Busy Bees

Hello to everybody! I am sorry for the delay in updates, but here is what is going on at the project as of late.

It has been a very busy few weeks with the busiest week to come. We are nearing the end of the second installment and are in the midst of making budget preparations for the third installment. The second and third houses are finished and are full of traditional hives which will be transferred into the modern hives next week.

Ok. Well maybe finished is an overstatement. This seems to be the ongoing joke of the year in RVCP since it appears that the houses will never be fully finished. For example, when we finished the first house we were told by the trainer we would have to build three houses total. Then, when we finally finished the second and third houses Hovaire (the national coordinator of RVCP) visited a bee keeping site and realized that we would have to put either mud or metal around the houses to protect them from thieves or vandalism. Even though there is one man, Emmanuel, who has been permitted into the Widowers Association as a guard to watch the houses he is not capable of seeing the houses perfectly, especially at night. This is the way it goes I suppose. Now we are getting ready to start preparing the houses with mud or metal for protection and we will see what new challenge comes up once we are done with that!! Either way though the houses look great (with the exception of a little erosion happening with the soil surrounding the houses due to the extended rainy season) and what is important is that the hives will soon be in the houses and bees will be fleeting about pollinating flowers and inadvertently helping create income for this widows association.

So, despite the houses not being quite finished, we will be getting hives soon. However, to do this a trainer will be brought in to help the women with the transition as well as hold another information session about how to care for the new hives with the women. Everybody is excited about the arrival of the modern hives as this will mean the production of honey and a really great start to the creation of honey.

Over the next few days Mushuru(the head of the income generation mico-project in RVCP) and I will be going to Kigali to buy some more needed bee materials, meet with the trainer and learn how bee hives are made. This should be some really exciting and valuable information that we can pass onto the women.

Over the next few weeks I will be doing some profiling with the women to learn more about them and their lives. They are such phenomenal and inspirational women I hope that you will read their stories with as much interest as I do. One interesting thing about this group is that some of the women have had their husbands imprisoned for committing acts of genocide, and others have lost their husbands to the genocide. This certainly makes the dynamics of the group very unique since some women may be working next to women whose husbands killed their husbands. However, this is one of the endeavors of this project, is to unite all the women, no matter what their background or social situation, to create friendships and bonds and be there to support each other. Everyday there are new laughs to share with the women and new things to learn from them. They are truly inspirational to be working with, and maybe I will just have to take one of them up on their offer to marry one of their sons.

On another note, we are also going to be creating the sign for End Poverty Now to put out in front of the project. If anybody has any good ideas of what to do for the sign to give it a creative spin feel free to leave a comment and let me know!! Rwanda is certainly into formalities, but right now we are thinking about making a sign with a bee in the corner or something along these lines. But, certainly the floor is open for discussion.

Updates on how the honey making is going to come soon. I also apologize for the lack of photos. It is quite difficult to upload pictures with such a lack of internet connection here, but I will continue to try and get some pictures your way!