[photos] Field Trip to Chumbe Island Pt. 1

No matter where you are, you need to get out of the classroom once in a while and so do the Form 3 students at our school. As you can imagine, in a resource poor setting it is extremely rare for students to go out on field trips. (I'm not sure if such concept is recognized as an effective teaching strategy elsewhere.)
Luckily we are in Zanzibar and there are projects to introduce the students to local ecosystem, notably its marine life. Chumbe Island project is one of them. The island is one of the off shore islands near Zanzibar and coral reefs surrounding it has been protected and conserved for more than 10 years. Like most of the off shore islands, it is privatized and advertised as a luxury resort to which only a small minority of the locals can afford to go.
But what sets Chumbe apart from the other resorts is that they have set up a project to raise awareness of the locals about marine environment and related environmental issues. While they offer one of the largest and well-protected coral reefs and isolated resort, they restrict number of visitors on the island at any time to 14 or so and rely entirely on rain fall and solar power as sources of water and electricity. They also have highly efficient compost toilets (I used it and it didn't stink at all!) that do not use water. Part of the project consists of inviting students to participate in one-day exploration of the reef and mangrove forest on the island with lectures given by professional marine biologist.
Although raising awareness of the environmental issues may take a long time (Global warming and other environmental issues are commonly perceived as "rich countries' problem."), the project opens up a door to the locals, especially to the students, to explore the marine environment and adds a little field experience to their learning which is almost exclusively done using books in the classroom.

So one day in August, I was invited to accompany a group of students to head out!



Getting on board at the Zanzibar shore. The students were still wearing their uniforms at this point, so I wasn't sure how they would swim or if they would be comfortable at all with those clothes.


Although we can't see it on the picture, the boat ride was quite rough due to strong wind and big waves. It took about 40 minutes to the island.


On Chumbe now. Now they look more like they are ready to swim. The girls needed to entirely cover up and the guys also wore t-shirts on top for the religious reason.


It comes as a surprise considering the location, but for most of the students, this was their first time to swim. So they are getting a quick lecture on how to put on and use the snorkeling gears.


Again, they practiced basic snorkeling skills such as breezing through the snorkel pipe in shallow water before going out to the reefs.


Now they are ready!


Some excited faces.


He was very excited (and shivering a little) after swimming and spotting corals and fish.
Too bad my camera wasn't water proof to take photos in the water.


Going back to the shore. By this time they were quite comfortable with water and swimming.

To be continued on Pt. 2....