Sep 2008

June 27

The wind here is unbelievable. It kept me up for the 2nd night in a row. Hopefully tonight I will sleep. I wish the students would respect the camping area as a quiet place more - their talking through the tents in the morning and at night makes it hard to sleep. But then, so does the wind.

Today we had lectures starting at 9. We have more lecture at 2:30 then activities. There's a museum visit at 5; I'm not sure I'm going to go. I may go to the lake and swim a bit. The lectures are a bit dull since I know all of the material already.

June 28

Second day of lectures, at least in the morning. I think there's a visit to Area 103 in the afternoon, so I want to go to that. I didn't do much yesterday. Went swimming around 4pm and I'm starting to get a bit of a tan. Supper was a change from veggie/potato/corned beef stew. Instead, we had rice, lentils, and chipati.

I talked a bit with Orion and Michael, who are Frank Brown's incoming grad student (Frank Brown is a geologist at UCBerkley, I believe). They spend their days hiking in the Koobi Fora Formation doing their studies. One of the interns went with them yesterday and they walked over 20km! I considered going, but they said they use about 4L of water and I can only carry 3L.

I didn't sleep well again, mostly due to inactivity, I think. I had to hush some students around 10pm because they woke me up - through my earplugs - by talking.

A plane is coming in today so we should get some fresh fruit and mail. It's also bringing in beer, to celebrate someone's birthday, apparently.

June 29

My new flashlight died last night, probably because its for indoor use only. Thankfully, someone else had one to lend me for the rest of the trip. I'm angry that someone stole my maglite.

Today is the last day of lectures, thankfully. I've been here for 2 weeks and have yet to do something productive. While the excavation will be hard and it will be hot, at least I'll be doing something. I'm already mostly packed and this afternoon, I'll help mark assignments. Good times.

On the 24th, we left Mugie and drove to Loyangalani (I know I'm spelling that wrong) which is farther than we expected to get. It was a good driving day - only one flat tire! I was exhausted after 10 hours in the back of the landrover, though. We stayed at a camp inside the town and I think everyone showed up to crowd around the camp gates. There were some vendors set up inside the camp and I bought some things: a piece of fabric, a necklace, and a small crocodile made of bats. It really frustrated me having to haggle. I'm amazed anyone can make a living out here. It's so arid, it's unbelievable. Emmanual says its not classified as a desert, which amazes me. It's so dry.

I slept poorly that night because of the wind. The same thing happened the night of the 25th at the Koobi Fora base camp. We arrived yesterday, after another 10 hour day. We had 3 flats, one on a landrover at the start of the day, and two on the unimog later in the day. Before we left the town, we stopped at the small museum, which has information and displays about the different cultural groups living in the Turkana basin. It was really nice, especially for such an isolated museum. The biggest delay was one of the landrovers flipping onto its side in a particularly sandy stretch of road. Everyone and everything was fine, and the vehicle still worked.

We got to Koobi Fora about 5:30 but we can't drive the lorry (the big transport truck with all our gear and supplies) down on the sand road, so we had to load it into the landrovers and drive them down. I helped with that and got here sweaty and dirty! But there's running water here, pumped up from the lack, so I got a nice, cool shower.

I forgot to mention that we can see the southern cross here. I thought it was only visible in the southern hemisphere, and we are a bit north of the equator. We can also see the big dipper, but not the north start.

On the 26th, we had a staff meeting, then I had a nice, cool swim in the lack. Today is a rest day for the students. Up until now, it's been very little work, at least for me. Hopefully that will change soon.