Buying rings, checking out Lucy, getting interviewed by ETV...

After visiting the hospital I cabbed it to the Piazza section of Addis (as the name indicates, this neighborhood was heavily influenced by the Italians, who invaded Ethiopia in 1935 and occupied it for a few years). I started talking to a random Ethiopian man on the street, asking if he knew of an Internet cafe nearby, and we ended up spending the whole afternoon together. His name was Negesh. He works for Irish charity GOAL, which does a lot of work for the poorest of the poor in developing countries. First we had lunch. Then we went to the famous St. George's Cathedral (well, to the museum and bell tower at least; we couldn't get in to the church itself as preparations were going on there for the Millennium festivities the following day.) Then we met up with Louise at the National Museum. There we saw a copy of "Lucy," the 3.2 million-years old skeleton that was found in Ethiopia in 1974. Lucy symbolizes the root of mankind and is arguably the world's No. 1 anthropological treasure. For being a quiet little old lady, Lucy is a big deal.
Ironically, the real remains of Lucy were no longer at the museum -- they had recently arrived in the U.S., where they will be on a six-year tour. On the way out of the museum, a reporter from ETV (Ethiopian Television, the country's main channel) stopped Louise and me, wondering if he could ask us some questions on camera. Sure thing, we said. He asked what we thought of the museum and of Ethiopia in general. We told him that we had a great impression so far, that Ethiopians seem very friendly, et cetera. The reporter thanked us and told us it was going to air the next evening as part of a special program on the Millennium. (And air the next day it did. We didn't see it ourselves, but three different families we talked to later saw it. For a moment we felt like minor celebrities.)
One little observation about the museum: it charges Ethiopians 2 birr in entrance fee, while foreigners have to pay 10 birr. At first I was taken aback by this. Can you imagine museums in the U.S. or Sweden charging foreigners more to get in? Can you hear the outcry? But I guess it makes sense here. Foreigners in Ethiopia tend to be pretty well off, and for them 10 birr ($1.20) is still very cheap for getting into the museum. To charge 2 birr for the locals simply means most of them will also afford to get in if they so desire.

Before we said goodbye to Negesh, he helped us take care of a pressing financial problem. Several banks had refused to change three of my $100 bills into birr. The greenbacks were from 1996, which the banks considered real old and hence for some reason risky. Unable to exchange that cash, we were starting to run out of money. It was starting to become a real concern. Negesh came to our rescue. He took us to a little shop that had a picture of a dollar bill plastered on the window -- a signal that this was a black-market currency exchange. We gave him our $300 and in he went -- as a local he'd get a much better exchange rate, he explained, than what we forenjis could hope to achieve by ourselves. When he returned he handed me a thick wad of birrs, ensuring we could indeed afford the rest of our vacation. A great deed by a great dude.