The Agrinautica

   Continuing the travel memoir book I'm working on, with this chapter we're caught up with everything I have currently written. Having just finished the back-to-back Second Nigeria project and Ethiopia:



May 12th, 2012, Istanbul Ataturk Airport – “You’ll have to collect and re-check your luggage in Istanbul” they had told me on check in in Addis Ababa. I clearly remember this, as I watch the baggage conveyor go around and around with ever fewer bags on it, none of them mine. Finally I ask a member of the airport baggage staff.
   “No it would have automatically been transferred”
   Just to make sure I walk to the far end of the airport to find some Delta staff to ask.
   “No there’s no transfer agreement between Delta and Turkish, your luggage definitely didn’t automatically transfer”
   And so, rather than get out of the airport or at least relax during my six hour layover in Istanbul, I spend the entire time getting the runaround around the airport trying to find my luggage, ultimately without success. It will eventually be delivered to me back home in California looking like they used the baggage tractor to back up over it repeatedly, pulverizing everything solid, including three honey jars that had been carefully wrapped and cushioned, spreading their contents over everything not already destroyed.



Many hours later, but still May 12th, New York – After 36 days abroad, and travel through many airports, which usually have put some effort into ensuring you arrive to a spacious, welcoming arrivals area, –a sort of foyer to the country with public art – I find myself emerging into a grimy underground-garage feeling area. Thick unadorned concrete columns support a roadway claustrophobically just above our heads, heavy traffic on the pick-up roadway fills the semi-enclosed space with exhaust fumes and the sound of engines, and the parking garage just across from it completes the enclosed feeling. And I may be back in the states now, but my checked luggage sure enough is nowhere to be seen.
   These are the days before smart phones (I’d get my first one as a birthday present from my parents in a month), so I ask someone for directions … and the answer comes back in a heavy New York or    New Jersey accent more incomprehensible than anything I’ve heard in over a month of travel … but I suspect it was rude.
   I descend into the grimdark depths of the New York subway system, and ride the snorting, shuddering subway carriage to the grand and airy Grand Central Station, and from there it’s two hours by Amtrak through New York suburbs I barely see because I’ve been traveling uncountable hours by now, to Bridgeport, Connecticut.
   I enter the Bridgeport marina and make out a pair of tall masts looming above all the smaller closer boats. As I walk down the dock, the rubber dingy sets off from the schooner Pegasus riding at anchor.
   “Mr Fricke I presume?” Tarragon says with a smile as I carefully step from the dock into the dingy with my backpack.



May 13th, 2012 – The crew of the Pegasus is busy up-rigging the boat. Over winter the sails and many of the lines had been downrigged to protect them from the elements, but now it’s time to get her ready for the sailing season. I try to be helpful but they ‘re very understanding that I’m still very jetlagged and don’t know the boat at all. Tarragon has been given the task of rigging the head-sails on the front of the vessel, and I’m happy to be her assistant.
   The schooner Pegasus normally only sails with an all female crew, conducting leadership programs for girls, but they're willing to put up with me during uprig and the subsequent shakedown cruise.
   It was just not even two years ago, 19 months, that walking down the dock in Olympia, Washington, to welcome passengers to the brigantine Eos, I had first met a bank teller named Tarragon, walking unsteadily on the gently moving dock. Now here she is with a list of sundry pieces of equipment she needs written on her hand and down her arm in sharpie as she competently sets about her complex task, grease stains on her work pants as she concentrates on tying an important knot.



May 14th, 2012 - “Happy birthday!!” Tarragon smiles at me across the table in the mostly empty restaurant. We were lucky to find one that was still open this late –after 9pm– the earliest we were able to get off the boat, what with the long days being spent trying to get her ship-shape.
   The waitress brings us a rich slice of chocolate cake.
   “I got you a present!” says Tarragon excitedly
   “When did you find time to get me a present?” I ask surprised
   She slides a pack of socks and a tube of toothpaste onto the table. I laugh with genuine happiness – with my luggage having been lost I truly appreciate these mundane gifts.
   So here I am, I think to myself, my thirtieth birthday. I’ve just returned from three projects in Africa and am volunteering on a sailing ship – is this where I thought I’d be on my thirtieth birthday? Certainly it’s a lot better than things looked a year ago. I don’t exactly have a career that’s making me rich but, I decide, it’s not a terrible situation, at least it’s interesting. I don’t know what to expect for the decade ahead but I hope it is both interesting and forms some semblance of a career.



