Local researcher and East London Museum curator, Dr Mary Cole, recently joined a group of researchers and conservationists at the annual graduate summer school on biodiversity and collection management at the University of Rwanda in Huye, Rwanda.
The event was aimed at enhancing the capabilities of young researchers in the fields of biodiversity sampling and collections management.
Cole joined 36 other participants from Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, SA, Uganda, Kenya and the US.
“I was invited by Prof Beth Kaplin, the director of excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resources Management.
“I was invited to train students about molluscs.
“Four of the other trainers were from South Africa, and one was Kenyan and the other teams worked on reptiles, amphibians, bats and freshwater invertebrates, pollinators and plants,” said Cole.
Two exceptional students, Edmond Twagirayezu and Pierre Batumike Cishibanji, joined Cole in her fieldwork, which consisted of collecting snails from their natural habitats and processing the different specimens.
The three researchers worked hard gathering samples, and catalogued 185 entries, subsequently starting Rwanda’s mollusc collection.
Cole, who also holds a PhD on land snails from Rhodes University, has headed the East London Museum’s malacology collection, among the major museum collections of molluscs in SA, since 1988.
“The collection contains marine shells, land snails, and freshwater species and since 2000, I have focused on the land snails of South Africa and the Eastern Cape in particular.
“It was very interesting for me to see what snails live in Rwanda.
“They were in the same families as those in South Africa, but different species and there was only one species I recognised,” said Cole.
Aside from for her work, Cole had the opportunity to experience Rwanda’s stunning scenery.
“The country is very hilly and divided into small plots.
“Very few people have vehicles, and the single-lane tarred road is shared by huge trucks, buses, cars, motorbikes, bicycles and pedestrians.
“People carry extremely heavy loads on their shoulders or on bicycles.
“In addition to the physical lifestyle of the people, two other aspects stuck out as being radically different from what one would see out of a bus window in South Africa; there was no litter, a most refreshing change, and no natural vegetation,” said Cole.
