From Bees to Baboons

On Thursday, Christina and I worked in Gataka helping Tabitha and Moses. Finding our way back during our 45 minute walk, a ruckus occurred with various people making a detour from the main road. Not speaking Swahili, Tabitha informed us that there were bees in the road and people were walking around or waiting for them to disperse in order to continue down the road. Even trucks were avoiding the bees. Not really understanding the severity of the situation, Christina reminded me that if you don't move, bees won't hurt you. Boy, weren't we naive.

We made a deal with Tabitha and Moses. We would walk down the road and when we made it through, we would wave them on. We embarked on our adventure and oh an adventure it became. As we walked, we talked, and then I said we should be quiet because I believed I heard the buzzing. Immediately after I spoke, we were taken over by the bees. They swarmed all around us. They were all over us. I had them in my hair (at least 5 or 6 were literally stuck in my hair), down my shirt,
all over my arms. We continued to walk until one stung me on my arm and then another on my neck. I could have sworn Christina yelled run (it turns out she didn't and I don't know who did but I took their advice) so I ran. I started waving my arms around like a madwoman screaming and yelling for people to get out of the way because of the bees. Christina didn't wait long before she followed. We ran as hard as we could trying to flick the bees off us while onlookers remarked about the two crazy white girls running down the street.

Luckily for us, a group of men told us to grab our long sleeve shirts and whip it around us to get the bees off. We were the smart ones who didn't put the shirts on before we started our journey. Then some men yelled for us to lay flat on the ground. We immediately dropped, covering our faces as the bees continued to crawl and sting.
The men covered us completely and not knowing what their intent was, other than to help us, I kept yelling that they trapped the bees with us and what good would that do? Within seconds, the men had made fires all around us and one by one the bees left or died from the smoke. At one point, Christina was almost burned by the fire because they put it too close to her head but they quickly removed it and kept it within a safe distance to harm the bees.

Eventually, the men allowed us to get up and with some laughter we continued our walk. Picking off the few last bees out of our clothes and pulling out the stingers, we were joined by Tabitha and Moses who took the safe route and ran the detour. Overall, I made it through with only 4 stings (it turned out that they did get me on my legs, which at first we thought was untrue) but unfortunately, for Christina, she had 17 all over her arms and back.

Fast forward to Saturday when we were in Masaimara. After a long but successful day on a safari, we made it back to our camp and were anxiously awaiting our chance for dinner. Another volunteer, Skye, and I were walking from our tent up to the dining area and noticed three baboons fighting. We stopped to watch and in an instant, the three stopped and turned on us. Sacha, another volunteer, came out of his tent to see what was going on. I told him not to worry and that the baboons wouldn't get in his shoes (no idea why, but it was a fear of his) and as I said this, the three baboons started coming for Skye and me. They didn't stop either. They ran us all the way to an open area and one of them broke off and went for Sacha. He yelled, "Puss puss!" (not sure why either but it worked) and the baboon left him alone. Skye and I made it safely to dinner but from then on we were on guard everytime we made our way to our tent.

Moral of the story: Don't go through a swarm of angry bees especially when strong Kenyan men run the other way and don't come across baboons who had just been fed bread from some extremely smart foreigners, who don't know any better.