And a merry old soul was (s)he!

Oy! Two weeks in London down already! Craziness.

So what have I been up to, you ask? Well, to be honest, the first week or so, not much beyond data collection during the day and frantic data formatting in the evening to run analyses to write my AAPA (American Association of Physical Anthropologists) abstract for next spring's conference in Calgary. Yep - my first weekend in London was spent holed up in various coffee shops and libraries while I worked. But, per usu, I'm getting ahead of myself.

My last update was posted in the waning hours of my time in Kampala - from thence I headed to Entebbe airport and on to Addis Ababa for a rather long and boring evening layover before a 1am flight to Heathrow. I arrived in London early morning and dragged all my luggage onto the tube system and out to the nabe of Dalston/Hackney, where I booked a room with an absolutely lovely couple. My hostess offered me the option of dinner for an additional fee most nights, and I took her up on it because she is a fabulous cook. So, I go to work at the museum all day and then come home to amazing home-cooked meals. Score! Their house is also literally across the street from Hackney Park, where I've gone for several runs on the weekends. The neighborhood has a sizable Turkish population, so there are great Turkish cafes and grocery stores.

Due to an internal conference at the British Museum, I couldn't start working until the Tuesday after I arrived, so I spent Monday getting settled at NYULondon, where I am a Global Research Institute fellow this semester. As the NYUL buildings are in Bedford Square right next to the British Museum, I decided to take a few hours and tour the galleries because I knew that even though I'd be spending a month working in the museum I wouldn't get many chances to take a leisurely stroll around. The British Museum houses many famous artifacts, including the Rosetta Stone, the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon, an impressive mummy and Egyptian collection, and lots of other great stuff. One of my favorite rooms is the one housing the Enlightenment collection - it basically looks like a wealthy person's library, with scientific instruments and objects displayed in between books housed in huge floor to ceiling wooden and glass cabinets. The room just has a really unique feel to it for a museum.

Tuesday I started work in the collections at the British Museum, where I am working with a large archaeological sample from Sudan. The bones are overall in really great shape, although many of the skeletons have not yet been processed much post-excavation and so tend to be fairly dirty. The hours are limited for researchers, but I knew this ahead of time and scheduled four weeks there to give myself a cushion. Today I hit 30 individuals, so I should have no problem hitting my desired sample size of 50 by the end of next week, even with taking a day or two off when my parents and sister come to visit (they are all coming on Sunday! Yay!).

Last weekend was spent in abstract prep and writing, but I did manage to fit in a tasty meal at the Dalston Yard Street Feast, which was in its final weekend. (I managed to fit this in because it was taking place across the street from the Dalston CLR James library where I was working...). I had some great fancy spicy tacos from one food truck, some fried sweet plantains on top of a Caribbean salad at another, and a great local lager from a third.

Tower Bridge, view from the South Bank

Given that the Street Feast was the only exciting thing I did during my first weekend in London, I decided to pack some touristy goodness into this past weekend. On Saturday (after a lengthy perusal of maps, bus routes, and hours of operation over a late and leisurely breakfast), I headed down to Tower Bridge, which is located next to the Tower of London. I want to visit the Tower at some point (crown jewels, etc), but it seems like you need a few hours to do it properly so I decided to put that one off for another time. I walked across the Tower Bridge and then strolled along the South Bank.


Based on the recommendation of one of the museum staff, I visited the Borough food market, which was absolutely packed on a Saturday afternoon with hungry people and tasty treats. I had a great brat from a German deli stand and then bought several yummy biscuits from the bakery with the owl shortbread. Cookies should be both delicious and beautiful.

Crazy pile of meringues and other goodies, Borough Market

After wandering through the market a bit, I continued my stroll along the Thames, eventually passing through Hay's Galleria, which used to be large warehouse and wharf and is now a touristy area. There are many pubs and cafes strewn along the river's edge, and lots of people were out and about in the (relatively) clear early autumn weather.

Another entrance to Borough Market

Hay's Galleria

After stopping to enjoy a chai latte by the river, I made my way down past the Globe (I bought a ticket to see Macbeth in a couple of weeks!) to Tate Modern, the modern art museum housed in a former power station. Modern art museums don't usually make it onto my travel itineraries, but over the past few years I've been inspired by my friend Priya and I've tried to be more accepting of modern art. I feel like I can appreciate it now for how it challenges me, even if I don't particularly like most of it.

