Baraza

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 15 2008 | By: baraza

The books about Owen and Mzee were best sellers in USA and the original story is now translated into over 20 different languages as well as Braille. If you have the book and the plushies, you might want to complete your collection with a unique postage stamp.

The unique relationship betwen Owen and Mzee was commemorated in Kenya in 2007 with a Ksh 25/- stamp.

If you would like one of these stamps simply make a donation of 25$ on this blog and send us your email address to victor@wildlifedirect.org giving Victor your name, date you made the donation and your address to send the stamp to. There are only ten of these stamps available so book yours fast! All funds raised will go directly into helping WildlifeDirect to support conservation activities around the world.

Don’t forget you can also help wildlife and give your loved ones a wonderful gift through our gift certificate (see the donate button on the right), or you could purchase an original work of art donated by David Derrick to help raise funds for wildlife by bidding on the gorilla named Kelly or any of our items on ebay. Just search David Derrick on Ebay USA.

Tags: Haller Park, owen and mzee, postage stamp, wildlifedirect

2 responses so far

Category: Gorillas | Date: Sep 28 2008 | By: baraza

Several news articles and blogs have noted that the launch of Looking for Miza will help to raise attention  to the crisis facing mountain gorillas in Congo. We are also really pleased that the book will also raise funds. When we started the project to do the book with Craig Hatkoff, we had three important objectives

1. To raise awareness. This book is currently in English and will be translated into a number of languages including native languages in Africa where it will be distributed. The Scholastic Junior corp of journalists from Rwanda will be helping to deliver messages across East and Central Africa and to the rest of the world through the Scholastic website.

2. To help people get involved in Gorilla conservation. We saw how this can work in New York on Friday when children in in the USA and globally were involved in the launch of the book and submitted hundreds of ideas to the website. Scholastic will continue to provide opportunities for involvement through their website.

3. We also aimed to raise funds for Gorilla conservation and already US$ 150,000 has been set aside to support rangers in the Virunga National Park from the Owen and Mzee Foundation. This should help to support many rangers over a one year period.

The situation in eastern Congo seems to be worse than ever and it’s now a year since the rebels have been in control of teh gorilla sector. Miza, and her family are at great risk. According to this article on MSNBC fighting continues near the park as Nkunda tries to extend his area of control. Just last month four people were killed and several injured (18 of them rebels) .  This may be why Emmanuel, Innocent and Diddy were unable to travel to New York to attend the launch of the book “Looking for Miza”.

Given the seriousness of the situation we are interested in your thoughts and ideas on how this children’s book can help to  raise awareness, involvement and funds for gorilla conservation.

Tags: Congo, Gorillas, Looking for Miza, owen and mzee

11 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 13 2008 | By: baraza

I invited one of our volunteers Kimberley, a visiting student, to send us a guest post from Mombasa about the conservation activities down there. She went to Haller Park, a rehabilitated quarry that I used to run. Here is her news about Owen and Cleo amongst other interesting things!

  This past July, I have been lucky enough to spend the month studying Kiswahili in Mombasa, Kenya, and when taking a break in my studies, I have tried to learn more about local conservation efforts in the area. Haller Park, a wildlife sanctuary and rehabilitated quarry of the Bamburi Cement factory, just north of the city, is one interesting example of what’s going on here.  Just next to the factory, the park has achieved a small degree of fame in recent years as the home of Owen and Mzee – Owen, being a young hippo orphaned in the December 2004 tsunami that befriended an Aldabra giant tortoise called Mzee, inspiring the children’s book, “Owen and Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship”.  While visiting last week, I spoke with Stephen Tuei, the chief animal caretaker at Haller Park and Owen’s keeper, who reported both animals are doing well, though Owen now spends his time with a fellow hippo, Cleo(patra).  He kindly let us visit Owen and Cleo (who are kept in an enclosure not yet open to visitors though plans are underfoot to expand the park) and we were able to see the young hippo (now about 4-5 years old) and his new companion (a female hippo, about 15 years of age) ourselves and snap these photos.

Haller Park boasts a variety of animals and immediately upon entering the park we were greeted by several Rothschild’s giraffe (comically near signs asking visitors to stay clear of the wildlife).  Visitors are given the opportunity to feed the giraffe every day at 3PM at an enclosure set up nearby and the giraffe were clearly waiting for feeding time.  (As the hour approached, the park’s Vervet monkeys also gathered, to seize the opportunity for scraps.)  The park receives many school groups of all ages from all over Kenya and feeding times are also set for the hippos (Sally and Potty, another male and female pair) at 4PM.  Visitors from all over the world also visit the park when in Mombasa, though our guide, Samson, informed us that numbers had sharply dropped this year due to the political troubles associated with the election (a report on the decline in tourism I have heard echoed throughout Kenya).

Tours of Haller Park are available in several languages and Samson, our guide, was nice enough to accommodate us with a mix of Swahili and English.  Samson’s background was in environmental studies, though since being at the park, he told us he has become increasingly interested in ornithology.  Haller Parks hosts some 230 different bird species, such as the weavers and Pied Kingfisher we spotted over the crocodile pond.  The tour of the park covers the reptile park, crocodile farm, fishery, and general wildlife enclosure, where Sally and Potty reside along with other mammals such as Cape buffalo, eland, oryx, and bushbuck.  Though my guidebook warned of poisonous snakes, only non-poisonous snakes are now kept in the reptile park, along with several Leopard and Star tortoises.  There are approximately 30 adult Nile crocodiles, introduced to eat waste fish from the fishery and bred regularly, though it was a bit unclear what for – Samson implied the young crocodiles were sent to other parks throughout East Africa.  He also informed us that the fishery (primarily Nile Tilapia) is in the process of being scaled down from commercial purposes to only Educational use and a continued role in the park’s ecosystem. 

In addition to its tours, Haller park also clearly posts information about their resident wildlife and various activities for interested visitors.  For example, in front of the mangrove nursery, there is information postedf about the Biofiltration Project, a joint project with the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) and Coastscape Ltd., to treat the park’s water systems with Rhizophora and Avicennia mangroves.  There is also information regarding further quarry rehabilitation, and about an initiative to promote Biofuel – “Plantations for Carbon-Neutral Fuel”.  Targets for 2008 include planting 150 hectares of Biofuel trees in the Diani and Vipingo areas of Kenya and further involving local communities, for instance, by inviting schools to participate in planting trees and creating employment opportunities.  

 For more information about Haller Park, visit their extensive website: http://www.lafargeecosystems.com/

Tags: Haller Park, Kenya, Mombasa, Owen and Cleo, owen and mzee

4 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jun 11 2008 | By: admin

Yesterday I signed copies of Owen and Mzee donated to Mukuru where I met children who were honored to meet a real “author”. When I told them that Isabella was 6 when we did this project their eyes grew big with the realization that children can be authors.

Mukuru is a school for over 4,000 children from a slum in Nairobi. 2000 of these kids benefit from one hot meal - probably the only meal they get each day. The school is supported by the world food program and my friend Rita Field-Marsham who donated 1,000 childrens books to their library, invited me along when she realised that I was an author of Owen and Mzee. What a privilege. These kids were amazingly disciplined, adorable, they were playing with a home made paper football. My dream is that Miza has just as much impact, if not more, than Owen and Mzee which is now in 17 languages. I’m hoping Scholastic will do a Kiswahili translation and donations to local schools in Congo, Rwanda and Uganda to inspire the youth to care about gorillas.

Tags: , Craig Hatkoff, Looking for Miza, owen and mzee, Scholastic

11 responses so far