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Showing posts from December, 2009

Bushmeat

In Cameroon there is quite a large amount of hunting for what is known as 'bushmeat'. Basically anything that moves in the forest is considered fair game for the dinner table. Now that the larger animals in most parts of the country are gone ('got finished' in the local pigion english) the main targets are smaller. Around Belo children hunt for rats and small types of cats. On my visit to Gabon many months ago there were teenage boys on the side of the road offering up their latest catches for sale. So I guess there is not too much hope for conservation in these parts until the poverty levels are raised above just subsistence living?

Kelvin

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My latest little orphan friend is Kelvin, a little three year old I come across on Tuesday after his uncle come to see me. His mother died a couple of weeks ago, leaving him and his two month old sister to be cared for by their crippled grandmother. There is a big difference between living with HIV (the case now in the OECD countries with access to effective anti retro virals) and dying of AIDS (mostly the reality for the rest of the world with no access to any medical care). Kelvin is definitely in the later, and fits the perfect model of an AIDS orphan who should now be dead himself. Maybe he still won't make it, but at least he will have had a shot at it with his admission to a nearby hospital on Wednesday. He's got advanced pneumonia, a massive thrush infection of the mouth and throat, and is severely malnourished. After a couple of days care he now has the strength to sit up and seems to like the special therapeutic food which tastes like peanut butter and milk power combi