Day 34

Today was a genuine day off. Katie, Jenn, and I bought khangas and katenge on Uhuru street, took a taxi out to the Slipway where we bought clothes and souvenirs, enjoyed fancy salads for lunch (a delicacy that’s hard to find in Tanzania), and ate ice cream. Afterwards, we watched part of Step Brothers on my laptop and ate curry from the hotel restaurant for dinner. It was a really nice way to spend our last day in Dar es Salaam before heading back to the field tomorrow morning. Best of all, we didn’t bring any of our field work to the city so we didn’t even have to feel guilty about gallivanting instead of sitting hunched over rocks.

Unfortunately, our fearless leader was unable to join in the fun. She spent the day dealing with officials at the Department of Antiquities and the Dar es Salaam airport, looking for 26 boxes of artifacts that were shipped from Edmonton but have yet to arrive at their proper place. Pam’s permission to take artifacts on loan out of Tanzania to analyse them in Canada is quite rare. It is also completely contingent on her returning previous collections before conducting more field work. Consquently, she spent several days before we left packing up boxes of artifacts and filling out the appropriate paperwork for them to clear customs in both countries. They were supposed to take the same flight pattern as we did, from Edmonton to London, Dubai, and finally Dar es Salaam. Unfortunately, 2 weeks have passed since the estimated arrival date with no artifacts in sight. How do you lose 245 kilos of artifacts, you ask? Apparently it’s not all that hard. The same thing happened when they entered Canada in 2006, so perhaps these items are just cursed. Anyway, after a heavily-escorted tour of an airport cargo bay, Pam was able to mostly figure out where the boxes are hidden and accruing storage fees. Our new antiquities officer, Anthony, is going to stay behind for a few more days to try to sort out this mess. In the meantime, we are heading straight back to the field: some rested, some not, and all preoccupied with rocks.