TIA BABY!! PART TWO (Pt2)

When I sat in Montgomery Hall in Wath-Upon-Dearne listening to Martin giving an introductory lecture for his Archaeology night class on a rainy night in 1996 little did I imagine that I'd end up working on the side of  mountain in East Africa. Mind you, I never thought I'd end up having to work in Wales either, but for the Grace of God I did. But East Africa is far more interesting than Wales and I'm here to tell you about that, not the land of leaks. As I said in the last entry, we'd hit the road from Nairobbery towards the Tanzanian border and Engaruka. The plan was to travel straight to the site in a day, but as with all the best laid plans, we took two days to get there. An unscheduled stop at the large town of Arusha, just over the border of Kenya and Tanzania, was in order. Arusha serves as the jump off point for most of the Northern Tanzanian Safari parks. This translates as millions of touts trying to sell you a trip to stare at the Lions or a Sunday afternoon walk up Kilimanjaro. We only spent a night in Arusha so the touting wasn't such a big problem, this time. No sir, we were off to Engaruka and nothing would stop us!

Fuck off Arusha!! We don't need your batiks or Muzungu T-Shirts!

How does one get to Engaruka, I hear you cry. Well, it's pretty simple, you take the road out of Arusha, follow the metalled road out to Mtu wa Mbu (the name translates as 'River of Mosquitoes'; probably not the best advertisement for a town in a Malaria hot spot...), go through the town and then on the left you'll see a dirt track. Follow that, unless the rains have washed away all traces of the road, for about 2 hours. Make sure you have a four wheel drive as a Toyota Yaris may not be able to cope with all the rocks the size of a house, soft sand, crevices, and giraffes that you'll undoubtedly meet along the way. Calling out the AA is not really an option: 'Yeah, we're stuck in some soft sand on the road to Engaruka. Where abouts? Erm, well there's some scrub land around us. There's some massive mountains in the distance. There was three giraffes but they've moved now. There's some kids waving and asking for money. Can you get our position from that?'

Turn left at the giraffes...

So after two hours of bouncing around like a tennis ball in a washing machine in the back of the Landrover because Posh Bastard refused to slow down, we arrived at the edge of Engaruka village. Daryl then refused to pay the $10 entry fee that the village council were charging for tourists. He was well within his rights since the barrier was not recognised by the Antiquities Authorities and was a local cash raising initiative, but I still feared we'd all be speared by Masai spears in the dead of the night. After a Mexican stand off that lasted for what seemed like ages we were allowed into the village and found our way to the campsite that would be our accommodation for the next six weeks. It was dark by the time we arrived and we had to set up in the pitch black but somehow we managed not to put the tents up upside down.

Did anyone see where I put that tent peg?

Over the next couple of days we met Israel, the guardian of the site and local wide boy. Over the period we were working in Engaruka Israel managed to shift his entire family into the service of Daryl. He guided, his wife cooked, when she wasn't available, his brother took over, some young lad who must have had familial connections ran around clearing plates after dinner and I'm fairly sure it was Israel's older relative who owned the camp site. On arrival, Israel took myself, Kirk, Ted, Benson and Johnpius around to have a look at the archaeology. We stumbled upon some Masai lads who gave us some of their soup, made from tree bark and dung by the taste of it. They were the warrior caste, called Moran. Basically, all the men of the village between eighteen and thirty years old leave and live together out in the wild, eating roots and berries, killing lions and generally training to be warriors. It's a pretty good system as it gives the Masai an ever present warrior army and separates the testosterone fuelled youngsters from the elders and the rest of the village,  therefore cutting down on power struggles between young and old. It got me thinking, we have a similar set young lads in the UK, between 18 and 30 who also spend their time out in pubs, drinking and fighting. Except over here we call them Morons.

Drink this soup or we'll fucking stab you...

