Lucy

Was awake nice and early, and found the internet mysteriously working, so I quickly uploaded the first couple of blog entries and their photos in case something went wrong again.

Joined the other 6 guests in the restaurant for breakfast. Pretty extensive. Everything you could wish for and more. I haven't had an omelette for breakfast since India, and tomorrow I might just splurge on a pancake.

Thought that, since I had a free morning and it was Sunday, I'd try and find a church to attend, so I hoofed it back to Meskel Square where there was a large orthodox church called St Stephens adjacent. Turned out that the call to prayer that woke me about 4am wasn't a mosque at all, but rather an orthodox church. The building was far too small to hold everybody, so there were hundreds standing outside joining in, courtesy of big speakers. Women were mainly on one side of the building, all covered in white shawls, whilst all the men were either inside, or on the other side of the building. Found out later that it's the left and the right of the church because its those sides that Adam and Eve are identified with. Non stop chanting, and you seemed to come and go when you'd had enough. A great experience, but I certainly didn't get inside, nor did I have a clue as to what was being chanted.

Home mid morning by foot, in time to find the auditions for Ethiopian Idol on the TV. Hmm, the budget is somewhat different. At least in America, even the duds know what the routine is. Here, well think of a room of duds equal to America's worst, who don't know what a tune or a microphone is, or even that they need to look at the camera. Stage hands were turning people around mid performance. Not many could sing, so mostly they just stood and jiggled. The judges sat behind a kitchen table, with a badly draped orange sheet on it, and talked into a microphone that crackled. Wonder if Simon Cowell knows about it?

I'm really liking Ethiopia. It's a lot like India in terms of infrastructure, mini vans, dust and smog, but without the frenetic traffic and the overwhelming crush of people. The locals are friendly and smile at you instead of deliberately ignoring you, and they actually seem to care about you and each other. Turns out that in ancient days, the capital kept moving around depending on where the firewood was, which explains the denuded countryside I saw from the air. However, during the period that the capital was first in Addis Ababa, the emperor imported eucalypts from Australia, and they re-grew so rapidly that they never moved again. So there we are Australia - you planted a capital.

Spent the rest of the morning watching the world go by my balcony, before being picked up for an afternoon tour. Did a drive up and down a lot of roads. Had palaces and ministries pointed out to me, but it was all a bit of a blur, and not quite a tour of exploration. There were only two places on the list to stop at, and one of those was the central market which is closed on Sundays. Oh well.

That left the National Museum. Certainly not the British Museum. It was housed in a building the size of a large house, with three floors. The guide knew his stuff, but with 2 hours to fill, and only a small number of pieces in the museum, I got an in depth explanation of every piece of pottery.

The star attraction on one floor was a number of sets of hominid bones from Ethiopian digs that covered most periods from 4 million to 1 million years ago, including homo erectus and homo sapien. 'Lucy', the best known of them, is an Australopithecus afarensis, dated about 3.2 million years ago. The most extraordinary thing about 'Lucy' is that she was found all together. Normally they seem to find different bones from different fossilised skeletons, and piece them together. So, in various digs sites quite close to each other in northern Ethiopia, they have found well preserved and reasonably complete sets of a number of different eras, which makes it unique. Had the museum director himself take me on the tour of the bones, which was great, but he had a very thick accent, and I didn't catch a lot of it.

A quick stop for coffee, then on the way home, I asked to go to see the Cathedral Church of St George where the emperors were crowned, as we weren't going to be stopping anywhere else. Not sure that the guide was that impressed, as they were doing roadworks near the entrance and we had to make a few detours, but we did a quick lap of the outside, and headed back to the hotel. The tour guide then told me that his part was over, and that the driver would be taking me to dinner, and then come back for me really early in the morning to take me to the airport, so I bid him farewell. A bit of an easy gig when you have a lackey.

Sure enough, the driver was back in a couple of hours, and we headed off to a cultural restaurant for dinner. Great evening, though we didn't stay nearly to the end as I'm up at 4am tomorrow to get to the airport. Had a traditional Ethiopian meal eaten with the hands, with traditional Coke to wash it down, while watching a traditional folk band accompanied by singers and dancers in traditional costumes. Very good, only marred by a very drunk Russian who gatecrashed the stage twice before we left, to introduce himself to the audience and sing karaoke. It could only end badly, though he probably would have won Ethiopian Idol.