SAFI in Usa River and a Fair in Arusha

With Christmas fast approaching, and my time in East Africa soon coming to an end, a couple of weeks ago I boarded my last bus, and with Aikande and her two young children, we travelled 13 hours overnight on the Mwanza to Moshi route, with 3 huge cases, 3 backpacks, 1 large bag, a box of honey and a large roller banner (and a partridge in a pear tree!) to join the Arusha Christmas Fair. 

While Aikande stayed with her extended family, I enjoyed staying with Ben and Katy Ray and their three lovely children in Usa River. We have known them since our Iringa days and they are also mission partners with Holy Trinity Combe Down church in Bath. They moved from Iringa to Usa River about a year ago and it was wonderful to be welcomed into their family and join in with spelling bees, lots of games and even attend Julia's school Nativity! And so good to see the work they are starting with SAFI (See Ability First International). Here we are singing and signing at their morning devotions...

It has been a big move for Ben and Katy, stepping out in faith into the unknown, and it is wonderful to see SAFI taking shape with their resilience and amazing creativity! They are working with groups of people with disabilities across the country; they are offering design support and skills and business training in order to see income-generating enterprises flourish, and not just see livelihoods improved but also mindsets changed. They are building up their workshop and capacity to welcome small groups locally for training and also offering support to groups much further afield. Mama Hive is delighted to be one such group looking forward to collaborating with SAFI in 2025! It was lovely to spend time with the three women who had lost their hearing and been coming to SAFI for the last couple of months to learn how to make these gorgeous dolls! 

Aikande enjoyed meeting Gemma and getting some good advice
on accounts and TRA issues for charitable social enterprises!

I travelled back from the SAFI office one day with Aikande to visit her family home in the banana farms in the foothills of Mt Meru. (I had no idea you could grow so many varieties of banana in one place! Different bananas of all sizes for every kind of eating: raw, cooked, fried, roasted...). It was lovely to meet Aikande's sister who I have been in contact with for a few years now; she is involved in all kinds of wonderful ministries serving disadvantaged women in Tanzania. I also met their lovely mum and young brother! 

With Aikande's family

Our other big reason for travelling was to attend the three-day Christmas Fair on the other side of Arusha. This is a large annual event ... and very costly with the registration, all the transportation and accommodation, and we were very grateful to have the opportunity to launch Mama Hive products there for the first time. Aikande and I bunked together in a very basic little guesti and lived on chapati and chips! The Fair was unlike anything we ever see in Mwanza! So many people and so many vendors from as far away as Zimbabwe, and so many quality products. We did really well, even despite the crazy, heavy rains! We sold almost everything we brought with us and enjoyed all the networking (and surprise meetings with familiar faces!) and certainly learned a lot for next time! We were both exhausted by the end of it and I was rather hoarse! 

At the Arusha Christmas Fair

It was then time to head to Kilimanjaro Airport and make the journey back to Bath. It was wonderful to be home and reunited with Tim and Amisadai! Louisa arrives back from her Gap Year trip to SE Asia and Australia next week and it will be even more wonderful to be all together! It has taken me longer than I expected to find my feet again here ... I still feel I am catching up with myself and everything else. It was a very full two months, which I am so very grateful to have been able to have. Now it is time to celebrate family reunions and Christmas, rest a bit and and follow up on things from my time away, and time to reflect and prepare for moving forward in the New Year with many things about to change! 

Red route: Mwanza to Kilimanjaro (13 hours; about 800km)

Catch up on the previous blog posts:

Blue Route (8 hours): Kome Island Beekeeping: Siafu in Suits and 80 Hives 

Purple Route (26 hr + 5hr; 1000km): Trekking to Uganda for Elephants and Bees 

Mwanza with Mama Hive

Trekking to Uganda for Elephants and Bees

Some of you followed on Facebook my adventure by boat, bajaji, bus and begging a lift to Uganda ... now for a bit about what I got up to in Uganda working with the Amigos team...

