I’m a little late - but watch this report on ABC news. Yes it has Lola in it! But you have to see the little censorship circles - they are the funniest thing I have ever seen.

I wonder why you don’t see them with other animals. There’s an interesting theory in the video that humans actually orginated out of Congo. I’m not sure there’s much evidence for that, but see what you think after watching.

On arrival at Lola, he received added attention from two American students from Duke University, Evan and Kara, who soon took to calling him ‘Homeboy’… following their lead we soon named him Ombwe (a town in the Province of Maniema)

Ombwe is doing very well, but he is so small and always hanging on to his substitution mother, Maman Henriette. And what a little chatterbox, as soon as you talk to him he answers with his deep little baby vocalisations… but when he screams…boy he screams! It’s a wonder how such a sound can come out of such a small being!

After his month of quarantine it was time for Ombwe to join the nursery, the other little ones often come to play with him, always (or nearly) gently, taking into account his small size and fragility… poor Ombwe has to wear a little woollen cardigan to keep him warm in these winter months in the Congo!

The other day during a little visit to the nursery, in between assaults by the other bigger ones, I saw Maman Henriette, her face a picture of surprise… she didn’t move, but watched out of the corner of her eye as her little protégé passed over her shoulder and for the first time ever tried to climb into a small palm tree… not the best of choices for a first attempt at tree climbing, what with all the thorns catching in his little cardigan!

His movements were wobbly and hesitant as he tried to maintain his balance, and move on up, all the while oblivious to the fact that he was caught in the thorns…

“But what mysterious force is holding me back?” he must have thought to himself!

“Bravo Ombwe!” exclaimed Maman Henriette as he came back to his starting position in her lap after his 3 minute expedition in the palm tree!

With foresight Maman Henriette turned around and sliced off the thorns from the first few branches. A first for little Ombwe!

To support our work and the bonobos please click on the following link:

http://www.friendsofbonobos.org/support.htm

We are delighted to announce that our Kisantu gave birth to a healthy little female called “Liyaka ya Lola” which means “Pearl of paradise”  in Lingala on the morning of the 18th of July, which just happened to be Nsomi’s first birthday! (For those who don’t remember Nsomi is Etumbe’s second baby, born just after the reintroduction in Ekolo ya Bonobo.)

Both Kisantu and her daughter are doing well (even if Kisantu has already carried out the ritual of plucking all the hairs off her tiny head)!

Kisantu is a very good mother and had proved to be in the past with little “Nkumu ya Lola” a little male who sadly died when the sanctuary suffered the terrible flu epidemic which took the lives of five of our bonobos last spring.

The new birth has caused a great deal of interest with the other babies in the group at Enclosure One. Kymia, Salonga’s baby who just turned one is particularly interested by the new addition…finally a little girl to play with!

Kisantu had been lying around with her HUGE belly for a good few months… now we get to see her lying around with her not-so-huge belly and her little baby!

Congratulations Kisantu!…

…and Happy Birthday Nsomi!

 Following endless discussions and an intervention by the Ministry for the Environment with the confiscation papers, the “owner” handed him over to Franck founder of J.A.C.K. who had explained to him that the bonobo would be sent here to Lola ya Bonobo. The little bonobo then spent a month of quarantine with Carole, a young French woman, volunteering at the J.A.C.K. sanctuary. They soon formed a strong bond and she looked after him like she would her own child. The plans began for his trip to Kinshasa and it was decided that he would travel with Roxanne (co-founder of J.A.C.K.) on a Hewa Bora flight.

 The journey was straight forward and Fanny and Gladez went to N’djili airport along with an inspector from the Ministry for the Environment to meet little “Chibo” (Chimpanzee-Bonobo).

We thank the RVA (Congolese Air-traffic Control) and Hewa Bora and their staff for having made his transfer so easy, to rejoin his own here at Lola ya Bonobo. Here he is on his first day in Lola.

