Although our main focus for ‘Watoto go Wild’ is student safaris for school aged children in local villages, we also run the one-off safaris for other groups in the community.
Earlier this month we organised trips for 90 people from local villages to come into the Katavi National Park. Like our younger ‘Watoto go Wild’ participants, many of the adults in these groups were experiencing the park for the first time, despite living right on the park boundary. Together with our partners LCMO, this special safari trip was organised for some of the top litter pickers during the village clean-up help on World Cleanup Day the month before. The trip was a fantastic success and everyone got the chance to see many different species of wildlife and hear talks from the Park rangers. Mr. Francis, the Community Conservation Service Warden, also took the time to talk to the communities groups on issues related to his field of work, and his overall role in the park. It is opportunities like these that really help open up dialogues between the different groups existing in this vulnerable ecosystems, giving new applications of others realties and struggles, and hopefully also taking another small step forward towards co-existence between wildlife and people. A big thanks to our partners, LCMO, on the ground who help make trips like this a possible and beneficial.