When my bus from Mwanza to Kampala was cancelled, I rushed back from the church on a motorbike to board the overnight Mwanza-to-Bukoba Lake Victoria ferry. I found myself in a little sleeper cabin with 4 little bunks with 4 mamas and a toddler, a lifejacket and a rather wet floor! We arrived at sunrise, which was beautiful... and then it was straight into a world of chaos trying to get my 2 huge suitcases (full of honey jars, beekeeping equipment, oils and beeswax and a large sack full of Dorcus Dresses) and backpack off the boat and through the mud and scrum of people to find a lift to the bus stand (about a 10 minute drive away). Finally, I was squeezed on a minibus... sitting 5-across in a row for three, for the 2 hour journey to the border. I then lugged my luggage across the border ... and after 2 hours in the visa lineups, I discovered there was no bus to Kampala. Thankfully, a group of Brits from the Newbury Rotary ahead of me in the line agreed to squeeze me in the back of their vehicle, with my luggage on the roof. After a 10-hour drive on terrible roads in torrential rain and then gridlock and getting lost in Kampala, we finally got to their hotel destination at 7:30pm. I then got a taxi to take me to Kira Farm and was extremely relieved to arrive at 9:15pm ... with all my stuff completely soaked! Travelling is not for the faint-hearted!

Getting settled for the night on the ferry!

It was wonderful to be back at Kira Farm with the Amigos team (as most of you probably know, this is the charity Tim works for, supporting development for disadvantaged communities across Uganda). My focus on arriving was to work with Lydia, Isaiah and Mwajuma on developing a plan for a value-added beeswax product project for Kira. They were a fantastic team to work with ... and in those first few days we thought through business plans and ideas and did some crazy Kampala city market exploring and shopping!

Elephants and Bees at Murchison Falls National Park

It was then time to head to the airport to meet Tim arriving from his travels working with the new Amigos church partnership in South Sudan, and together with Josh (Kira Farm Centre Manager), we drove the 5 hours to Masindi on the edge of the Murchison Falls National Park. It was great to catch up with Tim after 3 weeks apart ... and we had lots to catch up on! And it was good to be working together again! We spent our first day with Maureen (Amigos rural beekeeping extension coordinator) and the Mungu ni Mwema ("God is Good") Beekeepers group in Kigaragara, a group we had visited together 2 years ago when they invited us and presented their ideas and plans for a beekeeping project to protect their village from the elephants who invade from the game park during harvest season, destroying crops and injuring and killing people. 

Elephants are terrified of bees, so hanging hives on wires around crop fields surrounding villages is a "win-win-win" solution to protecting crops, livelihoods and people from attack, increasing crop yields through pollination and generating income through honey and wax sales! It was so wonderful to see all that the group had done since that day we first met ... the group is now helped by seven previous Kira students who have been through a year of beekeeping training and the group is keen and enthusiastic... and have been patiently waiting for this project to get going through many delays that were no fault of theirs! In April this year they hung 100 hives made by the carpentry and beekeeping trainees at Kira Farm; they hung them at a point where the elephants are known to break into the fields and enter the village. We had a good afternoon inspecting the hives which are doing well, with the first 18 colonised with bees. For the first time it was actually a good thing to find the bees fairly aggressive as it means they will do the job! While we wait until later this month to see if the elephants are deterred by the bees, it was great to see that the bees have already deterred the fierce baboons who have been wreaking havoc in the fields and even mauling children. We had a training session afterwards talking about the how bees actually make the honey and produce wax and about all the extended benefits of beekeeping! This is such a fantastic project to be part of and I am looking forward to seeing how it all progresses and develops and the impact it will have for the beekeepers and their village and also over time, surrounding villages.

The Kigaragara Beekeepers

Inspecting the hives

The Elephant Hive Fence

The next day we were again in Kigaragara with the Mungu ni Mwema group at the village chairman's house for a day of training on making various value-added beeswax products. While many people think about honey as a benefit of a beekeeping project, most don't think about the benefit of beeswax ... both for income-generation and home use. We had a great time together making various natural beeswax balms and lotion bars for cosmetic and medicinal purposes. In their prime location near the main gate to Murchison Falls National Park, we hope they will be able to market beautiful beeswax products and delicious honey to sell to tourists on they way for a game drive!

Beeswax product Training

Enjoying the natural beeswax balms!