Since that day, the little bonobo with his short re-growth hair, who has since been named ‘Shibombo’ after a small town near Lubumbashi, has joined our nursery. On first meeting his new playmates we were overjoyed to see him running around, laughing and desperately trying to get the attention of little Lukuru (who was much more interested by what was in Maman Micheline’s lunchbox)! Lunchtime over, they ran around us in circles, chasing each other and tickling each other… what a wonderful first introduction!

 Shibo with Fanny and Roxanne on his first day at Lola.

 On arriving, when he received his food, Shibo would vocalise loudly with excitement… this lead to him taking an intensive ‘Bonobo sex’ course with Masisi and Kodoro… with which he seems quite happy! (bit of an understatement there!)

Now it is Maman Micheline’s who will give him the love, the attention and the protection that he needs. See how Shibo enjoys bath-time, here with Maman Espérance.

“Welcome to Lola Shibo…”

To help support us please click on the link below:

http://www.friendsofbonobos.org/support.htm

To follow the story of Shibo through J.A.C.K’s eyes please click on the following links:

http://jack.wildlifedirect.org/2010/06/24/bonobo-confiscated-in-lubumbashi/

http://jack.wildlifedirect.org/2010/07/06/j-a-c-k-flying-bonobo-to-lola/

Yet another addition to Lola’s Nursery… We were told of a young bonobo, at least six years of age living in Idiofa, a small town in the Province of Bandundu. After a fair bit of organisation our vet Dr. Fanny headed off to Kikwit with Gladez and Danila in order to collect the little male who had been living with a priest for the past five years.

Having done a bit of research on the web and following a visit to Lola ya Bonobo the priest had decided that the best thing for his little bonobo was to send him to live among the bonobos here at Lola ya Bonobo. We drove the 330 miles to Kikwit, 11 hours each way and met up with the little bonobo (who we named Kipolo after a village in the Bas-Congo) the night before the long trip back to Kinshasa. He was healthy, perhaps a bit small for his age but he rapidly started to come to us in playful gestures…a good sign for sure!

 He was gentle and calm and didn’t complain once throughout the long, bumpy ride back on the road whose construction is still in progress! 

By evening we had made it back to Lola. Kipolo was very curious of the vocalising by the other bonobos, a sound which he had certainly not heard for years, but he remained very calm.

Since then, Kipolo has joined the other little ones in the nursery, a bit taken aback by our big strong Katako, we did the first introduction with Lukuru, a 2-3 year-old female who is gentle and curious and very sexually orientated, a perfect candidate for welcoming a newcomer. Then in went Waka, to our great joy, within minutes Kipolo began to play, clearly happy with the attention he was getting from the lively pair of females.

Kipolo, easy to recognise by his habit of sucking his bottom lip is now integrated in the nursery, often with Kodoro right behind him. Kodoro a little male who came from Basankusu last year seems very pleased to have found a “big brother”.

What a change of lifestyle for little Kipolo, he’ll need a bit of time to get used to it but it’s already looking very promising!

To help support us click on the link below:

http://www.friendsofbonobos.org/support.htm

 A BIG THANK YOU TO KEYTECH DELL IN KINSHASA FOR SPONSORING THIS MISSION!

Keza, one of the bonobos at Lola, has a new friend - Ashley Judd! The Hollywood starlet is also a human rights activist, and has traveled to Congo several times to raise awareness for the suffering of Congo, especially women. Ashley is one of the few celebrities who has traveled to Congo, which is not a fashionable cause. In fact, many Americans are unaware of the international war that has killed 5.4 million people since 1996 - making it the deadliest conflict since World War II.

Ashley’s diary of her time in the region is one of the most moving witness to the devastation of the region that I have read.

But Ashley found a little respite from her grueling journey at Lola, where she turned up without an announcement or entourage, and met Keza.

Keza is an adult male bonobo who lived for 15 years in a biomedical laboratory in Kinshasa. He lived his whole life behind bars, never climbing a tree or building a nest. During the two wars, he and three other bonobos were often starving - to the point they ate cobwebs. Claudine tried for 10 years to rescue them, and finally, in 2004, they were brought to Lola.

