Journey North Mystery Class Spring 2003

Introducing Mystery Class #8
Libreville, Gabon (0.383 N, 9.450 E)

Greetings from the 7th and 8th class from the International school of Libreville, Gabon! Gabon is in Africa.

The 7th and 8th Class at the International School of Libreville

Celebrating Mardi Gras!

Our School: One might say we have a varied class, but even that is pushing it because there are only 6 of us. We have students from Canada, Japan, Korea, South Africa, and the U.S. in our class. There are only 42 kids in our school. It is such a puny school because nobody comes to Gabon. (Mainly because nobody KNOWS about it.) The Gabonese don't come to our school because they can't speak English. Our school is situated in Libreville, which is the capitol of Gabon.

Our City: Libreville was created when a slave ship was rescued and the slaves were set free. The word for free in French is "libre", and the word for town in French is "ville". Libreville is very small, and only has one main mall. It's called Mbolo, which means hello in "Fang" (A language here). They have a movie theatre here too, but its in French. It's called the Majestic. Libreville has a lot of poor neighborhoods, but the president of the country has a huge palace. He has been president for 35 years.

Leatherback Sea Turtle on the Beach

Laying Eggs and Burying them in the Sand

Libreville is right on the Atlantic Ocean and, during the weekends, families like to go to the beach. During a certain season here, you can go to the beach and see leatherback sea turtles laying their eggs. Leatherback sea turtles have that name because they don't have a shell. They are huge! They are bigger than a person lying down and can weigh 500 kilos. Later on in the season, you can watch the baby sea turtles coming down the beach and you can even pick them up! We like to help sea turtles, because they are endangered. They migrate all over the world and they are caught in fishing nets. We camped to watch them lay their eggs this year, then we organized a walk-a-thon to raise money to help the sea turtles. We earned over $1500 US dollars! We gave the money to the Gabonese organization that helps sea turtles and other sea animals. They are called "Aventures Sans Frontieres" (Adventures Without Borders, in English). If you are interested in sea turtles, you could write to them at asf@inet.ga. They are amazing people. They walked along the entire coast of Gabon to tell Gabonese people not to kill adult sea turtles and not to eat their eggs!

A guide holds a baby Leatherback Sea Turtle

There are many other kinds of animals here too. A lot of them live deep in the forests. There, we can see elephants, monkeys, gorillas, and giant pangolins (they are kind of like anteaters). Those animals like to stay far away from villages because people hunt them for their meat. There is a terrible disease called ebola that has killed a lot of the gorillas and chimpanzees in Gabon, and some people too. This disease is far away from Libreville in the eastern part of the country. If you look at Gabon on the map, ebola is near a place called Mekambo, near the border of Congo.

There are also palm trees here. They're cool. People sell coconuts along the street on the weekends, and you can buy them and drink the milk for 100 cfa (that is about a US quarter). Gabon is one of the OPEC members, so they export crude oil, which is their main economy. They also export timber in huge amounts.

69% of Gabon's land is covered with forests

There are many tourist attractions in Gabon such as rain forests, beaches, and the Schweitzer's hospital in Lambaréné. Albert Schweitzer was the famous doctor who came to Africa from Europe and built a hospital on a river. Some people also like to go see the gorillas and the pygmy villages. Plus, the equator goes straight through the country, so there is a place where you can stand with one foot in the northern hemisphere and one foot in the southern hemisphere. We live in the northern hemisphere, but just barely. 69% of Gabon's land is covered with forests, and there are also some savannas. There are no very high mountains but it's very green because it rains so much. In the rainy season, the rain causes many floods and big storms. Sometimes the lightning lights up the sky as if it were daytime.

That is our country! It would be cool if you wrote to us and asked us questions. Our address is: aisl@internetgabon.com. So, were we easy to figure out?