The Latest Buzzz

Dry season. The season in which African honey bees are pushed out of their homes by forest fires and seek refuge on the tops of mountains, where forest fires don't generally go. Like this mountain.

Recognize the mountain? These are the spires that I had went on just a couple of months ago and had a nice camping trip. I was invited to go again with my buddy David and his friend who is visiting from the states, David (we call him David's David), who are just about the funnest guys to go places with, so off we go! On the way up we stop off at my friend KC's village, which happens to be on the top of a mountain also. We spend the afternoon and evening there, exploring her mountain and playing music with a mandolin and a tin whistle.

And my buddies are (LtoR): David's David, David, KC

David, KC, and David's David

The next day, David, David, KC and I head off to the spires! Biking, biking biking! We stop off in Fungolimbi, where there is another volunteer, Katie, and lots of food. We stock up on food, say hello to Katie, and continue on our way.

David, Katie, KC

On the way up I was grateful for the fires. There was no bushwhacking! instead of 8 ft dry grass like the previous time, we just walked over the grass ash and boulders that were now clearly visible.

The climb up to the top was smooth. It was steep, and a bit of rock climbing but no problem! We had all our senses, and our bodies were functioning perfectly, and we were all there to help and encourage each other along.
When we got to our camping spot on top it was lovely. KC and I sat up top and enjoyed the views.

The men went to explore the other spires.

As it turns oute were not on top of these rocks alone. There were just a few bees that were keeping us company. Until the sun started going down, each of us had one or two bees coming up to us, then leaving again. But then the sun went down, so it was no problem.

Yes, it crossed my mind that this could be a problem. I think it crossed everyone's mind. But when there are so many things going on in your mind, and not a lot of personal experience with African bees, who pays attention to just a small frequent buzzing in your ears?

As of now all four of us will pay attention to this buzz. Here is why.

We wake up to the most beautiful sunrise that one could imagine.

We are on top of the world, after all. Nothing above us, only below us. For some reason, the first thing every single person did when waking up, was put on our shoes.

A couple of bees came out. We decided to leave before having anymore bee problems, and so we started packing. Then more bees came. Lots more. They started stinging all of us at the same time. This situation became a big problem at lightening speed.

KC was the first to start down. We were suddenly all in our own place in time because we were all being stung by bees, and that hurts. One David tried to start a fire to calm them with smoke. The other David advised that we all go down. They disappeared. I was hiding under a sheet when they left, trying to get some protective wear on for my journey down. They started stinging me through the sheet, entering in the sheet, and getting caught under my hood, hat, bandanna and sunglasses. “Screw protective gear,” I thought, and I took the sheet off and suddenly realized that I was alone on top of the spires getting attacked by bees.

These ain't no American honey bees. These are African bees. You could call them African killer bees, because thats what they are. There is no other kind here. They are those really aggressive ones that don't sting to warn, they sting to kill. They don't sting in small quantities, they sting as groups. I didn't know this really at the time. I read it later on the Internet.

So, a lot of things were going through my mind, but at many different levels. While you are being stung by bees, your senses change, and your perspective changes. I was the slowest in leaving. Big ouch for me. I got the largest collection of bees after me because I was the last one the swarm found on the mountain. My face. They all went for my head and face. And my hands. They were all over my back and legs too but couldn't get me because of what I as wearing. I was ripping at the bees and unfortunately that took off my hat, sunglasses, hood, and bandanna. I guess that was ok at the time because it wasn't very light outside and I kinda needed to see to climb down this rock formation. But then again I couldn't see for long because the bees decided they wanted to go for my eyes... My f-ing eyes... There were points in the descent that I remember being hard to climb up the day before. I had gotten help from the others. These parts were no longer difficult to descend. Flying leaps work a lot better then carefully calculated hops. Then my ears... they dove butt first into my ears and got stuck there. They stung them. I couldn't hear a damn thing because of the buzzzzzzing of dying bees lodged into both ears. I could no longer see straight. As soon as I pulled one out of my ear another would go in. On top of that, bee after bee after bee was getting lodged into my hair, stinging my scalp or just getting stuck and buzzing around up there. They went in my nose. If I opened my mouth they went in there. I spit out bee after bee. I felt like I was going insane.

