donttalk2monkeys

[donttalk2monkeys]

Two last weeks in Asia

The last week at the Centre was a lot of fun. Another volunteer had joined the team and we got on very well. Her name was JoJo, so I became 'Singular Jo’, which I quite liked. The two of us and our new vet spent a few evenings drinking and talking. To my pleasant surprise, I wasn't sad to be leaving. Until the very last day I was just happy to be there. Getting a little closer to being able to live in the present is probably the most valuable thing I'm taking away from my jungle experience. Before leaving Laos, I spent a couple of nights in Vientiane. I went to a spa and enjoyed some lazy time sitting by the pool with a book and a beer. I also had a chance to meet up with my friends, old and new, who currently live in the Lao capital. It was great to see them all and I hope our paths will cross again soon. I didn't find Mumbai as intimidating as I had expected it to be. The city is really beautiful (I wish I could take better pictures), it's dirty and rundown but it has a lot of charm and its craziness is intoxicating. It is very busy and noisey. The honking of the cars just doesn't stop. It quickly becomes white noise, which is dangerous as the traffic is very chaotic to say the least. At first, I found myself doing what I saw street dogs do in Skopje - waiting for (local) people to cross the road and walking along with them, but I quickly realised that it's actually quite safe. Everyone's pushing in into every available space, but they do it slowly and carefully because they know that everybody else is also pushing in into every available space. People here have been both as friendly and as pushy as I had thought they'd be. On my first visit to the Leopold bar I ended up buying a pair of pants from a street salesman when I was smoking outside. Most of my clothes have either disintegrated completely or look very scruffy after 2 months in the jungle so it wasn't an entirely unnecessary purchase, but I'm pretty sure I paid a tourist price. Another time, somebody was trying to sell me a little drum. Having heard all my reasons for not wanting to buy it, he offered to exchange it for my watch. I haven't felt unsafe or offended by anything here though. If anything, I feel a little guilty for being annoyed with the locals. The poverty here is real and people are truly desperate. One thing that has surprised me here is the bureaucracy. I've had to present my passport (with a valid visa) to get a prepaid SIM and to buy tickets for a regional train. Mumbai is also more expensive than I'd expected, especially alcohol and cigarettes. Apparently they're highly taxed, which is probably a good thing. The most unpleasant surprise has been a 'dry day’. There are a few days in a year when it's completely forbidden to sell or serve any alcohol in the entire country. One of them fell during my stay in Mumbai. I briefly considered bribing somebody to get me a beer or two, just to see how easy it would be, but in the end I decided a dry day might actually be good for me. I've hardly seen any sites in Mumbai. I've spent my days here just wandering around Fort and Colaba or walking along the Marine Drive. I did go on a boat trip to Elephanta Island. Less out of the desire to see the caves and more out of longing for silence and fresh air. The boat ride itself was very pleasant. Once on the island, it took me about half an hour to see all the caves, after which I spent an hour on a terrace of a bar, with beautiful view and very reasonably (compared to the city) priced beer. On Saturday morning, I took a train to Pune. I wanted to go on Friday to be able to come to the Barclays office and meet the team, I'd been working with, but all trains were full then. Fortunately (for me) the team were all working despite it being a weekend. I'd heard of Indian hospitality before coming to the country, but the treatment I received from colleagues and friends in Pune really amazed me. I was driven around the sites, taken to meals, they've even paid for my hotel (initially I was going to go back to Mumbai the same evening, but was persuaded to stay overnight). I was also taken to an Indian amusement park. I saw a magic show and pretty ladies dancing with burning pots on their heads and received a peculiar head massage, only some of which was pleasant. All this was quite fun, but I can’t say I was terribly disappointed when a storm cut our visit short. I rarely get excited about food, but the culinary experience in India has been amazing. The variety of flavours is vast. I've been told that even a month here wouldn't be long enough to taste all the different cuisines of the country. I've enjoyed everything I've eaten here, including spicy breakfasts. Street food is equally delicious as that served in restaurants and incredibly cheap. The only thing I avoided was western food, except for peanut butter, which I spread on spicy idlis. I'm surprised by how little has surprised me in Asia. It turns out that people are the same everywhere. We all like sugary snacks and get annoyed in traffic jams. Diwali is just like Christmas: an excuse to be spend a lot of money on things we don't need. Political and economic circumstances change but they don't seem to affect human nature much, only the boundaries which we all like to push are a little different.

