YOLO

            It’s been a very eventful few days here at CARE! Today was my third full day of officially working here at the center. I guess I’ll start with yesterday’s events and go from there. Yesterday was a pretty exciting day, since it was my first day with the baby baboons! I spent the morning walking a few of the dogs around the center (followed by Stella, the very friendly warthog that also lives here), then making some enrichment for a few of the troops, and making bottles for the babies. My first afternoon shift was meeting Patats, who’s the only adult baboon that the volunteers are able to go in with, since she’s so gentle and calm. She’s living proof that these animals can endure a lot, and that they have individual personalities. She was captured from the wild when she was very young by a witchdoctor, who kept her welded in a steel drum, with hardly any space for movement, to help make his “medicines”. I’m not sure how long she was kept there, but it was years. Considering that, it would seem like she has every right to be vicious and mean, especially towards people, but when I went into her enclosure yesterday she was very gentle throughout the entire hour that we were together. It was just the two of us in there, and as I sat down around the hay that lines the bottom of the enclosure, she slowly came up and began to explore this new person. The first thing she did was pull at the Velcro on my sandals, so I removed them and rolled up the legs of my jeans to the knee. She then did some lip smacking at me, which is one of baboons’ main ways to communicate, and I reciprocated. Then, slowly, she began to “groom” my legs. We spent the next hour grooming and just being around each other. I originally was wearing my hair pulled back, but about halfway through the hour I let it down, and she loved grooming and gently pulling at my long hair. It really was crazy to see that this creature, which had been so mistreated by people for years, could still be this calm and gentle towards me.

            It seemed like that hour would be hard to top, but two hours later I got to meet the baby baboons for the first time, and join a few of the more experienced volunteers in taking them down to the river to play. The two babies we took were two little boys named Darcy and Yolo. All the volunteers sat down in the sand by the river and let the little ones play around us. Yolo approached me first, and decided to say hello by jumping into my lap and planting a big fat kiss right on my lips, which was pretty hilarious. They spent most of the hour playing with each other instead of the volunteers, which was fine since watching them was great entertainment. At one point, one of the other volunteers, Abby, pointed across the river and said, “Hey look. Is that a warthog?” I looked across and immediately saw that it was way too big to be a warthog- it was a rhino. It was too far to see too many of the details, so I assumed it was a white rhino, which is more common around this area. One of the other volunteers mentioned that there are probably only one or two black rhinos living in this entire reserve. Thankfully, one volunteer had his camera, so we took a picture of the animal, and when I zoomed in I saw that, in fact, it was a black rhino! Being that they’re so endangered, I could hardly believe that I was actually looking at a black rhino, but when I zoomed in on the picture I was sure that I was. Getting to meet the babies was great enough, but seeing that just made that afternoon even better. We all said it was kind of sad that our first sighting of a wild black rhino might also be our last, but either way it was a great experience.

            I figured that yesterday would be hard to beat, but today might have been even better. My first shift was another round of walking the dogs around the area. I kind of like having that as a first job, since it’s pretty easy and is a nice way to just get the day going. After that was an hour of cleaning, then the shift I was really looking forward to- my hour in the nursery with Darcy and Yolo. It was me, Cindy, who’s a volunteer from Australia who arrived with me, and Holly, a volunteer from Missouri, who spent that hour in the nursery. Darcy mainly hung around Holly and Cindy, while Yolo curled up in my lap almost as soon as I sat down and spent that hour playing and napping all over me. I could tell that he was quickly becoming my favorite baboon at CARE. I didn’t want that hour to end, but it wasn’t quite so hard to leave the nursery since I knew I’d be back that afternoon to take them to the river again. After having a shift of making and cleaning bottles, then having lunch, a few other volunteers and I headed back to the nursery to collect Darcy and Yolo for playtime at the river. The babies always choose which volunteer they want to carry them from the nursery to the river by climbing onto that person when the volunteers enter the nursery. I heard that usually it takes close to a week before they trust a person enough to let them carry them. When we walked into the nursery, Yolo looked around at all the volunteers (I think there were five of us), and then began tugging on my hand to pick him up. Yeah, at that moment I was sure of it- that little baboon has absolutely stolen my heart. Yolo let me carry him to the river, then carry him back to his troop when the hour was over. We also saw some more greater kudu by the bank on the other side of the river. That spot by the river is definitely one of the best wildlife viewing spots around!

            That’s all for this post. Sorry for the lack of pictures in these last couple of blog posts- the wifi here is really slow, so adding pictures to blogs has been really hard. Hopefully I’ll be able to include some soon. This post’s food for thought: “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”- Anatole France