We have completed the first edition of the ELIKYA Beekeeping Curriculum! There will likely be many more editions to come as it goes through more editing by John and as it is added to. Parts of it will probably be removed as the inevitable result of transferring practical instruction from a Minnesota apiary to a project in the middle of Africa. The curriculum still needs to be translated, first into French and then into Lingala as well. As non-native Lingala speakers, this is not a job for us. I will be working with Jonathon, one of the students in the class last month, to get the French curriculum squared away. The curriculum has been run through Google Translate already but it remains to be seen how well the program fared with it. So I will be visiting Jonathon soon with a fresh cahier (notebook) and a red pen.

ELIKYA Agriculture

This week we are kicking off the agricultural program here at ELIKYA. I am pretty excited and tentatively nervous about it at the same time. I will be teaching a 2-hour class every Tuesday from 7-9 AM. The class will then be followed by a one hour practicum. In addition to the garden that we have been working with, away and behind our house, we now have a parcel of land towards the front of the ELIKYA property, closer to the main road. This parcel is divided between widows’ and orphans’ food plots and land that is for the Ag Program’s use. This means experimental plantings, a small orchard, new and introduced crops, compost piles and a nursery. This is what it looks like now:



So none of this is here right now but hopefully by the end of the week we can report otherwise. Keep this project in your prayers. We are receiving project funds each month from our ReachGlobal ministry account to pay for associated costs like tools and labor. We are making an investment and praying that the Lord blesses this project in the lives of the students here at ELIKYA. It is daunting to be teaching a class in Lingala every week on a subject that I am still learning- tropical agriculture. But God has equipped us with the funds and the resources we need to be successful. May we be faithful in leaving this work in his hands and trusting his leading concerning its growth and utilization.

Bruihlers Volunteer for Africa Mission Service

Read the following article for an account of the Bruihler's time with us at the ELIKYA Center, courtesy of the Tri-County Record of Rushford, MN.

Bruihler's Volunteer for Africa Mission Service

Be assured, we did more than just cook. In case you were wondering.

A Special Visitor

Our first short-term missions team was accompanied by another traveler, my Mom. She came out to see her new granddaughter (we had to think of some way to get our family to visit us) and to stay with Michelle in Bangui while I accompanied the Bruihlers to the Elikya Center. It was a huge encouragement to have her. Not only was she a big help with Soleil but she also taught a sewing class while she was here and visited with a lot of old friends (she hadn’t been to Congo since a visit in 2002). It seemed that every day there was someone at the door asking for Mama Judy.

This trip was also sweet because my Mom was influential in the beginnings of the Elikya Center. ELIKYA as a concept came into existence back in the mid 90’s and it was known as CEVO (Centre d’Encadrement des Veuves et des Orphelins translated as Center for the care of widows and orphans). I remember coming out to ELIKYA once with her when I was a kid to help clear some of the land for the Center. It didn’t end too well. I ended up in tears because some of the others were picking on me. One of the deacons from a local church was there and said that maybe God was using the experience to prepare me to be a missionary someday. Sure enough, here we are at the very origin of that statement no less. It was great for Mom to be able to see how the Center has gone from concept to reality and how it is growing and bearing fruit.

So we were thankful to have my Mom out for a lot of reasons and we were sad to see her go. We made sure to send her back with lots of pictures of Soleil for the rest of the family. Maybe she can convince the rest of them to make the trip too.

The daily wash

Koko time

Livin' large in Bangui

Mom's Daily Handiwork

Teaching the sewing class

How to Apply for Your Child's American Passport in the Central African Republic

A Do-It-Yourself Guide

1. Call the US Embassy and schedule an appointment. No problem.

2. Find the US Embassy. Easy enough; helps to know some French. Also, try not to spill water all over your child’s birth certificate and other important papers during the taxi ride. Don’t forget to bring money.

3. Don’t be thrown off when the Vice-Consul appears with a checklist and explains, “Sorry, we don’t do too many of these here.” He’ll think you’re a novice (which you are).

4. Fill out the application.

5. Get a passport photo taken. Simple. Go on over to the nearest Photo Lab, skirt the hucksters snapping pictures out front and ask for a passport photo inside at the desk. Watch bemusedly as they try to hold your child’s head up long enough to get a picture, wait a while, fork over some cash and it’s done.

6. Get a passport photo taken. Oops. You need to clarify it’s for an American passport. Otherwise you get something like this:

Not quite the required 2 square inches. Swallow your pride, go back, fork over some cash and get larger prints.

7. Get a passport photo taken. No good. Difficult as it may be for your two-week old child, the applicant must present both ears.

Go to another photo lab to save some dignity. And make sure you don’t try to get this done between noon and 3PM. Everything is closed. Sorry.

