Sunday 5th July
On our first morning in-country we woke up to the now familiar smell of insect repellent after we enjoyed a lie in until 9am. We had a good breakfast then some free time to acclimatise further; this was followed by lunch.
We then took a walk around the city. There's already been a few eye opening moments for us - some scaffolding made of thin branches over a huge concrete building; a very frail elderly woman just walking the roads alone in her bare feet; and many stray dogs. The few dogs that are domesticated dogs were all tied up. Generally people in the city are incredibly friendly and as we pass through as a group they say "Seu-lam" which is Amharic for "peace" or "hello". English is generally well spoken here too.
Bamboo scaffolding for construction
We browsed some of the markets in the town before heading to the park where we gave some of the locals a game of football, which we ended up winning 5-4 much to their shock (and ours). They were clearly the better side and our match winner Peter reckons they had 95% possession. (I will attempt to write a full match report later on tonight.)
The Big Match
The travelling support
We then got back to the hotel, still taking pride in our performance, and had a nice dinner. The agenda for tonights entertainment was a 'gag off' and there were some fine jokes exchanged; particularly Rachel's about a vest wearing alligator (an investigator). After we naturally ran out of appropriate jokes, Daniel took centre stage and taught us how to play a dice game that included lying, called 'Maia'. This game proved infuriatingly addictive and we were all hoodwinked in the second round by some convincing bluffing from Ashley.
This first day in Africa was amazing and full of moments to put our location into perspective, but also some unexpected laughs throughout. I am keen to speak to some more of the locals before we start building on Tuesday. Tiredness is playing a role so we are glad to have some time to recover from the long journey.
Post by Harry Adair
Photographs by Ashley Parks
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