We also had time in Kigunia 2, a neighbouring village that Amigos is just beginning to work with. We met with the Farming Group and on the Sunday, Tim preached in the Kigunia Church (which was translated twice over into two more languages!) and we thoroughly enjoyed the exuberant singing and dancing! 

The Kigunia Farming Group

The Kigunia Church

Back at Kira Farm, I rejoined my small team and training and production began in earnest! We made a variety of candles, beeswraps and various balms and are looking forward to seeing how value-added beeswax products training can be included as part of the beekeeping course for trainees at Kira and incorporated with business studies could become an income-generating project to support the running costs of the training centre. 

Candle-dipping

The finished beeswax products!
(I really like the Elephant Paw Bars!)

And finally, while in Uganda, it was a real blessing and a bonus to be able to catch up with my long-time friend from Canada, Adrienne! Wonderful to be able to meet up for breakfast in Kampala! 

Catch up on the previous blog posts:

Kome Island Beekeeping: Siafu in Suits and 80 Hives 

Mwanza with Mama Hive

In Mwanza with Mama Hive

I thought I would have all this time over the two months I was away to post blog updates (and visit more people and do more things etc etc), but it didn't quite work out that way! But it was an incredible time with wonderful people and I do want to share it with you! So now that I am back in Bath, UK and trying to find my feet again, I will update the blog with a bit from Uganda with Elephants and Bees, a bit from Mwanza with Mama Hive (in this post) and a bit from Arusha with SAFI (See Ability First), and then a bit of what's cookin' for the Mongers next year...

Back in Mwanza with the mamas!

First, Mwanza... it was so good to be back again. I stayed at the Emmanuel International (EI) office and the greatest blessing was being next door to the wonderful Newby family... Joel and Samantha opened their home to me and it was lovely to share a delicious meal with them after busy days and enjoy story time and games with their awesome kids! 

Hephzie and Ethan Newby supporting the Mama Hive opening!

It was good to be back with the EI team and see all that they are doing and I also had the great bonus of being able to celebrate both Canadian Thanksgiving in October and American Thanksgiving in November, so a good opportunity to catch up with friends old and new! 

Mama Hive: Empowering Women. Crafting Futures. 

My focus in Mwanza was to help the women of Mama Hive with the launch of their new honey and beeswax social enterprise and opening of their new shop. They have been working hard for over a year on their registration as a Tanzanian NGO and set-up as a charitable social enterprise. With a board from Beacon Mission Christian Centre appointed, documents in place, a place to rent and a bank account opened, it was time to launch the newly branded products and begin to expand the business in order to grow and be able to support and disciple more women with albinism or other disabilities. They are able to buy and market the honey from the different beekeeping groups in the surrounding villages ... and it is wonderful to see and taste each unique honey from the different groups. The most recent Kome Island honey (see more about the Kome Island beekeeping project here) proved extremely popular at the honey-tastings. Mama Hive also buys local beeswax and the women produce beautiful candles and balms and kitenge beeswraps. Through selling quality honey and beeswax products across Tanzania, they want to advocate and create awareness for people with albinism and other disabilities and see lives transformed through the income-generating work and Christian mentorship. Aikande, the Mama Hive Manager, is doing an amazing job; her servant heart, tenacious hard-working nature and ability to learn on the job is pulling everything together! We have really appreciated the wonderful work from Alisha Hutchinson and George Eapen who have helped with the new branding as Mama Hive seeks to better share the story through the honey and beeswax products! 

Monica labelling the new gift jars of honey

Each honey from the different beekeeping groups is so unique! 
Different colours and tastes depending on the forage for the bees.

It was an incredibly busy time leading up to the Mama Hive Open Day ... there was a room to fix up and turn into a shop, the workshop was buzzing with a rotation of women busy making candles, balms and beeswraps, there were printed materials to design and labels to print, and there were all kinds of administrative and financial logistics to sort out! Somehow we made it to November 23rd, and the Mama Hive shop was officially opened!  It was wonderful to welcome people from the community to come and see the shop, do some honey tasting and shopping and sit and enjoy Kilimanjaro Coffee and cakes! We appreciated the support from local businesses... we have been particularly grateful to Manjis Tools and Hardware for their kind help! We pray this will be the beginning of a successful business for these women!

