Tacugama

Category: Education | Date: Sep 14 2008 | By: tacugama

It’s not an expected port of call for an ice-breaker, but early September saw HMS Endurance, a British Royal Navy ship, call into Freetown, the world’s third largest natural harbour. The ship’s tour of South and West Africa is helping to raise awareness of climate change and its impact on developing nations (find out more here).

It was a great opportunity for some of the school children taking part in our Tacugama Kids Programme to visit the ice breaker, learn about a continent at the other end of the temperature scale and how it’s helping scientists to learn about the impact of human activity on our planet. Over three days 50 children and their teachers from some of our partner schools were welcomed on board by the crew. It was an amazing opportunity for all of them and will hopefully have a lasting impact that will go towards increasing environmental awareness and understanding in Sierra Leone.

Hastings School
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Seeing Antartica for the first time
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Kossoh Town School
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Testing out the helicopter
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Saying thanks
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Russell School
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At the same time an exchange visit was taking place, with some of the HMS Endurance crew volunteering to visit Tacugama to help Pastor with our maintenance tasks at camp. Whilst the rains did their best to slow efforts we managed to complete and cross some of our big to do’s off our list as many hands made light work.

Some of the helping hands
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On the ropes
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We would like to take this opportunity to thank the British High Commission in Sierra Leone and the captain and crew of HMS Endurance for providing a unique opportunity and a very memorable day for all of the children and teachers. The chimpanzees say thanks too - they’re enjoying the improvements to the rigging and platforms in their enclosures!

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Tags: Chimpanzee, HMS Endurance, sanctuary, Sierra Leone, Tacugama