3 new chimpanzees

In the last two weeks we have resived 3 new baby chimpanzees, orphans from the bushmeat trade. Two girls Maiko and Osso, and a boy Fizi. They are very young, Maiko is 1 year and some months, Osso is maybe 8 months and Fizi about a year old.

There has been made a new blog for Lwiro, at http://lwiro.blogspot.com/ here there is links to portraits of all the chimps an monkeys at Lwiro and other things are coming.

I will try to keep this blog updated as well, it's quite a lot of work but I'll do it when I get the time!

Still a bit scared

There has been two days since the earthquake. The cimps are still nervous, but are eating more and more. There has been a lot of little quakes since, but it’s luckily getting less and less.

Earthquake

Today while we were eating breakfast we suddenly had to run out of the house. There was an earthquake again! A very strong one. Luckily the house survived, but with a few new leaks when it rains. I think we really need a new roof soon! All the primate cages luckily survived as well. But the chimpanzees have been very scared today. They’ve hardly eaten at all, they just sit on the top of the cages and no matter what good stuff we put on the ground they will not go down. There has been a lot of after shocks, one was quite big, but none as big as the first one.

Tchibatti

Today we took the journalists up to film at Tchibatti. Tchibatti is the site where we are planning to move the sanctuary in the future; it’s 4 km from Lwiro and is at the border with Kahuzi-Biega National Park. The research centre, CRSN, has given a huge area of land, about 75 hectares, that is going to be for the sanctuary. We now need money to reforest this area as soon as possible. There is also a corridor between the CRSN land and the national park which is privately owned, and we would also like to buy and reforest this land.
The view from Tchibatti is amazing, over lake Kivu, and on the other side you can see the sharp line were the national park start, the forest. After looking at the sanctuary land we were allowed to enter the park just a little bit, a couple of meters. And there we found chimpanzee trails and fresh chimp kaka, they had been there that same day! We were all very exited! Hopefully we will be able to help protect these wild chimps which are so close to our doorstep!

Red-tailed move

Today it was finally time for the red-tailed monkeys to move into the new cage. It took a bit longer than expected because some of the holes were a bit too big and we had to fix it so that they couldn’t escape. The move went quite well, we used little cages to catch them, and then put them into the new cage. We also tried to put Kavumu and Bukavu in with them, but it didn’t go very well… So they moved in with the baby monkeys instead.
Also today, two journalists from Norway arrived; they are making a documentary and a feature story in one of Norways biggest newspapers. They are staying for a week and hopefully this publicity will help us get more money for Lwiro. They came together with a new volunteer from Norway, Jeanette. She normally works at Kristiansand Zoo, as a zoo keeper. She is staying for 3 months.

Internet!

Finally we have got internet at Lwiro, thank you Coopera!! I will try to get this blog up to date and fill in the gaps within the next week. Alexa has been kind enough to write some of the updates for me, as I also have the norwegian one to update. Everything is going well here at Lwiro, only four monkeys left in little cages, and they will be out very soon. All well with the chimps, Kongo and Lume has setteled in well. Our first priority, and next step now is to get money for our new forrest chimp enclosure. We will need about 50-60. 000 USD for this. So if anyone got an idea of how to get some money we will be very greatful!

First paying visitors

We have now made a longer fence in front of the sanctuary which was needed after the new monkey enclosures. And it was desided that we are going to open to visitors. Congolese 1 dollar, and non-congolese 25 dollar. Our first two visitors were Congolese and were very happy with the visit.