Before ... 

... and after

Selling beeswax balms, candles, beeswraps... 

Honey Tasting

There is still much to work on (your prayers and support are much appreciated!), but it was really special to be with the mamas for the opening of the new shop ... they have all come such a long way since we started meeting together years ago as Upendo wa Mama (Mother's Love). And the love they have received from God and poured out for their children, for one another and for others is truly making a difference and our prayer is that through Mama Hive, this will extend even more! The women have savings and loans scheme set up and have been able to start small enterprises at home and also pay education and medical bills. Their children are growing up and it is wonderful with them to celebrate life and education, graduations and now weddings! And so good to see not just their own children (and some grandchildren) get a good education and know they are valued and created with a purpose, but also other young children with albinism that the group has been able to support and help. 

There is so much more I could say, but I just want to share about Zuena, one of the women in the group, giving thanks for her life! She battles with diabetes, and in the summer, she was looking at losing her lower leg and more than probably, her life, as an infection in her foot worsened and the cost of treatment and medication was far more than she could ever afford or the group could help with. She wanted me to share now her huge gratefulness to the friends that supported her financially and through prayer through this incredibly difficult time. She knows others who have died in the same situation ... left on the doorsteps of hospital with no way to pay the medical bills. And she knows others who have just had to amputate early as unable to pay for the treatment. She thanks God for his healing and help through His people, as she now walks again and is able to return to work! This is not the first time that the group has saved a life and made medical care possible in an otherwise impossible situation, and it has opened up the opportunity and desire to do more to help and minister in this way in the future. I really do want to thank each individual that heard about Zuena back in the summer, and gave to provide this life-saving care for Zuena and we are praying that God will water this seed of an idea to be longer-lasting and further-reaching!

Zuena filtering beeswax

Siafu in Suits and 80 Hives

I am reviving the blog for a bit as I am aware that I have been gone for a whole month now and have not done very well with communication! 

I left the UK at the beginning of October for two whole months! My main purposes in coming were one, to work with the albinism women's group as they launch Mama Hive, the new social enterprise, and two, to work with Emmanuel International on their Kome Island beekeeping project and thirdly with Tim, to work with Amigos Uganda on their value-added beeswax training and Elephant and Bee Project. There are other projects and partnerships I'm looking at, but these three things were my priorities!

I will try to add some posts to paint a bit of a picture of some of what I've been up to ... I'll start now with the Kome Island beekeeping project...

Last week Justina and I travelled by ferries, bus and motorbike to the island, about a 6 hour journey this time. We started this project three years ago, and it has been a challenging journey in so many ways, but it does feel like there may be light at the end of the tunnel! Justina is the beekeeping Project Manager and we have a great field officer called Shangwe who lives on the island. He does a great job taxi-ing us around on his bike and is carrying out regular checks and meetings with the groups.

Packed like sardines on the ferry between a bus and a mini-bus
We were asked to move to the other side to try and balance the boat!

Our daily fish!

The Nyamkolechiwa women preparing to check hives

We started with the Jikomboe Women's group in Nyamkolechiwa and these women are doing well! They now have 90 hives hung in shambas (farms) and forested areas around their village. They are enthusiastic and proudly becoming confident beekeepers; they harvested their first honey this year (which is delicious) and they were able to sell that very quickly locally! And through their micro-fincance group they have generated capital to pay for bricks for homes, tin for roofs, school fees and supplies and medical costs. They have joined together to start a soap-making enterprise and their church has more than doubled!

Justina leading a Bible study with the beekeepers

Justina and I had planned to have a value-added beeswax product and business training workshop with another of the groups, Walewa in Nyamiswi. But sadly, a little girl had just passed away in the village and so everyone was involved with the funeral on Tuesday and then the burial on Wednesday. In some very heavy rains which made us doubt anything happening at all, Justina worked to rearrange things and five hours later than planned, we ended up doing the workshop in Nyamkolechiwa instead and amazingly were able to have representatives from three villages joining in! We all enjoyed the practical making of natural beeswax balms. We used the most available oil, locally processed "mawese" (palm oil) from a lovely lady in the village. We talked about the costing and business aspects for if they were to make the balm to sell locally in their villages ... and hope this will add to their income-generating activities. And it will be a product that they can enjoy making for their own benefit with their beeswax!

