#6 shopping, shipping and chapping

Here we are again! Surprised? So are we! We’re clearly getting the hang of this blogging concept, such a shame that our time here is almost over tough… We know it’s a cliché and you probably all know what’s coming, but we’re going for it anyway: WOW, time has really flown by! Currently, we’re at the beginning of our sixth week and ready to fill you in on our exciting schedules of the past week and a half.

We kicked this period off with a beekeeping adventure in the notorious Kwelikwiji mountains: two hours of climbing an extremely steep little pathway with all our gear. Since these paths are not pikipiki-friendly, one of the local beekeepers took a new beehive all the way to the top in the typical on-top-of-your head African way. It was incredible to see how effortlessly she did this. After reaching the top of the mountain and a few successful colony divisions later, we descended to the lower village to enjoy some well-deserved local pineapples, sugar canes and even some fresh honey from stingless bees! This was a very pleasant way to restore our sugar-levels and the whole adventure resulted in some impressive picture material.

The next morning we checked on our quickly maturing baby: the collection house. We were pleasantly surprised by the hardworking people plastering the walls, who were making it look like a piece of papayacake. Afterwards, we visited Josephs beekeeping group, where we were welcomed with some durian fruit. The perfect opportunity to put the smelly myth about this fruit to the test! We were told you cannot bring a durian fruit on an airplane, because it smells like puke. With a heavy heart we took our first bite and… it tasted delicious! Leaving us behind rather confused. But enough of this, back to business! While enjoying our fruit, we talked about the collection house and the (close) future facilities that will be available, which was welcomed by very enjoyable enthusiasm! In the afternoon, we headed back to Kwelikwiji to begin a session of value addition. The group had prepared some samples of their own wax and we used these to explain how to make candles and wood polish. Thereafter, we grabbed this opportunity to demonstrate a better way to hang their hives.

After two weeks of tanning in Turiani, it was time for us to drive back to our headquarters and start the next mission:

Location? Mzumbe University, Morogoro Duration? Five days Goal? Shopping for materials

Difficulty level? Expert

Succeeded? … YES

Details:

The honey processing house, which is being build super-duper-fast in Turiani, has currently reached the state of ‘ruwbouw-klaar’. The next step contains fixing the interior and the needed materials. In our previous blog, you could already read about the home-made honey press, but the house will need a lot more of these kind of processing materials! Therefore we drove back to Morogoro, a big city in Tanzania, where we managed to tick off the boxes on our shopping list. Unfortunately, we have to disappoint you on the absence of pictures of our shopping days, which is probably due to the dusty Morogoro streets being a bit less attractive than the beautiful Turiani mountains.

Gas fires, weighing scales, refractometre, chairs & working desks, cooking equipment, clean gloves & skirts, storage buckets, fire extinguisher, jars, … you name it, the processing house now has it! Okay, writing it down like this, might make it look a little bit too easy… In reality, we needed three whole days to find all these materials and get them to the processing house. Yolan and Jasper travelled along with the transport truck on the bumpy road connecting Morogoro and Turiani, while Jonas, Margo and Tine stayed in Morogoro to fine-tune some preparations for the next week. They made a step-by-step guide posters for the processing house and a wooden mold to make candles. In the meantime, our two boys in Turiani had completely lost track of time (classic) and the last bus from Turiani back to Morogoro had already left. Therefore, they decided to overnight in Turiani and used the next day to help preparing the floor for tiling and check on the hives that we ordered with the local carpenters.

After this romantic getaway, Yolan and Jasper returned to Mzumbe to be reunited with their team-mates and we could again, Bee-Together😉. Sound like a lot of hard work, don’t you think? That’s what we also thought. Therefore we decided to reward ourselves with a trip to the nearby Ruaha national Park which was magnificent! (This was due to our chilled out peace-and-love reggae guide, the excellent tanning time and the fact that we spotted two leopards! But okay, enough about or short moment of voluntourism.) This brings us to the beginning of our sixth and last project week and means that our next blog will be the last. As we can hear your hearts breaking all the way to Tanzania, we will do our very best for this last masterpiece and will deliver it to you as soon as possible!