This is the command given to the students releasing them to position, aim and shoot their firearm at paper targets 100 meters across a scruffy field. We are at the Moshi policy academy shooting range, a dirt bank in an abandoned cornfield, to give students practice shooting firearms. Ballistics is not a course we teach back home so it is fun to tag along and observe.
The students have completed a module on firearms including care and use of guns as well as wildlife enforcement practices and policies. Many of these students will end up in positions where they must confidently know how to handle a gun. Some students will be employed in poaching patrols where they will be tracking and arresting poachers. (Elephants, bushmeat and illegal firewood are poached items.) Others will lead hunting safaris and will assist clients’ bag their trophy. Still others will need to be prepared to protect clients on photo safaris from the Cape buffalo caught by surprise.
The day starts with a serious reminder about gun safety, reminders for proper gun handling, gun assembly and a strict set of operating procedures for the day. Safety is paramount and anyone even remotely in violation of safety is docked points for the exercise. There are a dozen or so rifles and well over a hundred students so they must crowd around for demonstrations as the guns are taken out of storage and assembled.
Each student is coached through the proper position, aiming and shooting. Five students at a time are lined up and take aim. The instructors offer encouragement and praise as well as critique and comments regarding errant bullets that have sailed beyond the missed target and backdrop (identified by sound). After several rounds, the students and instructors trot out to the targets and inspect their results.
Scores range widely as does comfort with shooting a gun. Some have significant experience and others grimace while squeezing the trigger and bracing for the kickback. Mostly they are eager to handle the guns and shoot. With serious faces, they carefully position themselves, aim and pull the trigger.
The students are eager for me to try and I am reminded of the pistol training I once did ‘eons’ ago. I politely decline holding my camera in shooting position. They have many questions and stereotypes about Americans and guns which I respond to as best I can. They are convinced that all Americans carry weapons and are surprised that we don’t teach ballistics as part of our wildlife management courses. They compare notes on the ease of owning a gun in the US versus Tanzania and like young people elsewhere they are fascinated with the images of power associated with firearms. Many enthusiastically volunteer to have me “shoot” their picture, gun in arms, looking very powerful.
The day stretches on and round after round of students take their turn. The sun heats up and those who have already shot seek the few meager shady spots cast by the trucks. The day ends with lessons on cleaning, safety and demonstrations of different guns (including an automatic) before we head back up the slopes of Kilimanjaro to home. Just another day in ballistics class at the College of African Wildlife Management.
Incidentally, uniforms are widespread in Tanzanian schools. Though the students at CAWM don’t wear uniforms to class when in Mweka, they do wear the standard green safari uniform during field classes and fieldwork.
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