Day 4 - Crash Course in Stirring Up Bees

Monday, May 8th, Day 4 - breakfast at the hotel at 8:30 - long French bread baguettes are delicious. Nescafe less so. And omelets are dependable throughout the world, though they could use some cheese here.

Then we went to the regional governor (prefect)'s office to greet him. This three story building had a nice sort of creative architecture in the arrangement of the central stairs. The prefect wasn't in. Someone mentioned he's a soldier, and well of course he is. We greeted the regional education ministers instead.

Then we went on to the ENATEF Forestry school where the training will take place. Somehow despite being just out of town you feel like you're deep in the forest when on the ENATEF grounds. The buildings are surrounded by big trees and the grounds have a serene air about them. Fitting for a forestry school i suppose.


Looking out at the ENATEF main square, 2014


ENATEF 2014, I forget if these people were eating here or if it's a class

As usual we spent an hour or more with introductory speeches and stuff, broke for lunch, then maybe another hour going around having the students tell what experience, if any, they have, and any questions or expectations they want met at this training. Only one had previous beekeeping experience, this youngish fellow in the back who looked to be in his mid twenties said he'd been a beekeeper for 13 years.



And then finally i began my lectures. My very first slide is one that has pictures of the three castes of bee (queen, worker, drone), and also happens to have on it the bee pest the Small Hive Beetle (SHB). Then the one guy who'd said he'd been a beekeeper for 13 years raised his hand and said (through translator) the SHBs help the bees make honey.

I really have to flat out contradict someone who has just said they have experience at a thing and make them lose face but.. well this is awkward because um, no? Not at all? So i did my best to politely but firmly say they don't help.

He seemed to take that well enough and training proceeded well. They seem a good group. Attentive and interested. Then around 2 we finished so we could do some practical beekeeping.



The evolution of this plan was a bit funny, because initially it had been suggested to me that we only were going to look at hives, though i always want to actually open them up. And the photographer (the man from Alaska, recall) specifically wanted us to just play act around a vacant hive as that would be easier for him to get pictures, he said. It was apparent to me that he was a bit apprehensive about being around a live hive. So i encouraged everyone to get suited up and light the smoker, but/and also kept saying we should find a vacant hive, but this latter part seemed to get lost so we ended up getting all suited up and being led to an occupied hive just a short distance from the main buildings. The photographer didn't even want to suit up, being as he didn't intend to be near an occupied hive, but got talked into it.


Bailo suits up the photog

So finally we were standing next to the occupied hive and i tried one more time to ask if there was an unoccupied one but no one translated what i was saying. So i apologized to George (the photog) and said okay i guess this is what we're doing.

And then. More or less as soon as i touched the hive it crashed down from the evidently extremely precarious stand it had been on. Our many unsuited spectators ran shrieking away, as did at least half our people in suits (and the photog). There remained myself, two women, and a guy i think might have been an instructor at the school. While everyone else panicked these three kept calm and composed, which i was impressed and pleased with. Not only are stirred up bees psychologically disturbing but i know panic itself is contagious and it takes some mental fortitude to stand fast when everyone else is shrieking and running.

There was a fair bit of honey in the hive, which we harvested into a large bucket, and then we put it back on its stand as securely as we could.

Then we made our way back to the central square of the campus. Of course bees followed us, causing everyone up there to run when we arrived. Though in keeping with my principals of not bringing bees to a place where there's unprotected people while I'm suited up, i removed my suit before entering the square, and actually never got stung, despite that there were still bees about. The photog and some others were bailed up in the cars, and he had actually gotten four stings (in his hands, which had been exposed i guess, though I'd offered him my gloves). I was a bit worried this whole thing would be regarded as a fiasco but everyone i talked to seemed very pleased with the day. It helps maybe that we were able to harvest a significant amount of honey from that hive.


(The three troopers who stuck through it and the honey, unfortunately lots of bees in it because it was all a mess after the hive fell down)

Tomorrow I'll propose to maybe not open hives until the hour before sunset, a solution i commonly use so that stirred up bees aren't chasing people all day.

The photog and Ibro departed for another town to look at a different project there. I really thought they were gonna be here two days. Good thing we did some beekeeping to get the pictures today .. or maybe that's why they left ;-)

Day 5 - Crash

Tuesday, May 9th, Day 5 -



💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

ALREADY??????

IT'S ONLY DAY 5!!!!!

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Yes it's the same problem as last time, though I'd made it till near the very end of the project that time. It was just a loose connection between the hard disk and the rest at that time, my IT savvy friend fixed it in a jiffy. I'm going to ask him if it's something i can do myself and if so with his instructions attempt to reconnect the hard disk. If not I guess I'll be seeing if there's any computer repair place in this town but it's quite possible there isn't.

I think this laptop is too fragile for the bumpy roads here.


EDIT: got a screwdriver and fixed it!

Day 5 - technical problems

Tuesday, May 9th, day 5 - First part of the day the usual usual. Though now there was a Belgian team working on a women's reproductive health project staying in the main part of our hotel, whom we saw at breakfast (two Belgians, four locals). Arrived at ENATEF there were two white land cruisers with the GIZ logo on them there. That's the German development bureau that's funding my Ghana project, don't know what they're currently doing at ENATEF.

Fast forward to after the days lecturing, everyone got suited up, we got the smoker lit, all this took like twenty minutes which is usual. Then we didn't go anywhere, so i asked Bara what the hold up was.

"There aren't any more occupied hives it seems, just that one"

So we ended up going and looking at the hives, kind of miming going through them and discussing them with everyone around, since we weren't limited by number of suits. We did a similar thing one time in Ghana last year and it also went well. And it's very ironic that the photographer had really wanted to do exactly that and we hadn't been able to get that to happen yesterday.



Then we drove about 30km, which took about an hour, to go see a nearby Peace Corps volunteer. And i wanted to give her a copy of a good beekeeping-in-Africa book I've brought several copies of.

She is based at another agricultural college, this out in a more rural area. The road to get there had numerous very big holes full of water. It seemed like a serene bucolic place. She's only been there a few weeks, only having arrived in Guinea in February and then there's ten weeks of language training in the capital. She was from Massachusetts. Seemed nice.



Hour back once again on the bumpy road for a bit.

Arriving home to the hotel i intended to work on the slide show I'll use tomorrow. Specifically, to make a slide I've been procrastination making for a year now, and now that i need it tomorrow it's time to finally do it. So i get out my computer and ...

... well it turns out i left my charging cable at the training center. No worries i just have to be quick about it to get it all done on the battery and then I'll be reunited with the cable tomorrow. So i go to turn the computer on and...



Well see last post. Didn't panic tooo much because this is exactly what happened last year and was an easy fix in the end (loose connection to hard drive). But needed a screwdriver to open it up. The translator and driver fortunately both readily agreed to go into town to look for the screwdriver for me. Even though it was after 7 (or 8 even?). While they were out i drew up the diagram for the slide. I have no skills at drawing on the computer so i often end up hand drawing diagrams and then photographing them.

Guys came back w the screwdriver, which they'd managed to borrow from someone. Did the brain surgery on the computer. At first it wouldn't start at all and i was very panicked but finally it worked. Then it was being VERY slow. Like super tediously. And i thought it might have been related to the repair I'd just done but then i realized it was just the internet. But as i had photographed the diagram with my phone and needed to re download it from Google photos to use, this was a problem. As in it was taking over ten minutes just to load a page and recall without the charging cable i had a finite amount of battery time.

I was a bit exasperated with the amount of technical hurdles to what should have been a simple undertaking. That's what i get for procrastinating i guess. Finally i got it done though.

The end.