The Birds and the Bees

Photograph by Hanna Jacobs

We’ve had a wonderful rainy season this year. One of the results is that the grass and everything else are growing at such a rate that Skhumbuzo cannot keep up. To help him get ahead a friend of his, Siyabonga (his name means “Thank you” in Zulu) comes in on Saturday mornings to cut the lawn. During the week he goes to school, grade 11.

This morning, on arrival, he walks up to me and says earnestly: “Sir, I need to write a short interview with somebody on bees. I know nothing about bees, except that they are dangerous. Can you help me?”

“Yes, I think I can help you. How long must the interview be?”

“About a 100 words.”

“Goodness gracious,” I think to myself, “the teacher doesn’t know much about bees either!”

“Must you sit down and have the interview with me and Matilda, or do you write a piece on bees in the form of an interview?”

“No, I only write it in interview form.”

“You do know that bees are very important to us as humans, Siyabonga? Without them we’ll be in big trouble.”

“I know they are dangerous, but I do not know how they can help us.”

We are partly to blame for the dangerous-impression that he has. He and Skhumbuzo must clean around the shrubs close to our 2 hives and when they do I always tell them to do it very early in the morning and with the least disturbance of the bees. Our African bees tend to be bad tempered and from previous experiences I know that you have to handle them with care.

Now I balance my danger-talk with my promotion-talk and I tell him about their very important contribution to our ecosystem. “Everything in nature has a role, even the insects and animals that irritate and scare us. That is why we must conserve and protect. We must even look after the izinyoka  (snakes).”

“Izinyoka!?” He almost jumps back at the mere mentioning of the word. “Eish, they are very dangerous! Why must we look after them?”

“They catch mice and frogs and keep things in balance.”

He gives an “if-you-say-so-but-I-know-what-I-know”-laugh. I promise to write him something before  chaila time at 13:00. So, while he is busy in the garden I go onto the internet to make use of copy and paste, trying to fit the answers to “Why are bees important? What threatens them? Are African bees dangerous?” and “How can we help them?” into 100 words. 

The idea is that he will use the data that I've gathered and write his own piece. My only hope that it will indeed happen is the fact that a typed essay in a small school in rural Kwazulu-Natal from a grade 11 learner will be very suspicious. And even if he uses it in its unabridged format, he would have learnt something about the birds and the bees by the time it is written by hand in his own book.

Sitting in front of the computer, a scene from the animation movie How to Train your Dragon keeps playing in my head. Hiccup busy with his training in Dragon School pages through one of their textbooks on the different types of dragons and what to do when you encounter one of them:

 “Timberjack. This gigantic creature has razor-sharp wings that can slice through full-grown trees. Extremely dangerous. Kill on sight.  Changewing. Even newly hatched dragons can spray acid. Kill on sight. Gronckle, Zippleback, The Skrill, Bone Knapper, Whispering Death… Extremely dangerous. Extremely dangerous. Extremely dangerous. Extremely dangerous. Kill on sight. Kill on sight. Kill on sight. Kill on sight……”

We all need to train our dragons one way or the other.

I give him the page. Immediately he switches the lawnmower off, finds a place in the shade and reads through the interview on bees. On leaving he tells me he is quite satisfied. He thinks the piece will work.

As he strolls away, jacket hanging over his shoulder, Longfellow comes to mind:

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where

Hopefully, in this case, it might even hit a teacher.

George