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A few days ago, just after our arrival to the Limbe Wildlife Centre, Simone de Vries gave us two folders: the thinner one contained completed questionnaires, while the thicker one contained letters from children to Czech Radio, The Revealed, a mysterious person name Miralan Bobe, or all three of them at the same time. They were reactions to the book of gorilla fairy-tales that the Revealed project published half a year ago for children in Cameroon and that was distributed by LWC. Our aim was to show local schoolchildren the beauty of gorillas as well as the importance of tropical forest - as well as to give them a nice present...
We were curious how the distribution of the book would work and how would Cameroonian children respond to the fairy-tales. That is why we decided to visit Cameroon last November. Here are a few notes from the expedition:
"We can't understand the whole situation," an sms from Prague read. Well, neither do we... The problem was that we received an e-mail which stated an incredibly high price for shipping from Douala to Limbe (higher than from Prague to Douala), and, particularly, a yet more incredible calculation of the customs duty. We decided to (try to) sort it out in Douala. We drove for an hour and a half by car,waited for two hours for a responsible person, and then spent half an hour explaining. The result: our Gorilla Stories turned from a commercial product into textbooks and the customs duty fell from 52 % to 2.5 %. That was certainly positive but the books remain in containers on a ship they haven't even started unloading. We can expect more troubles, as they know in Prague. On our way back to Limbe, we received another short message: "Aren't the roads too muddy?" This is, fortunately, the only trouble we are certain to be spared. There is a tarmac road from Douala to Limbe. Matute, a headmistress,dressed in a lilac suit, stepped out of her elderly corolla. When her high heels stuck into the dirt, she smiled widely. At the moment, she resembled Whoopi Goldberg. In her office, she told us about her school, GSS (=Goverment Secondary School) Bonadikombo. The maximum number of pupils in one classroom is sixty but parents always talk her into accepting more, so she ends up with some sixty-five. "We have no electricity is bearable," says Matute, "but having no toilet for 400 pupils is a really BIG PROBLEM" After the bell (one of the pupils hammered on an old truck wheel with an iron bar) she showed us around the school. In each classroom she showed our book and said a few word about it. She initially thought it would be for sale but when we corrected her mistake, she brightened up with joy: "REALLY?!? GREAT!!!" Just like Whoopi Goldberg.
"Batoke Highschool, Glenn is teaching," reads our itinerary for this morning. Glenn is an LWC employee - part gorilla keeper, part environmental education teacher. Today, he is teaching in Batoke - some 140 pupils from two classes together. Glenn starts by explaining the differences between monkeys and apes. He stimulates the pupils to be active and the class develops into a show. When reading fairy-tales, he often stops to explain some points. After that he invites a child to the front and they together show how gorillas clean their fur, what sounds they make or how they eat. I am not sure if this is exactly in line with the methodology prepared by Simone de Vries for working with our book at schools, but it is fun and it works...
As for the questionnaires and letters that we received a few days ago, we are extremely curious to find out how well the book has been received in Cameroon, yet we are afraid a little what the response will be. In one of the letters that we opened, a girl writes that she prays every day for us to write another book of gorilla fairy-tales, and another one suggests that Moja (the heroine of our book, a little gorilla from the Prague Zoo) should move from the horrible Prague to LWC...
Where do the letters come from? From pupils at Matute's school, naturally.
16.11.2009 Twiggs was born in the wild in Cameroon around the year 1997. She and another female gorilla, Brighter, was smuggled across the border to Nigeria as infants to be sold as pets on the locale pet marked.
09.11.2009 When Pitchou was very small, she was brought to Hotel Ilomba in Kribi to be sold, after her mother had been killed by hunters. She stayed there for three days, until the hotel owners could no longer bare to watch her suffer. The family donated her to the LWC.
02.11.2009 Chella came to Limbe Wildlife Centre when he was only two years old. He was found in the back of a bush-taxi sitting on his dead mother. Wildlife officials confiscated him and kept him three weeks before bringing him to the Wildlife Centre.
21.09.2009 Adjibolo came to Limbe Wildlife Centre when she was only about 6 months old. She was confiscated by senior civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture, Mr. Adjibolo, from a hunter who tried to sell her.
