The Nature of Things

There are two main groups of chimpanzees aside from the 4 babies and partially paralyzed Ghaa in quarantine. The island has 37 chimpanzees and the mainland group has 8. The mainland group is comprised of chimpanzees that have at some point or another found their way out of the island, most on multiple occasions. It is also home to two that cannot be let outside at all until they can figure out how to contain them, they are Jack (the current leader of the mainland) and Bankim. Collectively they are hugely stubborn and cause more issues with the keepers than their island counterpart but there are relatively few issues between the chimpanzees themselves.

Then there is the island. The island is home to a wide range of personalities. There is Suzanne who is the matriarch, and the oldest member of LWC, she was a resident of the zoo before it was the sanctuary and is thought to be somewhere in her mid to late twenties. She is identifiable at a distance because she is the only blonde chimpanzee we have, it is not genetic, it comes from old age, the stress of having spent her early life in a very small cage and pretty horrific circumstances and having plucked or rubbed off most of her hair at some point. She looks like a matron now and plays the part well. If she stamps her foot, everyone stops what they are doing and the offender is often attacked in some manner by a large portion of the group. Aside from the violence, its kind of cute because she’s old and moves relatively slow. She is also the foster mother to a three year old chimp named Po-Po whose mother died last year.  

There are some young chimpanzees, just a few years old, some older. There are about 7 that rarely or never go outside including my grooming partners and an older chimp named Mac who really likes when you jiggle his huge belly. And there is Carlos.

Carlos is an anomaly in many ways; most of the workers here either have a guarded respect or outright fear of him. One of the volunteers here told me that being alone in a room with him was her worst nightmare, that just the threat of it would cause her to have a heart attack and die before he even entered the room. I can’t say I blame her.

He is the tallest chimpanzee we have, even on all fours he stands about 4ft tall. Most striking are his eyes. Unlike humans, most if not all primates do not have whites to their eyes, outside of the iris is a brownish black that fades into a paler brown and almost white at the extreme edges. Carlos though, he has eyes like we do. So in the morning before everyone gets let out, you are greeted with varying amounts of aggression by a huge chimpanzee with human eyes. Its oddly disconcerting. Fortunately much of his aggression and dislike is focused on men. Carlos is our chief poo flinger, and some staff will only come to the island in the morning with a stick to keep him at bay. When chimps throw poo, they don’t mess around, their hands are huge and they fill them, and it never seems to be with the solid stuff…

He is also our most aggressive towards other chimpanzees. It wasn’t until our newest volunteer came in that I was really made aware. She had volunteered here before, and had asked about a chimpanzee named Jackson. Having gone through all the files I knew he had died at the hands of Carlos, but I did not read the full report. I pulled it up and read it, then went to the keepers for some clarification and details. What was apparently a fight over a female, the low ranking Jackson became the object of Carlos’ aggression. It does not appear to have been much of a fight, Jackson had just rejoined the group after having been fairly sick. Carlos pounded his head into the ground and ripped most of his face off until he died. During the post mortem it was noted that there was no blood in many of the organs, most of it coating either him or the floor.  He then paraded around with the body. Yup, you read it right, held him up like he was a parade leader and pranced around with the now lifeless and faceless Jackson in hand.

I feel like a kid who just found out Santa isn’t real. It is easy to be around these guys and forget what they are capable of. Jane Goodall went through the same progression (She’s the chimpanzee lady from England who studied in Tanzania, not the Gorilla lady from the US who was macheted to death in Congo, that was Dian Fossey). She thought that chimps were better than people because they seemed so much gentler—then her group split into two and one annihilated the other. It was silly of me to put them on the same pedestal. Perhaps it was because all of them had suffered so much at the hands of humans. But they suffer just as much, if not more, at the hands of each other sometimes. Nature is not a beautiful calm. There is no such thing as a peaceful forest, I say it all the time, but apparently I forgot. Forest systems are classified as a dynamic equilibrium, they need a certain amount of disruption and chaos to continue to develop (come to think of it, so do we). There are fires and wind storms, there is death and suffering. Everything gets eaten, everything dies. Aside from possibly trees, there is no such thing as dying of old age in nature. You are alive until something stronger finds and eats you. I got caught up in the stories and forgot this. I remember now. Wild things are beautiful and wonderful, but nature is harsh and sometimes cruel and there is no escaping it.

