Day 7
I woke up at 6.30 on a Saturday to get picked up by my boss to go see the bonobos, but awoke to a text saying he would be a bit late, so got back into bed and read for a while- quite a nice way to wake up in spite of the hour. I got dressed and had some breakfast with K- on Sundays there are free eggs and waffles for breakfast at the hotel, which I enjoyed with my imitation maple syrup ‘eggo’, which for a cheap imitation was surprisingly edible.
The drive out to ‘Lola a Bonobo’ the name of the sanctuary is about a 45 minutes drive -being thrown around the pickup due to the state of the roads. However, driving out to the sanctuary was the first chance to get a look at DRC outside of the city centre which was great.
As you drive out of the city, the place starts to resemble India, in its busyness with 100’s of people packing into small areas to shop, try to sell you things while you’re in your car –tissues and cigarettes seem unbelivably popular - and go to church. As a very Christian country Sunday church is a big deal here and it’s amazing to see all the women in their colourful Sunday best, and you can hear the preachers’ from the road side. American style mic’d up sermons are all the rage here apparently.
It was nice to get out of the work bubble. To see how people really live, the houses, the churches and roadside markets, While all the little kids wave and shout “Mundeli” which means white (and white man) in Lingala the local language. Makes a change from the 5 minute commute from the hotel to the office and back!
Drove over one of the old Belgian railway lines that are now disused. It’s a shame that such a great infrastructure has been left to rot when it could be such a life line out into the provinces, especially when I think back to the Indian railways, but years of war, instability and conflict will do that.
We arrived at the sanctuary about 50 mins before it officially opened but as my boss was a frequent visitor, we paid our money and went down towards the reserve. It’s a beautiful place -a proper jungle where they raise Bonobos who have been orphaned or found ill. We first spotted one up in the top of a palm tree about 30 meters tall, as it was waking up the rest of its mates in the tree. That’s when we spotted the other tree with about 10 in total! The trees were on the other side of a little valley- time for the TELOSCOPIC LENS! So happy I blew my bonus on a new SLR camera and lens.
They are absolutely amazing creatures, as we watched them get called for breakfast by the keepers we were the only visitors there, they all came rushing down the trees for a breakfast of bananas and melon. Before playtime and post breakfast sex- these guys are certainly not inhibited!
Some fun facts about Bonobos:
Bonobos are found only within the Democratic Republic of Congo in Central Africa. Together with common chimpanzees, they are man's closest living relatives. Sex is an everyday affair in bonobo society, and is liberally used to create bonds between individuals, as well as for reproduction. That said, during periods of rest grooming is the activity of choice, and is thought to provide group cohesion and ease tension.
Bonobos are born helpless, and females provide the majority of the parental care, since paternity is usually unclear.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Bonobo - for more information if anyone is intrigued.
You can watch these guys for hours, their interactions and games with each other, their babies and the keepers are incredible and so human like. It’s hard not to anthropomorphise, mainly because they just so like us, they may not have the language skills, but you’d be hard pressed not the see the jealousy between them, and the amusement they take in teasing each other.
Eventually we stopped and walked over to the nursery where they keep the infants, and we were beyond lucky when one of the babes made an escape bid. He escaped out of the enclosure and climbed up the tree and refused to come down for his nanny. Oh the terrible twos.
He eventually came down and came to play with us, coming to hug and sit with us; I got to hug a baby Bonobo! This never happens at the sanctuary you’re not meant to touch the animals but as he came to us his nanny just let him play. It was so incredible.
The other babies were in their enclosure, where they were playing in the pond and on the climbing frame they had put up for them, some of them were sitting in the laps of the keepers, being cleaned and cuddled, each vying for attention from their ‘mums’. They even had basketballs they were playing with, trying to steal it off on another and push each other in the water. (They will put their hands in but don’t like being submerged.)
We stayed and watched and I got very photo happy, it’s hard not to with such great subjects. But the day was moving on and we headed back to the car. Upon return, the truck has mysteriously been washed (without anyone asking). Apparently this always happens, and you pay the guy, who you did not ask to wash your car, 500 francs (about $0.5) for avoiding the hassle of saying that you didn’t actually want your car to be washed as you’ve a 45 min drive back through unpaved roads. Hell everyone has to make a living somehow.
When we got back to the hotel that afternoon, K and I grabbed lunch. I read in the sunshine for a while, until the point I had swatted 3 mosquitoes trying to eat me, in spite of the amount of DEET I’d put on. I’m like one of those men who wear waaaayy to much cologne with my Eau de DEET -the smell of expats.
They have these weird tiger mosquitoes here, that don’t carry malaria but are out all day- you can spot them easily as they are white. So I decided to read from bed- indulgent........ and lazy........ and brilliant.
This is how the rest of my day continued as I found mythbusters in English on the discovery channel, and spent the evening watching TV in my PJ’s having opened my stash of emergency pot noodles- the restaurant at that point seemed sooo far away.
In bed asleep by 9.30pm, the first time in literally years.
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