OF BATS, and BEES, and WASPS, and SNAKES

Hi Again to All Our Loyal Readers !

Hope all well with each of you, and Memorial Day was pleasant, peaceful, and restful
As always lots going on here at the farm. Last Monday three young men arrived to spend nine weeks volunteering, working, and experiencing the Childrens Home, and Swaziland. They have all just finished the Freshman year at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, have arrived/adjusted safely, and are working hard as well as getting to know the children, and spend time helping with teaching, tutoring, etc. The young men are great to have with us, and it is fun for Gail and myself to again see Swaziland, thru young new eyes……..I am sure the time with them will fly by, and they will do great things and have a good experience too.

It is rumoured that the next group of Peace Corps Volunteers is to arrive in Swaziland 9 June. 35 new arrivals, fresh from the USA. Yikes! Means we are the old hands now, and that our assignment is almost half over….it will be fun to have new people, here in Swaziland, and in Peace Corps..but also means that sooner or later we will need to start thinking about life after Africa. I think we will start thinking about that later….like in 4q this year. No need to rush.

We have had a lot of activity with all sorts of “creatures’” while living in Africa, and thought it might be fun to describe some of the stuff that has become quite normal…..

Let’s start with bats. Couple months ago while preparing dinner, Gail says…”I think I see a bat in our house”. And yes, flying around the lounge—that’s living room—in fact was a nice little bat. I think it was more frightened by us, than we were of it, though I was terrified….and in fact the bat was frantically trying to escape. Not easy to do inside a closed up house. We opened all the doors, and windows—it was dark—and starting waving brooms, mops, etc…and pretty darn quickly it found freedom.
Then the wasps. Seems like we ( honestly I should write GAIL) are forever knocking down wasps nests—outside thankfully ! Neither of us have been stung yet…but every couple weeks we notice a new small swarm in the eaves, under gutters, attached to the geyser, etc—all making a new nest. So every couple weeks we get out the spray poison—it’s called “DOOM” ( what a GREAT name)…and we get all covered from head to toe…and then spray like crazy, and once all the wasps look dead—and DOOM works very well—then we knock the next down, again with the helpful broom…and we are good for another couple weeks.

And bees. Once upon a time this farm had a working, extensive honey operation, and as a result there remain many, many honeybees. Aggressive, African bees. Seems like fighting the bees is a constant battle as they are always in the houses—yes our house included. And we are always trying to shoo them out, smoke them out, show them out….and no sooner than we get contro, they are back. Oddly enough the most pesky thing, about the bees, is the noise. We get a few inside the house, flying around, and the buzzing is really quite LOUD. I do not think Gail and I have been stung yet, but it is quite normal to have a few bees buzzing around inside the house, making a nice racket. We have learned to ignore them, until the mass of bees gets too large, and we simply must get them out, or try to kill them. Just another part of life in Africa, we guess, as everyone—at least everyone on this farm, wages the constant battle with bees.

And finally snakes. Truth is there are poisonous snakes—adders, black mambas, etc.-in Swaziland. Truth is about the ONLY thing I was concerned about, coming to Africa, was the snakes. We have seen a few snakes during our 11 months in Africa. A small house snake visited inside our hut in training. We saw a life small common adder---venomous, not poisonous—on the road at the farm. There has been sighted recently a large night adder—again venomous, not poisonous—around the brown cottage. The adders will not kill you, but if they bite a finger, and it is not treated properly, quickly—you can lose the finger. And then on walks with the children, thru the forests, we have seen a couple very large, very poisonous, and thankfully very dead snakes. Always fun to pick them up, with a stick, and pretend we are carrying them. The dead snakes, that is.

To make a log story very short…as odd as it may be for you to read, seems normal to us to daily deal with God’s creatures. All of God’s creatures—even bats, and bees, ands wasps, and snakes—in this life we are living, here in Africa.

That’s all for now. As always we will try to write in a couple weeks. Cheers !