May 15th - 22nd – By and by uprigging is complete, we raise the anchor, hoist the sails and set off down the Connecticut coast towards New York City. It’s only about forty nautical miles to the Big Apple, but sailing ships are slow (the world was explored at the speed of smell) and we’re not in a hurry, so it takes us three days to get there. A schooner such as the Pegasus has two broad fore-and-aft sails, which it can swing out on booms to catch the wind, as well as staysails out over the bowsprit and triangular gaff topsails up above the main sails, but not the “square” sails that make a traditional “square rigger” such as my beloved Eos so distinct. Schooners can easily be handled by just a few crew members and are ideal for running in and out of coastal islands and shoals, as we are currently doing. Many of the little islands off the Connecticut coast have historic lighthouses and glimpses of elegant old buildings among the trees.
   We anchor the first night off an island the crew enigmatically refer to as “Tick Island” – we don’t go ashore. Anchor watch is much more peaceful than a watch at sea – one stands watch alone for an hour, alone at night with the stars above and lights of shore shimmering across the gently lapping waves. The metal fairleads on the forestays absent-mindedly tinkle like silver bells. Every fifteen minutes one takes bearing on three points the captain has designated, looking across the binnacle compass at the light and recording the bearing in the log: 130 degrees south-east by east to the beacon that shines nostalgically in the victorian steeple of the historic lighthouse on the nearby island; 240 degrees southwest-by-west to the light that slowly flashes an alternating red and white at the current lighthouse that sticks out of the water like a spark plug about a mile away; 003 degrees north to a light on the mansion on the privately owned “Tavern Island” If the bearing differs by more than an amount the captain has specified, the captain must be woken as that would mean we are drifting. We are not drifting. Once in each crewmember’s hour they descend into the warmth of belowdecks, and as quietly as they can so as not to wake the offwatch crew they proceed to three designated locations where they can lift the deck platings and see how high the water in the bilge is, and record this in the log. The rest of the time, one quietly strolls the deck, alone with their thoughts in the night, until it’s time to wake the next person up.
   The second night we once again anchor off an island with a historic stone lighthouse, surrounded by other islands with private mansions on them. This lighthouse island is rumored to have buried treasuer from the pirate Captain Kidd
   The third night we anchor off Throg’s Neck, the entrance to the East River through New York. Just across the water from us we can see the lawns of King’s Point, where one of my former crewmates attends the Merchant Marine Academy. The next day we sail down the East River, past the infamous prison island of Riker’s Island, and moored to the mainland adjacent there’s a massive cubist hulk of a barge. [obv the book wouldn't have hyperlinks but look at that thing!]
   “What’s that?” I ask a crewmate,
   “Oh that’s a prison barge.”
   It turns out it’s the world’s largest prison barge, the Vernon C Bains. As a history nerd I’d read about the prison hulks used in the 18th century, to find one in current use is disturbingly dystopian.
   We continue our sanding, painting and rust-busting as the endless rows of skyscrapers of Manhattan slide by to our west. After passing under the Brooklyn Bridge, we all look out with great interest as we approach the historic South Street Seaport, eager to see the large clipper ships Peking and Wavertree, along with their smaller consorts. Us tallship sailors always have a great fondness for other historic sailing vessels. The Peking and Wavertree were among the last generation of actual working sailing ships, the latter only retiring from working the tradewinds in 1947.
   We round the south end of Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty holding her torch aloft to our left across the shimmering water, tourist ferries zipping back and forth busily. We continue around up the west side of Manhattan and into the Hudson River, having almost circled the steel-and-glass heart of the metropolis.
   After anchoring overnight near the shore in a broad part of the river we continue up the gently curving river the next day. The sun is bright and warm, and I’m working up near the top of the mast, as on either side the forested banks slide by. Life is good. Having grown up in the urban sprawl of the greater Los Angeles area, I had always assumed the West Coast had entirely filled up with people before California began to – so it’s a marvel to me to see what appears to just be endless forest on either side of the river.
   Around another bend in the river and … it looks like something out of Lord of the Rings on the bank up ahead – A massive citadel of gray stone walls and towers standing straight and proud, stoic and impassive. No one had told me Westpoint Military Academy looks so picturesque.
   As it happens, Westpoint is our destination, and we tie up to a small dock below the stone edifices. It’s not a public dock, but our boat has special permission.
Walking barefoot on the grass field beside the river that evening Tarragon and I marvel at another unfamiliar sight for us – little glowing lights lazily loop around in the gloaming twilight – fireflies! After some fun but unsuccessful attempts at catching them we grow a bit serious, because tomorrow I am leaving. She purses her lips when she’s particularly thoughtful about something.
   “So you’re thinking of going to Australia next?” she asks
   “Well not for a few months, not till the end of summer” I say “the beekeeping seasons are reversed there so when the season is ending here it will be beginning there”
   “And… when will I see you again?”
   “You can come to Australia too?” I ask optimistically
   “And do what?” … “you’re always leaving” she sighs.
   We walk in silence for a moment, holding hands, barefoot on the soft grass, surrounded by the surreal scintillations of fireflies in the gathering darkness.
   “I love you but… I think we should consider ourselves broken up after you leave here – because I have absolutely no idea when I’ll ever see you again,”
   I don’t argue, we’ve been drifting toward this point for awhile.
   The next day she takes me across the river in the smallboat, I’ll catch a train in the town of Garrison across the river. As she casts off from the dock in Garrison, after we’ve said goodbye, she has one last thing to say: “now don’t you get killed in Australia.”

[If you're wondering thats not how the break up happened but over the phone a month or two later isn't as good a scene as among the fireflies, literary license here. Terragon might make one more reappearance in 2017 when I join her for a few days on the ship she is by then first mate of]
[baggage arrives run over would arrive here chronologically but doesn’t really fit]



June 2nd, Southern California – It’s a warm summer evening, and I’m tired from another ten hour day of beekeeping, but you can’t let that stop you from doing other things or you’ll never do anything, because every day is a ten hour day of beekeeping – unless it’s a 12 hour day.
   So sitting at my desk, under the slowly spinning ceiling fan and a pleasant breeze coming in the window, I open my laptop. It was articles in the American Bee Journal that inspired me to go to Africa, maybe I’ll have my hand at writing an article and see if they’ll accept it. My fingers hover over the keyboard, I need a good moment to begin on, something both exciting and representative of the whole experience…
   “Rows of yam mounds and mud-walled little houses fly past us as we speed along the narrow dirt trail...” tap tap tap 3690 words later an article about Ethiopia and Nigeria, with plentiful serious looking citations to the thesis studies of both my Ethiopian interpreters. Reread it again, send it to my mother so she can tell me all the commas I’ve missed, and go to bed.



