served in calabashes which make up their crockery from bowl to ladle and hang around the inside of their home. Built with an extra room in preparation for a guest their hut was tiny but cosy, a small upper level was used for storage and sleeping during malaria season. It was fairly unbelievable that this was a family home and there was absolutely no space for any domestics! Life is lived in a very basic and traditional manner and one that seems to require a lot of hard graft, it is not very often you see a women who gave birth two weeks ago carrying a back load of firewood!
Although unassuming at first glance Key Afer became our base in the South Omo and grew to be one of our favourite places. Interesting people, fascinating culture and with quality tea, tej and tibs this town has more to it than meets the eye. The town is so small we soon got to know many of the inhabitants. Some were enthusiastically nice with one declaring undying love, punctuating the nights with his cry of ‘I love she’ and rubbing spat out tej over his heart whilst others clearly wanted to disturb (seriously girls watch out and DO NOT drink alone!). Having said this in Key Afer we made some great friends from both tribe and town, witnessed some very different customs, had some wild nights out and nearly got a cow and calf for the bargain price of 1,500 birr. Never judge a town by the size of its roundabout!