Poking crocodiles with sticks and other minor assaults on wildlife

There is a nile crocodile that lives here, he’s about 9 ft long and pretty intimidating looking. To clean his enclosure involves going into his cage and poking him with a big stick until he moves far enough away where the keeper feels comfortable with the two of us going in to clean his pool. Once you’re in you have to turn your back to him at points to clean the pool of all the algae growing in it, it isn’t a good feeling. If he decided that he was hungry and I looked like a good meal, there would be no hope for me. But he never seems to care once the initial poking and gnashing of teeth and jaws are done. He just goes to the corner and waits for the pool to fill back up.  I will never be comfortable with this process, and the keeper , Killi, finds the combination of my hesitance and my willingness intensely amusing. There is a lot of me saying “Ok… If you say its safe…” followed by his laughter.  I do the same thing anytime I’m told to go into an enclosure with any animal bigger than a putty-nosed guenon.

                The escapee ninja drills continue to plague me when I feed that section. I feel like there was a generally call to all the free ranging drills that was something like “That light skinned girl who isn’t intimidating at all is here, rush the food truck and take all the bananas!” They were getting increasingly brazen, one using me as a midway point to bound off of to get to the food. All the other keepers throw rocks at them, over them really, but the drills don’t know the difference. My aim is pretty terrible most days so I have never, will never, throw rocks at the animals here. Instead I have gone to the less harmful option of pelting them with the food they were going to steal anyway. I will bean them with bananas and “plums” (kind of like an avocado hiding in the skin of a plum) or mango. It has had the desired effect of getting them to leave me alone. They still all gather when I approach, but they keep their distance until I am gone. I’ll take it.

                I continue to gain comfort with this place and insights into it. I’m never sure what to write, because everything seems interesting to me, but I’ve seen that glazed over bored look in too many peoples’ eyes to think you all feel the same. I remain an anomaly and a huge dork. I got excited over a mantid today and Killi thought I saw a snake since I yelled in excitement when I saw it. Though he humored me and let me take pictures of it, holding the leaf it was on so I could get close to it. He did later feed it to the adult mona monkey (who is finally my friend and rarely shows his teeth to me anymore), which I yelled at him for. I’ll feed the rats to the hawk, but don’t feed my bug to the monkeys. 

            I'm still in awe of the relationships I've been able to forge in the short time I've been here.

The nature of relationships has always seemed to me to be the decision that no matter the outcome, someone is beneficial and worthy enough to warrant the risk. Having a pet means that at some point in the future you will endure a great amount of pain when they die. Making friends, finding a significant other both run the risk of the deep pain associated only with those who know you well. But we all run those risks because primates are social creatures.

           As I bond more with certain animals here, I worry about their well being when I suddenly stop coming by. When I no longer come to groom or play chase, when I no longer tickle bellies or bring them food will they notice? The keepers say that they do, but they also encourage me to keep coming until I leave. Their lives have had so much negative, mostly associated with humans, that these interactions with people help them. I am one more person that did not starve them, throw things at them (with few deserved exceptions) or lock them in a cage.They have given me much already and I hope I leave having been as beneficial to them.

Truth is...

Truth is, I’m a really awkward dorky girl who just goes about life doing whatever seems like a good idea to me and my skewed ideas of the world and what it should be. I think sometimes I look cool on paper, but then you meet me and I open my mouth and it all goes away. It is no different here. 

My days consist of hours of cleaning poo and throwing food punctuated with hours of reading and data entry. That’s the reality of it. I am sweaty and dirty and I’m sure I smell terrible but I can’t tell anymore. I take cold showers when we have water, and use baby wipes when I don’t. That being said, I’m so glad I came. This suits me. As much as I miss people at home, miss my comfortable life and routines, I would do this all again given the choice-- even knowing my project would get canceled and I wouldn’t get into the field. 

I clean poo, but it’s the most exciting poo cleaning can get, I think. Its like an animal husbandry gauntlet every morning. I have to outsmart chimpanzees so they don’t take my broom or squeegee (by the way, brooms here have no handles, its like a witches broom on Halloween without the part she rides, it took a lot of getting used to). I have to watch where I step inside the satellite enclosures to make sure I don’t get close enough to the feed holes where bitchy gorillas can grab me and smash me into the bars ( fortunately there is a grate that runs the middle of the hall. In this case, splitting the middle is a very good thing). I have to avoid the holes they dig in their enclosures when I go hide their food in the morning, I feel like they set traps since the holes are never obvious (we hide the food so its like an Easter egg hunt every morning).  And then I get to play. Some of the guys don’t go outside every day, or in some cases any day, so I run around with them (outside the enclosure because I like my face where it is and I think my intestines should stay inside my body), groom them, let them groom me (chimpanzees don’t like clothes, they get in the way of grooming. My watch and my hat have to come off before I touch them or they will take them off and I will never get them back) and in some cases just hold their hand. Then there is the data entry.

