Roots&Shoots Peace Day in Lwiro!

Last Sunday the R&S-Lwiro club celebrated the Peace Day! Another R&S group from Bukavu (R&S-Heri Kwetu) was invited to join them in this special celebration. This guest group is formed with children who come from the Heri Kwetu center which is a center for disabled, handicaped or orphan children. More than 200 kids were together to talk about the importance of the Peace not just for humans but also for the animals and the environment.

Both R&S clubs prepare banners, songs and dramas for the Peace Day. The kids enjoyed performing and sharing their peace wishes. They made a sign with their messages of peace on hand cut outs (Amani is Peace in swahili).

It was also a special date for sharing experiences and activities to protect the environment and especially the primates.

Roots&Shoots-Lwiro: spreading the conservation message

During these last months R&S-Lwiro has been growing. Starting with 9 children just 8 months ago, the group now consists of over 20 children! The children keep busy during their weekly meetings and have recently been deciding how to spread a conservation message about primate protection to the local community.

Roots&Shoots Lwiro club

The children have decided their first activity will be to perform a dramatic piece about chimpanzees. Patrick, the club leader, has written this play in Swahili and the actors are already practicing their lines. Due to fact that they are extremely shy and it is the first time they have performed a play, we have decided to use chimpanzee and gorilla puppets. We are also designing masks to use for dramatic effect.

Mariamu and her chimp puppet

Frank and Patrick reading the lines

The second activity the children have proposed is to create posters with conservation messages to spread the word to the community. However, as the club didn’t have any place to exhibit their posters they proposed to create a public notice board. Thanks the generous donation from Roots&Shoots-Madrid we fabricated a wonderful wooden board at the entrance of the sanctuary (CRPL). On this board the R&S-Lwiro members have hung information about the 12 primate species of the sanctuary, pictures of the staff (their parents) at work and pictures of the 48 chimpanzees at the CRPL. On another part of the board, they have displayed information about the Roots&Shoots program, an updated picture of the R&S-Lwiro group and some of the posters they have made. Patrick and the rest of the members will be in charge of updating the board on a regular basis so the community and visitors can read this information.

Salomon drawing his poster about poaching

The first wooden board

The second board with R&S-Lwiro work

Some CRPL keepers reading the posters

We would like to thank R&S Madrid and its coordinator Marisa Mariñán in particular, for their donation which has allowed us to buy additional stationary material and build the display board to spread messages to the community. Also, we thank the Jane Goodall Institute Spain for its constant support and advice.

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-