The Edge of Starvation
Ofir bought Konjo in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. They traveled out of the capital on the side of the highway. Ofir could barely handle a horse. When he passed through a village, a man named D’Jote Aberra said to him, “You watched too many Westerns.”
Ofir and Konjo descend into the Gibe River valley, in part because no one can tell Ofir what is there. Following the river is arduous, and they have to cross in places guarded by hippos. Though Ofir finds that the hippos are all bluster and vanish when he claps at them.
Ofir with Konjo at camp, exposed on all sides. The large fire is to scare off hyenas and leopards.
Ofir has to abandon Konjo after both of them fall down a cliff. The Gibe River is unpopulated; Ofir has seen no people for days, and his food stocks are completely gone. The welts on his face are from the bites of tsetse flies.
Completely out of food and bitten on the face by tsetse flies, Ofir spots fisherman along the Gibe River. They give him bread, then move off to fish with giant hooks but catch nothing.
With the fishermen is a woman and her daughter, who both wear nice dresses. Ofir struggles to communicate with them in Orominya but takes their prosperity as a sign that there are villages near. Carrying a gift of food, Ofir continues along the river and finds no one.
Ofir heats and licks drops of oil off the carcass of the baby hippo he found. With nothing to eat, he cooks river clams. Harvesting them takes as much energy as it gives him back because he has to dive into the pools to collect them.
Ofir tries fishing, tries bludgeoning monitor lizards with rocks, tries catching a python with his hands. He could see in his arms that he was wasting away. The valley is so deep that there is no easy way out of it.
At the end of the journey
These three photographs, before, during, and after, were taken in the same month on Ofir’s Journey through the Gibe River valley. Afterwards, Ofir feels mentally prepared to enter a war zone for the first time, perhaps as a response to the question of whether he had been reckless.
Three faces of the Journey