Monday, June 26th, Day 53 - The trainees were coming from that far away place where the inauguration had been, which was at least four hours away. We expected them in the early afternoon but apparently their bus broke down ("their lorry got spoiled") and they ended up not arriving until late late like 8 or 9pm. I mostly sat at the dais working on my computer. You see my hotel doesn't have wifi ... well it DOES have wifi, I can see the god damn network and the signal is strong but all the staff profess no knowledge of it, when asked they say vaguely a guy is coming soon to fix the wifi. I think just none of them know the password and can't be bothered to figure it out. This hotel is a bizarre surreal place, in the early evening when lights would be on in occupied rooms there's often no other room with lights on or maybe one. On a boomin night there might be three others. And its a big fancy hotel. Anyway I digress, since it doesn't have wifi but if I stay in the training hall I can use the wifi server my support people have I wantede to stay there. Plus my hotel has an uncomfortable little desk but sitting at the lecture hall dais is comfortable and the kind of office I could get used to.
   So that was Monday.



Tuesday, June 27th, Day 54 - Started relatively early in the morning with the lectures. The original plan was to go to the field in the morning this day but we rearranged it because I didn't think it would be practical to have the field visit first before anything else at all. They'd be like "brood? whats brood? Drone? Whats a drone?"
   This group seems to be the youngest yet, I think there's at least half a dozen that look under 16 even (most are still around 20ish I think). This morning they were very quiet, often having no questions at all after a section, though by now I'm finding that's relatively normal before we've had a field visit to loosen people up. Once or twice when I called for volunteers ("okay who can point to the drone in this picture") no one volunteered even after a minute or two, which has never happened before. In this case it's not a matter of being worried about going to fast --we've already lost Monday and Sam wants to finish Thursday morning so we're trying to cram what was originally a week long program into essentially two days now-- but just about people being engaged in the material.

   In the afternoon we had a field visit, to the farm school just outside of town where we had gone on Friday. "Mr Odonku," the president of the regional beekeeping association, seems to oversee these hives and they're well tended. As mentioned last week, he both already is very knowledgeable and never contradicts me, in fact immediately taking up and repeating things I vaguely suspect he's only just hearing from me for the first time, which I appreciate!
   We had a very productive afternoon, he really helps me as we try to cycle through letting every trainee get a chance of hands on in the hive, and helping them along. And the trainees for their part, they seemed if anything more engaged than previous groups, they were really into it.
   We also had an unusually useful experience in that we were able to split a hive, which we had done last week, but also! There's checks you need to do a week later on a split hive, and having split one last week, this week we could not only split a hive but do the week-later check as well.
   There was a bit of a mystery because the one side of the split had a capped queen cell, which should take 8 days, or maybe a minumum of six, but this is four days later. So its good the hive has a queen cell but it shouldn't be so far advanced in so short a time. I can't remember if it was there last week but it must have been? This is where it helps to have a log book.

   That evening I sat on the steps in the breezeway for awhile in the evening, tooling aorund on my phone which is all I'd have done in my room anyway. Technically I was waiting for one of the guys (ie Williams or Sam) to take me in a yellow-yellow back to my hotel -- it's only about 100m literally, but there's no sidewalk on the road and it does seem a bit dangerous ... though I could probably manage to take a yellow-yellow myself. But as I said it was nice out and I had no particular reason to hurry back to the hotel. I could hear the laughter and ruckus of the trainees running around the halls of the hostel buildings and thought to myself how much fun they were probably having, young people on a rare multi day trip to another town. Probably having a great time, making memories, misbehaving. I fondly recalled my college conference days and wondered when I got so old.



