Last but not least!

We promised one last blog about our sixth week in Tanzania, and since we always keep our promises (ahum ahum), we can present you our last blogpost. As you might know, the last week of our project is already far behind us, but let’s say ‘Better late then never’.

As we were getting in the flow the previous week in the Mzumbe region, we wanted to stay in that flow and do things in the same way during our stay in the Mvomero region. You could read in our last blogpost that we were waiting on Nico and Chowo to go to Mvomero. That’s where this blogpost starts:

We wanted to travel very early to Mvomero but as you could read, there was one problem: Nico wasn’t at his office and Chowo wasn’t even informed about our trip to Mvomero. After some time of looking for Nico and waiting, Faith went to the VLIR office. Once there, Mara said that Nico was preparing his trip to America and he wouldn’t be able to join us to Mvomero and because of his absence on our trip, the university didn’t want to pay for our hotel and transport costs. Without informing us on this problem, they just thought we wouldn’t go to Mvomero anymore. Making them clear that we would pay the costs, because we could do a lot of work, Chowo finally picked us up at 11h at our house and drove us to Turiani (Mvomero). He stopped at our hotel to put our stuff in our room and after that we went to the carpenter to check if he had finished our beehives (he had promised the hives would already be finished on Friday). The hives weren’t finished at all and in our opinion he didn’t even work a whole day in the last week on our hives. He now promised the hives would be ready on Wednesday, although we didn’t really believe him. After we had lunch at the hotel, we went to the village Lungo (this is the village of the group we helped by cleaning their beehouse). We gave them the beekeeping suits and the gummy boots we bought. They were really happy and they told us that one of the cleaned hives was already colonised by bees. We hope the rest will follow soon.

Afterwards we went to the group of the young boys for harvesting honey. Just before darkness we arrived at the apiary. It was on a hillside. We climbed the hill (well, at least Faith, Milan and Jonas) and put on our beekeeping suits. Because Milan didn’t feel really confident about his suit (it didn’t fit well on his boots, so there were some gaps), he went back to the car. We started opening some hives. All hives were a bit messy and some of them were missing some top bars. All the hives had one thing in common: they didn’t contain any honey! It were all small colonies. When we asked how long the bees were in the hives, the boys said it was about four months (a bee colony will only be productive after one year). A bit disappointed we decided to stay an extra day in Mvomero, so we could harvest hives that were colonised for more than a year.

The next morning, we checked if the carpenter was still working on the hives. Guess what: everything was the same as the day before. He told us he had had a meeting and that’s why he didn’t work on the hives. Doing business isn’t always easy as you can see. As our initial plan was to bring the hives to the group with the cocoa plantation this day, we had to reorganise our stay in Mvomero. Tuesday was a day we only could wait for the hives to be finished. Chowo took this really liturally. He went to the carpenter and supervised him while he was working. The carpenter said to Chowo that he would work till midnight, so the hives would be ready on Wednesday. In the evening, we went back to the group with the boys. As Milan found his way to be sure no bees could get into his suit, he joined Faith and Jonas with the harvest (tape is always the solution). We opened some hives, but there was only one comb filled with honey in the four hives we checked. The hives were also missing some top bars. We made an appointment with the boys to explain the honey processing and when Chowo drove us back to the hotel, we passed by the carpenter. The only noise we heard was a snoring guard. Our dear carpenter was already gone and the hives weren’t finished.

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On Wednesday we went back to the boys after we visited the carpenter. He said his hammer and saw were stolen, so he couldn’t work on the hives. After all these false promises, we didn’t know what to believe anymore. Chowo drove us to the boys where we made a honey filter. We also asked if Milan and Jonas could stay here for some extra days after our holidays. Karibu (you’re welcome) they said. In the afternoon we went back over the bumpy road (if we say bumpy in this blog, we mean really really bumpy) to the beekeeping group with the cocoa plantation in the village Kwalikweje. As the road was too bumpy and unsafe to descend by night, we had to stay in Kwalikweje for the night. One of the beekeepers showed us his hostel (it were 3 rooms with 2 old mattresses). At 17h, we walked together with the beekeepers to their beehives. For this, we had to cross a river and walk trough some coffee plantations. We saw a hive hanging high in a tree. After preparing ourselves, the beekeepers took the hive out of the tree. When we opened the hive, we saw it was just a young colony that didn’t had enough honey. It was hard to make this clear to one of the beekeepers. He was handling the hive very wildly and was very stubborn and wanted to cut out all of the combs. After this unsuccesful harvest, we went to the second hive. The stubborn beekeeper said he didn’t need the smoker. As we didn’t want to push the beekeepers, we said it was okay, but we warned them the bees would be more aggressive. When one of the beekeepers climbed up the tree, we noticed the bees became really aggressive, so after a while the stubborn beekeeper asked for the smokers. When we wanted to take the hive out of the tree, it fell down and we all started to run away. As the bees didn’t seem that aggressive after falling out of the three, we approached the hive. The stubborn beekeeper started to cut out some combs even if we said that they didn’t contain honey. A little bit frustrated we went back to the village where we ate some Wali kuku, prepared by one of the beekeepers, and after that we went to our hostel. As it was going to be a cold night, Chowo put on two beekeeping suits to keep himself warm. It felt a bit like camping.

After a cold night, we climbed up the hill early in the morning to see the beekeepers again. They made some nice breakfast for us: cooked bananas and cassava with chai tea (we also got some presents as you can see on the picture). After breakfast we made the well known honey filter (the three bucket system) together with them. After that, we started selecting the honeycombs from the brood combs. Apparently not much honey was harvested the day before. The beekeepers took us to their new apiary and we were very happy that we spent our money well. If the carpenter finished his hives, they could definitely be placed in this apiary. We went back to Turiani and took some beekeepers with us. We hoped the carpenter kept his promise, but when we arrived, they were still making the roofs and painting the hives. Although the hives weren’t finished yet, we took some pictures with the beekeepers. After the photoshoot, we went back to Morogoro. When we arrived at the campus, we noticed their was no elektricity (the problem was fixed Friday afternoon).

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Friday was our last day at the campus. Milan and Jonas went to Morogoro to buy some honey jars for the beekeeping group of Tony (they had harvested 2 more times since we went to Turiani and had about 50 kg). In the mean time, Femke and Faith wrote some postcards for our sponsors. In the evening Faith and Jonas helped Tony by filling some honey jars. We ended our stay at the campus with a dinner. Because Nico and Aurelie were out of the country, we had dinner we Chowo and his wife and kids and Mara. At first, the kids were very shy, but when they discovered Femke’s smart phone and Jonas’s camera, the only thing they wanted to do is taking pictures. After the dinner we said goodbye and went to sleep.

On Saturday, Faith, Femke and Jonas travelled from Morogoro to Dar Es Salaam to take the ferry to Zanzibar. Milan stayed at the campus to wait for his mother and niece to come. Now we’re already the last day of our stay in Zanzibar, we can present you some holiday pics. (I can say that Zanzibar is not really my thing and that I’m happy I go back to Morogoro for the project).

Milan and I will now stay till the 25th of August with the beekeeping group of the young boys, but unfortunatly there will be no blog. So, this is the time we have to say goodbye. Well, maybe not for ever! There are some plans to continue this project the coming year, so stay tuned!

We would really like to thank all our sponsors, Wereld Missie Hulp for their donation and of course all of the people who helped on making this project succesfull. Asante sana!

Sweet kisses and sweaty huggs, Faith, Femke, Jonas and Milan