“Yeah”, with excitement on our faces, we all
said when we were told we would be going to the National Conservation Centre at
Lekki. We were having a writing workshop which was already in its third day. I
had not been to the conservation centre before that day. I imagined what it
would be like with some amazement on my face. I thought of the scenery, the
elephants, crocodiles, lions, chimpanzees and every animal I had seen before. I
had been to the zoo at the University of Ibadan but there, the animals there
were caged. I had heard that those at the conservation centre were not as they
were free to move from one place to another. Delighted, I prepared for the
excursion.
We got
to the centre in a few minutes after we left the Dover Hotel we had camped for
the workshop. We were welcomed by the beautiful scenery, a well kept environment
with grasses, flowers and tall trees all around. The tortoise with its cracked
shell was the first animal we saw, crawling on the grass at the centre of a roundabout
a few metres from the gate made for cars to turn back toward the gate. We took
photographs with it. A very shy one I remember as it moved away when we
gathered around it. Not too far, a beautiful bird moved, it was the peacock
with its flowery feathers going all the way down like the gown of a princess or
a bride’s train on her wedding day. It moved with Pride.
Moving further, we got to a bridge, made of wood
of equal sizes joined together. It would lead us round the centre, back to
where we started in a circular form. There were tall trees on opposite ends of
the bridge with a swamp underneath. A forest I called it. We would walk on this
bridge for the next forty-five minutes. It was like a never ending bridge I
must say. I was amazed by the stillness of the tall trees around, the graceful
cover they provided from the rays of the sun with their far-reaching branches
spanning over ten meters, the beauty
they radiated from their green coloured leaves and the life they gave as my
senses thought on the process of photosynthesis going on. I marvelled at the
bottom of a tree that looked like the leg of a T-Rex dinosaur I had seen in
cartoons I watched as a kid. “Maybe they were turned to trees”, I imagined. The
swamp beneath me moved slowly that a snail would win a prize if placed side by
side in a race.
We got to a shed. It had a wooden signpost on
the side with an inscription boldly written, “Alligators”. I entered with my
colleagues. I walked in and bent to take a look through a small opening made
for people to stick their heads out and have a view of the scenery. The swamp
was deeper than that on the path the bridge was constructed. There was a large
portion of the surface covered with a green substance I imagined to be algae
with shrubs around. Maybe the depth was the reason why I didn’t see any
alligator, no one did. Not even the top of their roughly formed body as I
usually see on TV. “Could they be hiding
underneath?” I had thought. We looked disappointed as we walked out of the shed
hoping to see some other creatures.
It was a long walk. No sight of any animal till
we got to a point where we heard sounds from the top of a tree. Hoof! Hoof! We
saw the branches on the trees sway from left to right and we walked faster to
the point so we could have a view of the creature making the noise. “It is a
Gorilla”, someone said behind. “No, a chimp”, another colleague said. With
expectations set high, and our heads lifted as we walked along, we rushed to
the point where the movement was made. I saw a large tree house at the top, a
high ladder connected to it from the bottom where one could climb onto from the
bridge. “Obviously, this would be for a Gorilla”, I said to myself. We looked
around the now still trees and we saw nothing apart from the branches of the
trees and the rays of the sun through them. It probably hid itself at the top
of the tree. It couldn’t have stayed at the top of the tree house because a
colleague, Rahman with some courage climbed to see the house. Three of my
colleagues had attempted but were scared of the fiery animal they had pictured
in their minds. “Julius, do you have a will?” someone had shouted earlier as
Julius made an attempt to climb. He
decided against it after three steps. “There’s nothing there”, I heard Rahman
say as he came down. We waited for about
five minutes at the spot but there was no sign of any creature. We did not see
any other except two monkey dangling from one branch to the other as we walked
to the exit. On seeing the end of the bridge, someone shouted, “Yippee! And ran
all the way to the sunlight we had been deprived of for the past forty-five
minutes.
Stepping off the bridge, the heat from the sun
touched my skin, I realised I hadn’t noticed the coolness of the forest I just
left. It had been calm except for the noises we made. “I’m glad this is beyond
the reach of the common man, he’ll do harm to this haven”. I said to myself.
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