Archive for the ‘Back Then’ Category
I was on patrol recently in Virunga National Park with my Rangers. We were near Ishango.
We patrol the park looking for illegal cultivators or people who bring their cattle illegally into the park. We also act as a deterrent to the Mai Mai rebels. Here I am examining cattle droppings. It is different conducting patrols in the savanna areas of the park. In the forest areas we find the rebel camps and poacher camps, but in the savanna people tend to come in and out of the park at night as it is harder to hide during the daytime.
The boundaries of the park are shown by what we call a “borne”. This is a concrete stone, and they were put in place all round the edge of the park by the Belgians in the 1950s. The park was established in 1925 but the “bornes” were not put down until later. This is a “borne” in Ishango. You can faintly see the markings. It is number 31127 and says PNA on it which stands for Parque National Albert. This is the colonial name of Virunga National Park.
Many people used to believe that the Belgians hid treasures under these concrete stones. When Independence came to Congo in 1960, people say that the Belgians did not know what to do with their treasures. They did not want to take them to Rwanda or Burundi so they hid them. And they hid them under the “bornes”. So people in Congo have dug up where they have found the concrete stones, to try and find treasure.
This is a view from afar of where people have dug a large hole in search of Belgian treasure.
And here is the hole closer up. This hole was actually dug in 1997. I think it was dug by the NALU - the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda.
I am not sure if the NALU rebels found anything there, but I reckon it took them about 6 months to dig that hole. I hope it was worth it.
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.
After writing Monday’s post on the rehabilitation work that’s taking place on the Rwenzori trail, my thoughts turned to the past and of the time I climbed the trail with my friend Charles Gahuma.
This was back in 1991 before the war, with me on the left and Charles on the right. Sadly Charles died in a traffic accident with his uncle, who was the first Director of ICCN and named Kabirizi, and is from where the Kabirizi Silverback gets his name. The photo was taken at Muhango, which is the second gite as you climb the Rwenzori trail. I want to share with you another photo, also taken in 1991, where you can see a group of us on Plateau Stanley in the Rwenzori mountains.
This was part of our training which was funded by the EU, or the EEC as it was then. On the far left is the man who is now the accountant at Mutsora, with me next to him, and on the far right is Shyaira and also present is the Chef of Mutsora, Monsieur Clause. Apart from the man in yellow,who is no longer with us, and the white man who was there to train us, we are all still guards and rangers here in Virunga.
|
|
