Good morning from the sunny slopes of Mount Entoto, or the city of Addis Ababa!  First, I want to let you know that if you double click on any of the photos in my blog, they enlarge.  Then you can see more clearly some of the detail. Perhaps you have already figured that out.

Today I want to tell you about the role of shipping containers in this country--and I think in much of Africa.  The President here told us that he buys containers whenever available. He said containers (perhaps only those shipping certain things, perhaps all) can only be used for shipping by sea once. Then they are sold. So he buys bundles of 20 containers at a time and uses them to build buildings.  The first photo is of music practice rooms build of containers. We have just watched another practice room module be build in the last week and a half. They cut out windows and doors, lay a concrete foundation in front, plaster the inside, put on a sloping roof, paint, and there you go.  He told us they aren't cheap to build, but are about half the cost of a similar building built from scratch.  I'll take a few more photos, but faculty offices here are built of containers, though faced with brick, as is the cafe, the bookstore, and many classrooms. African ingenuity, I saw.  Because the climate cools off every night, and of course there is no heat or air conditioning, the rooms are cool until afternoon. Then I think they get warm, especially the practice rooms, which are small, because the windows and doors are the only source of circulation.  But they look quite nice and often you would never know their interior construction.

The other photos are from the National Museum. As I mentioned, Lucy herself is on tour in the US. But there is an assemblage of her bones, or similar bones, which we saw. You can take a look at them above and read the explanation of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"! The museum has many many such prehistoric bones, of both humans and pre-humans, and animals. I found it very interesting.

Then there is an icon of Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus attached, as well as a painting in the typical Ethiopian style. The icons are, of course, stylized, but what I find interesting is they are Ethiopian figures in skin color and hair. I like them a lot.  As to the story painting, I would liken it to oral history. It is a sort of story board of the history of a certain tribe and area in Ethiopia. The figures are stylized, there is great detail, and the many frames tell many stories.  One of the concerns in this country is that people will lose their oral history now that their native tongues are being written down.  We were told that Oromofe, the language of the Oromo, which make up about 40-45% of the population, was written down only within the last 60 or so years.  In certain parts of the South of Ethiopia, Oromos still keep their oral history back many generations. In other words, they can recite their geneology back hundreds of years, and they know stories of many of the people in that geneology. What a marvelous thing! How many of us can do that orally very far back from our grandparents?

This evening the Anuak people who have been going to church with are putting on a feast for us. That is a real privilege.