Travel stories, life lessons. The following travel story, by Barry Hoffner, shares an encounter with members of the nomadic Afar people in Ethiopia. The Afar people, also known as the Danakil, Adali and Odali, inhabit the Horn of Africa. The story is an expanded excerpt from Mr. Hoffner’s new book, “Belonging to the World.”
After Mr. Hoffner lost his wife and travel partner, Jackie, his grief took him on a mission to visit all 193 countries on Earth. His journeys led to transforming his pain by experiencing a connection to the struggle, hardship, kindness, depth, complexity, and joy all of humanity shares.
Mr. Hoffner’s journeys are the best of travel writing. His stories are just the kind of encounters and sites and travel stories I love to experience–and to read. I highly encourage you to read his book.
-Editor, ConfettiTravelCafe.com
In a land where the Earth splits apart and temperatures test the limits of life, my guide, a member of the Afar people of Ethiopia named Hussein, schools me on the meaning of dignity and honor.
My first awareness of Ethiopia came when I was about four. One of the older boys in our neighborhood spoke of a man from Africa, from a country called Ethiopia, who had just won the Olympic marathon in Tokyo. That runner, Abebe Bikila, had also won four years earlier in Rome, the year of my birth in 1960, famously running barefoot because he wasn’t used to shoes. In Rome, he became the first African ever to win Olympic gold.
(Photo courtesy Barry Hoffner)
Ethiopia has long held a certain mystique for me: the first Christian nation, home to a legendary queen said to descend from Solomon, and, some believe, guardian of the Ark of the Covenant. It’s where coffee, one of life’s essentials, was discovered, and where “Lucy,” one of humanity’s oldest ancestors, rests in a museum in Addis Ababa. It’s also one of only two African nations never colonized, a huge symbol of cultural pride for all of Africa.
Introduction to the Nomadic Afar People of Ethiopia
The last time I was here, in early 2023, I experienced one of the more dramatic swings of travel—within hours, one moment deeply frustrating, the next profoundly moving.
After a detour to Somaliland to see the cave art of Laas Geel from 5,000 BCE, our group was driving back into Ethiopia when we hit an unexpected military checkpoint. We were ordered off the bus, men in one line, women in another, for a search. I’d passed through dozens of checkpoints in Afghanistan and Yemen, but never had to disembark.
Then came shouting. Josh, a thirty-something New Yorker in our group, was face-to-face with a soldier gripping a rifle. The soldier had taken cash from the purse of Helga, our eighty-three-year-old companion, barely four and a half feet tall.
“Give me that money right now!” Josh shouted.
I stepped beside him, moving Helga behind us. The soldier hesitated long enough for Josh to snatch the cash back. It could have ended badly, but a senior officer appeared, barked a few words, and waved us on.
(Photo courtesy of Barry Hoffner)
Travel Stories: The Highway to Harar
Later, along the highway to Harar, we stopped for a “call of nature” break. Ahead of the bus, I saw a gathering of women in bright beads and white veils—a wedding party paused unexpectedly by the roadside. Curious, I walked toward them and raised my phone in a silent question. They answered not with words, but with gestures, smiles, and laughter, waving me in.
Within seconds, I was surrounded. A young boy leaned in for a selfie, his grin unforgettable. Then a woman gently placed her baby daughter in my arms, her tiny headdress matching the others, as more women joined beside me for photos of their own. Soon I was taking pictures with everyone—the bride, the groom, strangers who, moments before, had been simply figures in the distance.
We didn’t exchange a single word. Yet in those few minutes, I felt something unmistakable: a genuine bond, a wordless kinship.
Back on the bus, I realized how quickly everything had shifted. Just hours earlier, we had been standing at a tense military checkpoint; now, I was carrying the warmth of a shared human moment that needed no translation. That brief encounter stayed with me—not just as a beautiful memory, but as a quiet introduction to something deeper I didn’t yet fully understand.
It was during that same trip, passing through Djibouti, that I first heard about the Afar, a fiercely independent nomadic people who live in one of the most unforgiving places on Earth. Their endurance and culture intrigued me, but I left the Horn of Africa without meeting them. That curiosity lingered.
Salt Lake Assale at Djibouti (Photo courtesy Barry Hoffner)
A Return to Ethiopia
Now, with every country in the world behind me except North Korea, I’d returned to Ethiopia for two reasons: to attend the Most Traveled People Conference in Addis Ababa, and to finally see the Danakil Depression, one of the planet’s most extreme environments. The area had been closed in 2023 due to a three-year war between the Tigray ethnic group and Ethiopia, with deaths in the hundreds of thousands.
Just twelve hours after leaving San Francisco, I was strolling through Istanbul’s glittering airport mall; the next day, I was flying north to Semera, Ethiopia, stepping into another world. My guide Chichi, from my previous trip, met me there, and together we set off toward the borders of Djibouti and Eritrea, into the land of the Afar.
Within half an hour, the landscape turned to vast, beautiful emptiness. A man herded long-horned cattle off the road; a boy led a camel stacked with firewood; clusters of white-domed tents glowed against the dust. As often happens, my mind was still trying to reconcile the world I had come from with the one I was entering.
