Expedition OMO 2005

Four years ago I experienced something special, something that moved my life forward. A childhood dream came true after a great journey of discovery with a group of great friends. It confirmed to me that one can do almost anything if one wants to. You know it yourself. Most people do something in life that they don’t primarily enjoy in order to make money and then be able to do what they enjoy. The river has pushed the boundaries of life’s values for me. So I decided to take a different shorter, more appealing, but more challenging path. It’s up to each person whether they choose the life of a dog in a kennel or a wolf in the woods. So I quit my job when I returned and have been making a successful living as a freelance photographer ever since.

In October 2001, we went rubber rafting down the OMO River in southwestern Ethiopia. In our hearts we had determination and a desire for adventure. In our hands was one black and white photograph of a river as murky as chocolate and a secret military map from the KGB. We survived all the pitfalls of the upper wild river, the fierce rapids, the dangerous hippos and the swift crocodiles. The Omo River is truly unique, the upper half is completely uninhabited, full of steep canyons and spectacular scenery, and on the lower stretch of our nearly 900 km journey we encountered tribes of coal-black natives almost untouched by civilization. We saw that these people do not need our conveniences at all and what Mother Nature offers is enough for them to live a happy life. The only thing that disturbed the idyll were the AK-47 submachine guns slung on their shoulders, known by the name of their creator, Kalashnikov. On the lower reaches we had problems mainly with the lack of clean water, the tremendous heat, the intrusive malarial mosquitoes and tsetse flies. As we also contacted the natives and communicated with each other only by hand and foot, unpleasant to dangerous situations arose here too at times, especially with the Mursi tribes and the thieving Kars. Despite the fact that each of us subsequently contracted malaria, we survived. Palko Barabá made a beautiful film, “Omo – A Journey into Prehistory”, which won the hearts of audiences and many cross-country awards around the world.

But time passes and more challenges accumulate in man. In my heart I had a view of the next adventure on Omo from two different sides. The first view had the name of respect, the other one of desire. Why venture to the same places and the same river again? For four years, respect won out. But early in the summer a group got together, got bargain tickets, and I couldn’t resist. Desire won. Originally there were seven expeditioners. In the end, we were down to five. From the original line-up only Peter “Becko” Ondrejovic, a traveler and Homo Natural, and me, Martin Žilka, a professional photographer. The party was completed by Ivan Bulík, traveler, writer and photographer, who was just finishing his book about Africa and needed a pearl for the end. And the Omo River is definitely that pearl in Africa! The fourth in the party was Miro Dušek, a professional rafting guide and a great friend. The fifth member of the expedition was Stefan Kostolansky, a motorized paraglide pilot who was to be our ace up our sleeve while on the river.

There were only a few months to prepare. It is important to remember that we have chosen to operate in an area where nothing we use on a daily basis at home has existed for a month. Clean water, electricity, shops, telephone, etc. The surrounding conditions force you to learn to be self-sufficient, to survive in the jungle, to cook the same thing over and over again, to paddle exhaustingly every day, to filter murky water from a puddle, to live with hippos and crocodiles. Every day you have to be prepared to deal with a multitude of potential risks. Most of them, however, we didn’t even learn about. During one pre-expedition meeting in Beckov, we each told each other beforehand what to do with our bodies if we died on the river. The reality of the wilderness. However, there are ways to reduce the risks. At home, before we left, this meant getting good gear to move around the wild river and stay in nature. We had to debug the portable motorized paraglide design, get our now legendary 5-meter boat “Blue Hippo” refurbished, get better quality anti-malarials, and a million other little things. We suspected problems with overweight during air transport to East Africa. After all, the allowed weight of luggage for the plane was 5x 20kg, which just matched the weight of a raft and a motorized paraglide. There was simply no room for personal belongings, a lot of necessary trinkets or food. The cards were dealt, so we had no choice but to play our best, use our contacts, experience, tactics and go for our dream.

Martin Žilka

To be continued