Wednesday, June 28th, Day 55 - Another relatively early start on the lecturing. As predicted they're more engaged now that they've had that field visit. And another field visit in the afternoon this day. This time we were at the other place we'd gone to last week -- where the hives were located in thick jungley brush, they had been notably badly tempered bees. And the owner, "FM" had been a bit overenthusiastic about doing everything himself. So let's see how this visit goes hey. "FM" btw, last week I didn't know what he looked like outside of the bee suit, I have since learned he's actually an stocky grey haired older man.
   As usual we divided into two groups, the first group suited up and we headed into the bush to the hives. Start working on the first hive, and even though I began the process, knocking on the topbars to find the one to open and opening the few, and then handed the hive tool to a trainee to pull one out, as soon as the trainee had taken the topbar out FM took it from him. I could see he really wanted to harvest it, it was entirely uncapped honey, but I had already announced it as uripe unsuitable for harvesting so he reluctantly put it back and then took out the next comb, which was capped, and harvested it. As he reached for the next one I said "please let a trainee do it" but he ignored or didn't hear me and took the next topbar himself and harvested it. As he reached for the next one I said more emphatically "LET . A . TRAINEE . DO . IT" and he used his knife to separate the topbar, let the topbar lift it, and then took it from her. Which is about what he'd done last week. He went through that charade with one or two other trainees before giving up the pretense and doing it all himself while everyone watched.
   Then this group of trainees trudged back to the village, while FM, a friend of his and myself stayed by the hives. He went to go prepare the area around the next hive we'd look at, cutting back the brush with his machete, and I wasn't paying much attention until I heard some loud thumping -- he was thwacking right against the hive. And then he roughly lifted the lid without any smoke jsut to I guess see how many bees were in there. Then he picked up an empty hive, roughly dumped it on top of the occupied hive, using the latter as a table, and proceeded to bang around with it cleaning it of the wax moths that had infected it. It was at this moment that I completely checked myself out I think. He had been inconsiderate of the trainees in not giving them opportunities to be involved, him roughly abusing the hive now was a further act of inconsiderateness, stirring the bees up thoroughly! No wonder the bees here had been remarkably badly tempered last week, lord knows what he had done to them before we arrived!! And, I try not to be sentimental about bees, but that kind of rough abusive attitude towards the bees themselves does also piss me off.
   Then the next group of trainees arrived. Fm immediately took off the lid from another hive that was there that was empty and began lifting the topbars. It was full of comb but empty of bees, and he started roughly cutting the wax out and throwing it on the ground. I would recommend leaving the wax in there to attract future bees and give them a head start, and definitely not just discarding it onto the ground, but he was getting into it with gusto and I was already kind of in a state of having proverbially thrown up my hands.
   Someone asked him why the bees had absconded from this hive and he said he didn't know, he hadn't checked on them in a year (my training emphasizes you should inspect your hives no less than once a month)
   Then he opened the one occupied hive in this place (he has a lot more hives around, though I don't know how many are occupied, but I mean in this immediate little corner there were two that had absconded and one still occupied). He didn't even give me the chance to start, tapping hard along the topbars with his large knife ("cutlass" as they call it here), as it happens the bees in this case had made their brood nest in the middle rather than in the end as usual. So where he'd normally be inclined to start at the back end and harvest all the honey and stop at the brood, he ended up having to lift all the brood frames as he went through looking for honey. Which he did roughly and quickly, laying two down on hte neighboring hive to make space. I was mostly standing back but feeling like I should try to participate and seeing this as clearly wrong I stepped forward and asked why they were laid out like that, pointing out that bees were getting crushed, but I didn't get a clear answer from him. I could see some of the trainees looking a bit confused, that they'd been looking forward to participating like yesterday but today they were just watchign this guy roughly hurrying through the hive. This hive didn't end up having any honey to harvest and FM put it back together, no one else from this second group having had a chance to participate.
   As we walked back to the the village I was fuming. What a god damn waste of everyone's god damn time. I don't know why FM had volunteered to be involved if he didn't intend to let anyone else participate and didn't seem particularly interested in learning anything new himself. Maybe he thought he'd be showing off how great a beekeeper he is. Well I wasn't impressed. As we walked back I searched my mind for what kind of diplomatically nice thing I could say about the field visit and I really couldn't think of anything.

   On the bus on the way back to town the women in the back were clapping and singing for a significant portion so that was nice at least, cheered me up a little bit.



   Even though it was 18:00 when we got back to the training center we went back to the lecture hall to cover some more topics so that we can finish tomorrow as soon as possible. Normally I always begin after a field visit by recapping it, both having the trainees recap it, then giving my recap, and then taking questions. And I really couldn't think of anything nice and diplomatic to say about it, not only had FM pissed me off but if I was going to honestly talk about it I'd be saying not to do a lot of the things he had done -- but he's an older and presumably respected member of the local beekeeping community and I don't want to cause drama. So instead I just began the lecture with absolutely no mention of the field visit.
   I did get one subtle dig in, we actually covered two topics, honey harvesting and wax processingly, and when I said that because wax is valuable you shouldn't, if you have an empty hive, cut out all the combs and just throw them on the ground, making more or less the exact motions FM had done while doing so, I think there were some knowing smiles.

