Muynak

If there is no strong wind, people sit on little benches, leaning against the shabby and crumbling walls of their decrepit houses. It is impossible to ascertain how they make a living; it is difficult to communicate with them about anything…If one smiles at the people sitting against the walls, they become even more gloomy, and the women veil their faces. Indeed a smile does look false here, and laughter would sound like the screech of a rusty nail against glass.

- Ryszard Kapsucinski, Imperium.

Ethiopia, 1975

The people below were so tightly squeezed together, their crippled limbs, stumps, and crutches so tightly intertwined, that they formed a single crawling mass, out of which dozens of arms stretched upwards like tentacles, and, where there were no limbs, innumerable gaping mouths extended upwards, waiting for something to be thrown into them. As we walked from one church to another, this gnarled, moaning, expiring creature below crept after us, and from it dropped every now and then an inert, already lifeless member, abandoned by the rest.

There had been no pilgrims here in a long while, to throw down their alms, and these cripples were unable to get out of the stony chasms.

“Did you see, sir?” Tadesse asked me as we made our way back to the village. And he said it as though to suggest he thought this the only thing really worth seeing.

- Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Shadow Of the Sun.