Bee keeping

I (Jo) had the opportunity to go with Richard Odell (another expat who has lived here for 40 years) to visit a small community who have natural rock bee hives near their houses. INF is running a program set up to encourage the community to market the honey, comb and wax to exclusive markets with the idea that it will provide them an income.

They live in a small village that as the crow flies is close to Pokhara but it still takes over an hour in a jeep firstly through a wide river then up and over a hill using a 4WD road. Before long the village will be cut off from Pokhara due to rain and slips.

Driving through the river!

The hives are protruding out from large cliffs. In Spring and Autumn the beekeepers light a big fire under the hives, the bees are smoked out and a man tied to a rope (there are no harnesses or hardhats) is lowered down with a long pole and another rope he pulls the hives out with the pole and uses the rope at the end of the pole to lower them to the ground. It's very dangerous as the person holding the rope can't see or hear what is happpening due to the river, the fire and the thousands of angry bees flying around.

The other thing I found fascinating was that the hives moved - as you looked at them you would see what looked like a  Mexican wave of bees moving up them, then there would be no movement for a while until another wave would run up the hive! Unfortunately the video is too big to put on the blog due to our slow internet.

The rock face in the centre of the screen is where the hives were.

The cliff where the hives are - they are the black hanging things, on the right there is also an old one which is white.

The day we went we were seeing if they had used the money they were given to spend on training - unfortunately they had spent all the money on vegetables and wanted more for the training which we weren't so keen to give. We had a look at the hives and then bought some old honey comb from the ground back to the house which we cleaned a little, boiled it up and then left it to drip through a muslim bag. This then hardens and the wax is separated from the water allowing them to make candles - a commodity needed a lot in Nepal as electricity supply is so variable.

We also encouraged them to look at packaging what is available to sell the honey comb in as well as labels to make it attractive for tourists etc that will buy it. Again they appeared excited about the project especially when we said that this can produce money for them - we will visit again in three months to see if the momentum has been maintained.

 Richard with an old piece of comb that the locals thought was worthless which we took back....

 the comb being cleaned up.....

cooked up to turn the wax into a molten state (next to the dinner)

 Hanging out the wax to let the wax and water drip through and dry to separate. What is in the bag can still be used as ignition for the fire that they cook their dinner on (that is in the photo above) and the wax in the pot can be used for making candles.

Updates

Sorry its been a while since we've posted anything we've been a little busy the last few weeks. Heres what we've been up to while you all thought we were lazing around in the hot June Nepal sun:

Work
We've both now started work Mark at Green Pastures Hospital (GP) and Jo at Western Regional Hospital (WRH).

Mark is helping out at GP with some development work that is going on there. GP has received funding from a Finnish donor to build a new out patient department, replace a lot of old equipment around the hospital and carry out repairs on the existing buildings. The superintendant at the hospital is really stretched so Mark is working with her to make sure everything happens on time. At the moment he is working on finilising the details of the new building.

Jo's first proper day at WRH was yesterday. She arrived at work to find that the head of the department had gone on leave for a month and the only other physio there is a recent graduate that started work at WRH the day the head physio went on leave. Things could be a bit bumpy for the next week or two as they both work out together how the hospital runs.


English Bible Study for Nepalis
Some of the youth (youth in Nepal means 16 to 30 year olds) at our church approached us about whether we might be interested in running an English bible study as a way to help them practise their English and us practise our Nepali. We met the other night and it was decided that we would run a weekly bible study on Sunday evenings. We're both looking forward to this opportunity to make new Nepali friends and practise our Nepali.

Monsoon
The monsoon has finally come, or so they say. So far we haven't had that much rain but it has been raining most evenings but the days were very hot and humid. However, there was a lot more rain the day before yesterday and the temperature dropped to a nice cool 27 degrees. Today it is overcast, drizzly and feels very cold - I went to get my jersey to realise it is still 26 degrees!!! Not having the sweat running down our backs constantly is a nice change from the last month.

Swimming
We have found a hotel with a swimming pool that is cheap so we have got into the habit of going there to spend a Saturday afternoon after church lazing around in the pool and cooling down. We took our Nepali friends last week. The kids just loved being in the pool and were really happy until we dragged them out after hours as they were getting cold!!

Summerpan enjoying the swimming with Dad behind

 Arapan is loving it!!

Return to Bhalam  We've been planning for the last few weeks to sneak out to Bhalam to visit our village stay family so last weekend we jumped on our bikes and braved the heat. It took us an hour to ride out there and by the time we got there we felt like we'd been swimming the sweat was running off us. When we got home Jo discovered that the dye in her top had run and she was varying shades of blue from neck to waist.