   Anyway, that was the last field visit of the project. Tomorrow we wrap up with this group and return to Accra, and Friday, after nearly two months in Africa I depart. It's bittersweet. I'm ready for Western food and the Next Thing (USA for the first time in four years!)but I'll be sad this is over -- being paid to do development is what I've always dreamed to do, as long as I'm here doing this I'm literally living the dream. But now it must end at least for the foreseeable future



Bonus: here's the trainees singing during a brief break in lecture to get their blood flowing again.

Wednesday, June 7th, Day 34 - "Do you think you can finish by today?"
"I thought we were going to finish tomorrow?"
"We'll just have the closing ceremonies tomorrow"
"Okay I'll hurry through it then I guess."



   It's funny when Courage is here we seem to go from around 9am to 6pm Monday through Thursday and then finish at noon on Friday, long marathon sessions and usually I'm left stressing about how I'm even going to fill all the time. Without Courage here first it was proposed that because it took less time than usual to organize everyone on Monday we could wrap up Thursday. So that made sense there's usually about a three hour delay of "they're not even here yet" on Mondays so we could eliminate the three hour session on Friday sure, but I was visualizing we'd go till five or six on Thursday. But now Thursday is just that three hour session, so this has only been a three day program.

   Well I was able to cover all the material, only finishing half an hour over target time Wednesday. And it would have been on time if I didn't do the business unit that I'd kind of only added because I felt like I had more than enough time and needed more material, but by now it feels like part of everything.



   Anyway I'm not really complaining, it was less stressful then being unsure how I'd fill all the time, and I think I was able to adequately impart all the necessary knowledge.
   Also as a result of this I guess we'll have a 3.5 day weekend. Which I kind of feel like maybe I OUGHT to do something really adventurous with it. Especially since for example that guy W T Lanier was really recommending I spend three days at Mole National Park which is not far from here. But I kind of feel like just going on a day trip so I can take my colleagues along. Spending three days and several hundred dollars to go there by myself just isn't feeling very appealing to me. I don't know, not to be like "shrug" about safari but I've been on safari before, I'm sure it's lovely but I'd rather go with friends than alone.
   So we'll see what ends up happening but I might just spend the time "relaxing" here in Tamale. Which often isn't terribly fun as there's often daytime power outages and hotels, especially this one as we've seen already, don't often feel motivated to run their generators during the day, assuming their guests are out doing something -- so if you're just here during the day you find yourself just sweltering with no AC and nothing to do but try to read a book.



   "Are we here to take pictures or are we here to do beekeeping o?"
   Anyway we did have a field visit this afternoon. It wasn't nearly as far at the day before. We took the big red bus to an outlying village not far out of Tamale. Parked the bus and we were all trudging along the trail to the outskirts of the village. And there's this native mint that grows naturally beside the trails and when a lot of us are walking it gets trod upon and makes a nice earthy minty smell.
   But as we were walking suddenly someone from the village was calling for us to stop. It turns out a representative from the village chief had interdicted us because no one had told the chief what was going on, so there was a few minutes delay while our leaders discussed with this representative, and then on the way out they went to see the chief.
   Village chiefs are obviously a big part of culture and tradition here, but I get the sense that a lot of more progressive Ghanaians are quietly a bit eyeroll about their place in society. Imagine the person who had lived in your subdivision the longest made everyone's business their business and you had to respectfully check in with them for whatever you wanted to do. Sometimes they conduct themselves with dignity and gravitas, but as with one chief we met with last year he seemed kind of barely there mentally.



   Dr Courage returned here last night so I'll be kind of curious if he tightens the gears on things immediately.

Monday, May 30th, Day 26 - Today was the first day with a new group. It's once again "youth" so should be demographically and generally just like the previous group.
   But... remember I said the first day of the other group they asked _no_ questions and we flew through like 70% of my prepared presentations for the week in one day? I don't know what's different, but this group is normal -- they ask questions. We only got through the first topic, which is more the pace I expect. I dunno if somehow we'd set the tone wrong at the start of the last one and got it right this time; or, as I mentioned the translator last time tended to just make pretty abrupt translations of what I said, speaking suspiciously shorter than I had just done -- this time we have a different translator (named Chris, which is confusing, because of course MY name is Kris) who translates for more normal lengths of time after I've spoken.
   Also, and I don't know if this was true last time and we just didn't notice or this group is indeed demographically different, but when asked who could understand English 90% of the participants raised their hands -- only about 4 or 5 of the 50 couldn't. However, like with my very first project in Nigeria, we found they can't understand MY English, so the translator has to translate to English they can understand in addition to local language.



