19th March 2008 : Honey and Big Skies
Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 02:14PM Written last night but was too tired to post, so here we go now...
Look at this feast! Today our trusty beehives delivered this bounty, despite there being rather a shortage of bees around this year…obviously enough to make enough honey to go round for us and the guys that work for us. The hives we use are traditional Wakamba beehives: hollowed out logs hung in the trees with wire. They’re not the most efficient type of beehive in the world: we’re planning to buy some more modern, more efficient hives soon. In the meantime, it’s important when harvesting the honey not to take all the combs out of each hive, otherwise there’s nothing left for the bees…I squeezed the incredibly sweet honey out of the combs by hand, which was a sticky experience but well worth it…there’s nothing quite like a slice of homemade bread, fresh out the oven and still warm, with honey from one’s very own beehives…
Oozing honey...
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Honeycomb in close-up
The generous beehive hanging from a tree near the Peaceful Place
Squeezing the honey out of the comb
A sticky business!
The reward: homemade bread and honey...
On the culinary front, I’ve recently started making kefir – for anyone who doesn’t know what this is, it’s a drink/food very like natural yoghurt but apparently with even more health benefits. You start with some ‘grains’ (which I got from a friend – her grandmother kept the same culture going for 60 years by looking after those all important grains), put them in milk overnight, and by morning you have a thin yoghurt-like mixture with myriad health benefits. (Even Ian has been persuaded of this, and has a daily glass into which he mixes a little honey.) After making a jugful, you have to carefully put the grain in some water (or milk) to keep it alive and ready to make the next batch. Learn more about kefir here.
Sieving the kefir to retrieve the all-important grain
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This ugly-looking lump - a mixture of bacteria and yeast - is the magic-maker: this is the all-important kefir "grain"
If placed carefully in water, you can keep the kefir lying dormant until you want to make your next batch...
Ian thinks it’s like “The Good Life” all over again [a 1970s English comedy series where a Do-It-Yourself couple tried to live off the land in their tiny English town house, overlooked with amused disdain by their upper-crust neighbours.]….just wait until we have our own elephant- and baboon-proof, super-fortified veggie patch!
My goodness it has been HOT – you sweat just getting out of the bed in the morning! The river has been very low, and a huge new mud flat has opened up on Hippo Bend, with interesting sand formations being created by the wind where the mud meets the sand. There were lots of ‘track stories’ on the beach when we were down there the other evening…telling of the passing elephants, and the baboons who were running just ahead of us on the beach, and of storks walking in perfect parallel, and even of the cheetah who’s been back here drinking again….or is this a hyena footprint? They are so difficult to tell apart, and we’ve been hearing a lot of hyena noise around the house recently, loud whooping and the distinctive chuckling noise they make which leads people to say that hyenas laugh…
Baboon footprint (the thumb makes it distinctive)
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Fresh cheetah pug mark
Lion paw print
Parellel Storks...
Elephant footprint - just as if someone's plonked a great big bucket on the mud!
Elephant footprint patterns
The searing heat has been pulling in great tall rain clouds and it looks like the rainy season is about to start any day now, with huge wild skies and towering clouds and the smell of moisture on the hot, hot air. Because the last rainy season ended so late here in Tsavo, it seems strange to be contemplating rain again already, but it certainly does seem to be on its way. The wind in the evenings, as the sun slips below the horizon and the temperature drops, has been unbelievably fierce…in fact, it’s been blowing so hard, we think something has snapped in our wind turbine which is looking decidedly sluggish despite the raging winds…
These two young impala rams, which have just about taken up permanent residence on our Little Serengeti, have got the right idea – resting up in the shade on the beach during the heat of the day.
The baobab trees have only just dropped all their leaves, which had turned such a bright yellow colour that the trees looked like they were in blossom. They are now bare-boughed again. If the thunder and lighting outside my window beyond the Yatta have anything to say about it though, it seems the trees will be coming out in leaf before too long again…
Yellow-leafed baobab tree - you would be forgiven for thinking it was in flower!
Bare-boughed baobab above the airstrip
Jean-Genie [plural – our genet cats - we initially thought there was just one, but now it now turns out there are at least two or three] have become tamer and tamer, and now come right up to our chairs when we’re on the balcony eating dinner. Soon they’ll be tame enough to photograph but I don’t want to frighten them away at this early, delicate stage by using the flash. What the genets leave behind, the ants tidy up – how about this for cooperative labour?
