In pursuit of honey...

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!

Goings on in Bayanga

Saturday: the day of our arrival in Bayanga.  We arrived in time for lunch and a party that evening for a couple of gorilla researchers that are on a one week break in Bayanga.  They spend 2 to 3 months at a time in the middle of the jungle tracking female gorillas, writing down all their observations.  Not something I would be particularly interested in, but hey. 

Sunday: We went to the local EBB church and were warmly greeted by the pastor's wife.  The pastor in Bayanga moved here a year ago after having spent 6 years at our church in Gamboula so he was eager to have us over and to hear the latest news from Gamboula.  The rest of Sunday we relaxed, being especially tired after our long trip.

Monday: The plan was to head south to visit two villages but the road was rained out.  This seems to be a chronic problem in the rainforest in the rainy season.  Go figure.  Instead we worked in the rain around the centre here, dividing and planting trees in the nursery and doing a bit of laundry in the river.  You have to enjoy camping to really get a kick out of life out here.  If you don't enjoy camping this life can seem awfully onerous and full of inconveniences. 

Tuesday: The road is a bit drier today so we ventured off with Constant, the EBB pastor and a local Aka guy who is interested in learning all about fruit trees and giving advice on planting etc.  I was quite excited to have JP with us as he is showing a lot of initiative when it comes to trees.  He has asked us to come to his garden to give him advice on planting trees and such.  He is the kind of guy you want to really give a lot of attention too in the hopes that he will help other Aka in the future with tree planting and gardening.  We stopped first in a village called Lijonbo, a village with a mix of Aka and villagers.  They have two churches, one for the Aka and one for the villagers and many people had nice big jackfruits in their yards from a previous visit Constant made their a year ago.  A big part of our job is to reinforce the work of guys like Constant who are fully capable of doing the agroforestry work but need access to the resources to do it.  We continued on and landed in the last village there is in this part of CAR.  We were on the only road south out of Bayanga and it ends at the Sangha river.  The other side of the river is Cameroon.  Here the Aka and the villagers live pretty well harmoniously, having the same church and the same school.  We were pleasantly surprised to find a group of Aka houses with trees doing really well.  Of 15 trees Constant planted last year all of them have survived and flourished, and these are people who wouldn't dream of watering their trees at all in the dry season.  God truly blessed these trees and some are even starting to flower already.  We planted another 10 trees here and we plan on returning to help them get their own nursery going so they can have trees to plant around their gardens in the future.  In another 2 or 3 years these will be very productive places food wise and will help change the course of the health of these people.  What a privilege to be involved in such work.

Wednesday: After having our vehicle briefly inspected by the local mechanic we set off north to visit 3 villages that had seminars in them last year.  After a brief stop in KP to say hi and look at the trees we headed for Wango, the site of an orchard and fish basins that a Swedish guy helped with this past year.  You can't fault people for wanting to help even though they have gaps in their own knowledge, so we took a look and made some suggestions for improvement.  We then did some 'door to door treevangelism' as we are now calling it.  We go from hut to hut asking the owners if they would like a tree planted at their house.  If they agree then we help them pick out a suitable planting place, give them instructions on how to take care of it and how to eat it and then we are off to the next hut.  When you return for another visit you can see who the people are that are serious about taking care of trees and then offer them further help the next time.  Those that didn't take of the trees get no further help.  From there we drove another further 50 km towards the direction of the Congo to a town called Liboko.  Here we were greeted by the local pastor of a well integrated Aka/villager church.  They even had a Swedish built guest house that we were able to stay in.  We had a great meal of gozo, beef (that we bought and brought with us) and coco, my favourite green that is abundant in the forest here.  Coco is a smallish leaf that grows on vines in the forest.  They collect the leaves, make a little packet of them and then cut them up really fine so that it looks like shredded grass.  Cooked with palm oil and peanut butter it makes a delicious and nutritious addition to gozo.  That night the Aka started up drumming and singing and dancing beside the church and our guest house and so we joined in the merriment for a while before retiring for the night.  It was one of those moments where there is no mistaking that you are truly living in the heart of Africa and that you know few people will ever experience what you just did.

Thursday: After bread and coffee we rounded up the few Aka who didn't go hunting for the day, including the head guy most interested in fruit trees and oil palm.  We went to their group nursery and helped them transplant about 30 oil palm seedlings.  Afterwards, we did a mornings worth of treevangelism and planted some 40 fruit trees.  I have high hopes for this village and especially for one Aka guy who is quite interested in fruit trees.  He has planted several seeds on his own initiative and has started planting trees in his own garden.  After a lunch of gozo and coco we were off for Nola, the large town half-way between Gamboula and Bayanga.  We arrived in the afternoon and took the opportunity to wander the market and get a few groceries (it is much less expensive there than in Bayanga).  I also bought a pair of orange knock-off Nike shorts for $4.00 so I could swim in the river here.  Darren and Constant took a look at the truck since we were having some trouble with it on the drive to Nola.  To our surprise we found that we were completely without rear brakes because of a major rear differential oil leak on both sides.The whole brake assembly was totally gummed up with oil.  We managed to buy some oil to top up the differential and then put it all back together in time for dinner.  Yup, you guessed it, we had gozo and coco, cooked with fish.  Their was also a bowl of some meat from some forest animal that Darren and Constant enjoyed.  I stuck with the coco and fish sauce. 