   In the afternoon we went out to look at some beehives. The schedule as originally envisioned had only lecture on the first day but after last group I had insisted we have a field visit the first day because it effectively functions as an icebreaker. Plus a lot of participants have no prior experience in beekeeping and I think it makes everything we talk about more real to them if they've already had a go at it before we talk about it. Plus I hate long days that are all lecture, I think it's really too much lecture in one day for the trainees.

   Got to the bee site and found we didn't have a smoker. This was a potential big problem, though we found a metal chicken feeder that we could put smouldering stuff into. It worked alright for calming the bees it seems, but it was hard to prevent it from just shooting flames and/or getting way too much smoke in my eyes.
   Hives were kind of disappointing. They were moooostly well made but often the topbars had been left a bit jumbled so everything was cross-combed. And it appears this bee yard was in a state of dearth -- there was nearly no honey and even brood was at a minimum. Anyway I think we had a good beekeeping experience.

So I woke up this morning bright and early planning to make an update about yesterday (nothing dramatic happened yesterday, just the usual observations), sat down at my usual place at the tables in front of the hotel, opened my laptop and...


"NO BOOTABLE DEVICE"

😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

I employed all my technical know-how, which consisted of turning it off and on again, and when that didn't work doing it again but leaving it off longer, but still no boots, not even a sock.

This is the second time I've had a laptop fail in mid assignment. I don't think it actually experienced rougher handling than it should be capable of taking (just a lot of being carted around in my backpack) -- i think the real reason for the high electronics failure rate while on assignments is just Murphys Law.

My immediate concern over a computer crash is loss of critical documents and irreplaceable pictures -- fortunately after my phone was stolen love Nairobi in 2015 I set automatic backup to Google photos up (AFTER losing 40 days of irreplaceable photos from East Africa), and after my computer went through a period in 2020 as an amnesiac with no memory i got in the habit of writing all my documents directly at Google docs. Other than those two categories most important things probably came from an email and can be found there again.

BUT I never got in the habit of making PowerPoints on Google docs even though i suppose one can. I've spent many hours over the past month making new presentations and refining old ones, and most of that work is probably a complete loss. Though i think i had sent two PowerPoints (of about five I've been using) to the host organization of this project to translate into French, and that was pretty much at the end of the Ghana project so they're more or less complete ... though now they only exist in French. Jk I'm sure i can get the original back from them.

The substantially revised Guinea presentations and had hastily put together of course would be a loss as well.

And of course there's the sheer inconvenience of losing my laptop an hour before i was going to be once again presenting for hours.

As it happens, Ousman had already departed to assist another volunteer, which was unfortunate because he had the translated presentations on his computer. Ibro was still here so we were able, after unsuccessfully spending half an hour trying to transfer it to another laptop so he could still do work he needed to do, to use the presentations on his laptop.

We'll only have "practicals" at the beehives this afternoon and Saturday. Off Sunday, and Monday I'll do my honey harvesting and processing lecture without any visuals because that's one of the complete loss presentations.

I find this all rather frustrating. My computer savvy friends say the memory might still be recoverable though if hooked up to another device.


In other news, so this morning just after i discovered my computer had crashed, the hotel restaurant guy came by, and asks "cafe?"
But see, I said that to him yesterday and he brought me gosh darn tea.
When my translator came a bit later i grumbled about it to him and he rattled off something to the guy and he promptly came with nescafe.
i complained about it to my translator, saying "how does 'cafe' sound at all like "tea??" Like, maybe my pronunciation is bad but surely he could put it together, how unrecognizable can my pronunciation of cafe be (the word in French is definitely 'café')" and my translator said "oh maybe you should have said nescafe."
So today after he says "cafe" i say "nescafe," and he says "cafe?" and i say "_nescafe_" and then he nods and says "okay" and BRINGS ME FUCKING TEA. (for the record nescafe is a terrible substitute for real coffee)


Needless to say from here on out any updates i post will be from my phone, which I find much more tedious to write things on than my computer.

