Inspired by the tales told by one of Haile Selassie’s adopted sons, Yves Stranger journeys to western Ethiopia to witness one of the most remarkable and least-known migrations on the planet

Yohannes Dernersesian has had an extraordinary life. He was one of 40 Armenian orphans adopted by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in the 1930s and, as a boy, he would head off on hunting expeditions into the interior on his bicycle, later he tracked elephants in the far west of the country. He still bears the scars from when a lion attacked him on the fringes of the Danakil desert in the north-east of the country.

Nowadays, Dernersesian occupies himself fixing cars in a tumbledown garage in Addis Ababa, where discarded drive shafts nuzzle up next to ancient gun barrels, and a buffalo’s head is mounted on the wall, near to an elephant’s trunk that adorns the chimney.

When I first met him, my 40-year-old Volkswagen Beetle was blue and in need of some work. Dernersesian looked it over, took a long drag on a hand-rolled cigarette and told me his speciality was repairing Beetles. ‘When I’ve finished with that car, you’ll be able to drive it all the way to Gambela,’ was his parting shot.

Gambela was one of the places he had explored in his younger days. It is more than 400km from Addis, a wedge of land that pokes out of Ethiopia towards the plains of Sudan and which had been hit by the unrest that had engulfed the region in recent decades. Through it flows the river Baro, Ethiopia’s only navigable waterway and one that ultimately joins up with the White Nile.

As the weeks and months ticked by, I would pay weekly visits to Dernersesian’s garage to check on my (now green) car’s progress – or lack thereof. He had quickly realised I was a valuable source of his favourite Old Holborn tobacco and, after giving me a detailed report on developments with the bodywork, the brakes, the suspension, the lights and the rest he would carefully roll himself a cigarette and tell me tales of his wanderings.

‘The plains between the Bahr Al Ghazal, the Sudd and the Baro and Akobo rivers are bigger than Kenya and Uganda combined,’ he would say, through a cloud of smoke. ‘Vast herds roam there. Higher up, along the border, you can follow elephant tracks that go all the way from Sudan into Ethiopia’s Omo Valley.’

I was not surprised by the slow progress of restoration. At the beginning of our automotive relationship my story-telling mechanic had said: ‘I ask just one thing. I will treat your car just as I would mine, but don’t be asking me about dates or deadlines.’

Dernersesian’s wandering habits were firmly entrenched, it seemed. Sometimes I would arrive at the garage for my weekly visit and discover that my car had not been touched. There would be a lingering smell of Old Holborn, but no mechanic. I would be left looking blankly at the maps on the wall, reminders of the old man’s journeys and stories, while the buffalo stared down at me with sympathy.

Eventually, however, Dernersesian did finish the job. After a little more than a year I drove the (now yellow) Beetle away knowing a little more of the art of Volkswagen maintenance and a lot more about the geography of one of Africa’s last unexploited hinterlands.

I was reminded of my friend’s stories about a year afterwards when reports came through of an aerial survey that had been conducted over Southern Sudan – over the Sudd, the Jonglei and the Boma areas. It was the first time such an operation had been carried out for 25 years. The civil war had ended in 2001, a peace accord had been signed and the oil companies were turning their eyes on the Sudan.

The survey revealed that wildlife had thrived in many parts of the south during the fighting, and that an annual migration of close to a million and a half animals – mostly tiang and white-eared kob antelopes – was occurring. The migration, comparable in size to the herd movements of the Serengeti in Kenya and Tanzania, took place seasonally between the highlands close to the Ugandan border and the huge plains below the White Nile as the rainy season marshes and lakes dried up after January. The northern limit of the migration was the Baro river in Gambela.

When I expressed an interest in travelling there to see this unique natural phenomenon, Dernersesian suggested he fixed aluminium plates under my Volkswagen and that I drive. I looked at my car, now 41 years old, and decided to find myself a flight.

One week later, I was at Addis Ababa airport looking at an ultra-light Zenair CH701. The plane weighed in at 260kg and as I was about to board it, an Ethiopian Airlines pilot ambled over and asked with a grin if it could actually fly.

Thankfully, it could, although, with its 100hp engine, it felt rather like a winged version of my Volkswagen Beetle.