I apologise for the irregularity of my posting at the moment (and it’s going to get worse for a while, I’m afraid, but my workload is so heavy at the moment, that I just am too exhausted by the end of the day to start blogging…in time, things will get back to normal, and I’ll be here more regularly again…until then, I’ll be around, but it’s going to be sporadic for a while…
More in Pictures from March 2008:
Wild Animals
Birdlife
Tree Watch
Miscellaneous Views of the Landscape
Big African Skies
People Pics: Our Life in the Wild
Track Stories: Tales Left Behind in the Sand
Reader Comments (9)
Don't worry, the rains will start on Friday. How do I know? It's my birthday - it always rains on my birthday!
What are you working on at the moment?
I always love hearing about your days. It makes me go into an instant day-dream. I drove through Bryanston the other day (thought of you so far away!). I hope the rains bring you some relief from the heat. Keep blogging.. I would miss not reading your posts terribly! Jane
Good to read an update. My uncle in Zambia has been complaining bitterly about the constant rains that make it impossible to drive out from their lodge on the Zambezi River. The only way out is by a microlite which my uncle built and flies despite being 75 years old.
I love coming to my blog in the morning, and finding comments from people here - it's like seeing old friends...even though we have never met in person!
Jane - I promise I will carry on blogging - my posting might just be a little erratic for a while - but I'll at least try to keep writing little snippets here and there. The problem is, despite me being so busy, with my head inside my computer, there is still just as much activity on the river, and just as much to tell you all about...so it's difficult to write short posts, and also frustrating for me if I just "let things go untold"...so I'll just have to do my best to fit it all in!
Suzanne, your uncle sounds like a real character. Microlights are amazing. You may recall seeing my posts about our friend who arrived for Christmas by microlight and landed on the beach in front of the house. He only needed a few metres to take off and land - incredible. His microlight is such an odd-looking contraption - you'd never guess it was aerodynamic - to me it looks like a shopping trolley with wheels!
The rain storms all around us are ferocious - the lightning last night was incredible - the storms haven't quite descended on our heads just yet, but they are so close we can smell the rain...it won't be long before they bombard us, I think.
Imogen, you are probably right - the rain will come tomorrow - it's your birthday and we have guests arriving for Easter - the weather always has a habit of playing those sorts of tricks...
In answer to your question, I'm working night and day on formulating a five-year Expansion Plan for the African Environmental Film Foundation - I'm Director of Strategy for the Foundation, so formulating plans like this falls squarely in my lap!
Our mandate is to make educational films about conservation and environmental issues in Africa, for the people of Africa, in their own languages. The films are distributed free of charge across the continent through educational institutions, conservation organisations, mobile cinemas, etc etc etc.We are ten years old now, and we feel the time is right to build on the success of the past 10 years, and to create a more robust organisation that will secure its future for the next generation - this will include expanding our film production capacity by increasing the number of fulltime film crews working for us, as well as expanding our distribution network.
As well as rolling out some exciting new distribution methods in Africa, we are shortly going to make the DVDs available for sale via our website too, as we are receiving so many requests from US and European schools and universities which want to use the films as teaching tools in their own classrooms - they have the resources to pay a small amount for the DVDs, which in turn will help us fund the production of extra copies for African schools.
It's all going very well but we are extremely busy - and I have to have this new Expansion Plan down on paper by the end of March - please don't tell me how many [few] days I have left - so that's why I'm a bit under pressure! (You can read more about the Film Foundation by following the link in the right hand menu of this blog).
I wish I had time to do some of my artworks too, but they've also been pushed aside for the time being. When things calm down a bit, I'm going to try to get back to doing some artwork at the weekends...in between blogging, of course!
Thanks to you all - it's great fun to be in touch like this...
Hey Tanya, looks like the breadmakingmachine is working !! Thanks for giving us a glimpse into your world because ours is wet and cold at the moment. There will be snow at Easter. Very funny, no white Christmas but a white Easter !
Have a good weekend !
Audrey
Hi Audrey - I'm not using a bread machine: I'm baking by hand! Hope you and Bart have a happy [white] Easter!
The Good Life, Felicity Kendall *sigh*
Oh, I thought you had a machine that would work on the turbine ! Well, baking by hand tastes maybe even better after the hard work making it :-)
Bye, Audrey
Mark: you're as bad as my husband, sighing over Felicity Kendall!
Audrey: I agree - all that kneading imbues the bread with a better taste...or so it seems, anyway! ;)