   Today was officially a day of rest. Well I think at least during the morning local coordinator Courage was cracking the whip at his team to get some things done, and the media team was busy processing videos and photos. But anyway that left Arne and I pretty free. We lingered around the breakfast table from 8am till noon. After that I returned to my room and worked on the expense reports up to this point, and I forget maybe something else or maybe just a lot of procrastination and time wasting -- I think Arne may have accomplished a similar amount. Around 3pm by entirely unspoken agreement it seemed we all emerged from our rooms and converged on the dining table even though we we still weren't hungry. But Rolanda brought us bananas and mango to snack on -- Cecilia, who usually is the primary staffmember to attend to us had the day off. I don't know if Rolonda is just incredibly shy or what but she always seems to be bowing and shyly backing away almost apologizing.

   Around about 5pm, Arne and I and Williams and Nadia (two members of the media team) headed out to walk into town. Almost immediately I was greeted by a man in a suit saying "Mr Kris Mr Kris!" whom I didn't recognize (I'm actually terrible at recognizing people) but he clearly knew me, and then Yahaya the translator from the training came up as well and greeted us, the two of them were emerging from a building literally across the street from out guest-house. They said it was there office. If I'd known they were literally right there I'd have planned to meet up with them!
    Then we met up with Cecilia, our off-duty hotel friend -- this was coordinated, not a coincidence. She had agreed to show us around town a bit.



   Ceci showed up with a baby on her arm whom she introduced as her "auntie." I at first naturally assumed the syntax had become confused and the baby was her niece but she said no it was her auntie. Further investigation revealed that it was the baby of her "grandmother," and therefore her auntie, but it wasn't actually her real grandmother but a member of her extended family of her grandmother's generation; but African tradition (throughout the areas I've been anyway) is to liberally grant "brother/sister," "aunt/uncle" etc status to extended family or good friends -- Ceci even once asked if her sister had already brought us something, referring to Rolanda who is clearly not related to her.

   Anyway we walked down the main road for a fair distance, Nadia poked into some shops, looking at shirts. We encountered one of Ceci's uncles (an actual blood uncle I think?) who mentioned how he had looked after Ceci after her father died in a motorcycle accident (in 2013?).. and then mentioned how he himself lost his leg(s?) in a motorcycle accident. I hadn't noticed because he was sitting on a motorcycle.
   Finally we accomplished what had become the goal of our quest -- Nadia was fanging for some "Kenkey" which they apparently eat every day in her home region but not as much here and she's been missing. It consists of a corn dough you dip in a spicy sauce, which she also had with fish and the shito fish sauce. While she was ordering this from the place we finally found that sold it, Ceci took one of the "yellow-yellows" --auto-rickshaws-- home real quick to drop off the now sound asleep baby and return. We all then got on a yellow-yellow ourselves and proceeded on it back to the guesthouse -- though Ceci wouldn't come in because "if they see me they'll make me work."
   Then we (minus Ceci) spent most of the next two or three hours once again sitting around the dining table before finally withdrawing to our rooms. The End.



   I still have no appetite after three days now. I'm wondering, can one have "indigestion without discomfort?" because I don't feel like I have indigestion but I've felt full for three days while barely eating, making me suspect things are just sitting in my stomach going nowhere. But I don't feel any lack of energy so I don't know!

Saturday, July 2nd -- After I finished writing yesterday's livejournal entry [yesterday's yesterday as of when I'm posting this, I had no internet yesterday], sitting at a table next to the hotel pool, I went to the hotel front desk to exchange US$50 to the Ghanaian currency ("cedes" apparently). Despite that the official exchange rate is pretty close to 8 cedes to the dollar, I was informed they would exchange them at 7.2 to the dollar. Which wasn't very appealing but I didn't feel like hunting around town to exchange money at a better rate. Then the front desk fellow, whose name was something a bit silly like Lordly, said that he didn't have a ten so he'd give me 350 and owe me the ten ... which I sighed and accepted, after all it's just a dollar thirty nine. And needless to say I never saw him again.

   I returned to my room and succumbed to the urge to take a nap. Conventional wisdom is that the best way to get over jetlag is to power through your sleepy daytime and only go to sleep when it's an appropriate local time -- however, having been in transit for over 24 hours (counting the four hours I spent in the Melbourne airport before departure, because surely I wasn't at my leisure at that time), I was fairly exhausted. Though I tried to tell myself I spent much of that time essentially somewhere near asleepness on the plane so it would be lazy to just sleep more after have been semi-asleep for nearly 24 hours ... but semi-asleep, as it turns out, is no substitute at all for actually asleep, and long story short, I slept away the entire afternoon.

