School visit

As part of outreach for the Global Rivers project we have a small budget for visiting local schools within each watershed and speaking with the children about their relationship to the river. One such element of this relationship is to provide some art supplies to the students and ask them to put their thoughts about their environment onto paper. Today we visited our first school in Brazzaville and distributed pens, crayons, markers, pencils, and large format paper. The children were eager (or as Paul says it’s said in the UK, “gobsmacked”) to put pen to paper. We will return to the same school to collect any artwork that they’d like to share in our last week before leaving Africa.

John Poulsen distributes art supplies to children in a Brazzaville school.

Late last evening we went downtown to a true super market to collect supplies for our trip. We filled two shopping carts with water, preserved food, and other necessities. We leave Brazzaville first thing tomorrow morning and we’re beginning to question whether or not the rental truck will be able to handle the load.

John in front of 23,000 Ngolu seeds ready for planting.

Also, yesterday John received his seeds that he collected in the north last week. It was necessary to spread them out in his room on a tarp for drying. The included photo shows John in front of 23,000 Ngolu seeds ready for planting.