The Apinautica - Finote Selam

   Continuing the book -- the first training location in Ethiopia has finished, and felt unsuccessful as they never allowed me to demonstrate the use of smoke on beehives. Now we head to a second location!



FINOTE SELAM

April 30th, Day 24, Monday– Teferi, Beide and I drive three hours south of Bahir Dar through undulating countryside. Plodding oxen pull plows through fields. We pass thick rows of eucalyptus trees in plantations – the bluish tint of the younger leaves identifying it as blue gum, a quick growing straight timber favored for building. Crews stack the cut logs on trucks. I think regretfully about the natural habitat being replaced with this non native tree.
   We drive through villages of mud daub houses, and past smoldering mounds of charcoal production. Occasionally we have to slow for herds of goats or cattle.
   Just as I’m preparing to take a photo out the window of an ox plow, something else eclipses it in my view finder – the crab-like curves and mottled green-brown carapace of the rusty hull of a Soviet era T-54 main battle tank.
   “It’s probably from the war against the Derg twenty years ago” Teferi says, “Have you lived through a war?”
   “Technically yes, I suppose, but the United States only fights them on other country’s land”



   “Finote Selam means ‘Pacific Road’” Teferi informs me. It’s a town on the road between Bahir Dar and Addis Ababa, but I point out to Teferi that it’s nowhere near the Pacific Ocean which one would have to travel east from Addis through Somalia to reach.
   “Pacific as in ‘peaceful’” he laughs, “Haile Selassie named it this during the Italian invasion because there was fighting all up and down the road north of Addis to Tigray but it was more peaceful here.”
   We arrive at one of two four story buildings in the small town. I think I’m being shown up to my room but instead we enter a banquet hall full of men facing the front table. I had not been forewarned that I would start the training the literal moment we arrived!
   I don’t get stage fright but jesus one wants to compose oneself and plan out what one is going to say before very unexpectedly finding oneself presenting to several dozen people.

   Several people in this group describe their occupation as “bee expert,” and they seem very restless with the more basic stuff I begin with to lay the groundwork for more advanced lessons later.
   “And thirdly there are the males, the drones, any unfertilized egg will become a drone” I am saying when I’m interrupted by someone near the front urgently raising their hand. “Yes?”
   “When you smoke a hive, how do you prevent the smoke from drifting to the hive next to it and making those bees angry?” he asks.
   Shortly later I’m explaining “new queens develop from female eggs laid in peanut shaped ‘queen cells’ such as pictured here” when I’m again interrupted by an urgent question. I prefer the sessions to be interactive so I generally don’t outright ban people from asking questions in mid lecture.
   “But doesn’t smoke kill the bee larvae?” the questioner asks.
   The restless bee experts also ask several times “just tell us how you produce so much honey in the United States” until I finally say “look it’s not any one magic thing we do, it's a thorough understanding of everything I’m going to explain to you over the next three days.” This doesn’t seem to be going particularly well and I’m feeling very stressed and anxious.



May 1st, Day 25 – After lecture, at the end of the day, we go to look at some beehives in a nearby village. It's the by-now-familiar set up of reddish-brown mud-daub cottages, wicker fences, hives hanging from eaves, hay stacks. The weather is a bit cool and the sun is getting low in the sky though it’s still sunny. The owner of the hives we’re to look at shows us to some square yellow frame hives in a half shed.
   “Can we open the hives now?” I ask, hoping not to get into another argument about waiting for the sun to set. Kerealem consults the owner and then says “yes.”
   “Can we use the smoker?” I ask hopefully, though by now almost certain the answer will be no. Again Kerealem consults the owner, and then, much to my surprise, says “yes.”
   Some dried leaves and corn cobs are provided and we get them smoldering in the smoker. I approach the hives fully suited up, smoke the entrance, wait a few seconds, crack the lid, puff some smoke in, lift the lid. The bees go about their business, ignoring me.
   Using my hive tool, I pull out a frame and examine it. It looks pretty good, there aren’t even any of the hive beetles that were pervasive in Nigeria. One by one I look at more frames. The bees tend to run off the frame as I remove it but don’t become aggressive. Seeing that the bees aren’t buzzing angrily at all, I take off one glove. And then the other, and finally remove the veil and continue inspecting frames. By the time I finish looking at all the frames most of the bees are on the outside of the hive, which is fine they’ll go back in later. I look up at my audience, they’re standing in a semi circle around me about twenty feet distant, with no protective gear, I grin at them and they grin back and applaud. Finally.

