Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Youngster
Juveniles usually have brown faces and hands until they're roughly 7 years old. Shots from feeding cages. 
More chimps
Males apparently have little to do with their babies. In fact, I'm told that the handlers don't even know which males are fathers to which babies. Moms do take care of their young -- and they usually breast-feed them until age 4. 
The Fun Part
After the chimps take their nap and leave the cages to return to their enclosures, the volunteers (me and Iona, from Scotland) plus the 2-3 Zambian workers get to clean all the cages. 
There is no running water, so we use only brooms. And the chimps really trash these cages each day.
When was the last time you tried to clean up monkey urine and excrement with a broom? It's not easy. And it doesn't smell fantastic.
At enclosures 1 and 2, we clean up after 69 chimps. That's about 10 or 12 separate rooms. Sweep the mess into a corner, scoop it into a wheelbarrow, and dump into a dry well to be burned. Then, wash your hands!
By then it's after 3:00 -- time to walk a long way back home, or get a lift from some other staff if you're lucky.
There is no running water, so we use only brooms. And the chimps really trash these cages each day.
When was the last time you tried to clean up monkey urine and excrement with a broom? It's not easy. And it doesn't smell fantastic.
At enclosures 1 and 2, we clean up after 69 chimps. That's about 10 or 12 separate rooms. Sweep the mess into a corner, scoop it into a wheelbarrow, and dump into a dry well to be burned. Then, wash your hands!
By then it's after 3:00 -- time to walk a long way back home, or get a lift from some other staff if you're lucky.
Feeding Time
The main task each morning is to prepare the chimps' lunch. They eat one big meal per day at 11:30 a.m.
Two or three times per week, a big truck from town delivers food for the chimps. On those days, you have to unload it, sort it, and place it in a storage room next to each chimp enclosure.
When the food is properly stored, we prepare the day's meal. We cut sugar cane and cabbage with a machete. When available, the chimps get sweet potatoes, oranges, "bush oranges," apples, energy drinks, limes, whatever else is laying around, and (of course) bananas. The food is mostly donated by Shop-Rite, a grocery store 60 km away in Chingola.
We also cook shima (a dough-like food that's basically the same as bukari) on an open fire, lay it on some cloth, and roll it into balls for the chimps. They won't eat warm shima, so you have to give it time to cool off.
At feeding time, the handlers call the chimps by name, and they go into their designated rooms. Most rooms look just like this. Sometimes, there are as many as 8 chimps in a room. They come in at feeding time and eat for an hour or more.
Here are some chimps going into the feeding house. They go through that hole there on the bottom right and proceed to their designated rooms. Usually, families are kept together.
After lunch, the chimps take a nap. They are released back into the enclosure around 1:30.
Two or three times per week, a big truck from town delivers food for the chimps. On those days, you have to unload it, sort it, and place it in a storage room next to each chimp enclosure.
When the food is properly stored, we prepare the day's meal. We cut sugar cane and cabbage with a machete. When available, the chimps get sweet potatoes, oranges, "bush oranges," apples, energy drinks, limes, whatever else is laying around, and (of course) bananas. The food is mostly donated by Shop-Rite, a grocery store 60 km away in Chingola.
We also cook shima (a dough-like food that's basically the same as bukari) on an open fire, lay it on some cloth, and roll it into balls for the chimps. They won't eat warm shima, so you have to give it time to cool off.
At feeding time, the handlers call the chimps by name, and they go into their designated rooms. Most rooms look just like this. Sometimes, there are as many as 8 chimps in a room. They come in at feeding time and eat for an hour or more.
Here are some chimps going into the feeding house. They go through that hole there on the bottom right and proceed to their designated rooms. Usually, families are kept together.
After lunch, the chimps take a nap. They are released back into the enclosure around 1:30.
Chimp Sanctuary
I spent two days volunteering at a chimp sanctuary in a place called Chimfunshi. It's near the Congolese border in north-central Zambia, along the Kafue River.
I also spent part of a day at Chimfunshi's chimp orphanage, which is separate from the sanctuary. More on the orphanage later.
The morning after I arrived, I got a tour of the grounds from Albert, the second in command who lives at the volunteer site. During the rainy season, the land in these next two photos is flooded with water.
