We Live in Africa

This happened last month but I forgot to post the photos. One the left is Susan (anthropologist from Belgium) and on the right is Nathalie (pediatrician from the UK).The one year mark is a big deal because high risk activities (most sports) are a no go in the first year after repair because re-rupture of the ligament is so common. First Sport- Tennis. Don and I bought tennis rackets and now play once or twice a week.

The plant is wild mint. Local people use it as an insect repellant and place around the outside of their bed nets to help keep mosquitos away.

Mangrove trees thrive in muddy, salty, hot conditions that would kill most plants. They have a filtration system that keeps out salt and a complicated network of roots that keeps them upright in poorly oxygenated mud that constantly shifts as the tide moves in and out. They live in shallow salty water and often line river banks in the area where seawater meets fresh water (this mix of water is known as bracken). Mangrove forests are home to many forms of life- oysters and mussels, crabs, fish, birds, crocodiles, lizards and insects to name a few.

There are about 70 species of mangroves that range from shrubs to tall trees up to 60m tall. They are some of the most complex ecosystems on earth and provide food to many of the local people living in The Gambia. Oysters are harvested at low tide and some NGOs are trying to facilitate this difficult cultivation process by contructing oysters 'farms'- strings seeded with oyster shells that are suspended from logs in the bracken near the trees (there is a photo below). In The Gambia they hang the strings for about 8 months then snip the string off the log and take them home. The people have fewer injuries from hacking the oysters off the roots and the mangroves are in turn not damaged by this cultivation process.

(I don't do much on this blog, but I will switch a good picture for a bad one when I can! - d.)

The dense roots serve as nurseries for fish- they live in the root tangles and are kept safe from the larger predators found in open water. Mudskippers (a previous post on them) are also abundant creatures in this habitat as are crabs that scuttle away if you move too quickly. The trees are literally coated with life. They also stop the river banks from eroding by stabilizing the soil. All around pretty incredible and important plants. Unfortunately they are disappearing at an alarming rate. In the last decade 35% of the world's mangrove forests have been been decimated. This rate is faster than the rate at which we are losing tropical rainforests. All of these photos are from Makasutu forest that we visited last weekend. Also notice the large blue heron- a Goliath Heron with a wing span of 1.4m- but more on him later.

In fact they don't so much walk as they do jump or skip. We saw them jump distances of up to two feet. These guys are probably the most land adapted fish and can live out of water for days at a time as long as they stay moist. They are found in the Indo-Pacific and the Atlantic coast of Africa and have two ways of breathing- one for land, the other for water. They dig burrows in the soft sediment to thermoregulate, hids from predators when the tide comes in, and to lay their eggs. They were absolutely everywhere in the mud at Mandina lodge.

Last weekend we decided to take a break from the coast and headed to Mandina lodge located about 45 minutes south east of Fajara. The owners have bought about 100 acres of forest which is now a protected area. The lodge is located on a section of this forest on a network of creeks branching south off the River Gambia. We stayed in one of the floating lodges which are really neat because thy rise and fall with the tide. This post lets you see what a lovely little paradise this place is.