We're here

Lola ya bonobo Sanctuary is the loveliest place you can imagine. It used to be the weekend retreat of Mbutu Sese Seko, the former dictator of the Congo who amassed a $4US billion fortune before he died. Our lodgings were his former villa that overlooks the river.

The bonobos live in a 35 hectare primary forest. It’s the last forest left in Kinshasa. There’s a beautiful lake the bonobos like to swim in when it’s hot. There are trees with fruit the bonobos like to pick as well as a delicious water plant they like to graze on. If I was a bonobo and my whole family had just been shot and butchered up to be eaten, while I was stuck in a wooden crate and sailed down the Congo River so someone could sell me as a pet in Europe, USA, or the Middle East, arriving here would feel like heaven. That’s why it’s called Lola ya Bonobo. It means Paradise of the bonobos, in Lingala, the main language in Congo.

It was so much fun arriving. The keepers made us a bower and decorated it with flowers. No one welcomes you back like the Congolese. You know so much about them and their families that coming back is like being jolted into a harsher, more beautiful reality. They were so happy to see us I nearly embarrassed myself and cried. The cynical part of me knows it's because we triple their salaries when we come. But no one works harder than they do for us, and if the extra cash makes a difference, then I'm glad.


Seeing the bonobos was great. Some of them recognised us, some of them didn't. There was lots of sex. Maya's one year old son had sex with Etumbe and Etumbe g-g rubbed with another female who then grabbed Etumbe's son and g-g rubbed him, except he has a penis and it didn't quite work. Etumbe had the most massive swelling and the young female kept sticking her foot inside it.

Tory is going bonkers, she has never seen bonoobs outside a zoo and right now she is trying to figure out all her experiments. I'm sitting on the porch enjoying the sunset and a Coke.

We have a Korean film crew here and they are interested in our studies so I'll probably be recreating experiments tommorrow.

Lomela, the bonobo from my last post is here. She made it, but only just by the look of her. It's not completely certain she will survive.

Here she is with Mama Henriette.

Keep your distance

Sometimes I feel stupid because I get so emotionally caught up in what's going on here. When they brought the last baby in, looking like a skeleton, lonely, and terrified. I dropped all the testing and wanted to look after him. Brian said no, it could have all sorts of diseases, you'll give them to the other bonobos, let the sanctuary people deal with it, they know what they're doing. It still breaks my heart. The baby died. There was water around his heart from stress. I came to give him some juice in the morning and he was lying on his side, stiff and dead with his eyes open. I cried all day.

I know I'm supposed to be concentrating on the research, but sometimes I just want to drop everything and spend the rest of my life fighting for bonobos.

That's why Claudine and people like her are so amazing. They don't want to. They do it. And as for the rest of us, we just help in any way we can and hope it's enough.

This is the latest arrival, as well as Pierrot, the education officer's note from the field.

'As promised, I attach the photo of the bonobo in her cage, her prison for the last five years. Lomela, as we have called her, is in deteriorating health. The two other bonobos we came to confiscate are dead. We caught the person who brought them, he is a diamond smuggler and thought he would traffic in bonobos as well. Unfortunately for him, on his first try, the two bonobos have died, one by dehydration and the other by acid in his house.

He didn't seem to understand bonobos are an endangered and protected species and he had neither the right to catch or sell them. The two bonobos were eaten by their captors. There is a lot of educating to be done here at Lodja.

It seems that there are bonobos within 100kms from here. We should go and see. At the moment we don't have the time or money. We must do it next time.'