Last Weekend, I took my fish loving daughter to Gelephu Fishery. It's a place my cousins told me lots of stories about in school days. They tempted to visit the place but it took me over 20 years to make it here myself. In these year I have become a father and even my daughter has developed fascination for aquatic life.
Beautiful Office with romantic campus, but smell of fish is unavoidable
But I was never really prepared to see so big an area for fishery and so many tanks in our own country. Going by the size of the fishery here I am wondering why we are importing fishes from across Phuntsholing. Where all the fishes from Gelephu Fishery go?
Touring the Tanks
I am impressed by the range of projects this fishery is undertaking: from piggery to aquarium making. The piggery is an integral part of fishery. There are as many pigsty as fish tanks. Though it might sound disgusting to hear that the pigshit goes to fish tank but that's the indication that the fishes coming out of this tanks are very organic.
The fishery is also raring exotic aquarium fishes to be sold along with aquariums and I think it's a smart move because they know best about fishes.
Happy Fish Lover- But we didn't see a fish that day
It was sunday and we had to take special permission to get access to the facility, but without any activity like feeding or harvesting the shy fishes didn't show up, which disappointed my daughter. But she grew excited when we peeped through to window of the exoctic fish unit.
We didn't see a fish that day but going by the size and number of tanks I strongly feel that it can feed whole of Bhutan with organic fishes- because we don't know where and how the fishes we import are rared. Bhutanese deserve to feed on healthy food.
Gelephu is a whole new world for me. Born in the north I am up against many warm adventures in the south. I am making heavy use of Sundays that I have to myself and family because weekdays are insanely tight. I wish I had good reception of 3G connection at night to write down all the first hand southern experiences.
The following is the picture of the woods across the Gelephu High School campus. It's two acres of Rubber trees. I joined my friends during the lunch break to explore the woods and extract rubber. Kids were playing with rubber balls they made from the trees. I took a knife along to try out the cutting skill we learnt in high school geography.
Rubber Forest
The trees were laden with milky saps, just a small cut and it comes oozing out. It soon turns into rubber. Gelephu High School had the intention of adopting the trees and harvesting the rubber. They had called Indian experts for advice and found out that each tree could give them at least Nu.1500 a month. This could have made the school self reliant but the idea didn't sell well with NEC for whatever reason- so I learnt.
Oozing Milk
Raw Rubber Balls kids made
Looking at how children have exploited the trees, each tree carries hundreds ugly scars, the trees may not remain harvestable very soon. The question is why are these trees planted if they are not harvested? And even bigger question: If rubber trees grow in our country why haven't we invested in it?
For now, Gelephu High school uses that forest as assembly ground during the hot summers as natural air conditioner.
I was watching a documentary on Aljazeera last evening that
gave me a wonderful surprise- can you believe elephants are afraid of bees? Jim
Carey is right, size doesn’t matter. Well this is one of nature’s many unusual phenomenons.
After seeing how elephants panic and run away when they hear buzzing of bees my
heart went out to the coward giant.
But the documentary was not intended at insulting elephants
whatsoever, it was rather about how farmers in Kenya have used this weakness in
elephant to defend their crop. Elephant is the last animal anyone wants to see
in their fields because they are infamous for wiping off the entire harvest in
a night. Kenya is home to a large population of elephants, which is good news
for nature lovers but a very bad one for farmers whose only source of
livelihood is their crop. They have been in continuous state of war for
survival ever since the natural habitats of elephants were disturbed by the
growing human population and developmental activities.
Killing elephants is the only option the farmers had but
that was illegal, and other option was to die of hunger. They don’t have the
luxury of using electric fence like Bhutan (They don’t even have the power to light
their homes). But out of the blue an idea came that is going to change
everything. Now farmers are encouraged to do bee farming along with their usual
crops. The bee hives are hung strategically around the field interconnected by
a string that runs around the field like a fence. When elephants encroach into
the farm they will touch the string, which will shake the bee hives and excite
the bees. And you know that happens when elephants hear the bees buzzing- right
they run for their lives.
Bee Fence!
In southern Bhutan, our farmers are bothered by elephants too,
and the best we have done so far was setting up electric fences around the
fields. Due to heavy investment government could not provide electric fences to all
the farmers. It will take another round of foreign grants from friendly
countries to have our southern farms protected against elephants. But there are
a few questions we have to ask:
1.Is the investment worth the return?
2.Is the method sustainable?
3.Is it Eco-friendly?
4.Is it safe for other wildlife?
5.Is it safe from humans?
Bee fencing method will not only be the answer to all the
questions but also give farmers sweet harvest of honey. It will defend them
from elephants and also enhance their harvest with so many bees pollinating
their crops. Solar electric fence might sound like a very green idea until you
see the cost attached with it. After listening to Gunter Pauli, the founder ofBlue Economy, I admire what Kenyans have learned from nature. When will we do
this?
