Limbe Wildlife Centre

Category: education | Date: Jul 10 2008 | By: limbewildlifecentre

Yesterday was the last day of our second Conservation Education Holiday Workshop of this summer. This week we had a very interesting group of students of around 11 years old. Just a few students had been at the Limbe Wildlife Centre before, so for most it was quite a new experience. In the regular school curriculum in Cameroon conservation is not taught, so there was a lot to learn.

The theme of this year’s Holiday Workshops is ‘Animals and Culture’. Busch Gardens Zoo in Florida is sponsoring the workshops and they are simultaneously organising Summer Camps with the same theme. One of the very popular parts of the program is the internet chat session that links up the Cameroonian students with the students in Florida. Before this I told the story of Little Red Riding Hood to our children and how that story influences our thoughts on wolves. I also told about how the wolf almost got extinct in the USA and was reintroduced to the wild later on. So one of the topics our students were asking about was how the wolves are doing now and how the American students feel about wolves. The students at the other side were equally prepared because they asked about the meaning of the elephant for the Bakweri culture. The Bakweri people live on Mount Cameroon.

Our students had already learned a lot about the meaning of elephants, because they had participated in a traditional Bakweri Elephant Dance. One of the men explained the meaning of it all. The elephant is considered the strongest and most powerful animal of the forest. If you do something bad, like stealing, the elephants will come to punish you. They might for instance destroy your crops. The dance acts this out and warns everybody to be good to each other.

This year’s theme is very useful to bring our conservation message across in a very playful way. Storytelling, making poems and singing are all great teaching tools, especially with young kids. We will have two more workshops this summer, but then for High School and University level. That will give us the possibility to discuss how culture influences our choices concerning conservation. I am already looking forward to that.

Simone de Vries

Assistant Project Manager