Coming home...
...and starting the next phase

Updated: August 6, 2000

We finally arrived home (yesterday) and are very relieved and happy to see family and friends. The trips home to Dallas, Washington, D.C., and Michigan were long, albeit uneventful.

Our intention was to send one last report from Dar es Salaam on Friday, 4 August, our last day there. However, there were unexpected delays in acquiring the papers needed to clear customs with our three trunks full of fossils. There is a lot to be said for "knowing the ropes," even if one gets advice from government officials beforehand! Despite several tense moments between 8:30 AM and 5:30 PM, it all turned out well and we ended up checking our trunks as extra luggage and boarding the plane as planned for our 7 PM flight.

Above: Jason models the fashions stylish paleontologists
will be wearing next season.

Bonnie, Pat, and Kent stayed in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday and Wednesday to finish taking care of obtaining an export license from the Antiquities Unit and to pack the fossils, while Jason, Beth and Gregg went to Mikumi Game Preserve. We secured an export license and had the fossils packed in their trunks by Wednesday morning with the aid of Ferdinand Mizambwa, the Antiquities representative who accompanied us on our trip. We decided that it would be wise to relax on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday. Wednesday afternoon and evening was spent at a delightful place called the Sea Cliff hotel located north of the city. It's situated on the top of a rocky cliff made from old coral reef. The view to the Indian Ocean is spectacular there and when the tide is in the waves crash and boom against the rock. One can spend several hours simply sitting and looking out to the ocean, enjoying the salt spray and cool breezes. In the evening on Wednesday we saw a large fruit bat flutter past our heads and land on the inside of a palm frond about 10 feet away. It wrapped itself in its wings (Count Dracula) and rested for a few minutes before taking off over the water and into the night. Soon after the bat departed, our friends returned from Mikumi and told us about all the game they saw there. The list is long, and includes elephants, zebra, wildebeest, jackal, giraffe, superb starlings, a lilac-breasted roller, maribou storks, and even a wild dog!

Above: Zanzibar harbor.

On Thursday we took a large and fast ferry to the island of Zanzibar! The boat ride takes about 1 ½ to 2 hours. We arranged for a "spice tour", about 4 hours long. This was a great way to see several parts of the island and to learn about the spices that made Zanzibar a famous place, even hundreds of years ago. Many of the spices grown for export there originated in Asia, but some are from the New World. We saw cloves, nutmeg and mace (Indonesia), black pepper, ginger, cardamom, turmeric, and cinnamon (India or tropical Asia), and chocolate and vanilla (American tropics).

Above: Cardomon, young chocolate fruit, and chocolate tree.

Above: Young bananas, at left, and jackfruit tree.

We also saw tropical fruit trees including breadfruit, jackfruit, mango, rambutan (tropical Asia) banana (Asia and Africa), avocado (Central America), and coconut (widely dispersed and it's unclear as to where it was first cultivated). We had tours of both government and private plantations.

To the right is a picture of a young man in a coconut palm tree that really was as tall as it looks here. He climbed right up to the top where he cut down some leaves and fruit. We drank milk from the young coconuts (we were told it's not good in mature fruits) and had baskets and other woven objects made for us on the spot (see photo of Jason!). We had lunch in the home of a local person, which consisted of rice seasoned with many of the spices we saw. Dessert was fresh tropical fruits.

Zanzibar is infamous for its role in the slave trade. The sultans of Zanzibar were big slave traders, and the old ruins of a palace that we saw included areas for the sultan's harem as well as his slaves.

Above from upper left: Columns in ruins, palace doorway,
and an overview of the palace.

In the last half of the 19th century explorers would begin their journey into the interior of Africa after organizing their trip in Zanzibar. We saw the house (formerly a hotel or guesthouse) where Livingstone, Burton, and Speke all began their journeys.

Above: Carved door in Zanzibar town.

The old part of Zanzibar town (Stone town) consists of very narrow streets lined with shops and homes. It's very old and very interesting. The doors are heavy carved wood and in traditional homes will open up onto a courtyard. In some cases, the doors are decorated with metal spikes - a holdover from India where these spikes were used to discourage attack by elephants used in battle (or so our guidebook told us). The streets are so narrow that a person on a bicycle cannot pass when another person is in the street. Therefore, bicycle horns and warning shouts from the pushers of carts are often heard as they encourage people to step aside and out of their way. There is no way that these streets could accommodate anything as large as a car.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Although our adventure in the field is behind us, we will always be grateful for all the help we got from people and organizations here and in Africa. The bulk of this project was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation to Bonnie Jacobs and Pat Herendeen, as well as a grant to Gregg Gunnell from the University of Michigan.

The ability to transmit this information via satellite phone to the web from a laptop computer charged by a solar panel was supported by the Arthur L. Ruff family of Dallas, and we thank them for their generosity. We would also like to thank Ralph Gauer for the tremendous job he did in maintaining this web site and Karen Carr for providing us with a web home.

We thank Professor Terry Harrison for his invitation to study the plants from Mahenge, and for his initiative in tracking down the locality - long forgotten by most of the world since Mannard reported it in a dissertation in 1962.

We are grateful for permission to collect and study the Mahenge fossils granted by the Tanzanian Commission on Science and Technology (COSTECH), the Tanzanian Antiquities Unit, and The National Museums of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam. The people of the Singida District were very welcoming, and did much to smooth the way for our arrival at the site. We are very grateful to the Executive Director of Singida District Council, the District Education Officer, the Regional Commissioner and Administrative Secretary, as well as the representative from the ward. Our time near the village of Mwaru was made more enjoyable by our good relations with the kind people who live there.

We are indebted to Charles Msuya (New York University graduate school) who helped tremendously with preparations for our field trip and continued to be essential as a patient and understanding guide in many instances. Ferdinand Mizambwa served as our representative from the Antiqutities Unit, and as such was not required to participate, but quickly became a welcome and important part of our field team.

Finally, we thank our families and significant others who, without exception, have been understanding and supportive even though our being away from home for more than a month was hard for them as well as us.

Kwaheri ya kuwanana,
Bonnie Jacobs