June 3rd – Sit down under the fan once again and open the computer, read the news. Headline: “Nigerian airliner crashes into ‘Mountain of Fire’ Church, 183 dead.” A Dana Air flight from Abuja to Lagos had crashed, killing all aboard and many on the ground as well. I double checked my ticket stub, yes I had flown that same airline, that same route, just a month earlier. Dana Air only operates four aircraft, there’s a one in four chance it was the aircraft I was on, there’s a one in four chance each and any of the flight crew I saw that day were in it. I feel a bit shaken, this is as close to a plane crash as I have any desire to get.
   After some delay due to being unsettled, re-read my article. Fix all the commas my mother pointed out as missing, make some other tweaks, email it to the editor.

June 4th – “Hello Kris,

Thank you for sending your interesting article on your volunteer beekeeping work in Africa. You are certainly to be commended for your wonderful work in helping beekeepers in Africa! I think many of our readers would find this article and your photos of interest. We have published similar articles from volunteer beekeepers in the past and we always like to highlight these efforts in the hope that it will inspire others to do similar volunteer work.

Please select some photos from the many you have for use with your article. That would help me out a lot. On our present schedule, I hope to print your article in one of our late summer or early fall issues that we are working on now.

Best regards,
Joe”

   I hadn’t actually been terribly optimistic it would be accepted, the ABJ is such as prestigious publication!


   By and by the summer slips by. I apply for and receive a working holiday visa for Australia, which will allow me to live and work there for a year. I book a ticket for September and put feelers out for jobs, though the visa specifically requires one not to have a job lined up beforehand. My article is coming out in September though, which should make it easy to get a job in the industry that month.

[potential scene where I go camping alone in the redwoods for a week before I leave for Australia but I don't think it makes the cut]

   Continuing posting bits of the work in progress book. Here's the last portion of the chapter about the first trip to Ethiopia.



May 7th [2012], Day 31 – We hike up the forested slope of nearby Girakasu Mountain, single file on a narrow trail, under the canopy of pine trees, over little gurgling rivulets, until we come to an open glade filled with rows of yellow hive boxes. A the far end of the apiary as we enter gray furry anthropoid bodies bound away – monkeys! One pauses a moment to look back at us, it has prominent white side whiskers like the muttonchops of some wizened old dickensian miser.
   “Do you know what kind of monkey that is?” I ask Girmay.
   “I think they’re called ‘grivets’”
   “Do they disturb the beehives?”
   “No I don’t think so, maybe only if all the bees have died in the hive they’ll open it up and look for any remaining honey or brood to eat”
   I had at first been distracted by the monkeys but now I look at the view – from here we can see down the far side of Mount Girakasu from Korem – the slope descends precipitously down, down to a savanna down below that stretches off into the distance – the Great Rift Valley! Down below the landscape is a dry brown savanna quite different from the forests up here. Down there somewhere the three million year old “Lucy” skeleton was found. The escarpment continues as far as I can see to the north and south, with white ribbons of waterfalls cascading down into the valley.

   Much to my relief the beekeepers in this area have no aversion at all to using smoke and they immediately light up some smokers and we begin inspecting beehives.
   Holding up a frame I see a small round red mite on a bee.
   “Girmay! Girmay!” I call out, “what is this??” I ask bringing him the frame. It looks to me like the very troublesome bee pest the Varroa mite, which is present throughout most of the world but at this time not yet known to be in Ethiopia, so it would be an important discovery if it was.
   “That’s a bee louse, the braula fly” he explains to me.
   “Oh, interesting, I’ve heard of it but we don’t have it back home.” I examine the bee louse carefully, it really does look a lot like a varroa mite, though perhaps a brighter shade of red.
   One of the beekeepers is admiring my gloves, which aren’t even traditional beekeeping gloves but nitrile chemical handling gloves because they’re cheap and didn’t take up much space in my luggage.
   “They’re only four dollars” I tell him through Girmay.
   “He says he can’t afford that. These farmers only earn about $12 a month you know” Girmay reminds me.
   “Tell him I’ll leave him my gloves when I leave.”

   The frame hives have been manufactured by non-beekeepers and given to beekeepers who aren’t familiar with them, so the beekeepers receiving them haven’t even been able to identify what is wrong with them. The key to frame hives is “bee space” – bees have innate opinions about spacing. Anything less than 6mm the bees will generally block up with propolis, a kind of glue they make from tree resin. A space of about 9.5mm bees will see as a hallway and use it as such. Spaces bigger than 12mm they consider open space and may build buttresses of “burr comb” into it or “cross combs” connecting across it. These frame hives have lots of improper spacing and as a result frequently the comb is built across the frames such that they can’t be removed without breaking it.
   The beekeepers, though very experienced in their own right, follow with interest as I show them what’s wrong with these hives they’re less familiar with. The burden that has been haunting me, of having nothing useful to contribute, finally feels lifted.
   Over the next several days we have lecture and Q & A in our fortress hotel and walks to forest apiaries on the mountain. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it hails, sometimes the weather is perfect in the serene little town of Korem. I usually have an omelet for breakfast (the one universal food), injera for lunch, and spaghetti for dinner (a lingering Italian influence). This is not a coffee producing region so we drink a lot of tea. A cup of hot milk in a tea cup is also surprisingly popular. Girmay tells me there’s another beverage that is unique to this town called “korefu” that is very alcoholic yet only consumed in the morning, but I am unable to find it.
   One day while walking along the main street a pickup truck suddenly pulls to a stop behind me and a uniformed but barefoot Ethiopian soldier hops out of the back, AK-47 in one hand. It occurs to me that if an armed man had jumped out of a truck behind me in Nigeria I probably would have immediately dove into the hedge, but this is peaceful Ethiopia.