[donttalk2monkeys]

Week 7 at the LWRC

Monday started off with a sad news. A pangolin brought to us only the day before didn't make it through the night. We were all very excited when the pangolin arrived. Most of us hadn't seen one in a real life. I hadn't even known what they were. The species is critically endangered. They are said to be the most hunted animals in the world. Apparently their meat is a delicacy and their scales are used in alternative medicine (grrr…). The day did get better though. After the morning rounds we were asked to help the vet with taking measurements and DNA samples of binturongs. Even though the animals were unconscious and all we did was measuring them and pulling out some hair, it was very exciting. The zoo animal records are very bad. We didn't even know the genders of the binturongs (you need to look quite closely to be able to tell the difference between boys and girls). The staff have been making efforts to fill in the gaps but it's a slow process due to very limited resources. The focus on binturongs is not accidental. LWRC is going to cooperate with The Arctictis Binturong Conservation (the only conservation organisation in the world devoted solely to binturongs). ABC will provide financial help in exchange for our data. After lunch we went out on a tyres’ hunt. We use old bike tyres to make swings and bridges for monkeys and bears or to hide treats inside as a form of enrichment for the animals. We got into the truck, which had just been returned from a garage after over three weeks, and drove around nearby villages in search of broken tyres. Local motorbike repair shops will have heaps of them. Most owners give them away for free, some do ask for money, but very little so we are happy to pay. It was a good hunt - we managed to get around 30 tyres. On the way back the car broke down. I learned that to indicate a roadside emergency here, one puts a small pile of green plants on the road. I wonder what they do in the dry season. After a short inspection of the car, it turned out a that the water tank was leaking and the engine overheated. We cooled it down and filled the tank. The engine started up again but we had to drive back very fast to make it home before all the water leaked out. The roads here are narrow and bumpy - it was a fun ride! On Tuesday the new vet arrived. The old one had been offered a job in Malaysia and will be here only until the end of the month. She’ll be doing research on human diseases affecting or carried by other species, which will involve DNA analysis. It sounds like a great opportunity so I'm not surprised she took it but I really like her and would be sad to see her leave if I was staying here for longer. The new vet seems really nice too and she shares my passion for beer so we've been getting on very well. I also had to say goodbye to Atlas, the dog, this week. His owners used to manage the Centre. They resigned shortly before I came here and had been traveling since. They left Atlas behind but came to pick him up on Tuesday. I'll miss him but probably not as much as the jackals will. They absolutely love him, especially little Sarah. She was a tiny pup when she was rescued and had to be bottle-fed for a while. She stayed at the old managers’ house then and Atlas became her big brother (he's too much of a gufball to be an adoptive dad).u The old binturongs enclosure, the concrete pit, was knocked down this week. The volunteers were asked to help with the demolition and I got to use a sledgehammer! Only for a very short time though as it quickly transpired I'd be of much better use shovelling the grovel. It was hard work but, as a reward, we got to ride at the back of a tractor. On Saturday afternoon I went to Vientiane to renew my visa again and stayed overnight in the city. I had a chance to catch up with a friend of mine and drink beer other than Beer Lao. It was a fun night - definitely worth the headache in the morning after. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't missed civilization at all, but after the trip I was very glad to be back in the jungle, away from the city noise and polluted air again. Ahead of me is my last week in the LWRC. I have a feeling I may get a little sentimental...

