Introducing Gerdame United: Save The Dibatag
After we got back from the Somali Region of Ethiopia a year ago, Charles Foley, Alex Meyer, Ian Thompson and I wondered how we might help conservation around the tiny village of Gerdame, in the heart of Dibatag country.
Promoting local conservation is something many mammalwatchers care about. Just visiting a remote area in the first place can be very important of course. Writing a trip report that might encourage others to visit; even more important.
Some mammalwatchers bring field guides and spare binoculars to give to local guides.
Some might take a particularly promising guide under their wing and help advise them on how to set up a business (if you like that idea then you could contact me to take out a listing for your guide on mammalwatching so they have their own webpage).
It can also be helpful to raise awareness of – and local pride in – the wildlife the locals live alongside. Russ Mittermeier talked about ‘t-shirt diplomacy’ on our podcast: he likes to give a community some t-shirts of their local primate.
In Gerdame we went a step further and decide to sponsor the local football team. OK, so there might not be a football league there. Nor a team. But there are a lot of young footballers, and a pitch. So we sent the village eleven red ‘Save Dibatag’ jerseys (with the mammalwatching logo on the back), beautifully designed by Charles’s talented daughter Sierra.
Håkan Pohlstrand, who led our tour, and was arranging delivery of the team strip, noticed an important flaw in our plans. It could be useful to have shirts in a different colour so the red team would have some well-dressed opposition. So he very quickly ordered more shirts.
They arrived in Gerdame a few days ago and have generated a good deal of excitement. Hopefully a tiny part of that will translate into some pride in the Dibatags. Just wait until one of these guys signs with a Premier League team!
If you’d like to do something similar, or want to contribute to mammalwatching to help us do this again after a future trip, please let me know.
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