After a couple of days of flouncing around the site looking at the archaeology we were joined by the Kenyan student; Grace, Mary, Linda, John Junior and Steve Ugali, along with Charles the Tanzanian antiquities representative who had more testosterone than the entire male staff of English Heritage combined. Later we were joined by the Tanzanian students and we began working. My team consisted of John Junior, Irene, Catherine, Edith and Linda. As you will notice, I was surrounded by birds for the first few weeks and women being women, they were obsessed with soap operas. The particular soap they were obsessed with was Shades of Sin, a Latin American show that was screened across East Africa. This filtered it's way onto site through osmosis and we were all renamed after characters in the soap. I was Papushka, Catherine was renamed Mamushka and John Junior became Paco. These names stuck for the duration of the excavation. What else can I say about the students? They were great overall, very funny, friendly, hardworking and very polite. None of them complained like the whining York students when they had to climb up a fucking mountain everyday in a Death March led by that Posh Bastard Daryl. Oh no, the students at Heslington East whined when they had to get out of bed to get to work for half past nine. How would they have coped if they had to have got out of bed to be on site at 7.00am after walking for nearly an hour up hill to do a full days work.

No shirkers here...

I'll take a break here to talk about the food on site. Given that it was a student excavation run on a tight budget the food was expected to be quite bad. 'Quite bad' would do it too much justice. Let's say 'downright fucking terrible'. Each and every meal, Lunch and dinner, was made up of beans along with cabbage (at least I think it was cabbage...). To bulk out this culinary combination we were provided with rice for dinner and for lunch, Ugali. Now for those that don't know, Ugali is an African specialty. I had had it before in South Africa, where it is called Mielie pap. I tried it in one of those moments that tourists have: 'let's try what the locals eat, it can't be that bad!' It wasn't at the time, but then I only had it for one meal. After six weeks of forcing this glutinous slop down just in order to get something in my belly after a full day's work I'd rather eat a bowl of my own shit and vomit than another plate of Ugali. You think I'm kidding? At least shit and vomit would taste of something. Ugali has literally no taste, even sticking my dusty fingers into it improved things. It was great for dieting, I'd work a full day, walk back down the mountain starving hungry, see the Ugali waiting for us and instantly loose my appetite.

 Bleurghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

OK that's enough shit for this part, I'll return to Africa soon with tales of what we did on our days off and my holidays through Zanzibar...

We Sent Them To Dig In This?

I'm just going to tell you about Belgium before I continue with East Africa, if you don't like it, use your telephone to call someone that fucking cares. Cos I certainly don't. The Belgian archaeologists of the Institute for the Archaeological Heritage of the Flemish Community (IAP) are working on various sites throughout Belgium in order to assess the preservation of the underground archaeology of the Western Front. The areas affected during the war are under scrutiny to be put on the World Heritage List by 2014. This being the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Great War, you thick cunt. Do try to keep up. Marc Dewilde of the IAP asked Dr David Kenyon to assemble a highly professional team of some of the most experienced Great War archaeologists that Britain has to offer. He did, but they were busy, so instead he had to ask Danny Boy (Douche) and me to help him dig out rusty German beastliness. It mainly comes down to the fact that Douche and I have pissed away every opportunity for any kind of proper career and at any one time either of us are not working or are in such vocational circumstances that we can take time off at the drop of a hat. I got the call whilst languishing like a sweating sun burnt sow in Zanzibar and this is how I found myself on Friday night lost on the outskirts of Hitchen ringing Douche to find out where he lived.

You wanted the best, you got us instead...

We had the usual car swapping leap frogging journey to the ferry (I drive to Luton then Douche drives us both to Sevenoaks then Kaptain Kenyon drives us all to Belgium with Kenny Loggins, Survivor and Cher as a soundtrack) and ended up at the accommodation in Ypres. We really landed on our feet with the place where we were staying (It was called Le Chat Noir which we anglicised to the Black Shit) it was clean, comfortable, two seconds away from the main square in Ypres, had satellite TV, a barbecue, a fully working kitchen, swimming pool, ball room, aga, space rocket launch pad, discotheque, firing range and tank proving ground with a fully stocked garage of armoured fighting vehicles. OK, fair enough, it had every thing up to the kitchen, but it was a really good place. The only problem was we had to sleep Das Boot style in the same room but at least we didn't have to share beds.

