Camp Nyika Day 3- Banana and Bee Day

I started the day off in the classroom teaching beekeeping theory; including the benefits of beekeeping, as well as how to make a budget for getting started, the demensions of a 29 top bar box hive, and selecting an apiary to hang hives in once they are ready. I also talked about using local materials like maize sack suits, and bamboo hives instead of expensive planks.

After teaching theory we went outside and made a local materials hive as a group. We split bamboos and attached them to two end plates with rina (the wires pulled out of used tires) and nails through bottle top washers to permanently fix them into place. We baited the top bars with melted bee's wax and made a cradle out of eucalyptus branches to hang the hive. After finding a good site in a near-by forest we hung the hive and made a mixture of clay and cow dung to seal any gaps between the bamboo. After putting grass on the cover to keep the black plastic cool, and applying grease to the wires to keep the ants out, our hive was ready to be occupied! We snapped a few kung fu photos to celebrate.

Unfortunately my beekeeping took most of the day (I even teach at Dan speed!) So Matt only had a couple hours to do Banana propagation, which luckily was all he needed. He presented a very clear and straight forward demonstration of how to do split-comb propagation. He dug up a mature banana tree that hadn't fruited yet and cut it down to the core of it's root base. He then started hacking it into small chunks that we planted in a nursery with the same side facing up. After about 3 weeks of watering the nursery at least 10 shoots should have sprouted, each a clone of the original banana tree.

That night after dinner we had the Camp Nyika talent show, and Alinon decided that Elijah the natural born entertainer should be the MC for the event. Elijah did a stellar job, as did all of the students. Some of the most memorable performances included Shadrick Mwakasangira's word for word rendition of the Nas song “I can be whatever I want to be”, Paulina Gondwe (our only Form 1 student at the camp, who everybody called baby Paulina) smiling from ear to ear as she danced and sang a Chitumbuka church choir son, The Kaporo CDSS students doing the electric slide, the Mwazisi CDSS students doing a drama about fidelity, and a poem by Atupele Mbukasa thanking us for the camp. It was a very sweet poem and her kind words got me all misty eyed in front of the whole camp. The students weren't the only ones to perform. All of the teachers showed off our talents at once; Tenley worked out quadratic equations on the blackboard, while I reached back to my high-school basketball days to do some fancy dribbling with old soccer balls, Devin did his gangster crypt walk to an Akon song, Alinon juggled onions, and Matt pulled out his dentures to make the creepiest hand puppet I have ever seen. We were a 5 ring circus of odd Azungus! Then Alinon had the whole room hooting and hollering with an animated telling of the nursery rhyme “The old lady who swallowed the fly.” At the end of the show Al congratulated Elijah for being a great MC by giving him the giant straw top-hat he had been wearing the entire week with a slip of paper tucked into the brim's ribbon that said “Happy Fungi.”. Elijah wore it for the rest of the week with pride.