Ruins of Winchester Palace, South Bank

Outdoor art sculpture, 'Endless Stairs', Tate Modern

After visiting Tate, I walked across the Millennium Bridge back to the North Bank and walked around the grounds of St. Paul's Cathedral. It was getting kind of late, so I couldn't tour inside, but the gardens have some nice waterfalls and sculptures scattered about.

 

St. Paul's Cathedral

This weekend was Open House London, in which many famous and not-so-famous buildings, houses, etc that are normally closed to the public are open for tours. There are hundreds of listings, so I decided to focus on something close to where I was staying, and on Sunday I visited St. Augustine's Tower, just a short walk from where I'm staying. The tower is all that remains of a parish church from the - get this - end of the THIRTEENTH century. Awesome. You can hike your way up a series of winding stone staircases to get to the top, where there are great views of a big portion of London. I met a lovely spry elderly lady on the roof who pointed out the new constructions from the Olympics (and told me what a pain they were for the people like herself who live nearby) as well as landmarks such as the Gherkin and the Shard. It was a fairly clear day so we could actually see all the way out to the marshes. She also recommended that I visit Sutton House, a Tudor manor house located in the neighborhood that was also participating in Open House.

St. Augustine's Tower, Hackney

Interior stairs, St. Augustine's Tower

View of the Hackney Central Overground from St. Augustine's Tower

After walking through the St. John at Hackney churchyard gardens (this is the church that replaced St. Augustine), I found Sutton House just around the corner. Luckily, it was opening just as I got there! This house obviously sees many tours going through because there were many placards of information. You could go all over, from the top floor to the cellar, and it was very interesting to read about how the manor had changed over the years. If you look in the first picture below, you can see where a small panel over the fireplace has been let down to see the original stonework behind. In the second picture, you can see a cool little figure etched into the stonework, presumably around when the house was built.

Sutton House, interior

Etching over the fireplace of a figure of guy wearing a pack and holding a grid-iron, potentially a good luck charm to keep the devil from entering the house via the hearth!

Ceilings were short back in the (Tudor) day!

Taking my friend Connie's advice, I went to Old Spitalfields Market, a vibrant collection of designers and vendors selling a mishmash of clothes, jewelry, art, accessories, antiques, etc. To top it all off, there is a performance space in the center which yesterday contained a huge half-pipe where guys were doing tricks on dirt bikes to a thumping bass soundtrack. The whole atmosphere is mildly chaotic and loads of fun. After some lunch and shopping at the market, I headed to the Geoffrye Museum, a former almshouse that now documents the changes in the homes and furnishings of the middle-class from the 16th century onward. There are period rooms as well as household objects on display, and behind the building there is also a series of small period gardens. Fun fact: the sofa, while long a mainstay of aristocratic households, did not become a staple in middle-class homes until the late 18th century.

Grounds, Geoffrye Museum

Stay tuned: further adventures in Blighty to follow!

Final days in the Pearl of Africa

Well, here I am, with my third and final week of data collection here in Kampala completed. It has definitely been a busy couple of weeks - I made several new acquaintances at the guest house and so went out for many long evenings of dinner and drinks after 9+ hour days of data collection. It made for some rough early mornings, but it was fab to get away from the rather bland offerings of the guest house restaurant and try some of the fun places in Kampala: Mish Mash, The Lawns, Thammaphon Thai, Cayenne Club, Mediterraneo... One definite highlight was sampling tandoori-style crocodile, kudu, and springbok meat at The Lawns - so named because the restaurant/bar overlooks a lovely open space where there are a few bunnies (seriously) hopping about (tho no rabbit on the menu, if you were wondering).

I've also had plenty of Ugandan style cooking, because last week I finally let the technicians in the anatomy department convince me to have a "real" lunch and accompanied them to the little awesome place in the hospital known as Mama Box. This is no hospital cafeteria. Rather, there are several ladies dishing up heaping plates of beans, rice, matoke, cassava, potatoes, avocado, etc from huge tureens for about the cost of a dollar. It's all delicious and, everyone assures me, traditionally prepared. So, naturally, I gave up my sad little Clif bar and snack lunches and have gone to Mama Box every day since.

With last weekend being essentially my only opportunity for tourism, I decided to spend one day visiting Jinja and another visiting Entebbe. On Saturday, fellow guest house traveler William and I hired a driver to take us to several sites in and around Jinja, the town near the "source of the Nile." We headed out of Kampala in the morning, and our first stop was Ssezibwa Falls, a short jaunt down dirt roads off the main road between Kampala and Jinja. A guide took us around the site, which has several local shrines in addition to the waterfall - in the past the area was apparently a favored spot of some of Buganda's kabakas (leaders).

