I arrived at the workshop before sunrise, when the highland mist still clung to the eucalyptus groves and the only sound was the distant lowing of long-horned cattle moving toward the river. Tesfaye had been working since four — I could smell the cured ox-hide before I saw him, a dense animal warmth mingling with beeswax and the faint iron tang of red ochre rubbed into the grain.
A Lineage in Leather
The workshop belonged to Tesfaye’s grandfather, who learned the craft from his own father during the last years of Menelik’s reign. Three generations of hands had shaped hide in this single stone room — soaking it in the river for seven days until the fibres softened, pounding it with acacia-wood mallets, then rubbing beeswax into the grain until the surface gleamed like polished amber in low light.
“The hide remembers the hand that shaped it.”