Home

Sweet inspiration from Tanzania and Kenya

Headshot of Stephen Scourfield
Stephen ScourfieldThe West Australian
An African bee on a protea flower bud.
Camera IconAn African bee on a protea flower bud. Credit: Kira Ryan/Getty Images, Kira Ryan

Here are three stories of natural inspiration from Africa...

One

Abel Shangwe says things are pretty quiet in his village in Tanzania. “As usual!” he adds.

I hear lots of laughter at the end of the phone and can picture Abel and his mates Gwaatema Qwaray and Elliamino Petro clustered around the mobile phone.

The African village of Mamire usually welcomes visitors, who come from nearby safari camps to see authentic daily modern Maasai life going on.

The little income from visits, and on-going support of travel companies who arrange these, supplement their fragile and vulnerable income from agriculture.

For these villages are in the buffer zone by Tarangire National Park, which teems with wildlife.

And that brings a rub.

The villagers create a food source, and that brings animals from the national park.

Elephants can trash a crop in one visit.

But these Maasai have a new barrier to protect their fields and families.

It is part of their history to keep bees — usually in logs hung horizontally in trees, or in hollows which they sculpt out.

A hive hanging in a tree in Mwikangi, near Mamire village, Tanzania.
Camera IconA hive hanging in a tree in Mwikangi, near Mamire village, Tanzania. Credit: Stephen Scourfield/The West Australian

Beekeeping is one of the oldest Maasai practices. They use honey for wound healing and to treat coughs, and for ceremonial brews.

But, with some money from tour companies, they have been able to build hundreds of simple hives, and extend their beekeeping zone, between their crops and the national park.

It is forming a natural and very effective fence. Lions, elephants … nothing will run the risk of passing the 200 hives in the nearby area of Mwikangi.

African bees are short-fused and dangerous.

And a big increase in honey production brings a new source of income, selling for $10 a kilogram when the safari camps are busy and visitors call by.

The hives are hung in trees — dozens of them, yielding up to 40kg each, some dripping with honey.

And how do you get up there and harvest honey from millions of Africa bees?

You might have guessed the answer … very carefully, and not without pain.

The beekeepers climb into the trees and let the hives down on a rope, one by one, trying not to excite the bees, or others around it.

“Do you get stung?” I ask the obvious question.

The boys laugh and rollick around, re-enacting the onslaught of angry bees. Of course they get stung.

  • Across East Africa, the Maasai Beekeeping Initiative is helping villagers to become honey producers. Among its projects, the Enkutoto women’s group was formed by widows needing to increase their household income by producing honey and other bee products sales — a business they have developed in collaboration with Maasai Beekeeping Initiative. maasaibeekeepers.org
Giraffe, Hluhluwe-Imfolozi park in South Africa.
Camera IconGiraffe, Hluhluwe-Imfolozi park in South Africa. Credit: Stephen Scourfield/WA News, Stephen Scourfield

Two

This acacia tree is warning the others around it that a giraffe is grazing.

The animal, perfectly adapted, is nibbling the fresh green leaves on top of the short tree — pruning and gardening as it has for thousands of years. The giraffa genus evolved nearly eight million years ago.

As the giraffe started to browse, the tree released ethylene gas, which drifts downwind warning other trees.

And just as this tree is exuding a bitter-tasting tannin, limiting the time the giraffe will graze, so the other trees have started doing the same.

Three

There’s the equivalent of more than 13 spoons of sugar in the 500ml “African bottle” of Fanta sold in Kenya. But the Kenyan music band Abana Ba Nasery not only burned up that sugar in performance, but did so using the bottle.

The Fanta bottle became Abana’s trademark, earning them the tag “guitar and bottle kings of Kenya”.

For this particular bottle has ridges on the sides, which they play with metal rods of different thickness, getting a variety of sounds.

Fanta is popular in Kenya — with flavours like root beer in addition to the more common orange.

Abana Ba Nasery established their Fanta sound with the album Classic Acoustic Recordings of Western Kenya, and refined it on !Nursery Boys Go Ahead! — with legendary band leader Shem Tube, guitarist and vocalist Justo Osala Omufila and Fanta bottle percussionist Enos Okola.

I found an old CD of it in a little shop in a backstreet in Nairobi.

“You like this?” the shopkeeper asked.

“Yeah,” I say. “I like the picking guitar.”

“And the bottle?”

“And the bottle.”

The songs are mostly in the Luhya tribal language (in which I am not fluent), but friends tell me there are catchy numbers like Esimiti Khusilenje (Plaster on the Leg) and “1 0 0 93”, the band’s post office box number, so fans know where to write.

But I like the picky guitar, with its unfamiliar cadences.

And the bottle.

Get the latest news from thewest.com.au in your inbox.

Sign up for our emails