6 MONTHS IN ASIA

The past few weeks have been incredibly busy, exciting and, at times, stressful. We came over to Asia to be part of the Church of Joy in Singapore; but things haven't worked out that way.

Our involvement there always depended on whether or not I would find work that would entitle me to a visa. So, for the past few months I daily scoured advertisements for jobs on-line. I must have applied for hundreds of jobs by now, some suitable and some not so suitable, the pre-requisite for applying being that if there was the slightest chance of me getting an interview, however slight, apply. I had two interviews!

My job searching was further complicated by the fact that South Africans are only given a months visa at a time and there is apparently a standard operating procedure in place making it extremely difficult for Africans to remain in Singapore; because of previous abuses by unsavory characters. Therefore, our on-line applications for extensions were summarily rejected.

The ameliorating thing in all of this has been the willingness of Christians here to help each other out. After the first month, needing to leave Singapore and re-enter to obtain another months visa(or not!), provision was made for us to stay at a house in the care of Thomas, the pastor in Johor Bahru, just across the border in Malaysia. We spent three good weeks there, including attending a Leaders Training Time, and then returned to Singapore.

As that month drew to a close, we realized that we would have to return to South Africa because the prospect of finding work in a short space of time was bleak and Singapore is an extremely expensive place to stay. It was a strange place to be in because we had really felt to be there. A phone call from Thomas however, changed things for us.

He offered me the chance to teach part time at his school, the use of the condo and Rooster(the red van). We took the opportunity and moved across the border to JB, still intent on finding work in Singapore. Teaching was a new experience for me; so it was a steep learning curve; but besides the initial disciplining of the kids I've quite enjoyed it.

This was always a temporary measure though to buy us time to look for work. Which as I mentioned before, I didn't find. The only positive thing work-wise in Singapore was selling an article about the extinction of bees to Asia Geographic. Time was running out though.

Then last month, Cindy crossed borders to visit friends in Singapore. On her return, something happened that got our warning bells sounding. The emigration officer grilled her, asking her all sorts of questions about why we were here and what we were doing etc. In the end he stamped her passport with a month visa. Worrying for us because we had always been given three months. We knew then that we had to make a decision about our next step.

We did a lot of praying and worrying. At the same time, Thomas came to chat to me about taking over his old web design and hosting company. This gave us options but it meant that we would have to give up on being in Singapore for the next season and apply for a working visa in Malaysia. Our other option was to return to South Africa but in the end we felt that God had opened a door for us here that we needed to step through.

We are now in the process of applying for a working visa and we are hoping to hear good news soon so that we can get that up and running. And what do I know about web designing? Almost nothing, but Thomas has offered to teach me what I need to know. I will take over his existing client base of 25 customers, so that will be a great head start.

Besides teaching, I've been writing a book to inspire parents and students to make a difference in the world. We were hoping to have it done by tomorrow night, so that it could be handed out at the schools end of year concert, which shares the same theme. Over and above the teaching I did daily plus having to complete a few prior commitments, I had just on a month to complete the project.

I had to sift through and collect inspirational stories about people making a real difference in the world, sift through pages of information, come up with titles, write a few paragraphs about each story, extract quotes and caption the images, which I had to find and edit. That was the easy part!

What proved more difficult was designing the book and arranging the layout. This is something that I've never done before; so I had to first of all find a freeware Desk Top Publishing(DTP) program that I could use. I then had to learn how to use it before having to battle through designing the book and choosing spacing, fonts, colours etc etc. I basically ended up working from morning to midnight, Monday to Sunday for weeks on end. Cindy has an excellent eye, so she helped me a lot in getting it right.

Although the book was just about finished by Monday, with some tweaking here and there needed, in the end it was just too much for me to get done in such a short space of time. The plan now is to have it done for early next year.

This too was a sharp learning curve, but a learning experience I really enjoyed. And I'm excited to hold a copy of the finished product in my hand real soon. It will look something like this:

SEEDS

A little seed covered with earth
and watered, becomes, over time,
the world's lung, heaven's perfume,
shade to man, beauty to the eye
and a home to many.

MILK AND HONEY

Great men make great conquests
of lesser lands, for in everything
they see that which could be.
.

[Learning to fly: Young bees practice flying.]

Cindy and I drove into the heart of Malaysia, where we thought we would be squeezing through musty jungles; instead, what we witnessed was the mass devastation of what once
must've been a beautiful land.

Its a rugged land, none the less, way up in the sky; and we had to use 4x4's to get there. We were there to save bees that had fallen victim to progress. A 1000 hectares of virgin forest are scheduled to be
bulldozed over, burnt and

then replanted with palm oil plantations.

I'm all for progress; I love watching new buildings being built, new road systems, new cars. I love the ingenuity of man that creates a better place for all, both man and beast. But I didn't see that kind of philosophy in action here at all. All I see is a few people benefitting from a country's wealth. Poor migrant workers, mostly from Indonesia, clad in rags and living in tin shacks, were the hands used to clear the land after the bulldozers had come and gone. And when the machines had come, the animals and birds fled. Those that weren't swift enough died.

[A migrant worker walks over land once densely forested.]

We were up there with a friend, Bruce Cheong and his business partner Kenny. They are both passionate about bees and they told us many interesting stories about these little winged wonders, like; if a bee stings you, walk away from the hive first and then pull out the sting otherwise all the other bees will attack you when they smell the scent of the sting as you pull it out, and how their habitat is being destroyed(not that that needed explanation, we saw for ourselves what was being done to the forest).