The Black Shit, what a great place!

Douche was up to his usual tricks, he had forgotten to bring his toothpaste and tooth brush from home. Whilst on the ferry the fucking idiot could only afford to buy one or the other, so in his glorious ignorance he chose the paste. Rather than buying a brush and using someone else's toothpaste he ended up not cleaning his teeth for three days until we went to a Belgian supermarket where he could buy a brush. His forgetfulness didn't end there, on Monday at work he forgot his lunch, on Tuesday he forgot his coffee. He'd finally got it right by Wednesday. Not only did I have that to put up with, but Kaptain Kenyon continually droned on about his working as historical advisor on the new Steven Spielberg movie 'Warhorse'. He made it sound like he was rewriting the script as he went along. It was either luvvie talk about lunching with 'Steve' (as his friends call him) or he was wittering on about his ideas for a time travelling movie involving Roman Dodecahedrons. The idea is that a mad scientist in the future has sent an object back in time in order to prove time travel can exist, an object so ambiguous and puzzling its purpose cannot be fathomed by modern archaeologists, but would be known by the mad scientist to be from their time. The whole idea was a load of shit and didn't even involve a single Delorian.

Dr. Kenyon, archaeologist, film writer and wanna-be-time traveller

So I had to put up with this crap for a week, not only that but I had relentless abuse about my beard. I'd not had chance to trim it since getting back from Africa and admittedly it's got a little out of hand. I think there may be as of yet undiscovered rain forest tribes living in there and it's strong enough to hold a spoon in place, but there was no need for the continual torrent of psychological torment that I had to put up with. It was an abuse of KK's position of power and jealousy on both of their parts as they can only grow wispy bum fluff.

The beard is big, but the beard is pissed...

Apart from that, we had some great trenches, we were looking at mostly German front line systems. We worked on two sites, Palingbeek and later, Sanctuary Wood. As ever in Belgium, the wood preservation was excellent. Douche had a brilliant little slot across a communication trench with wooden planking on the base at Palingbeek. Also at Palingbeek we found in situ wooden hurdling (the Germans used a lot of wood in the trench wall constructions), something we've all seen in photographs but never in the ground.

I've got wood, BOOM BOOM!

Sanctuary Wood was also excellent from an archaeological point of view. There was a certain amount of difficulty in actually seeing the features in the ground, but we cleaned up and I located two trenches of sizable depth. Absolutely packed full with cartridges and a sock. Santuary Wood had a further touch. We were digging within spitting distance of the Canadian Memorial on Hill 62 and every so often we would hear, drifting through the woods, the sounds of bagpipes at various ceremonies being held on the memorial. There is something haunting about the thought of the violence that the place had witnessed compared to the tranquility that it currently holds.

Then...

...now

But as ever, as soon as it had started it was all over and before I knew it I was standing in the square in Ypres eating Belgian waffles waiting for Franky and his van so we could sign off the sites and return to the UK. I don't know when I'll be back in Belgium again and the time between jobs is never short enough.

 

Belgium = Om Nom Nom

TIA BABY!! PART TWO (Pt1)

I kept a diary each day whilst I was in East Africa, the entry dated 17/18th July says: 'laid on a bed in a room in a 'hotel' in Nairobi with walls so thin I may as well be sitting in the bar outside attempting to sleep, I'm also listening to what sounds like the world falling out of Kirk's arse in the next room [turns out I was mistaken about this and it must have been the dodgy plumbing...]. Already been electrocuted by the shower, the light bulb is dimming and brightening and the plug for the TV doesn't fit the socket. Welcome to Africa...' Welcome indeed, to Africa and welcome to TIA BABY!! PART TWO. This is the first of several parts (I don't know how many yet, I haven't written the fucking thing have I?) of my blog on my latest trip to Africa. I'll try to make these entries short so you don't get too bored reading them, but they will also be interrupted by a trip to Belgium I will be taking this coming Saturday, so that will give you a bit of time to recover...

TIA BABY!!

