‘Animal Encounters’ are integrated into the curriculum in the UK and popular with the children. Provided by companies that would bring to a school a variety of wildlife such as spiders and rabbits. It was often an easier option for the teachers rather than taking a trip to a Wildlife Centre. Also there would be a lot less health and safety paperwork involved!

Here in Africa the wildlife comes to you, it’s just unpredictable what or when. One of the giant tortoises wandered in to the Kindergarten playground yesterday and it was apparently not perturbed by more than thirty children riding bikes and running past. At first, I thought we would co-exist quite happily but it was when the creature deposited the remains of what I should imagine were several meals, that the children became really fascinated and it was the ‘topic of the moment’ for many a conversation.

There is cruelty amongst the tortoise population on the Bingham campus though. As I found out earlier this week when I returned home for lunch across the car park in front of our apartment block to find our house-worker Seble, holding her hands to her face in horror. She had just witnessed a large tortoise push a smaller one off a wall onto the concrete below. Alarmingly, its actions appeared to be quite deliberate. Despite signs of injury the smaller one did walk away, so hopefully it will survive to chomp the grass another day.

Other creatures arrive such as the lizard that the children caught in the sandpit. They were fully involved making it a home for it for a day. Or the sizable cricket that was sitting on the climbing frame for long enough to enable the children to examine its eyes, feelers and count its legs before it made a bid for freedom straight at our student helper. All generate learning opportunities, we just have to take a photograph and use books or computers to find out some more information.

In addition, this week the children discovered a baby bird under a bench in a toukle. When I joined them they had carefully placed their plastic play food all around the shivering creature to make it ‘feel happy’. To the children’s delight it began calling for a parent and a small green bird (which I think could be a Baglafecht Weaver) began circling nearby answering its cries. You would think that it would learn that a children’s play area is a scary place, but the next day it was back sitting on a rope ladder tolerating many a gentle stroke before I reached it.

It was now definitely time to set the classroom tadpoles free as they were rapidly turning into frogs and climbing up the sides of their plastic container. The children said their ‘goodbyes’ before they left school for the weekend. It seemed sensible to deposit them in the river behind Bingham as I had been told that it was a lot less polluted than the one from which they were originally extracted. However, I knew that no ‘ferenji’ (foreigners) ever venture there so I took Ruth with me. We carried them over the rough ground and turned beside a wall to a stepping stone crossing place where the water could be reached. About ten young men were sitting on the mud and rocks amongst the rubbish discarded liberally around behind us. There was a fire burning and one guy was washing his hair. They were a good-natured group and intrigued by our mission but I was pleased to have Ruth there to explain exactly what we were putting into the water.

Add to this the fact that all except one of the model snails that my class made from paper, paint and pasta shells have been eaten by rats who appear to be able to climb up a vertical wall display. (Fortunately this only happens when the room is unoccupied).

I have to ask - who really needs an ‘Animal Encounter’?