Killer Bees and a lack of chicken

Luke, Tracy and Emily start school tomorrow and Baxter starts on Wednesday. They are excited and I must admit - RVA is a very cool place to go to school. The atmosphere is more like a small college campus than an elementary and junior high school. I pray that they continue to like it and that they grow both academically and spiritually.

OK - now to explain the title. We had chicken pot pie tonight. Some man came to our door on Saturday selling chickens so we said we would take two and he left for awhile and then returned with two chickens in little sacks. We also had a man come to the house who was selling eggs. We bought a tray of 30 eggs because that is how they sell them. The kids also really like them so we use a lot of eggs. So tonight before we ate dinner Tracy made a very profound statement. She said, "If we keep eating more eggs than chicken pretty soon we are going to run out of chickens". So the logic is a little flawed but we did get a good laugh out of it. Emily wouldn't eat the chicken because she said it didn't look like all of the feathers had been plucked off properly. You see, while we were in Cheptebo there was a fundraiser with a meal (for about 400 people) that we helped cook for. This involved killing about 8 chickens (chopping the heads off) and watching them run around like a chicken with it's head cut off! Then, the ladies plucked the feathers off of the chicken. The kids were fascinated and a little grossed out but they began to realize that chickens don't only come in the grocery store. Emily is a little leary of eating chicken right now.

Saturday, we were getting ready to walk to RVA and measure how far it is and how much of an increase in elevation. As we were waiting outside our house to go, James, one of the boys next door told the boys that they could all throw rocks at a bee hive in the middle of a large tree between the houses. Well, all of Baxter's pitching practice paid off (or didn't depending on how you look at it) and he threw a rock right into the middle of the hive. Needless to say, the bees were very angry. We noticed right away that James was nowhere to be found. Suddenly, we felt the bees on us so everyone scattered. Baxter and Luke ran towards an open field by the hospital, Tracy, Emily and I made it into the house and shut the door and all of the windows and Philip got Carly and ran to get the outside worker and run from the house. After about 2 hours, everyone was able to return home. Philip and Carly got stung several times and Tracy got stung once. We were quite lucky. They were not killer bees really but it sure seemed like it for awhile. Just this evening, two Kenyans built a fire in a small paint can and climbed up a ladder to the hive. They smoked the bees out and then got all of the honey and honeycomb out and then poured Kerosine in the hole so that the bees would not return. The guy was protected only by a jacket, a pair of gloves, a hat and something on his face. Not quite the white knight that we call a bee keeper. When he finished, he gave us a little of the honey and then we lent him a lantern to carry while he walked home. He was a little scared to walk home because there were 3 elephants spotted in the forest yesterday! Here is a picture of the bee operation.