Koobi Fora and some old fossils

Story and Photograph by Neville Cole

The wind is still blowing my curtains horizontal. I walk back to the patio to find John and Justin quietly drinking strong, sweet Kenyan coffee. Do these African guys every sleep, I wonder. John pours me a cup without having to enquire whether I’d like one.

“We’re thinking of heading up to Koobi Fora this morning.  Are you interested?”

“What’s Koobi Fora?” I ask.

“It’s a paleoanthropological archeological site,” Justin replies as if those multisyllabic words quite naturally roll off everyone’s tongue at seven in the morning; then, noting my blank expression, adds:  “Leakey established a base camp there in ‘68. He set up a Kenyan search team called the hominid gang who discovered hundreds of fossil Hominins in the area. Mostly they found Homo habilis, homo rudolfensis, and homo ergaster but they discovered Australopithecus remains up there as well. It a very important site paleoanthropologically speaking.” By now I could tell these two African boys were enjoying themselves at my expense.

“Let me have a cup of coffee before you try to explain any more of this,” I moan. “It too early for all these fucking big words.”

Justin and the Frenchies are flying up to shoot some big scene for their documentary so I thought we might as well go along to check it all out.”

“You can see the movie being made and commune with the ancients at the same time,” Justin adds, sipping slowly on the thick, black liquid in his cup. “We’d take you in the helicopter with us but they are carrying all kinds of shit with them today: wave riders, ultralights, hang gliders…the entire crew, some local Turkana hands to set everything up and, of course, all the models and Cristo.

“Cristo?” I repeated.

“That’s the name John came up with for our new mysterious, wandering friend. It was getting tiresome last night continually referring to him as friend or stranger or bearded one.”

“I decided his full name is Jesus Cristo,” John added with a cynical snort. “He’s our most glorious existential messiah.”

“Anyway,” Justin continued, “You should come up to Koobi Fora with John and check it out. It’s going to be crazy.”

I am not one to want to miss crazy, so naturally I agree to go along.

“Great,” said John getting up from the table. We leave in about an hour and don’t worry about the costs; we’ll figure it all out when we get back to Nairobi.”

The flight to Koobi Fora took us all the way to the very tip of the Jade Sea.  Here the landing strip is not only perpendicular to the prevailing wind but also covered in a three to twelve inch layer of loose blowing sand. Twenty-five feet above the ground we drop suddenly out of the sky and bounce violently to a rapid stop. “Wow!” John screams.  “Lucky we didn’t snap the landing gear with that one!  I only hope we’ll be able to lift up out of this quicksand later today.”

The ubiquitous African buggy picks us up at the strip. We see that the French crew and their small army of Turkana production assistants have arrived before us. Out of the enormous Russian helicopter has poured a mountain of equipment and that small army of Turkana production assistants. They have set about transforming the badlands landscape into a fully-fledged movie set. The first order of business it seems was to establish a base camp complete with a craft services tent and a hair and make-up station where the models will apparently to undergo some kind of prehistoric makeover.

In the distance I can just make out Justin and Cristo helping to lug two hang gliders to the top of an extinct volcano cone. Michel is talking to a couple of crew members who are busy constructing an ultra-light that will be rigged with a mounted camera. By the lake, I see a buggy unloading wave riders into the water. Jean is discussing the sequence of shots with the DP while grips set up two main cameras and and an array of reflectors. Everyone has a job to do but us.

“I’ve talked the driver into taking us down to the fossil fields,” John says tossing me a bottle of water he has snagged from craft services.

“I thought these were the fossil fields.”

“This isn’t where they find all the hominids,” John says already loping his way back to the buggy. “But Chongwe says he can take us to them.”

Our driver, Chongwe tell us he has worked at Koobi Fora for nearly half his life. As he drives us down the long, winding, rutted trail to the fossil fields he explains that searching the area for fossils has become his life’s work.

“Did you know Kamoya then?” John asks.

“Oh yes,” Chongwe smiles. “Mr. Kamoya is one of my most dear friends. I was one of the hominid gang. I helped Mr. Kamoya find Turkana boy. I was only a boy myself at the time.” Later John would explain that Kamoya Kimeu, is one of the world’s most successful fossil collectors. Kamoya worked with the Leakeys and is credited with making some of the most worlds most significant archaeological discoveries. The “Turkana Boy” Chongwe referred to was an almost complete Homo erectus skeleton found nearby in 1984.