Making the balms and figuring the costs and profit margins

The groups with all the beeswax balms!

On to the next village and we lose the bags off the back... yes this was all on one bike with three of us!

Flat-pack Beehives "IKEA-style"

Flat-packed hives

A big focus of the trip was getting a significant number of hives out to colonise. We have really struggled to find places to hang hives with many people very reluctant to allow hives on their property and so we have lagged very far behind schedule with getting hives made and hung and colonised.  But with permission from the government to use a beautiful protected forested area, we were excited to meet our target goal for hives! Simon (Emmanuel International) had come up with a great "flat-pack" design which meant that a carpenter in Mwanza could cut and drill all the pieces and make the top bars and then pack 3 in a sack and load the sacks on the ferry to Kome. We had already shipped 30 hives soon after I arrived, and Simon loaded up the Land Crusier with 50 more and came to meet Justina and me in Mchangani. He got a rather delayed when the ferry packed up early into the crossing, and had to get towed back to port where they could all get on another one. But we were on the job by 11:30am and working into the night, 80 hives were assembled, legs attached and then 50 were carried on shoulders into the forest! It was an epic operation!

Hive assembly in action

We had a team of ten, and developed a rhythm making about 10 an hour. We were joined by a great many monkeys ... all running around in and out the hives. They stole one mama's breakfast chapati and were trying for all the bananas they could get. They will run off with anything they find, even phones... you had to keep a keen eye on them! 

Yes, he stole mama's chapati!

Taking a lunch break ... not just flat-pack hives, 
these are multi-purpose, converting into a table!

Taking the hives out to the forest! No easy task!

Ouchy Dilemma: Siafu or Bees?

We spent the evenings checking the hives with the groups. I have had quite a few adventures in beekeeping in my time, but Wednesday night was a first for me! We were with the group in Mchangani ... we were short a pair of boots, and as I had thick socks, I offered to give mine to someone else. All was going fine, but then felt what I thought was a sting on my ankle and stepped back to make sure everything was sealed at the ankles. But I stepped back into a path of siafu ants (the kind that are a huge army of biting ants that climb rapidly up inside your clothes and attack on cue; it is the kind that the Masai use as sutures for wounds because they bite and clamp so tightly to human skin!). The first instinct is to run and strip off your clothes to start pulling them off your skin ... but I was in a beesuit and covered with bees on the outside ... not a good idea. So I had to hop about trying squish the siafu on the inside through the suit while trying to lose the bees on the outside. It was brutal ... the ants got all the way up before I could take the suit off! I was still pulling dead siafu out of my socks when I collapsed into bed!

Before the siafu attacked!

 

A bit of honey and seeing the bees
start to colonise the new hives makes it all ok!

Mchangani: An Un-settlement

It is both really wonderful and pretty difficult to be starting a beekeeping group in Mchangani. It is not like any other village I have known. It is right on the lake at the top of the island, deep in a protected forest reserve where living is officially forbidden. There are no schools and the lack of children reminds me somewhat of the imaginary town in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang ... it's strikingly odd. But the fishing is good and no one seems to care, so people have built "temporary" wooden structures to live in. People come here from all over the island and mainland ... fishermen bring wives and entrepreneurs come and go selling food and supplies to the fishermen. Many people are criminals on the run. Without schools, women often leave with their children, or when the fish are moving elsewhere, the fishermen leave their wives for months with no support. Most of the young women are sleeping with one man to the next and HIV AIDS is rampant. For many the money from fishing is spent on alcohol and domestic abuse is common. There was a cholera epidemic earlier this year and all women and children had to leave as they quarantined the village on the island. And it's all in the middle of this absolutely beautiful old forest. The potential for not just incredible honey, but also for hope and new life is exciting. Justina has been working to bring together and train a small group of beekeepers, and under the leadership of a faithful, good man called Wilson, there are three men and four women who are keen to learn and see this project flourish and help this community.

A beautiful sunrise on the ferry back to Mwanza!