February

I have been busy lately, and I have been packing my camera around a little more.  First my brother and I spend a morning pruning some of our families’ orange trees as some of the limbs were dead and not producing fruit.  By pruning them next year the new growth will produce fruit.   

PaKonte working

We had an audience, and by their faces you might thing something bad was happening but it was fine.

The onlookers

Later the same day I was in my garden and one of the small kids ran back and yelled “Forday Forday Drumoo” which is a giant bush rat, so I followed them to the side yard where my brother had caught it. 

Lion Vs. Drumoo

 It wasn’t happy about being caught and Lion was also trying to get his share of it.

 

The final hour

He ended up killing it and giving it to my two younger brothers to skin and prepare.  They just boiled it with jimbo, onion and some salt.  I went to the bush for the day and when I got back in the evening they had ate it all and nothing was left for me. 

Skinning is a family activity

I got my new Bee Suit a few weeks back and have gone beekeeping in it three times since I have gotten it.  It is amazing!! It fits me perfect and I can move and bend without getting stung.  I can even swing a machete and cut brush in it without it tearing or getting stung.

Yes, I brought a Hickory to Africa

Yayah and Edee

There are a couple wild hives in the bush just outside my village and so my friend Yayah and my brother Edee decided to check them out.  Edee found one of them so he wanted to go and get some honey.  It is still soon after the rainy season and swarming period so the bees haven’t been real productive.  I told him that there might not be much honey but we could go and see. 

Beehive

The first hive was in an oil palm tree that had fallen into a cashew tree.  They climbed the cashew tree and smoked the hive some to get them to move off of the comb to see if there was any honey.  There wasn’t enough honey to harvest it so we all decided to wait a few more months and see if they would work a little harder and make us some honey.  

Yayah and Edee in the Cashew tree

The next hive was on my father’s land where he grows rice on part of it and the other part he leaves as a forest.  The hive is one of the largest I have ever seen.  It is hanging in a large Senegalese Rosewood tree.  Both Yayah and Edee climbed the tree and smoked it but this hive also didn’t have enough honey to harvest.  I cleared around under it and we called it a night.   

The large hive in the Rosewood

Friday night after my beekeeping and a nice cold bucket bath I went into my family’s house.  When I went in they were eating fresh bananas so I joined them and chatted and ate fresh bananas.  My mother split a banana and gave a piece to one of my brothers but the piece she gave was the one that my youngest brother Salifuu wanted and so he through a small tantrum that he does sometimes.  I had my camera showing my father the beekeeping pictures so I snapped a quick picture of him. When I showed everyone they all laughed except him. 

The Happy Camper