April 2006 Outreach Mission: Turtle Fun for Kids, Preventing the Spread of Avian Influenza
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Each month, Mayumba National Park's Outreach Team prepares a program that includes an environmental education component for the children of the villages close to Park borders, and a health topic for everyone to learn about. This April, we packed up a trunk full of costumes, posters, and audiovisual equipment and hit the road... sort of. Mayumba's Parkside villages are most easily (and sometimes only) accessible by boat, so over the glistening Banio Lagoon waters and through the winding mangrove forests we went to go talk turtles, and to tell people how to protect themselves, their families, and their food sources from avian influenza. Even though the message was the same, each village visit was a little bit different. In Mambi, every kid in the village (all 15 of them) ran down the hill to greet us and carry our equipment up to their school, where we'd sleep in tents in one of their tiny classrooms. In Malembe, the old village chief invited us in for lunch and showed us the smoky kitchen where his wife was weaving a mat out of raphia. At one village we didn't even step foot on shore, because we literally bumped into the chief fishing in his dugout canoe and gave this leader of a 3 person settlement the bird flu lecture right there on the lagoon. |
| In the classroom, things were a bit more predictable. The kids would be astonished to learn that a leatherback turtle can weigh as much as a car, they'd giggle uncontrollably when one of their classmates donned the jellyfish costume ("and here, madamoiselle, is your hat!"), they'd argue over which name was best for their satellite turtle, they'd scribble and erase and color their turtle drawings with the greatest of diligence- for these drawings were going to children on the other side of the world! In all, over 250 children learned that their beach- their very own- is the best in all of Africa for leatherback turtles- that they're "champions". I've gotta say, it was pretty fun. | |
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Having gained approval for this mission from the local authorities, the team took printed and audiovisual materials about avian influenza prepared by the Ministry of Agriculutre and by medical and veterinary experts at the Wildlife Conservation Society to share with the region's population. Mayumba is a stopping point for many migratory and aquatic birds, and is thus a site of increased vulnerability. While Mayumba National Park's Outreach Team toured the lagoon villages, local NGO Nyanga Tour pitched in between Mayumba and Tchibanga, distributing handouts to all the roadside villages. With our combined efforts, nearly 1000 people received this important message. At the bird flu lectures, people listened intently, and posed serious questions- "If someone is infected with avian influenza, can you take care of them without getting sick yourself?" Keep in mind that here in Gabon, the spectre of Ebola is never far off the radar, and the reality of HIV/AIDS is on many minds. The information given at these lectures empowered people to take action to protect themselves: at the end of the lecture in Mambi, a woman approached one of the Outreach Team members and said she'd be sending her kids to cut bamboo tomorrow, because she was going to build an enclosure for her chickens. |
| Partnering with San Diego-based NGO Wildcoast, Mayumba National Park is launching an international children's environmental art exchange. Children in Bahia de los Angeles in Baja California, Mexico, a reserve that protects loggerhead turtles, among other aquatic species, are drawing their turtles to send to the children here in Mayumba. Village children near Mayumba National Park, some of whom had never colored a picture before, drew pictures of turtles, the threats they face, and how we can protect them. The drawings have been collected and catalogued, and now the children anxiously await next turtle season, when they will receive a drawing from their new faraway friends. |
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