[donttalk2monkeys]

Week 6 at the LWRC

A new volunteer, a young man from France, has joined our team this week. He's been a great addition so far. He’s enthusiastic and hardworking and, being an agricultural school graduate, has brought in valuable skills and knowledge. He speaks very little English, and the combined knowledge of French of everybody else in the team is very basic so there's virtually no verbal communication between him and the rest of us. We have to show him everything instead of explaining it. This however hasn't been a problem at all. He’s already the third volunteer I have trained here and it seems to me that he learnt everything quicker than the other two. Although he did learn about the electric fences around enclosures in a painful way, but then again I'd been told about them and still once touched an electric wire by accident (it's very unpleasant but not dangerous). I do like words very much (other people's more than my own). They can be very beautiful, but I'm beginning to think that using words (spoken or written) is not always the most efficient means of communication. Dogs, among many other species, use body language to communicate. It's very straightforward and misunderstands rarely occur. Humans have developed an unnecessarily strong attachment to words. Nothing important happens without headlines, captions, vows, testimonies. We're obsessed with what is said or written yet so many of the words are meaningless, ambiguous or intentionally misleading. Advertisements are an obvious example, but we all use words as tools in our human game from time to time. We respond to questions in a way which gives an impression of providing an answer, yet reveal no information whatsoever. We start an dishonest statement by saying 'to be honest’, or an offensive one with sarcastic 'I’m sorry, but’. We praise things which we hate to be polite and scorn those we love to hide weakness or avoid embarrassment. Other, less evolved, animals don't do that. The biggest event in our animal world this week has been moving a group of binturongs (mother, father and daughter) to a new enclosure. Their previous home was referred to as 'the pit’ and it fully deserved the nickname. The new one is really nice. It's hidden away from the zoo visitors and there are two massive trees in it for the animals to climb up and snooze on. Binturongs are arboreal, they like to lie on big branches with their paws hanging down and sleep all day (they're also nocturnal). Everyone was so excited about the move that they even let us take a break from work to watch it. It all went fairly smoothly. The parents were moved first. They crawled up the branches for a nap almost immediately. The daughter however, even though her mother and father had already been there when she arrived in the new home, was very distressed by the change. She curled up on the ground and kept growling at everyone despite being used to people, even strange people coming to look at her every day. She was born in the concrete pit and didn't know anything else. The new enclosure wasn't greener or nicer and definitely not 'more natural’ to her - it was simply foreign. She had spent all her life in one place and then, one morning, literally her whole world had changed. She was scared. I've been thinking about change recently. Not actual change, but rather change of what we know or believe. In my youth I campaigned for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. She was a 'prisoner of conscience’ and a hero then. This week I heard her talking about 'violence on both sides’ in an interview. Perhaps it's true that she doesn't have the power to stop the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, but I still found it upsetting that she didn't condemn it. Has she changed or is it what I know about her that's changed? I was upset because I felt cheated. I wasn't cheated though. My knowledge hadn't changed completely, it was simply expanded. Aung San Suu Kyi’s past accomplishments and suffering are still a fact. As is her indifference to the suffering of Muslims in her country. Changing one's beliefs becomes more difficult with age and finding out we may have been wrong about someone we admired can be hard to swallow but it shouldn't be. Nobody is a flawless hero and nobody's perfect. I've realised that it was holding on to illusions that caused a lot of anxiety in my life. Next week, unless there's a change of plans, we're going to be helping our vet with microchipping and health checks of binturongs. I can't wait!

