17 Apr 2009

All I needed was some screws

Please read this post and then read the comments. A friend of a friend makes a good point about how ignorance can possibly be detrimental.
Today, I was helping putting some desks together for the LITA classroom and so I went to get some screws. While I was there in this little storage shed asking the guy in charge if he had what I was looking for a huge swarm of bees came into the building where we were and they were all over outside as well. We were in the little office and only a dozen or so bees came in there. I don't know what they were doing but it was apparent they weren't going to leave real soon and so I asked the guy " How do we get out of here?" One other guy that was with us took the only heavy Jacket and covered his whole self and walked through the massive swarm and the other one looked at me and said "just walk backwards as you're leaving" So, I looked down and walked through maybe thousands of African Killer bees and came out with out being stung at all. Although, I didn't find the screws I was looking for, I still came back with a story.

4 comments:

Editor said...

Quite a narrow escape! Those bees often live up to their name. Thank God you made it out safely.

Did you really walkout backwards? what's that about?

Bob

Nic Nice said...

yeah, I just walked backwards through a swarm. Took about 15 meters of walking backwards to get through the whole of it, and while I was walking they were flying into me and landing on me and I just kept walking backwards with my head down and my arms at my sides. I guess I wasn't threatening to them in that position?

Question said...

Hey Nic,

This is Chioke's friend, Rachel. I have been reading your blog via 'The Lawino Letters' and have been meaning to comment for some time. This post strikes me as interesting. It certainly is a good story and one does encounter all sorts of animals/bugs/sounds/smells that we are not used to in the US when we arrive in a new country.

A few thoughts though:
"African Killer Bees" do not actually exist in Africa. They are a hybrid species that developed in Brazil when two different kinds of bees mated and made a large, ferocious species that moved in swarms. They were called 'Africanized" because it was believed at the time that the fierce bees mirrored the untamed African. So the term itself has a problematic history.

Second, even though the bees were in a swarm, they didn't sting you, which means that even if 'African Killer' bees did exist on the continent of Africa, what you most likely encountered was a swarm of honey bees that got displaced from their nest and was moving to a new location. They didn't want you, they wanted a flower!

In fact, African bees are actually much smaller and less likely to sting than european bees.

I point all of this out because as a visitor in a new land, the desire to sensationalize Africa can be great. Without meaning to or knowing to we can continue myths and ways of describing things that have roots in racist histories. I can tell through your conversation with Chioke that your commitment to questioning these things is vast, so I thought I'd jump into the conversation and point this out.

Next time, follow the bees to the honey!

Nic Nice said...

Rachel, thanks for commenting. It's funny, because when I got out of the swarm, there were a group of Zambians that were just watching this huge swarm of bees and I heard someone say "African killer bees" I didn't really question this, and when I blogged it, certainly was thinking to myself "Were those really killer bees at all?' Then I thought, I wonder what an African killer bee is, and so on, but didn't research it. I also thought, someone is going to know about this and comment on it if there are any gaps in my story.

The guy that went before me did get stung, and someone said that if you get stung six or more times, it's could be lethal. It was a nice experience to walk through this with bees flying into me, and crawling on me, and come out unscathed. I think they were looking for a place to settle down actually.

Again, I appreciate your comment, and I will leave the story as is, because I think you point is important. I hope that many will read it and then your comment about "sensationalizing Africa". It is something that I try not to do, and will be more careful in the future.