THE BEE INCIDENT

So, the other day Shabani, one of the guys that works at the camp, said that he saw a dead buffalo in the river. Naturally, as soon as he told Ray, James and I, we all wanted to see it. We decided to make it an afternoon activity. The buffalo was by the river, so we had to walk through the forest to see it. We parked the car on top of the hill, then had to walk down, cross an area that had flooded (over my knees) to get to the forest, and then eventually the river. Ray went first, followed by the children and I. Jackie, JeanAnn and Richard were behind. We had all taken off our shoes at the top of the hill, and rolled up our shorts to wade through the mucky pond. All of a sudden as I am in the water, I hear and see JeanAnn screaming at the top of her lungs from the top of the hill. Jackie starts screaming as well, yelling “THE BEES ARE SWARMING, RUN!” I grab Sarah, Ray grabs James and we head into the jungle, running as fast as we can. It was out of a movie, and very scary at the time, knowing the bees were coming for us and that we just had to outrun them. Jackie was shouting for us to run towards the river, so we did, at an angle. I could smell the dead buffalo, and ran past it to try to find a shallower part of the river.
We keep running for another minute, and eventually I see a bank. I sit down and accidentally start sliding down the mud bank into the river! So, now I am covered in mud but can see the river is MUCH deeper than I thought. Ray is now shouting at me, “NO! Don’t get in- crocodiles!” We are all out of breath, and luckily he grabs James and I and helps us get back onto land. We realize then that there is only one bee around us, until Ray looks to the right and we are standing NEXT to another hive. We had run from one to another! So, we decide to just run straight back out, a different way. The swarm was gone, and Richard came and met us with the car. JeanAnn was stung many times, Jackie was stung 9 times, and I managed not to get stung at all!
Anyway, I will write more later, but we had 5 really fun clients this weekend who were all young and adventurous. A great time. Some of them are from England and the rest live in Dar, so its nice that I will have more people to hang out with next time I go. I have promised to let Sarah and James use my computer to watch The Parent Trap, so more later.