Back to Nairobi

(Written early Thursday morning)
We returned to Nairobi last Friday to finish up classes, and it proved to be an interesting end of term.  The GEOG course that I'm in had two major group projects and an exam on Saturday, and like all things at school, it was a crunch to the very end.  We also had our animal reports due on Sunday and our journals to hand in on Monday.  It was a crazy weekend!  We were also given some time to relax however.  On Saturday night, in celebration of finishing another session of classes, we headed out to Safari Park (expat haven) where we ate tons of Italian food, drank copious amounts of wine, danced and sang karoke well into the night.  The whole night ended with a jump in the local pool.  It was a much needed chance to unwind.  On Sunday, we technically had the day off and went to Westgate Mall for the afternoon.  I spent a lot of time fruitlessly trying to find a Kurt Vonnegut book. 
The end of classes and then ensuing celebrations proved to be too much for me though, and I ended up with a head cold that put me out of commission for Monday's activities.  I stayed in bed while the rest of the group started the urban module in Nairobi.  They split into two groups and went back to Kibera to a project with Maji and another one with the Vision Sisters.  I joined the group on Tuesday that went back to the UNHabitat building in Kibera and we interviewed merchants along the road about how the road had impacted their business.  We later debriefed with the other groups and shared our information, so I didn't end up missing too much. 
Session three courses have started!  I'm am taking an archaeology course and it is possibly the coolest thing ever!  I know I use words like cool, amazing and great a lot in this blog and need to desperately expand my vocabulary but until then you may have to hear them a few more times when I refer to this class.  Yesterday (Wednesday) we went to the Nairobi National Museum for our first class.  We essentially covered the prehistory of human origins in 1.5hours as an intro to the course.  We are studying Stone Age hominids, or human origins.  We also got to visit parts of the museum the public don't have access to.  In the morning we visiting the casting lab which is where they make the casts of hominid fossils for the entire world.  Every museum, university, exhibit that includes hominid casts, includes casts from the lab in Nairobi.  It was a cool process to see and discuss.  We also got to handle a bunch of the casts as we discussed  the differences between them.  We also visited the archaeology department in the afternoon where they house a bunch of artefacts.  When I say a bunch, there were thousands upon thousands of boxes.  We got the low down on stone tools and how to identify them.  We are learning about hominid evolution through the development of these stone tools as human culture.  It is really amazing stuff and I will probably never look at a rock the same way.
Today we are headed out to a site outside of Nairobi to find some of these stone tools.  The aim of today is to learn how to identify them and even try our hand at making them ourselves using some obsidian quarried nearby.  I will try to get on the computer to recap this activity before we leave Nairobi (and internet access) because it should be pretty cool. 
It's now 4:22am and we are departing here at 5am so I better get some breakfast.  Thanks for reading!