A Special Place in Congo

Well -- it has been another extraordinary day. Relatively smooth sailing getting here from Uganda, just a long, long journey. Two hour flight to Addis, night in the Hilton Hotel (don't recommend it, when I arrived at 10pm they said the room still had to be cleaned). Four hour flight to Brazzaville in the morning. Airport there is INSANE but fortunately JGI had arranged for someone to meet me and put me on the next flight to Pointe Noire, where I finally arrived at 5:30pm and was met by Lisa Pharoah of our Africa Programs staff -- so good to see a familiar face! We spent the night at the staff apartment in Pointe Noire and had dinner at a lovely restaurant on the beach -- delicious fish, waves lapping at the shore, pinpoints of light on the horizon which are the many oil rigs that dot this coast. Pointe Noire looks relatively prosperous, with a wave of oil cash flowing in -- new stadium in the centre, but the roads are still dreadful and of course the vast majority of people still live in poverty.

Which brings us today. We started with a visit to Bouity village near the sanctuary, accompanied by Abell Gousseine who is the Director of Education for Congo, and several of the teachers who run our education program here. The children at the village school, which was paid for by JGI met us with songs and smiles -- their benches and desks set up under the trees, and I had an opportunity to see an example of JGI's education programs for Congo, called "Kudia Kubanza" in action, with the children learning about the role of the forest and the animals that live in it, as well as the part they play as human beings. Extraordinary that we have to explain these things given that these children live in the forest, but in the past they have only ever viewed it as a source of food. Abell tells me that until two years ago, when JGI built the school and hired a teacher, there was no school for any of these children, and this is the first opportunity many of them have had to attend class. They seem to be entranced by the entire experience.

From there on to another kind of classroom -- this one for infant chimps that have been brought to the Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Sanctuary, situated within a stunningly beautiful 18,000-acre reserve here on the coast of Congo. We are accompanied by Rebeca, who manages the sanctuary here, and what a formidable task -- there are currently 138 chimps in her care, almost all of them orphans of the bushmeat trade. The sanctuary is quite remarkable -- it just seems to go on forever, with group after group of chimpanzees being housed in different outdoor enclosures, separated by their age and size and to minimize conflict. The infants are ridiculously engaging -- they spend their days outside with their dedicated keepers, who comfort and tease them, even swinging in the trees to play with them, as they try to help them recover from the terrible traumas many have experienced. As in a human nursery, if one catches a cold they all do, and several currently have runny noses and coughs. They crowd to the fence to get some attention and affection, and I have my first experience of a true chimpanzee cuddle with Kudia.

We spend the afternoon touring the sanctuary with Rebeca explaining the mechanics of it all -- a serious challenge to feed and manage all these animals and keep them in reasonably natural conditions. The majority of the chimps spend the day out in the natural forest or in outdoor enclosures, only returning to the dormitory buildings to spend the night. The reserve itself is as much savannah as forest, and the chimps really need more natural forest and isolated conditions that won't bring them into contact with wild chimps and with humans, so JGI is investigating the possibility of moving some to another location. In the meantime, they seem happy and extremely well cared for -- after all had been bedded down (an experience in itself with the older chimps displaying and shrieking wildly!) I saw three chimps being lovingly shampooed by their keepers to control some skin condition they had developed.

I have seen all our Chimp Guardian chimps -- Timi, Kudia, Petit Prince and the ancient Gregoire and all are well and happy.

Now all is quiet and I am typing with a small sanctuary cat on my lap (how they find me I don't know.....) Tomorrow I will return to Pointe Noire to visit another school group before boarding the plane home. I will be very happy to see my family again but very sad to go .... this has been another amazing stop on my African odyssey!