Day 30

IRAP 2010: the project where “taking a day off” means washing, sorting, and inventorying artifacts for 6 straight hours in the hot sun. We have been a little delinquent in our lab work, to say the least. We wanted to make a good start on our excavation before traveling back to Dar es Salaam, so we excavated and collected artifacts for 6 straight days in order to get through the Iron Age. That was a similar move to making dinner for 600 people and then not doing any of the dishes. Apparently on July 13, Katie and I collected 949 artifacts from a single 1m x 1m x 10 cm level. Considering that all artifacts must be individually washed, grouped, inventoried, and boxed before we can export them back to Canada, we have a little bit of work to do.

Fortunately, this isn’t the first time Pam has stayed here and asked to do something weird. As in previous years, the hotel let us convert the second floor patio into a temporary laboratory where we could wash artifacts in plastic basins and let them dry on newspapers. Then, we grouped them according to category (iron, furnace fragments, stone tools, etc), counted them, and bagged them. For bone and bead artifacts, we refrained from washing them and packed them into separate boxes marked fragile. Finally, Pam updated her master excel spreadsheet which will form the basis for our export permit application. Unfortunately, by the time we decided to quit for the day, no one was still in the mood to go out for lunch or see some shops as we had originally planned. There’s always tomorrow, depending on how many more treasures we have to scrub with toothbrushes.

I’ll admit that at the beginning of this trip, we were taking it pretty easy while we waited for our permits to come through. However, I can assure you that we are making up for it in our study area! Now you see why we’re looking forward to returning to the capital for a few days where we can temporarily shift back into vacation mode. Don’t take it personally pango, but I could really use a break.

Today is the 1 month anniversary of when we left, which I find hard to believe. I’m sure we have been in Africa for years. If all that has happened can fit into 30 days, what on earth will the remaining 44 bring?