I still had a long way to go to get down. I needed my hands to stay balanced, but I needed my hands to get the bees out of my eyes. The stings hurt. But they were stinging me so damn much I almost couldn't feel it anymore, but it hurt... a lot. So did falling down the mountain. So did diving head first down rocks slides into seas of grass, swimming through them, trying to brush off bees to no avail.
I don't know how many times I fell. It was hard to distinguish on pain between falling and stinging. I think it ended up balancing out pretty well.
While the trip down the mountain was pretty direct, there was one moment where even the bees couldn't push me forward, however much they may have wanted to. I was shuffling through the grass and came one on one with a 10 foot cliff. I stopped dead in my tracks, looked down, had a moment with myself, and turned around to go back UP, towards the bees, in order to find a different way down.

If I had to describe what was going through my mind at the time, I'd say the main thing going on in the very very back of my head was “This really sucks. When will they stop stinging me. When will they leave me alone. I just want them to stop. Please stop.”

Other than that my body was just moving. Autpmatically, yet clumsy. I eventually got down to where the grass was burned. I realized that I could see better now. I heard David calling my name. He shouted something else but I couldn't hear because of the buzzing. I waited to answer until I got closer to his voice. I called out his name and said that I couldn't hear him. He shouted louder and told me to stop where I was. I stopped. I found it difficult to stop, but I did. I sat down and tucked into a ball. The bees were all over my face. I brushed them off and tucked my face into my fleece shirt. I waited for David. He stopped a ways behind me and explained the situation. He said we were far enough from the hive that no more bees were coming. We had to kill the remaining bees. He said I had a lot of bees on me. He was going to come hit them but needed my help. I needed to kill as many as I could reach before we came. I was listening intently. I knew there were lots of bees in my hair, so I took my hands, took handfuls of my hair and just squeezed. I heard pop after pop after pop after pop. It was a lovely sound. David told me I was doing a good job. He told me I had a lot on my back and shoulders. I hit everywhere I could reach. Then David basically ran up to me and started beating the shit out of my back, arms, and head. Ouch, but a good kind of ouch. He yelped a couple of times as my bees suddenly turned on him. David took a lot of stings for me. What a guy.

Then, miraculously, It was quiet. The buzzing stopped. David stood me up and gave me a big hug (David knows when one needs a hug). I was sort of on the brink of hyperventilating I think. He look me straight in the eyes and told me “Sheila, I need you to concentrate on your breathing, ok? I want you to take deep, slow breaths.”
So, I did. And I followed David weakly down the mountain. There were straggling bees. One flew straight into my ear. Fuck that bee. I tried to get it out but it was too far in. Buzzzzzzinig. Crazy moment: I grabbed some long, hard grass ready to make a stick out of it to jab it straight into my ear. Thank heavens for David. He just came up to me, pulled it out of my ear, and told me to keep going. At this point I was talking a lot. I was asking how the others were. I had no idea if they even made it down. David said they were all waiting for me. I was saying that we need to call Etienne about this (our emergency guy). I was worried that something could still go wrong. What if someone had an alergic reaction? I talked a lot about calling someone. Basically I was still in freak-out mode. My whole face was literally on fire. It hurt so much...
We met the others. They both looked at me and their jaws dropped. They seemed to be OK, just shaken up, like I was.
All of our baggage was on top of the mountain. It just so happens, however, that KC and I both had our cellphones in our pockets. David went to look for a signal to make some phone calls. The other two and I went to the forage to “wash up.”
We found A couple of local women at the water source. I'm sure we looked like the un-dead when they saw us approaching. They just stared at us, petrified. KC tried explaining to them what had happened. They spoke only Jahanke. We spoke Pular, and David spoke Malinke. Oh well, they got the gist, lent us a bowl and told us to put it in the onion garden when we were done.

While we were all in bad shape, I was probably freaking out the most. I wanted to rinse off my face but when I touched it I couldn't feel much skin, I could only feel bee stingers. I kindly asked the others to help me get them out. It was a humbling experience being surrounded by people carefully picking stinger after stinger after stinger out from around your eyes.
David's friend David was starting to get a rash. He was getting an allergic reaction. I was lost and confused. I was probably still freaking out. KC made a comment that we should probably get away from the forage because the bees come here to drink. Because we all smelled like bee distress signal, we would probably be stung again. Sure enough, a moment later a bee flies straight into my hair. Another lands on my shoulder. I hear that buzzing again. Something went off in my head “FUCK THIS!” And I started sprinting away from the forage toward the village. I had visions of laying down in a hut where the bees couldn't find me anymore. More buzzing. And they were following me. I was flailing at them wildly. Yes, I was going crazy.
Well, I snapped back into it when the buzzing stopped again. I looked back and saw KC jogging towards me and David's David coming in behind. “Sorry,” I said. “I want to get away from where there are bees.” KC stopped me to get the dead bees out of my hood. I don't know what we would have done without KC. Though she got stung a lot as well and had her own very, very dangerous descent down a much steeper side of the mountain, she managed to stay completely calm and helped to calm and organize the whole situation. She never rested. KC and David's David both went with me to the village, and found the first household and KC asked if David's David (Whose allergic reaction was worsening) and I could lay down because we were very, very sick.
So I got a hut to lay in, as did David's David. KC went to wait for David to come back so he could find us.

