Welcome back! We’ve had an exciting week. Our last few days at the Mpala research center were spent learning more about the savanna ecosystem surrounding us, and about the community that is a dynamic part of the ecosystem. Wednesday morning, we went with Pat Milligan of the University of Florida to the greenhouses at Mpala [...]
Karibuni! Welcome to the TBI Summer Field School 2018! My name is Lucia Nadal and I am the Resident Academic Director of this year’s program. Together with the Summer Field School Director, Dr. Jason Lewis and our TA Lydia Myers, I’ll be accompanying the students throughout this program. Our three-module six-week field school will [...]
This blog was written in collaboration with Natalie Lubaszka: On Monday June 18th we took a trip to see one of the hand pumps that was installed by a non-governmental organization. When we arrived there was a woman and a few children pumping out water. After speaking to them, with the help of our translator [...]
This blog was written in collaboration with Winnie Wang: Monday, June 11th marked the first day of the second class in the Global Innovation program, EAS 310: Global Design Engineering Innovation. Professor Rodrigo Peña introduced the class and the corresponding assignments. The students’ main responsibility for EAS 310 is to outline a long-term project to [...]
Meet Margaret Shuoro! A teacher at Ileret's primary school. She became a teacher just a year ago but has already inspired many students. Spotlight Teacher: Margaret Shuoro Growing up Daasanach, Margaret experienced many difficulties. Battling through it all she became one of the few in her family to earn an education, going all [...]
This blog was written in collaboration with Konnie Xu: Monday morning the team was energized for a week of finishing up their short-term projects, aimed at improving the daily lives of the Daasanach tangibly. This is to be completed within the two week period of the first course of the Global Innovation program, EAS 312: [...]
In our effort to produce fruit and green vegetables locally, to supply the Turkana Basin Institute field stations at Ileret and Turkwel, we set up two successful hydroponics gardens. Hydroponics is the process of growing plants in sand, gravel or liquid, with added nutrients but without soil. Michael Kibumba manages the gardens, and with [...]
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This blog was written in collaboration with Sam van der Poel: On the morning of our first full day in Ileret, we were fortunate enough to witness a revered local gathering: a post-wedding ceremony. Typically the day after a marriage family members, friends, and neighbors gather to socialize and enjoy a goat. Men and women [...]
This blog was written in collaboration with student Emily Aviles: Wednesday night the Global Innovation crew went to bed early after dinner and a game of Uno to prepare for a game drive Thursday morning. While animal sightings are never certain on a game drive, the animals were cooperative and did not shy away from [...]
This blog was written in collaboration with Professor Rodrigo Peña: The Global Innovation Field School is on the road again. As we arrived to the Nairobi Airport, on Tuesday May 22nd, unexpected rain with low temperature was waiting for us. Even though the commute was long (almost 24 hours) and made us all exhausted, the [...]
The students were very busy in our last two weeks in Kenya. The Archaeology module took us to many sites around Turkana where there have been important paleontological and archaeological finds or where there is exciting current research. The students walked the Turkana outcrops in search of bones, stone tools and pottery. Through their studies [...]
Photo: Esther Kadaga Our journey through the Archaeology module is coming to an end. We had a few site visits this week and one of the activities the students got to do was archaeological surveys. Archaeological surveys are useful in helping archaeologists to identify where best to excavate. The field team scans the [...]
Stone tools which were a vital technological invention of early humans, enabling them to do things like butchering. Oldowan and Acheulean stone tool technologies were collectively prevalent for millions of years; now it was time for our modern day students to try their hand at reliving their ancient ancestors' ways of life. On Monday Dr. [...]
On Friday the field school said goodbye to our camp at Ileret where we've lived for the past 7 weeks and got on the TBI plane to fly over the "Jade Sea" (Lake Turkana) to our new home, the Turkwel campus.
We are into the last week of the Human Origins module. As the students have come to find out, the phylogenetic tree of human ancestry is more bushy than expected.
This Week, the students have been introduced to the story of being and becoming human. The scientific story of human evolution. Humans have always been curious to identify who they really are which poses questions like; how and why are we different from other mammals? What made us develop distinct traits like bipedality and bigger [...]
The students are now well into the Vertebrate Paleontology course with Dr. Bill Sanders from the University of Michigan. Professor Sanders has been teaching the students how to interpret the skeleton and teeth of animals in order to understand how they lived. You can understand a lot about an animal based on its bones. The [...]
A Dasenach village. Photo: Rosie Bryson The students visited a village in Ileret and got to know more about the culture of the local Dasenach people. The Dasenach are a pastoralist community living in Marsabit County within the Turkana region. One of the things the students learned was the division of labour within [...]
In the last week, we have been delving deeper into the geology of the Turkana Basin. This included seeking to understand how stratigraphic units (distinct layers of soil piled on top of each other which represent different time periods) are formed and how to interpret individual sedimentary strata’s in order to reconstruct past environments. [...]