   Just around 10pm when I was thinking of changing into my pajamas and going to bed for real, my colleague from Germany called to say he'd just arrived and would I like to join him for a beer? So I did and we sat by the pool drinking beer (the Ghanaian "Club" beer) and talking till around 1:45am. Then he tried to exchange some money at the front desk but they informed him they didn't have any cede to give him. And then we tried to go up to our rooms but found neither of our keys was working now for some reason and had to return to the front desk and have them come up with us and let us into our rooms.

Sunday, July 3rd -- I paid for my room (700 cedes) on my debit card, thinking it would go through for the exact amount minus a negligible bank-instigated currency exchange fee -- but when I looked at the receipt I saw they had rung it up as "100 USD" ... once again using their own 7:1 exchange rate, such sauce! And then I paid for my dinner and beers I had charged to my room with a 100 cede note for the 85 cede bill and they gave me 10 cede change because they "didn't have another five." Such sauce.
   Though despite their skill at nickle-and-diming me to death on exchanges the hotel was pretty nice, considering.

   Arne and I proceeded to the airport to catch our flight to the northern town of Tamale. Looking out the terminal windows at the tarmac I noted what looked like a small passenger plane with "Nigerian Air Force" written on the side.. as well as two UN aircraft.
   Flight was an hour and a half in a small turboprop. Talked a bit with the young woman in the seat beside me, and then, apparently overhearing this, as we disembarked the man in a business suit from the seat in front of me said to me "what's an Aussie doing here in Tamale, Ghana??"
   He was a friendly fellow, and the young woman (Margot) also continued to talk with Arne and I in the baggage claim and walked with us out of the (very small) airport terminal and helped us find a (very small) restaurant by the parking lot where we would wait our in-country colleague. Altogether people are very friendly here.
   By very small restaurant I mean basically a kiosk but there was a table and chairs. The sign declared it the "Airport View Hotel" which was very literally true since it was level with and directly adjacent to the tarmac, which isn't really the most majestic view and very loud when an aircraft was there but there was only an aircraft about once every two hours.

   That was around maybe 2:00 when we arrived there. Around 4:00 two crew-cab pick-ups arrived and six young men disembarked, it was our local contact Courage and his staff. They took us aboard and we proceeded about an hour north along a mostly very straight two lane highway. The land around looked very flat, and was mostly cultivated in small plots of yam, sorghum, maize, rice (but apparently a rice that grows on dry land?), also lots of neem and shea trees. Noted more tractors working fields than I recall seeing in Nigeria or Guinea. We also passed through lots of villages with goats, chickens and the occasional cow wandering across the street.
   Arrived at this "guest house" in (Wale-wale?), it's really quite nice. I was expecting something much smaller and rudimentary, but it seems to be a whole complex of very nicely appointed rooms. The guest-house staff prepared a dinner of rice and this sort of stew one pours over the rice which apparently involved fish but didn't taste fishy at all -- thank god because I loathe fish. I'm a bit concerned, I'm getting the impression they eat a lot of fish in this country. Also there was "fried?" chicken. The chickens appeared to have been rather big, Courage was asking "are you sure this wasn't a turkey??" We all (Arne and I and Courage and his staff) all ate together and conversed about the different parts of Ghana each of the staff had come from. We quized Courage a bit as well about his various plans, he seems to have really big plans for improving Ghanaian agribusiness and is consulting to other African countries as well. He's working on helping them all meet food standards for export. He's really nice, charismatic, and clearly extremely smart and competent -- later Arne and I agreed "I think we just had dinner with a future president of Ghana"

   And now it's only 9:20 but I am le tired so I think I shall go to bed.