At Salt Lake Assale (Photo courtesy Barry Hoffner)
Devotion in a Land of Extremes
“Man, it’s hot out,” I said as our jeep rolled deeper into the desert.
Chichi grinned. “This is the cool season for the Afar people.”
The thermometer read 41°C—104°F. The terrain unfolded like two worlds merging: black volcanic rock giving way to endless white salt flats. When our tires first crunched onto the salt, I hesitated. Beneath that shimmering crust lies water, sometimes tens of feet deep.
We stopped where salt is still mined by hand, a labor that has shaped this region for centuries. Chichi’s friend Hussein, a local leader and guide, swung his axe into the crust for nearly twenty minutes to free a single block worth about fifty Ethiopian birr, twenty-five U.S. cents. Camel caravans still carry these slabs across the desert, though trucks now shoulder most of the load.
By sunset, we reached a place where a thin film of water spread over the flats, turning the world into a vast, surreal mirror. As Chichi snapped photos, I felt weightless in a dream of salt and light, an incredible peace and presence.
At dawn the next day, we drove for miles on what seemed like a highway of salt, toward Dallol, one of the lowest and hottest places on Earth. After a few miles, Chichi stopped.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“Hussein needs to pray,” he said.
I watched Hussein walk fifty feet into the glowing flats, kneel on the salt, and bow toward Mecca, a silhouette of devotion in a landscape of extremes.
At Danakil (Photo courtesy of Barry Hoffner)
Connections
Just as the sun rose, we reached Dallol, long on my bucket list. Over 100 meters below sea level, this is where the collision of three tectonic plates, combined with brutal heat and low elevation, forces minerals like sulfur and iron oxide to the surface. The result is a chemical reaction that paints the land in unreal and vibrant colors—greens, yellows, reds—like a living, three-dimensional canvas.
Standing amid that kaleidoscope of mineral pools and vaporous heat, I felt an unexpected connection to the very beginnings of life on Earth itself. Scientists come here not just for the spectacle but because Dallol mirrors the volatile chemistry of early Earth, where energy, minerals, and water once conspired to spark the first living cells, even in such an unforgiving environment.
Harsh, raw, and unforgettable, the Danakil Depression feels less like a place you visit than a place you enter—into the Earth itself.
At Lake Assale (Photo courtesy Barry Hoffner)
The Importance of Hospitality
After walking through Dallol’s otherworldly terrain, Hussein led us back toward the salt lake where we’d left our car. Chichi set up a small breakfast table overlooking what he called “the Canyons,” or as Hussein preferred, “Dubai,” a cluster of towering salt spires. The area, he said, was once part of the Red Sea, thousands of years ago when its waters flooded this rift valley before retreating.
Over tea and bread, I asked Chichi to translate a question for Hussein:
“What is it about your Afar culture that you value most?”
Hussein’s face brightened. Chichi translated:
“Though we are a poor people, living a difficult life, our hospitality to guests is important, and most important is our code of honor.”
I thought back to that roadside wedding near Harar—another moment of unspoken generosity—and began to understand that what I had felt there was not случай, not chance, but culture.
Later, I learned how deep that code runs. In 2007, an Afar nationalist group operating from Eritrea abducted several British nationals. Hussein was working as their guide. Because he was Afar, the militants told him he could leave. He refused, staying with his clients out of loyalty and honor, earning an award from the Ethiopian government for his bravery.
They were released unharmed after nearly fifty days. Hussein returned to the Danakil, to the salt, the heat, and the horizon he calls home.
At Lake Assale (Photo courtesy of Barry Hoffner)
Sharing News, Sharing Truths
Before we left, another guide stopped in his Toyota 4×4 to greet Hussein. The two clasped hands and began an exchange in the Afar language I couldn’t understand. Later, Chichi explained that this was Dagu, the Afar’s ancient system for sharing news. Every meeting, even between strangers, carries an obligation to trade what each has seen or heard: news of water, grazing, safety, or conflict. The need for information is a matter of life and death in this place of extremes. To pass by without speaking would be unthinkable.
In a world with few phones and vast silence, Dagu carries truth across the desert like an invisible network, linking far-flung families through trust. I watched Hussein listen intently, asking questions. It struck me that this sense of honor, this deep culture, must be profoundly life-affirming in a place where life itself is so hard.
Somalian cave art (Photo courtesy of Barry Hoffner)
Travel Stories, At Their Best
Travel, at its best, reveals not only the world’s extremes and its most unique features but also its hidden internal riches. A single question or moment of presence can open a window into another culture—and sometimes, into ourselves.
In the burning heart of Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression, Hussein’s code of honor and his openness will stay with me—as will the colors of Dallol, and that fleeting, wordless connection on a roadside near Harar, where I first began to understand what it means to belong, even briefly, in someone else’s world.
For More:
Below are a few ways to purchase the book online:
- Amazon
- Barnes & Noble
- Bookshop.org
- Barry Hoffner’s website, Belonging to the World.com
Readers can also connect with Barry on social media:
-All photos courtesy of Barry Hoffner.