   The beehive owner invites me to eat with him in his house. Cow hides are laid on the dirt floor for us to sit on, and a table, woven like a basket, is brought in by his wife and placed in the middle with a piece of injera on it. She places grilled meat in the center and some piles of various spices around it. Kerealem and I and the farmer and two more men all partake of the meal by ripping off a piece of the injera nearest ourselves, and using it to grab a piece of meat and dip it in the spice of our choice. Glasses of what looks like pond water are brought for us.
   “This is tela, local beer,” Kerealem informs me. It doesn’t taste as bad as it looks, it's completely flat of course and tastes a bit like hay flavored water. Again fearing for the future of my gastrointestinal tract, I gamely drink my tele. As a thank you I leave one of my several hive tools with the farmer.
Fortunately, as it happens, neither this nor the raw beef earlier upset my stomach at all.



May 2nd, Day 26 – We begin in the morning with discussion of the previous day’s practical session. Several people share with everyone else, in impressed tones, how I had used smoke, opened a beehive during the daylight, and without a veil, without being stung. As I give the day’s lessons, the “bee experts” are no longer interrupting and questioning everything I say – it’s clear I have earned their respect at last.
   One thing that is missing however is Teferi and Beide. They have apparently stolen away this morning without telling me. Not that I terribly need them, though Teferi is supposed to be my support, but between this and not telling me I was beginning the moment I got here I am in general unimpressed with Teferi’s level of communication.
   In the evening we visit a small honey processing center, just a few rooms in a small brick building. It has a spinning extractor that can spin the honey out of comb honey, but not one made for spinning frames. So far, with all the frame hives I’ve seen, I have not yet seen an extractor suitable for harvesting the honey from them. Several beekeepers had cited a lack of access to these machines as an impediment when I had asked obstacles they were facing.



May 3rd, Day 27 – As we’re driving back north or Bahir Dar I almost do a double-take as I see a very large bird standing not far from the road, almost ostrich sized, but with short legs and red plumage on its head. It’s gone in a moment, I’m almost tempted to ask Beide to stop the car.
   “What bird was that?” I ask excitedly
   “It’s called a jigra or Turkish type” he explains
   “Will we see another?” I ask hopefully
   “No it’s quite rare”
[This paragraph probably to be deleted: "" Googling later, the best I can discern is it may have been a particularly large type of guinea fowl. Interestingly, the word “turkey” for the large bird in English is believed to have come from the large birds imported to Europe via the Turks in Constantinople, the origin of which the Europeans didn’t know but they may have been these large guinea fowl from Ethiopia, hence the “turkish type.” "" because as you'll find in the following paragraph I no longer think it was a Guinea fowl, but maybe these Turkey facts are interesting?]
   The type of bird I had just seen would remain a mystery of me until over ten years later while reading up on vervet monkeys I was shocked by an incidental bird picture on a page, it looked like the unidentified bird I had seen all those years earlier – an abyssinian ground hornbill apparently.
   This evening back in Bahir Dar I go to another of the nicest restaurants in town with Woinshet and Tsion and splurge once again on dinner for us all for $13.

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   I have a feeling flash-forwards (as opposed to flashbacks) such as in the second-to-last paragraph won't go over well, as well as how meta they are. Feel free to tell me you hate it so maybe a preponderence of you can convince me to see reason but for the record I happen to like my meta flashforwards.

   Not currently mentioned but my hotel room in Finote Selam had the fanciest shower I've ever seen, it had so many knobs and levers it looked like a time machine, and water would suddenly shoot out of the most surprisingly places as one tried different levers on it. Might be amusing to fit in.
   There was a moment here which I just wrote and inserted back into Nigeria -- sitting on the rooftop lounge of the hotel one evening there was a hollywood movie on the television -- Tears of the Sun -- in which Bruce Willis goes on a guns-blazing hostage rescue in Nigeria and the protrayel of Africa is very hollywood cliche (which is to say just helpless people in villages and people shooting constantly). Moved the seeing of the movie back to Nigeria since it seemed more fitting.