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Expedition Diary - Congo Basin

Education for Nature

Judith Mashinya
© WWF

Conserving the Congo: Education for Nature

For almost 15 years, WWF’s Education for Nature (EFN) Program has been equipping conservation leaders with the training and practical experience to take on challenges in their home countries. Follow Judith Mashinya of WWF’s EFN Program as she travels through the Congo Basin to visit conservationists supported by WWF. Along the way, she travels across lagoons teeming with crocodiles and learns how to avoid a buffalo attack.

Dugout canoes serve as transportation for local people on the lagoon.
© WWF/Judith Mashinya

Part 7: Living Lagoon

I woke up the next day looking forward to my visit to Loango National Park – one of Gabon’s 13 recently created national parks. I had read so much about the park - where the tropical forest reaches the seashore – that I hoped to see elephants, gorillas, buffalo, hippos and other forest animals that are known to sometimes wander on the beach. I was also excited to learn that Roger Boussougou, a Gabonese who received support from EFN to pursue a master’s degree in tropical forestry, was now managing the northern part of this park.

Just before sunset I boarded a small boat that ferried me and four other people across a wide lagoon speckled with hundreds of forested islands to an eco-tourism lodge in Sette Cama village. WWF has facilitated a partnership between the park and the lodge and helps maintain an electrical generator. As I was boarding I asked the guide if there were crocodiles in the lagoon. He replied that indeed the lagoon had many crocs, including the infamous Nile crocodile. The Nile is perhaps the most aggressive and dangerous species of crocodile.

Once we got going I enjoyed the one hour boat trip on the Ndongo Lagoon. It was beautiful to see the sunset over the water and I was fascinated to see local people in the long and narrow dugout canoes that are the main means of transportation in the coastal waterways. Most of the islands are uninhabited but some have small settlements. Although I saw some manioc plots along the way, the main source of livelihood for local people on the islands is fishing.