Bees_04_3 Placing the Dead and Nurturing the Living: Documentation of house- construction and terrace farming in Zargulla, an endangered Omotic language

The children and adults gathered continue to watch the bees piling on the stick. The researcher asks if they can describe what they observe and Mr At’inafu teases her saying that they have already taught her about this years back. But he repeats how the bees are made to settle down, how they are brought to the bee-hive, how the honey is harvested etc upon which Tariku comments “why do we need to tell? Watching the work that we do, doesn’t that teach even more?” Mr At’inafu agrees. One of the children watching states: “actually these are our bees. We have followed them all the way down the street and made them settle here calling “bul-bul-bul”” Following this Mr Atinafu and Tariku go into lengthy and interesting discussion on how the owner of a bee-colony is determined by custom. Controversies can arise since bee colonies can leave a bee-hive owned by a person and move to another bee-hive owned by another person. They also talk about the skills and sophisticated characteristics of bees which they compare to science. The recoding was done by Azeb Amha using Panasonic HC-W580 video camera