Uganda Log: Wednesday 28 October 2009
In Butogota, Joseph was able to hook us up with a pickup truck and a driver who agreed to drive the Batwa back to their settlement in Kihembe. Nate had made arrangements with the tea house proprietor (the same tea house where we had spent time while our tire was being fixed the other day) to let the Batwa sit at the tables and drink Coca Colas while they were waiting for their transport. You would have thought they were having cocktails on the Champs Elysees the way they were acting. They were truly enjoying their experience.
We finally hit Buhoma around 7 pm. After dinner Nate walked up to the phone booth: a high spot along the roadway where there is a divide in the mountains and the only place where he can get telephone reception. He needed to call back a reporter who had questions about the man-eating lions of Tsavo. Nate co-wrote a paper with one of his students, Justin Yeakel, and others. The paper was published in the November issue of Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences (CLICK HERE FOR ABSTRACT). It made the cover (below).
The Chicago Tribune ran a piece on this subject on November 2nd (CLICK HERE FOR ARTICLE). I remember my dad taking me to the Field Museum when I was a kid and we viewed the diorama that displayed these two infamous lions who preying on the railway workers of the Ugandan Railroad at the end of the 19th century. In 2007, when Nate and Erin were visiting Mary and me he snuck off to the Field Museum and procured some hair samples from the lions to do his isotopic analyses. I suspect that there will be more to come, in the form of other magazine articles on this intriguing event in African history.
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