Each morning, I woke up early. By 7 or so, I was racing along a dirt road on the back of a truck to the chimps.
Most mornings, you walk around one of the enclosures to make sure the fence is intact. Enclosure 1, which houses 23 chimps, is 500 square acres. This is me walking with Iona, from Scotland. She was the lone official volunteer. Ahead of her is Joseph, one of two or three additional Zambians who help with the manual labor.
Here's a photo through the enclosure fence. Inside the main wire fence is electric wire. The chimps have a long history of escaping without much difficulty. For example, they climb a tree and jump over, or lean a log against the fence to cut off the electricity.
I also spent part of a day at Chimfunshi's chimp orphanage, which is separate from the sanctuary. More on the orphanage later.
The morning after I arrived, I got a tour of the grounds from Albert, the second in command who lives at the volunteer site. During the rainy season, the land in these next two photos is flooded with water.
Each morning, I woke up early. By 7 or so, I was racing along a dirt road on the back of a truck to the chimps.
Most mornings, you walk around one of the enclosures to make sure the fence is intact. Enclosure 1, which houses 23 chimps, is 500 square acres. This is me walking with Iona, from Scotland. She was the lone official volunteer. Ahead of her is Joseph, one of two or three additional Zambians who help with the manual labor.
Here's a photo through the enclosure fence. Inside the main wire fence is electric wire. The chimps have a long history of escaping without much difficulty. For example, they climb a tree and jump over, or lean a log against the fence to cut off the electricity.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
To a Chimp Orphanage
When I arrive in Chingola, Zambia, I have a decision to make: Stay here or press on?
There are good reasons to stay. It’s almost 6:00 in the evening, and it will be dark within an hour. I need to eat dinner. The place I’m going has no food, so I need to buy food and bring it along. Plus, I don’t know exactly where I’m going. After scouring the Internet, I have a scrap of paper with the following written on it: “Chimfunshi Chimpanzee sanctuary / orphanage. 60 km west of Chingola. Solwezi road. Campsite.”
On the other hand, there are reasons to go. I’ve stayed in Chingola before, and it’s fine but hardly exciting. It’s also expensive: I haven’t located a campsite in town, so I would probably have to stay in a guesthouse. And anyway, I want to keep moving.
At a taxi stand, I ask a few cab drivers how much to Chimfunshi. One hundred dollars, says one. That settles it, I think to myself. I’m going tomorrow.
Just then, another young man comes up and says “I will take you for 100,000 kwacha.” That’s about $20. I am skeptical, so I ask some of the men I have been chatting with, and they all agree that the guy is legitimate and that he knows where Chimfunshi is. So I go for it.
I scarf down some dinner, buy some bananas, bread, beans and water, and hop into my chariot. It’s a “combi” -- a medium-sized blue van -- and I’m the only passenger.
I sense that this is no ordinary combi. (Or maybe it’s a perfectly ordinary combi…)
When I try to put my bag and tent in the back seat, the driver runs over and says he will open the sliding door for me. He grabs it with two hands (one on the handle, the other through an open window) and lifts it clear away from the van. As I load my bags, the driver stands a few paces back, holding the sliding door in his arms.
I settle into the front seat. My seat has no cushion, so I sit on springs and metal bars. The back of the seat seems about to fall off; it leans all the way into the second row, the right side sagging lower than the left. The windshield is cracked. That’s normal, actually, but this one is really cracked -- with spider webs of cracks radiating from multiple centers. There’s a hole where a radio once might have been. My window doesn’t roll up.
As I’m trying to get comfortable, the driver -- a cheerful Zambian in his 20s -- tells me: “We are just waiting for the conductor.”
Hmm, I think. What’s the conductor for?
Soon, I find out. Another young man arrives with several containers of fluid. He shoos me out of my seat, lifts it up, and pours a liter of I-don’t-know-what down there. He hops into the second row of seats, unscrews a cap near the floor, and pours another liter down there. I think that one’s gas. Or water. The rest of the fluids he brought must be reserves.
Then, the conductor really goes to work. He gets behind the van and starts pushing. We gain a little speed and he shouts at the driver, who tries the ignition -- but the car shudders and stops in its tracks; the engine won’t turn over.
