Flora & Fauna
A preserved patch of coastal woodland
The museum's remit reaches past human history. Because the grounds keep their natural local flora intact, they form a small refuge of West African coastal woodland — and a reliable stop for birdwatchers working the Tanji coast.
The guided trail
A guided walk takes visitors through the woodland along a marked path. Indigenous trees and plants are labelled, and guides explain their traditional ecological and medicinal uses — the pharmacy, timber yard and grocery of a village that had no others.
40+
Labelled species along the path
Dawn
Best hour for birdlife and cool air
Living History
The Nature Trail & Birdwatching
Baobab
Leaves are dried and pounded into a sauce thickener; the fruit pulp is a vitamin-rich drink, and the bark fibre becomes rope.
Neem
Introduced but now everywhere: leaves boiled for fever, twigs used as chewing sticks.
Rhun palm
Split trunks make roof beams and rafters strong enough to carry a thatched roof for decades.
Mangrove
Roots shelter juvenile fish and shrimp along the coast — the nursery behind Tanji's fishing economy.
Kinkeliba
A shrub whose leaves brew into the everyday bush tea taken for digestion.