As we trudge along the trail, Chongwe explains that, after the rains each year, the area is awash with rivulets and along each pit and gully new potential discoveries are exposed.  That is when the team really goes to work. It has been a long time since the last rains; but it is still difficult to take a step without landing your foot on a piece of ancient history.

“Look at this!” Chongwe bends to down to pick up two, small, cone-shaped objects.  “Crocodile teeth. This whole area was flooded by the lake about a million years ago.” John points out a curved fossil jutting out of gully which Chongwe says is a hippo jaw. I pick up shiny black rock about the size of a Swiss army knife.

“That is volcano rock. Over by the volcano we found an area where homo habilis made tools. That is knife for cutting fish. See? Fish bones everywhere.” We find fossils of every kind and size but our short excursion uncovers no identifiably human remains. Presumably those were all discovered soon after the last rainy season ended.

“I have done good work last season, my friends,” Chongwe smiles. “Everything there was uncovered I have found. Soon, the rains will come again and we will be out searching out for more ancient wonders.” We wandered with Chongwe for more than an hour. Slowly making our way up one gully and down the next like small children lost in a maze. Eventually we stop pulling up fossils and badgering Chongwe to identify each insignificant find. Instead, we find ourselves standing silently, trance-like, staring out over the post-apocalyptic sedimentary plain; all black lava, red claystones, brown siltstones, and grey sandstones, scattered with bone white fossils. None of us says a word for twenty minutes, maybe longer. Finally John, who has been unusually silent all morning, sidles over to me and whispers unconvincingly: “Well, this is almost as much fun as digging up graves.  Let’s go see what the Frenchies are up to.”  As we walk back to the buggy John is suddenly in the mood to talk again.

“So what do you make of that Cristo character?” he asks conspiratorially.

“Well,” I say, “he tells an interesting tale but I don’t believe much of it is true.”

“He says he’s been wandering out here for years?” John snorts. “I’ve seen backpackers who been out here for one week and they are without fail covered in welts and bites and their hair is a nappy mess. He looks like he’s just come from the spa. Did you see his hands? Not a callous on them. You are not going to wander through Africa the hard way and look like that. It is just not going to happen. If you notice, even the animals out here are covered in ticks and bites and scratches. It’s not a zoo out here. It’s the real thing! Anyway, we are agreed, right? He’s up to something. I just wish I could figure out what it is. Oh Jesus!” He says suddenly staring almost directly up into the sun. “Take a look at this, will you!”

Like Phoebus driving his chariot, the ultralight bursts out the glaring equatorial sun and buzzes directly over our heads. We scamper up the nearest hill to get a better view of the proceedings. From the top of the hill we can see the ultralight swooping down past a group of models positioned dramatically jet black lava flows. Each one stands, arms outstretched, with a thirty-foot trail of fluttering colored cloth blowing in the wind behind her. Narrowly missing the models, the ultralight turns and chases the wave riders along the lake shore; again each one carries a model clad in similar fashion to the lava sirens. Finally, the ultralight banks sharply back toward the volcanoes just in time to catch the two hang-gliders as they step off into the void and climb higher and higher into the piercingly blue sky.

“Whoa man!” says Chongwe who has scampered up the hill to join us. “This is some kind of show. Good thing we didn’t miss that!”

“What the hell is this documentary about anyway?” I wonder aloud. Nobody seems to know but we are all pretty sure it will look spectacular.

By Neville Cole

“So my friend,” Wolfgang interrupts deliberately shifting the conversation.  “How is it you chose to end up here tonight?  How did you get here?”

“I’ve been wandering around this area for years,” the bearded stranger replied matter-of-factly.

“You walked here?” Wolfgang exclaimed.  “Now that’s a story!”  Justin sat up sharply as if he’d just remembered a really big secret and leaned over to Wolfgang.

El Moyo - early morning

“He has been living in one of the El Moyo huts for a week. We blew it down this morning so I invited him to come up to the lawn tonight.

“You really walked here?” Wolfgang repeated.

“Walked, rode, drove, flew…I’ve done it all,” the stranger replied.

“He came right across the Sudan.  It’s a miracle no one shot him.”