There is so no way to romanticize what I do for that. The project that I accepted is something I had thought of early in my masters career and had put aside for several reasons. I wanted to do a field based project, wanted the cool sexy stories you get when you’re in the field, I wanted to test myself out there and prove myself as a field biologist—but it was not to come to pass. Instead I am going through 20 years of files, histories of every animal that has come through Limbe Wildlife Centre for treatment. I will put them into some sort of order after which I will do an analysis of the patterns that show up to help the sanctuary and the government decide where to direct education and enforcement efforts. In the end there will be a lot of math done, graphs and maps produced and I will hopefully have retained some of my faith in humanity. 

These cases have given me an insight into the behavior of some of the animals and an empathy that makes me almost happy to clean their cages in the morning. It makes sense to me now that Julie doesn’t want to go outside, if I were locked in a room for 12 years by myself, I’m sure I’d be afraid of big open spaces and large numbers of my species as well. Achou is our resident dancing baboon. I thought it was cute and funny until last week when I got to her file and realized its an idiosyncratic behavior that comes from being in a box so small she couldn’t turn around so the dance she does is the only movement she could do for many years. Some stories are better, some are much much worse. And for any of you that know the rules to my feeling(s) (most of which are reserved for little kids, the elderly and animals), you’ll know this is pretty hard for me. But I have the benefit of being able to leave my computer and touch or at least observe these guys. I get to play chase with Julie, watch Chella command his group, see Achou atop a pole or running around the enclosure, watch Suzanne be able to walk and interact with the group and see Tripod climbing and jumping through branches in his enclosure. Captivity is not the place for these animals, for any non-domesticated animal really, but this place is a haven for them. There is food, social interaction, clean and safe places to sleep. It is not perfect, sometimes animals can be terrible to each other, but it is orders of magnitude better than what they had. I am privileged to be a part of this and consider myself very lucky to be here. 

On a lighter note:

Fresh barracuda tastes pretty amazing.

Local people eat the head of the fish and I am still not sure how or what they get out of it.

There is a gecko that lives in my room that I call Dobby because he has a long nose and big eyes.

When a chimpanzee or gorilla wants something they make fart noises.

Multiple animals have happy food noises, the most of which being our cross river gorilla Yangu who has a cross between a moan and a wail when she eats elephant grass.

I really enjoy being called Madame.

When they say they speak French and English here, they meant the “and”. They speak it together in some weird pidgin hybrid language. So my French hasn’t made much progress, but I am starting to get some of the pidgin. “Wuna no chop this kind bush beef for dem go finish small time” or “Don’t eat bushmeat or they will soon be extinct”. The lack of any discernible grammar rules has made it difficult to learn, so anything I’ve learned is just based on hearing it or reading it enough times.

Hope all is going well where you are. I will see you soon.

Sexy monkeys

Aside from the obvious husbandry aspects of cleaning and feeding, much of what I do here is observation. You watch for behavioral changes, try to unwind the subtleties of the animals to make sure everyone is doing ok. Animals have a tendency to hide injuries or illness out of instinct. If you're less than 100% in the wild, something is going to eat you so its best to hide it.

In watching the 15 species we have, seeing the babies run around, watch the big males vie for dominance I started to wonder what makes a sexy monkey. There are some females that are very obviously preferred by the males. It seems to differ from species to species. Sometimes its availability, smaller groups have less choice. There are some obvious physical characteristics some species look for-- the big puffy ass is a hit in the drills and the chimps. The gorillas seem to go for more personality traits than some of the others. Brighter is the top choice of the males by far. She is big, aggressive and maternal in a "mess with my baby and you will no longer have your head attached to your shoulders" kind of way. She's also a bully when you don't bow down to her dominance. She's a bitch. If she were a person I'd want to take an axe handle to her face just to bring her down a few notches. But the boys seem to love her. I guess if you're lucky enough to get close to her without getting beaten she's a good bet to carry on your genetics.

