Zambia!

It’s been three weeks, or ish, since I got back from Zambia.  I had hoped to keep this blog more updated than I have, but it’s okay; I’ll fill you all in on what has happened eventually.  Let’s start with my intracontinental/international trip.

My trip to Zambia started on a Sunday morning when I drove myself down to Nairobi.  I was very proud of myself for being able to make it all the way to Joyce’s house without much fuss, although I did have to make two freeway U-turns.  I missed the only freeway exit I needed to Ruiru and ended up back on the freeway, so I literally just turned off onto the dirt between the two sides of the freeway and went back the other way.  After I had gone past my exit again I made a second U-turn and tried the exit again, fortunately making it into Ruiru properly this time.

The flight to Zambia was early the next morning, and I was at the airport by 6:30 AM.  I waited in line to check into my flight for nearly an hour, and then again in a line at customs for about twenty minutes.  While in line at customs I witnessed some airport officials try to take a woman in a wheel chair up the escalator, which ended terribly: the official had tried to back onto the escalator with the wheelchair, and the woman slid out of the wheelchair and onto the escalator.  Fortunately, the escalator was stopped immediately, but the poor woman looked pretty traumatized by the whole event.  The one entertaining part of this event was that the “down” side of the escalator was started before the “up” side was, and people from the customs lines started trying to climb up the backwards-moving escalator, despite stairs being less than 50 metres away around the corner.

Kenya Airways treated me very well, and I had some breakfast on the flight.  Upon arrival in Zambia I easily bought myself a visa and made my way through immigration and to the parking lot.  I was picked up by a driver from Chimfunshi and we quickly got going up to Chingola, which is the largest big town near Chimfunshi.  The drive was about an hour and a half and I pretty much slept through it; I was exhausted from my adventuring.  In Chingola I was met by Mark, a Gonzaga professor with whom I’d been communicating, and we ate some lunch with Innocent, the manager of Chimfunshi.  After another hour-and-a-bit long and dusty car ride we arrived at the sanctuary.

The education centre at Chimfunshi

I was shocked upon arrival by the size of the research centre.  They have about seven buildings that are used just for housing of researchers and other education-based programs.  Each building has two rooms that have two beds each, and a long room in the back with about 17 more beds (eight double bunks and maybe one or two singles in there).  I was put in house 5 in one of the double rooms, fortunately empty as there was no dresser so I laid my clothes out on the other bed.  It was less than an hour at that point until dinner, so I hung around and took advantage of some of the free wireless internet (!!) that Chimfunshi has arranged for their education centre and caught up with the fam and the boy.  That evening, and each following evening, there was a lovely bonfire that the researchers and volunteers sat around to chat in the evening.  I didn’t last for long though, after all of my travels, and I retired early.

My pad at the research centre, house 5

The next morning I woke up at 5:00 AM to go on dawn patrol with Mark.  Dawn patrol entails walking to the chimp enclosures with the goal of arriving at the largest enclosure by the time the sun breaks the treeline.  We made it that morning, although it was a close one.  On dawn patrol I had the opportunity to talk with Mark and Jenny, a vet student who has visited Chimfunshi several times, about sanctuaries, the problems that often plague them, and the differences between Sweetwaters and Chimfunshi.

The sunrise was beautiful, and I loved watching the chimps so early in the morning.  Chimfunshi has a totally different feel that Sweetwaters.  The environment is totally different from anything I’ve seen in Africa yet: lots of tall, sturdy looking grasses in a fairly open woodland.  There are enormous ant hills all over the place – gigantic mounds of dirt that are constructed by some kind of ant or termite (nobody could give me a firm answer on which).  There are also more traditional termite mounds: the tall, cylindrical-ish spires that you think of when you think about termites in Africa.  The soil is so fine there that the dust permeates everything, but apparently it drains pretty well and the place doesn’t turn into a slushy mess come the rainy season.  There are a lot of fig trees in there as well, which is good because they are a main food source for chimps in their natural environment.

After watching the sunrise from the roof of enclosure 1 we walked down to enclosure 2 and checked on the chimps there. To our surprise there had been a huge fire and large parts of the enclosure had all of the grass completely burned.  I was worried that some of the chimps might have suffered from smoke inhalation or gotten sick, but unfortunately there wasn’t really a good way to check on that at the time (especially since neither I nor Mark can ID all the chimps in 2).  At around 11:30 the chimps came in for lunch and were given nchima (ugali) and fresh vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, potatoes, oranges, cabbage) and after they had been in for two hours some “snacks” were spread around the enclosure for them to forage upon returning outside.  They were given either bush oranges – a large, gourd-like fruit with lots of seeds inside – or small, red fruits with a hard husk.  Both of these fruits were awesome enrichment: they required tons of handling time to open and lots of creativity, lasted a long time, and the chimps can come back to them many times to keep eating them or using the gourd husks to scoop up water.

Some of the semi-burned area on the way to the danbo

After lunch the chimps dispersed again and we walked around the enclosure to go look for them.  Behind the chimp enclosures is a huge field with waist-high grass that looked like it went on forever.  Apparently if we followed the road and the danbo (a small creek that is connected to the river in a couple of places, and acts as overflow for the river) for long enough we would get to the Zambezi river, which is pretty awesome frankly.  We returned to the chimp enclosures after a while and, in the afternoon, played with a couple of the indoor chimps with paints and crayons for enrichment.  Around four the volunteers were picked up by the truck, and I caught a ride back with them, and started helping Sally and Marina (two other scientists at the sanctuary) make dinner.

Me in the field by the danbo

The next few days passed very similarly: dawn patrols, relaxing lunch times, lots of photo-taking, walking, dinner, fireside talks.  Discussed my research ideas, and played around with the idea of getting a health check going at the sanctuary. One evening we had a movie night for all the chimp staff, their families, and children, and played Ratatouille, much to everyone’s great appreciation.  At the end of the evening we had shana-shana (a dance, I think?) which was very, very entertaining.  The staff sang traditional Zambian songs and danced, including a dance/chant where the children were lined up, boys on one side and girls on the other, to dance rather provocatively with one another (we would have been asked to separate at my Australian school) in lone pairs, in what appeared to be some kind of grinding chicken.  We were encouraged to dance, which I really enjoyed, especially when I got to bust out my Saturday Night Fever moves and small Zambian children, who as a whole dance better than I anyway, and frighten away all the kids.

All in all, Zambia was a really excellent, successful trip.  Hopefully I will get to return many times, not just for research.