They are light but tenacious shrubs, entwining themselves by attaching themselves to trees with amber barks that wait for the most intriguing rays of the sun, to colour the darkness and humidity on the palette of a nature that is still untainted. The Mukogodo forest is like this, a dip of extricable bush in the sea of the Laikipia plateau. More than three hundred kilometres into which few human beings penetrate and which remains the realm of shy and happy animals, and of indigenous hunters and gatherers, who respect their rules, even the crude ones, help each other, exploit each other and form alliances whose common interest is the maintenance of their habitat. Of what others today like to call an 'ecosystem' and which should be the world.
The indigenous people are called Yiaku. It is an indigenous Cushite ethnic and linguistic group, almost 6.000 people, which has lived there for at least five hundred years, ever since they migrated from Ethiopia and chose that forest. There they have always had a friend in common with Nature: bees.
Bees produce their main medicine, their soothing and, now that they have come to know the importance and power of money, their essential gain.

They also use honey for their sacred rituals, at weddings and for blessings. During initiation ceremonies in the heart of Mukogodo, the sacred forest, they purify young men who pass from one age group to another with a mixture of honey and water that is believed to help them recover quickly from the wounds of circumcision. In order to marry, the young men must already have 20 beehives to manage and take them as gifts to their beloved's parents.
The Yiaku are beekeepers and therefore also defend the forest and respect its plants, flowers and animals.
They ask the little elephant that wanders in not to destroy the honey acacias and callianders, the giraffes not to look down but to continue to feed on the highest, sun-warmed leaves, where the bees do not arrive. Also because they are the first to get pissed off.
Yiaku and Nyuki. That's what they call the hard-working insects in Kenya. A friendship that stems from the same character: we are tireless workers, we live in a community, we have a tribal order, our chieftain and loyal subjects. We know the rules of the game and we do not shirk.
But you must not break our hives.

The Yiaku have built homes for their forest companions. They care for them like an old-fashioned employer cares for his workers.
About ten days after a hive is built, like a hospitable apartment building in a pleasant setting, the bees come in and out. Yiaku and Nyuki have the same thoughts: how wonderful it is to work on a natural element with so many uses, and at the same time to feed and live in communal sweetness. A Yiaku who does not have a hive, who does not have bees as allies, is a loser.
The taste of honey produced as naturally as possible, certifies not only the goodness and health of the plant, but also the state of grace of the forest. The acidity, the sweetness, the density, the pungent taste in the throat. Every aspect of each honey produced is a signal to be grasped, safeguarded or acted upon.
A Yiaku who does not love the forest, who does not extol its purity, its ability to restore itself and reproduce, its need to generate water and resources without waiting for help from above from those who would then kill it by drugging it, is not a true Yiaku. It has already been contaminated, beguiled, screwed. Some have even become enemies, in pursuit of material riches. Sandalwood, a highly prized plant with much coveted wood, also grows in the forest. Sandalwood smuggling is no less widespread than ivory smuggling, and is much less visible.
But not for the Yiaku, who defend their favourite plant and its resins.

At the limit, those who need to let off some steam, to laugh and not think too much about living in an immersion of natural captivity, can produce the ancestral honey schnapps and fall asleep with a mellifluous smile.  
When the illegal woodcutter sees a hive near the sandalwood, he already knows that he will risk his life much more than with the corruptible officers, during their transport, when it will be too late for the plant anyway.
The first to rebel will be the Queen herself and her subjects: a swarm can kill you with sweet revenge.
An end even worse than the one the evil-doer would make, falling into the clutches of the Yiaku.
The honey sold has also created the minimum of wealth necessary for the Yiaku children to study, and some of them will study how to earn money by maintaining their forest, others will join the Kenya Forest Service, because who better than them knows how to defend a heritage?

The KFS recently stated that the Mukogodo forest, despite the obvious deforestation of the entire country, has increased its territory by 18% in the last ten years. An extraordinary fact, which is also due to man's friendship with the bee. 'The beauty of beekeeping in forest conservation is that the whole ecosystem is conserved rather than a keystone species or a particular tree,' they say at Kenya's forestry research institute, KEFRI.
This is why the Yiukis have earned full management of the forest and continuously promote the production of non-wood forest products: in addition to honey, gums, resins and beeswax. The Yiakus make a decent living from beekeeping, earning two or three times as much as a cattle farmer threatened by banditry subsidised by greedy social climbers or a farmer struggling with pesticides and feuds over land that is increasingly coveted by developers. Elsewhere in Kenya, fellow beekeepers complain of poor honey production due to environmental degradation and declining bee populations. Without respect, without friendship, thinking only of yourself and making money in the short term, you will lose everything. These are not honey words, but they are just as true.

Photo: Christa Neuenhofer/PBase