Looking for Pumpkin Pie in the Kenyan dirt

I think I’m more oblivious than I should be.  For an archaeologist, inattention to detail is kind of an Achilles’ heel… but luckily it doesn’t seem to affect me in the field.  I’ll notice minor changes in soil color, or a tiny cluster of disarticulated bone shards—yet somehow it took me almost a week to notice the door leading outdoors from our kitchen.  So the other day, when I found myself having to repeatedly empty washbasins full of dirty water outside and refill them in the kitchen sink, noticing the door leading to the garden outside from our kitchen was like finding the road to El Dorado.
Holding a plastic bowl of murky water, I happily unlocked the door, turned the handle, and opened it.  Suddenly, there was something enormous and alive immediately on the other side of the screen door.  There was a flash of motion, and naturally I went into Velociraptor Attack mode.  Which basically meant jumping in alarm (thereby sloshing dirty water all over myself) and standing paralyzed in fear.
Once I was no longer blinded by adrenaline, I realized that the screen door was not the only thing stopping me from certain death at the hands of a prehistoric beast (obviously… the Jurassic Park dinosaurs never made it to Africa anyway. Duh.)  I was looking, instead, at a two-and-a-half-foot tall monkey holding a piece of papaya, staring intently back at me through the mesh of the screen, looking like he, too, was in Velociraptor Attack mode.  The last thing he had expected was for me to open that door, which normally remained closed and locked, and the last thing I expected was to find Curious George in our gated apartment complex.
At Mtwapa, we excavate under a forest canopy.  It’s never very sunny, but it’s never particularly dark either.  Mostly, it is just impossible to tell what the weather is like beyond the trees and mossy ruins.  This morning, all of the members of the excavation team, who live here in Mombasa, told me that it was going to rain heavily later in the day.  We bought a plastic tarp with which to cover the site, and continued working.  I kept waiting for the rain to begin falling, but aside from a sun shower in the midmorning, everything seemed clear.  Over and over, I gazed up through the treetops, at the keyholes of sky visible through the leaves, and it didn’t seem cloudy.
I heard it before I saw it.
Out of nowhere, it sounded like people were shooting gongs with birdshot.  Everyone at the site moved quickly, grabbed some equipment, and crowded under a small shed, because ten seconds of standing in that downpour would make you as wet and cold as Leo in Titanic.  As I watched anthills and leaves being swept away by the mini-rapids forming in the forest floor, I realized that even with a warning, I was completely caught off guard by the deluge.
I’m surprised every day by the things I do right.  I sound a little bit like Eeyore on Zoloft saying that, but it’s true.  Last year, I bumbled through the Kenyan lifestyle, not understanding that the handshake people offer when they enter a room means “hello” rather than “introduce yourself.”  This year, I drink the tea, which I hated last year. I know enough of the language that people initially think I’m fluent. I can answer the high schoolers’ every wary “What is that?” and “How do I eat this?”  I’m surprised at my own ability to blend, something I never really used to possess.
Archaeological research is all about surprises.  You’re surprised by how much you find, by what you don’t find.  You’re surprise-disappointed when you find a coin from the 1940’s along with ceramics you thought were from the 1700’s.  You’re surprise-excited when you unearth a near-complete pot with which you can perform studies on food residue.  The very act of digging slowly (at Mtwapa, we dig in rectangles which we deepen by 10 cm at a time) acknowledges that the nature of archaeology is characterized by a hope to be surprised.  An archaeologist recognizes that he doesn’t know what he’ll find.  Like a child shaking a wrapped present under the tree on Christmas Eve, he does his best beforehand to ascertain what the earth might contain, but in the end, the only way to find out is to dig, and to constantly, constantly, allow oneself to be surprised.