Visitors in Camp

Updated: July 21, 2000

Well it has been quite an eventful day today.

Our day started with Bonnie and Charles visiting with the village head man, Mr. Magwisha, who blessed them and our project. He is 99 years old and one of his sons is helping us with the digging. That was a really nice experience: We went into the village of Mwaru and to Mr. Magwisha's home, which is a mud brick and daub structure with a flat thatch roof. Charles, Bonnie, our driver Gregory, and Ferdinand from Antiquities joined Mr. Magwisha and 2 of his sons, including the one working for us. We paid our respects and offered him sugar and tea.

Visiting in the village of Mwaru

Bonnie then asked if it would be OK to take a picture and he agreed to a picture of himself with all the others. He then asked if Bonnie would take a picture of him by himself with his chiefly accoutrements, which include a fly whisk and a leather strap worn around the neck that has a pouch for sacred medicine. The picture was taken and then he blessed Bonnie with the fly whisk and necklace and also blessed the entire project.

Mr. Magwisha blesses the team and our project.

After returning from the ceremony in the village, our fossil hunting luck took a turn for the better. The digging crew finally reached the base of the deposit (approx. 15ft. deep) and prepared the benches for excavating large blocks. We started splitting rock in earnest this afternoon and quickly accumulated a substantial number of specimens of dicot and monocot angiosperm leaf fossils. In addition, we discovered several types of angiosperm fruits! In addition to plants, we found several very nice fish specimens, including one that appears to have some organic preservation.

Working in the deep pit, now at a depth of approximately 15 feet.

We had several visitors today:

Peter and Corry Kuchar, Anthony Curry (mechanical engineer), and Martin Joseph Kwezi visited from Singida. Peter is a botanist working in the Singida Region.

We were also visited by a large number of children from the village:

They were very curious to find why we were sitting around breaking rocks all day. I suppose it is rather a strange way to spend the day (not to mention two weeks!).

Best regards!