To See Our Photos of Ethiopia, Click Here
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| Michelle at the National Cafe |
We arrived in Addis Ababa very excited not just to see a new country (especially as we'd heard lots of good things about Ethiopia ), but also to see our last country of Africa. Before we left Kenya we tried to do some online research ahead of time (quite unusual for us) and discovered that internal flights in Ethiopia were quite expensive - more than we were hoping. We will soon be back in England in just two weeks' time, and because we do only have two weeks and the distances are so great (buses take 1 to 2 days to some places!), flying across Ethiopia would be the way to make the most of our time. The Addis Ethiopia Air office was not far from our guesthouse and we decided to see if there were any deals to be had. Well, we were in luck: daily flights around the country are about $40 to $65! But you have to buy tickets from inside the country to get that great price. That would save us some time. What an uplifting start! We could heave a sigh of relief and now continue to enjoy our first day in Addis.
We even managed to find an amazing local cafe, across from the airline office, that would be our mainstay for our time in Addis. National Cafe was our introduction to what we would find out was
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| Eating Bozena Shero with Injera |
fabulous local foods.... and plenty of it at that! I would think that most "Westerners" impression of Ethiopia is that it is a desolate place with major famine and hardly any agriculture. That is far from the truth, because we found it to be a rather green, crop producing country, the food was delicious, and most times, we couldn't eat all that was served to us - very plentiful. On our first trip to National Cafe, we basically looked around the restaurant, pointed at plates and asked for those items. This would be our first taste of a staple food called injera, which is basically a massive pancake with the consistency of tripe, and it is fermented a few days, so that the taste is a little sour. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I didn't mind it - Michelle, on the other hand was not too fond of the texture or taste.
Many countries in Africa claim to be the "Cradle of Mankind" but the reality is, Ethiopia is where it's at! In 1974, Australapithecus Afarensis, or 'Lucy' as she is more familiarly known ('Lucy in the sky with Diamonds' was playing at the camp when she was found) was one of the first bipedal hominid (upright walking and human-like) fossils to be found. 3.2 million years old and pint-sized at 3 and a bit feet tall, Lucy was one of the major pieces to one of the most important puzzles to mankind - our evolutionary origins.
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| Michelle and Lucy |
The casts of the several hundred pieces of bone representing about 40% of her skeleton is housed at the National Museum. She is significant because her skeleton shows evidence of small skull capacity similar to apes, and signs of upright walking akin to that of humans, providing evidence supporting the view that bipedalism preceded increase in brain size in human evolution. We took local transport to the musuem, and were surprised when the lady who showed us which minibus to take, actually paid for our fare. Little things, but it sure shows the nature of the Ethiopian people. Lucy was the main attraction, but the rest of the National Museum was interesting, but a lot of reading.
The former palace of the Emperor Haile Selassie is at the University of Addis Ababa, and is now the site of the Ethnological Museum which we had time to visit. A super interesting and colourful museum, it captures the heritage of the past and traditional art and culture of Ethiopia's many tribes and cultures. It describes the different stages of life viewed and experienced by over 80 language ethnic groups! It also still houses the Emperor's original bedroom where he slept for 10 years. Haile Selassie was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 until the abolition of the monarchy in 1974. As Emperor he was the head of state and government, with ultimate executive, judicial and legislative power. He endured the war and occupation by Italy for 5 years from 1935 when Mussolini's Fascist regime was keen to provide a
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| Emperor Haile Selassie's bedroom |
bridge between it's occupation of neighbouring countries, Eritrea and Somaliland, and to avenge its defeat suffered in the First Italo-Abyssinian War (1895 to 1896). Haile Selassie was the heir to a dynasty that traced its origins to the 13th century, and from there apparently back to King Solomon and Queen Makeda, better known as the Queen of Sheba. As his real name is Ras Tafari Makonnen, Haile Selassie is revered as the returned messiah among the Rastafari movement. The stuff you learn!
The museum was a short walk up the road from the National Museum, and on our walk we shocked to see the amount of beggars along the road. It seemed like they were all waiting outside the church, as a ceremony was just finishing, and hoping to take advantage of the worshippers good hearts. Later, we returned to our guesthouse called Wim's Holland House. It was a funky place with a nice, helpful staff (especially Mimi), and some other friendly Dutch travelers all using different methods to travel Cape Town to Cairo. * Mush/Stub
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