The Buzz…

Abuba excused me from playing the last two nights, on account of my suffering.

You see, it’s been a rough past few days in Lopitland.

Kimmie and I had the bright idea Saturday to climb up to the top of a little neighboring mountain—the one we had church on not long ago—and shoot a video greeting for Annika, Steve & Co.’s recently departed school teacher. It was her favorite place in Lopitland.

Well, I’m here to tell you it’s now my least favorite place, despite all the warm-and-fuzzies associated with Annika.

The long and short of It is that I climbed into a tree at the very top of the mountain, only to find said tree was the home of a giant beehive. On any normal day, we would have been fine—and I assure Kimpie to that affect. (We later learned that thieves had come the night before and stole all the honey, so the bees were already agitated.) But next thing we know, we’re absolutely swarmed by the things and fleeing down the mountain, screaming and flailing and completely at the whim of the little beasts. You know in the cartoons when there’s this big arrow of angry bees? That’s pretty much what it was like. I just kept thinking, it’s got to end soon; they’ve got to stop. But they didn’t stop. It’s safe to say I was frantic. And to make it worse, after the initial barrage had passed, I had to go back up the mountain to get the video camera… and was attacked again, though—praise God—by a lesser army.

We spent the rest of Saturday in a miserable state—burning all over and unable to get any sort of relief. We pounded down the antihistamines and lathered up with cream, to no avail. Sunday went by in similar fashion. Poor Kimmie looks like she has a golf ball lodged in her cheek and swollen Mickey Mouse hands. My whole body is like a pincushion—I’m talking dozens of stings. And it doesn’t help that I’d just absolutely fried my frontside playing at the river. Then I got up in the middle of the night and was so doped I slammed my head against my stool and have a knot just above my eyebrow. Like I said, it’s been a rough few days!

And there you have it, the story of our current misery. Or, as the Lopit would say, our suffering. Laudina and Abuba lu-lu-lu-ed at our pitiful fate and have told us maybe a thousand times how the bees are bad, bad, bad. They’ve made us promise never to go up that mountain again. They’re such dear friends and have done their best to inform the whole of the community about our little adventure. (Gee, thanks!) Our friends keep coming by to “look” at us (the literal translation sounds a bit funny there) and tell us how bad bees are and how we should never, never, never go back there.

So perhaps the blessing in all this is that we’re just that much more humbled before our neighbors. Or that we were able to see how much they really do care.

Or maybe God just thought the Lopit needed another good laugh at the expense of their white visitors? ;)