A conversation with Dr. Jason Lewis

Do you know that a lot of the people who have been to Africa or have lived in Africa before share a passion for the magical continent? Here I am sharing a great conversation I had with my good old friend and colleague Dr. Jason Lewis, assistant director of the Turkana Basin Institute, Stony Brook University. We touched base on a few things that he experienced when he was living in Nairobi. Click on the play button below to listen to the edited audio of that conversation.

Conversation transcribed:

Deming: "This is beyond safaris, where we explore what is often neglected in a conventional safari in Africa and discuss the reasons behind what we see there today. If you are traveling to Kenya or any other African countries, one of the first questions you may ask is 'Should you be concerned about safety there'? Today I'm with my long term friend and colleague Dr. Jason Lewis, assistant director of the Turkana Basin institute, here at Stony Brook University. Hopefully he can help us answer some of the questions that you may have. Jason!" 

Jason: "Good morning!" 

Deming: "Tell us something about what you do."

Jason: "I am a paleoanthropologist, which means I study the evidence of humanity's evolution and prehistory. And I do this work mostly in Kenya, but I also have projects in Tanzania and in France. And I have worked in other countries before, such as in Ethiopia and Djibouti."

Deming: "So you lived in Kenya before. What was it like?"

Jason: "So I was fortunate enough to live in Kenya for about a year and a half, and that was from 2014 through 2015. And I was there with my wife and daughter. She was two years old at the time, my daughter. And we lived in Nairobi because we had some free time in our professional schedules here in the US. We lived in a very nice apartment in Nairobi, very close to the (National) museum (of Kenya. Everything was very safe. We even had 'our own' Chinese restaurant in the apartment compound. [Deming: laughter] It was very convenient. It was very nice! And our daughter went to a Montessori school, and made a lot of great friends and had a great time. It was a very enjoyable experience to be able to take our daughter to see the wildlife, going out on game drives, viewing amazing animals, elephants everywhere, zebras, and the 'Big Five', if you will, that make Africa so unique."

Deming: "How do you feel about being immersed in a different culture?"

Jason: "It's a very humbling and eye-opening experience to go from western contexts to first Nairobi, which is one of the most rapidly developing cities in the world, both in terms of infrastructure and population. But also (it is) becoming kind of a tech and business hub of east(ern) Africa, which is awesome to experience. And then going out into other more rural areas, and meeting people from many different cultures, whether they are Maasai, or Samburu, or Kikuyu, or Turkana, and understanding how we often don't get exposed to the subtleties of what makes Kenya Kenya or what makes Ethiopia Ethiopia, and how they have a lot of languages and cultures, and different histories in different parts of the country, and learn(ing) how they are all interacting with the developing economies within east(ern) Africa, is really great!"

Deming: "For our audience who are wondering whether they should go and experience all that, what suggestions do you have for them?"

Jason: "Going to Kenya is a great idea. I go there three or four times a year. I go all over the country. I would say that be prepared for adventure(s), meeting lots of great people. And know where to go, where not to go, what to do, what not to do. And don't let the headlines that you hear on CNN scare you about going to Africa in general but especially to east(ern) Africa, because they are only concerned with the big (and) scary things that they can make a lot of headlines about."

Deming: "Ok! Thank you so much Jason for joining us today!"

Jason: "Thank you, Deming!"

Deming: "And we hope that this conversation can address some of the concerns that you have about traveling to Africa. Stay tuned for more stories!"

Please feel free to make comments below and let us know what your experience was if you have been to Africa, or what else you want to know about Kenya or Africa in general!

A pair of Abyssinian ground hornbills (female and male) in the Turkana region of northern Kenya

Field research in Africa

Many people may have asked you the question "why go to Africa"? This is something that my parents used to do when I first decided to go. In their minds, there's just not enough attractions in Africa that can make up for the potential risk that I was about to take. Is this really so? Here I would like to explain why anthropologists go to Africa and what we do there.

One of the main reasons we go to Africa for field research is that the materials that we study are located on the continent. For example, as I mentioned in the previous blog, chimpanzees and gorillas are only found in the forests of Africa today. So if we want to study them, we have to go there. For some of us who study the archaeological and paleontological record of the continent, it is the same story: we can't bring the artifacts or fossils out of the countries of origin.

A baboon family resting on the ground

Depending on what we do, the nature of our field research in Africa can differ quite a lot. Primatological field research can happen in a wide range of habitats going from lowland forests, savannas, to highland grasslands. This is because the primates of interest can live in diverse environments. For example, most baboons are terrestrial animals that mostly move on the ground. So a typical environment that they live in is the savannas. Others such as the black and white colobus monkey are tree dwellers that only live in forested environments. Because most of these primates are found in remote and protected areas, most of the challenges in our field work involves moving our supplies to the location, setting up camps, and routines to tracking the animals daily. This is manageable for most of us but it could be much more than an adventure for some! Here I am sharing one episode from the Leakey Foundation podcast that has some of the stories from the field.



For some of us who do archaeological and paleontological field research, the situations are very different. Because we don't necessarily study the living primates, the "field" environment could be as simple as just someone's backyard where fossils and artifacts are found. But in most cases, our field research happens in really dry and open environments because there's minimal plant or animal disturbance to the fossils and artifacts of our interest.

Excavation at a paleontological site near the Kenyan-Ethiopian border

I study early human evolution in its environmental context: what are the animals found alongside human ancestors, what are the habitats that they lived in. In order to collect new fossil materials where we can gather data from, we travel to remote areas where fossils have been found in previous surveys. The place where I work is close to the Kenyan-Ethiopian border where most people are pastoralsts who herd there livestock for a living. 

A Daasanach herder and his cattle

Typically, when we go to the field, we go on week long surveys trying to locate where the fossils are. We usually hire field assistants from the local communities to join us for the surveys. More often than not, there are no roads in the field and we really rely on the knowledge of our field assistants to find our ways around. After reaching the general area of interest, we make a camp, set up the kitchen and work from there. Because it is really hot and dry most of the time there, our days start very early in the morning when the sun is not so relentless. We go for surveys until it is about 1:00 pm when it gets so hot (~105 F/ 40 C) that we have to stop for two hours to avoid dehydration. At around 3:00, we go back to our surveys until it is almost dark and we call it a day. 

Field assistants surveying on barren lands

There can be a lot of challenges for this type of field work that we do. First of all, it is so dry there that we need to transport all the water we will need for our camp, which is not an easy task. It also gets so hot and dusty that sometimes our electronics stop working! This is not so good when we rely so much on GPS units in our surveys. Finally, sometimes we have visitors in our camp! It could be as good as some friendly neighbors and their goats and camels, or as bad as hyenas and jackals that steal our food and boots at night, or even worse when we are caught in the middle of a tribal conflict! 

Our water supply in the camp

If all goes well, at the end of the day, we really enjoy a nice volleyball game just to add more sweat and fun to the formula of field research. Despite the different challenges we have in a home away from homes, we are good friends and a family after all!

A volleyball game in the bush!

In a nutshell, there are always many reasons to go to a different country, for work or for fun. And a country in Africa is not necessarily less than others, as long as you know what to look for.

Here is more about what I did in the field last season, if you are interested.