10/9/97
Hotel Sahel, Niamey
Room 231
6:00am
Yesterday at 5:00pm, as we were about to carry down the few remaining bags and drive them to the embassy, Alex appeared large in the hallway. "I’m sorry to tell you guys. I just saw Paul in the Sofitel. We won’t be leaving tomorrow."
Once we’re in the field, the costs will drop significantly. Here in town, another day, another dollar. We’ll buy souveniers, camel boxes, batiks, jewlery. Ride in cabs, to get to the Bier Niger brewery, send faxes, 7,000 CFA for two pages, make phone calls ($9/minute to the US; $2.65 to Switzerland), eat (5 loaves of bread, $120 US for capitan grille for the team and 1 bier apiece, all expedition funds) cokes, fanta orange, Yuki (200 CFA apiece, personal funds), diesel for the Blue E as it tools about town carrying Paul and Didier from ministry to ministry, 5 rooms at the Hotel Sahel (5 rather than 4 because 2 rooms have three people and 2 rooms have only 2 people. When the support crew arrived the hotel told them they couldn’t sleep three to a room, so they had to take 3 rooms for the five of them. When the advance crew showed up I paired with Katherine and no room changes were made.
Today we’ll hurry up and wait. We know the routine.
10/9/97
later that day
Have long meeting hotel terrace with the whole team. Discuss: plan for field season, knowing our limits, African geology, people’s expectations. Go w/ GW & Rud to the museum. Buy batiks, Have cokes under straw hut. P & D meet with truckers. Truckers still unhappy about the situation and want to return to Ghana. No progress with research document. Go w/ Greg to buy lunch and dinner supplies at SCORE (ham, cheese, grilled chicken).
P decides he will stay in Niamey w/Ibrahim and the caravan will go ahead to Touha. Brings bags to embassy. Uses satellite phone. Calls Chicago.
10/10/97
1:25 pm
60 miles from Birnin Koni
The sky has been inseparable from the earth for days. Grey dust mists the horizon, evaporates shadows into the grey clouds that is the sky above. Carried along by flamenco music we cruise across the sahel. My new companion, Jeff Ogradnik is a solid driver. Quiet, matching myself in the truck. He was surprised I’d done a lot of driving solo in this car.
"It gets boring driving by yourself, doesn’t it?"
"Yesh, well, I’m pretty quiet."
"Yeah, actually you’re pretty quiet for a girl," he remarks. His all American boy, whatcha see is whatcha get, low on sarcasm upbringing slips out.
"You know what I love about Africa? The bats. I never get to see bats."
He says Africa and bats with a flat Chicago "a" that sounds like it comes out of the side of his mouth. Hat, bat, Africa, all the same "a."
10/10
3:45am
Wake up. Move to Embassy and repack trucks. 5:20 depart. Truckers not ready. P. stays behind to get research document and plans to catch up in Touha. 6:00am drivers pull out from Museum lot. 3:30 reach Birnin Koni after White TDI dies twice on the road. 5:00pm leave BK. Arrive in Touha at dark. Drive trucks to camping area 4km outside town. Cold dinner of sardines and canned cassolet. P arrives w/Ibrahim around 9:00pm.
10/14
8:20am
Depart for Fako from InGall w/two water tanks in tow. 11:30 reach site. Hema’s Landcruiser tows water tanks through two sandy spots. Set up camp. People set up personal tents. The guard Malik shows me how to make Sahara bread in the sand.
10/27/97
InAbangarit
5:45am
We wake up on the desert plain. It is flat all around and the light melts gently over from the Eastern horizon. The moon is a thin cupped palm directly over the soon-to-rise sun. The breeze is cool and glides along with wind-worn ripples of the sandy ground. Not 50-feet from where we sleep is the partially-excavated maxilla of Carcharodontosaurus…
10/27
Wake up. Excavate Carcharodontosaurus maxilla, partial limb, 3 ischia. Go with chef Uvlad Albakar Sininiof InAbagarit to prospect. Drive through dune fields prospecting. Chef’s wife, Fatima does henna on my hand. Stop at well, See lots of camels. JP rides a camel. Back at Chef’s house I wash in a back room with a soap and towel given to me by Fatima. Eat bread and molasses. The women ask if I wear a bra & the little girls tell me how babies are made. Camp north near dune field. P calls Chicago. Hans finds out his apartment was robbed.
