Helloooooo!

Since my last post from Nairobi, I've been to:
Maputo and Inhambane (Tofo Beach), Mozambique
Mbabene, Swaziland
Johannesburg, South Africa
and now.....middle of nowhere, South Africa, aka Bloemfontein

Lots going on, lots of adventures, new experiences, learning lessons, progress both in terms of my dissertation research and inner work.....more soon.

Still in Nairobi

This sign is hanging in my office....likely put there by another graduate student.

Not Reassuring

From one of my professors:

'There was an American student when I was in Nairobi last Fall – I can’t remember her name – but she ended up in the emergency room with amoebic dysentery. The Drs. quizzed her on what she had eaten the last several days and decided it was lettuce. She said that she had bought it in a supermarket, sealed in plastic with “triple washed” printed on the outside of the package.'

Petite Power!

This was pretty funny, for those of you who saw the announcement yesterday....
(from The Huffington Post)

TMI (too much information)

I went to see a doctor today and he gave me antibiotics to take care of a number of different organisms that could be making me sick. Did not want to go the route of stool samples, which involves three days of taking a dump in a plastic bag and sticking it in the freezer to take back to the doctor. No thanks. So hopefully I'll be feeling better soon. I'm ready to lay out on the beach in Mozambique already.

Be Thankful

From a poem, author unknown:

Be thankful when you don't know something,
for it gives you the opportunity to learn.

Be thankful for the difficult times.
During those times you grow.

Be thankful for your limitations,
because they give you opportunities for improvement.

Be thankful for each new challenge,
because it will build your strength and character.

Be thankful for your mistakes.
They will teach you valuable lessons.

Happy Thanksgiving To Me

Wow, it's been three weeks since I last posted?!?! I was feeling kind of down after the election - I thought it was from being homesick and tired of Nairobi and working at the museum. I'm sure those all played a part, but then I started having the symptoms that I remember all too well from being sick with a parasite last summer. After a week of that (along with a lot of denial) I gave in and started taking a 'just in case' supply of medication that I had. The medication, obviously, works by killing the parasite. This means there are all sorts of unpleasant side-effects to the human as well. So I went through all that and finished the medication on Monday. I have not been feeling any better so I finally decided to see a doctor today but for various reasons that went nowhere. And my symptoms are consistent with the parasite I had last summer but the medication I took does not seem to have worked. So this afternoon I went to the 'chemist' (pharmacist) and got another drug. It's a single-dose treatment, where you take 4 pills at once, and can be pretty sick for the next 24 hours because the drug is so strong. I was reading the accompanying info and it spoke about 'toxicity levels', which is really not something you want to read about when it comes to medicine you're about to take. I spent most of the day at home and am about to take a bath and give myself plenty of time to sleep tonight so that hopefully I will feel better when I wake up tomorrow.

I am envious of all the good food that people in the US will be eating (and enjoying) today. After the chemist I went to the market and made myself a Thanksgiving-inspired dinner:

From The Onion

Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job

WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation's broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can't catch a break."

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/black_man_given_nations

also....

Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nation_finally_shitty_enough_to

and....

Bush: 'Can I Stop Being President Now?'

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bush_can_i_stop_being_president

Today is a good day to be an American abroad

It's been a long time since I've been able to say that.

Kenya is engulfed in Obama-mania, as I heard someone refer to it. The president declared today a national holiday so the museum was closed and we had the day off. On the streets, amidst all the Swahili spoken around me I can constantly pick out the word 'Obama'.

And living in DC just got a whole lot more exciting too!!!

Good Night

I'm going to bed early because I'm getting together with some Americans at 6am tomorrow for a breakfast election party. We're hoping that we'll wake up to a new president...

Only in Africa, Part II

That's a monkey* on my balcony.


And there are the remains of it's snack.

The bananas aren't from my kitchen, but, needless to say from now on I'm going to be a lot more careful about leaving my balcony door open.

*http://www.kenyabeasts.org.uk/four.htm
Scroll down to 'Sykes Monkey'

Only in Africa

Yesterday I was walking by one of the busiest, nastiest roundabouts you can imagine and in between the cars there was a guy on a bike with crates piled up about eight feet high over the rear rack.