May 9th, Day 33 – “What’s with the awnings?” I ask Girmay as we wind our way back up the road to Mekelle. Frequently we see what looks like a temporary awning erected outdoors near houses and people seemingly having picnics there.
   “It’s Mariam gunbot, ‘Saint Mary’s Day,’ traditionally the same group of neighbors celebrate it together every year,” he explains.
   “Oh that sounds very nice”
   “Would you like to come celebrate with my neighbors and I this evening?”
   “Definitely! Thank you!”

   I join Girmay in one of his neighbor’s houses in Mekelle that evening. Many of his neighbors of all ages are mingling and chatting, I’m surprised by the number who speak English (all education from high school level up is in English), and they’re all very friendly. The table is heaped with traditional food – injera and grilled meats and many spices. There’s the traditional honey wine tej, commercially canned beer (Ethiopian brand St George), and even Johnnie Walker whiskey. Any time my glass has gotten relatively empty an attendee I perhaps haven’t even talked to yet appears with a smile and insists on refilling it with a friendly grin.
   Presently I am pulled into a circle forming in the middle of the room, and traditional dancing begins. At first the dancers keep their hands at their sides while shuffling enthusiastically about to the cheery beat of traditional music; later as the night goes on, the dancing morphs into less restrained joyous cavorting.
Now the music is turned down and someone is standing on a chair making a speech.
   “Traditionally people make speeches arguing that they should host it next year and then everyone votes who should do so” Girmay tells me, “I would like to host some time but not until after I’ve married my fiancee and we have a house together to do so.”
   Likely spurred on by the liquid encouragement of my constantly refilled glass, I get up on a chair.
   “I want to thank you all for your amazing hospitality,” I say, “this has been so much fun and I’m so grateful to Girmay for inviting me and all of you for welcoming me.” People cheer, and then cheer again after it’s been translated for them. “And you know, I would love to host next year, but sadly California is very far away.” I think I’m adequately safe from having to actually host anything, but rather to my alarm shouts of “no, you can still host!!” come back at me.
   I dismount the chair and try to withdraw into obscurity a bit until the voting finishes, which seems to occur informally via level of cheering and applause for various names proposed until one is decided upon.
   I Stumble out of the house at the end of the evening, thoroughly drunk. Girmay hails me a passing bujuj auto-rickshaw. About to get in, I remember how the taxi drivers in Egypt used to always try to scam me and, consider: in my obviously intoxicated state I am an obvious mark. So I hurry back to Girmay who is just turning to return inside, to ask him how much it should cost, before getting in the bujuj. A few minutes later, back at my hotel, I was amazed to find the driver quoting me the exact amount Girmay had said he would. What honest people, these Ethiopians.

   I wake up in the night with my hotel room slowly spinning around me. My mouth is already dry and I realize I’d drank heavily the previous evening without drinking any water. If I learned anything in college it was that one must drink water to mitigate having an awful headache in the morning. I desperately need to drink water but there’s another problem – I have no bottled water in the room!
   I have two choices, drink no water and face feeling deeply miserable in the morning, or drink the local tapwater from the bathroom sink and risk everything that comes with that.
   <>I’ve been in Africa for over a month now, I think to myself, I’ve probably been exposed bit by bit to the local water bacteria. I’ll drink the tap water.



May 10th, Day 34 – I stumble down to breakfast in the morning feeling grateful I only have a headache. Miraculously, the tap water does not appear to have destroyed my guts.
After breakfast Goru takes me to tour the Comel honey processing facility. I’ve already met the director of the plant and their head beekeeper at my training, but now I also meet the owner, Daniel. Serious but kind and personable, he reminds me a bit of my own father. The plant itself has state-of-the-art gleaming machinery, homogenizers, filters and bottling machines, arranged in spacious and clean workspaces. They export 70 tons of honey a year throughout the world and win international prizes. I’m thoroughly impressed.
   “I was talking to a government official from the Agriculture Department and he was telling me about all the investment they were making into beekeeping, the 50,000 hives a year they were producing,” Daniel tells me “and I asked what their plan was to facilitate the sale of all this honey. The official just shrugged. So I built this honey processing plant” he says with a smile.

