Ghana Day 6

[aggienaut]

   Today began well, began at 5am because I harnessed the power of jetlag to casually get up at 5am to write the previous two daily updates -- as they were both pretty involved I wanted to get them both down before too much time had passed.

   Found Arne down at breakfast at 8:00 as usual but he remarked that he wasn't feeling very well and wouldn't be joining us today. The plan for today was to split a hive at the teaching farm but we were told the bees were STILL riled up there from the other day so we wouldn't go there. So instead we went to the hall and I presented about miselleneious things including diseases and also someone asked me to tell them how beekeeping in my home country is and I happened to have a slideshow I'd made about beekeeping in America awhile ago so I showed them that and told them about the langstroth hives we use (the modern stack-of-boxes hives), and while I was at it I played a video tour I'd made of work at Edmonds Honey and some other things tossed in like a picture of my house and of Cristina and I, whom I described as my wife to keep things simple, and the picture of her and I got applause ahaha.

   Then for awhile (an hour or two?) the participants (there's 56 altogether) gathered into two circles and discussed.. stuff? I'm assuming the two circles were the two different language groups we seem to have. Even our local organizing staff said they didn't know what the groups were discussing since they don't speak the local languages, but it looked like they were having a good discussion, and "probably tehy will present us some minutes."
   Also at some point, actually before these circle discussion groups I think, randomly (seemingly to me), the room broke into a sort of circular conga line dance, which I think was a traditional local dance. One of the older women was ululating cheerfully. I got a video of the first three minutes of the dance which maybe I'll manage to post at some point -- then I got pulled into the dance and will consequently burn any video evidence of that remaining portion.



   Then in the afternoon eleven of us (see I know exactly because this time I took a count) went out to some hives that were only a short distance south of town but after turning off the main road was a bit of a distance along a track that could barely be called a road at all. Once we got a bit of a distance down this road we started to see clusters of huts on occasion, which, I must admit I love to see though I fear it may be patronizing to be unduly excited about people living in a substandard sort of housing.
   Eventually we had to park the car and walk the remaining distance, which once again involved walking through ankle-deep mud/water in places (and Nadia the photographer moaning softly to herself "oh my shooes oh my shoees" as she only had her one pair of sneakers). The owner of the plot of land we were visiting is/was "A.B. Yahaya" or some such, he's been serving as one of our two translators and often seems to deliver his translations more charismatically than the original version. He said he had owned the 3 acres since (2013?) and had preserved it as forest, unlike the land around it which was mostly tilled cropland ("ground-nuts," which may or may not be peanuts?). An aside about the cropland around here, apparently its a tradition not to cut down the shea trees (possibly because shea nuts have value) hence even where land has been cleared for fields there are intimittant shea trees giving it a savanna-like look. But this plot was relatively thick with foliage and the owner had many beehives in amongst the trees.
   From my observations, the topbar hives weren't quite ideally made (overly large entrance holes, overly wide topbars, lids not fitted snugly), and were mostly vacant. He had a lot of smaller "catcher hives" up in trees of various designs, and they seemed to have a much better occupancy rate. We proceeded to a concrete topbar hive -- an innovation Yahaya was particularly proud of-- and the plan was to split it. I think his plan with making them out of concrete was for two reasons -- (1) better survival against bush fires but I'm not sure it wouldn't still cook the bees inside it if engulfed in a fire even if it wouldn't burn; and (2) it being too heavy for thieves to take which is probable. Unfortunately the lid was also concrete and two of us struggled to remove it. And then there were only three occupied frames inside... and an unaccountable quantity of ground nuts (?!?)(is some rodent bringing these in? or are these bees harvesting nuts?). So we couldnt' make the split.
   Instead we transferred some bees from one of the catcher boxes to an empty hive -- though it had clearly been well past overdue to be transferred and the box was full of comb. And then even though I told him more than once and he seemed to respond in a manner that conveyed a thorough understanding, that the newly constituted hive should be put where the catcher box had been, he proceeded to have it placed somewhere else ::throws up hands::
   Not sure what all I'll say about all this in class tomorrow because he's one of the most prominent beekeepers, the first day he had to be restrained from trying to teach teh class himself a la expanding expansively from the answers he was supposed to translate from me, and it would be embarassing for him if I listed all the things that were wrong with his hives.

   Anyway for once we didn't have any stinging shenanigans. One the participants appeared to get some bees in his suit but I don't know if he just backed off and was fine or what because that didn't turn into a debacle.
   Then we returned to the guest house for a very late lunch (3pm?). Around dinner time (7pm), Arne put his head out his door when Williams came by to tell us dinner was ready, and Arne reported he'd been feverish all day but was optimistic of being better tomorrow.



   Most of us found we weren't very hungry though the food was good. After dinner I went out walking with two of the lads, Williams and Samuel -- they wanted to buy some small things from some market kiosks in town.
   "Whose goats are these?" I asked regarding the numerous goats hanging around the street.
   "Just touch one and the owner will appear" remarked Samuel.
   Also they pointed out to me how the only working streetlights were the ones on the relatively minor street our guesthouse is on ... because it leads to the Vice Presidents house (also a staff member confirmed to me that the VP's entourage had stayed at this guest house just last month). In the rest of the town the streetlights weren't working.

   And now it's bed time!

Comments

[engarian.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, if that's a prominent beekeeper and he's keeping poor hives, you have your work (and diplomacy) cut out for you!

- Erulisse (one L)

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Indeed! Unfortunately the politics seem to have gone off the rails a bit here with Mr A.B Yahawa. I think I parted on good terms with him but he seems to have continuing complaints about the project planning, compensation and/or credit / respect for involvement.. I'm really not sure. I hope it isn't a problem when we return next year