Heading Home

Jim (Tumlinson) and I are sitting at the Duduville guest house waiting for our ride to the airport. Flights out of here to Europe typically take off well after my bedtime :-(.   Yesterday we made a trip to the beautify Lake Nakuru Park about 3 hrs north and slightly west of Nairobi.  It is very green and covered with all kinds of acacia trees - a very different landscape from what lies between here and Mombasa to the southeast. It was a nice way to finish up our time here.  See you all soon!

Lake Nakuru Lodge

Still catching up!

  On Thursday I made the trek to Kituti to give a seminar at South East University College where our colleague Muli is also a faculty member. The seminar was to lay the ground work for potential future collaborations between SEUCO and PSU. Muli will deliver a reciprocal seminar at PSU on July 20th.  I think my seminar was reasonably well received but what they really went wild over were the books I brought with me. Check out the photo of their band new library below and you will understand why. So thanks to all of you who donated so many wonderful books to this cause. And thanks to Sara for help me lug them over here. Seeing their faces (and their library) made it worthwhile! 

The SEUCO library.

Your text books very well received. Dean of the Ag College on the right. Muli and fellow faculty members on the left. 

Beautiful new classroom building at SEUCO - it was just a build site last year when we visited.

Catching up!

Sadly Sara and Jeremy  left us on Monday.  On her way out of Duduville, Sara made me promise that I would keep up with the blog. After 5 days of no blog entries, hopefully you can all now see why I needed to bring her along with me to Kenya!  It has been a busy and interesting week. Monday through Wednesday we held a training course for a few select Kenyan beekeepers and extension specialists from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. They were a VERY interactive group. We learned a lot from them and Muli assures me they learned a lot as well. 

James explains the importance of working bees slowly and gently. He is an EXCELLENT beekeeper!

Kilonzo teaches the beekeepers how to do a sugar roll and identify Varroa. 

Fiona gives a presentation on molecular biology and why this tool is useful to beekeepers. She did an outstanding job - even I understood - AND SHE GAVE  THE PRESENTATION IN SWAHILI!!!

The beekeepers learn about quality control in honey processing at the icipe honey processing area.

June 19th --- My day with Fiona

After my first week at ICIPE Fiona offered to take me out and show me the town and I have been excited about it ever since. Today was finally the day. Fiona came by the guest house around 10am and we left ICIPE for Nairobi (central). Fiona stopped a passing Matatu and we were on our way. It was so much fun! Once in town we when to her favorite coffee shop and had a great discussion while we drank our coffee. Fiona ordered a muffin for us to share and it was brought to our table warm, which I think is an excellent way to eat a muffin. We then to a bus to Fiona's parents house and I got to meet her mother and father as well as her older sister Linda and her daughter Andrea, and her younger sister Maria. We had a great lunch there and I really enjoyed hanging out with Fiona's family. Everyone had great smiles and her niece was a little fireball. In the afternoon, Linda took us over to the Westgate Mall and we window shopped and Maria, Fiona, and I took in a movie. After the movie Fiona and I started to head back to ICIPE and finally managed to find a bus headed that way. I had a really wonderful time hanging out in Fiona's city and I hope the next time she is in the United States I can show her "my city," NYC. Asante sana Fiona---Sara
(Sorry no pictures from today.)

June 18th --- The Long Way Home

Before we left the coast we had a little bit more tourist shopping. I went out to the beach to try to haggle for some gifts, I failed at haggling but bought some wonderful presents. As a convoy we also stopped at the mall just north of Mombasa again to pick up some more gifts and we were on our way back to ICIPE afterwards. I unfortunately slept most of the way so hopeful Maryann can add some substance to this entry. We stopped for a short lunch on the way and got stuck in a short traffic jam, getting to ICIPE around 18:30. We ate dinner at the guest house and crashed after a long day of travel.

June 17th---A Great Way to End Our Time at the Coast

What a great day! Almost as good as the safari day. We left the hotel in the morning and headed towards Mama Alice Caseka's farm.

She is a pretty amazing women. On her farm she has fruit, cows, goats, sheep, butterflys, stingless bees, and honey bees.

                                                                     Passion fruit vine

                                                                  Stingless bee colonies
She gave us a wonderful tour of her farm. She discussed how her farm works and how she keeps bees. She has all three kinds of hives: log, Kenyan top bar, and Langstroth.

                                          Log and Kenyan Top Bar Hives

                                                           Maryann and Alice Caseka
Her biggest problem here is the honey badger, but see has also seen other pests such as moths, and bats. For the log hives, Mama Caseka says the bees prefer the wood of a certain type of tree. This tree is naturally hollowed some what and the rest of the hollowing is done with tools. Her oldest log hives are up to 20 years old! While walking around for the tour some things I noticed about the farm:
   Everything is planted in holes so that the water collects around the plant.

                                                        Maize planted in dug out hole.
   Fencing is done with branches and sticks and there are clear pathways through the farm.

While on the tour Mama Caseka gave each of us three oranges picked right from her tree. Fiona had me smell the leaves and they smelled sweet and citrusy. After saying good-bye to Mama Caseka we headed for Malindi. We stopped to eat lunch along the way at a streetside restaurant. It was great to have everyone together.

