This is Samantha. I recently visited the illegal fishing village of Kavinyonge. Illegal because it is in Virunga National Park. And it has about 20,000 inhabitants.

I took this aerial photo a couple of months ago. Some of you may remember. Kavinyonge is the settlement you can see and Ishango is at the mouth of the Semliki River.

We set off in the boat from Ishango. It takes about half an hour. Atamato is there in the grey t-shirt.

This is what it looks like when you get there. Blissfully quiet. And with a definite smell of fish about it. Really just a little paradise on the edge of Lake Edward.

And then people come out of the woodwork. Kids are clearly not used to out-of-towners like me.

So they all crowded around, utterly curious to see the “muzungu”.

We were going to Museya. That is where a patrol post is being rehabilitated and I wanted to take a look. It’s about 10 minutes away on a bike. We had to get gas first.

By this point all the kids were overflowing with curiosity!

And although they don’t get many visitors, they definitely knew the deal with digital photography. They all wanted to see their picture after I had taken it.

So this is the old patrol post. It is one of 6 overseen by Atamato and has up to 6 Rangers based there.

And to the right you can see the new construction. It will be very smart when it’s done and much more waterproof.

Some Rangers sleep in the tents there that were donated through this blog. These are behind the new construction.

And then we drove back down the main road of the town. The blue plastic bag was covering the wing mirrors of the motorbike I was on, for some reason. There isn’t actually much traffic there so I wasn’t too worried.

And then when we got back to the lake edge more kids had arrived. They had literally come to see me. They all looked healthy children on whole, as compared to so many you see here who are suffering from malnutrition.

This little guy on the right was the most daring of them all!

We got a warm goodbye.

And so headed back to the tranquility of Ishango’s hippos. Bliss.

Samantha

Technorati : congo, drc, iccn, ishango, wildlifedirect

help us and share this