   I’m in the security line at Mekelle airport. The man in front of me has just had honey confiscated from his carry on. I’ve made sure to pack my jars of honey in my checked luggage and no longer have a hive tool to worry about, having given it to Girmay.
   My bag goes through the X-ray machine as I walk through the metal detector. The security woman scowls at it and puts it through the X-ray again. She scowls again and asks if I can open it. She looks inside, takes some things out, puts it through again, and still isn’t satisfied.
   Meanwhile other passengers are also passing through. An older woman with a hand-held GPS has been sidelined by security, who is telling her she can’t take it on the plane.
   “But I was able to take it on the plane from New York to here!” the passenger insists.
   The x-ray technician shows me the display screen on the machine, which appears to show a pen in the backpack which she can’t find.
   “Can you take out this pen?” she asks. I look in my backpack but can’t find the pen. We take everything out and put it back through the X-ray. The now-empty backpack still shows a pen inside in the x-ray image.
   The other woman has come to a compromise with security, they will let her take her GPS if she promises to hand it to a cabin crew member when she boards the aircraft. Trusting entirely to the honor system they let her go. A hassled-looking American in a business suit takes her place at the sidelined inspection table. A cheerful Australian man in skimpy running shorts breezes through security, winking at us as he passes – “mates dress like me and they won’t try to frisk ya.”
   The security woman gives up on trying to find my ghost pen and waves me through.

[end of Ethiopia I chapter]


I really love this picture, though the runners don't stand out well against the dark background, I suppose if one was crafty one could subtly increase the brightness of their yellow and red outfits until they stood out better ... if someone with some photoshop fu wants to have a go at it go right ahead, it would probably be wicked easy for someone who knows what they're doing

   There's a potential further scene where I negotiate buying a drinking horn in a market in Addis Ababa, which is kind of interesting because it wasn't a standard object anyone had for sale but when tehy found out I'd pay good money for one several shopkeepers called friends they knew who had one for actual use. Eventually several examples were rushed to me, which were all actually a bit ugly since they were home made for actual use rather than for display, and I paid way too much for the least ugly one but I kind of like that its an actual made-for-practical-use drinking horn. But this story felt like it didn't fit here as far as pacing and arc.

   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.

   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.

BAHIR DAR

Wednesday, April 25th [2012], Day 19, 6:30am – I realize at once my mistake. The severe-looking woman manning the airport baggage x-ray machine has just pulled from my bag a flat six-inch-long by inch-and-a-half-wide piece of stainless steel, bent ninety degrees at one end and sharpened at the other.
   “What is this?” she asks coldly.
   I sigh and make a dismissive gesture “Sorry I meant to put that in my checked luggage, you can take it I guess.”
   “What is it?” she repeats.
   “Oh, it’s a hive tool – for opening beehives.”
   “Are you a beekeeper?” she asks, while examining it, testing the sharp edge on her finger.
   “Yes, I am.”
   “Okay.” she says, and, much to my surprise, hands it back to me.

   I haven’t moved that hive tool since Nigeria, I think to myself, which means the Nigerian airport security completely missed it even though they found and confiscated my nail clippers! Remembering the confiscation of the nail clippers leaves me irritated all over again, how can you possibly hurt someone with nail clippers? Clearly Ethiopian airport security is both more thorough and more thoughtful about what they do or do not confiscate.



   The small Fokker 50 turboprop aircraft buzzes through the morning air over Ethiopia. Far down below brown land divided up by rocky ridges and rugged gullies glides by. Occasional patchwork clusters of small squares of different shades of green denote fields around villages. After about forty minutes the land becomes flatter and more covered in fields, laid out in concentric circles around low hills topped with thick groves of trees. As we bank around on final approach to the airport I see blue water stretching off to the horizon – Lake Tana.
   The outskirts of the airport sweep past as the ground comes up to meet us and was that the distinct shape of a Soviet Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship sitting defanged and impotent without its rotors, in the corner of the field like a discarded shoe?
   A gentle bump and we decelerate down the runway, with bright red airport firetrucks immediately rushing out to meet us. I’m a bit alarmed, is there something wrong with our aircraft? But no one else seems concerned, and the firetrucks merely come to a stop surrounding where the aircraft comes to a stop. Just a standard precaution? I’m pleasantly surprised to find we aren’t about to die, but is this… often necessary here?



   Outside the small terminal there is a small crowd waiting for the passengers, but I once again look in vain for my name on a sign. The gaggle of other passengers quickly disappear into the cars that have come for them and disappear, until there only remains myself and two men who were waiting for someone. One is short and kind of shifty, wearing an ill fitted suit, while the other is taller, looking comfortable and unconcerned in his slacks and collared shirt. In fact the taller one looks just like an Ethiopian twin of the actor Jean Reno. Around us, beyond the round-about at the terminal curb, I only see bushland of low shrubs. The airport seems to be in the middle of nowhere.
   After everyone has left, the shorter man approaches me and asks hesitantly, “are you Kris Fricke?”
   “Yes I am”
   “Oh…. we expected someone older.”
   He introduces himself as Terefe with OCAV-ODCA, and the other man as Beide, the driver. We get in a white landcruiser and proceed into town. After just a few hundred yards the shrubbery around us gives way to a broad savanna of cultivated fields – evidently a no trespassing security zone exists around the airport, which allows the extensive shrubbery growth there.
   Its a very short drive and after just a few minutes a big red billboard declares “WELCOME TO COCA COLA Bahir Dar” and the fields give way to buildings of town.
These buildings look very modern – hotels and office buildings standing four or five floors high on either side of a broad palm-tree-lined road with very little traffic. Other vehicles on the road seem to mostly be little three-wheeled blue and white auto-rickshaws and the occasional donkey cart.
   We pull in to the drive of one of the buildings – “HOMLAND HOTEL” is emblazoned on the sign. I’m shaking my head at the egregious mistake by the sign maker as I enter the lobby and see that “Homland” is in fact the name.

