Meet Lucy, our common ancestor

Being a tourist sure is a lot easier than being a Rotarian! Alex, my guide for the week, didn’t pick me up until 10:00.  The traffic was fierce – apparently Addis Ababa is hosting the Pan African Union, or some such group, and both traffic and police are everywhere.  So we got out of the car (it was stuck in traffic) and took me under a bridge to a place where I had my first Ethiopian coffee.  Even the word “coffee,” he told me, is from an Ethiopian place name.  “Mocha” is from a Yemeni place name, right across the gulf.  To millions of coffee drinkers everywhere, know that it all started here.

Then we went to a store to get a sim card for my phone.  Interesting: I had to show my passport and have my photo taken to buy the darn thing; I’m not sure what the “issues” are.  And it didn’t work when put in my phone – needed Internet access to turn the thing on – so with fear becuase I now need to find a safe place for my “regular” sim card) we postponed the issue and moved along to sightseeing. Plot spoiler: When I returned to the hotel and to internet, I still couldn’t get the darn thing to work.  Sigh.

Off to the church of the Holy Trinity built by Haile Selassie, ad which serves as his tomb.  He was killed in a coup in 1974, in the power vacuum that followed the Communists took over, and it wasn’t until 1991 when Moscow had more important things on its collective mind that the Communists were evicted.  Lots of Lada cars – especially taxis – all date from the Communist period, apparently, but I haven’t seen much else to show for their time here.

By this time it was lunchtime,  and Alex took me to a local eatery where I was properly introduced to injera, the Ethiopian staple that serves as both bread and plate, and which wasn’t anywhere as bad as the guidebook had led me to believe.  Think a pizza-sized tortilla made from sourdough, and you about have it.

In the afternoon we went to two museums.  One is in the former palace of Haile Selassie, which he turned into a university when he built a bigger palace for himself, and includes lots of indigenous crafts, et cetera, as well as a few rooms dedicated to the emperor and god.  The other is the National Museum, where I met Lucy, our common ancestor.  She was shorter than I realized, but stands fully upright.  And she makes a mockery of racism and any other  scapegoating of the “other,” since she is the common ancestor of us all.

The day ended with a trip to the market and then back to the hotel.  But wait! The day isn’t over yet! We have  a cultural experience at a restaurant tonight.  More later.