Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary

With only five weeks left in my JHR contract, I'm feeling an ever-increasing urgency to see as much of Sierra Leone as I can, and so I was pleased when I arrived home from work yesterday to my roommates' suggestion that we visit the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary. Bryna, Patrick and Kevin all fly home in two weeks, so I can only imagine they're feeling a similar need to seize the day.

As we prepared to leave this morning, Patrick made the off-hand comment that Tacugama would likely fall flat for me, having recently tracked wild chimpanzees. The thought had certainly crossed my mind as well. Fortunately, that was not the case at all.

The Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary is a very impressive facility. Their website gives a great history of its development, from the 1988 meeting of the Sanctuary's director, Bala, and its most famous alumni, Bruno, through to its 1995 opening and almost up until the present-day situation. It is a history dotted throughout by a dedicated staff, who kept Tacugama running at their own peril throughout the entire civil war.

Willie is one such man, and he proved an excellent guide for our intimate tour of the Tacugama facilities. Having worked at the place since it opened, he knows all 93 of the facility's chimps by name and temperament, and displays the type of care and love for them befitting a 14-year bond. It was fascinating to watch as he interacted with the primates, who all respond, sometimes begrudgingly, to the names they've been given.

Ultimately, this is why I don't think my Bossou-based chimp tracking in any way detracted from my Tacugama experience. Bossou offered an amazing opportunity to sit in the midst of a dense forest among wild chimpanzees, which is in many ways far cooler than seeing them in a facility.

But Tacugama offered something entirely different, an opportunity to glimpse the individual personalities of these primates in a way that only increases my interest in the species. And I mean, given their ridiculous abilities in the area of climbing shit, I was obviously a fan to begin with.

Chimpanzees are humans' closest relative, sharing 98.6% of our genetic makeup. And it shows. In the Sanctuary's extensive education centre, we saw a photo of Pinkie, one of the center's most famous past residents, taken shortly after she was born. As an extremely rare chimp afflicted with albinism, Pinkie was born largely without hair, making the resemblance to humans especially uncanny.

Unfortunately, after gaining Tacugama much notoriety and even being the focus of a pretty good documentary called "Forest of Hope", Pinkie had a fatal fall when a weak tree branch snapped and she broke her spine. The center has made a mural in her memory.



For me, the highlight of the day at Tacugama was definitely getting a feel for the individual personalities of the chimpanzees. We started by viewing the youngest group during their feeding.



Willie called out to the chimps periodically, shouting things like, "Jane, share with Mark" that could have just as easily been uttered by a stern mother at a Canadian dinner table. We watched as one young chimp scurried on two feet away from the pack with both hands full of cassava, casting anxious glances over his shoulder, a look on his face that said, "I can't believe I'm getting away with this."

Later, we visited two of the older groups, who live in forest enclosures of about eight acres in groups of around 30. Here, we would meet my two favourites.

First, there was Phillip. Phillip was the right-hand man to Bruno, the chimp that started it all. Unfortunately, Bruno's story ends in tragedy.

In April 2006, 27 chimpanzees escaped from Tacugama, including Bruno, who then encountered a group of three Americans and two Sierra Leoneans trying to enter the Sanctuary. Bruno attacked their car, ultimately killing the Sierra Leonean driver. For a straightforward recap, you can check out the BBC story here.

For the more gruesome details, and a glimpse at the quality level of a lot Sierra Leonean media in 2006, you can check out local stories from the less than stellar Awareness Times, or the somewhat more reputable Awoko newspaper. Personally, I enjoy the fact that Awareness Times refers to Bruno as the chimps' "squad commander" and that Awoko sees absolutely no need to identify one of the story's key figures beyond simply calling her "the white lady".

Anyway, in the aftermath of the tragedy, almost all the escaped chimps were returned to the sanctuary, but four, including Bruno, remain at large. Meaning there was a power vacuum in the group for the position of alpha male. As Willie explained, Phillip currently has a tenuous hold on that title over two aggressive, insubordinate males, thanks in large part to the widespread support of the female chimps. Even in chimp circles, it seems, you have to know how to charm the ladies.

In our brief encounter, Phillip seemed to be a mild-mannered leader. As pictured below, he sat silently in the pose of The Thinker, staring back at me with calm interest as I crouched five feet from him (albeit with a fence between us).



Even when Bruno's young son, apparently a hellraiser of the highest order, narrowly missed Phillip's head with a projectile rock intended for my fellow visitors and I, he merely cast a glance in the young punk's direction. Phillip appealed to my more passive instincts, the contemplative intellectual in me.

My other favourite chimp took a less passive approach to dealing with the youngster. When Bruno's son again prepared an assault on his visitors, scampering towards us rock in hand, Suleh backhanded him. Minutes earlier, this is how we found him, arm resting casually on his knee, his posture dismal as he cast us a scowl that almost said, "And what the hell do you want?" Patrick immediately decided this was me in chimp form.



As Suleh seemed laid back yet with a no-nonsense edge, I was flattered by the comparison. He satisfied the more brash side of my personality, the same part of me that gets amped up over the braggadocio cultures of both basketball and hip hop.

But my chimp brethren grew impatient with our presence before long and picked up the rock dropped by Bruno's son, making a number of threatening motions until we backed away. To me, it was as if he was saying, "Look, I don't want to have to throw this rock, but if you leave me no other choice, I'mma fuck you up."

If it's not already clear, I really enjoyed trying to get inside the minds of these chimpanzees, which I suppose should come as no surprise given my general affinity for ascribing inner monologues to non-human entities. But I think that's what Tacugama offers: a chance to get a pretty close-up look at semi-wild animals and marvel at our shared traits. Just look at that facial expression and tell me you don't want to psychoanalyze this chimp.