View above Ssezibwa

Ssezibwa Falls

Our next stop was Mabira Forest, which has an extensive trail system. Given our packed itinerary for the day, though, we only went on a short hike. My entire goal with going here was to see monkeys, and we actually saw a few red-tailed monkeys within the first few minutes on the trail! Our driver, Paul, is actually the one who spotted them. By the end of the hike, I was joking we should have just hired him to be our guide because I feel like he spotted more wildlife than the actual guide... Once he learned I wanted to see monkeys, he proceeded to point them out to me for the rest of the day (there are lots of free range black-faced vervets roaming Jinja), which was awesome. With a short hike we didn't get very deep into the forest, but in addition to the monkeys we saw several different types of birds (Uganda is apparently great for birding) as well as a long trail of safari ants on the move. There are so many ants in the marching column that they actually create deep ruts in the ground, kicking up dirt on both sides. You do NOT want to get in their way - they swarm!

 

Vervets hanging out by the Nile

Next we headed on to the town of Jinja itself, where we had a leisurely lunch and then went down to see the Nile. By taking a boat ride out on the river you can see the actual location where Lake Victoria meets the Nile- the water ripples and then calms in a line that shows the demarcation.

The river Nile

Our Nile transportation

 At the source with William

On the boat ride back, we saw a vervet pop down for a drink! (spotted by Paul, of course)

We then decided to try and find Itanda Falls, a place I had read about online. A large dam was built several years ago that essentially destroyed many of the waterfalls closer to Jinja that used to be a large tourist draw, but this one survived unscathed. Itanda is a bit far out of Jinja and tricky to locate, but with frequent stops to ask the locals for directions, Paul managed to find it. There was a short rain shower on the drive there that was just letting up when we arrived, so the pics are a bit overcast, but it was great to see the rapids, some of which are Class 6. Adrenaline-junkies do go white-water rafting and kayaking down this part of the river - it's the most popular thing to do in Jinja.

The rapids @ Itanda Falls

After visiting Itanda, we returned to Jinja to have a sundowner at a lovely bar overlooking the Nile. We had planned to meet up with two other guest house travelers, Vanessa and David, for dinner but unfortunately had phone issues (if you two are reading - sorry to have missed you!), so we decided to call it a day and head back to Kampala.

View of Lake Victoria from the Botanical Gardens

Entebbe Botanical Gardens

Earlier in the week, I had accepted an invitation from Duncan, the chief technician, who offered to show me around Entebbe on Sunday. We took a car to the city and visited the Wildlife Park, which is a cross between a zoo and a refuge center, and the Entebbe Botanical Gardens. Among the animals housed there, the Wildlife Park has several rescued chimpanzees who live in a fairly large enclosure surrounded by a moat. The water keeps them stranded on their little island because they don't like deep water. To get the chimps to come out into the visible part of the enclosure, the guide started calling them and chucking fruit into the water while explaining the purpose of the moat. I asked him why he was throwing the fruit in the water if he knew they wouldn't go in. He turned to me with a gleam in his eye and said, "Oh, just wait." Soon enough, several chimpanzees came knuckle-walking (it's really more like knuckle-loping; it was much faster than a walk) into view down the path to their moat. Upon spying the fruit in the water, one chimp looked around and then grabbed a large branch and used it to start pulling the fruit towards the shore. After a bit, another one joined in as well. It's one thing to know that chimpanzees use tools and to watch videos of them doing it, but, wow, to see it in person is pretty spectacular. When I asked if anyone had showed them how to do that, the guide replied, "Oh no. They are very wise. We share 98.7% of our DNA with them, you know." I was like, yes we do, buddy! Good job.

Chimpanzees using branches to get floating fruit

Free-range black-faced vervets at the wildlife park

On the way back into Kampala, Duncan took me to one of the roadside markets to shop for fresh fruit. I bought what has to be the tastiest mango I have ever had the pleasure of eating, along with some lovely passionfruit and jackfruit, the latter of which I have never tried before. I thought the taste was somewhat reminiscent of a cross between a cantaloupe and a mango.

Kampala market

A sample of some market offerings

 And now it's on to London! I've had a great three weeks here in Uganda, and it has been a fab introduction to Africa. To end, I want to say congrats to both my cousin and his wife as well as Jeff's cousin and his wife - both couples had their first baby last week! Welcome to the world, Titus and Elise - it's definitely a crazy place, but I will say you can find great people all over it!