10/28/97
7:46 am
Heading north from InAbangarit
There is no way to capture in a photo what it is like to drive along a dune field, the curvaceous shadows on the dunes rolling by, the rattle of the wheels along the marble-sized rocks carpeting the ground, and the worn smell of cedar smoke exuding from the guard sitting next to you. The lurch of the vehicle over protruding sandstone, the lugging sound of the engine as it slogs through soft sand, and the ever-present chirping of squeaking doors, hinges, and roof-rack contents.
All the while the wind wrinkles on the dunes slipping by.
Soft air runs in a stream through the window and across your face and the sun is a warm reminder behind your right ear.
10/28
Prospect north of InAbangarit. Find associated titanosaur caudals, clams, turtles. Also arrowheads Visit salt mines. White Tdi loses a wheel then runs out of gas. Green Tdi goes ahead to InGall (with a clutch problem developing) to fetch gas.
10/31
Haloween eve
Fako site
Guards return from Agadez and report everything is fine. It will be no problem to go to GadaFoua and camp. Buy melons from kids on donkeys who show up at camp. Continue site work. Remove lots of jackets from pit. Make all orange food for Halloween. Invite the guards for a party. Make goody-bags of candy. K. dresses up as little Bo-Peep and carries the plastic sheep around. I make donkey ears and a tail out of tin foil, wire and duct tape. Dave and Rud dye their hair with purple KoolAid. DV makes a Jack-o-lantern out of a melon. The guards are fascinated.
11/5/97
6:29pm
Fako site
Paul heaves a pickaxe against the far side of the pit. The Natty-G crew mixes up salad dressing with olive oil in their nearby encampment. Hans, JP, Jon Marcot and others play "Frisbee till Dark." Dave and Jeff cut sweet potatoes for dinner while Greg spins the wheel of the shortwave looking for VOA.
Above, a sickle moon glows, skirted by Mars below and Jupiter above. There are no birds chirping and no insects humming at all.
JP: "Hey Frank"
Frank: "Did you say something, JP?"
JP: "I said, "Hey Frank."
Frank: "What?"
JP: "My feet stink. I just thought you might want to know."
As I write, my wrist aches from hammering. My skin is splotchy white from dryness, like a thin layer of dust on it that could be smoothed with a finger tip. The sides of my fingers are cracked up past the second knuckle, but they're not really painful. I look around at our set up and think of all the things I didn't know about and just take for granted now, or just do without thinking about them:
- like keeping leftovers cold by putting them in plastic crates half-filled with water, covered with strips of dampened burlap. As the breeze slips by and the water evaporates the food is cooled
- like chiseling away from the bone and pedestalling fossils on matrix to get them ready for jacketing.
I think of all the daily things: filling and purifying the water with purification tablets; trying to estimate how much to cook at dinner. Eating candy and the granola bars – things I wouldn’t do at home.
Moving rocks is the hardest - filling plastic buckets, dumping them time after time, crouching in narrow trenches, the rocks hard to pick up, sharp edges wear out a pair of gloves in two days.
And over and over we are capping the bones with plaster jackets. I’ve learned how important it is to stretch the plaster-covered burlap around the edges and below and over and around and pack the burlap tight against the bone to make the protective jacket strong.
