livelihood (fine art print) · Simien Mountains / Ethiopia · 2017

His skin was leather, testimony to a noble life spent beneath the generous Ethiopian sun. He looked 80 but was probably closer to 60 when deducting the dignified furrows a career of arduous labor had etched into his face. And while his reticent demeanor expressed a polite indifference to my existence, I somehow felt like he would guard that bit of stranger’s existence with all of his if necessary. He exuded an air of loyalty to his responsibility as a scout. All he carried into the mountains was a small rucksack, a quilted jacket, an umbrella, a shawl that inexplicably sufficed him as a blanket throughout the relentless altitude nights, and the AK-47. Ka-lash-ni-kov, rat-tat-tat-tat – what a perfect last name to invent a rifle, I thought. The phonetics and connotation were a match made in Russia. What kind of machine gun would a “Wilson” or “Gonzales” be? But if the rifle made me feel any safer, it made me feel unsafer in at least equal measure. I disliked the tangible proximity of death the gun established, notwithstanding that this one was more livelihood than weapon – a tool of life and death that was foremost a tool. Some written or unwritten rule obliged him to carry it, and me to be babysat by an armed veteran. Wild animals or humans are no real threat here, but a family going hungry is.
 
 
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Simien Mountains, Ethiopia, Africa, street photography, candid, travel, living room, horizontal