My boss wants me to make videos to show young people how to keep bees and get an income from the honey. We had supported a group of beekeepers in Matale, a small village in the countryside about three hours from Morogoro and so the communications guy, a man from Acla Honey who acted as our fixer, and the driver and I went out there.
We took camera, tripod, mobile phones and two phone gimbals. In the end all we used was our mobile phones and gimbals. The quality was plenty good enough.
On reaching the village e sought out the government representative. He wasn’t in his shell of an office so we went to the next village where there was a weekly market going on. We didn’t find him there but by the time we got back to Matale word had reached him that people ere seeking him and he was waiting for us.
The four of us set out for the hives with the beekeeper, his assistant and the government man. We had asked Acla Honey to take us to hives which ere located in a scenic place and they did not let me down. It was spectacular.
We spent around 3 hours filming and refilming the beekeeper and the hives. He was very obliging and did all the acting we asked of him. The other to men from the village watched on silently. Then we walked back to the car and I got 10,000 shillings from my own pocket to give to the farmer to thank him for his support. But apparently the other two men also felt that they needed paying.
I am thoroughly sick of this sense of entitlement. They had done nothing but watch and yet I needed to tip them too. I needed to keep them on side so I did it but it has stained the memory of the day which was otherwise a lovely memory.
We stayed overnight at Turiani in a hotel which was a lot better than I had expected for £12 a night. This was just as well as we had to spend longer than we had planned there – our car wouldn’t start and so my plans for an early morning start were thwarted and it wasn’t until 12:30 when a replacement car as brought from Morogoro than we were able to set off.
Filming in the heat of the midday sun is painful. It has the added disadvantage of having overhead sun making it difficult to get good lighting. Hence we did a small amount of filming in a forest clearing just off the road back to Morogoro and headed back to the office hot and sweaty.
Beekeeping is a great option for the rural population because there are plenty of pollen-producing flowers and a lack of people. The outputs are in demand and 1kg of honey sells to a bulk buyer for 10,000 shillings (about £3).
This does not sound much but to those struggling to make a living in the countryside it’s a reasonable price. There are also other products you can extract from honey to increase income. The input are not very expensive and hives and other equipment can be shared amongst a team.
It’s always great to leave the town and get out into the countryside and what better way to spend the day than filming beekeepers in the bush.