Yes, I'm finally here! Actually I've been here for nearly 48 hours now. I just haven't had a chance to write yet...
My flight over was uneventful. Peter dropped me off at the airport, and even waited on the line for security as long as he could with me. Both of my flights were full, and I had the pleasure of having not one, but two crying babies within three rows of me on my Amsterdam-Nairobi flight! Thankfully, I was so tired from not having slept a wink on the first flight that I slept a lot on the second one. I watched the Golden Compass too, which I enjoyed.
Stepping off the airplane into the airport in Nairobi, and I felt right at home. It was great! I sailed through the immigration line since I already had my visa, and got a good spot with my cart at the baggage claim. There was a really friendly airport attendant helping an elderly Kenyan woman in a wheelchair, she was positioned next to me. I realized with a smile that I understood a lot of the Swahili they were speaking to each other - she was telling him what her bags looked like so he could find them on the baggage carousel, explaining that they all had a little colorful piece of cloth tied around the handle.
I got some Kenya shillings out of the ATM - it was a tense moment, since my ATM card (for my Kenyan bank account) expires on 06/08. I wasn't sure if that was June 1st, or June 30th. Thankfully, it was the latter. I found a friendly taxi driver, and had a quintessential Kenya taxi ride - full of loud music on the radio, the occasional phone call that he answered (no one here seems to have heard of hands-free sets), and chatting about politics and the weather. I got to the apartment we're renting in Nairobi, managed to send a few "got here safe" emails, and went to sleep!
So now I'm done with days one and two of field preparation. Everything is going well, and it's great to see so many friendly faces. Museum staff, the Kenyan crew who will be excavating with us, and even the peanut boy and the newspaper delivery guy. Everyone smiling at me, asking how the US is, how I've been, how's my family... it's always such a warm welcome back.
Unfortunately, traffic in Nairobi gets worse every year. I took this photo at about 5:30 pm. It took me 35 minutes to get from the museum hill roundabout to the university roundabout - those of you who've been to Nairobi know you could crawl that distance in less time than that! Backwards. With your eyes closed. It was unbelievable. Mental note: try not to drive anywhere in Nairobi at 5:30 pm on a Friday evening!
Tonight I'm having a relaxing night at home. My stomach was a little under the weather, so it was soup and plain pasta for dinner. Last night I went to Mediterraneo, a delicious Italian restaurant, and had pasta made with ostrich eggs and rabbit ragu. Yum! I had dinner with Cara, who got her PhD at U Conn about a year ago, studying stone tools. She had recently returned back from doing fieldwork in Baringo area, where her group was plagued with vehicle trouble and unseasonable rain - and she personally got food poisoning the day she was leaving the field! But she was in good spirits. There's a sense of community amongst those of us who do fieldwork in Kenya, and it's nice to be in that community again.
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