When we got there Madhu was busy in the rice field planting rice so we helped her for a few hours to finish the last couple of fields. Its quite nice standing in cold mud on a hot day it's quite soothing. Fortunately there didn't seem to be any leaches around.

While we were staying with the family their bissy was very pregnant we arrived last weekend to the site of a two week old calf curled up in the bissy shed next to mum. Very cute!!!

The bissy are always tied up and many hours is spent bringing food to them. Baby can't reach mother so as to give lots of milk to the family.

Rice crops
We have enjoyed watching the process of planting rice. In the village we helped plant the dhanko biu. This is planted by seed in one area of the farm while corn is still the prevelant crop. About a month later when it has grown a little, the corn is harvested, the fields fill with rain and the seedlings are planted out for the crop. If it is a good season with lots of rain 2 crops can be grown using this method.
Some people are now digging a hole in one part of the field, planting the rice and also putting fish in the field. The fish swim around and fatten in while sleeping in the hole. When harvest time comes the water is drained, fish are harvested and then so is the rice!!

Mark and Madhu planting rice

More rice paddies can be seen in the background

Jo helping out!!

This photo was taken in February

And this is the same spot two weeks ago!

 Mark has bought a Nepali drum and the landlord who lives downstairs has been teaching Mark how to play it. While it looks like he supports England he cheered hard for NZ and congratulated us on drawing with Italy!!!

Kayaking

Well, last Friday we finished full time language and decided to celebrate by having a short chutti (holiday). As avid white water kayakers we've both been eyeing up the rivers over here so we decided to take advantage of our time off and do some paddling (whitewater kayaking slang for those not familiar). With the monsoon on the way (well it was but then a typhoon in Pakistan pushed it back a few days) we decided to pick an easier river in case it arrived while we were on the river and we didn't want to be on a river with the rapids going from fun to pure survival. We chose the Seti river, two other people joined us in a raft, one from Canada and one from the UK, they were great people to hang out with.

We had four Nepali guides from Paddle Nepal (www.paddlenepal.com), two of who were in kayaks and two were in the raft. The guys were lovely and glad to speak Nepali to us. One kayaker in particular was very good at surfing a Blisstick Mac1 (good to see New Zealand built kayaks over here).

We set out on a bus to the get in - the rafters got a full safety briefing and we were told to get in a kayak and go. The river turned out to be very flat except for a few rapids all of which had a big hole hidden in it somewhere. We took turns getting stuck in them. The scenery was great and it was so nice to see a part of Nepal where there are so few people.

We camped on the side of the river. We were given tents to sleep in but it was too hot so we slept out under the stars which was great!!

The food was incredible. We pulled over on a beach after a few hours paddling on the first day, a barrel was bought ashore and the guides proceeded to make a coleslaw, produced meat, bread, fruit and biscuits. Dishes were all rinsed multiple times in a series of 5 buckets with iodised water. Dinner started with popcorn, moved to vegetable noodle soup that was made from scratch as Maggi hasn't made it to this country yet. This was proceeded by pasta, potato fries and a milk sauce. I hope our kayaking buddies in NZ are taking notes as this is what we expect now. The leftovers were made into a pasta and tuna salad with bread for lunch the next day after we had had a breakfast of porridge, pancakes and toast!!!

Sorry paddling buddies, as we were with a raft we couldn't stop and take video of us going down the big rapids!!
We went home on a local bus which we think the Nepalis paid $10NZD to get our gear and six people the 2.5hrs back to Pokhara and then we got delivered to the office, not the bus park like everyone else!! However, the penalty was a bumpy ride which got worse the closer we got to home, the opposite to NZ - start off on a bunpy gravel road and it gets better. Jo hit her head on the roof going over one bump - that drew blood and some very startled glances from the Nepalis - the roof was a good height for Nepalis but not expats!!!!

Jennie (Canada) and Paul (UK) at the end before they got on a bus and went to Chitwan where they saw rhinos, rode elephants and saw a python eat a baby deer!!!!

Mariams Birthday Party

One of the INF staff, a very lovely Christian lady had a birthday party. She has a wonderful husband named Nandaram. The party was at their house and started with a great feed and then then Nepali dancing started and it was the Nepalis role to teach the expats how to change a lightbuld  one hand) while turning the tap on and off (the other hand) which worked when we weren't laughing really hard!!! The photos speak for themselves.

Mark is eating and talking with Grishma, the pastor of our church.

The expats trying to do co-ordination games!!!