Sunday, September 3rd - In the early afternoon Alex the Spaniard went to go play futball with a local team and the girls invited me to go visit a friend of theirs with them, which sounded dandy to me. After just two blocks we reached the end of town and proceeded on a cow path a very short distance onto a forested hillside, some of the foliage underneath smelled of mints, and it was a nice sunny day.
   Their friends turned out to be a young couple, Emma and Norbit (?) with three young children including a precocious little toddler girl who delighted and amused one and all. Apparently Emma works with the girls at Fabretto. Emma and Norbit were very nice and even though the only person present who could translate for me was the French girl, Emma and Norbit occasionally directed questions my way and seemed very friendly and hospitable. They gave us tamales. We all sat in a sort of semi enclosed space beside their house, walled on three sides with the fourth open to the clearing in front of their house. The other sides of the clearing consisted of tall flowering plants, it was quite beautiful in the warm afternoon sun. Chickens pecked about the ground, a small dog (Lucy?) snoozed nearby, and a small kitten meowed quite piteously if anyone was eating anything and not sharing it with her.
   Presently I was asked if I'd like to go horseback riding, which of course I would. Arrangements were made and some twenty minutes or so later Norbit led the three of us down the path leading from the front of the house down across a small stream and up again to a dirt road, where three saddled horses were waiting for us. We saddled up and set off trotting only loosely guided by the horse's minder on foot. Now, as someone who does not own a horse, the opportunities to ride a horse are usually severely limited to mere "trail rides" where the horse proceeds along a course so familiar to it it may as well be asleep; and most of my interaction with horses these days is limited to them trying to bolt out of farm gates I'm trying to drive into to go see some beehives. So I greatly enjoyed this rare oppotunity to take a horse on a free ranging meandering course. I found my horse to be extremely responsive, unlike some previous horses I've been on, and was pleased to find I had no trouble at all turning it this way or that, stopping, starting or speeding it up. Somewhat restored my faith in horses which of late has been badly shaken by the horses that when not trying to bolt out the farm gate are trying to bite me. i couldn't recall my horse's name but one of the others was apparently something like "Cinqua Carmella" which everyone who heard it thought was quite a hilarious name, if someone who speaks spanish could explain the joke to me I'd be interested.
   We ranged along "roads" behind the village which can only be traversed by foot, horse, or maybe some sort of tracked vehicle. I continue to marvel at the cute adobe houses with pink tiles that just look so much like the stereotypical latin american rural adobe that it almost feels like it shouldn't actually BE that way.
   After we'd gone a little ways up and down some hills (up and down the tops of the hills anyway, the bottoms were WAY down) our guide instructed us we should turn around and I was told "it's just two more hours down this road to Honduras"
   "By car?" I naively asked
   The French girl laughed and said "no, by horse. There are no cars here."

   On the return we left the guide (on foot, recall) behind, and got somewhat lost upon reaching town, trying to find where to return the horses to, which was actually kind of fun because it gave ample opportunity to confirm that the horse wasn't merely following the road but that I could take it down this road or that, or turn it around, and just generally wander around the quiet cobbled streets on the horse.
   When I was considering moving to Ethiopia and maybe doing some work at the university in Bahir Dar I had asked an Ethiopian friend if it would be weird if I just used a horse to get about and she kind of laughed and said maybe a little but they'd forgive me for being a ferengi. I've always quite liked the idea of getting around on a horse. In Cusmapa there were definitely more people getting around on horse than by car, the wide open cobbled streets are mostly traversed by pedestrians but you can't go ten minutes without someone clip-clopping by on a horse, maybe with a hoe over their shoulder or a bag of groceries. I actually saw a small boy on a horse with a brightly colored backpack on his back, apparently headed to school!

   Arriving at our destination, Emma's parents house sits on the ridge at the very top of town commanding a magnificent view. Her father confided in me (through translation of course) that he had bought it (14?) years ago for $300.

   Leaving the horses there we walked back to Emma and Norbit's place to wyle away the afternoon. At one point there was a brief thunderstorm and rainshower but it quickly passed (the weather report for Cusmapa lists every single day in range as thunder showers). It was dark by the time we made our way back to our own house, the moon being fairly full lately it was bright out and the streets shone white in the night. I noted there didn't seem to be any street lights.



Monday, September 4th - Marcus fetched me and we switched out his toyota hilux for a land-cruiser because we were to do some very serious driving. It took about 40 minutes of driving down VERY steep roads, and occasionally up them. At first the road was "paved" with nothing more than two concrete lines for the wheels, which I've seen in someone's driveway before but never for much of a length, and then even that ended. At the end when I saw how completely bald the tires were I was even more amazed. We arrived under a canopy of tropical trees, surrounded by a lot of banana or banana-like trees, just three adobes near the road. The end of the road. Some young men were there to greet us and Marcus looked up at me with shock after briefly conversing with one of them:
   "This guy says he knows you!!"

