Tacugama

Category: Charlie Girl, Chimpanzee, Education, Introduction, Tacugama | Date: Dec 18 2007 | By: admin

We’re gradually getting ourselves into the blogging habit and catching up on events over the last couple of weeks. Thanks for all the comments. The real time for Charlie Girl’s antics was about three weeks ago and today’s blog catches up on two weeks ago… we’ll soon be hot off the press and gradually fill you in on the sanctuary’s history!!

A week’s gone by and Charlie Girl’s cast is still on. But I am beginning to see some damage along the edges. She is certainly working on it! And I can tell by her crying that she isn’t happy being indoors. The family group is very important to chimpanzees and Charlie Girl is missing her group. It’s important that we can keep an eye on her recovery and try to make it as speedy as possible. Also the last thing we want is to go through the whole hospital procedure again especially in the middle of a busy week!

We’re launching a new educational project, the Tacugama Kids Programme, to provide local schools with curriculum materials for environmental conservation and sustainable use of the Western Area Forest Reserve. Our sanctuary is located in the reserve on Sierra Leone’s western peninsula just 40 minutes drive from the capital, Freetown. The Western Area Forest Reserve is a crucial habitat and water catchment area under severe pressure from human encroachment. Education is one of our key strategies in securing the long term future of chimpanzees in Sierra Lone and this week saw teachers from 16 schools around the Freetown Peninsula coming to Tacugama for our inaugural programme workshop.

The map below shows the peninsula, where we are and the schools involved in the programme:

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Workshop day! I and Harunna, the project driver started off at 6 am with two vehicles covering the Peninsula picking up all the participants to get them to the educators in time for at 9:30am start The roads around the sanctuary make travel slow and transport difficult without 4×4’s. Harriet, Sentu, Laia and Laura (Sentu is a local teacher working closely with our volunteers) had been working really hard organizing the workshop and were quite happy to see a full house and on time! Everyone participated with much enthusiasm throughout out the workshop. Willie and Mosses took great pride in demonstrating their knowledge and interaction with the Tacugama chimps. There was plenty to eat and drink and the entire TCS team and teachers had a happy and eventful day. The schools were given various tasks to undertake especially launching their own nature clubs. We had only one complain from the participants… the volunteers had forgotten to say a prayer when they began the workshop! In Sierra Leone, it is almost a crime if you omit this so the volunteers had to learn one more thing and the workshop ended with a prayer!

The workshop gets underway…
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The teachers observing the chimpanzees …
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A successful day…
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We’re already seeing some great follow-up by the teachers and are looking forward to seeing the results as we continue to visit the schools and prepare next term’s workshop.