Resource 4: Local knowledge

 Teacher resource for planning or adapting to use with pupils

At Save Teacher Training College (TTC), teacher training students discovered that old Sentore, the man known as a fabulous artist, was a wonderful resource about the local natural world – a true naturalist.

If Sentore was shown a pouched squirrel, he would know that it harvested and stored seeds and grain (much like a hamster), and had a specific Kinyarwanda name for it that no student knew. He could tell all sorts of fascinating facts and folklore about the animal. For example, he told how seven years of drought can be predicted when the pouched squirrel is taking the trouble to chew the palm nuts so as to carry them in its cheek pouches to be stored safely.

Another example of local knowledge:

The story of the old woman who knew her ants

A very famous African entomologist, S H Skaife, tells an interesting story of how, during World War 2, there was a shortage of tea. People decided to try to cultivate the wild rooibos tea plant from the Western Cape Fynbos.

They offered a reward of one pound (a lot of money in those days) for every matchbox full of rooibos seeds. The seeds were very small and the local children soon gave up trying. Only an old woman was successful. Every week she brought in a matchbox full of seeds and collected her pound. She would tell no one how it was that she managed to do what no one else could.

She only divulged the secret of her success when the organisation had enough seeds and stopped paying. What was her secret? She knew that a certain type of ant harvested the seeds of that specific plant. All she had to do was to find the ants and follow their trail back to their nest and rob them of the harvest of rooibos seeds. The moral of the story – sometimes it pays to carefully observe what is going on in nature.