February

So from Jinja we went to the Maasai Mara (which is a huge game conservatory)We pitched a little tent city inside the park (actually right inside teritory already claimed by a group of 5 male lions who insisted on voicing thier protest at our presence at various hours of the night)We did game drives every morning, so I got to add Elephants, Cheetahs, buffalo, warthoggs and meercats (who dissapointingly did not break into song, lions, crocodiles and a whole bunch of ungulates (which is the intelligent sounding word for gazelle-things)to my life-list. We took a drive out to the Mara river to see the hippos (there was a 1 day old baby - and it was actually still the size of a large dog), to straddle the line between Tanzania and Kenya, and to see the 250,000 year old stone blades that are just lying around by the river side (I started my archaeology class in the mara so prepare for lots of excitement over rocks.
on the 20th we moved camp to Elangata Waus. It is right in the rift valley, its like camping in a forest - only all the trees are thorn trees, and the dirt is bright red and dusty, and there are peices of animal skulls scattered really notchalontly between the trees. At Elangata Waus they had arranged for us to go in pairs and spend the night with a Maasai family on the ranches in the surrounding area. It was an absolutely unbelievable night. I got to milk a goat and we cooked dinner (with food the programme provided) over the fire inside the tiny mud house (ugali and cabbage for dinner, rice and tomatoes for breakfast)We talked well into the night through our youth guide, who was acting as a language and cultural translator, ugh, it was too nuts, too fabulous. The next morning we walked back to the main road, and the bus picked us up to take us to church. Church lasted from 10-1 (we snuck out early, church normally goes as late as 4), it was a pentecoastal church so there was lots of singing and dancing in the isles which made the time pass quickly. After church one of our professors had organized an 'olympics' of traditional maasai weapons. There was a staff team, a maasai team, a student girls team, and a student boys team (4 on each) and then we had to score points for the win. The first game was archery, the second a rungu toss (its a short club that you throw at gazelles to break their legs - we threw it at a chair- 1 point for a hit, 2 points if a piece of the chair broke off), the last was a spear throw which we had to make stick in the ground like a javalin. The Maasai team unsurprisingly won, but the girls came in second and since we had bet a round of beers with the boys team, I feel like everyone walked away happy (except possibly the boys who came last). The next day we visited a primary school and spent some time talking with the kids and then organized a big game of soccer against some of their older boys. We were owned (3-0) but in our defence many of the 8th graders were going on 20 so the beating is not quite as severe as it sounds.
On the 24 we drove to MPALA ranch (a research centre in likipia) we were still 'camping' but at the ranch the large canvas tents were permanent and comfortably fit 3 beds and all our bags. There was a man who came around and lit a latern outside our door each night and a stone fire pit dug into the ground like a pool, with a stone bench covered with cushions lining the outside. At Mpala the archaeology class kicked it into a seriously high gear since we had 4 days to clear up the excavation site my prof had started in 2005 but had had to abandon since 2007. We spent the mornings rotating between digging in the two trenches (i found 84 peices of flaked rock, and old tools just in my little 1 m patch, Nico found 103 in his!)and surveying the area for surface artifacts made visible by erosion and mapping them on GPS. The first afternoon we made our own stone tools (i managed to smash my fingernail into 3 peices - were I really a homo habilis I feel I may have been the end of the line) and then after that we had lectures for the rest of the week to learn what it was exactly we were working so hard to uncover. On the very last night a huge group of 25 or 30 people came down from the staff village dressed in traditional costume to teach us how to dance (Turcana style). It involved a lot of wild arm flinging, purposful stomping and jumping as high as you possibly can while seeming to not try at all. It was unbelievably fun, and I can't wait to bust out my new moves in the club.
Yesterday we arrived in Nairobi, today we are going to the National Museum to see what has been found at other sites in Kenya, to see the lab and pique an interest in interning to help catalog and analyze what we brought with us from MPALA.
I will try and post pictures soon, but all our final projects are due in the next few days so the laptops are a very hot comoditiy and I may not be able to get my hands on one until Savo.
Miss you all terribly.
xo