“I got shot at,” the stranger replied. “I just never got hit.”

The way our new friend told it, he’d had been a traveller from birth.  Here is an abbreviated version of his story as he leaked it out in dribs and drabs during the course of the entire meal.

He described riding across southern Europe as a child in a gypsy caravan. His father apparently doctored farm animals and traded horses. He described picking pockets while his mother told fortunes at fairs. He talked of moving to Paris and how his parents struggled to keep the family together working in a factory.  In Paris he said he first discovered Marxism, Existentialism, and Sartre.  Then as a well-read, seventeen year old, he struck out on his own.  Drifting first to Spain and then on to Morocco he said his travels thorough North Africa proved to him that, although Europe was his birthplace, his spiritual homeland was Africa.  This was the land of the nomad, he said.  His political leanings had faded somewhat over the years but he never tired of travelling.  Somehow he managed to get by, primarily because he was well trained on getting by with just about nothing.  He spoke English, French, Romany, and enough Swahili to trade for just about anything he needed.  He was currently undertaking a solo stroll generally along the length of the Rift Valley but was more than willing to accept any ride anywhere down as many unchartered paths as possible. He admitted that actually rode a good portion of the way across the Sudan aboard a World War Two MAN troop carrier with a bunch of Dutch evangelicals headed for Cape Town. His method of funding  this existential pilgrimage was unclear but he did at several points in the story offer up a number of blunts, which were summarily passed around. His story, which I believed to be about twenty percent accurate, seemed to have the desired affect on the models, one of them had moved so close to him she could have been sitting on his lap.  She either was very turned on by his tale or really liked grass. Of course, the girls had pretty much been limited to a small crew of workmates for the past few months, so they were probably more than normally interested in some fresh meat.

As our epic dinner ends I look over to John.  He has the stare of a Vegas gambler who’s been beaten by lousy bluff.  He is obviously used to being the centre of attention and riding in the back of the Bearded Wonder’s bus isn’t sitting well.  I can see him searching for a bone to pick.

Italian painter Pino Daeni’s "The Gypsy"

“So, my gypsy friend,” he smiles suspiciously.  “You must play guitar, don’t you? Isn’t that a required part of Romany education.

“Of course,” the stranger replies.  “I play a little guitar.”

“Wolfgang,” John raises to his feet with some difficulty.  “Do you still have the guitars Peter left here all those years ago?  We need some party music.  My friend wants to play us a gypsy song and I will see if I can play along.”

Peter Beard’s vintage guitars are summoned and after some brief tuning by both players the stranger strums a slow progression then picks out a simple melody line.  John joins in with a dramatic flourish.  The two play together for a short time but it is evident that each is trying to out do the other and take the lead; however, once they each realize that they were both pretty damn good, they settle down and we all get up to dance.  Just another night at the Oasis; dancing under the stars to dueling gypsy guitars. The wine, the warm, steady breeze off the lake, the delicious food, the company, the philosophy and the laughter quickly drain my dwindling energy and by twelve-thirty, when the rest of the group is just getting going, I excuse myself and drift back to my room to sleep.  I have made it.  This is what I’ve been longing for – peace at last.

"Mr Dali, do you use a dictaphone ? No, I usually use a lobster."

Story By Neville Cole

Dinner arrives not a minute too soon. Most of us have been drinking for more than two hours already and we are all quite besotted. Meals at the Oasis are served family style so introductions are quite naturally in order. Everyone seems most interested in learning more about the bearded stranger taking his seat at the table. All he will offer up is that he no longer uses a name but that he will always answer to “friend”. Most of the group appears quite willing to accept this rather peculiar comment and leave him to his anonymity; John, of course, is not one of them. Leaping to his feet he is clearly ready to pepper “friend” with further questions but his attack is cut short by a more pressing need: food.

The meal starts all out quite remarkably with an appetizer of Lobster Turkana (actually Nile Perch in a white crème sauce but Michel, after one bite, spits his on the floor later explaining he is allergic to crustaceans and was momentarily convinced it really was lobster). Perhaps feeling a need to draw attention away from the retching Michel and more importantly to himself, John seizes that exact moment to raise himself up to his full, gangly height and call the entire table to attention.