8. Get a passport photo taken. Return to the lab at an acceptable hour and ask for an American passport. Watch bemusedly as they try to get your child’s attention, hold her still and get both ears in the picture. Fork over some cash and be on your way.

9. Get a passport photo taken. Make sure the background is brilliant white. Grayish white, off white, mostly white or any other shade of white simply won’t do. Keep it under control as the Vice-Consul refers to your photo technicians as a “bunch of clowns”. Take matters into your own hands. Lay your child on the back of a poster on a sidewalk in the sun, try to wake her up and snap this gem.

Then have it printed by a fellow missionary who took pity on your trials and tribulations.

10. Present your photo at the US Embassy. Feel free to sing the Star Spangled Banner with joy as it is accepted and your now complete application is sent on its way (after you fork over much more cash).

11. Wait the prescribed 4 weeks for the passport to return from processing in neighboring Cameroon.

12. Wait many more weeks.

13. Drive 8-28 hours to pick up your child’s official US Passport!

We’re still on step 12. This guide would have been very helpful had we been able to read it beforehand. Had we done so, I have a strong suspicion that steps 5-9 could have been condensed into a single step. Oh well. Next time.

The Great Bee Adventure of 2011

and

Other Stories

John and Deb Bruihler came to the ELIKYA Center all the way from their home town of Rushford, Minnesota. Leaving their farm under two feet of snow, they escaped the Midwestern cold for the blazing heat of central Africa. In addition to their farming operation they keep bees and sell honey. It was precisely this aspect of their work that brought them to Congo in the first place. Honey has a relatively high market value but nobody in this area keeps bees. To get honey they must go into the zamba (jungle) and look for a wild hive, then extract the honey at night and bring it all the way back to town and try to sell it. So there is a lot of unexplored economic potential in beekeeping. John and Deb agreed to come to ELIKYA for 5 weeks to help explore that.

Undeterred by their strenuous journey to ELIKYA that involved sleeping in the Nairobi airport overnight and spending two days on the road as we travelled from Zongo to Gemena, they got right to work upon arrival. The priority for the first week was constructing a hive.

Building the Hive

Once the hive was built the challenge was to get bees to populate it. A neighbor of ours at ELIKYA, named Victor turned out to be a honey hunter and he was glad to oblige. He brought back some comb and some bees. We tied up the comb in the new house in hopes that the bees would care for the brood. The number of bees we had to start with, however, was too low to really start a new colony and they either died from the transport in a sack, the cold (believe it or not) or absconded back from whence they came. So we were unable to get a hive going but a lot of people got some good experience in seeing how a colony can be started and how to use the smoker and attach comb to the top bars.

Taking the hive out

Gathering 'round the hive

John with a bag-o-bees

John and Jean working the bees

The next three weeks were spent teaching a class of approximately 25 the basics of beekeeping. Our students included Jonathon, slated to teach future classes at ELIKYA the exact same course that John just taught. As a student destined to become the teacher, he was an effusive note-taker. Jean, the CECU Director of Development in the Zongo region, was also part of the class. Jean was involved in a prior attempt at beekeeping that never took off so he was very excited to be a part of the class. The rest of the students were ELIKYA’s very own widows and orphans. They proved to be very excited about the class.

John and Jean

Morning Bee Class

John taught the class every morning and I translated. This turned out to be an excellent opportunity to work on my Lingala and get creative explaining certain things. Like how do you explain supercedure in Lingala? I hardly knew what it meant in English. It was certainly a challenge when explaining something rather technical and involved, to have to do so in a language as limited as Lingala. Nevertheless, the students really picked up on it and got involved, especially when it turned hands-on and practical.

Students got to try their hand at rendering wax...

Bee Practicum

Squeezing out wax

Candle in a tin can

Papaya stem candle

and at pouring wax starter strips to encourage the bees to build on each top bar.

Making wax starter strips

But the best lesson by far came from the bees themselves. One thing John had been disappointed with during his first week here was the seeming absence of bees in the area. A bowl of water and honey that we had set out had failed to attract even a single bee. Getting enough bees and comb from local honey hunters was also not working out. It looked like we were simply going to have to accept the fact that bees were not going to be a part of the beekeeping class. But they had other ideas.

One afternoon we were returning to ELIKYA having just finished a tractor class at the CECU garage when we got a call from Sarah, who had stayed home. She said that a “humungous” swarm of bees had just flown over ELIKYA. They had apparently occupied a mbila (palm) tree in the middle of the Center for a short while so we were to avoid that since Deb has a serious bee allergy. Once we had walked back, John inspected the mbila and, lo and behold, the entire swarm of bees was still there! John had been teaching in class that very week how the best way to begin a new hive is to catch a swarm. From others we had talked to, it seemed that the swarm season was around July-August. So we were not expecting this! And of all the places to settle they had chosen a tree smack dab in the middle of the ELIKYA Center.

