“L’eau, l’eau, l’eau!” “Arachide, arachide!” “Baton, baton, baton!”
Clinical Veterinarian Susan Fussell greets a distraught Danial, who had been chained to a freezer for over a year. A week later, happiness is lots of bananas for Daniel who is now at the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Cameroon.
The calls filter into the train carriage as we pull into a station. It is 1 a.m. I have been on the train for over six hours and at each station there is a similar onslaught of children, women and some men selling food and water. Money passes out the windows and the goods flow in. The next stop is Belabo, Cameroon where I get off. I am on my way to the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Centre to volunteer for a month.
I grab my bag as we pull into the Belabo station and am one of the first on the platform. As I walk toward the exit I am met by Monica, a volunteer from Hawaii, and Barnaby the Cameroonian driver. They have been in town all day doing the weekly shopping and have been waiting at the train station for hours. In no time at all we are on our way.
The trip is only about 30 kilometres but takes an hour due to the condition of the road. Vegetation slaps in through the open windows.
We arrive at the centre in a downpour. Supplies are rushed into the kitchen and I am given a quick introduction to the necessities – my cabin, the latrine. Monica will be up at 5:45 a.m. to look after the morning duties. I decide to do the same. I unpack by candle light; make up the bed – sheet, sleeping bag, headlamp, watch and water bottle; climb into bed and tuck in the mosquito net. Sleep does not come quickly. Insects chorus, then chimps near my cabin start hooting and screaming. I have arrived.
My alarm goes off and I am up and into my clothes. Monica is already in the kitchen counting out vitamin pills. I am instructed on how to mix the formula for the young chimps and then, unbelievably, I am standing in front of a pen offering two cups of formula to Batti and Gremlin. Within seconds the cups are empty and they are given their vitamins.
I want to touch them but I am in quarantine for a week so must be content with looking. Back in the kitchen I learn how to prepare medications for the animals that are under treatment then I make a cup of Nescafe and grab some bread and a banana for breakfast.
Taly, a volunteer from Israel, comes into the kitchen with Xeko on her hip. He is an infant at six months of age. Like all of the animals at the centre his mother had been killed for “bush-meat.” At six months, he has no teeth and would be almost continuously with his mother, holding on for dear life as she moved through the jungle. Her level of care had to be mimicked so Taly and Monica along with a Cameroonian lady, Philomen, became surrogate mums. He did not wear diapers so you can imagine the consequences of close association. At almost a year he now pushes away from his caregiver to relieve himself – a relief for all I’m sure.
By now the Cameroonian staff had arrived and it was time to sign out radios, machetes and other equipment. I met 12 or 15 people within a few minutes, their names and faces a blur. Then it was off to the first feeding of the day.
Wheelbarrow loads of fruit are taken to enclosures, a plastic container drummed to herald the arrival of breakfast. The chimps are frantic for the bananas, oranges and guavas. The Cameroonian staff and volunteers can identify each of the 64 chimps and ensure that each receives its share. Next the vitamins and finally the medications are given.
Once the feeding is complete the local staff walk around the enclosures to trim vegetation and to check that the electric fences haven’t been damaged overnight by falling branches.
We return to the camp where I was introduced to the ‘solar,’ a small hut with amazing array of solar panels, converters, wires, batteries and clips. It is our only source electricity. I felt my brain short circuit as I was instructed on how to make functional this chaos of wires and then how to turn each system on and how to check voltage prior to the chimps being let out into the enclosure. This was just the beginning of a steep learning curve.
By the time the chimps were brought into the pens for the night and we had washed and prepared fruit for the morning feed it was 5:45 p.m., almost dark, and I was exhausted. After a dinner of rice and peanut sauce, Monica and Taly offer me a glass of wine. We sit outside and marvel at the celestial display overhead – there is no light pollution here.
Before calling it a day I don a headlamp and head to the shower keeping an eye on the ground, cautious of ants or snakes or spiders or…. The shower consists of a drum on the roof of the building connected to a shower head. There is a basin and a cup. It’s basic but it works and washing by candle light is pleasant.
Over the next few days I start to recognize staff members, chimps, cats and dogs. I also realize that I am going to be called on to treat humans as well as animals. It is rather unnerving. I am called to treat children with pneumonia and malaria, an hours-old baby that is crying incessantly and a woman who is bleeding post-abortion. I change bandages and dole out antibiotics to staff members who have been injured by the chimps.
I spend a lot of time on the phone getting support from the veterinarian who founded the centre, Sheri Speede. She has been providing medical treatment to the villagers for years. They pay only the cost of medication and get treatment they had no access to previously.
About half way through my stay, we are informed of a chimp being held in Bertoa, a city about two hours drive away. The ‘owner’ wants to sell the animal. He is told the matter of money will be discussed once we see the animal. In reality money never changes hands – if it did it would most certainly mean the death of another mother chimp.
