Addis Abbaba and Sylvia Pankhurst

1 June 2008

Up at crack of dawn – not difficult since I hadn’t been able to sleep – nervous anticipation of what was to come!

I had not seen anyone I knew apart from VSO people since I’d arrived. Although I had been writing a regular blog I knew it wasn’t going to be the same as actually being here.

On Saturday, we woke to rain. I was grateful that I had decided to book a taxi tour of Addis for the afternoon.

Wehib picked us up after lunch and in between downpours gave us a good tour of the key sights of the city. Although I had spent some time in Addis, I had not seen a great deal and most of what I had seen was located in the poorer areas.

A highlight was a visit to a church I had seen back off the road and not generally on the tour route. Known as the Selassie or Trinity Cathedral it is relatively new. The decorations were fabulous, paintings, murals, stained glass windows, chandeliers and elaborate carpets. The Guide was knowledgeable and with excellent English.

But the ‘find’ was the tomb of Sylvia Pankhurst, the suffragist daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst and sister Christabel. Whilst Emmeline and Christabel were active in the Women’s Suffrage and Political Union, Sylvia was busy working alongside working class women in the East End – an early socialist/feminist who was thrown out of the WSPU for having continuing the suffrage movement despite the war. Syliva was also anti-racist and campaigned firstly against the Italians and then the British for the restoration of Ethiopian independence. She lived her latter years in Ethiopia where she died at the age of 78 and was give a state funeral. Among many of her literary achievements, she wrote Ethiopia A Cultural History.

We also visited the Makardo, supposedly the largest market in Africa. I had absolutely no desire to get out and look around – apart from the rain, it did not look attractive or inviting.