Q: so what do 8 cows, 1 bull, 14 goats, 4 chickens, and 1 dog have in common?

A: they were all happily using the playground of the school that I went to this morning.

As well as endangered and threatened species work, the organisation that I am volunteering with also does some work within the community. One area that they are involved with is in-school ecology and conservation lessons, which they run through the year at the local schools as part of the regular school lessons. The lessons cover wildlife identification and ecology, understanding ecological relationships, the importance of preserving biodiversity, as well as conservation issues associated with snare hunting and poaching.

Over the past week, accompanying the Community Conservation manager, I have been lucky enough to visit a few of the local schools that they are working with, and meet the Principals, teachers and children of those schools.

The lesson that I went into a school to help with yesterday was about Species and Natural Habitats. As the lesson was in Zulu, the children very patiently let me exhaust my entire zulu vocabulary of 15 words, and then helped me as I mimed missing words. They all took great delight in laughing at my drawing of a monkey - mocking my lack of artistic ability it turned out didn't require any words in any language!