They repeat the procedure and get the same result. I get out and help push, but we still can’t start the combi. Finally, on the fifth try, the engine starts. We run alongside the moving van and jump in -- the conductor uses my door to avoid the detachable sliding door.
We are on our way. The combi runs better than it looks, I think.
Within minutes, I spot a few more issues with our vehicle. Most urgently, I notice that the car is filled with fumes. Intermittent coughs and sneezes are the soundtrack for the ride. I also notice some temperature issues. Specifically, my bottom is very hot -- and the rest of me is very cold. It’s dark outside, the middle of the Zambian winter, and both of the combi’s front windows are wide open. This is necessary for ventilation -- and I spend much of the ride with my head out the window gasping for fresh air -- but it’s freezing. Meanwhile, something’s happening under my seat, because it’s scorching down there. I feel like a corndog after a while in a weak microwave: icy on one side, burned on the other.
We drive through the darkness on a tar road littered with potholes, weaving back and forth across the center line to avoid the biggest ones. The engine roars and seems fairly healthy, but our top speed can’t be much more than 50 km per hour. Our van communicates with oncoming vehicles in a cryptic language I cannot grasp -- both sides employ blinkers, flashers, and headlight signals, but I have no idea what it all means.
Twice during the ride’s first hour, the engine seems to kick into turbo mode. The conductor screams at the driver in another language, and we quickly we pull off the road. I abandon the van and run some distance away as the conductor races to replace fluids under my seat and in the second row. We can’t stop the car while in a ditch -- if we do, we’ll never be able to start it again -- so I keep far away, convinced there’s a nontrivial chance the van will ignite during the emergency procedure.
Twenty kilometers from Chimfunshi, we stop at a convenience store to buy more fluids. I vacate the van and stare in wonderment at the clouds of blue smoke billowing from the exhaust pipe. Soon, we’re back on the road for what I think it the final stretch.
The driver pulls a Mosi -- a Zambian beer -- out of the bag, pops the top, and takes a swig.
By the time we arrive at the sign for Chimfunshi, the driver is on his third beer. I am thrilled that we made it. I almost suggest that they can drop me by the sign, but I recall hearing that Zambia is the Black Mamba capital of the world, so I let them take me along the narrow dirt road.
Good thing I did. We bump and weave along slowly for a few kilometers, and I realize this could be a long road.
Suddenly, the headlights go out. We are driving in total blackness.
Instead of stopping, the driver turns on his flashers and keeps plowing forward. I search my bag for a light. The conductor hops into the front seat next to me and fishes in the front panel, messing with a fuse box while drinking a Mosi of his own.
After a few minutes, the conductor manages to turn the headlights back on. But they’re out again within 15 seconds. A few more attempts meet the same fate. The conductor spends the remainder of the 12-kilometer ride leaning into the front panel and holding the fuse in place.
At long last, we arrive at a campsite. A man comes over and asks if I have an appointment. I say no. He says that I have to drive another 6 kilometers to some other site; this is the volunteer site. As we are talking, I see in the glow of the headlights that our van has bathed the campsite (and a lone volunteer sitting by a fire) in thick, suffocating exhaust fumes. There is no way in hell I am getting back in that van.
The man walks away, appeals to his boss, and gets the ok -- I can stay.
Thanks for the ride, guys.
Welcome to Chimfunshi -- the world’s largest chimpanzee sanctuary and orphanage.
There are good reasons to stay. It’s almost 6:00 in the evening, and it will be dark within an hour. I need to eat dinner. The place I’m going has no food, so I need to buy food and bring it along. Plus, I don’t know exactly where I’m going. After scouring the Internet, I have a scrap of paper with the following written on it: “Chimfunshi Chimpanzee sanctuary / orphanage. 60 km west of Chingola. Solwezi road. Campsite.”
On the other hand, there are reasons to go. I’ve stayed in Chingola before, and it’s fine but hardly exciting. It’s also expensive: I haven’t located a campsite in town, so I would probably have to stay in a guesthouse. And anyway, I want to keep moving.
At a taxi stand, I ask a few cab drivers how much to Chimfunshi. One hundred dollars, says one. That settles it, I think to myself. I’m going tomorrow.
