Tuesday, February 9, 2010

A Week in the Mud

Last week we headed down to Chiawa, an area on the north shores of the Zambezi river. Our job was to assemble & distributed 150 hives to 70 people on a rental basis. It was a lot of hard work, but the team was strong and we managed to get them out there.

This week I'm heading up to start a new phase of rent-to-own.

The stories are in the pictures. Enjoy.


Stuck again. My ability to drive in the mud is fairly limited, who knew.


James built his own hive to save money and still be able to sell honey this June.


There was a huge community effort in getting the hives assembled, very impressive cooperation and I guess finger painting is fun no matter where you are.



Here I am with some of the crew.


Piles of wood waiting to be assembled into beehives.


We worked with a group to extract honey and wax from the comb. Everyone enjoyed this.


Each hive weighs at least 20 lbs. These women are tough, they carry baby and 50lbs on the head for kilometers.


Part of the crew parked beside a baobab tree. These trees can be 800 years old!!


We're walking back to Joster's house as he carried little Jane.