While we were standing in the ruins, they pointed to the last standing hill of virgin forest in the entire area, a road from the left and road from the right, along which the bulldozers will travel, snaking towards it. Kenny told us that a tiger had taken refuge there, with all the other animals; and that a hunter would soon be sent in to shoot it, regardless of the fact that its an endangered species. The workers are scared of it and wont work with it around, so die it must!

The fate of the forest bees is the same as that of the tiger. When the loggers come across a bee hive, they chop the tree down and then burn the section of stump housing the colony, whether the bees sting or not.

Pic below: Kenny, in the white, and his friend move a

tree stump, the home of a bee colony, from the ruins

left of the forest. A piece of paper is plugged into the

entrance of the hive to keep the bee's in.

So Kenny, Bruce and Cathy have decided to put a stop to this. Not just for the sake of the bees but also for humanity. According to them, if the bees, who are the main pollinators of our vegetable and fruit crops, die out, our food sources will be greatly affected, to the point of gross food shortages.

So, they pay the loggers to call them when they come across a bee hive and then Kenny goes in with a team to remove it. If the bees are of the honey producing type, then he takes the hive back to one of his pieces of land where they are integrated into his apiary; if not, he releases them back into the wild or gives them to farmers to pollinate their crops with.

Kenny has been involved with bees for a long time. He says that he has been stung so many times now that if a bee stings him, it feels like a mosquito bite(Hence no protective clothing worn in the pic above). He fell in love with the little creatures when he decided to keep a hive as a hobby.

At that stage he was still staying in town, working as a lumber jack; but his bees, returning from forages into the neighbourhood, were stinging passerby's in their cars. And to

placate the angry drivers he would give them a bottle of the honey he had harvested from his bees. Soon however, a steady stream of cars arriving at his front gate, angry people demanding honey, he realized it was time to find a place on the outskirts of the town. Not long after that, his bee population exploded and he was able to swop careers, from being a lumber jack to being an apiarist(beekeeper!). His marketing skills were found wanting and so he approached Bruce and his wife Cathy, who were selling bee products, to help him.

Picture left: A tree stump housing a bee colony that Kenny rescued and relocated to his star fruit farm where he keeps many hives. The tree stump is propped up against a star fruit tree; and then, using a method he invented over many years, he positions a box above the old entrance of the hive. In this way, the bees are fooled into believing that their hive is now in the box itself and they start building there. Kenny is then able to open the box and harvest the honey without ruining the hive as other people would.

We managed to rescue five such logs housing hives the day that we were there. All of them were taken back to this star fruit farm. Kenny, Bruce and Cathy, however, are worried about the future of their bees here too. Masses of adjoining land, once pristine forest, have recently been cleared for rice paddies and they are worried about the pesticides the farmers will use. Bees are extremely sensitive to these poisons and multitudes of whole colonies have been wiped out as a result. So they are currently looking for ways to involve indigenous forest dwellers in protected reserves to help them care for the bees.

After we had spent the day collecting and relocating the hives, we drove to a few other locations where they keep their bees. They have involved the help of the local community, who hang hives in trees on their property, in return for some of the honey harvested. If they did not do that, other bee keepers steal their hives.

To end the day off, we got to stick our fingers into the hive, with stinging bees swarming around(Don't worry mom and dad, Kenny the expert showed us how to do it), and taste the honey. Delectable is the only word for it. The honey from each hive tasted totally different from the other. Some were sweet, some bitter, some bitter sweet, some tasted like Eucalyptus. Bruce explained that a colony will harvest the pollen and nectar from one type of flower and impregnate the honey with that particular flavour, hence the differences in taste.

Well, whatever they do and whatever flowers they pollinate, one thing is for sure, I don't know what they sell in the shops as pure honey, but its not the same thing.

A BEE'S SPITTOON

Below: A Bee's spittoon!

Below: Digging in!

Left: Bee in the box!

978-0-620-44933-5 Sexy Salsa

If you're wondering what the title is all about, let me put you out of your misery. It's an International Standard Book Number(ISBN); but not just any ISBN, it's the very first one ever allocated to me. Cause for celebration I should think.

I had thought that, as with most other bureaucratic processes, it would take great effort over a prolonged period to come by one of these little numbers, but it literally took 10 minutes work and 3 hours wait. Now don't we wish all government procedures were as snappy as that.

I simply logged onto the net, no having to look for parking or stand in dreadfully long cues, Googled ISBN and clicked on one of the first links. I read a bit about it and found out that I needed to approach the ISBN center in the country I was to publish the book in. They generously supplied a link to the South African center, so another click and I was back home in South Africa.

I sent a mail to a Ms. Magret Kibido, of the National Library of South Africa(NLSA), who deals with ISB Numbers, asking her what I needed to do to get my hands on a number. That was just before lunch. By the time I had returned, she had replied, asking me for a contact address, which I duly submitted. A mere 2 hours later I had my number and a directive to fill in a one pager form as well as furnish the NLSA with one copy of the published book. You got it Magret!

And with less than a week to go for the final touches to be added, I'm becoming all the more excited to have my book in my hands with its little ISBN printed somewhere on the back cover.