A relaxing Sunday in Nairobi

Today was a fairly quiet, relaxing Sunday. Toby slept late (until 9:30am - I'm hoping we get back onto a pretty normal schedule tomorrow!), and after Rick and Jenny left late morning to start the fieldwork in southern Kenya, I did a little more unpacking/organizing/etc.

After lunch, Toby and I went to the Muthaiga Country Club at the invitation of a Kenyan alumna from my undergraduate college (Bryn Mawr), Agnes. Agnes and I connected through one of the Bryn Mawr alum Facebook groups I'm a member of, and we realized today that we graduated a year apart although we didn't know each other while we were in college.

We hung out all afternoon with Agnes and her daughter Lynn, one of Lynn's friends, and Agnes's sister's three kids (her sister is in Finland on work travel). Agnes said they pretty much spend every Sunday there, and I could tell that a lot of the kids basically know each other and play together and feel very comfortable there.

Lynn and Toby

Toby had fun playing on the bouncy castle slide, running around on the grass, and going in the pool - even though Agnes and I thought the kids were a bit crazy for swimming on such a cool day. While it was mostly cloudy, the sun did peek through a few times.

The poolside ice cream mid-afternoon treat was a big hit!

Waiting rather impatiently for ice cream

Mom, do they have chocolate? I want chocolate. Chocolate's my favorite. Can you check if they have chocolate?

Mmmmm chocolate!

After an early dinner with Agnes and company, we headed back to the apartment to Skype with Daddy (yay!) and finish getting things organized for starting work at the museum tomorrow. Toby fell asleep before 10pm, giving me hope that tomorrow he will finally be fully adjusted to the time difference. I have to say, though, so far the jet lag hasn't been nearly as bad as I was worried about.

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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...

a shout-out to Solomon

I just want to give a shout-out to our armed guard this year, Solomon (he's the one on the left in this 2011 research team photo). We've worked with a different guard each time we've been here and they've all been great. Solomon has a particularly good sense of humor with a great laugh; keen eyes that can see elephants from a few hundred meters away as well as bones seemingly hidden in the grass; and is always patient as we ask him questions about animal behavior and footprints while we're tromping around the bush. Thanks for keeping us safe out there, Solomon!

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...

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