Monday, 14 April 2003
This day we had a tight schedule as we had to be at Martina’s place at 10 pm to get her car. We had breakfast on café “Le Notre” as their croissants are the best in town.
Shortly after we hired a taxi and directed the driver the way to Martina using all the instructions and marks given by her to find way. It was an Embassy here, a restaurant there, drive right at an open square and find the white gate with the European Union sticker.
The lack of street names implies that people invent names like “Hotel Ibex Road” and “Norwegian Embassy Road”. What a relief to have street names and house numbers.
Martina’s house was really nice and big, even though the garden could not be compared to the one at Sophie’s place. Here we picked up the car and her friend Malin, who we met on the yesterday walk around Addis. As Martina had to work it suited Malin perfectly to have some company today. We headed right at the Ethiopian National Museum to explorer the main attraction: “Lucy”.
Even before we parked the car a young man offered himself as a guard. We made a deal with him and a handicapped colleague to look after the car. The museum was quite small and decayed.
Besides “Lucy” the main attractions are Haile Selaisse’s throne, crown, dresses and weapons. But the main attraction is of course “Lucy”, the worlds oldest human skeleton discovered in 1974 by French scientists whose ghetto blaster played the Beatles song: “Lucy in the sky with diamonds”.
She is 3,2 million years old and defined as human being because of the fact that she had a V-shaped jaw. “Lucy” was only 3 foot tall and weighted some 30-kilo. The most surprising discovery was that she walked upright despite that her brain capacity was lower than a chimpanzee. Therefore is “Lucy” seen as the missing link proving the theory of Charles Darwin.
We could not hold our disappointment when seeing the few pieces of bones, which on top were a copy according to the guidebook.
Short after we continued to the “Department of Ethiopian Studies” located at the University. As it was closed for lunch break we took the opportunity to enjoy the sun, looking at the birds and the very well dressed pupils in the university garden. Not everyone is starving in Ethiopia.
This exhibition was a bit more interesting. Here we saw craftsmanship like jars, plows, boats and drums, string instruments and much more.
One of the wall sheets read about riots under the occupation where the Italians killed thousands and burned down a considerable number of houses as revenge to an attempted assassination. Outside in the front of the university we found an obelisk erected in memory for the victims of the massacre.
At noon we ate lunch at “The old Milk house” and we got an unexpected opportunity to play pool while waiting for our club sandwich. Later we passed by some souvenir stalks to see the range of goods and prices.
Jørgen had to go on work; hence Jesper and I drove Malin back home, returned the car and got a taxi back to Jørgen’s work at the UN military office.