My favourite novel that uses mistaken identity as its central plot device is Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. William Boot, a genteel nature correspondent, is sent as a foreign correspondent to Ishmaelia, a crisis-ridden East African country, as he has been mistaken for his adventurous distant cousin, John Boot. There are predictably hilarious results.
Ishmaelia is a thinly veiled fictional version of Abyssinia, now known as Ethiopia, a place that Evelyn Waugh had visited in 1930 as a special correspondent for The Times. Waugh wrote up his African travels in a wonderfully funny book, Remote People.
In one amusing scene, when Waugh and his entourage had travelled into the heart of Ethiopia, a guard takes an interest in Waugh’s possessions. Waugh tells us that the guard:
…in exchange showed me his rifle and bandoleer. About half the cartridges were empty shells; the weapon was in very poor condition. It could not possibly have been used with any accuracy and probably not with safety…
More than 75 years after Waugh’s visit, Janie and I journeyed to Ethiopia, where we encountered a great many tribespeople with such weapons and ourselves were the victims of a form of mistaken identity.
We spent a few days in the South Omo Valley; a tribal part of Southern Ethiopia near the border with South Sudan. We had a fascinating time there.
Our small lodge was near some Karo villages. On our second day, we had arranged to visit Turmi, a Hamer tribe village, on market day.
Our guide, Dawit, asked us if we would mind if a local tribesman, Adama, join us in the vehicle. Adama is, unusually, half Karo & half Hamer; he wanted to visit his Hamer friends and relatives. Adama had trekked to our lodge in the hope of hitching a ride. Naturally we agreed and had a peculiar conversation with Adama, through Dawit.
Adama wanted to know more about us. He wondered how much cattle we owned.
Dawit passed on my reply; we don’t own any cattle.
Adama asked what other types of livestock and how many of them we owned.
Dawit broke it to Adama, gently, that I had told him that we own no livestock at all.
Adama said that he felt sorry for us; he hadn’t realised that we were poor people.
Dawit tried to explain to Adama that we come from a society where wealth is not measured in livestock.
“He says he understands”, Dawit told me.
I looked at Adama and smiled. He smiled back. The smile was a smile of pity. Of course he understood. Ian and Janie were proud people who did not want to be perceived as poor. But by the sound of it we came from a pitifully poor tribe, universally blighted with a chronic livestock shortage.
We had been mistaken for paupers…or had we? In Karo and Hamer terms, we were/are indeed poor.
Turmi market was wonderfully colourful, bustling and friendly.
Livestock is unquestionably an important feature of that society.
We visited a Karo village later that same day, on the way back to our lodge. We had heard that the Ethiopian Government had just built the village its first school, which was due to open later that year, but had provided no consumables for the school. Janie and I always take a few boxes of biros with us when we travel in the developing world; we thought this place well suited to a gift of 100 pens.
The chief of the village was delighted and hastily arranged a ceremony for the gift.
Once we had ceremoniously handed over the pens, the chief – showing no concern for social distancing whatsoever – embraced me, spat over my shoulder three times and (through Dawit) explained that Janie and I were now honorary members of the village.
Janie and I then spent some time in OUR Karo village. I wonder whether the World War One vintage Lee Enfield 303 rifles the villagers were carrying had been around since Evelyn Waugh’s visit some 75 years earlier? Or perhaps they had found their way to the South Omo Valley from the 1970s Alleyn’s School CCF arsenal.
To celebrate our new-found membership of the Karo tribe, Janie tried her hand at hair adornment…
…then one of the Karo body artists reciprocated with some face painting, after a false start using all white face paint, he quickly made up a small batch of dark face paint.
So, as honorary Karo people, I suppose we weren’t mistaken for poor people, we ARE poor Karo people. We have no livestock and we have no antique weaponry. But we do have some exceptionally rich memories of our time with those remote people.
Postscript One: A Video Of My Performance
Below is an “uncut” video of my performance, published with the kind permission of the ThreadZoomMash participants.
Postscript Two: Links To Our Ethiopia Trip
If you would like to know more about our 2006 visit to Ethiopia, you can find a placeholder and links here, but at the time of writing this piece I have not yet Ogblogged my journals.
If you just want to look at our photos from the South Omo Valley, the Flickr link below has an album with the best 80 of our photos from there:
Postscript Three: A Very Brief Review Of The Mistaken Identity Evening
I don’t think that Kay Scorah imagined that she was choosing a dark topic when she chose Mistaken Identity, but the vast majority of the pieces were very dark indeed.
Let me put it this way. Terry went first, with a creepy piece about the grim reaper visiting the wrong potential “reapee” by mistake. It was almost as creepy as the following short scene from one of my favourite dark movies…
…and Terry’s piece was one of the least dark pieces of the evening.
John’s brilliantly structured story involved Northern Irish and Islamic terrorism echoing in the life of one female character.
Julie’s story was a beautifully crafted, shocking piece about horrific, fatal domestic abuse.
Adrian’s story, which started lightheartedly enough, ended with the murder of a young man mistaken for a mass murderer.
In a near-futile attempt to lighten the mood before a short break, Kay scheduled Jan’s story, which was a poetic piece full of mystery about a potential re-encounter with a former lover..or was it merely mistaken identity?
After the break, David resumed the dark theme with a thriller about a man kidnapped by thugs for mysterious reasons; but was it a case of mistaken identity?
Then the mood finally got a bit lighter, with Geraldine’s thoughtful piece about her early days in New York and how status seemed to be identified (mistakenly or not) simply through one’s job title, place of origin or even merely one’s name.
Before my piece, which was the last, Ian T told us about several of his doppelgängers; Jeremy Corbyn (I don’t think so, but judge for yourselves), an Ecology party candidate in 1983 named Ian Newton and a man in a red coat at a church parade who looked so much like Ian that even Ian himself thought the other fellow might be him.
Perhaps I should have done my own doppelgänger story, not that I have delusions of grandeur about my scribblings:
It was a great evening, as always. Many thanks to Kay for organising it, to Rohan Candappa for the original idea upon which ThreadZoomMash is based and also a huge thanks to all of the participants.