To Towie then. That’s The Only Way Is Ethiopia, or The Tribe (Channel 4) as it’s really called. Actually more tsetse-fly-on-the-wall than scripted reality, with unobtrusive fixed-rig cameras placed around the Ayke Muko family’s huts in a Hamar village in the South Omo valley, Educating Yorkshire style. Eavesdropping Omo.
Anyway, last week I was getting a bit fed up with Zubo and Arrada, who are supposed to be in charge of the negotiations with the neighbouring village to finalise the deal for a wife for their younger brother Muko. The bride’s family wanted a few extra goats thrown in – not unreasonably, given that they are losing their lovely daughter Dami. But Zubo and Arrada got all uppity about it, making promises, then not delivering. It was disrespectful to the family – and the whole village – of the bride, I’d say.
The goat issue seems to have been cleared up for now, and Zubo and Arrada are off again to collect Dami. But they arrive late, three hours late! Are they determined to scupper this match? No wonder Dami’s family are cross, again – they don’t invite them to join in the leaving party and make them sleep in a cattle pen too. Ha.
Dami herself isn’t overjoyed about the prospect of leaving her family and friends, for ever, to go and marry a man she doesn’t even know. Well, she is only young; I don’t think we’re told exactly how old.
She does eventually go though, with Zubo and Arrada. She makes the walk – the long, hot, sad walk – to a new village and a new life. It’s not exactly straight up the aisle when they get there. Dami’s still not even allowed to meet Muko. There are new things to learn, new animal pens to be cleaned, marriage preparations to be made, bridal rituals to be carried out. Dami’s head needs to be shaved, for example. No! She has lovely hair, everyone agrees. But off it all comes, scraped away rudely with a razor blade. Ouch.
Next, poor slaphead Dami is rubbed all over with butter mixed with red soil, to make her skin soft. “So it’s lovely for Muko,” explains Kerri Bodo, Muko’s mum. Yeah, maybe, but what about for Dami? Then she has to go up to live in the attic. To be honest I’m surprised these huts even have attics; maybe this one has had the loft done. I bet it’s hot up there though, under the thatch (at least the hut has still got a thatch, unlike Dami). And that butter is going to get seriously rancid. How long does she have to stay up there? Only five to six MONTHS.
It’s hard not to feel really bad for Dami. One minute she was a child, with family, friends, hair, happy and carefree; the next she’s wilting away in a lonely attic – a bald, soily, buttery Mrs frigging Rochester.
But I think it’s going to work out all right, in the long run. Muko seems nice, he’s got a lovely smile. I think he may be less useless than his useless older brothers, and that he’s going to treat Dami well, even if he does get himself another extra wife at some point down the line.
There are times, watching The Tribe, that you think this really isn’t so different. So here’s Grandad Ayke Muko, grumpy (“Who’s this bullshit person, get out of my way, why is no one working?”) but kinder than he likes to make out. And Kerri Bodo, magnanimous and wise, doing the daily grind (coffee), and moaning about the youth: “Kids that age just make up their own rules”. And kids that age, like Hacho, making up her own rules, on her phone the whole time, or going into town to buy clothes, with money she stole from Kerri Bodo and Ayke Muko. Oi, she gets away quite lightly with that one. I remember getting a slap round the head when I got caught doing the same in the village I grew up in (Islington, obvs). Anyway, it really could be Towie. Hey, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, we’re all the same, man.
But then sometimes, it is a bit different too. Like the bigamy thing. And the time eldest son Zubo, Mr hands-off-my-goats himself, slips into the conversation that he once killed a man who was trying to steal his cattle. Mr hands-off-my-cows-and-all. I’m getting the idea that livestock is a big deal round here.
