Skip to main content

Briana: 1. Car: 1.

I got my car to the mechanic this morning just after 8am, as he asked, even though the car parts shops didn't open until 9am. I hung around, watching him fix a few other cars, and after only about two hours, my car was fixed - to the grand tune of about $11. Hallelujah!

Briana: 1. Car: 0.

Then, I had to go get the car washed to get all the oil off the underside and engine, plus power washing all the fine, brown dust from Shompole away. That cost about $20 and took another two hours. At that point, I realized it was too late to leave for Ol Pejeta today and get there before dark, so Fire (my colleague working on the Ol Pejeta project with me) and I went off to run some errands.

As we were pulling into the Sarit Center, basically the local mall where I do nearly all of my errands, I started to smell an electrical burning smell coming from my dashboard. Immediately after that, I noticed small wisps of smoke rising from the place where my steering column and dashboard intersect. Fire took her seatbelt off and started to move towards the window, leading me to think she was ready to open the door and jump out of the car if the dashboard was to spontaneously combust or something. It turns out she was simply looking at the hood to see if there was smoke coming from there as well. (We've had a few laughs since at the idea that I thought she was about to jump out of the car!). Just after that, I noticed that the indicator lights (turn signals) weren't working. Hm. Perhaps the power wash somehow shorted out my indicators? Anyway, I no longer have functioning indicators. Which most people in Nairobi don't use anyway.

Briana: 1. Car: 1.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

D minus a week and a day

I'm leaving for my annual migration to Kenya soon, just like the wildebeest.... well, only there's a few million less of me than there are of them. Also, I'd like to think I run in a few less circles than they do, given that they spend their year basically making a big circle between Kenya and Tanzania in the Serengeti/Mara ecosystem (though that's debatable!). I'm going through my usual 'I'm leaving soon' routine: getting together with friends who want to spend a little time before I leave for a few months; making sure I can take care of all my (as my fab friend Fire calls it) "personal admin" online while I'm gone - banking, paying utilities, etc.; adding things to the duffel bag I keep stocked during the rest of the year with my 'going to Kenya' things. It's always hectic, and no matter how well I plan - and those of you who know me know I plan! - there's always a lot to do at the last minute. So it's D (departure) mi...

99 transects for bones in the bush, 99 transects for bones…

(sing the title of this blog post to the tune of 99 bottles of beer on the wall) We completed our 99th transect this morning – and then our 100th! It was a momentous occasion. I started doing bone transects here on my own in 2003, and while I always envisioned this as a long-term research project, it’s exciting to see it really happening. Team photo after our 100th transect today - Fire, me, Isaack, and Kari (Ella was in camp not feeling well) Ella, Fire, and Kari looking at and measuring bones in a bush transect Fire and Kari walking around a small muddy water puddle Ella and Fire getting ready for a transect Our vehicle with "gari ya mifupa"  (which means "bones car" in Kiswahili)  written in the dirt on the back door Ella, Fire, and Kari hard at work Kari still drinks a can of Coke at the turnaround point on every transect Ella and Isaack with their weapons of choice, a giraffe radius and a rifle Kari asking Fire ...

bones and animals

Fire and I left Nairobi at about 9:45 am yesterday and drove to Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where we're doing pilot work for what we hope will be a long term study. Our project is called BONES (it took a long time to think of that cool an acronym!): Bones of Ol Pejeta, Neotaphonomic and Ecological Survey. We have several interesting research questions which we hope to answer using a study of bones scattered across the landscape of this conservation area. One of them is this: paleontologists and archaeologists dig up fossils, and we use these fossils to reconstruct animal communities and ancient habitats. For instance, if we find 50% grassland adapted animals and 25% forest adapted animals and 25% woodland adapted animals, we use this information to look at the animal community, and reconstruct the vegetaiton. When we do this, we assume that the types of animals we find as fossils are preserved in the same proportions as in the living community they came from. But is this the case? We ca...