I lay down. It was just me and the villagers, who were coming in in shifts to check me out. The villagers were very, very nervous about my condition. They were very hospitable, giving me fruit, some insect bite balm, and asking if I wanted to bathe (this is pretty much everything that they could possibly do for us). Then time passed. After a few minutes I felt buzzing at the back of my neck. I reached to the sound and pulled out a dying bee and chucked it across the room. Then another. The two women in the hut stared in shock at the dying bees on the ground that I had magically pulled out of my shirt. They examined them for a moment, shared a few words, then squished them. Then the buzzing started up again in my hair. AAAHH!! So I sit up, start pulling at my hair trying to get it out. Three women come up to me and found the bees and picked them out. Then they started picking the other dead bees out of my hair. I asked for a comb and they brought me one. I spent about 15 minutes combing the grass, dirt and dead bees out of my hair, all with an audience of amazed children watching me intently. There was an impressive pile of crap on the floor by the time I was done.
At this time I could no longer see out of my left eye. My other one, I could see just a bit. I lay down, tears streaming out of both my eyes. I couldn't tell if I was crying or if it was the fact that I had been stung some 100-somethingish times on my face that was just making my eyes water
KC came in with news. David had made some calls. There was a doctor on the way with meds. David's David's allergic reaction was becoming worse. Matt was coming with a car to meet us at Fungolimbi with a car. The doctor came. We got pills and shots. He tested our breathing. Within a few minutes, according to KC and David's David, my swelling had reduced a lot. I could now see out of my left eye. Davids allergic reaction went away almost immediately. By this time we were all OK enough to make some jokes, and we even laughed a bit about this damn situation.

David's David and I got motorcycle rides 12 kilometers to Fungolimbi, where the health center was. Matt was already there with a car when we got there. The expressionon Matt's face when he saw my face was priceless. I got to see it for the first time as well (motorcycle mirror) and wow...

David and KC were riding their bikes back to Fungolimbi with two local villagers riding the other two bikes. Bless KC's heart. She had lost her glasses on the top of the mountain, had a terrifying experience and managed to take care of us the whole time and STILL rode her bike, without seeing much, 12 kilometers over rocky, steep paths in lightening speed.
We rode the car back to Kedougou. No one talked much, but David's David sang a lot. The whole ordeal started at about 6:30am. We got back the the house at 1:00pm. We've gotten lots of calls from the PC med staff asking how we are and prescribing us medicine. They were very worried about us.
I think that by that evening I had gotten pretty much all of the stingers out of me.
David went left to go get our bags the very same afternoon. none of us can believe how much this man can do. It's like, he never stops. He is back and safe. Bees don't come out at night. He slept under two giant baobabs near the top of the mountain and as the sun rose he carried 4 bags and everything inside down two mountains by himself, on foot. Is he even human?

Here's to David, KC and David's David for all staying alive and sane and helping me through this. Here's to Katie, the volunteer in Fungolimbi who, after receiving a call from Etienne (our emergency man), ran all over her village in her pajamas, waking the doctor and getting him to come to us in lightening speed. Here's to Matt for getting a car up there that arrived even before we did. And of course the villagers who welcomed us strangers and did everything to make us feel safe. And last but not least, heres to all the volunteers who greeted us at our homecoming and made us feel more than taken care of.

Pictures didn't come until David bought the camera back. But have a look! This is me before

and after. The swelling has gone down a lot in 24 hours, but I still look like a chubby pale chinese lady. And I'm purple to boot.

It isn't every day that I'll be posting a picture of my butt, so enjoy.

And Bees? I think everyone involved in this will no longer overlook that small buzzing sound in their ears. And so, who is up for some beekeeping?!

Until next time!