Friday: After a good nights sleep at the pastor's house we found our only passenger (the pygmy evangelist from Bayanga) and Constant and headed for Lopo, just south of Nola, in order to find diesel and gasoline to bring back to Bayanga.  We also dropped Constant off so he could traffique his way back to Gamboula.  The whole country seems to be out of gasoline (for the motor bike) but we were able to find diesel for the truck.  We made our way back to Bayanga, about 4 hours driving time, with no hassles or mishaps, just stops to say hi to Aka on the way, and stops to buy plantains and forest fruits.  We arrived in good time to enjoy lunch with the Raul and Diana.  We had a beautiful nights sleep and spent 3 hours Saturday doing our washing in the river.  I wish I could adequately describe what we saw and did during this week but it is better left for when we can talk in person.  Suffice it to say that we were filled with hope for these displaced people and were encouraged by their gentle and humble spirits. 

12 hours, 175 kilometres!

Wanted to write a quick note to say that we did make it to Bayanga and only a day late.  After getting a little late start in Gamboula, Constant, Darren, Rosa (cute 4 year old) and I started our way to Bayanga.  The goal was to stop in Bilolo, the half way point to have lunch around noon with some SIL folks doing language transcription.  We started the trip with Darren as our chauffeur and we were doing fine until we hit our first barrier.  It is a curious thing here to have border points within the country and Constant is very dutiful at making sure we stop at each one in order to maintain good relations with all the military men.  At the first stop we met a very bothersome guard who wanted to see in the back of the truck, asked us about guns, poked around the inside of the cab and then asked to see our passports.  He stalled us for quite a while but we didn't have to pay him anything thanks to Constant.  As we carried on we had to go through several more checkpoints but the road was good and I am sure we reached 60 km/hour at some points though we don't know for sure as the odometer and speedometer are both broken on the truck. 

 

We were doing fine and were making decent enough time until we reached a fork in the road.  Neither Darren nor I remembered the fork and it was Constant's first time on this road so we chose right.  There was a sign pointing to the left and it had the name of a sawmill on it.  After driving about 5 minutes down this road we second guessed ourselves.  Beware the second guess.  We recalled Roy saying something about choosing the wrong fork, ending up at dead-end, wasting a lot of time, blah, blah blah.  They key thing was, which way did he say was the wrong way? So we turned around and headed down the left hand road.  We must have travelled some 20 km down it before we came upon a sentinel who informed us that we were in fact not on the road to Bilolo but a dead end road ending at the sawmill.  So we turned around and headed back for the RIGHT way.  Up to this point Coco, our dog, who was also on this journey with us, had thrown up 3 times in the car and we had to stop each time to clean it up.  We also switched drivers at the turn around and finally ended up in Bilolo around 2:30 (2 hours later than we thought we would).  Just before entering Bilolo we were stalled again by a very drunk rain barrier guard who inisisted it had just rained and that we pay him to let us pass.  Reasoning with this guy took a while but eventually we got through.  We had a quick lunch with some missionary friends in Bilolo and were about to move on when it started to really pour.  This is a problem in two ways. One is that rain can make certain roads as slick as ice, such as the road between Bilolo and Nola, the next largest stopping point.  The second problem is that they also have rain barriers that close the road off in the event of a rain.  Fortunately, the barrier just outside of Nola was manned by a member of the EBB who Constant easily persuaded to let us pass.  It was much to my angst that he did let us pass as the worst and wettest section of road was ahead of us.  I nearly cried on the way into Nola I was so afraid we were going to slide right off the road and into a ditch, wrecking someone else's truck.  Constant did a fine job in getting us through and he arrived in the outskirts of Nola at about 5:30, just after the bac (river ferry) closed.  Constant went about trying to find the ferry operator which was interesting but he managed it and by 6:30 we were crossing the first of two rivers.  It wasn't until after 7:00 that we were on the second bac and arriving into Nola.  We knew we could go no further so we drove around until we found the EBB church and the pastor's house.  The pastor was kind enough to make us a late night dinner of gozo, meat and fresh boiled peanuts (not just a thing for Georgians) around 9:00.  The pastor's house in Nola is an old Swedish missionary house so there was plenty of room and beds for us to stay the night.  Constant ended up sleeping in the cab of the truck in order to keep an eye on our stuff.  Good chauffeur! 

 

After coffee and bread we were on our way to Bayanga and we made it here about 11:30 Saturday morning, just in time for lunch.  I can't say it was a harrowing adventure but as close as I would like to come.  I am a bit of a road wimp and would probably prefer hours in a canoe to a slip-sliding road. 

 

...Since arriving we spent Saturday afternoon unpacking and visiting people from 'the project', the WWF project in the area, seeing how we could help their development arm of things.  Sunday was a good day of rest and learning from Raul and Diana, the American missionaries here.  We had hoped to go to a village 40 km south of here but we woke up to thunder and rain this morning so we opted to work around the centre's nursery today and plan on going south tomorrow.  Wednesday we will start our way back north, stopping for the night in Wango, then a second night in Liboko, then we will drop off Constant in Nola where he will traffique back to Gamboula and we will go back to Bayanga until the end of the month.  There is no shortage of work here and no shortage of people to help.  This morning I went and helped/watched as Diana went to see a pygmy guy down the road with a huge boil that had burst on his leg.  Quite painful looking, a little disgusting and definitely reason for caution.  We are hearing reports of Ebola across the border in Congo about 100 km away and we are hearing lots of warnings about not eating any dead animals you find in the forest.  Hmm, I don't think we will have any problem with that advice.  Don't plan on eating many live ones either for that matter until we hear better news from Congo.  Don't worry mom, we wouldn't think of eating monkey!

 

Will write more when we return from this weeks adventures.