We set out the next morning prepared for anything, anaesthetics, tranquilizers, pole syringe and transport cage. We find a baby chimp tied by his waist to an old freezer cowering in the corner. His face is expressionless, closed down. Raymond, the camp supervisor makes first contact and we spend the next few minutes trying to gain his trust.
At last the chain is removed from the freezer and he is carried to the waiting truck and transport cage. Daniel sits immobile; clutching a banana; barely looking around. It is then that the ‘owner’ demands payment. We have to off load the cage. Taly and I stay with Daniel while the others go to get a government official. We wait, drink a pop, talk to the local kids and try to make contact with Daniel until they return.
Finally Daniel’s cage is again loaded into the truck and we drive the official back to the government compound. Yet again our departure is blocked by another official. We are informed that Daniel might be sent to Yaoundé. Once again Daniel is offloaded. We are told he must stay at the government compound and we cannot stay with him. He has been taken from his familiar environment and now left alone in a small cage overnight.
The next morning we find him hunched and shivering in the cage. It took until noon before we finally had all of the necessary documents and stamps and were on our way back to the camp. It had been quite an experience for me but Daniel’s journey was just beginning.
For the first week he had a caregiver in his cage almost all of his waking hours. He learned to be more trustful and starting eating normally. He was then slowly introduced into another group of babies. It was amazing to watch him become a chimp, rough housing, climbing and jumping but the most rewarding was hearing him laugh when he was tickled. Not the life he would have had if his mother was alive but a vast improvement over living in isolation, chained to a freezer.
While Daniel was becoming part of his new family a respiratory infection was brewing at the centre. Days were spent checking and medicating chimps. One afternoon, Xeko spiked a fever that was unresponsive to acetaminophen. We ended up bathing him in buckets of water to cool him down. At first he was unresponsive but when he started screaming we knew the worst was over.
Monica was tired and soaked to the skin but after a change to dry clothes we took time to sit in a cabin, have a glass of wine and rejoice. Unfortunately, for me the day was not over. Another baby, Ginger, had become feverish. I ended up sleeping beside him; monitoring his vital signs every two hours. By the morning he was sounding and looking better but I was sounding and looking worse. Later that day we were going to start moving a group of chimps into a new, larger enclosure, so I grabbed a nap in preparation.
At first we tried to encourage the chimps into the transfer cage. Sheri, founder of Sanaga-Yong, and Agnes, the camp manager, have wonderful relationships with the chimps and were able to entice three of the four into the cages. Unfortunately, Amigo refused. Anaesthetic was required. We had trained him to drink honey water from a syringe the days before the move which made administering the tranquilizer and subsequent anaesthetic fairly simple.
The last animal to be moved was Coffee, an adult female with a severely deformed mouth. She had been housed on her own ever since her arrival. Before that she had been held for 15 years in isolation and refused direct contact with other chimps. This would be a final attempt to integrate her.
While she was anaesthetized she underwent the usual examination, had her teeth cleaned, was skin tested for tuberculosis and vaccinated. During the next few hours she was showing signs of accepting contact with the new group.
While I was monitoring Coffee’s recovery a government delegate arrived with a young chimp. Sheri and Agnes went to see the new arrival. Initially they thought she was a six month old sleeping infant when in reality she was a two years old and comatose.
She had been severely neglected and abused before her seizure by the government official but tragically the abuse continued once in government control. She was held in a bag for a period of time and then kept in the compound almost two days with no treatment – infected, scalded, malnourished and hypothermic.
Despite intensive care, on the morning of my last day at Sanaga-Yong, ‘Jewel’ died. Agnes and I buried her in silence, clods of red earth falling on her tiny body. I was filled with grief, outrage and impotence; how could such a thing happen.
I just wanted to escape, be left alone but with Monica’s encouragement I spent the afternoon with Simossa, Launa and Kadet – walking and playing with chimps. Rejuvenating my soul until it was time for me to leave.
Update
Since my return to Canada I have had news. Coffee has been successfully integrated into the group. She has explored the jungle and climbed trees for the first time in almost twenty years.
Daniel tried to run away on his first trip into the jungle with a caregiver. Since then he has learned to be more trusting and is an integral part of his group.
Xeko has been successfully integrated into the same group as Daniel. He has had to learn to sleep with members of his own species and stand up for himself. He is thriving.
Jewel’s grave is beside a path used by visitors on tours of the centre. Her story is the reason Sanaga-Yong exists.
Background Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Centre was established by Dr. Sheri Speede in 1999
Website: https://www.ida-africa.org/
Current population: 64 chimpanzees, about 20
Cameroonian staff members, 1 camp manager, 2 to 5 volunteers, 4 cats, 2 dogs
Cost of feeding one chimp for one day: 50 cents
Cost of supporting one chimp for one month: $20
Cost of hiring one Cameroonian worker for one day: $4
Editor’s note
Susan Fussell is a Clinical Veterinarian in ANIMAL CARE AND VETERINARY SERVICES at Western. She recently spent a month at the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Centre in Cameroon. She wrote this account of her experiences for Western News.