Classroom

The school classroom in the Dja Reserve pavilion provides an excellent space for our popular educational programmes, suburban camps or zoo-clubs and zoo-schools for kids. Photo: Petr Hamerník, Prague Zoo

In the pavilion, rural Cameroon is primarily represented by a school classroom designed to be as close as possible to a real classroom in Somalomo, a small town on the edge of the Dja Faunal Reserve, where the base of the Wandering Bus is located.

The classroom’s authenticity is imparted by the individual details: specially shaped bricks illuminated to mimic the windows of African schools, stylised classroom walls smudged with the ubiquitous red dust, or educational posters imported from Cameroon. The portrait of President Paul Biya above the teacher’s desk was purchased by Prague Zoo’s director, Miroslav Bobek, from a street vendor in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé, while the posters on the walls were collected by Malvína Kahleová, head of the zoo’s in situ projects department, from classrooms and offices in the town of Somalomo on the border of the Dja Faunal Reserve.

Windows in tropical Africa typically have no glass panes and are filled with shaped bricks resembling central European lattice fence panels. The bricks for the schoolroom in the Dja Reserve pavilion were handcrafted by the owner of the brickworks in Štěrboholy himself. Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

We also transported the school desks directly from a school in Somalomo, Cameroon. Prague Zoo acquired them for the pavilion in exchange for providing new benches. Since the original desks had already seen considerable wear and tear, they were taken after their arrival to a specialised conservation and wood-restoration workshop at the Central Bohemian Museum in Roztoky near Prague. There, the furniture was treated with radiation to eliminate woodworm.

The benches where visitors to the pavilion can sit come directly from a school in the town of Somalomo. We acquired these benches and desks in exchange for brand-new ones, which we had commissioned in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, and then donated to the school. Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo