Ryan Salm Photography

The sun is baking down on my face, I tie my shirt around my head, beads of sweat begin to trickle. It’s the last thing I was expecting. I make my way up the hill, rows of tukuls line the pathway with fire smoke and the smell of freshly cooked goat and urine strong in the air. We pass multiple little stores in this no horse village and no one has it. I hate to say but I just want to get this over with, anything at this point will do. You ever go shopping for a body bag? That is my current mission.
    It all began a couple weeks back when we heard that we were indeed in the perfect location at the perfect time to witness one of Ethiopia’s most sacred and interesting occasions. April 3rd was Fasika or Easter. In an Orthodox Christian environment that housed one of the religions deepest roots this could truly be the photographic spectacle I was hoping for. Lalibela, said to be the eighth wonder of the world is one of Africa’s most impressive religious sites and home to famous rock-hewn churches containing tunnels, hermitages, relics and deep connections to the early days of Christianity. It is Ethiopia’s most holy.
    We were in the seedy manky crossroads town of Gashena awaiting our mules and guide to begin a 50 mile walk to this festive vibe through highland villages along an escarpment. The walk was long and despite some of your normal 3rd world setbacks like villages not getting the message that you are coming and no preparations being made, lack of food, no water, hungry fleas infesting your sleeping bag and feasting on your flesh, the sights were gorgeous and the scene was reminiscent of the Grand Canyon. The idea was to walk into the start of Fasika, a pilgrimage of sorts.
The last few miles of the journey were along a paved road where we flagged a minivan and got a ride past the hundreds of villagers making their way to Lalibela along the road towards the town’s famed Fasika Saturday market. On this particular day over 20,000 sheep and goats would change hands at the market and would be religiously slaughtered to break the 55 day fasting period. It was an exciting time to be there, one of those things that travelers live for, and there were tons of tourists, more than we had seen in our entire month of travel.
    As the evening progressed the excitement grew until it was finally time to go check out the Lalibela’s famous churches. Along with an Israeli couple (Matan and Michal) whom Lauren and I had been spending the day with, we proceeded towards two of the more famous church complexes. Upon our entrance in Bet Medhane Alem we could tell we were in for a treat as pilgrims donned white cloth from head to toe, lined the entranceway and packed the bellies of these ancient rock-hewn churches. An evening of prayer had begun. The churches in this complex were interconnected by a series of tunnels and caves and had walls that surrounded sometimes 25 feet tall.
    As we moved on to the town’s most beautiful church at St. George I was engulfed in the moment and snapping images from one of the highest walls along with another photographer. It was nighttime but the candles and lights from the church made a tremendous impression. It was amazing how this church was dug from the surrounding bedrock. I decided to proceed into the church and found my way in by the dark and empty labyrinthine footpath that I had to light with my headlamp. As I popped through the tunnel and into the church I was right in the mix as the priests we standing by the entrance way in the middle of a series of hymns. I was shooting like mad when I got a tug on my shirt. Thinking it was another Ethiopian demanding more money from me or telling me it was yet something else I was doing wrong, I ignored him at first. The tugging continued until finally I could hear him saying “your friend, your friend!” I had no idea what he was talking about since I entered alone. My first thought was he was talking about Matan or Michal. He was really pulling on me as Lauren and I followed him toward the footpath. At the entranceway to the tunnel was a faranji (that’s what they call tourists) lying on the ground, slightly convulsing, and breathing heavily and labored. The basalt rock bed below his head was rounded out and made a natural indentation that collected the blood that ran from his ears.
    I believe Matan was the first on the scene. He secured the man’s spine and head and aided in opening his airway to help out his breathing. My first thoughts were grim. Lauren and Michal were doing their best to help the man. I put down my gear and proceeded to sprint even though at first I didn’t know where I was going. “Doctor, doctor” was going through my mind. Breathless and nervous I made my way into the big complex we visited earlier hoping that one of the many European tourists would be a doctor. I calmly and frantically asked around if anyone knew a doctor knowing that I was in the middle of the country’s most sacred days. A couple Ethiopians tried to call for help but there was no answer at the ambulance or hospital. I found a German man who was said to be a neurologist and begged him to follow me. I could tell from the start that he was tentative in his decision but at the moment he was the only hope. We moved quickly through dark rocky terrain back to St. George where I heard the German doctor say it would be very difficult without the correct tools and gear.
    A crowd had gathered around the man on the floor that we came to know as Lucasz. I left the doctor with my friends and Lucasz and proceeded to sprint again looking for anything we could use as a stretcher. There wasn’t much around, I tried to pull a door off a hut, but failed. I asked frantically the few people that passed but their English was poor. A mini van pulled up and I asked if I could take his roof rack but it wasn’t happening. I was joined at the minivan by Michal and a few Ethiopians and we got in and drove to what appeared to be a clinic of sorts. We yelled for entrance but it was slow as all things are here in Ethiopia. Finally, after some deliberation and talk, a stretcher was produced but no neck brace and no doctor. We proceeded back down the rocky terrain with a giant stretcher that probably dated back to the 1940’s.
    Lucasz was still bleeding and confused and scared and really, I can’t imagine what was going through his mind as our head lamps were moving around and numerous voices in numerous languages were trying to figure out the next move. After some serious labor a bunch of us moved him onto the stretcher and began one of the most difficult movements of the night. We had to walk him through that labyrinthine footpath mentioned earlier. At times the footpath came to a squeeze making passing difficult. People were constantly moving as they got squeezed into the walls. Lucasz was very confused, in pain and scared. He spoke occasionally in English and even made some jokes about costs and distances. Matan spoke to him the whole time, trying to comfort him. He was hurting and traveling alone and we were going to be his friends.
    We moved up to the minivan where we struggled to load him in. He was a big man and so was the stretcher and barely fit in amongst the rows of seats. Matan and I got in along with what turned out to be our crew of locals and moved towards the “hospital”. Our German doctor decided there was nothing he could do and had disappeared.
    Lucasz was bleeding and getting more and more uncomfortable with each bump in the dirt and cobblestone road that continued for 20 minutes. We jostled up a hill and down some hills and finally arrived at the hospital where I jumped from the window and started yelling for a doctor. The hospital looked like an old abandoned school. I found no one. I continued yelling and searching until I finally found a man watching TV who at first seemed uninterested in me. I yelled at him in western fashion until he got up and followed. It was some time before there was any real action taking place. We moved Lucasz from van and into the hospital not really following anyone and unsure where to go. “There has to be a doctor”, I thought. “Where the fuck is he?” It was the beginning of many frustrations.
    As we moved him into the depths of the hospital we saw two men who slowly paced toward us with a vibe of complete nonchalance. One motioned for us to bring Lucasz in to his office. I felt immediately scared for anyone who had to be in this situation. This “doctor” asked that we put him on the floor, when we refused he cleared a table, checked his vitals, and gave him glucose injections (which were extremely difficult as Lucasz would not surrender his arm). By his movements we could tell his spine was ok and his back was lifted to check the head. The doctor searched for the fracture that caused the bleeding and it was at that point we all realized the bleeding was coming from his ears and his head injury was internal. The doctor wanted him moved to the “patient ward”. From that point on it appeared that Matan and I were the main employees of Lalibela Hospital. We asked if they had a bed with wheels to move him on. The doctor said no and the people there proceeded to slide the table that held Lucasz and the stretcher across the hospital floor toward the patient ward. The shrieks that came from metal scratching on floor were piercing. Lucasz would yell out every so often and we tried to console him the best we could. He had stopped speaking to us in English and was rambling in Polish, I believe. Matan and I were very concerned and scared for him.
    While Lucasz was in the doctor’s office on the table one of the Ethiopians told me he had recently met the ambassador of Poland and had a number in his cell for the Polish embassy. Here began our contact with the embassy. It was also the first time I learned anything about Lucasz. I took his money belt from his waste in an attempt to find an emergency contact and also to provide the embassy with his necessary info. He had no emergency contacts I could find. He had recently been to Kenya or was about to go there because he had a bunch of Kenyan shillings. From his business card I found out that he was a fellow photographer and was most likely the guy I was shooting next to on top of the St. George, 15 minutes before his fall. He did have some sort of insurance and I found a small notebook whose contents were in Polish. I relayed all this info to the sole lady at the Polish embassy and tried to convey the seriousness of the situation. I told her about the conditions of the hospital and tried to see if any sort of airlift could be arranged. Like all things Ethiopian it took a while for the endless phone calls to be placed, to figure out who Lucasz was, to find out if he was indeed a Polish citizen, if he did have insurance, etc. These were all things I think were happening.
    We followed into the ward and moved Lucasz into a bed with a wall on one side. His breathing was much labored and we could start to hear that maybe there was blood in his lungs. There was a male nurse present who would take his vitals and do his best given the situation. He was the only true help to Lucasz in this ordeal and deserves to be held in high regards for his attempts and work. Lucasz was kicking his legs in complete discomfort and began to yell in Polish. In an instant, he slightly leaned over and threw up. From his mouth came over a liter of blood. It was one of the scariest, darkest moments of everyone present’s life. It repeated, they gave him more glucose. There was no blood to transfuse, no x-ray, no CT scan, no running water, no nothing. The doctors didn’t do anything and Matan and I realized that we were going to have to be the best we could be in the situation because everyone looked for us for the next move.
    (Matan had been a company commander and a captain in the counter terrorism unit in the Israeli army for 7 years and had been under missile attacks in the Gaza strip and seen many friends and others shots and killed in battle. He was as calm and collected as one in our situation could have been and handled everything as good as one could have. In Lucasz’s situation he was the doctor, the moral support, the link to anything and everything. )
    I went back to the phones and tried to get an aircraft sent from the embassy or something. It had been hours since the fall which occurred at around 10:30pm and was now after 2am. The woman at the embassy did her best to figure out a plan of attack. Lucasz’s condition was deteriorating and it was then the decision was made that he had to be moved to a different hospital. We tried to speak with our diver about driving him to the biggest hospital in the northern region of Ethiopia. It would have been the Dessie hospital and was 300 km away through the mountains and desert on partially paved road. It was said to take at least 6 hours. When we asked the driver he told us that it was Fasika and he hadn’t eaten or drank in days, it was the fast. It became evident that a drive of this length under these conditions would be dangerous and potentially life threatening to everyone. He disc.ussed it with his boss and quoted us a price of over $1000 before he declined to do it anyways
     Over the next two hours we were able to contact Ethiopian airlines by banging on their front door until they awoke in order to get him on the first flight the following morning to the capital city, Addis Ababa. We thought it was all set until Dr. David declined to sign the paper due to Lucasz’s condition. He said and was probably right that he was unfit to fly on a commercial plane. It was a dark moment. Lucasz was kicking and yelling and moaning. The blood was building inside him and it was extremely difficult to handle. Seeing his condition and the current condition in which he lay was incredibly grim. The nurse told us, “he may expire at any time”.
We then were informed that we could charter a flight through Abysinnian Airlines (never heard of it before) for around $3000. It was decided that was the only call. We contacted the Polish Embassy after the airline refused Lucasz’s credit card and decided they wouldn’t take ours either and needed US dollars. The Polish Embassy offered to pay for the flight. The flight couldn’t arrive until 8am.
    At 6am after about 45 minutes away from the hospital (plans needed to be solidified) we returned to the hospital to begin the journey to the Lalibela Airport. Lucasz looked really bad. His coloring was off and he was clearly in an agonizing daze. The vision I have in my mind from this moment is hard to deal with. (There are a few details I have decided to leave out here as they were Lucasz’s darkest). Taking Lucasz from his bed and putting him back on the stretcher was bordering on impossible but with 5-8 men it was done. It was at this time when the Ethiopian hospital staff pulled out a rolling bed, something that would have made everything much easier. We were in shock. We put him back in the minivan taxi that was used all night. At no point did anyone from the ambulance pick up their phone. In order to keep the stretcher level in the van we used two rocks from the gateway to the hospital to keep balance. Somehow along the 35 minute drive the rocks, though completely uneven never toppled. ( It was one of those strange things that you can’t understand.)
     We drove towards the airstrip, the van was an Ethiopian hospital on wheels. Myself along with a good friend Tristan held his legs down as he was kicking and moving out of control. We rubbed his legs to try and comfort him as the nurse gave him more glucose and checked his vitals despite the incredibly bumpy road. It was a race. As the sun rose over the horizon and the warmth touched our speeding minivan I noticed the Lucasz was no longer struggling. He was calm under the rising sun. As the nurse took his vitals I think we all knew that Lucasz had passed on. We were minutes from the airport.
     I am not sure exactly how I felt. He was in such pain and discomfort but we were so close. I think we all felt devastated and defeated, we had failed. I also know that we all felt like we did our best. We drove onto the tarmac and sat there with Lucasz under a sheet and thought and wondered and grieved. It was such an incredible loss, such an empty moment.
    In perfect Ethiopian fashion the plane didn’t show up on time, in fact it was an hour late. The pilot was very surprised and compassionate to find out that Lucasz had died. He was also very unsure as how to deal with his new cargo. Instead of a injured man, he now was transporting someone who had just died. It took several hours for him to get everything in line as he couldn’t just fly into Addis Ababa airport with a human body. He asked that we get something to wrap Lucasz in. It was at that point in complete exhaustion and dehydration that I walked from the airport to a neighboring village to find Lucasz a body bag. The only thing I could find was a orange tarp-like material that I purchased by the meter. Lucasz was a very big man so I bought three meters to make sure. As I walked back from the village, children approached me in their normal fashion asking for handouts and saying hello. Outside this difficult situation lifein Ethiopia was still going on. It was their holiest day.