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Published: November 17th 2009
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Museums, Monuments, Cathedrals and the Pink School
Museums
All the group is here now - the last 3 people arrived during the night. We are supposed to meet at 9a.m. for a tour of
Addis Ababa but there is no bus yet. We wait in the hotel reception while Baty organises a bus. The film "
Zulu" is showing on the TV in reception - seems an odd choice for Ethiopian TV to show!
Eventually a bus arrives and we get taken on our tour of Addis Ababa.
As a "Baty Bonus" we taken to the National Museum. Quite a few of us went there yesterday so we form a splinter group and head for the
Enthomological Museum which is housed in the former palace of
Haile Selassie. The museum is interestingly laid out according to the ages of man rather than according to geographical regions or historical ages. My favorite exhibit is the display of musical instruments on the top floor, atmospherically set out in a room with the walls darkened and the sounds of the instruments piped into the room. In front of the palace is a spiral set of stairs. The Italians started building
this during the occupation of Addis Ababa with one stair to commemorate each year of the fascist "empire" - it doesn't go very far!! On top the Ethiopians placed a Lion of Judah after liberation.
Also nearby is the
Yeketit 12 Monument built as a monument to the thousands of Ethiopians who were killed by Italian forces in a 3 day massacre in retaliation for an assassination attempt on the Italian governer.
We have lunch at a restaurant near the museum. One of our group receives a text telling her who has been voted out of X-factor. Aaaaaagh!!! I thought I'd escaped!
Cathedrals
In the afternoon we take in
The Holy Trinity Cathedral and
St. George's Cathedral. St. Georges Cathedral is very busy today because it is St. George's Day (
I think) and there are lots of people praying at the cathedral. Today is also the 79th anniversary of the coronation of
Haile Selassie at the cathedral. I have a bit of a dilemma here because I have to take my shoes off to go into the cathedral - the feet doctors aren't going to be too pleased with me when I get back.
The Holy Trinity Cathedral contains the rather large tombs of
Haile Selassie and his empress and some quite impressive stained glass windows.
On what's turning out to be a fairly packed day we are taken for a drive into the hills above Addis Ababa for some great views of the city
{see the panorama at the top of the page}. As we drive up the local kids are coming out of school. We can identify the schools by the different coloured uniforms. One school makes its pupils - boys and girls - dress completely in pink! I couldn't really see Quarrydale boys accepting that!!
We round off the day with a trip to the market. The
Merkato market claims to be the largest in Africa. One of the guide books claims that anything can be bought here - even a Kalashnikov rifle. But we just go to one corner of the market - the spice market. I think Baty is worried he may lose us if he lets us stray too far!
Everyone tries to get an early night - we leave the hotel at 5a.m. tomorrow to get the Internal flight to
Lalibela. Am I
on holiday?
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Nick Buchanan
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An introduction to Ethiopian history
The other thing of note was our rather interesting guide for the day. The tour was set up to have the indomitable Baty travelling with us the whole time but to link in with local guides in each location we went to. Today, we were joined by a large chap in a grey suit with shades ... imagine Puff Daddy's minder and you get a good idea. At lunchtime, however, the gentleman disappears and returns in full military DPM camo suit and sporting a rather fetching hat in the Ethiopian colours, bearing the legend "Ethiopia" just in case we don't get the subtle nationalist reference. He is now set to tell us all about Ethiopia and "his book". As it happens, this chap appears to be writing a book which he kindly informs us about at every given opportunity. He explains patiently that Ethiopia is, in essence, the first at being first ... all things started here, all inventions probably came from Ethiopia, language started here and, well, pretty much anything you can think of was originally Ethiopian. He has a number of interesting conspiracy theories which put Graham Hancock and Dan Brown to shame ... apparently the Templars are intimately linked with Ethiopia and are still there today ... hmmm ... he also explains the difference between Ethiopian Othodox Christianity and Catholicism making some surprising claims about Catholic dogma and ritual which I'm sure the Pope would find enlightening ... his claims about the divinity of Jesus were rather interesting to say the least. I suspect he's not theologically trained but he did get full marks for enthusiams, conviction and a willingness to share his knowlege. Did I mention, he's writing a book ... ?