The morning was another session on Amharic. The previous day's language
stuff hadn't really had a chance to settle but we did try to cram some more in.
Part of the language session was watching the coffee ceremony. This is an
important part of Ethiopian life. Neighbours invite each other over for coffee
but they actually make the coffee - roasting, grinding and infusing the beans.
Shame I don't like coffee really. As a ferenj I can be forgiven this, apparently.
Also in the morning we had a session on cultural differences that we would
experience, and differences amongst the regions of Ethiopia and a little bit
of its history. The sessions were interesting. Maybe it's the fact that we might
need this, but I don't remember history being interesting before.
At lunch we were given the good news that the luggage might have turned up. Several
of us got into the Land Rover and were taken into town. We had to stop and wait
several times because of the conference. There was a very strong military and police
presence. Young soldiers could be seen chatting quite easily with their machine guns
resting a short distance from them. This wasn't threatening at all. Even when they
searched us the soldiers were very polite and quickly let us proceed after a quick
feel of the pockets. They even brought over a female police officer to search the
women.
Some of the bags did turn up, but then some of them didn't. I am still without my other
bag, and this means that Space Hippo is still missing. We can hope to get the bags
on Friday morning when another flight will have landed (late on Thursday night). By this
time, we should have been moved to our hotel.