Favourites

I sholdn`t mention that each chimp is an individuality, as humans, that`s obvious. And you can see it even with such a young ones as Baati, Sambe, Gremlin (about 2 yrs). In fact you can see even better, than in human babies, since a chimp lives at about 40 yrs, so a 2 yrs old baby is an equivalent of a 4-year old human child. I wish I could stay here longer and see how their personality develops and changes. It would be very interesting how different thing can impact their personality. Also it would be intreresting to follow their cognitive development, I am sure we can find paralells with Piagets theory, however accurate it is. I think we can anticipate to a certain point how these babies will be as adults. Let`s take Baati for example. He is the noisiest one while in their tiny, 2x3x2 m2 cage (practically they are only fed there and they sleep there). Baati (means Small in bamwele) was braught here when he had barely few months, and Agnes says he was kept quite well by a lady I guess in Douala, who wanted to sell himm as a pet for good money. So he needs love and confidence since he didn`t get any from his mom, who was killed for meat by poachers. Thus when he is in the cage he requires constant attention jumping on the bars and pulling away anybody (Sambe, Gremlin) who would come for a hug. He loves when you are playing with his little penis (maybe sg from Freud:)) and is adorable when he hangs over the bars and pushes his belly towards you so you can scratch it. Agnes loves his small arms and legs, and find them very cute, which I personally do not. He has a rather plane face with two dark lines under his eyes like indians. You wouldn`t recognize him once in the forest. He never leaves you, and if he does so, it is to make a few steps forward and then he runs back into your arms when he hears a little leaf trembling. He barely climbes, which worries me a lot, since his lack of practice is very visible: he falls whenever he tries. And then it is a viciuos circle, he falls, he comes for confirmation and is afraid to try again. So we are sitting, two hugging each other, while the two others disappear in the crown, and the only sign of them are the falling pieces of trees, poops and pees, so you have to pay attention so that they don`t land on you (which happens a lot). Sambe likes to come back from time to time for a hug, and then I groom him or swing him by holdong his legs. Gremlin barely comes down , but sometimes he is also thirsty for love and then stays longer and we play or he looks for peanuts in my pockets. I find him the most beautiful from them 3, he has a small, very wrinkled face and I love to watch him eating; he bites everything carefully and swallows slowly and seems not to care about anything. I think his independence is what for I like him so much.
That is the same with the other 3 babies (Muna, Zach, Yoko), who are a little bit older (guess around 2-3). From them Muna is the absolute favourite, no question about that. She has an exeptional personality, she is gentle, sensitive and beautiful. I am sure that if she was a human baby she would be the one that every mother dreams about and that appears in the pempers advertisements. She is calm and full of love and yet she is barve and self-confident enough to deal with the two boys she is in the same cage with. I think she will be very high in the hierarchy when she becomes adult. The only bad thing I can mention about her is that she starts to scream terrbily whenever she is hungry, so we have to make it sure that she is fed first. Then there is Yoko, whom I find extermly ugly, like an old chinese man, but who has beautiful light brown eyes. I love to watch them while I am tckling him on my knees and he is laughing with mouth wide open. In fact all the three of them do that, and make a cute hrghhh noise. Yoko is sometimes frustrated and Marie tends to say that he is mechant, but I haven`t have problems with him so far. The last one is Zach, who I think is a great, balanced, brave little guy, who can become a confident member of any bigger group.
Another calm group is Kiki`s group, which probably is my favourite one from the Big Cages. I love Kiki, a wise about 30 yrs old alpha male and I think he is a great father for the 6 babies he is taking care of. He is beautiful with the half of his hair fallen off so you can see his huge muscles. he seems to be very calm and balanced, and always give reinforcement for those who come to him, he puts his arm over the other`s head and bites him gently. And at the time of feeding he is so happy with short, high vocalizations and turned up upper lip, so you can see all of his teeth - wow, that`s frightening. Unfortunately it is not possible to integrate more chimps with this group as there is a blind individual, Chouky, who would probably freak out, and couldn`t get used to it. I have had no interactions with Chouki or Kiki so far, the first one is more due to his blindness, so he does not take new people easily. As for Kiki I feel he just doesn`t really need contact with me, I don`t know if it is beacause of me, or he is just like this with everybody. But his babies are great. I like Foe, he comes around all the time, he likes to drink from my hand or to play with my shoelaces (in fact all the chimps like that). Foe, Baati and Yoko have faces as from the film The Planet of Apes. And Foe reminds me of John Travolta from Greese. And there is Mika, or Mirjam Karen, a beautiful young girl, who again reminds me of the orang-utan Mengi from the Bp Zoo. She is so beautiful, thet if I were a young chimp I would definitely fall in love with her. She is gentle abd delicate as a woman should be.
