Martin Herold, Geography graduate student, went on a 3-week excursion to West Africa in February and March, 2003. This excursion (link to map of North Africa) was organized by Martin’s German advisor, Prof. Gunter Menz, and his colleague, Dr. Hans-Peter Thamm, from the Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Germany. The group included 23 people, mostly Geography students from Bonn. They traveled from Niamey, the capitol of Niger (link to map of Niger), to Cotonou, which is the largest city of Benin (link to map of Benin).
The main objective of this excursion was to follow a transect from the sub-Saharan Sahel zone to the tropical Guinea Coast and explore the natural and cultural aspects of the landscapes and recent land change processes in particular. The trip was related to an ongoing research project IMPETUS that studies the spatio-temporal dynamics and social aspects of these processes such as land use change, desertification, forest/landscape degradation, and population migration (link to IMPETUS research site).
Martin has a large collection of scanned photographs posted on a web page: [dead link]. Although fuzzy and sometimes a little dark, the photos offer an impression of how different life is in West Africa compared to what’s typical in the United States and Western Europe and how urgent the need for better stewardship of the land so people can, sustainably, have the basics of clean water, food, and fuel. The photo at left is of two of the excursion participants drinking Coke and quinine tonic water. Coke was imbibed as an antibacterial agent, the tonic as an antimalarial. None the less, some participants came home with malaria.