The rains are starting to come now. They were delayed a bit which seems very African of them, and I was grateful to have had a few nice beach days and to be able to run around with the babies before their play area turned into a mud pit. I hope your summer is going well. We had a fourth of July BBQ here which was nice. Buying chicken here is a little more of an adventure than it is back home as you pick a live one at market and pay them on a sliding scale of how prepared you want it. It worked out in the end.

See you all soon. Stay well.

I can't sit at home anymore

After sitting at home and doing nothing but entering data and plotting the painful demise of everyone who has ever owned a primate in this country I decided to go back and work at the wildlife center and do the data entry during breaks. It is much easier to read these stories if I can walk around and see all these guys running around and being as happy as they can be in captivity. they play, groom, mate, form friendships and get to live without being locked in a cage or tied to a post.

While watching the gorillas I was thinking on some of the problems associated with rescuing all these animals. Most come in very small, spend some time in the quarantine area and then get introduced to a group. With the gorillas there is the added problem of having to deal with the males as they grow into their own. Chella is our resident big silverback male, and some years ago he was challenged by another male, Arno. Arno lost, ended up with a broken leg. They decided to give Arno his own enclosure and three lady friends, but there is not room for that to happen again. As Benny is coming up in the ranks, there will either be a powershift if he wins, or some form of rotation if he doesn't.

I kind of like Benny. He is that kid that started high school at 90lbs and graduated at 210. He matured slowly, but now he's big and he knows it. He is biding his time until he thinks he can win, then he will attempt to rule. Boys.

Tales from the keepers and other miscellany

This will be my last post for a bit, my research portion starts now so I'll just be doing a lot of data entry, reading and statistics, nothing anyone wants to hear about. I'll check in on facebook so everyone knows I'm still alive unless something interesting enough to warrant a post comes up.

More things I've learned in the past few days.
1) If a chimpanzee gets out and starts biting your head, a solid punch to the chest will apparently dislodge it and send it running to find someone else.
2) In a fight a chimpanzee will often do one or more of the following
     Bite the head and face area
     Rip off the face
     Stick its finger in the anus of the enemy and pull out intestines
3) If a gorilla gets out, its tendency is largely to wonder around.
4) If a chimpanzee and a gorilla fight, the chimpanzee gets its ass kicked.
5) One apparently has no need of trailer hitches here, just put someone in the trunk and have them hold the trailer
6) There is a lot of fake hair here. It's about 20% if what they sell in the market, and while cleaning the drill enclosure I found two significant pieces of it in there.
7) Chimpanzees learn quickly, two can now press buttons on my watch to make it beep and light up
8) Machetes (ma- chet) here replace about a half dozen items from home including lawn mowers, hedge trimmers, drain snakes and rat traps
9) Baby chimps are stronger than I am

I hope all is well with everyone. I miss things at home but am largely enjoying Limbe. I appreciate everyone who has sent me updates, it's nice to hear from you. I can't always reply because the internet is terrible and I have a limited amount of time, but I am getting them.

Limbe

Limbe is a coastal town with a heavy western influence. Its like a traditional African town collided with great force with a western one and all the resulting debris ended up on the ground. Pollution is awful, no vehicle here would pass emission standards at home. There is trash everywhere and the air often smells like miscellaneous burning things. But the ocean views from the restaurants are amazing, and if you catch it right you can see all the flying foxes wake up and fly overhead on their nights search for food.

You'll see people walking down the street in wrapped fabric clothing, and right next to them will be some guy wearing chucks and levis. Most people, me included, get around on motorcycles. To go anywhere starts off with a bargain, but you're not going anywhere for under 100cfa or twenty cents in American dollars. I'm white so all the prices start off higher. I've asked around the staff for how much they pay for things so that I know around where I need to bargain to. The beaches in Batoke are 300cfa and 10km away. Old market is 100cfa.

My walk to work is about 10 minutes, and like everything else here is navigated on landmarks. There are no street names. I turn at the tire pile, pass Chariot shaving and beauty complex, take a left at the Jenny Rose Bowl and stay straight until I hit the red gate with the painted blue stones. It works for me since I am terrible with directions. "Near Down Beach" or "Just past the Mars Bar" works well around here.

Today finishes my two week rotation. I spent the last two days in quarantine cleaning and feeding and playing with baby primates. Sadly the turtle boots lost their battle with Africa, but went to chimpanzee enrichment. Gaa and Yabien had a good time trying to wear them and filling them with water and throwing them around. There are pictures and very blurry video.

