As with all good stories, this one comes with a very sweet ending.
Tuesday started as any ordinary day does in Bayanga, that is until Raul came
knocking at the door to see if we wanted to join his kids and a couple Aka
on a honey hunt. While I am not into hunting large animals of the variety
that require bleeding and skinning, I have no qualms when it comes to
hunting insects. Call me biased, but hunting that ends in a sweet reward is
my kind of hunting. We all piled in the truck and drove about 20km into the
forest where we were deposited on the side of the road to be picked up again
at 3:00 in the afternoon.
The Aka are very skilled at honey hunting and are able to spot potential
hives 15 metres up a tree while walking on a vine enmeshed forest path. The
hive we were after had been spotted during an animal hunt a month earlier
and Jacques, our lead guide, hadn't forgotten where it was. Jacques and two
others flanked us in front and behind as we walked about an hour through
forest paths that you and I would have got lost on. The forest here is
quite similar in feeling to the west coast rainforest except for the
abundance of vines. You are constantly being grabbed at, tripped and
otherwise taken captive by all manner of vines. I am happy to say I only
fell on my face once and our guides (and Darren) were gracious enough not to
laugh. Even though the walk was only an hour it was still quite tiring
because of all the extra effort put out battling vines and picking up your
feet-like a good stair master workout.
When we finally did reach the tree the real work began. The hive in
question was about 50 feet or 15 metres up a very large trunked tree.
Fortunately for our guides, a large vine was growing right along side the
tree all
the way up to the height of the hive. They sent the youngest guy up to
check out the hive to see if there was any honey in it. By the time I had
my camera out he was already up in the tree, having had scaled the vine like
it was a fireman's pole. Once it was confirmed that there was in fact honey
they set about making a fire. They use a piece of dried treed sap that they
light with a match as a form of pygmy 'girl scout juice' to help get the
fire going. This is especially helpful in a rainforest where there is a
lack of dry tinder. With the fire going nicely they went around collecting
two varieties of leaves. The first was branches with small leaves that they
made two piles with. The second were long, wide, platter like leaves on
which they would eventually put the honey comb. While the fire was doing
it's thing, another
guy was out collecting vines and joining them together to make a 15 metre
long rope. On the end of the rope they attached a basket that they put
together on the spot out of even more vines. In the basket they made a bed
of the large leaves. When all these preparations were finished they took
hot coals form the fire and wrapped them up in the bundles of small leaves
and tied their packages together with vines. The two oldest guys, with
Jacques at the lead, scaled their way up the tree with a bundle of smoking
leaves in their armpits.
The rest of the process involved setting the smoking leaves into the hive of
bees in order to smoke them out. Once they were satisfied that it was
'safe' to reach their arm into a huge bee hive inside a tree they started
pulling out the combs. The good combs full of honey were placed in the
basket and the old, trash combs were thrown down towards our heads like
manna from heaven. We sat on the ground eating the comb they threw down.
Once the basket was full they lowered it down to the ground with the vine
where it was unloaded into a waiting basin of leaves on the ground. Up went
the basket again where it was filled yet again with yummy, sweet, sticky
honey. Once the hive was cleaned out of honey the two guys descended and we
proceeded to temporarily package up our honey, that is after we all had our
fill of fresh comb. I say we temporarily packaged it up because we were in
quite a hurry to move to a another location to do a good job of it. With
all that honey just sitting there we were a perfect target for those poor
displaced honey bees as well as sweat bees, about the worst part of the
rainforest.
Let me digress a moment. Sweat bees are a tiny little bee, about the size
of a gnat, a generic gnat that is, that don't sting but are attracted to
sweat. And if there is one thing you do in a tropical, humid rainforest,
it is sweat. They hover around your face, crawl into your eyes, land in
your ears, stick in your nose and generally drive you crazy. If you are on
the move they are no problem but stop for any length of time and you are
had.
So, we carried on a ways with our honey until we came to a spot where the
large leaves grew. They divided out the honey amongst us and we ended up
with 6 neat packages of honey all tied up in leaves and secured with vines.
No need for the Walmart shopping bag with all the things God made at our
disposal. The rest of the day we spent wandering the forest, picking
various fruits, well the Aka, not us as the fruits were also about 50 feet
up a tree. On our return home Darren squeezed out all our honey and
filtered it through a cloth and in the end we alone had about 750ml of
honey. It is the sweetest most unique honey I have ever had and I am most
grateful to our guides for sharing it with us. This was one of those
experiences you can't put a price on, one of those things that never in your
life you imagined you would do. It is a goal of our work here and the work
of the project that the Aka be able to retain this traditional knowledge and
the area they need in which to hunt and fish, while at the same time
becoming self sufficient in the ability to garden and live amongst the
villagers.
Mmmh, honey hunting gives such sweet rewards!