There is a funny kind of battle that goes on in applying a plaster jacket. The burlap strips are cut and soaked in water, the plaster is brought down to the quarry in a tub, dry along with an empty tub, and a tub of water. When the separator has been laid down- usually a dampened piece of paper towel or tin foil, the plaster is mixed and the face-off begins. The jacket rim is wetted. Bandages are squeezed and dunked into the plaster and then rolled in it, to be slapped- plaster gobs dripping, onto an open palm. The bandage is stretched and unrolled across a specimen, the plaster smoothed into the burlap with little circles of fingertips. This hand off is interspersed with handfuls of plaster. Then the words, "The plaster is setting," are heard. You can add a little water and mix it around in the tub and try to keep it alive, but the key is having just enough plaster to roll the last bandage and a little left to smooth it in- but not too much or the plaster will be wasted.
Once the words have been said the race is on and the movements are a little faster- the mixing, spreading, smoothing, pressing, plaster smooshed form hand to hand; "A little water," and a cupped handful of water is scooped from the tub of bandages . We smooth around and around. Some times people draw their names in the final layer.
And after it dries, what a thrill to turn the bone- like a loose tooth that comes out with the burst of a rush just after it pulls free, raw, clean, a relief, open to the air...in this case for the first time in over 130 million years. What a breath of air at that wrenching! Then the process starts over again.
We brought 10,000 lbs of plaster with us and the funny thing is, we probably won’t have enough…
11/7
Go prospecting between Fako and Agadez, East. Don’t find much all day. At end of day – large bone scatter spotted from truck near the Agadez piste. Plan to possibly return.
11/12/97
Tawashie near Marandet
Work on three sites simultaneously – juvenile sauropod, the "Lapperine site" and the road kill site. We’re overwhelmed, struggling against increasingly hard rock to make progress. We’re running out of time. The truck is scheduled to come out on the 17th and we still have major jackets to carve out at Fako.
We’re rushing to be able to get to GadaFoua. So far sauropods galore.
The pickaxes bounce back off the rock at Oliver’s site. The beautiful inlet of outcrop I prospected on our first afternoon here was gorgeous, romantic, wind-carved and hidden. It’s referred to as the area "under Rubber Ducky Rock." Meanwhile, we’re camped out under the "Bishop’s Hat." Allison’s theropod scapula cum sauropod rib was found east of Rubber Ducky rock right near the Hersheys Kiss.
We carry the familiar with us…
11/14
Go w/Allison and JP to storage house at InGall and do a water run. Stock up and do inventory of food. Very low on granola, snack foods, deserts, Fine on meat, rice, couscous, vegetables, etc.
11/19/97
Fako Site
6:10am
The Fako site will have been our biggest job. By the time we’re through with the site we’ll have excavated nearly 20 tons – three specimens of the new sauropod – two adults and a juvenile! As well as a crocodile skull and parts of fish and turtles.
One of the most exciting things about working this area is that we will have so much of this new animal. A brand new sauropod! We have examples of almost every bone, including the skull! Wen the animal is cleaned, plastic casts are made of its bones and a mounted skeleton is constructed, the new dinosaur will stretch to nearly 60 feet (we think). It’s also amazing to have a juvenile of the same species, so that comparisons and a growth study can be done.
Our analysis (Dave and Paul’s, really) of the geology of the site so far is that is that this was a flood site. We’re not sure if the animals died during the flood or before, but the skeletons were washed together and buried VERY quickly – so fast that there was hardly any disarticulation.
Our last day will be tomorrow. We’re so caught up in finishing the site and closing down camp there’s hardly time to sit. After we unload all the bones in Agadez at the department of mines, we’ll set out for the Tenere desert in the heart of the Sahara. The area is called Gadoufaoua…
11/20/97
6:36am
Road to Niamey
The leaving of Fako was abrupt and lonely. The site work was done, the pit was empty and looked like a crater blast. It was rimmed with white jackets and plaster rubble.
Two of the tents were already down, one truck already loaded, Allison had inventoried the kitchen. I won’t see InGall again probably. I would have like to say goodbye to the Aborza family, and given "Mama" a Chicago T-shirt. Arali, maroon FLA shesh draped around his neck sits in next to me the passenger seat. His hair cropped short, curly, wooly like a sheep. He is quiet and so am I.
On to Agadez, Gadoufaoua, and the next phase of the field season…