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.