Back in Goma 18 June 2006

Laura has left and it's just ol' me again. The JGI office has a new accountant so I don't have a computer to work on during the week, so I can only do stuff on weekends. The advantage is though, that Anne Laure has agreed to help AWARE with our accounting. Amongst other things, I have been trying to be an accountant. It's not rocket science but I do rather well outside with chimp poo on me!The house is quiet and all the kids are getting on well. I didn't have a chance after I got back from Bukavu, to check our new chimp out. I was rushing here and there to finish website stuff with Laura etc. Today, I went outside and sat with everyone in an attempt to get to know Gari better. After being completely dominated by the Princess Yongesa for about half an hour, Gari wondered over to my feet and bit down hard. He has been chained like a dog for most of his life and the behaviour of biting feet and legs probably comes from people who tease, laugh and kick at him and the only way he can get them to go away, he has learned, is to bite. He has never been explained in chimp language that there is a time and place for biting and if someone is being nice to you, you don't need to do it so hard...... at least I was wearing my gumboots. So I stroked his back and under his arms (chimps love their armpits being fondled) and after 2 minutes he was up and on my lap. I carried on grooming him (no doubt he hasn't been groomed for an awful long time) and picked at his scabs. Most chimps love this. I feed the scabs to them and if you've got a good big juicy one, their mouths are open before you can even get it off! It is a practice that Etaito finds particularly disgusting and when I show him his scabs, his face is something to behold..... utter disgust!!! really funny. Anyway, so I'm grooming Gari and getting a chance to check out his condition properly. The hair around his neck is gone and the hair on his belly is chaffed off too. There are old scars of his previous captivity around his little waist too. (Pictured above when he arrived last Saturday, picture by Laura Darby)So after half an hour and nearly falling asleep, he shifts and pees on me, then gets off, takes three curved sticks in his mouth and waddles over to Bonane (caregiver). He waddles coz his belly is still recoiling from protein deficiency and worm infections. He snaps each stick in half and hands them to Bonane and asks him to scratch his back, which he was obliged to do.Gari still has that shocked look in his eyes. It will take a couple of weeks for him to get into a routine and feel part of a family and know that he will get enough food and be safe from harm. He has bonded well with the caregivers and I think he's going to be alright.After sewing a curtain for the caregiver's room, the gate guard informed me that there were two people at the gate offering to sell me their chimpanzee. They didn't have it with them and the lady explained that it belongs to some police person and he has left and told her to find a buyer. So, in my best french, I am trying to explain a few things...... not only is it illegal for you to have the chimp madame, but chimps are very much like people and need their families around them and you are chaining this chimp, no doubt, so it won't destroy your house and that is not even how criminals are kept in jails. You are keeping an infant (apparently 7 months old) like a prisoner and when it grows up and weighs 70kgs what will you do then. No, I won't buy it from you, in fact you need to be paying me, coz it's going to live for another 60 years and I have to feed and look after it in a sanctuary for that long. How can you live with yourself knowing you are chaining a small infant who needs a mother and good (but expensive) milk formula in order to grow..... it's not fair!!! Believe me, my french is THAT good!..... the guy that was keeping silent was almost in tears!! So we shall see if I was convincing enough and then we might have yet another chimp.Being back in Goma is good. I missed the kids so much when I was in Bukavu. It is good to be at the house doing all my work alone, reading by candle light each night (electricity is a temperamental thing) and having cold showers. My dad is coming for my birthday and then we have new volunteers coming around the 9th July.Keep well all, miss you lotsxl