Wasting no time, John went to get his bee suit and the smoker. I grabbed a ladder and a large burlap-type sack and we all met back at the mbila. By now many of the orphans had been called and were running over to watch the crazy white man catch a sack of bees. Once we were pumping out smoke John climbed the ladder to gather the bees. Earlier in class, he had convincingly told them that bees when they are in a swarm like this are much more docile. Nobody was willing to put that to the test. A couple kids were holding the branch down to make it easier for him to work but other than that everyone kept their distance. Eventually, the bulk of the bees were in the bag.

Keeping their distance

Helping John with the smoker

Easy does it...

Walking the bees out to the hive

John tied up the bag and we started to walk out to where we had placed the hive three days earlier. By this time just about all of the orphans that were in the class were following along. The place where we had set the hive was a ten minute walk. It was in a shady spot near the river. We got there just as darkness was falling and…no hive. It was gone; vanished. We were all absolutely stricken by the theft. Moving the hive was no small feat. It was pretty big and extremely heavy. Many of the orphans were both upset and angry that someone would steal something that was being used to help people. There was nothing we could do so we walked back to ELIKYA and a couple of us prayed over the situation, asking God to return the hive and to receive glory in the resolution of the situation.

The next day John made an attempt at making a small hive out of a plastic bucket in the hopes of hiving the straggler bees that were left on the mbila and the sack we had left by the river. We gave it a shot but it was too small and the bees didn’t take to it. A lot of the bees were flying around stinging people. We made a few rounds with the smoker, “rescuing “victims from their winged oppressors. Then I handed it off and went inside.

Pouring bees into a bucket

So at the end of it we had received the amazing and unexpected gift of a swarm of bees and then had to face the reality that we had nowhere to put them. It was tough to take. All in all, though, it was still a very valuable experience for the students in the class to see a swarm of bees and to see how to catch it. They were part of a big event here at ELIKYA and they were right in the middle of it. It was encouraging to listen to them as they described what the bees were doing and reciting things they had learned in class earlier in the week. I think it stoked their desire to try this for themselves. And ultimately, hive or no hive, everybody knew that God had sent the bees for the training. I’d say we put them to good use.

One of the best aspects of the class was the way that it got the students thinking. Like any business, there are costs involved in keeping bees. You have to buy or build a hive. You have to buy or sew a protective bee suit. You have to have buckets and a machete and other tools. So for the student in the class, the widows and orphans, it was a bit daunting. But there was a lot of discussion on how to make cheaper alternatives for hives and bee suits. At the end of it, each student felt that beekeeping was feasible. There were ways to make it work. They wrote out brief business plans, too, planning how to grow their business over the first couple years.
After the three weeks of class we printed out certificates of completion for all the students and presented them. The Vice President of CECU was there for the “ceremony” and he prayed over the students as well. It happened to be John and Deb’s final day in the Congo so there were some tears and a lot of thanksgiving too.

Marta receiving her certificate

The graduates, certificates in hand

While John was teaching about bees he was also giving some training at the CECU garage on tractor maintenance and driving three afternoons a week. He taught them how to plow, helped initiate the building of a cassava planter and worked at getting their implements ready for another season of use. CECU was given 2 tractors from the Congo government to help kick-start economic growth in the region (other organizations received tractors too). However, the tractors were given with very little instruction on how to use them. Edison, the chief mechanic at the garage, said that what he has learned from John has given him confidence in using the tractors and in coming up with ways to get even more out of them.

John with the CECU Garage mechanics

Edison with the cassava planter

Tractor Driving Class

Making repairs

Deb, meanwhile, was working with the sewing instructors here at ELIKYA to design and put together bee suits from locally available material. She made several pairs of gloves, a jacket and several veils made out of screening. More importantly, the designs and the know-how to make more remain at ELIKYA and will be a vital part of the beekeeping program here.

Deb and Yiko working on the veil

The finished product

Another highlight of the Bruihler’s time at ELIKYA was the visit of the President of the ECC. The ECC is the largest Protestant organization in the Congo. It is made up of many different denominations including CECU. So it’s a pretty big deal when he comes to town. While he was visiting here in Gemena, he and his entire entourage came out to see what ELIKYA was all about. John shared a little about what he was doing here for the month and it really resonated with the President who was convinced that hope for development in the Congo lies in the rural areas with agriculture. They walked, hand in hand, out to see the plowing that had been done earlier in the day. The President seemed very pleased with the projects that were being undertaken, asking John when he was coming back.

John with the ECC President at ELIKYA

So now the Bruihlers are gone but work is still left to do. We have the challenge of building another beehive, of making more smokers, of looking into less expensive hive alternatives and of finishing the curriculum for future beekeeping classes. But we are happy to have this work and we hope to report on more bees at Elikya in the near future!