Day 3

Monday 6th July (29 Sanni 2007)

Our second night's sleep in Ethiopia was a good one, but I had to rush to the early meeting after sleeping in.  If it weren't for Ben I'd have missed it no doubt - the importance of a good room mate! Turns out I wasn't the only one who was a bit late.

David provided today's thought for the day, about housing poverty before we all went to breakfast and afterwards left to get another look at the city. Today we visited the National Museum of Ethiopia, the current resting place of one of the oldest human skeletons ever discovered, "Lucy" who is 318 million years old and found in the 1970s. 

Lucy

I knew of this skeleton being of great significance in the evolution of primates to bi-peds but it was a complete bonus to see it here as I had no clue what to expect from the museum! 

The museum also included a lot of traditional Ethiopian dress, farming tools and war artifacts which was great to see.

Team photo outside museum

We then went to a restaurant for lunch. Our walk to the restaurant involved walking through the museum gardens and we got a shock seeing two tortoises get up and run away, because they looked like statues from further away. Declan and I decided to take an ill-advised gamble at the restaurant and try some local food whilst everyone else sensibly chose western food at ridiculously low prices. It didn't pay off. I got the slightly more palatable of our two dishes, with Declan receiving a confusing olive/chilli fusion with a surprise boiled egg inside, and served with vinegary pancake bread on the side. Definitely ordering safe from now on, but it was a nice place to have lunch. Meanwhile Tom and Ben were given a pepper eating challenge by Peter out of pure badness. Ben definitely came off worse!

Alex took full advantage of the visit to the supermarket and stocked up on some cereal and later discovered the local milk had lumps in it to his disappointment. When returning from the supermarket we were given our orientation talk by Dereje from Habitat for Humanity Ethiopia. It was great to find out the sort of work we'll be doing while we are here. We were tasked with building two toilet blocks- one in a local school, and the other in a slum community.

Tonights entertainment courtesy of Sam and Nathan was team charades. These ranged from simple demonstrations like "Up" and "Titanic" to rather impossible gestures like "Zero Dark Thirty" and "The Simpsons". Ashley and Stuart were worthy winners this time around with some great teamwork. After the game died down we all descended into a conversation about relationships and other complicated stuff. This was a great way to bond with everyone with stories of young love, betrayals, shocking ungratefulness, and one hilarious but rather brutal rejection. It was a nice way to get to know each other better and to bond together as a team. 

Post by Harry Adair

Photos by David Scott