Off to Bukavu 15 June 2006

Hello all,This is a large step for us and we are getting very la de dah now. I can write all my news on this blog thingy and put pics up as well. The previous entries, as you can see, are from Laura. She is the computer whizz who is helping on the website and blogsite. All very complicated for me but she is a star and we are hoping to get it all completely up by the end of July.Laura came at the end of May so that I could go to the site in Lwiro and work with them for two weeks. Got a UN helicopter flight (always fun) and settled down in the little house in Bukavu. Just to explain some previous detail for those who are new to the news...... About a year ago, the Jane Goodall Institute (Goma) heard of some chimps being held illegally. They decided to help and set up a house here to care for the chimps. There is no chimp sanctuary in Goma yet. Across the Lake Kivu to the south, there is a site called Lwiro. It was set up in the 1950's by the Belgians as a research site. Bukavu (40kms south of Lwiro) has the head office of the ICCN (Institut Congolaise pour la Conservation de la Nature) who confiscates illegally kept wildlife. They made a collaboration with the CRSN (Centre pour la Recherche Scientifique de la Nature) at Lwiro. The CRSN agreed to house the confiscated wildlife. There is not an awful lot of money for the animals there and they are in small enclosures. We decided (as AWARE) to help create a sanctuary there and, in time, transport the kids in Goma to Lwiro. So there are in essence, two projects on the go that both need support.It is currently too dangerous for me to stay at Lwiro and that is why I had to find a house to rent in Bukavu and commute every second day to Lwiro. There are 20 chimps and 18 small primates there at present. There are 3 large-ish enclosures for the the sub-adult and juvenile chimps and there are 6 kids under 1 year that stay in small cages in a room. They are let out in the yard each day to play around the centre. The small primates are baboons and various Cercopithecus species. They are in small cages.The cheapest way I could find to get to Lwiro was by moto (rbike) taxi. Hiring a car, petrol and driver is not in our waning budget at present, so we haggled with a driver and came out with a good price. My moto man was David. A short little oak but cheeky as anything.So now my 9-5 commuting was starting at 7am for an hour and a half drive to the centre. So here's me going through the little villages in deepest Congo, flying past banana plantations with the wind in my hair, how romantic is that? So it's dry season and the roads are real dusty and people walking on the side are even wearing surgical masks.....and..... the roads here are decidedly stuffed..... and..... i am probably the only mzungu (white person) that the villagers have ever seen on the back of a bike and they are hissing and shouting 'MONUC' (the Congolese branch of the UN peacekeepers here) and MZUNGU and staring and hissing... and my bum is probably getting calloused... how romantic is THAT!? A vision of my calloused backside!So anyway... At Lwiro, as previously mentioned, there is not a lot of financial aid, animals are being fed at least but the management of the sanctuary has a lot of work to be done. I started devising ways of changing the cages so that individuals were placed next to same species and had contact. We started welding newer and bigger cages for animals that are two or more in a group and need more space. The Born Free Foundation had done an appeal a few months ago for Lwiro and had funding which I requested.They allowed me to use some of the funds for maintenance of plumbing, buying supplies for the caregivers, hosepipes, wheelbarrows, nails and wire rebar, etc.On my first day, I went the bone-jarring 40 kilometers to the center only to hear that Thursdays are market days and it would be in my best interests to accompany some of the staff to the market in Mudaka which is 36km back in the way that I'd come. Upon seeing a mzungu, it was assumed that I had bushels of money and I was surrounded by maize, passion fruit, aubergine and tomatoes, all stuffed in my face.I swear I didn't see the sun for an hour!Our last purchase was onions (oignon) and the vendor was wearing a brilliant Congolese dress in Primus fabric. [In Congo, it is very fashionable to advertise your company by printing your logo in bright colors on fabric. The fabric is then used to make dresses and suits and Primus is the leading beer company in Congo.] I think I got royally screwed over by the Primus Dress lady -- I said that I wanted to buy onions and I also wished to take a picture of her brilliant dress, though she refused. I, in turn, refused to buy her onions unless she permitted me to take a photo. After doing the final food count, I discovered that I didn't have as many onions as I believed I'd bought, it was explained to me that she understood that I'd give her 500F, let her keep her onions, and get a photo of her dress.... I had inadvertently paid a bushel of onions for my photo and didn't even get the oignons!But the photo, nonetheless, is brilliant. (It's at the top coz I don't know how to bring the damned thing down here....)After two weeks, I left Bukavu, and returned to Goma. Laura has to leave on the 16th of July and I await the next victims! At the moment, we are supervising Gari's transition with the other kids and he's doing really well!Til next time,Love & Kisses,Liz