Jojo

Jojo is an adult female baboon from my troop. She was found a couple years ago being chained to a tree in someone’s backyard. Unfortunately, not an unusual story for baboons here in Africa. You can watch her rescue and the beginning of her rehabilitation story here:

 Jojo's Story

Jojo was the lowest-ranked baboon in the troop. She’s very sweet but often spent time by herself. When we put the baboons into their release enclosure for a few days prior to the release in order for them to slowly get acclimated to their new surroundings, Jojo unfortunately became the target of some aggression stemming from the stress of a new environment. Her injuries prevented her from being released and she was taken back to the Centre for some treatment and recuperation time. After a few weeks there, she seemed back to her old self and we traveled to Lilongwe to pick her up.

The troop was still hanging around the release enclosure area and using trees in the vicinity as their sleeping site, so it was an ideal time to reintroduce her to the troop. Luckily, everything went very smoothly. She spent a day and a half in the enclosure again, to allow the troop time to say hello and for her to again acclimate to her surroundings. Everyone greeted each other happily, which was a delight to see. There was lots of grunting and lipsmacks and grooming.

When we opened the enclosure she ran right out and up a nearby tree. She seemed a little apprehensive at first about where she was, just as the other baboons had on their first day. She quickly joined her friends and has been living her free life in the bush ever since! In the following few weeks, she has done remarkable well. She doesn’t pay us, the research team, any attention, she keeps up with the rest of the troop, and she eats plenty of the good natural foods around. She gets particularly excited when finding seed pods that grown near the ground. She is already gained weight and body condition and is looking as healthy as ever. 

Initially, we weren’t sure the whole process was going to work. Was the troop going to accept her again? Were they going to be aggressive towards her? Was she not going to want to join her troop again? Would she not be able to keep up with the others? But Jojo has absolutely excelled in all areas. It has been a joy to be able to give this kind baboon yet another chance at being free. To me, it even seems like that the rest of the baboons were waiting for her to return. As soon as she did they became more vocal throughout the day, and they began to explore their home range further. The very next day after Jojo's release the troop began to expand their foraging areas and started sleeping at different sleeping sites.

February in Kasungu

I’m sorry I haven’t written in so very long. There’s so much to catch up on now, I don’t know where to start!

The Release

The release got off to a rather rocky start. Immediately the baboons shot off in the opposite direction than we thought and than we anticipated. The next day we found them, but they had split into two groups, one of 9, with the two adult males, the one subadult male, a juvenile male, four adult females, and one infant, the other of 12 baboons, made up of two adult females and ten juvenile males and females. Both groups travelled enormous distances for baboons, around 20 km a day, but unfortunately in the wrong directions. We kept track of the two groups in hopes they would reunite, but the next day the group of 12 ran into a very large troop of wild baboons, about 70 individuals strong. I watched as the wild troop chased off my small group of 12 young baboons. The 12 scattered and basically that was the last we saw of them. We, then and now, searched the area far and wide for any sign of them. A week or so later, one of the juvenile males was spotted with another wild troop, looking happy and healthy. So that was great news!

Lately

Now my days are spent focusing on the 8 baboons I have, John, Bruiser, Chip, Wendy, Tosca, Bobbit, Jilly, and Brian. They are finally behaving like we anticipated and spending time around their release site. I am still provisioning the troop with some food to ease their transition into the wild. They spend their days in an absolutely beautiful area that is ripe with all sorts of natural foods. They eat grass and mushrooms and grasshoppers, and even some bird eggs. It is awesome to see them taking advantage of all that the bush has for them. It has been the height of the rainy season so everything is in full bloom, the grass is as tall as I am, and the clouds are always amazing. All the baboons are doing really well, eating lots and growing rapidly. They’re slowly expanding their range that they explore everyday. It’s tiring work though, I’m in the field when the baboons get up and leave when they go up in their trees to sleep (roughly 6am-6pm), but it’s all good fun and for the best cause ever!

Health

A few weeks ago I had a crazy health thing. No, not malaria again, thank goodness. I had a nasty bacterial infection just next to my knee. It was rather red and painful. I came back to Lilongwe to get it sorted out. Sorting it out turned out to be quite unpleasant. The doctor here had to slice my leg open a bit and squeeze a bunch of nasty stuff out of it, root around in my knee, and then leave it open so it could drain and heal. Sorry if that’s too much information, but it was really gross. I spent the next week hobbling around on crutches while the gaping hole in my knee slowly closed up. It was such a bummer to miss a week of work, but it was nice to be in Lilongwe again. Apparently the rainy season affects people in crazy ways! But good news is that the weeks since have all been fine!

Birthday

For the 6^th year in a row, I spent my birthday in a foreign country. My friend Kat from the centre came up to Kasungu to surprise me the weekend before and we had a nice little party with the just the few of us. It was unexpectedly very fun. The next day we all hung out and then climbed Black Rock, which is, well, a large rock. It overlooks the whole park; trees as far as you can see, which includes over to Zambia. We drank some beers as the sun set. Unfortunately, and at the same time fortunately, our car broke down a few days later and we had to return to Lilongwe to get it fixed. So I was able to spend my actual birthday here at the centre amongst friends and going out on the town. It was a great way to bring on 28!

Jojo

I’m writing this from Lilongwe now, where I’m preparing to bring Jojo back for re-release. She was part of the original troop, but sustained some injuries in the release enclosure and was taken back to the centre to recuperate. Now that she’s all better I’m going to bring her back up to Kasungu to rejoin the troop and get another chance at living in the wild. Very exciting!!!

Kasungu

Sorry about the delay in updates!! Life here has been insanely busy! (we've also had a new policy in talking about projects in social media). A real update with shortly follow this one, I PROMISE. But for now, here are some photos of where I live now, Kasungu National Park, some of my released baboons, and some of the various other creatures I've encountered around. Hope you like em!