By Alex Bierman

During our time in southeastern Senegal, we went to the largest park in West Africa.  It is a very wild place, where seeing an animal feels like a surprise because you don’t know what you will see.  It is an unexpected place.  The roads are bumpy.  The ground is soft and dusty.  The trees hung low over the road.  

Most of us road on top of the vans when we were on safari.  There are luggage racks on top and we climbed up metal ladders to get the best views from the top.  Driving through the park, it was exciting to see the animals face to face and fun to have to dodge the branches and thorns.  It was frustrating to get hit but it also added some excitement.

During our safari, we saw antelopes, monkeys, warthogs, baboons, crocodiles, and hippos.  We felt the real African wilderness.  Even though we didn’t see the lions we wanted to see, we could feel the presence of animals and lions.  That made it even more interesting.  Overall, it was an experience that kept us on our toes and was really exciting.  I would love to do it again.

But, thinking back on it, the feeling that sticks with me is sadness.  The sadness Kecouta had when we stopped by the location of his old village deep in the park.  I could see in his body language and in his answers a real sadness.  He seemed very vulnerable as he stared out into the forest at the old walls of houses and the mounds of abandoned wells.  I think he was thinking about the loss of his old village and how that is going to affect him and his family in the future.

Back in the 1970s, Niokolo Koba became Senegal’s biggest national park.  The people of Niognani were forcefully removed by the government and moved to the side of the highway, where they were left with two buildings and a well.  The well soon went dry and became useless to them.  They didn’t have the resources they used to have so they had to start over completely.  Back in the forest, they had everything they needed.  The soft, fertile ground away from danger and other people had been replaced by ground as hard as rock and neighboring villages just 50 meters away.  Instead of having all the space they needed, they now try to survive on the side of the road, where the ground is harder and the water is harder to access.

In the park, life was good for Kecouta and his village.  They had the food they needed and they lived in harmony with nature.  They could fish, farm, and do some sustainable hunting.  Their lives were changed in the span of a day.  In the old Niognani, there was soft, fertile ground and a lot of water to use.  They were in the best jungle I can imagine.  Suddenly, they were on the side of a highway, in a tough place to live.

All of this change happened because the government wanted to the park to be attractive to tourists like us.  When tourists go to a nature park, they want to see animals, not people.  Even though we would never want to impact a person like Kecouta, we are the people who want to see something like Niokolo Koba.  We are the ones the government were trying to please.

Moving forward, I might behave differently remembering Kecouta’s sadness because I learned that behind even the most beautiful and fun things, there can be loss.  Before knowing Niognani, I would have never understood that behind beauty there could be loss like this.  The loss of a village and a habitat is devastating, much more powerful than seeing a lion.

Thinking ahead to the future, I know that Kecouta must feel how limited his resources are.  He is the one who knows about the past and we got to see how much he knows the forest but none of his children will learn about and know that.  There will be limited resources in the future and education will be only in school.  What comes next?  I believe people will succeed but it won’t be as beautiful as it could have been in the forest, as it should have been.