NEWS FROM ROOTS&SHOOTS-LWIRO!

This month new members have joined R&S-Lwiro club! Patrick Wasso, an enthusiastic and young primate keeper at the CRPL has become the club leader. He loves wildlife and he knows the Congolese animals extremely well.

Last Sunday we started the first meeting with Patrick as leader. The experience was wonderful! Thanks to R&S France we were able to enjoy the reading of amazing books in French about great apes and see pictures of African wildlife.

Patrick explained Jane Goodall’s work in Swahili to all the club members so the new ones could learn about her and the aim of the Roots&Shoots clubs all around the world. We could also read it from a nice magazine with plenty of pictures and drawings made by JGI France. At the end we tried to draw a chimpanzee following the steps found in the magazine.

We would like to thank R&S France, and its coordinator Mehdi Daval in particular, for allowing us to keep on our activities with some more educational materials about great apes in French! ASANTE SANA!!!

Roots&Shoots-Lwiro continues the work!

The children learning about animal tracks

The Roots&Shoots club in Lwiro is going on with their educational activities. In these last weeks we have learnt more about the animals of the Kahuzi-Biega National Park. Using guides and books we identified different species of mammals and their tracks. And we have also watched documentaries about wild gorilllas and chimpanzees, so we can see how these amazing animals live in the wild and discuss the problems they face in DR Congo.

Watching chimp documentary

We have also visited the small forest that will be fenced soon as it will become the new home for the CRPL chimpanzees. We enjoyed a nice walk and discovered the several species of trees and plants that the chimps will soon enjoy!
Visiting the forest as a Nyoka
However, as the children walked to the forest we discussed how it is possible that they have never entered this particular forest before. The R&S club told a story of a giant pithon that lives within this forest which is the reencanation of the ancient spirits of their ancestors. So, to give them the courage to enter the forest the R&S club made a giant human Nyoka (snake in swahili). This gave them the strength to explor and enjoy the adventure.
Learning about the forest
We would like to once again thank the Jane Goodall Institute Spain (www.janegoodall.es) for thier support and for making this R&S-Lwiro club a reality.

-Laia-

Roots and shoots in Lwiro

Roots and shoots Lwiro club

We have started the first Roots&Shoots club in Lwiro! This group is formed for 9 girls and boys between 8 and 14 years old. All of them are sons and daugthers of CRPL staff. They are really interested in nature and they know well the work their parents do at the sanctuary. They also know a bit about the Kahuzi-Biega National Park and the wildlife found in this area.

Frank reading a tale for the rest of the group

Their activities take place in a new educational room that Coopera has close to the sanctuary. And some stationary material was bought with part of the donation from Jane Goodall Institute Spain to start educational activities in South Kivu throught the Roots&Shoots Program.

The first day we started the R&S activities talking and learning about chimpanzees and some facts about them. We used some educational books and tales from JGI. After that all the kids draw chimpanzees and we could decorate our new educational room.

The group in action

We also received an unexpected visit from Mr. Dieudonné Boji, the conservator of the national park, who brought a baby red tail monkey to the sanctuary. He explained to the kids the huge problem of bushmeat and the importance of the CRPL in the conservation of the primates in this zone.
The conservator of Kahuzi-Biega brought the confiscated monkey, Malimingi

The group R&S will meet up every week to learn more about wildlife, the problems it face and they will try to find solutions!

We would like to thank Jane Goodall Institute Spain for their collaboration and support to start this Roots and Shoots Program in Lwiro.

-Laia-

Education and new arrival

Recently CRPL started education sessions for the communities around the sanctuary. These are planned to be quite informal to begin with, before a more organized structure can be put into place. The sanctuary staff have completed two presentations, one to the chiefs of the local area and the second to the wives, husbands and fiancés of the staff of CRPL. The idea is to let the local people know what it is that CRPL is doing so they can involve them in the process. The next planned session is for the priests of local churches.

Today we have been informed by the manager of the workers that the wives have formed a ‘wives of CRPL committee’ and are planning on becoming involved with the sanctuary and its running. This is a wonderful outcome of the session. More meetings will be planned with them to discuss how they would like to be involved.

This afternoon a new baby Chimpanzee has arrived to Lwiro Sanctuary. Her very long journey including a boat, small airplane and road travel. It’s estimated that she is between 18 months to 2 years old. She is small and thin, but appears to be in good health. She is also very independent and confident. Her name is Ituri, named after the area from which she was confiscated. Ituri will pass a time of one month in quarantine, before she is introduced to the current nursery group.