   “What do you mean we’re not doing field visits?” I ask of Terefe after, in discussing the planned training, he’s informed me I’m just going to be lecturing.
   “It’s not in the budget!” he says defensively, avoiding eye contact.
   “Well we need to find a way to make it happen! We can’t do beekeeping training without field visits!”
   “I’ll, um. Look into it. In the mean time, you can rest, we start tomorrow”
   v“Oh… it’s not even 9am, we can’t do something today?”
   “I’ve got other work to do” Terefe responds a bit peevishly.
   “I can show you around” Beide volunteers.
   “Great, I’ll put my bags in my room and be right back down!”



   After dropping off Terefe at his office, Beide and I proceed to a wooden dock that extends from between two buildings not far from my hotel out onto the lake. For about fifteen dollars we were able to hire a motor boat and driver to take us out to one of the monasteries located on islands in the lake.
“There’s actually eight island monasteries on the lake, we’ll go to the closest one, it’s not far” Beide suggests. As we motor through the flat blue-green waters I see a few fishermen paddling along on kayak shaped boats made from bundles of papyrus.
   “These are called ‘tankwas,’ they are the traditional boats used by local fishermen. They can easily make them themselves.”
Beide speaks decent English. He teaches automotive engineering at Bahir Dar University (gosh he’s overqualified to be my driver!), for which he gets paid a decent-by-Ethiopian-standards wage of $50 a month. He also gives driving lessons, and as in the current case works as a driver for hire for organizations. I’m interested to learn that all education from high school and beyond in Ethiopia is conducted in English. I find this a bit puzzling since Ethiopia was never a British colony (nor anyone else’s) and was a Soviet ally during the Derg regime in the 80s. There are numerous regional languages in use throughout Ethiopia but the official national language is Amharic, the language of this the Amhara region.
We are cutting across a bay in the southern end of Lake Tana. To our left the lake stretches out of sight, and to our right buildings of Bahir Dar line the shore line, each set back amid the palm trees of its own little piece of the lakeshore.
   “Bahir Dar” means “Sea Shore” in Amharic” Beide informs me.
   “But this is just a lake”
   “Yes but we don’t have a sea shore” he laughs.
   Across the bay we follow parallel to shoreline reed forests for about another kilometer and enter a channel between an island and the shore. The boat pilot points out another channel leading into the reeds to our right and says something to Beide in Amharic.
   “That’s the beginning of the Nile river there.”
   “Just right there?” I ask amazed.
   “Yes the Blue Nile, which joins the White Nile in Sudan, but most of the water, 85% I think, comes from this side. Look there’s hippos,” he points.
   Sure enough the little ears of several hippos can be seen, fidgeting like birds on their barely visible bodies just breaking the surface near the reeds. A few fishermen paddle tankwas along the channels, giving the notoriously dangerous hippos a wide berth.
   Shortly we pull up to a short dock on the island across from the beginning of the Nile. We walk past three tankwas that have been pulled ashore beside the dock and about a hundred meters along a smooth dirt path through tropical trees, past a few rough-stone outbuildings and through a gateway to arrive at the monastery grounds. The dominating building, like all Ethiopian churches, is a large cylindrical building. The conical metal roof of this building is a rusty mint green.
   One of the monks, in white robes and a white turban greets us in Amharic and seems happy to give us a tour. “The monastery was founded here in the 14th century” Beide translates.
   He ushers us up the steps of the church. There is an outer walkway around the building, and through a heavy door we’re led to another inner walkway around the inside. There’s another heavy door leading into the very interior but I’m told only the monks and priests are allowed in the inner sanctum. Along the walls of this inner walkway there are some ornate old tapestries and some other interesting objects, such as a large brass bell for calling the monks to prayer and a very large drum that Beide pretends to play.
   The monk shows us to another building beside the church, which is set up as a little museum with various things behind glass on shelves. Books he says are 900 years old and about ten ornate metal crowns with little plaques identifying them as having belonged to Ethiopian Emperors from as early as the 1500s.
   He opens one of the books to show me the perfect lines of hand written script written in the angular ge’ez alphabet.
   “Ge’ez is a language only used by the Ethiopian church now, but it’s an ancestor of Amharic like Latin is to Italian” Beide explains.
I look at the smooth only-slightly-yellowed paper, I don’t believe it’s actually 900 years old, but I’m not sure what to think of these crowns behind the glass. They’re not exactly solid gold or jewel encrusted but they’re more intricately bedizened with delicate metal work than anyone would be likely to make just to fool with tourists. If these really are the crowns of nearly a dozen past emperors of Ethiopia this little shed is an incredibly unprepossessing place to find them. [seriously though check these things out. Real historical crowns or someone has a serious crown making hobby what do you think??]



