Misisi is going well, and quarantine periode is soon finished!

Misisi is doing very well and will finish her quarantine period in 4 days. On the 20th of July she will spend her first day in the nursery cage. For the first few days – or until she is ready – her caregiver will also remain in the cage. Misisi will also sleep inside the house as she has for the last month, in the beginning days of the introduction.

Misisi is becoming stronger each day. She is still being treated for the mouth infection, however, it has almost healed. She eats well and has put on a lot of weight, but she still needs time for her muscles to regenerate.

News from Lwiro

The new dormitory
The struggle of getting enough funds for the new chimpanzee dormitory is fianlly over. Only to be taken over by the struggle to raise the funds for the fence around the forrest....

But back to the dormitory, it was started last march, but due to lacking of funds the work has been stopped for many months now the outside is finished but the inside is not. Now funds have come through 9900 dollars from Survive Australia, after an auction they held this autumn, and 4600 dollars from Friends of Lwiro in Norway ( former AWARE Norway), most of that from sales of Julius paintings in Kristiansand Zoo. This is enough to finally finish the dormitory and the building has started today. But the best thing is that COOPERA has agreed to try to cover the running cost of the sanctuary for 2009! This is great because otherwise the money from Australia and Norway would have had to cover the running cost, and the dormitory wouldn't be finished.

The dormitory January-09

Great support from local children

Yesterday morning there was a very nice visit to the sanctuary. The children of " the environmental center of education and interpretation" of CHAHOBOKA / KATANA donated a big sack of carrots that they had grown themselves for the CRPL primates. It's so great to see.

Everyone loves football

After the football turnament this christmas, a video was made and sent on Spanish tv about the athletic club CRSN Lwiro. This has raised 3000 euros to build a new football pitch and changing room for the teams!

The chimpanzees

It has been very cold this month in Lwiro, and almost all the chimpanzees in the sanctuary have got colds, especially the little ones and Baheny has injured one of his canine teeth. It got ripped of when it got stuck in a rope. Luckily he is doing well, and will recover ok from the injury.

Baheny

Christmas in Lwiro

This autumn "the champions leauge CRPL" was organised in Lwiro. 9 teams of entusiastic children between 5 and 13 years of age, from Lwiro and suronding villages. After the game there was a barbeque for 150 local children. It's amazing how well football joins the people.
At five o’clock, when work was finished at the sanctuary, it was time for a well deserved Christmas party for the workers, with good food music and dance.

Monique Okapi
The newest chimp in the centre is Monique Okapi. She arrived 28th of November, and is a girl at about 2 years of age. She’s finished her quarantine and moved in with the others in the nursery group, Maiko, Osso, Fizi, Julius, Banro, Ituri and Uvira. She’s already settled in very well with the others.

Some of the players in front of one of their new football goals.

Local music

Food for everyone

The workers arriving at their christmas party

Monique Okapi with her keeper

Monique Okapi


The nursery group with their keeper

Leaving Lwiro

I have now left Lwiro due to the increasing instability in DRC. However, the veterinarians are still in Lwiro and working hard at the sanctuary. The nursery group has been moved to an enclosure within the sanctuary grounds and the sanctuary security is being reinforced. Currently, there has been no direct threat in the area, and the local staff and community are still committed to the sanctuary. Below are photos of the women’s group who bought an enormous offering of bananas and tomatoes to the sanctuary for the animals. The photos show them singing and dancing, wearing their new t-shirts!

Andrea

Lwiro update

People may have heard about the unrest in DRC over the past week or two. I want everyone to know the animals and the staff and their families are all safe. Everything seems to have settled down for the time being and it is business as usual. The volunteers were housed at the UN camp near by for safety reasons during four days of the trouble. We returned on the 2nd of November to Lwiro to find the sanctuary and staff well.
Shumbi – the olive baboon - has been moved from his small quarantine cage into a larger cage which neighbors Kashusha (another male baboon) and a group of other baboons. As soon as he woke from the anesthetic he climbed up on the branches with no problems at all. The staff were originally concerned that he would not be able to move about properly (due to the fact that he has one arm missing and the other is injured from a gun wound). His wound has healed very well.

Muhungu - a young male chimpanzee broke his on the 2nd of November. He has been isolated from the group to allow recovery. He still has visual contact with the group however, and can touch them through the wire. He is recovering well.

Banro is now very happy in the cage with the other babies. She has bonded with both the keepers and all of the babies very well. Every night, Banro and Julius cuddle up in their tub to sleep together. Below are photo of all of the babies in the nursery group. They are all strong, healthy and happy.

Fantastic support from the lwiro women!

Unexpectedly today, the wives of the CRPL workers arrived at the sanctuary (17 women in total). They informed the manager they were going to start to prepare the land (which the sanctuary has yet to be able to afford to do) to the right of the sanctuary and plant maize, beans and manioc. They will do this free of charge to the sanctuary and the crops will assist in feeding the sanctuary’s primate residents. They plan to come for four hours every Saturday to undertake the project.

It seems that the community is so excited about this project, that we have had two women join who do not even have relations working at the sanctuary. We also have had the daughters of two of our female workers join the group.

The management of the sanctuary are so touched and excited about this incredible offer from the women of Lwiro. For all of these women to give up their time and money to plant these crops to assist in feeding the animals is amazing.

Second operation for Shumbi the baboon

Shumbi had his second surgery today to clean up the wound and have a closer look. The veterinarian bandaged the wound thoroughly, however a few hours later (with only his feet), Shumbi managed to free himself of the bandage. He is doing well at present and eating well. We now have to wait and see how he recovers.

