Baboons, Baboons, Baboons

As I mentioned before, baboons are at the center of attention here at Na/an kuse, therefore it is only fitting that I write my post about baboons after I had my baboon sleepover, which was last night. There are over 60 baboons here, in 6 different troops; you have the seniors who are very very big, live in a 14 hectare, and have minimal human contact (they are too dangerous). Then you have two junior troops, where the baboons age from 3-6 years old, they live a stones through away from the lapa. Although we don’t get in their enclosures, we do take them on walks. This means we open the doors and walk about 2km with 12 baboons into the middle of the reserve. The next troop is the big babies; these guys are young and playful, and we do the same as we do with the juniors; we don’t go into the enclosure, but we do take them for walks. They also lovvveee grooming you, sitting on your shoulders, playing with your zippers, etc.

Nap Time!

Our last troop is the tiny babies, or the baboons that are under 2 years old. We spend a lot of time with them because they need human interaction. In the troop there are 5 baboons, and 2 vervet monkeys. You have Frodo, Bruce, Oasie, Asias, Shrinky (who is mentally disabled) and the vervets, Golem and Precious. All of them have come to the sanctuary at a very young age, often because their mother got poached, leaving them all alone. Poachers then recognize that the mother baboon he shot had a baby, and proceeds to bring the baby here. But anyway, with these guys we can always go into their enclose (a bit small) and play with them! They love human interaction :)

The first time I went in there, I was briefed about the do’s and don’t when handling baby baboons. So here they are:

Do not react if they bite you or hurt you, doing so will make them think you are aggressive which will result in the whole troops attacking you (thats the worst case, sometimes it will just be the monkey that bit you). Some volunteers have gotten really scratched up from head to toe because they freaked out when they got bit.

You are at the bottom of the hierarchy. In any primate troop there is always a strong sense of hierarchy, alpha male etc. Often to get to the top you need to fight off the rest of the troop, so the same goes for us, if we want to become dominant over the tiny babies we need to fight them, or in other words challenge them (looking them straight into the eyes with some aggression) and then picking them up by their neck and shoving their head in the ground. Yes, yes, that sounds brutal, of course you dont use your full physical force, but this is the way they do it in the wild, so that’s how we have to do it. Right now i’m fine being at the bottom, but given that im here for 3 months I will try to become dominant over them (So they listen better and you can get them to stop if they bite you etc.)

Do not bring anything into the enclosure! This is something we were told by almost every volunteer. Baboons are very intelligent and curious, so anything and everything you bring into the enclosure will be taken. Even if you have zipped pockets, they will open it and get whatever is in there! If they take it, game over, it’s theirs, you can’t take it back and will slowly have to accept your loss! haha!

My Experience with the Baboons

From the moment I entered the enclosure, all four baboons jumped on me (shrinky avoids human contact), on my head, shoulders, legs, chest, everywhere! It felt a bit surreal that I had 4 baboons on me!! I guess i can consider myself lucky that they took to me right away, as they they completely ignore some volunteers! The more I came and visited them the more I enjoyed it and felt a bond with some baboons. The vervet monkeys want nothing to do with me, but the baboons treat my like their brother…I’m not sure If thats a good thing or not ;). Although you do get bitten (the baboons test bite to see how you react and where you stand in the hierarchy), and get a lot of scratches it is definitely worth it! I did experience a not so pleasant feeling, the feeling when you have a baboon on your shoulder, and slowly you start feeling a warm liquid flow down your shirt…yes I got pee’d on… on the first day I was in there!! This turned out to be the norm, as every time I went in there (which is quite often) I usually left with wet shirts or shorts.

 On Saturday, whilst on the baby baboon walk, I also found out how it feels when a baboon shits on you…. I didnt notice it at first until a smell started to reek right next to me. I check my shoulder, and yes, it happened, a cheeky baboon thought it would be funny to poo on my shoulder! It was a laugh though, Justus (a fellow volunteer) mentioned that he felt like a human playground, which I replied, “rather a playground than a toilet!” haha. I guess you just have to get used to it!

Frodo and I

The Baboon Sleepover

Since the baboons/vervets are still so young they need to sleep with a volunteer at night who acts as their mom and gives them a sense of protection. This is a very unique experience, and something I wanted to try as well. So on Thursday I signed up to take Frodo for the night. Although here are 7 monkey’s in the troop, Shrinky and Bruce do not stay with volunteers and instead stay inside in the clinic (since they are not too reliant on us). So the 5 people who have a monkey with them for the night all sleep in the same room, the baboon room. 

At 6:30 it was time for us too pick up our babies for the night. Frodo quickly jumped on me, and we proceeded to the baboon room. This is where their party started, from bed to bed, the curtains, door, wardrobe, they were having a ball! In the meantime I tried to catch Frodo to get his diapers on! Yeah, these guys pee and poo during the night and well… no one wants to wake up wet covered in poo, so yeah they get diapered ( a little hole gets made for their tail!). After about 30 minutes all of the babies were diapered, so the next step was to calm them down so we could take them to the lapa. This again took a long time, because we had just given them their bottles (they all have their own formula’s) which did not end too well, as Frodo was quite a greedy one, once he finished his bottle he continued to bully the rest and get their bottles! Anyway, at around 8 I finally had Frodo in my sweater, nice and calm. We chilled by the campfire for an hour, which was when I decided to call it a night. 

At 9:15 the 5 of us, and all the babies were in back in the room ready to go to bed. One thing that we do get told is that the baboons will usually choose who they want to sleep with. So you might be assigned to one baboon, and get another one sleeping with you. I found out the hard way…as we got ready for bed Asias and Oasie jumped from their beds to join Frodo and I. Yes…all 3 baboons wanted to sleep with my tonight! You might think that, that’s pretty cool and cosy to have them all around you, but no, these guys don’t sleep like normal people. I had Oasie on my head nibbling on my ear, Frodo holding onto my chest (what a little baby!) and Asias sleeping on my neck! I was completely stuck and couldn’t move! It was only until I released 20 minutes later that the pillow was soaking wet (so much for those nappies…) that I shifted down the bed, legs sticking out, it was safe to say that this was definitely not comfortable! After a couple of hours of attempting to sleep we sensed that someone had filled their diapers.So lights on, to find the culprit, this was done by…sniffing the diapers! If they pee in their diapers we just change them, but if its number 2, we need to take them to the toilets to clean them up! Bare in mind this was at 3:30 in the morning! Luckily none of my babies had poo’d so I only had to change their wet nappies. So after a quick cleaning session, we attempted to get 2 more hours of sleep. Again, I was covered by the baboons.

At 6:30am the monkeys were up and were jumping all over the place. The room reeked again and we knew someone had poo’d again. This time I didn’t have luck on my side as Frodo was the culprit. So to the bathroom we went, holding him tight by the bicep whilst slowly removing his diaper, only to find out…he had diarrhea. Because he drank everyone else’s milk that night, he drank formula that wasnt meant for him, causing the diarrhea. Changing his diaper, whilst washing him, and keeping him calm was a challenge, it did result on my shorts and feet being covered in poo… but it had to be done!

At 7:00am we had finally made it! We brought the monkey’s back to their enclosure and ran straight to the showers! 

So what can I conclude from this experience, well, it definitely was an amazing experience but you do give up your nights rest and have to clean stinky baboons! Will I do it again? Yes! Maybe once every 2 weeks, as we all need to step forward and help the team out when needed!  

Asias peeking at the camera!