"Bees" :)

A follow up from the end of my last post. :)

 Bees! And the women who are keeping them. :)

The women work collectively - they share in the labour, share in the care, share in the "harvest" of honey (for health - they know how good honey is for you, all the nutrition and medical benefits/treatments, probably more than most of us! AND for selling rather profitably at the market, where there's always a demand and honey always gets a good price!) , and share in the joy of working together to make new roads forward for their community. 

I met with one lady who is part of this project & had a good chat - just off-hand since I wasn't doing any formal monitoring/evaluation of the bee project. 

The lovely, lively Julia

Her name is Julia. She is, I don’t know, maybe 60 years old? And the liveliest animated little lady you would meet. I was actually just having lunch with Chicho, one of the staff, in a local eatery and she happened to be in “town” (she lives up in one of the communities in the mountains) and she came scooting over to greet Chicho and pulled up a chair and sat down and started telling me all about the bee project, grabbing a napkin to demonstrate how to take the bee hive square thing (I believe she used a more technical term in Spanish :P) out of the box and extract the honey, and dip in (wax – I think) if it needed re-laminating. Ugh, I totally wanted to whip out my camera and take a photo or a video while she was waving her napkin around!! (But didnt want to interrupt or take away from the spontaneity of the moment). She is a member of the women’s association in her community & one of the leaders of the “community council”. And just so proud of her community, and with so much "fuerza" ("strength", but the kind with some real ooomphf behind it!!) . And so happy to talk to me – she kept saying, "before, I never spoke my voice or talked to people I didn’t know!!" It was so refreshing to hear her enthusiasm. One day, they’ll invent something where you can take photos/videos with your eyes! :)  And when that happens, I'll have even more to share with you!

Annnnnnd for the record, I DID find sheep!!! 

Not many, but I found these ones! :) (or, they could be goats.. but the one in front looked rather fluffy). They were down in the lowlands, a bit between mountains. So what do you know, maybe we COULD have a sheep project after all! :)