[donttalk2monkeys]

Week 5 at the LWRC

This week we worked in the macaques’ enclosures again. We've put more branches for the monkeys to climb on, built new bridges and swings, installed new shelters. Every new thing caused great excitement. Watching the monkeys run and jump around the new installations I realized that, even though the monkeys wouldn't say ‘thank you’ or even be nice to me, witnessing all that excitement was probably the best reward I ever got for any job I've done in my life. Like many people I've always loved dogs. Dogs are easy to love - they're sweet and funny and do amazing things like detecting cancer. But they're also the only species that chose to be domesticated and the only species whose members crave contact with humans. All others hate us. I learnt that within the first few days of working here. I’ve also learnt that to love animals, like I've always said I did, isn't possible without a great deal of humility and selflessness I'm not sure I have. We're not allowed to have direct contact with any of the animals here. I've broken the rule once. A baby gibbon held out his little hand to me and I touched it. I got told off and rightly so. The baby gibbon wouldn't hurt me but contact with me is hurting him. It perpetuates the harm that has already been done to him: taking him out of his natural environment and making him a toy. Expecting affection from animals is not loving them. It's loving ourselves and love for animals needs to be selfless. I was asked to answer a few questions for an article about volunteering which will be included in the next LWRC newsletter. One was about the challenges of working here. Aside from catching grasshoppers, the biggest one for me has been to understand and accept my role in the animals’ lives. I am the human who brings treats, but also one who stares at them and shows her teeth for no good reason (that's how a smile is perceived by monkeys), one that doesn't understand their language, and whose language they won't even try to understand. My biggest challenge has been to show kindness to the animals in a way that is good for them: give them what they need and leave them alone. Next week we start working according to a new schedule. We'll start at 7.30 instead of 7.00, and do less cleaning (no more picking up bear poo!) and more enrichment and enclosure improvement work. I'm looking forward to that. We also have a new volunteer joining our team. He speaks hardly any English. It will be interesting.

[donttalk2monkeys]

Week 4 at the LWRC

A monkey died last Monday. He suffered from a heat stroke because he'd been locked away in a part of the enclosure with no roof or shelter from the sun. He had to be locked away because staff were carrying out maintenance work in the enclosure and it'd be unsafe for them to do it while the monkey was there. Safety of people was more important than that of animals. Naturally. I didn't know that monkey, he was just one of a group I'd feed sometimes, but seeing his lifeless body being taken away by the vet, in her arms like a child, made me feel sad. The following day, ants attacked our food. I was hungry so I still ate it and I didn't feel sad for the ants. The arbitrariness of sympathy comes so naturally, and so does the arbitrariness of the division of worth. We the primates, the humans, the people of certain breed, deserve more than those outside of the group. The circle narrows or widens depending on what's at stake or how much needs to be sacrificed. Testing cigarettes on animals - ‘disgusting’, testing cancer drugs on them - ‘necessary sacrifice for the greater good’. The word ‘deserve’ comes from the Latin ‘deservire’ which means ‘to serve well or zealously’. In order to deserve something (a reward, a treat, a payment) you need to provide a service first. But the service part is often disregarded. We often deserve good things simply because we ARE and some of us deserve more than others, but the rules don't seem very clear. Did the monkey deserve to live, do the people who accidentally killed him deserve to be happy?… On Friday both volunteer coordinators were off and I was supervised by the vet. All day long I got to molest her with questions - it was great! I even got a little gig in the animal hospital, only to sort syringes and needles, but still… ;-) I've also been ‘making friends’ with the jackals. They don't like people much and stay away from them, but they love Atlas the dog. I've changed the route of our morning walks to go by the jackals enclosure. All three jackals come out to greet Atlas every day and they don't seem to mind my presence either. Then the dog and his wild cousins start chasing each other. There's a fence between them but they're not bothered by it at all. I love watching them play. Sarah, the youngest and the newest member of the pack is the most adventurous and the most curious one. Even with no fence between me and her (I go inside to clean the enclosure sometimes) she'll come quite close to see what's going on. She's the least camera shy too.

