Aaron and Tim at Kedongro, near Miango, Plateau State

Tim De La Haye

My name is Tim, and I grew up in Miango, which is near Jos in Plateau State. Before I was in Nigeria I lived on the beach in Liberia but due to the unrest there, we had to evacuate to Nigeria. It was the year 1991 that I first came to Miango. Miango, is a little town that is growing and this means that the fauna are declining because every Nigerian man is a hunta by heart or at least there are hunters in all many villages. My parents taught at the Christian school there in Miango. I became friends with a Fulani boy who loved hunting also. We would just shoot even cattle egrets and chop the meat! We were fanatic hunters. It was so fun. We often tried to trap the Francolin and Guinea fowl but there were hard to get and every once in a while we noticed tracks of bigger game but we never saw anything. Tracks of duiker were seen but I never saw any. When I got older, I really had a passion for the outdoors and I would go out hunting in some deep bush away from Miango, almost in the state of Kaduna. I would hunt monkeys, guinea fowl, rabbits, tunku, porcupines, rock hyrax, duiker and of course the famous francolin. It was addicting. I would go to the bush every evening and then hunt every night with a spotlight. There are lots of bush roads that go deep into the bush so you can go by car or dirtbike and have some sweet hunting. It really does have lots of fauna left. They are still there because I have seen them with my own eyes and chased them. We should do conservation work and set regulations so that they are not killed when in mating seasons. If work is done, Nigeria will, in several years, be know for its wildlife instead of just corruption and misuse of its resources. I have a degree from Biola University and currently work in Sudan for Samaritans Purse International.