Visiting Lucy
Sunday in Ethiopia. Michelle and I enjoy a relaxing morning with great coffee. She boils the coffee grinds in water then strains the juice. Rich and delicious. Not many people drink coffee in Kenya. Tea is the drink of choice in East Africa but coffe is, hands down, my favorite beverage on the planet.
In the afternoon, Michelle and I walk through town to see the sights. Addis is a large city in every respect and it does have its poor population. When we begin our trek, I tell Michelle I normally ignore anyone begging (even children) and I hope she isn’t offended by such behavior. She tells me she does the same thing. So we walk and talk along a new, wide road into the more properous parts of town. We pass a hotel and Michelle says there was a shoot-out in the lobby of the hotel in May, during the national elections, and several people were killed. For a week during the elections, Michelle and other VSO volunteers were told to stay home and not go to work. Most people in Addis avoided going out because of the potential for election-related violence to erupt. But violence of this sort, related to politics and elections, is common in developing countries where ongoing political instability prevents these countries from developing.
It’s a lovely day and we walk for five hours, trying hard to ignore the very tiny children who run beside us with their hands out. At least many of them are offering purse-size packs of tissues, instead of begging outright. Not so with the very ancient men and women who approach us. There are many people with disabilities begging. More than in Kenya, where most people who ask for handouts are young and healthy.
Ethiopians have small builds. I’m larger and taller than most of the men. Years of malnutrition hasn’t helped. Small children, begging, seem even tinier, as do the old, old men and women. As we walk, we get used to people calling out to us because of our white skin.
Michelle and I have collected three children as we walk about town. We decide to stop mid-day for a meal. We chose a restaurant called Dashen and enter with the children following. The waitress shoos the children back out the door where they wait for us. A TV in the corner, just over my left shoulder, shows the New Orleans flood damage from Hurrican Katrina. While everyone around us is speaking Amharic and eating Injera, the traditional pancake-like Ethiopian food, I’m fascinated by my fellow Americans who fill the TV screen. They seem so foreign to me in this foreign country.
Michelle orders and soon a large, oblong plate is set before us. On top of the Injera, which is folded in half, sits a bowl of what looks like ground beef in a tomato sauce, with a hard boiled egg's smooth white curve peeking from the center of the bowl. Michelle unfolds the Injera on the large plate and pours the contents of the bowl on top. She instructs me to rip off a piece of Injera and scoop up the meat sauce, using only the right hand. It is very similar to pinching off ugali and using it to soak up meat with sauces. The Injera is gray and spongy and has air holes like a not-quite-done pancake. It is tasteless but takes on the flavor of accompanying dishes and dips.
We drink orange soda poured from a glass bottle and I sip it conservatively because the Injera sauce is slightly spicy. Michelle then orders a second dish, this one with chicken poured over Injera. We complete the meal with small, strong shots of macchiato. The total is 24 birr, or about $2.40 USD.
We walk a few blocks to the National Museum where we visit Lucy, the 1.1 metre tall skeleton unearthed in the Hadar region of Ethiopia. She’s tiny, this skeleton that is part actual bone and part reconstructed bones. This miniature woman, only three feet tall, is just a replica, the sign tells us, for the real bones of Lucy are locked away in the basement of the museum. A sample of primitive australopithecines, Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy walked essentially erect approxiately four million years ago. She's the most complete early hominid skeleton yet recovered and she shows postcranial features that permitted her to process judgments about early hominid (bipedal) locomotion. Well, that's a fancy way of saying her brain allowed her to walk upright, on two feet.
As Michelle and I bipedal ourselves home, I being sneezing and my nose is running. Not sure if it’s from the dust particles in the air, from the high elevation or just a cold coming on. But it worsens as the evening goes on and when I wake the next morning, feeling headachy and stuffy, I know it’s a sinus infection. I get them regularly and normally take a 10-day course of Amoxicillin, which halts the infection. I had planned to bring Amoxicillin on the trip, but the bottle of pills is on my kitchen counter in Kisumu!
In the afternoon, Michelle and I walk through town to see the sights. Addis is a large city in every respect and it does have its poor population. When we begin our trek, I tell Michelle I normally ignore anyone begging (even children) and I hope she isn’t offended by such behavior. She tells me she does the same thing. So we walk and talk along a new, wide road into the more properous parts of town. We pass a hotel and Michelle says there was a shoot-out in the lobby of the hotel in May, during the national elections, and several people were killed. For a week during the elections, Michelle and other VSO volunteers were told to stay home and not go to work. Most people in Addis avoided going out because of the potential for election-related violence to erupt. But violence of this sort, related to politics and elections, is common in developing countries where ongoing political instability prevents these countries from developing.
It’s a lovely day and we walk for five hours, trying hard to ignore the very tiny children who run beside us with their hands out. At least many of them are offering purse-size packs of tissues, instead of begging outright. Not so with the very ancient men and women who approach us. There are many people with disabilities begging. More than in Kenya, where most people who ask for handouts are young and healthy.
Ethiopians have small builds. I’m larger and taller than most of the men. Years of malnutrition hasn’t helped. Small children, begging, seem even tinier, as do the old, old men and women. As we walk, we get used to people calling out to us because of our white skin.
Michelle and I have collected three children as we walk about town. We decide to stop mid-day for a meal. We chose a restaurant called Dashen and enter with the children following. The waitress shoos the children back out the door where they wait for us. A TV in the corner, just over my left shoulder, shows the New Orleans flood damage from Hurrican Katrina. While everyone around us is speaking Amharic and eating Injera, the traditional pancake-like Ethiopian food, I’m fascinated by my fellow Americans who fill the TV screen. They seem so foreign to me in this foreign country.
Michelle orders and soon a large, oblong plate is set before us. On top of the Injera, which is folded in half, sits a bowl of what looks like ground beef in a tomato sauce, with a hard boiled egg's smooth white curve peeking from the center of the bowl. Michelle unfolds the Injera on the large plate and pours the contents of the bowl on top. She instructs me to rip off a piece of Injera and scoop up the meat sauce, using only the right hand. It is very similar to pinching off ugali and using it to soak up meat with sauces. The Injera is gray and spongy and has air holes like a not-quite-done pancake. It is tasteless but takes on the flavor of accompanying dishes and dips.
We drink orange soda poured from a glass bottle and I sip it conservatively because the Injera sauce is slightly spicy. Michelle then orders a second dish, this one with chicken poured over Injera. We complete the meal with small, strong shots of macchiato. The total is 24 birr, or about $2.40 USD.
We walk a few blocks to the National Museum where we visit Lucy, the 1.1 metre tall skeleton unearthed in the Hadar region of Ethiopia. She’s tiny, this skeleton that is part actual bone and part reconstructed bones. This miniature woman, only three feet tall, is just a replica, the sign tells us, for the real bones of Lucy are locked away in the basement of the museum. A sample of primitive australopithecines, Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy walked essentially erect approxiately four million years ago. She's the most complete early hominid skeleton yet recovered and she shows postcranial features that permitted her to process judgments about early hominid (bipedal) locomotion. Well, that's a fancy way of saying her brain allowed her to walk upright, on two feet.
As Michelle and I bipedal ourselves home, I being sneezing and my nose is running. Not sure if it’s from the dust particles in the air, from the high elevation or just a cold coming on. But it worsens as the evening goes on and when I wake the next morning, feeling headachy and stuffy, I know it’s a sinus infection. I get them regularly and normally take a 10-day course of Amoxicillin, which halts the infection. I had planned to bring Amoxicillin on the trip, but the bottle of pills is on my kitchen counter in Kisumu!
posted by Cindi at 4:23 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home