Lola Ya Bonobo

Yesterday some of us from Bethel took an excursion to Bonobo Park. The bonobo's are a in the great ape family and are most closely related to chimpanzees. They are only found, in the wild, here in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One of the main reasons for this is that they are not good swimmers so the the Congo river keeps them from spreading out to other areas.
The habitat we went to is about "1 hr to 4 hrs, depending on traffic" away from bethel. Thankfully we did not have to bad of a time and we fell into the 2 hr travel time slot;) It was the overseer in the computer department who organized it for his team to go. The overseer in laundry, Charles, heard about it and invited some of us in construction to tag along as well. I am so glad that he did!
The Bonobo's are very close to nearing extinction. As our guide said, "they are the pride of the Congolese, but it is also the Congolese who eat them!" Therefore it is highly illegal to catch, hunt, or eat them. I think he said it is a fine of $3000 dollars if you are caught. Because of this happening, there were a lot of orphan bonobo's being left to die in the wilderness. That is where the habitat that we visited comes into play. They take the orphans and rehabilitate them back into the wild. The bonobos require a lot of love and attention when they are young from their 'moms', sometimes up to 4 years of it! It does not work well to pair the orphans with an adult bonobo mom, so instead they get adopted by human 'african moms'. The first place that we visited in the habitat was the nursery where around 10 orphan babies were playing around inside an enclosure with 4-5 African mom's sat in chairs watching them. Many time the babies would run over to one of the 'mothers' and latch onto their leg, or hop up on their lap for a hug. Some of the babies refused to leave the comfort of their 'mothers', holding onto them much like a small toddler would with it's mother.  It was really interesting to see....It made me want to hold one of them too, but I guess that wasn't allowed;(
After the nursery we visited some of the other areas of the habitat where all the adults were kept. Each bonobo had a specific name, most of the time it was a town or city somewhere in Congo, and they would recognize their name being called and come tromping from the forest, swinging on branches and even doing somersaults to come to us. They were incredible to see!

The Nursery

Our Group