Further down we can find Ballas`s cage, that is far less idillic than KIki`s one. In fact I think Ballas is crazy, but this enables him to draw constant attention to him. He is about 13, huge and strong and gives massive displays all the time, piruetting around the bars, shaking his shoulders and pulling sliding doors with force, that could easily kill anybody. I think he is quite board here, he dosen`t know how to burn off his energy, so he is frustrated and he would need somebody who would kick his ass. But he is the alpha male so far, with two young males and a young, an adolescent and an adult female in the group. He is a kind of a challenge for the men employees here, who like to compare their strenght with him, but nobody is a real match for him, so they shouldn`t mess up with him, unless they want to have their arms being sutured as Charlie had the other day. Of caurse he has his calm moments, for example he loves when he is offerd water as a baby, but even if we approach him in a good mood, he could easily break our finger simply by touching it. He doesn`t care much about the aother, I have never seen him giving confidence to anybody so far, but I have seen him several times diplaying, biting and jumping on females of the group. So Bouboule and Jessica are quite afraid to approach the food when he is around. On the other hand there is Aaron, who is so funny, tricky and crafted, and he always know how to take the best from any situation. I think he is my favourite in this group. He is great at stealing Ballas`s food when he is doing his display. He quickly walks over where the food is , looks around with the face telling "ok, so nobody is watching, I guess I can take theese...", and he is back on his place with an additional papaya or banana as if nothing happened. I remember somebody told me to be careful with him, cause he will be like Ballas and he spends tooo much time with him, but I gess he is way more intelligent than Ballas, and I am looking forward to seeing him one day as a domainant male.
And so there is Jacky`s group left, but I still don`t really feel comfortable with them, as there are 25 chimps, and most are young and adolescen so I can hardly recognize them. However I feel I do make some progress. especially with Caroline, an older female, that is the one you have to learn the first to recognize as she is very dangerous with a tendency to grab you whenever she can. So at the begining I was all the time reminded by the caregivers and Agnes to stay away from her. She is very distinct with her dark face and a strange noise she makes with her tongue that at the begining was for me as a pendulom saying " tic..tac..I am waiting for you... tic.. tac... I will grab you one day...". But now when I go to the Big Cages she is the first to call me and she pulls her ass to the bars so I can touch it (a kind of greeting at chimps). BUt still I know I have to be very carefull. And then there is Nama, who is so ugly, small and her hair has a light colour as she was always covered with dust, so maybe that is why I like her so much. She seems like doesn`t care about anything. And yes there is Dorothy, who was kept for 20 yrs in a samll cage so she has never learnt how to climb, so she is fat and barely moves and has huge fat bulbs under her neck and knees. Agnes says that the youngs are afraid of her thus she is often alone. But the most I think I like Leylah for her independence. She is ugly too and is always followed by a group of younger ones and this group likes to profit as long as they can from the enclosure, so they come back always as the last ones.
This week Agnes is gone to Douala and Yaounde, she is having some meetings to raise money for the project. She is coming back probabley on Wendsday with a new female, Coffecake (often referred by us as Cupcake or Coffecup so who nows how many times will she be rebaptized here). Agnes wants to integrate her with Ballas`s group so she hopes the new female will calm him down and awake some sexualinterest, that he is lacking to show towards Bouboule (which I can understand seeing she is about her 40s and Ballas is 13). But Agnes often admits, thet it will be a hard integration, and Coffecake might end up with Tati, Amigo, JImmy and Kashka in the quarantee group, which would be a sad ending to her story. She was kept for 25 yrs in a cage wthout any contacts with other chimps, however I wish she won`t have to join the 4 too humanized ones, as even if they going to have bigger enclosure than nw in the future, they still don`t have a life of a chimp. They have spent too much time with humans and in captivity.