“I’d like to make a toast…” he says while keeping quite remarkable balance for one so tall and tipsy. “To Wolfgang… to Lake Turkana… to beautiful African skies and even more beautiful women!” Now, that was something the whole group could agree on, and glasses around the table were duly raised.

I can’t help but think that we look quite a sight this night. The bearded stranger sitting at the center of our long table and the rest of us spread out to either side disciple-like with John next to me at the far end.  I can already tell that John is more than primed to play the part of Judas. Of course, unlike The Last Supper, our two dozen or so includes four strikingly gorgeous girls. The girls don’t say much and they eat even less. In fact, until three bowls of salad are set down before us, not one them has a single bite.

I find myself transfixed by the tall blond next to me who is diligently carving her tomato into impossibly thin slices and savoring each bite with almost orgasmic delight.

“You really like that tomato, don’t you” I ask finally.

“Mmm, yes” she answers with a distinct Russian burr. “I have not ever tasted such a flavor.”

“They are very good, aren’t they? You can really tell that they are fruit.”

“Fruit?” the Russian says while posing seductively with a thin slice of tomato poised next to her full lips.

“Yes, you know…” I continue. “As opposed to vegetable… I always had a hard time thinking of tomatoes as fruit because in the States where I live they don’t have much flavor.”

“Mmmm?” she adds with little conviction. “I suppose you must be right.”

I am clearly losing the battle for her attention so John leaps into the fray.

“Neville is a writer and a filmmaker too” he exaggerates. His interruption fails to hit its mark. The Russian continues on her oblivious tomato-loving way. However, all is not completely lost and Michel turns to me with sudden curiosity.

“You are filmmaker? You did not say this earlier. What film you make?”

“I’m not a filmmaker, exactly.” I have to admit. “I make videos. They’re kind of like travel videos, but not exactly…and I write kind of a travel blog, but not exactly.” I’ve never been very comfortable describing what I do and this floundering attempt quickly loses everyone’s interest and imagination and is quite rightly overshadowed by the arrival of the main course, a mountain of grilled perch filets and fresh vegetables.  Before we can fill our plates, the bearded stranger raises himself up and all eyes are immediately drawn to him.

 “My friends,” he says warmly. I have a toast for us tonight as well…” His toast is delivered in what appears to my ears to be almost perfect French. When it is completed we all drink with the requisite convivial gusto but John in his typical fashion is the first of us to ask for clarification.

“Why don’t you translate your toast for the rest of us so that we can all know what we just drank to?”

“Of course,” the bearded one smiles. “I said: What we choose is always the better; and nothing can be better for us unless it is better for all.  We have all chosen to be here together in Africa tonight and that I believe is a good thing for all of us.” 

I look over at Jean. He is sipping his wine and whispering quietly but with great sincerity something about “l’essence” and “l’existance.”

“What was that last bit, Jean?”  John asks with a cheeky smirk.  “I guessing some more Sartre, but it’s been years since I discussed French existential thought.  I’m afraid I’m a tad rusty.

“Very good, my friend. You are correct. We are both quoting Sartre.” The bearded one replies. Jean reminded us that: “Existence comes before essence.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?” I ask myself before realizing I have just spoken my thoughts out loud.

The bearded stranger holds out his glass of wine.  “It’s like this glass,” he says holding it to the light. The person who created this had a one purpose in mind – to make a beautiful container for wine. Whoever made it knew exactly what it would be used for.  The glass is made in a certain, definable manner and precisely for a specific purpose.  In the case of this glass, its essence – the sum of its production and its purpose – came before its existence.  The same is not true of us. We exist first then create our own essence.  Our choices determine what we are.”

“And God or some supreme being doesn’t enter into it?” John asks, quite obviously simply for the sake of stirring the philosophical pot.”

“Man is his own creator. As Sartre wrote: “There is no supernal artisan. There is no human nature because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. He is in possession of himself and the responsibility for his existence is squarely upon his own shoulders.” The bearded one then finishes off his glass and reaches for a new bottle of wine.

“I agree with the whole self-determination idea,” John says without a trace of cynicism, “but I don’t see how that necessarily excludes the hand of God from setting the whole thing in motion.”

“It’s science, man!” Justin suddenly blurts while knocking over his wine glass for added effect.  “Everything fits together.  Look around you, the formula works.  We are all one fucking big science project!”