Just then, another young man comes up and says “I will take you for 100,000 kwacha.” That’s about $20. I am skeptical, so I ask some of the men I have been chatting with, and they all agree that the guy is legitimate and that he knows where Chimfunshi is. So I go for it.
I scarf down some dinner, buy some bananas, bread, beans and water, and hop into my chariot. It’s a “combi” -- a medium-sized blue van -- and I’m the only passenger.
I sense that this is no ordinary combi. (Or maybe it’s a perfectly ordinary combi…)
When I try to put my bag and tent in the back seat, the driver runs over and says he will open the sliding door for me. He grabs it with two hands (one on the handle, the other through an open window) and lifts it clear away from the van. As I load my bags, the driver stands a few paces back, holding the sliding door in his arms.
I settle into the front seat. My seat has no cushion, so I sit on springs and metal bars. The back of the seat seems about to fall off; it leans all the way into the second row, the right side sagging lower than the left. The windshield is cracked. That’s normal, actually, but this one is really cracked -- with spider webs of cracks radiating from multiple centers. There’s a hole where a radio once might have been. My window doesn’t roll up.
As I’m trying to get comfortable, the driver -- a cheerful Zambian in his 20s -- tells me: “We are just waiting for the conductor.”
Hmm, I think. What’s the conductor for?
Soon, I find out. Another young man arrives with several containers of fluid. He shoos me out of my seat, lifts it up, and pours a liter of I-don’t-know-what down there. He hops into the second row of seats, unscrews a cap near the floor, and pours another liter down there. I think that one’s gas. Or water. The rest of the fluids he brought must be reserves.
Then, the conductor really goes to work. He gets behind the van and starts pushing. We gain a little speed and he shouts at the driver, who tries the ignition -- but the car shudders and stops in its tracks; the engine won’t turn over.
They repeat the procedure and get the same result. I get out and help push, but we still can’t start the combi. Finally, on the fifth try, the engine starts. We run alongside the moving van and jump in -- the conductor uses my door to avoid the detachable sliding door.
We are on our way. The combi runs better than it looks, I think.
Within minutes, I spot a few more issues with our vehicle. Most urgently, I notice that the car is filled with fumes. Intermittent coughs and sneezes are the soundtrack for the ride. I also notice some temperature issues. Specifically, my bottom is very hot -- and the rest of me is very cold. It’s dark outside, the middle of the Zambian winter, and both of the combi’s front windows are wide open. This is necessary for ventilation -- and I spend much of the ride with my head out the window gasping for fresh air -- but it’s freezing. Meanwhile, something’s happening under my seat, because it’s scorching down there. I feel like a corndog after a while in a weak microwave: icy on one side, burned on the other.
We drive through the darkness on a tar road littered with potholes, weaving back and forth across the center line to avoid the biggest ones. The engine roars and seems fairly healthy, but our top speed can’t be much more than 50 km per hour. Our van communicates with oncoming vehicles in a cryptic language I cannot grasp -- both sides employ blinkers, flashers, and headlight signals, but I have no idea what it all means.
Twice during the ride’s first hour, the engine seems to kick into turbo mode. The conductor screams at the driver in another language, and we quickly we pull off the road. I abandon the van and run some distance away as the conductor races to replace fluids under my seat and in the second row. We can’t stop the car while in a ditch -- if we do, we’ll never be able to start it again -- so I keep far away, convinced there’s a nontrivial chance the van will ignite during the emergency procedure.
Twenty kilometers from Chimfunshi, we stop at a convenience store to buy more fluids. I vacate the van and stare in wonderment at the clouds of blue smoke billowing from the exhaust pipe. Soon, we’re back on the road for what I think it the final stretch.
The driver pulls a Mosi -- a Zambian beer -- out of the bag, pops the top, and takes a swig.
By the time we arrive at the sign for Chimfunshi, the driver is on his third beer. I am thrilled that we made it. I almost suggest that they can drop me by the sign, but I recall hearing that Zambia is the Black Mamba capital of the world, so I let them take me along the narrow dirt road.
Good thing I did. We bump and weave along slowly for a few kilometers, and I realize this could be a long road.
