Monday, July 28, 2014

Limbe is a beach town on the Atlantic Ocean.  Andrew has a favorite hotel he's stayed at before that is fairly far out of town, but clean, with good food and a friendly staff.  Across the street is the black sand beach.  Unfortunately it was the rainy season, as well as high tide most of the day, so not a lot of walking on the beach. We did manage one morning walk, where I found the water pleasantly warm, and collected some very cool light weight lava rocks.  The day after I arrived we went into town to see the Limbe Wildlife center. Check out their website http://www.limbewildlife.org/activities/education   
In the top picture you'll see Glen, who runs the educational programs.  This year he was in 13 schools, next year he hopes to include 20.  So many Cameroonian children have no idea of their heritage!  Glen, began volunteering as a teenager.  He volunteered for 10 years!  Eventually he went to school and came back to work at the wildlife center.  His passion for his work is pulsating and listening to him you can believe there is still hope for these animals.  
Andrew and I were so fortunate to have Glen all to ourselves since it was pouring rain and no one else wanted to be there.  He gave us so many of the stories behind the primates there, difficulties raising them, introducing them back into the wild, and the need to understand their hierarchy behavior.  We hope to keep in touch with Glen to see how they are doing.  The center has also been successful (one of the few) in getting the local bush meat hunters to grow food that they supply to the wildlife center for a profit.  A win  win situation for sure!  In other areas the bush hunters are much more resistant to change.
Dinner, grilled fish on the beach.  Sounds wonderful? No! I will say the fish was delicious!   However the beach was cluttered with people, trash, noisy bars.  Sitting at a rather dingy picnic table we were the target of many efforts to try and sell us something.  There were some very cool boat with mast flags in the harbor and smack in the middle......an oil rig.   



















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