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!

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!