While the laminated world maps in Addis are plentiful, the general every day signs are totally absent. This was particularly fun in the ethnographic museum I visited. The lack of signage began with trying to find the museum. It was deep into the far reaches of the University campus, yet appeared to be totally unlabeled. I just had to ask someone at every intersection which way to the museum. Now it’s possible there were signs in Amharic that I couldn’t read, but honestly, I didn’t see any.
Once inside, there were all these unlabeled artifacts screaming “I look interesting, guess what I am and why I’m significant”, but then would never tell you. There were signs later on with long descriptions of various ethnic groups. They would all start super boring with an explanation of exactly how many people are in this group, the boundaries of where they are… but then once in a while, squished in the middle of the page would be this fantastic fact like “[insert awesome fact that is breathtaking but apparently not memorable enough to retain long enough to write in a blog]”. Anyway, it made me feel like I needed to read every word written to watch out for those little gems.
At the top floor of the museum, I met Marvin. He proved himself super useful in explaining a painting on farmers to me (I really don’t know anything about farming) so I didn’t shoo him off when he asked if he could join me as I strolled through (unlabeled) exhibits. He started by asking me my name and what it meant: nothing, it’s just a name. He didn’t believe me. Then he proceeded to explain to me that his name was Marvin which meant Marvelous, Astute, Responsible, Victorious, Innovative, and Noble. Apparently he has a motivational name that was given to him in an English class (now do I thank the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons for this?). Then he wanted to get down to business, how exactly did I feel about the book “the Laws of Attraction”? He was baffled that I’d never read it – he gave me the kind of look you’d give someone who had been living a full life without ever bothering to try sleeping lying down. In fact, it’s probably how I look at people who have never kept a personal budget. It got worse when he summarized the book for me and I shared that I didn’t buy the basic premise. Devastation! Sometimes I try to entertain people when traveling and fake common interest “I love Angelina too!” or “Yes Bryan Adams is a genius” but frankly I didn’t feel compelled to do this for my motivated friend since this conversation meant I couldn’t actually look at anything in the museum for which I’d paid 30 cents entry.
I must revise my earlier statement, there are signs. There are a few street signs. They, however, do not correspond at all to what the streets are actually called so aren’t really that useful. My hotel is on “meskel flower road” because the oldest building on it is the Meskel Flower Hotel (which is tiny and not otherwise notable). Most of my appointments are on “Bole Road” (so named because it runs through the neighborhood of Bole) or “Fake Bole Road” which runs parallel to Bole road. I had an awesome ‘dumb foreigner’ moment when I asked “what is the name of the road that goes to Ambo?” Answer: Ambo road. On the way home, I’m assuming it turns into Addis road. Brilliant.
The national museum was the next stop. Again, lack of signage. We walked in what looked like the main entrance and ended up being an art gallery. We figured if we just kept walking through it, we’d get to the museum entrance but eventually hit a dead end and tried again. The real entrance was on the side of the building. This museum was better funded and had a little movie playing on repeat about how all people come from Africa with an explanation of the latest skull discoveries. It was pretty sweet except that the volume was so loud that the rest of the visit was punctuated by glorious music and a resounding voice declaring “LIFE BEGAN IN AFRICA”.
I did the first floor with old pottery and then the second floor with artwork and hit the souvenir shop without having yet seen the actual main attraction… a little skeleton called Lucy. Turns out, she is in the basement, and not just the basement, the farthest depths of the basement. I bet 90% of museum visitors never find her. The entire basement has collections of skeletons and I kept reading all the labels (provided by Japan) and wondering “wait, so is this her?” I bet what happened is that a Japanese person came to an unlabeled museum and went nuts and then donated all his money to have it remedied
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