January 14, 2004
Herald photo by Garret Leiva
East Junior High seventh-grade geography students took a trip to Africa Friday, thanks to local businessman Marty Cotanche, who showed a slideshow of his travels. Here, Katie Riley tries out a horsehair hat and an African drum.
Class follows safari trail
Marty Cotanche brings Africa to life for East Junior High students
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
With a looming water buffalo head and other ruminants in the background, Marty Cotanche captivated geography students at East Junior High School Friday.
Presenting information about his eight safari trips to Africa, the Traverse City resident and businessman discussed the different countries he has visited over the years. These countries included South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ethiopia and Tanzania.
"I've been in all the capitals of these countries, they are big, sprawling cities surrounded by shantytowns," said Cotanche, co-owner of Traverse City Products, an automotive components manufacturing company. "The country surrounding the cities is barren because they heat with wood and have cut down all the trees."
Cotanche noted that most of his time in Africa was spent in rural villages, way out in the bush. Linking up with safari companies, he had the opportunity to hunt and bring home trophies from a variety of animals, many of which he displayed for the students. Trophies included heads of a warthog, a gazelle, a Cape buffalo and a dik-dik as well as skulls of a lion, wildebeest, hyena and a leopard. Cotanche also had a zebra skin on display. He discussed the body type and food of each animal and their place in the ecosystem.
"I liked the big water buffalo the best," said Suzanne Moen, a seventh grade student at the school.
Cotanche has been visiting seventh-grade geography classes at the school for years, each time dazzling the students with a taste of Africa.
"It brings things alive for them, makes it real and concrete," said Nancy Fitzpatrick, one of three geography teachers at East Junior High. "He does this every year for me and he loves it and he spends hours preparing for it."
Fitzpatrick noted that her students completed a study of the continent before Cotanche's visit. This unit included preparing an in-depth report on a country, discussing current problems and presenting solutions.
"So this made some of the problems come alive for them," she said. "The slide shows helps, too, showing the pictures of the villages and how they use the environmental materials to make their huts."
Cotanche discussed the format of a safari, with their bush camps and personnel including a tracker, skinner, cook, gun bearers and hunters. He also told the students how the safari money helps both the countries and animals.
"You can only hunt the old male animals so there is no impact on population," he said, noting that half of the trophy fees go to the villages. These funds give villagers incentive not to poach and also much-needed cash. In addition, a portion of the funds goes to the host country to help fund anti-poaching patrols.
"In some village areas, with no safaris or anti-poaching patrols, villagers can deplete all small animals for ten miles," Cotanche noted. "When we're out hunting, we bring hundreds of (poaching) snares out of the forest."
A slideshow of his travels in Africa outlined the basics of life on the continent, which in rural villages consists mainly of subsistence farming.
"The basic mode of transportation is walking, if they're really wealthy, they'll have a bicycle," Cotanche said. "All tools are handmade and they will use every piece of scrap metal."
Cotanche also brought along numerous artifacts including headdresses, a drum, a shield and spear, a portable stool and headrest as well as some stationary made out of elephant dung (which did not have any odor.) He also showed a snippet of a documentary he participated in about renegade elephants rampaging villages, threatening people and crops.
Peering into such a completely opposite way of life was interesting for Katie Riley, a geography student at the school.
"It's cool because they live so differently than us and use home made tools where we use plastic tools," she said.