we met because of Angela’s brother he
took me on a hot-air balloon ride in
order to photograph Messiah from above I
was working on my first book on the
Masai of Kenya and Tanzania and had a
thousand feet in the air
he looked deeply in my eyes and said
there’s something I really want to tell
you and I have to tell you that my heart
was beating wildly and he then said
continuing to look at me very intensely
I would really like you to meet my
sister my heart sank
but he believed that Angela and I had a
tremendous amount of interest in common
a real passion for the traditional
cultures of Africa and a love for the
nomadic way of life and he was concerned
that she was traveling alone and I was
travelling alone and we were
encountering a lot of risks as well as
great rewards and I think he wanted to
bring us together and we both really
wanted to share each other’s experiences
and when we started recording African
ceremonies across Africa we knew we
could do it we also had quite by chance
a very similar visual aesthetic
while we were working on our book
African Ark over a five year period in
Ethiopia we decided to go into a remote
wilderness area in the southwest part of
the country the only access in was
organizing a mule train of 15 animals
and carrying everything that we could
possibly need for five weeks of survival
and our goal was to find the soorma
people who lived in the southwest close
to the border of Sudan there were no
roads into the area we were up and down
over 10,000 foot mountains and through
dense forests of colobus monkeys and we
finally got to the Sarma and we spent
five weeks with this very extraordinary
group of people we were the first white
people in that particular area
so initially they were terrified at what
had happened and how we’d rubbed off our
brown skin and we made very very close
and dear friends we accompanied them
through births two births two marriages
to stick fights where they have some of
the wildest fights on the continent in
order to prove masculinity and win wives
we were with them during cattle raids
with their neighbors their enemies the
bully and at the end of this
extraordinary five-week period where we
had really bonded with about 250 of the
soorma we prepared to leave at the night
before we were leaving which meant
packing up our mule train and going on
the five-day trip out we understood that
our the old train was going to be
ambushed and that we would not be
allowed out of lives and we were
extremely disarmed and taken aback by
this because we felt we had made such
extraordinary bonds with a small group
of people in four villages and what had
happened is unknowingly we had broken a
cardinal rule
their society they’re an egalitarian
people and we had left out 13,000 other
soorma people in establishing our close
friendship with three villages so they
felt this was an unacceptable violation
of their social system and that we
shouldn’t be allowed out of sörmland
alive so our guides Olga who though is
Ethiopian himself from the north and
extremely concern for our well-being
decided to host a huge gathering of all
the elders and we would have a goat
roast we would have a big feast honoring
the Chiefs of the soorma and we would
give them all the food that we had left
knowing that we knew they wouldn’t make
it out alive or if we did we wouldn’t
need very much to get all the way out
and at the end of this wonderful day
where the Chiefs felt really delighted
with what had happened he asked them if
they would be willing to escort us out
of sörmland and if they’d be willing to
get up at 3 a.m. in the morning which
they said of course we will it would be
our honor so at 3 a.m. we packed up in
the dark
put a chief in between each mule all the
way down the line and headed out in the
pitch black of the night with our breath
held and our fingers crossed and by
sunrise we looked up and we saw in the
trees the the summer warriors with their
Kalashnikov sin ak-47s armed from the
Sudanese border pointed at us but when
they saw their chiefs and they saw this
stately honorable procession
none of them pulled the trigger they all
just sat there and allowed us to pass
out till we got to the border and we’re
here to tell the tale
you
took me on a hot-air balloon ride in
order to photograph Messiah from above I
was working on my first book on the
Masai of Kenya and Tanzania and had a
thousand feet in the air
he looked deeply in my eyes and said
there’s something I really want to tell
you and I have to tell you that my heart
was beating wildly and he then said
continuing to look at me very intensely
I would really like you to meet my
sister my heart sank
but he believed that Angela and I had a
tremendous amount of interest in common
a real passion for the traditional
cultures of Africa and a love for the
nomadic way of life and he was concerned
that she was traveling alone and I was
travelling alone and we were
encountering a lot of risks as well as
great rewards and I think he wanted to
bring us together and we both really
wanted to share each other’s experiences
and when we started recording African
ceremonies across Africa we knew we
could do it we also had quite by chance
a very similar visual aesthetic
while we were working on our book
African Ark over a five year period in
Ethiopia we decided to go into a remote
wilderness area in the southwest part of
the country the only access in was
organizing a mule train of 15 animals
and carrying everything that we could
possibly need for five weeks of survival
and our goal was to find the soorma
people who lived in the southwest close
to the border of Sudan there were no
roads into the area we were up and down
over 10,000 foot mountains and through
dense forests of colobus monkeys and we
finally got to the Sarma and we spent
five weeks with this very extraordinary
group of people we were the first white
people in that particular area
so initially they were terrified at what
had happened and how we’d rubbed off our
brown skin and we made very very close
and dear friends we accompanied them
through births two births two marriages
to stick fights where they have some of
the wildest fights on the continent in
order to prove masculinity and win wives
we were with them during cattle raids
with their neighbors their enemies the
bully and at the end of this
extraordinary five-week period where we
had really bonded with about 250 of the
soorma we prepared to leave at the night
before we were leaving which meant
packing up our mule train and going on
the five-day trip out we understood that
our the old train was going to be
ambushed and that we would not be
allowed out of lives and we were
extremely disarmed and taken aback by
this because we felt we had made such
extraordinary bonds with a small group
of people in four villages and what had
happened is unknowingly we had broken a
cardinal rule
their society they’re an egalitarian
people and we had left out 13,000 other
soorma people in establishing our close
friendship with three villages so they
felt this was an unacceptable violation
of their social system and that we
shouldn’t be allowed out of sörmland
alive so our guides Olga who though is
Ethiopian himself from the north and
extremely concern for our well-being
decided to host a huge gathering of all
the elders and we would have a goat
roast we would have a big feast honoring
the Chiefs of the soorma and we would
give them all the food that we had left
knowing that we knew they wouldn’t make
it out alive or if we did we wouldn’t
need very much to get all the way out
and at the end of this wonderful day
where the Chiefs felt really delighted
with what had happened he asked them if
they would be willing to escort us out
of sörmland and if they’d be willing to
get up at 3 a.m. in the morning which
they said of course we will it would be
our honor so at 3 a.m. we packed up in
the dark
put a chief in between each mule all the
way down the line and headed out in the
pitch black of the night with our breath
held and our fingers crossed and by
sunrise we looked up and we saw in the
trees the the summer warriors with their
Kalashnikov sin ak-47s armed from the
Sudanese border pointed at us but when
they saw their chiefs and they saw this
stately honorable procession
none of them pulled the trigger they all
just sat there and allowed us to pass
out till we got to the border and we’re
here to tell the tale
you
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