Suddenly, the headlights go out. We are driving in total blackness.
Instead of stopping, the driver turns on his flashers and keeps plowing forward. I search my bag for a light. The conductor hops into the front seat next to me and fishes in the front panel, messing with a fuse box while drinking a Mosi of his own.
After a few minutes, the conductor manages to turn the headlights back on. But they’re out again within 15 seconds. A few more attempts meet the same fate. The conductor spends the remainder of the 12-kilometer ride leaning into the front panel and holding the fuse in place.
At long last, we arrive at a campsite. A man comes over and asks if I have an appointment. I say no. He says that I have to drive another 6 kilometers to some other site; this is the volunteer site. As we are talking, I see in the glow of the headlights that our van has bathed the campsite (and a lone volunteer sitting by a fire) in thick, suffocating exhaust fumes. There is no way in hell I am getting back in that van.
The man walks away, appeals to his boss, and gets the ok -- I can stay.
Thanks for the ride, guys.
Welcome to Chimfunshi -- the world’s largest chimpanzee sanctuary and orphanage.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Like a Hot Knife Through Butter
The hour-long ride from Lubumbashi to the border was pretty memorable. Here was my cab. (Click on the photo to get a better look at the windshield.)
And here was the minor delay we encountered.
But we made it.
I sailed through the DRC-Zambia border crossing with no problems. It took some yelling and some name-dropping, but I didn’t pay a single cent.
Then, I hopped in a minibus and rode towards Chingola, Zambia, feeling proud of my accomplishment. A few kilometers from the border, we were stopped at a police roadblock and I was singled out to pay a bribe.
For those crossing between Chingola, Zambia to Lubumbashi, DRC, here are the vital statistics:
- From Chingola to the border (and vice versa), you can find a “taxi” -- usually a car or bus that fills up with people before it leaves -- for 20,000 kwacha (about $4).
- Going into the Congo, the only “official” fee I have heard of (aside from the visa cost) is a $10 fee, paid to the man behind a window. He should be the third or fourth “official” you encounter, and he’s in the same office building as the person who checks your immunization records. However, I’m 80% sure that the $10 was a bribe as well.
- Leaving the Congo overland, you don’t have to pay anything (except your Zambian visa fee). Several people told me I would have to pay $50 just to leave the DRC, but nobody asked for that. On a plane, I have heard of a “go pass” -- an additional fee for leaving the DRC -- but overland, you don’t have to pay that.
- From the border to Lubumbashi (and vice versa), you can find a taxi that will take you wherever you want in the city for 6,000 Congolese francs. Right now, the exchange rate is about 750 francs per US dollar, so if you give the taxi driver $10, he should give you $2 (or 1,500 francs) in return.
And here was the minor delay we encountered.
But we made it.
I sailed through the DRC-Zambia border crossing with no problems. It took some yelling and some name-dropping, but I didn’t pay a single cent.
Then, I hopped in a minibus and rode towards Chingola, Zambia, feeling proud of my accomplishment. A few kilometers from the border, we were stopped at a police roadblock and I was singled out to pay a bribe.
For those crossing between Chingola, Zambia to Lubumbashi, DRC, here are the vital statistics:
- From Chingola to the border (and vice versa), you can find a “taxi” -- usually a car or bus that fills up with people before it leaves -- for 20,000 kwacha (about $4).
- Going into the Congo, the only “official” fee I have heard of (aside from the visa cost) is a $10 fee, paid to the man behind a window. He should be the third or fourth “official” you encounter, and he’s in the same office building as the person who checks your immunization records. However, I’m 80% sure that the $10 was a bribe as well.
- Leaving the Congo overland, you don’t have to pay anything (except your Zambian visa fee). Several people told me I would have to pay $50 just to leave the DRC, but nobody asked for that. On a plane, I have heard of a “go pass” -- an additional fee for leaving the DRC -- but overland, you don’t have to pay that.
- From the border to Lubumbashi (and vice versa), you can find a taxi that will take you wherever you want in the city for 6,000 Congolese francs. Right now, the exchange rate is about 750 francs per US dollar, so if you give the taxi driver $10, he should give you $2 (or 1,500 francs) in return.
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