After two weeks I've only learned a few dozen names of the animals, and can identify even fewer. They largely have people names, though things like "Titan" and "Madamme" get thrown in every once in a while. There are only a few names of people I know in there. There is a Nicky which made me think of Mammy as it is a female, Johanna, Billy, Julie and Jack. Though none of the personalities fit.

Hope all is well with everyone. See you in 8 weeks.

small and stubborn

These last two days have been with the chimpanzees, and I have to say that I could stay here forever. They are a crazy combination of this wild thing and human. They play, laugh, form bonds, relax in groups, they have belly buttons and thumbs and like to play chase and be tickled. They also spit, fling poo and can swing by their toes. They don't like to be stared at for too long, especially by big groups. that's when the rocks come out. They pelted a group of students with them today, and I couldn't help but laugh. A good portion of my last two days has been cleaning vasts amounts of feces, lobbing papaya and other assorted plant life over very high fences and being groomed. Chimpanzees are intense scab pickers, and after the elephant grass I have a lot of them. There is no need for a nail brush if there is a chimpanzee around. Julie and Ngombe are my chief groomers.

I've also spent the last week or so observing social interactions between all of the species here. And, as Andreas the keeper put it "It is not good to be small, unless you are stubborn, then you will do ok" By stubborn he means having the ability to stand your ground and be wildly aggressive towards bigger troupe members. I've seen it in the drills (if you haven't googled them, you should) the most but it is very evident in the chimps as well. The small ones will never compete with the big sexy alphas (drills) or the matriarch (chimps) but they will have a place in the group, get enough food to eat and not get the utter shit kicked out of them as happens to smaller submissive members.

There is so much I think to write during the day and I either forget it or don't know where to fit it when I write these. I've been good about keeping a journal, training log and nutrition log thus far. Though my food journal is so repetitive I think I'm going to let it be. My wrist/ thumb are almost better now, but my shoulder still bothers me. I haven't really let it rest yet and there is a lot of picking up and throwing done during the day here. I've moved countless stones around and inside enclosures, done two of the corn deliveries now and if the throwing of food keeps up, I'm going to be nasty at dodge ball next season. And if pushing poorly made uneven and rickety wheelbarrows around rocky and uneven terrain comes up in regionals next year, I am going to dominate.

Hope all is well. I will see everyone soon.

4 days and 10 species later

I ended up starting my primate rotation on baboons, drills and mandrills rather than the smaller monkeys. I found out that my greatest admirer and most motivated enemy are of the same species. My first day of feeding and one of the baboons, one which I had kind of had a soft spot for because he's a little less than perfect, threw rocks at me and landed a good shot under my right eye. Luna and I are not friends. The next day was no less eventful. It was spent running around the drill enclosure trying to capture a sick baby and later collecting large stones throughout the enclosure. They hate the net we use to catch them, so I kept it with me and carried it like a flag anytime I moved to a different section. It was my first literal safety net.

These last two days I was with the smaller monkeys, mona, guenon and mangeby. Mangeby can be extremely aggressive and they like to grab and pull if you get too close to the edge of their enclosure. Monkey pinches are not pleasant. There is an ancient red-capped mangeby that I can't help but baby. He has arthritis in everything, is missing teeth, drools all the time. I keep making sure he gets the ripest or softest of everything.

I've managed to keep my reputation as a strange American. With a smirk and a crowd I was told to chop down elephant grass with a machete for the animals, smirks stopped when I did it and did it well. I always feel like I'm being tested. The wheelbarrows (which really are the bane of my existence here and I plot their destruction daily) keep getting heavier, jobs longer and more labor intensive. I think they keep waiting for me to fail. I'm an anomaly to them. They only have 6 more days to torture me before I start in the field, so we'll see what challenges lay ahead.

Things I have learned in my first week:
A good J-kick is handy when breaking bamboo.
Don't let chimpanzees take your clothes, they will never respect you again.
Don't flinch when the primates run at you or try to attack you.
Don't look them in the eye or raise your eyebrows when you're near them
Baboons have really good aim.
There is no such thing as a set price.
Food will be ready in no less than an hour at any restaurant.
You can fit three passengers on a motorbike.
I will spend the majority of my money on eggs.
Plants are cheap, animal products are not.
When monkeys masturbate(which they do a lot), they eat the resulting fluid.
Big floppy protrusions on female asses that look really unhealthy are apparently very appealing to chimpanzees.
Chimpanzees really do fling poo.