The ever shifting African sky now promises an imminent sunset and the purple hills on the horizon assume the shape of a pre-historic snail. The ground beneath the tires is cruder and bumpier now, rife with stubborn scrub and hidden potholes. The drivers no longer have the freedom to choose their own path, and they resume their small caravan formation, feeling out the best way to go. In the distance, bands of zebras flicker at times into view, disappear, then return. Foxes or hyenas peek out amid the scattered trees, having smelled the soup from afar, and try to join the crawling food convoy. One of the Africans, who has donned his chef’s hat in honor of the approaching meal, gets on top of his truck’s tarpaulin and opens fire over the heads of the wild animals – not to do harm, just to warn them off.

Since dusk falls rapidly in the region, it is already dark when the caravan arrives at the large encampment of excavators, pitched on the slope of a bare volcanic canyon. In the depths of the canyon, one can just glimpse a bluish sparkle of water. Closer by, the UNESCO flag flaps on a tall pole, and small flags in a variety of color are planted all around it to mark the location of fossils. A crowd of diggers, men and women, are already unloading the contents of the vehicles, including the live goat, with cries of joy. Sijjin Kuang rushes with a medical kit to one of the big tents, while the white administrator stays with the liquor bottle, the cigarettes, and the chocolate, awaiting the arrival of the scientists.

Now they draw near, climbing up from the canyon, young and dusty and most them naked to the waist, Africans differing one from the next in appearance and hue but all of them astonished to find a middle-aged white woman clad in a colorful African dress and an old windbreaker.“Who is this?” they inquire in English, in a variety of accents.

And Yirmiyahu presents the sister of his late wife, who has left her husband and family and country and come only for a few days to try to connect with the spirit of her beloved Shuli.

The black researchers greet her heartily, impressed by the boldness of this older woman who has come all the way to their excavations of the origins of the prehistoric man who split off from the chimpanzee millions of years ago, in order to grieve for her sister. Daniela is beside herself with excitement, and with the natural assertiveness of a long-time teacher wants to know the names of the half-naked people standing before her, their countries of origin, and the professional expertise of each and every one. Yirmiyahu did not exaggerate in describing the multinational nature of this group that has gathered from all over the continent.  Here is an archaeologist from Uganda, and with him a botanist from Chad, and two tall South African geologists, and a Tanzanian anthropologist as black as coal who is the leader of the mission. Behind them stand a physicist from Ghana and an American zoologist from Kansas City who has not forgotten his ancestors and has come from the New World to help verify that humanity began right here.

And as they introduce themselves with their musical-sounding names and their professional titles and energetically shake the hand of the older woman whose English is so fine and precise, she wonders with slight concern if her daughter-in-law has remembered that today she won’t be able to pick up the grandchildren from nursery school and day care, even though it’s her turn to do so. (Pages 91–92)