Skip to main content

The museum work begins!

We're settling into our museum work routine pretty nicely. I always appreciate the ~5 minute walk up the hill from the apartment to get to work in the morning - as opposed to my hour long commute at home...!

Toby in the museum collections building courtyard


Which is bigger, an extinct elephant skull or Toby?


Toby was SO EXCITED to see actual dinosaur fossils, courtesy of a research group from a few different institutions around for a few days before they go off to the field.

Toby is definitely enjoying the company of Mercy, his nanny! I found her thanks to my other-archaeologists-with-kids network; Mercy is the daughter of a woman who was a nanny for archaeologist friends of mine, Sonia and Jason, when they lived in Nairobi for about a year a few years ago with their (then) toddler daughter. Mercy is currently on summer break between her second and third year of law school. The staff at the museum have been very kind and accommodating, allowing Toby and Mercy to set up on a table in a large room where some of the staff work on computers. They've been keeping busy with LEGOs, reading books, doing art projects, playing on a nearby playground I didn't even know about, and more. They are on the other side of the Paleontology lab from where I'm working, but Toby can still easily swing by when he wants to say hello, show me his most recent LEGO rocket ship or art work, or just get a hug from mommy.


Making a variety of LEGO creations on Monday

Making a LEGO race track for Toby's matchbox cars on Tuesday

Toby coloring in Mercy's drawing of cartoon characters on Tuesday

My work is going well too. I'm continuing to work on fossil collections from a prehistoric site called Olorgesailie in southern Kenya. I helped run the excavations at this site for 6 years (of the ~35 years of excavations led by my boss Rick!), before Toby was born, and for about 10 years now I've been studying the fossils from the many excavations across a single time horizon dated to just under 1 million years ago. Since the excavations have been going on for so long, I'm actually studying fossils that were excavated back to when I was 10 years old - which is pretty cool. I'll post a little more about my museum research here soon.

Comments

Post a Comment

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...
5 comments
Read more

Final Fieldwork Week

We're home now - arrived yesterday. Our travel home was uneventful... well, except for running into my colleague René, his wife Susana, and their 5 year old son Andres in the Nairobi airport on the way home! René and Susana took Andres to the field in Mozambique for the first time this summer, and were on their way home to England after attending a conference in Nairobi. Toby and Andres got on like a house on fire, running around the waiting area together and calling to each other across the plane. It was very cute, and Toby kept talking about how much he enjoyed making a new friend. But back to our final week, which was pretty busy... Here are some of the highlights of our last day off. Toby imitating the gape of a hippo at "Hippo Hide", a place at Ol Pejeta where you can walk along the banks of the Ewaso Nyiro River  Kari, Ella, and Toby walking along the river When I was doing my PhD research at Ol Pejeta, I offered to create some educational material...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more