It’s hard work being a self proclaimed Jr. Professor! FIRST you gotta go outside, THEN you gotta stoop down, AND THEN you got to pick up long bones for the MAN like an indentured servant. The “MAN” as in my very nice professor – and although I love him, I fear I may have been bribed at the prospect of being published! In all seriousness, what an unexpected and yet appreciated opportunity to work with my professor so suddenly in order to reconstruct the paleoenvironment of the gully which we had searched previously. For those unawares, professor Manuel offered that we may be published with him as co-authors if we were able to help collect more data from the same gully that we grabbed our teeth. He planned to more accuractely and quantitatieyl predict the paleoenviroemtn of the region, and hoped we may work with him during the Fall of the coming year. Count me in!
The MAN or rather Professor Dominguez-Rodrigo, in case you are unwares, is a very big deal within the anthropology world. He’s the top dog, the crem de la crem, the big man, the boss, el jefe, the dude who was my Bio Anth teacher – so to speak (he wears a lot of cool hats and I respect him very much). Anyways, today we learned very much from el jefe. And before we extrapolate any further into that, may I point out that whenever I discuss the sort of phenomenon that is absolutely mind blowing and yet customary to this field, the only words thoughtful enough to escape my mouth are “cool” and “awesome” and “righteous” and shaka” and “oh wow”. That’s basically it, so I apologize to everyone who had the displeasure of experiencing such bad explanatory vocabulary. For example, after hearing baffling explanations into how one may tell the predator of an ancient bone by the slightest of grazes, my response is to shake my head and say one of the previous. I am glad to say it happened often, being dumbfounded, that is, as my professor with his wife and his team and many others continually sent my imagination to the stratosphere. Its hard to imagine a time I have found a similar love of learning in such short time.
And later after recovering from my mind getting blown up, Maasai women set up their wares right outside of our camp, calling jambo and karibu. And of course I wanted to buy a few things for the folks because I am Kamden and that happens to be my love language, and so I would squat and look over their handiworks. I’d scratch the mustache and utter a long “hmmm” while reaching for my wallet and later quickly retract it. I think they thought it was very funny, as in a short time me would all look around at each other and they would reach for a missing mustache and I for mine, and we would all let loose a collective sigh, “hmmmmmm”. They all laughed and of course I did too, I started to overdo it and that made it all the better. We all shared a laugh, they were given money, and I was handed wonderful gifts – everybody wins!
I also believe we haven’t talked much about him, but there’s a camp cat who we’ve lovingly named rabies. A stray tomcat, with the loudest most grisled cry you’ve ever heard, “MAOOOOO”, it sounds that if his job wasn’t to be lazing around all day it would be busting his hump as a unionized dock worker. Anyways, Mr. Rabies seems to be a man’s man, and I am happy to say that he favors me very much. He’d like to follow me for scratches on the butt as I walked back to my tent and would loop in and out of my boots while I was eating popcorn (it was always served before dinner and was tremendous). He was a good boy. We love you Rabies.
Tomorrow we leave the gorge and head toward Nairobi, beginning the first leg of our adventure home. I definitely look forward to coming home, but then again, I have found one here. Among the bones and stones, beneath these unfamiliar stars and in these ancient gullies and past the trickling streams. Here I have left a bit of myself.
I make pray that we make it home safe to give everyone a big huge and a neat gift.
I love you all and will see you soon,
Kamden
