Puppy in lap and cold drink in hand, I sit and wait for Saturday to start. Behind me, the sun sets over the Turkwell River. Life is sweet.
Today was probably the coolest day of study abroad so far. Relieved of the constant anxiety of leaving, we walked around with a lighter step, breathing fully for the first time in days. We are so unbelievably lucky.
We start the day with a lecture and then a drive to the South Turkwel site, where a multitude of fossils have been found. We do so with Robert Foley, a professor and anthropologist from Cambridge, and Kevin, our own professor. On the ground, Rob points out middle stone age tools. We hold them in our hands and marvel at the craftsmanship. Keen to identify more tools, calls of "Kevin!" ring out over the landscape every two minutes onward.
The day is outstandingly hot and under the desert sun we swelter. I am in a constant state of sweatiness here. It doesn't matter whether I am freshly showered or hours into a field day, I am always always damp. In sites like South Turkwel, however, it's easy to forget. I stare out the ground, block out the heat, and gape at the ancient tools and bones and possibility, even as a group of goats rolls through, trampling precious material underfoot.
But it is after lunch that the real fun begins. We go to the archives, where they keep most of the full fossils, and ooh and ahh as shelves are pulled out to reveal entire megacroc jaws, dinosaur femur fragments, and ancient bovid skulls. The puppy continuously tries to follow us in (we carry her everywhere) and it is only when she starts to pull the plastic cover off a dinosaur fossil that she is relegated to the outside patio for good. Afterwards, we go to the lab of Marta Mirazón Lahr, where she shows us the human skeletons she has found through the course of her career. These are some of the only hominin skeletons ever found in Kenya. Each skull she shows us has made the cover of "Nature". And yet, she is both incredibly humble and an unabashed storyteller, taking us through her discoveries with an almost theatrical flourish. She describes theories of war, shows us the exact spots she has found arrowheads embedded in spine, and recreates the crushing blow that would have smashed the skull she holds in her hands. It is an extraordinary afternoon, spent in a stiflingly hot closet of a room, and I cannot stop smiling.
The land we stand on holds thousands of stories all layered over the other. Sand has shifted, rivers have dried and refilled in new locations, and time has deposited itself in vibrant sediment layers. This landscape is both a painting and a life sized puzzle, offering us information about the world long ago.