The Gift of Time

Looking back, my original plan to stay in Nairobi for only three weeks seems extremely foolish. I've been here for just over that amount of time and am about halfway through the work I need to do. I've found that it's difficult to estimate how much time it will take to study a fossil collection, and another student at the museum who is here for an entire year told me that she was advised to figure out how much time she thought she would need and to double it. Because you never count on days like I had today - where I spent the morning running around town printing and xeroxing the application materials for a research permit, and then spent the afternoon identifying pieces of rhinoceros bones. There are about 200 bone fragments that I need to identify as either hippo or rhino, and unless you are really familiar with those animals the way to do that is to figure out which bone your fragment is from and then compare it with the relevant bone from both a hippo and a rhino to see which one it resembles. Second to elephants, the white rhino is the largest terrestrial animal alive. The osteology department has skeletons of rhinos arranged in big boxes and on shelves. So imagine going through boxes pulling out these huge and heavy bones and you can see why I only made it through about 1/5th of the work I had intended to do today.

So I was walking home at dusk, freaking out at how little work I had gotten done...and I thought, okay, I have the money, I don't need to be back in DC for anything...so I am going to give myself the gift of time and stay in Africa as long as it takes me to get through my dissertation work and not worry about it anymore.

Life in Nairobi

Life in Nairobi is good. I'm working like crazy and decided to extend my trip, partly because there are more fossils to study than I anticipated and also because I'm really enjoying being here, which is kind of surprising. I was in Nairobi last summer for four or five weeks and was dying to leave towards the end of my trip, which is why I had planned a shorter visit this time. I think a big difference is that this time I have my own apartment, and last summer I was staying at a place with my professors and other students and post-docs - all a great crew, but let me tell you, sharing a bathroom with one of your professors and her husband, and seeing your advisor first thing in the morning when you go the kitchen to make coffee were not super-pleasant experiences. Oh, and I also caught the parasite last summer too. This time I am boiling all of my water.

Also, I will be the first to admit that I am leading a really sheltered life here. I basically just go back and forth between my apartment and the museum and don't have to deal with 'real' Nairobi too much (more about that later). I'm staying in a beautiful apartment that charges about what I pay for my rent in DC, but has, I kid you not, daily housekeeping service (which is why my bed is made), a pool, and on-site laundry service. I also have a huge balcony where I've been doing yoga.
View from my balcony - the pool is in between the two buildings. I went for a swim this afternoon, which is, frankly, how I'd like to be spending my time in October in the future.

David Sedaris on Undecided Voters

“I look at these people and can't quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention? To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it? To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked."

You know you've been working too much when....

....you're walking barefoot in your apartment and step on a tiny flat rock that your shoes probably dragged in and you start examining it because it looks like a flake from a stone tool.

No messin' around

I had been advised to avoid being in Nairobi during the rainy season - late October through December. And I can see why - there's no messin' around when it rains here. Sheets and sheets of water come down, but usually for an hour or less. And these are only the 'short' rains - I can't imagine what the 'long' rains (April-June) are like.

Tina Fey on Sarah Palin

'If she wins...I'm leaving Earth.'

$1 = 73KSh (Kenyan Shillings)

You do the math.

In Bloom

Ah, Kenya. The land where there are no crosswalks and red lights and car lanes are optional. Forget assaults, beatings, kidnappings - the biggest danger in Nairobi, by far, is getting hit by a car. Or more likely a matatu, which is a banged-up minivan used as a taxi that fits about, oh, twenty-five people, and the driver always speeds like he's just escaped from prison. Makes crossing the street quite an adventure and probably takes a couple years off my life every time. Choking on the polluted air, that's another danger. Needless to say, both of these factors make spending time outside rather tricky, which is a shame because October is a beautiful month to be here - it's springtime and the weather is mild and the flowers are in full bloom and the colors are gorgeous at sunset.

Aside from the occasional hiccup things are going well - I have an office at the museum with plenty of lab space, which means that I can work after hours and go in on the weekend. The work is going exceptionally well - have some interesting fossils and am reminded why I fell in love with paleoanthropology in the first place. I've been working long hours and am considering extending my stay here by a week as there is quite a bit of material and my plans for South Africa seem like they're getting a bit complicated. And complicated is the last thing I want right now.