Save a chimp, save Jane

During a seemingly ordinary day of field work in Côte d'Ivoire, I was introduced to the very painful realities and consequences of wildlife poaching. That day, my village associate and I came across shrieks and howls so piercing, that we stopped everything and went to investigate. It didn't take us long before finding they came from an adult female chimpanzee, kept in a 'farm', not far away. The villagers told us she does that often, cries in distress - something I found impossible to tolerate, let alone get used to. We followed the painful sound to find the chimpanzee, in ghastly conditions. The cage was evidently too small, with open grid metal flooring - a surface unsuitable even for chicken to live on -, around her neck a chain so heavy she carries one end with her hand. She stopped screeching once we arrived and started looking at us, inquisitively. As one can expect, I was shaken to my very core. One can hear about such stories, can see such stories on a screen, but when one sees and feels in reality, it is not possible to look away. Next to her was another monkey, a male patas also endemic to the region, in a cage slightly bigger than the its size. I was met by people working on the farm, who explained the chimpanzee was taken as a baby, the farm's owner kept her at home until he realized, as she grew, that chimpanzees are no pets. She used to live in the city, in the owner's house, until one day she escaped, caused havoc, destroyed a boutique nearby, and ever since she has been put in this desolate farm, far away from everything. The worker had lost count of the years she had been there. He said she was very aggressive, only allowing him to go near her, and absolutely hating his wife - a detail I add not to humanize the chimpanzee, (who is clearly crushing on the only male figure she has interactions with), but rather to show the brutality of imprisonment for such complex creatures. Today, the owner has seemingly forgotten about her, he rarely comes to the farm, and most importantly he doesn't send money for food so it is with the workers' leftovers that they feed the both the chimp and the monkey. 

Needless to say, the emotional state I found myself in that day and the following days was very hard to process. Luckily the woman I was with, whom I lived with, felt exactly the same way, horrified and angry and in pain - I felt less alone in the profound grief that we shared in the face of uatrocity, irrespective of our very different lives and cultures. I set out to find a solution, and as they say in Côte d'Ivoire, Dieu merci, I found Akatia. I spoke to Sarah Crawford - founder of Akatia - who told me to go back, take photographs, send a localisation of the area and they would find a way to help the chimp. When I went back, the worker I had previously met brought out some bread, then he gave her a water bottle unfortunately believing we would be entertained to see her drink like a human. We were very close to her, no aggression this time, only desolation. She spent the rest of the time sticking her arm out of the cage bars, asking for more bread but the bread was finished, her face sombre, her gaze lost. As we were leaving she began to exhibit notorious signs of distress, walking up and down, one hand helping her move, the other holding the chain.

Help rescue this chimp. I decided to call her Jane, which is both a tribute to phenomenal Jane Goodall and to her status as a Jane Doe, since not much is known about her. 

Here is what Akatia needs : 

     Transport carrier: $200

     Medical care (anesthesia for transport, lab tests, tb tests, deworming, etc) : $150

     Food for 1 week for an adult chimp: $35 ($140 per month ... $1680 per year ... )

     Camp supplies for 1 week: $50

     Caregiver's salary: $150

A little bit about Akatia : Akatia is the youngest sanctuary in Africa, it was founded in 2017 by Sarah Crawford and Estelle Raballand and works in a very complex environment. Côte d'Ivoire has become a wildlife trafficking hub with animals from throughout the region being trafficked here. Akatia was created to fight this, with fundamental work being done on a parliamentary level - helping pass laws to criminalize wildlife traffic, becoming a resource for the local government in the rescuing and handling of the chimpanzees - and by creating one of the first sanctuaries in the country which offers a home to the chimpanzees, with a team of experts to tend to their very complex needs. There is therefore significant support needed.