[donttalk2monkeys]

Week 3 at the LWRC

The number of volunteers has gone down from six to two this week. Additionally one of the coordinators was on leave for a few days so there has been a lot more work and a lot more bear poo to pick up pro capita. Most of the construction projects aren't very urgent, but animals need feeding and enclosures need cleaning every day so it's been a little tough. The staff here have been busy collecting DNA samples from our Siamese crocodiles (sticking a cotton bud into their mouths just like from a dog ;-)) The species is critically endangered. Chances are that ours aren't hybrids and could be used in a ‘breed and release’ program. The samples will be sent off to a Lab in Germany, and if the results come back as pure, the Centre can start breeding the crocs (in collaboration with the Cologne zoo). Breed and release programs are not easy to carry out, especially with mammals who, by the time they're independent from their mothers, are too accustomed to human presence to be released to the wild. Reptiles however are independent the moment they hatch, so fingers crossed. As it's probably not difficult to imagine, recycling isn't big in Laos, but here at the Centre we do pretty well. We make enrichments for animals from plastic bottles and cardboard boxes, we reuse nails and wire, most of our food leftovers go into primates’ feed and banana peels from bananas fed to monkeys are given to the deer. The other day the vet asked us to make a bear carrier. We considered using clothes left behind by former volunteers (there's a big pile of them), but decided that the fabric wouldn't be strong enough to carry a bear. Then we remembered an old fold up bed, woven with a strong tape on a metal frame. The frame got used as a drying rack (our drying rack collapsed a few days earlier), and we're going to use the tape to weave a hammock like carrier. Such resourcefulness is not only good for the planet, but often necessary as the Centre’s budget is quite tight. (Feel free to donate: http://laowildliferescue.org/donate/ ;-)) On Sunday I went to Thailand. My first Lao visa would expire in a few days so I spent my day off on a ‘visa run’. The border is only around 65 km away from the Centre but it takes over three hours and four different buses to get there. My bum hurt by the time I got back, I don't know how I manage to sit at my desk all day long. The last trip (to get across the Friendship Bridge) was by far the least pleasant. The bus was significantly overfilled with passengers. Luckily it took only around 10 minutes and I managed to get place near a window both ways. Interestingly, the journey back from Thailand was almost twice as much as going there - on the same bus, with the same driver. Overall, a visa run is not the nicest way to spend a Sunday, but had to be done. I did, however, have a chance to stock up on precious supplies of black coffee (locally available instant coffee comes premixed with milk powder and sugar) and peanut butter. I also quite enjoyed the ride through the rural areas. There are a lot dogs loitering by the roads here. I don't know if they have homes (they don't have collars on them, but that may not mean anything). They do look well fed, some a little too well, and quite content. I really like watching them. I sometimes worry about them being run over, but they seem streetwise and the drivers usually warn them with a beep. Having to renew my visa came with realization that almost a third of my sabbatical is already behind me. My arms and legs are covered with scratches, cuts and insect bites, my hands and fingernails are in terrible condition, but I haven't felt this relaxed in years. Physical work combined with large doses of solitude make a fantastic brain holiday. Although I am a little disappointed with myself that my knowledge of Lao hasn't progressed beyond ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’.

[donttalk2monkeys]