So what was I doing in Africa? Well, I'd heard on the grapevine of a job supervising a research excavation on some olden days stuff in Tasmania. After further inquiry I found out it was actually TANZANIA in East Africa and not a island off the south coast of Australia. Naivety on the leader of the project, Dr Daryl's part allowed me to worm myself onto the caper. I thought to myself, well, I've been to Morocco in North Africa, I've been to South Africa and Swaziland in, er, South Africa, but I've never been East or West in Africa. Since East Africa only carries the dangers of Malaria and AIDS and the West carries the dangers of your vehicle being stopped by armed insurgents in Technicals and having your arms being macheted off by drugged up teenage boy soldiers, the East seems to be a much nicer prospect.

No drugs and machetes here...

The project was dealing with a 'lost' village at a place called Engaruka in Northern Tanzania. This village consisted of several field systems of complex furrows and water channels along with mysterious stone circles and a mountainside terraced with house platforms. This whole thing had gone out of use about three hundred years ago, but they was little evidence of who the people were who had lived there. The Masai who lived in the area now only moved in around two hundred years ago and their oral histories had no recollection of the people of the village. It's not as Scooby Doo and mysterious as it sounds, given that these people were farmers it was probably a climate change that brought around their disappearance and they just fucked off to a wetter area. We were there not to discover who these people were, that would be almost impossible anyway, but to work out the sequences of construction between the house platforms and field systems. Whew, that's the boring archaeology out of the way, come on, wake up, I'll try not to mention it again too often.

Yawn...

We (the supervisors were myself, Kirk and Ted. The project was led by that Posh Bastard Daryl) flew into Nairobi as that is where the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) is located. It's in a lovely leafy suburb of Nairobi and it gave one the impression that Nairobi was a idyllic place, an oasis of green in the dusty desert. It was only an impression. Nairobi isn't called Nairobbery for nothing and a walk through the park could result in either getting raped, robbed, injected with a syringe full of AIDS or all of the above*. The opening account was written sitting in a hotel called NIBS (Nairobi Institute of Business Studies, the students ran the hotel as a project) which was just around the corner from the BIEA and despite Ted's protests was cheaper than the YMCA. Despite this saving, I was electrocuted by the shower. I hadn't been wearing the plastic slippers provided and the TV had a two pronged plug for a three holed socket.

'Has this shower had a HSE inspection?'

Having said that, NIBS did the best Nyama Choma that I'd ever had. Well, it was the only Nyama Choma that I'd had until that point, but that hardly matters does it? Nyama Choma is an East African speciality, basically it's a load of cooked meat served with some chilies, sometimes some grilled bananas. You order it by the kilo and Ted, Kirk, Sarah (an American woman who came along despite having A MASSIVE FUCKING INFECTED HOLE in her leg from an insect bite...) and I ordered two kilos of unspecified meat. This brought on the first of many fevered meat dreams.

'What animal is this?'

'Who cares, just keep eating!'

The BIEA was where the expedition was to be launched from as the site was in Northern Tanzania and was easier and closer to reach than from Dar Es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. Besides, all the equipment was located at the BIEA, what were you expecting us to do? Dig the site out with our fucking teeth? The few days spent in Nairobbery were busy with meeting some of the students who we would be working with and packing the two Landrovers that we would be taking with us. These first students were from the University of Nairobbery and had just completed their anthropology degrees. I'll tell you more about these in a later post, but we were also working with students from Dar Es Salaam University and they were to arrive at a later date. After quick introductions during which I promptly forgot every one's name, myself, Daryl, Ted, Kirk, Sarah, Johnpius (another graduated Student from Dar Es Salaam) and Benson (our site surveyor) set off for the long journey south to the wilds of Tanzania in the Landys. What was waiting for us there? Would we be mauled by tigers? Eaten by Polar Bears? Assaulted by boxing kangaroos? Find out in the next part of TIA BABY!! PART TWO... (Don't hold your breath though, I'll be away for a week...)

On the road motherfuckers!! 

* For Mary's sake, all of this is a joke.