Elie Mundima

Category: Back Then, Outside of Virunga | Date: May 03 2007 | By: admin

Following on from yesterday, here are a few more photographs from my past that I would like to share with you.

Back in 2001 I spent a year in Tanzania doing a certificate course in Wildlife Management at Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Above you can see me with fellow students at the Mkomazi-Limba Game Reserve, outside the Information Centre. We came here to do some research on the fauna and flora and the local community.

In this park they protect the black rhino, as well as dealing with the problems of Tourmaline (both green and red) mining. Local communities complain about the presence of the park and that the park has taken land from the peoples. From this, when I was there, a story was going round that Mr Tony, a white man, was killing people by shooting them from his aeroplane. Of course this story is unfounded, but that does not stop the story from preventing a good relationship forming between the park and the local population. It is a common problem in many African parks.

Here we are during the exercise of animal capture, and the animal that we are catching is a dik-dik, which we captured by using nets.

Once we examined it’s health, we then attached a ring on the ear for future studies and then let him free. Using a net is one of of many methods to catch an animal, other methods include either a dart or to use a hole like trap for a large animal such as a hippo or a rhino, which is a method often used for translocation.

You can see me at the bottom on the left, with a Maasai lady on the right, and a man from Tanzania on the left. For the moment then, at Tanzania, the Maasai were studying how to take on modernisation. Before that they lived in isolated tribes, but now they are being integrated into conservation methods, and learning how to adapt with that.

This photo was also in Tanzania, taken in the Museum at Olduvai. The bones on display are extremely ancient, and also there was the skull of the Olduvai Man.

Here is where they found his skull.

And finally, here I am in front of the President of Tanzania, Benjamin Mukapa, with the Military Colonel on the left. He came to visit the college and I gave him a short presentation on the bones of animals. The event was filmed by Tanzanian television, and it was really such an honour to get to meet the president as I had never met a president before. I hope one day to do a similar thing with our new president here in Congo. That is a wish of mine.

Technorati : Benjamin Mukapa, Congo, Conservation, Olduvai, Tanzania, WildlifeDirect