When they first arrived, they wouldn’t come out of the night buildings because they were terrified of grass, which they had never seen before.

Here is the video of their transfer.

http://www.wasmoethwildlife.org/movie3.php

Keza, like anyone who has been imprisoned for 15 years, has a few problems. He is unpredictable and occasionally aggressive towards humans. I’ve tried for years to play with him, but he has never shown much interested in me (no matter how many bananas I bribe him with). The only person I’ve really seen him connect with is Claudine. He makes this funny face for her, where he pushes out his lips, like this:

Then I got this note from Ashley,

‘He kept soliciting, so we played and had the best time. He would run and roll, and then sit, waiting for me to take my turn. I’d have a go, and he would be so elated.  And, he kept wanting to kiss, and running to the door. I nearly climbed the fence!!!!!!  We had such a great time, and he did not seem to want me to go, as evidenced by getting a hold of my pants and not letting go for 3/4 of an hour.’

I was so happy Keza found someone to connect with. Unlike most of the other bonobos, who are somebody’s favourite, everyone’s a little wary of Keza, because he’s unpredictable.

When bonobos are raised by people, they have this need to engage with them, which is why if you walk around Lola, 60 bonobos will follow you. But when bonobos are raised and abused by people, they become conflicted. They still want to interact, but sometimes they snap.  I don’t really know how to explain it, but I think playing and engaging with Ashley meant a lot to Keza, especially since it’s so rare.

So thank you, Ashley, for making Keza happy for an afternoon. Come back and visit soon!

On the 27^th of June, in Brussels a demonstration was held by Greenpeace to “Save the forests of the Congo”, among the supporters, were some friends of bonobos who went along with a few photos of our furry friends.

Here is a big shout out for the effort… and a big thank you from the bonobos at Lola and Ekolo!

Hey everyone,

Brian and I did an interview for the NYT here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/science/06conv.html

We plugged Lola, of course!

Q. WHERE EXACTLY DID YOU PERFORM THESE EXPERIMENTS? I’M UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT BONOBOS ARE DIFFICULT TO RESEARCH BECAUSE THEIR HABITAT IS IN THE WILDS OF THE CENTRAL AFRICAN RAIN FOREST.

A. Brian: Well, we went to the semiwild. There’s this amazing conservationist, Claudine Andre, who founded a sanctuary in Kinshasa for bonobos orphaned by the bush meat trade. She’d convinced the Congolese to let her use this 100-acre wood with lily ponds and forests that once had been a bucolic retreat for Mobutu Sese Seko.

Working with the orphans in the sanctuary, they were much more like wild animals than the captive bonobos one might study at a zoo. They were obviously much easier to see and interact with than animals in the forest.

Judging by Sankuru’s dominant behaviour in enclosure 3 “Training for reintroduction” we decided it best to put her into Enclosure 2 for a bit of discipline!

In she went along with Sake… and what a sensation she made… The start of her swelling completely disrupted the order within the group!! For two days, no-one came back to the regular meeting points… (Distribution of soya milk, feeding time…) except the “Old crew”… Tshilomba, Maya, Makali… whereas the young males could think of nothing else than the young females “charm”…

After three days, things had changed… each tried their luck in turn… some more successful than others!

Indeed two very young males, Moyi aged two and a half (Tshilomba’s son), and Bisengo aged five (Maya’s son), were obsessed, being the “cheifs’ sons” they pushed away the fully grown males with total nonchalance!

Who knows… will the ex-star Likasi have to share her fame?

To be continued…

For today’s Friday photo, I chose Waka, sucking on a lollypop. We gave a whole bunch of these ot the nursery bonobos at Lola - and it was interesting that all the bonobos had a different lollypop sucking technique. Lukuru crunched hers up in 2 seconds then ran around trying to steal everyone else’s, Sankuru dipped hers in the dirt - mmm, crunchy, and Waka was the champion. Hers lasted 28 minutes - the total record. That girl sucked it and licked it molecule by molecule and when she finished, she stared at the stick sadly. Oh, happy days.