Five hours later, Ian Stevenson – the pilot and current manager of the Omo National Park – brought us swooping in over the Omo river and onto the broad plains. Below us were thousands of tiang and eland antelope, and buffalo.

On the road to the village of Matar, down on the Baro river near where it enters Sudan, I saw the vanguard of the great herds of white-eared kob. The long grasses had just been burned and everywhere the charred earth was being covered in the green sprouts of new growth. The peoples of these plains – Nuer, Anuak and Dinka – are impressive, tall and adorned with jewellery, paint and ceremonial scars – even the women towered over me. In Matar, I ate doro fanta which means ‘cooked like a chicken’, but the bones in the dish were big, the meat purple and I later saw a severed kob’s head perched on a table in the village.

The plains are beautiful and stretch – I knew from the maps in Dernersesian’s garage – all the way to Juba in one direction, to the Sudd in another and to the Ugandan border in a third. This expanse of wilderness with its vast herds is attracting interest around the world. Not only are the oil companies eyeing it up, it has been suggested it would be a perfect venue for growing biofuel crops. Already, roads are being constructed and rivers dammed.

Environmentalists are also on the move, and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has set up the Boma-Jonglei Landscape Project in the region in conjunction with the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS).

The plan is to bring integrated conservation and management to a 200,000km sq area encompassing the great wildlife migrations, one of the largest intact savannas in Africa, and the Sudd wetlands. The region – which includes the Boma National Park, Zeraf Reserve and Bandingilo National Park – is biologically connected by the white-eared kob and tiang migrations, elephant movements and the seasonal wanderings of local pastoralists.

American conservationist Dr Paul Elkan, director of the WCS Southern Sudan Country Program, knows the region better than most. ‘The Boma-Jonglei area is a tremendously important zone which supports what is one of the largest land mammal migrations in the world,’ he says. ‘After 22 years of civil war it is amazing there is anything left, and yet many species of wild-life have survived in significant numbers and although others have been drastically reduced they remain in numbers that can recover.

‘The Boma-Jonglei area has a relatively low human population density with some 12 tribes, many of whom are pastoralists,’ he adds. ‘The region contains one of the largest intact savanna habitats remaining in East Africa. WCS and the GoSS have been calling this region “Paradise not yet lost”, and its wildlife resources represent tremendous hope and opportunity for the people of Southern Sudan.’

There is even talk of joining the Omo and Gambela parks of Ethiopia to the project, together with a sliver of northern Kenya, creating one of the largest managed ecosystems in Africa.

‘There is potential there,’ says Elkan, ‘but the jury is still out on how conservation success in one area would impact the other. Cross-border tourism has significant potential, and we are working on that in Boma already, though it will take a couple of years to get things set up. From a conservation perspective the degree to which these areas are biologically connected or not has yet to be properly determined.’

He adds, however, that the potential for success and positive change is immense. ‘Conservation and integrated land management in Southern Sudan could bring huge benefits to the people, wildlife, and the region in general. But we need to move fast to create and support protected areas and to work with local people to develop management strategies and secure the resource base in the face of rapidly expanding roads and infrastructure, oil, and commercial hunting. This will also contribute directly to peace and development in the region.’

The Omo park and area also illustrate the issues facing the region. Huge dams are being erected upstream on the River Omo, with possibly damaging impacts on the agriculture practised in the region. ‘Ethnic tourism’ is going on in an unsustainable way, with money being exchanged for photos and local people stripping to fulfill visitors’ expectation of how they should look. Roads and bridges are being laid out with little forward planning or discussion.

The double-edged sword of civilisation hangs over the area – a place that was once the cradle of humanity – and uncertainty shrouds what may happen next. What I can say, however, is that having seen the region for myself, I realise why my erstwhile mechanic had so many tales to tell.

Boma-Jonglei Landscape region

This conservation zone includes Boma National Park, Bandingilo National Park, Mongalla Reserve. Habitat includes pastures, flood-plains and the wet grasslands of the Sudd.

The region comprises grasslands the size of Kenya and Uganda combined that harbour an abundance of wildlife. Species present include buffalo, elephant, hippo, lion and giraffe. www.wcs.org

Where to stay

Sheraton Addis - PO Box 6002 Taitu Street Woreda 14 Kebele 24 Addis Ababa Tel: (+251) 11 517 1717 www.starwoodhotels.com