   I was amused by how unlikely that seemed to him, but at the beekeeping workshop at the national university on my first day in Nicaragua I had been informed there were two young men from Fabretto, and lo, verily, this was one of them.
   We looked at the beehives, they were pretty good, they'd had 27, but ten appear to have absconded due to lack of forage in the area. Biggest issue was that they said they had a lot of problems with small hive beetles and on examination most of their comb was very old and dark -- hive beetles aren't really an issue if you switch out your dark comb regularly (they don't like the honey or pure wax but rather proteinacious materials such as pollen and the build up of stuff that's in dark comb). That's your beekeeping wisdom of the day. Of course I instructed them how to do this. Also "El Gato" kept coming up as a sort of paradigm of good management (and he's only 18!). I kept picking up "el gato" in conversation and asked Marcus why they called him El Gato. Marcus told me its because he has blue eyes ... seeing him later I determined they're actually kind of a yellowish green, which is striking and cat-like enough.

   Fast forward through returning back to Cusmapa, walked about town a bit and read a lot, and then the three volunteers returend home from volunwork in the early evening, and barely had they popped in than Shannon (the French girl, pixie-cut hair) told me they were going to Emma's sister's birthday and would I like to come along. Which as you may have gathered it's always my policy to say yes to this kind of thing.
   First, in the early evening and comfortable refreshing air, as drums beat methodically from somewhere nearby, we walked a few blocks to someone's house whom they had apparently commissioned to bake cakes for them. It was a grandmotherly lady, I suppose maybe she's a baker, but it appeared merely to be her house? It being a tiny town, of course on every block the three volunteers greeted someone familiar to them cheerfully and often with laughter. I can see how living in this cute little town could really be delightful.
   Returning to Emma's parents house at the top of the hill, we spent the evening sitting around in their livingroom, which though it had a bare concrete floor and walls and the ceiling was merely the underside of the corrugated metal roof, it was filled with warmth and seemed in no way lacking as a home. A small chicken spent most of the evening under my chair. Emma's father was a jovial friendly fellow, Emma's sister and her pretty teenage friends were rather shy and Alex, the Spaniard, often made them blush with his boisterous joking antics. A small child apparently thought I was Alex's father, which, I suppose we're both lean, pale, and bearded, and I suppose I do have rather a fair bit of grey in my beard whereas he does not have any, but it made me feel rather old. (he's 27, I'm 35).
   When I felt the need for fresh air I'd step out front, where the two volunteer girls were hanging out because they were smoking (because they're European, after all), and noted the constant flash of lightning in the distance.



Tuesday, September 5th - I was awakened in the early hours of the morning by a loud bang, like a cannon shot, nearby. This was NOT another mango dropping on the roof.
   A second bang came from much further off. The dogs began barking, the roosters crowing, and somewhere either a car alarm or police siren started to sound.
   Then tehre was another nearby bang. Another further bang. Was this... a shootout??
   A further bang (sounded like it was coming from a few blocks down the street) ... a nearby bang which sounded like it was just beside the house. Well, maybe this town isn't so innocent after all I thought to myself lying in bed listening for any other telltale signs. After ten to fifteen minutes the explosions stopped, and I fell asleep again.

   In the morning my housemates didn't know what it had been about. Alex had apparently been inspired to evacuate from his bed near the streetside wall to a couch in the living-room (I wasn't in a street-side room, and did reflect that bullets probably wouldn't travel through multiple adobe walls). Alex questioned some people that walked past our front door and all he could gather was that people said it was a celebration, something to do with the church. I don't know. Didn't sound very festive to me. When Marcus came to pick me up I asked him and he claimed to have heard no sounds at all, which I find rather disingenuous. But I do still want to believe in the fundamental innocence of the little town of Cusmapa. In favor of the celebration theory though I later heard similar loud bangs during the middle of the day in Somoto from just beside my hotel and it didn't seem to be a gun battle in that case so there's that.

   Marcus fetched me and we drove back to Somoto. Met up with El Gato and inspected some more beehives that Fabretto is thinking about buying from another company. Tried not to look too weird as I tried to ascertain his eye color. FINALLY got a bee sting, was beginning to be concerned I'd not get a single bee sting here but one got me in the sock since my current interim pair of boots aren't as high ankled as my normal boots. Altogether I'm surprised I was prepared for wild wild africanized bees here but the bees do not seem as bad as the africanized bees I was accustomed to in California. Could it be that the bees I grew up with are actually some of the meanest in the world?

   And now I'm in the hotel El Rosario again. Tomorrow I head back to Managua and the next day I leave Nicaragua, will be in the states a few days for my brother's wedding and then on to Australia. I don't generally get "homesick" but working all these other bees I've begun to quite rather miss MY bees, plus of course, Cato, King of Cats. But less I start to miss it too much I check the weather back home and its all highs in the fifties and raining.