In my last post, I talked about the Diwaniya Agricultural High School.  The US State Department gave them a grant to purchase bee hives so students can learn how to manage hives.  The State Department also helped this school start its fish hatchery.  They are involved in helping this school because Diwaniya Province is largely agriculture.  See, Iraq isn’t all desert.  These two project alone help the school generate revenue while teaching high school aged children agriculture skills they can take back to their farms.  Some of them move on the ag college, but most return home with what they learned at the high school.  Originally kids from all over the province lived in the dormitories at the school, but they were damaged a few years ago.  That means most of the pupils are not from rural areas.  The school hopes to repair the dorms soon so the provincial agriculture school can again be for the entire province.

Here’s the story I did on the ribbon cutting for the bee hives at the Diwaniya Agricultural High School.

Ok, enough with the serious crap. I thought this story was going to be completely stupid when I went out there. I was thinking, “Wow, I get to go to the aggie school for a ribbon cutting of boxes, woo hoo.” I mean who the hell cares about a bee hive ribbon cutting? What I didn’t realize is that I would be able to film bees and it would be cool. The rest of my video is pretty vanilla. After the ceremony we tried to rush over to the fish hatchery, that’s where I was going to get some interviews with Iraqis. By the time the convoy I was on got over there, all the Iraqis, including the First Deputy Governor of Diwaniya was speeding off to his next appointment. That’s why my one soundbite is of our State Department buddy on a couch in an office.

My favorite part is around 26 seconds. It’s hard to see in the internet video, but there are a ton of bees flying around. The entire crowd is around the hives and the bees sense it. You see the Director of Diwaniya Vocational Schools holding up the honeycomb and the First Deputy Governor back away wondering what is going through that mans mind putting his fingers in that hive.

With all those people up there, I don’t think anyone was stung. I was around those hives for awhile and was never stung.

This post is tagged 343rd MPAD, Diawanya, Diawanya Agricultural High School, FOB Kalsu