Week 2 at the LWRC

This weeks highlights: 1) Fixing swings in one of the macaques’ enclosures. The exciting part was that we were in the enclosure together with some of the monkeys, which for safety reasons, hardly ever happens. We were summoned to the volunteers’ house for a safety briefing, the most important point of which was: ‘Don't run! Monkeys hate when people run!’ The most aggressive adult males had been locked away, and as entered the pen, it quickly became obvious that the remaining ones had no interest in approaching any of us. Still, we had a few minutes of raised adrenaline levels, and afterwards it was nice to see them play on the swings which had been broken for a long time. Two days later three monkeys escaped from another enclosure, two got caught almost immediately but the alfa male made several members of staff run around with nets for over an hour. For safety reasons, we were locked up in the volunteers house but could observe the chase from the balcony. 2) Catching grasshoppers. Generally we're advised to stay away from creatures with more than four limbs as there are a few venomous species around, but we currently have two hospitalized dragons which can't catch their own food so we've been doing it for them. I was absolutely rubbish at it. The first two times we went on a hunt I came back empty-handed (everyone else got some). Only after I'd overcome the repulsion of holding a bug in my hand and ditched the net, I managed to catch a couple. After we caught them, we had to pull off all their legs so that they wouldn't get away. Then, the lucky ones would be fed to the lizards immediately, whereas the rest would be kept crippled but alive until the next day. I could've played my vegan card to get out of all that, but somehow it felt wrong. 3) Throwing elephant poo at a leopard. Well, not exactly at him but into his enclosure. In nature predators roll in the feces of their prey as a form of a scent camouflage. Scattering the feces around the cat’s enclosure was supposed to trigger a natural behavior in him. We didn't get to see that unfortunately, but he did seem a little intrigued and perhaps enjoyed a poo roll later when he wasn't being watched. Plus, once you've stuck your hand in bucket full of elephant crap, you're ready for pretty much anything. There are 23 bears in the Centre, but only one sun bear - a little girl called Missy. Sun bears are the smallest of all bears and Missy isn't even quite grown up yet so she’s very small and seemingly cuddly. In reality of course, she's a wild animal and direct contact with her could end bad. In her previous life, she was kept as a pet (chained in a backyard), but as she was growing up she became too aggressive and the owners contacted the authorities, who brought her to the Centre. Now she lives alone in her enclosure, instead of starting her own family in the wild, where she belongs. Sun bears are nocturnal, but Missy's body clock adjusted to life in the Centre and she's awake during the day. Another distinguishing feature of the the species is their exceptionally long tongue (20-25 cm) which helps them to extract insects and honey. Last Friday, during our enrichment workshop, I made a special treat for Missy. I put jam in a bamboo stick (around 17 cm long) - she got it all out in seconds. On Saturday night we went to the karaoke bar again. Apparently it takes four bottles (640 ml) of Beer Lao to get me to sing.

[donttalk2monkeys]

First working week

On the first day of work in the Centre I used more tools than I had done in the 10 years prior to that, or perhaps my entire life. We were sawing, digging, hammering nails. All that to adapt an enclosure for a baby civet, whose father rejected him. The father had been moved to another enclosure already. The baby will stay with the mother until he’s weaned off and then he’ll be moved to his own enclosure for as long as it’s necessary for him to become independent enough to be released into the wild. Animals from the Centre are rarely released. The main reason is that most of them sadly wouldn’t survived without humans. The other reason is that, the Lao government do very little to protect wild animals from poaching, and even though around 25% of the land are technically national parks, the animals are not save anywhere outside of sanctuaries. The morning chores consist of cleaning enclosures, preparing treats and toys for the animals and picking up bear poo. I don’t have a problem with picking up poo before breakfast, but the bears’ enclosures are covered with tall grass, so first you have to find the poop and then scoop it up from the thick foliage - my shovel handling is improving day by day. After breakfast, it’s construction work time. Before the Rescue Centre took over, this place had been a state ZOO for a long time (it still partly is). Most of the enclosures had been neglected, and many are not fitting for the animals that live in them so there is a lot to do! The tools are of rather poor quality, we often use ‘recycled’ nails and, needless to say, we’re not very experienced as construction workers, so the work doesn’t always go smoothly and, even though it is mostly fun, swearing can be heard every now and then. In the afternoon, we continue with the construction projects or work on ‘enrichments’. The animals receive them on daily basis. These are usually treats hidden in plastic tubes, balls and bamboo sticks or wrapped around in grass. The idea is that the food isn’t just presented to the animals, but they have find it or solve a puzzle to get to it. They need to untie knots, pull out bamboo grass or shake the container to make the food fall out. To keep it interesting, we need to invent new puzzles all the time. Different species approach the problems in different ways. For example, macaques try everything they can think of, gibbons, on the other hand, reject some solutions before trying them, because they can envisage the outcome. There is no shortage of drama in the Centre: animals escape, new ones get brought in, some get sick and die, and some get released to the wild (all of that happened during my first week here). It’s the paid staff who respond to all the surprises of course, but the volunteers get some action too sometimes. The staff are very knowledgeable and dedicated, they’re always happy to share the knowledge despite being up all night bottle feeding a baby monkey for example. I’m really enjoying learning not just about different species but also about individual animals, their stories and personalities, likes and dislikes. We have only one wild cat (plenty of bearcats, but apparently they’re neither bears nor cats): an aging leopard named Rambo. He’s spent his entire life in a small enclosure behind bars. He’s lethargic and apathetic, he barely gets up to eat. The staff here have recently started making scent trails for him (spraying scented oils around his pen). It was amazing to see a hint of curiosity and excitement in him, to watch him behave like a cat for the first time in many years. The volunteers work Monday to Saturday, from 7 am to 5 pm with two breaks (2.5 hrs in total). Saturday night is ‘bar night’. All volunteers and the volunteers’ coordinators go the Karaoke bar in the village (about 1km from the Centre). They have only kind of beer there (Lao Beer). It’s not very good but it’s cheap (around 60 cents) and comes in 640 ml bottles! The music is very loud and incredibly cheesy (Hotel California must’ve been the best record we heard all evening), but it’s a bar and it’s the end of the working week. Sunday is a well deserved day off for the volunteers. The work here is not very hard, but for somebody who normally sits on her bum all day, the first few days of physical work combined with heat and humidity weren’t that easy. I’m not regretting my decision to come here though and I’m sure the next 7 weeks will bring plenty to write about.