                                                       Jeremy outside our lunchtime stop.
We then went to the Gedi Ruins, which is where the co-op for honey extraction is for local beekeepers. Here they also have a butterfly building, and buy pupae from surrounding farmers also.  The tourist part of the Gedi Ruins though is the remains of the buildings that existed 700-800 years ago when the east coast of Africa had the biggest slave ports in the world. This port was controlled by Arabs during this time. The ruins were amazing and Fiona, Maryann, and I got a private tour by Benson who has lots of experience here because he use to work here. There were lots of giant Baobab trees here and one of the largest had stairs building next to leading up to a landing near the top of the tree. It was unbelievable!

                                                           The landing in the tree.

                                           Looking down from the landing on the central court.

                                            Jim and I measuring the trunk of the Baobab tree.

                                                             The ruins at ground level.

                                           Maryann, Jim, Fiona, and Benson on our way out of
                                                                       Gedi Ruins.
Our next stop was one especially for Jeremy, the Galileo pillar in Malindi. This pillar is the third pillar of a set of three on the African continent and mark the three landings of Galileo on his famous journey to India. Jeremy had seen the first two and now has seen the complete set. Malindi is an interesting just to drive through. It is a pretty big city and has a fairly big muslim population. It was interesting to see this culture.

We then headed back toward Mtwapa, stopping at one more place along the way, a place Maryann called the boardwalk. The turned out to be Mida Creek, where there is a large mangrove. The interesting thing about this place is it is like an inner lake on the coast that is fed by the Indian Ocean. When we got there we enjoyed fresh coconut juice while we waited for the second vehicle to arrive. There were 6 or 7 guys there that were very energetic and reminded me of people who love and truely enjoy what do. It was great! So the boardwalk is actually a 260m length of "bridge that takes you out through the mangrove to a deck where you then get in a canoe and come by canoe back to parking lot. The "bridge" is many free swinging sections of bridge with rope as the rails.  I enjoyed this stop very much. Once we got out to the deck the boatmen sang us the kiswahili "Jambo" song,  complete with dancing.

                                            Mida Creek Nature Preserve (Dug out canoe)

                                                               Beginning of the boardwalk

                                                                 Submerged mangrove

                              Making our walk across: Kilonzo, Maryann, Fiona, Jim, Muli, James

                                                 Fiona, Jim, and Muli on the boardwalk.

                                                                  Everyone on the deck

                                                                Jeremy and Kilonzo

                                                          James, Fiona, Jim, and Muli

The canoe ride back was a lot of fun too. The boatmen continued singing as we made our way back.
We made it back to the hotel and got ready for our end of the week group dinner, at a neighboring hotel. It was a very nice dinner and was a wonderful way to say good-bye to the coast.---Sara

June 16th---Finishing up our work at the Coast

Since today was going to be a day of tying up loose ends we started later than usual. Jim and I took a walk along the beach, trying to avoid the beach boys. (The beach boys are what the they call the men that try to talk the tourist into safaris or snorkeling adventures etc.) Here are some shots of the beach:

James, Muli, and Kilonzo took Jeremy and I to a store near Mombasa for some shopping in the morning. We had some great gift buys. We returned to Travellers and the beekeeping crew had a meeting about the Beekeeping workshop to be held next week. We all came together for a great pizza lunch at the hotel. The beekeeping crew then went out to finish up our work doing some more aggression behavior tests, checking varroa mite boards, and checking on the development time experiment. Everything got finished up today and we should have a great day off on Friday.

Also I wanted to add some things that I have noticed over the time I have been here:

      Handshakes- Handshakes are as much a part of daily greetings as hellos, and there are many, many, many ways of saying hello here, to the point where I think it is sort off a game of who can say hello the most. Lol, it great to meet up with the gang in the morning and get such a greeting.

      Cats- There are cats everywhere. At ICIPE there are a couple of cats that hang around the cafeteria, and even at the hotel the cats act like kings, laying about all day, and coming to the dining area for any snatch of food they could get. Probably a great way to keep mice/rats under control.

---Sara

June 15th---Kwetu Training Centre

Our third location was Benson's hives at Kwetu Training Centre and we processed 6 colonies here.

                                          Just a part of the apiary here.
It was great working here because it was breezy and the bees were not bothering us while we were processing the samples so we didn't have to wear our veils.

                                          Jeremy and Muli examining brood for mites.

                                          Fiona, Ayuka, and I taking samples from the brood
                                          and examining mites.

                                          Fiona and I working hard. Doesn't this look fun!
The back drop here was beautiful too, just like the other places we have visited. In the afternoon while I entered data, the beekeeping group went back to site 2 to finish up the hygienic test and to site 1 to check the varroa mite boards. It was a very busy day but we are right on track for the week.
Later that night we saw the lunar eclipse of the full moon, what a sight!---Sara

June 14th---Our day in the Jungle with African Bees

Our second day of work brought us into the "jungle" as it was referred to, otherwise known as Mtepeni. This apiary belongs to a coastal beekeeper that volunteered his colonies to us for the project.  We processed 5 colonies here in the morning. These bees were more aggressive than the bees we worked with yesterday.

                                   Fiona and I taking samples in the "jungle" surrounded by banana,
                                                     paw-paw, and mango trees. Yum!

                                           James getting the smoker ready!

                                           We encountered some interesting things in this apiary.

                                          Interesting!?!

                                           Me, Benson, Nixon, and Fiona enjoying mangoes after
                                           a morning hard at work!
While I stayed back to enter data the beekeeping gang headed back to site 1 to follow-up on our experiments and to perform the aggression behavior test. ---Sara

                                            Jeremy recording the aggression test.

                                                     The bees attack!