   We return to town, Biede’s wife runs a restaurant off a side street in the center of town. The buildings in this part of town have an elegant old world style, with vines climbing plaster building facades and balconies fronted with metal latticework. The medians of the main roads are planted with trees and works of art.
   The restaurant has a nice little outdoor foreyard under a mango tree where we sit and they serve me a earthenware bowl full of delicious chunks of cooked beef –derek tibs-- accompanied by two pieces of the crepe-like injera rolled into scrolls. As I’ve seen locals do, I tear off bits of the injera and use it to pick up the pieces of meat in lieu of using a fork. Meanwhile one of their employees, a young woman, roasts some green coffee beans by holding the pan over a fire, then grinds them in a home made pestle and mortar of which the pestle appears to be part of a drive shaft. Beide works in automotive engineering after all.
   I’m having a great time already and it’s only lunch time. Would I like to go see the large waterfall on the Nile that appears on the 1 birr note? Yes absolutely.
After lunch we drive 30 kilometers south through rural countryside of small fields and clusters of mud-daub houses, big rounded haystacks sit amongst the houses and at one point we get caught in a traffic jam of donkey carts loaded high with hay. We park by a “Welcome to Blue Nile Falls” sign and as we’re walking to the river a young man matches pace with us. He speaks english and has a laminated “official guide” badge. He only wants a few dollars to be our guide so I tell him he’s hired.
   We board a small wooden boat that’s just pulled up to the shore to disgorge a few Ethiopians, and the standing boatman takes us across the river using a pole like a Venetian gondolier.
   Our guide points to a series of triangular hills a short distance off and points out that they look like pyramids, and further points out that there has always been a cultural continuum up and down the Nile and there’s more pyramids in neighboring Sudan than further down the river in Egypt. Be this as it may, I’m not sure these hills have anything to do with pyramids.
   “Right now we’re actually crossing the artificial ‘headrace canal’ for the Tis Abay hydroelectric dam.” the tour guide tells us, continuing proudly “Ethiopia produces so much electricity from hydroelectric that we export it to countries such as Sudan.”
   On the other bank we disembark the boat and walk a few hundred meters until we arrive at the top of the waterfalls. The waters of the Nile roar over a 400 meter broad waterfall to fall 140 feet. Plumes of spray billow up from the crashing waters.
   “Tis Abay’ means ‘Great Smoke’” the guide informs us as he leads us down a trail into the broad gully below the falls “because of the clouds of mist.” From a vantage point below the falls we can see them just as they are pictured on the currency note.
   “You are actually very lucky” the guide says “when the hydroelectric turbines are running the waterfall is just a trickle because all the water is being diverted, but today they’re off, so the waterfall is turned on.” It strikes me as a bit of a shame that something like this, a national emblem, can be “turned off” to make electricity. The sacrifices and tradeoffs a country must make to modernize.
   We are able to pick our way up the increasingly slippery rocks until we’re close to the waterfall and can feel the spray. It had been a warm day but down here under the constant spray it’s actually a bit chilly. The guide offers to take some pictures with my phone and Beide and I clownishly pose with thumbs up.
Following a trail up the ridge just opposite of the waterfall we find a girl of maybe twelve seated patiently with a set of coffee cups on a small box, the traditional coffee making set up. Would I like coffee, yes of course. She immediately begins the familiar process of roasting green coffee beans, which I surmise we grown within a kilometer of here, and grinding them in a mortar and pestel before brewing them into coffee in a traditional clay coffee pitcher – a “jebena.” An older woman (her mother?) is nursing a baby just a few meters away and framed between them from where I sit I can see the Tis Abay Falls. Could there be a more Ethiopian image than this?

   So I've been working on a book about my travels 2012-2022. Well I've spent I think nearly two years now just on the first year, which is not a very promising pace to ever finish but I think it's accelerating now a bit. In other news, writing a book length memoir is an interesting endeavour with entirely different challenges from the usual short story writing, and I assume even from writing a fiction novel, as it requires a lot of introspection to identify the plot arcs and to portray the protagonist as going on a fully fleshed out character journey.
   Anyway I had posted the first three chapters here, and if you missed them and/or fancy reading everything up to this point all in one place, please to be seeing this google doc; and if you do read it, any feedback is always appreciated!

   And now, the first draft of Chapter IV: Ethiopia I, is complete and so I'll proceed to post it here in bite sized chunks (or you can read the whole thing here, which I'm always grateful if someone wants to read it all in one go so they'll see it in the context of itself as intended)

   Pictures won't necessarily go in the final book since novels don't usually have pictures, but then again, if it proves feasible to include some pictures why not. Art should stretch boundaries after all, not rigidly conform to established norms.

[In the immediately prior section I was just finishing the Nigeria project]


[if I could somehow re-create this image from the in flight map without all the blur it would be a good illustration for right here]

Sunday, April 22nd, 2012, Day 16 in Africa – In the dark of night, from 30,000 feet above, southern Sudan is a vast expanse of darkness with just a few faintly flickering orange specks. Then as one crosses over into Ethiopia one senses the ground below rising up in an endless series of mountains. Finally the plane clears one last ridge and reveals a galaxy of blueish electric lights twinkling like stars reflected in a pool – Addis Ababa.
   I breeze through the airport passport control and the baggage claim, emerging from the terminal expecting to find a someone holding a sign with my name on it, but I look around in the chilly night air in vain. Presently, seeing me looking flummoxed, a young woman who has been booking people into her hotel asks me if I need help.
   “There’s supposed to be people here to meet me but I don’t see them” I explain
   “Can you call them?” she suggests
   “I have a number for them but my phone has no service in Ethiopia”
   “Here use mine”
   “Are you sure? I don’t have any money to pay you with” I have cynically learned that in some places (*cough* Egypt *cough*) nothing is free to tourists.
   “Haha yeah no problem at all” she answers laughingly. I call the contact from the Organization and he informs me the driver is just running a little late. I chat with the woman for a few minutes until the man from the Organization shows up. What friendly people they are here.
   Arriving at my hotel, the porter, a young man named Addis, takes my bags, and in the lobby, under an ornate chandelier, an attractive female receptionist named Addis checks me in. Welcome to Addis!
   The porter Addis shows me to an elegantly appointed room and flits around the intricately carved wooden bed frame to turn on all the light switches and TV, as seems to be the custom when showing a guest to their room throughout Africa. When he leaves I look for all the switches to turn half of them off, especially the TV, and then finally have a moment to marvel at how elegantly appointed this hotel room is, and it costs less than a Motel 6 back in the States.