[donttalk2monkeys]

First day at the Lao Wildlife Rescue Centre

The Lao Wildlife Rescue Centre took over the grounds and the animals from the Lao ZOO and are in the process of turning it into a sanctuary for wild animals. Most new comers are animals who were (often illegally) purchased from poachers and kept as pets in inadequate at best conditions. The owners often bring them in themselves as they realize that wild animals do not make good pets. Some are taken away from the owners, but that can only be done by the authorities as the Centre doesn’t have the right to intervene even in cases of clear mistreatment of an animal.

I heard a lot of sad stories on my first day. Many of the animals have been through so much that they’ve gone insane, and are incapable of enjoying the better life they’ve been given here. They sit in a corner, pace around the enclosures or swing their heads from side to side. Some mutilate themselves or suck on their fingers or other body parts, which is their response to anxiety caused by unnatural upbringing and mistreatment.

An important part of the program is ‘enrichment’. The goal is to keep the animals mentally stimulated and entertained. It’s achieved by giving them toys and puzzles, making scent trails for them or hiding treats in different parts of the enclosures. It’s also about creating an environment as close as possible to natural and making sure they’re comfortable in each other’s company, which is often difficult as many of the animals are too damaged to interact socially the way they would in the wild.

The monkeys are particularly aggressive. Many of them are bullies who fight for domination within their small groups (there’s one nicknamed Trump). It takes a lot of shuffling around to make sure they won’t kill or hurt each other. As a result, some end up in enclosures smaller and not as nice as they could do, if they weren’t trying to beat each other up. Another reason for some of the monkeys to be locked up in cages is that they’re escape artists. There’s one who herself has no interest in going anywhere but will undo the wire mesh and let all others out just for fun.

The saddest story I heard during my introduction was one of the elephant. Mainly because it’s the story of every elephant kept in captivity and forced to work for humans. These incredibly smart and sensitive animals are captured as babies and tortured until they want to die. They give out a special cry when they do, and then the ‘trainer’ knows they’re ready to submit and learn all the tricks. On the weekends, our elephant is kept chained near the picnic area so that the visitors can see her and feed her bananas. It’s not ideal but the organization has to conform to the government to an extent as the place doubles as a state ZOO. On weekdays, she can stay away from people, whom she hates. The only people she does hate are her two trainers (mahouts). Elephants love their mahouts because they’re the ones who after months of torture ‘rescue’ the animals.

The cicadas are so loud I have no idea how I’ll be able to sleep. And it’s an early start tomorrow: 7am - picking up bear poo!