Henry in Guyana

On Saturday I was taken on a trip to work on some bee hives, something I know very little about but sounded interesting. Anyway, six of us piled into a 4x4 and headed out of town past the airport, then off road through some thick vegetation until we arrived at what seemed like a secluded spot with five bee hives. I was given a head net and wore long clothes, and some had bee suits although one chap who was an old hand at bee-keeping didn't wear any particular protection. I thought this might been the bees knew him and left him alone but actually he just got stung a lot.

Anyway the process consisted of taking wooden frames out of the hives, scraping off the outer layer of honeycomb and then putting them in a hand-crank centrifuge to extract the honey. I helped a little but the main effort was left to the proper beekeeper. Despite mixing the honey at the truck, maybe 100m and through some bush away from the hives, they caught on pretty quickly and weren't too happy with the fact that we'd stolen their hard-earned food. Pretty soon there were hundreds if not thousands of bees all over, and we did our best to use smoke to keep them away but everyone (apart from me!) got stung a few times, even through clothes. I think I escaped because I wasn't really doing anything or getting in their way.


Later that evening I headed out for a meal with some VSOs, followed by a party at a sports club next to a bank. The music was incredibly loud - there was no chance of talking. The night warmed up as we worked through a few bottles of white rum and by the end it was very jolly. Most of the music was what I understand as Caribbean dance-hall which doesn't make much of an appearance back home in my experience. Also the DJ's role is to growl things into the microphone, stop songs 30 seconds in and restart them, then play for about a minute before moving to another song. It wasn't an accident - that's just how they do it. Rather suprisingly there was a Klute -esque (that's a cheesy nightclub in Durham if you didn't know) 10 minutes or so with Billie Jean, Barbie Girl, Summer of 69 and some Britney Spears if I remember correctly, and naturally this sparked a response from the overseas element on the dance floor. Following this we headed to another ba which seemed to continue the energy as I didn't get home until 4:30 (fortunately it was the weekend).

As I was writing this I noticed a mouse had been caught on the roach/rat paper we had down in the kitchen. It must be a horrible way to die so I folded it over and jumped on it outside. I think I felt a bit of mouse skull crunch, but hopefully it has found peace.

Until next time...