[There's a few more foreshadowing remarks about Egypt before eventually the storyline will actually arrive there]



Monday, April 23rd, Day 17 – Complimentary breakfast in the hotel is a buffet, which is normal the world over, but where in other places coffee might be available in an urn, this is Ethiopia, and coffee is serious business, so it’s made to order and attractive waitress Samrawit brings it out to me just as I’m about to dig in to what I mistakenly believe is scrambled eggs.
   Just as I take a big mouthful of what is not in fact scrambled eggs but a sort of scrambled version of injera, the national dish, Samrawit informs me rather nonsequiturly that I’m very handsome. Injera, when not diced up to resemble scrambled eggs, is like a large crepe, and often, as is the present case, quite sour, and not at all like what one expects scrambled eggs to taste like. I nearly gag from surprise at both the flavor and the unexpected compliment.

[the above paragraph is included both “because it happened,” but I’m worried this may be taken as like I’m trying to portray myself as a lady magnet which isn’t a good look, what do you think?]

   I have a meeting with the Organization’s staff at “4:00 this morning” on this date in 2004, which is fine because I traveled back in time whilst hurtling through the darkness last night in a pressurized tin Ethiopian Airlines tube with wings. Ethiopia, you see, doesn’t use the same (Gregorian) calendar the rest of the world does, and by Ethiopian reckoning it is not April 23rd 2012 but 15th of Miaziah, 2004. I’ve posted on facebook informing my friends that I’ve traveled to 2004, and they are commenting that I should buy stock in Apple while I’m there..
   And time itself runs differently here: they don’t consider the clock to start counting from midnight till noon and again from noon to midnight but rather from dawn (standardized as what we’d call 6am) to dusk (standardized at what we’d call 6pm). So my meeting at 4 is actually at what I’d consider 10.
[is this date / time stuff too confusing? I definitely want to note their different date / time system but maybe there's a better way to go about it? Even deleting the "15th of Miaziah" but leaving the time and year difference might streamline it?]
   The staff of the Organization take me to their office which isn’t far from the hotel, and after we’ve gone over some things there we drive across town, which takes an hour in the city traffic, to meet with the Other Organization they are partnering with to put on this conference. The sky is grey and threatening to drizzle, and the air is chilly. At 7700 feet Addis Ababa is on par in altitude with American ski towns such as Mammoth and Aspen. It seems to me every fourth lot in the city is a construction site (and every fifth lot appears to be a bank), and I note a surprising number of women in dresses splattered with grey mud pushing wheelbarrows of concrete at the construction sites.
The Other Organization has the extremely creative name of OCAV-ODCA. In their office I meet Mr Mulufird, who may represent the Other Organization in Ethiopia, or is high up in the Ethiopian ministry of Agriculture, or both. He goes over the plan for the project:
   “Ethiopia has a long tradition of beekeeping” Mr Mulufird explains to me, “the Ethiopian government has organized unemployed youth to produce 60,000 frame hives per year. These are sold at a subsidized price to farmers throughout Ethiopia, but their traditions and knowledge are for traditional hives, not frame hives, and this is why we’ve organized this training.”
   “How much are they sold for?” I ask, pen hovering eagerly over notepad
   “800 birr” he says, and seeing me struggling to make sense of the 17.5 birr to 1 USD exchange rate he continues “that’s about $46. Which is a problem since the farmers only make an average of 200 birr per month, or around $12. But frame hives can produce twice as much honey as a traditional hive and Ethiopia has a very strong potential in beekeeping.”
   “With a frame hive of course you need a spinner to extract the honey, do they have spinners?” I ask
   “There’s some co-ops and NGOs that are making spinners available to them” he explains. I’m wondering just how easily accessible these resources are, but I guess I’ll find out.
   “For this project we’ll hold three different training sessions in different parts of Ethiopia. Bahir Dar and Finote Selam in the Amhara province to the northwest, and in the town of Korem in the Tigray province in the highlands of the northeast. In addition two other volunteers will be doing beekeeping projects in the mountains of the West and southern forests.”
   The ambitiousness of this project makes my head spin a bit. The projects in Nigeria had turned out alright but they weren’t expecting me to help revolutionize an industry on a national scale. I smile at Mulufird with a confidence I don’t feel.

   So there you go. Hopefully these two scenes bring the reader to Ethiopia without too much exposition, mention the time thing without too much confusion, and established a sense of narrative tension in the project's goals.
   This chapter lacks the historical-fiction flashbacks that Nigeria I had, partly because they didn't seem to play well with readers over at scribophile.com, though I suspect they may be a bunch of philistines. Experimenting with doing a few little things a bit different in the different chapters to get a feel for what works best and then maybe in the end I'll bring them all in concordance with eachother.

   Original entry covering these days.