Ituri and Uvira have integrated well into the cage with the four other babies, Maiko, Osso, Fizi and Julius. They have become very independent and all of the babies interact and play well with each other.

Banro is also doing well, and plays and runs around in the garden non stop. She is forever trying to escape into the area with the other babies. Her quarantine period will be over on the 20th of September, she will then be introduced into the nursery group also.

Andrea

Update on Ituri, Uvira, Banro and the baboons

Everything is going well with the introduction of Ituri and Uvira to the four other babies (Maiko, Osso, Fizi and Julius). Last night they also slept in the dormitory with the babies and Papy, the keeper. They all slept well.

Today Banro began to play for the first time since her arrival. She is doing well, and eating very well. She is very quiet, but also likes to explore the garden on her own.



The new baboon cage is coming along nicely. However, in the past two weeks we have seen some aggression between them which has resulted in leg injuries to both Yoda and Kalonge. This new cage we hope will allow them more room to move and hence we hope to see less aggression.



Andrea

Maiko and Osso

Yesterday Maiko and Osso came to Lwiro Sanctuary. Two little girls. They were very tired and scared. They had travelled by plane, car and boat. They were with us at about 5 o’clock in the afternoon. We carried them into my room, and with a bit of force got them out of the travel cage and put them in the cage they were going to sleep in during the night. I was alone with them in the room and Osso came out of the cage and sat on my lap. I cried for a while. It’s very difficult to understand how people can treat chimpanzees like that. Maiko and Osso have both seen their family being slaughtered. They ate mango and passion fruit and then went to sleep. Today they slept for a long time, we woke them up at eight. We had planned to have them inside in the room for a couple of days, but Maiko was very shivering with cold, so we put them back in the cage and carried them outside to the quarantine cage in the sunshine. There they slept most of the day, scared and tired. We took them back in at four o’clock and put them to bed for the night.

Jeanette

Maiko and Osso

In the beginning of February we heard that two baby chimpanzees had been confiscated near Maiko National Park in North Kivu. And after a lot of paperwork, and quite a bit of money to cover transport cost, they finally arrived at Lwiro today. They are two little girls called Maiko and Osso.

Maiko is a bit over a year old, she has a lot of parasites and her tummy is very painfull.

Osso is under one year old and in better shape than Maiko, but they are both very thin and traumatized.

Jeanette, a zoo keeper from Kristiansand Zoo in Norway is looking after them with the help of Carmen the vet and manager. Jeanette is volunteering at Lwiro for 3 months.

Hildegunn

Good bye Lwiro

The time has come for me to return to England, slightly sooner than planned (usual problem of lack of money!). I have been here for 4 months and enjoyed every second of it. It has been very exciting at times, with the earthquakes and things, it can be hard too, but most of the time it is a very peaceful, simple and fun place. The people I have met working here are very dedicated and the workers at the sanctuary absolutely adore their animals, they work so hard everyday yet are lovely lovely people. Obviously the main attraction is the animals. I have loved to just spend time with them, getting to know each of them individually, and I have some hilarious stories of them to tell, like when Goma ripped off my t-shirt! I have spent Christmas, New Year and my Birthday here, and they will certainly be memorably ones. So a big Thank You to Lwiro and I will see you soon!

Alexa

Kalume

Kalume is about 8 years old and has horrific injuries from when he was captured as a baby by poachers. He had his face smashed in by a machete and has already had two operations, and is waiting for a third, to help sort out his mouth. There may be other internal problems as well as he often gets a bad chesty cough, but as there is limited medical equipment at Lwiro it is difficult to tell. Despite these injuries he is the boss of a group of 7 other chimps at the sanctuary, and has been surprisingly happy and active.
After the first big earthquake at Lwiro all the chimps were very scared and did not want to come down from the roof. Kalume was the same, but after all the others had calmed down a bit, he persisted in staying up high. We thought initially that he may have a cold, but we soon realised that he wasn’t walking well. When he stopped eating we decided something needed to be done, and took him into a smaller cage to keep an eye on him. The poor boy couldn’t walk and was very depressed. Carmen gave him some painkillers and an anti inflammatory and someone sat with him all day to keep his spirits up. As we can’t give a fixed diagnosis with no scanners or x-ray machines, we can’t tell exactly what was wrong with him, but after two days of being spoilt rotten he started to walk and eat again. After a few more days he seemed back to his usual self and we took him on several walks around the sanctuary, though he tried to milk it every so often by crying like a baby when it was time to go back to his cage! We have decided he will be happier back with the others so he will be joining them again soon.

Alexa

Harry and Sally

The only monkeys who were waiting to move into a bigger cage were Harry and Sally, the red tails. They are not overly sociable with other monkeys so are kept separate from them. There was an empty cage where the others used to live before they moved to the new monkey enclosures. We had the floor concreted and waited 5 days for it to set, then came the day for Harry and Sally to move in. Jacques and Kahole had put lots of branches inside for them to jump around on. It was a very easy move, the small cage they both lived in fitted through to door, so they were carried inside in that and let out. Sally took a few days to settle, but Harry loved it straight away! They seem very happy now, and there are no more animals in tiny cages, yay!

Alexa

Welcome the Lwiro primates blog!

Welcome to the blog for Lwiro primate rehabilitation centre.
We hope you will enjoy and come back regularly.
Here we will report big and small stories of the happenings of the sanctuary.

We are employing 18 congolese at the moment, as keepers, cooks, gardeners and sentinels.


And the main caracters in the story is our 30 chimpanzees, and 34 monkeys of different species.



Enjoy,

Hildegunn



If you want to find out what's happened the last year at Lwiro check out awareafrica.blogspot.com