•Chimpanzees ‘talking’ at Chingola’s Chimfunshi Chimpanzee Orphanage.
By HUMPHREY NKONDE –
THE world was treated to a rude shock following revelation of the existence of a humanzee, a creature that was human and partly chimpanzee in Nigeria.
Many readers on the Internet have commented on the bizarre laboratory creature in the West African nation following the appearance of the weird article in the media.
The rare creature is able to talk, a clear indication that the mumbling of chimpanzees is close to human beings’ vocal language.
While human beings do not understand the vocal language of chimpanzees, those primates can understand human languages.
In fact, the more than 100 chimpanzees at Chingola’s Chimfunshi Chimpanzee Orphanage in Zambia for example, have names by which they are called and understand some verbal instructions.
It has long been held that Chimpanzees are very close to human beings in terms of genetic formation and the humanzee in Nigeria, suffering from HIV/AIDS, is proof of scientific findings.
Just as the astonishing story of the humanzee broke out, this author was on the way to Chimfunshi Chimpanzee Orphanage, located some 60 kilometres in a thick forest west of Chingola.
The Copperbelt has great potential in tourism and aviation-related activities that can contribute to the creation of new jobs and improvement of Zambia’s gross domestic product (GDP).
It has long been held as a mining region owing to the abundance of copper, cobalt, limestone and gemstones, some of which cannot be found elsewhere in the world.
However, a close look at this mining region shows that it has the potential of being a tourist destination and an aviation hub.
Top chimpanzee orphanage
Chimfunshi Chimpanzee Orphanage is one of the well-known treasures on the Copperbelt acknowledged by the outside world and less visited by the local tourists.
The world’s largest rehabilitation and sanctuary for chimpanzees has been a learning point for veterinarians from all over the world and most of the local people on its doorstep in Chingola have never been there.
Chimpanzees are native to Africa and some of endangered animal species because they are poached for meat and trafficked to other parts of the globe, where they fetch a lot of money.
They are used as pets or as specimens for scientific studies, abused and exposed to human habits such as beer drinking and cigarette smoking.
Rehabilitating a drug addicted chimpanzee is one problem that has been handled at Chimfunshi.
A portion covering 1,200 hectares, with its wire fence free-range enclosures in the pristine habitat, has been reserved for the chimpanzees at Chimfunshi.
They exhibit human traits such as love, motherly care, grief, annoyance, jealousy, deception, self esteem, political dominance and many others.
These are some of the characteristics that the author in the company of Joseph Mumbi, the manager at Ndola’s Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport, observed with keen interest.
As we approached the electrified wire fence in which the primates are kept, one of the chimpanzees leaped into the air, quickly ran to a metallic window of a building in which members of a group sleep and started banging it with a clenched fist.
The force with which the punches landed on the metal sheet made the author see why glass was not used to make the window.
At pains to explain banging by the chimpanzee on the metallic window, the author asked Innocent Mulenga, a UK-trained primatologist managing Chimfunshi.
Mr Mulenga said, there was dominance of a male in the group just like it is in human relations.
The primatologist explained that the chimpanzee that banged on the window was not the dominant male and wanted to deceive the author and Mr Mumbi as newcomers, that it controlled the cluster.
If you are a photographer who has taken shots in which human lovers have posed romantically, you need to advance to romantic portrait photographs of chimpanzees at Chimfunshi.
A male chimpanzee, after approaching the wire fence embraced a female carrying a baby, providing an opportunity for the picture of the day to the author armed with an EOS 600 Canon digital camera.
Discipline and sign language
To make the chimpanzees come close to the electrified wire fence, Mr Mulenga threw groundnuts still in the pods into the air.
Some of those groundnuts could not land on the ground, as the apes clasped them airborne.
As the groundnuts were thrown into the air, the chimpanzees stood upright on their two legs, a posture that most of the lower animals cannot manage.
At one point, a big chimpanzee pinned down a young one to the ground after it picked groundnuts quicker than the elderly, signifying the discipline that is similar to that of human beings.
The young one gestured to Mr Mulenga, the thrower of the ground nuts, that it had unfairly been treated and possibly conveying the message that the elderly chimpanzee was not above the overseer in terms of authority.
Advanced sign language, not seen in lower animals such as goats and cats, exhibited by the young chimpanzee that was pinned down to the ground, is another aspect that makes those primates communicate like human beings.
Chimfunshi’s accolades
Chimfunshi was initiated by a couple of British origin Sheila Siddle and her deceased husband David on October 18, 1983.
In 2001, the couple was awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth II of England and the Global 500 Roll of Honour by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) the previous year for their role in conserving Chimpanzees.
It was an exciting moment for the author to meet Ms Siddle, who is passionate about animal and tree conservation, at her farm next to the Chimpanzee sanctuary.
She has written a book on chimpanzees titled In My Family Tree, with some copies in large print for readers with sight problems, except that the Oxford-published version does not have pictures of the apes.
In the first chapter of the book, Ms Siddle explains how the sanctuary started on October18, 1983, saying: “I had received a message around midday over the short-wave radio that he (Pierre Fabel her son-in-law) was on his way to Chimfunshi, our farm along the upper Kafue River, but nothing prepared me for what lay ahead.
“Pierre came out of his truck… carrying this pathetic terrified animal in his arms. It was a baby chimpanzee, not like any chimp I have seen before …This small chimp-a bag of bones, really-had badly smashed teeth and the right side of his mouth was slit open about two inches more than it should have been.”
The young chimpanzee was named Pal and was not the first primate at Chimfunshi, as the book explains, there was already another one named Rocky that was confiscated from boys who wanted to stone him to death.
In her book, Ms Siddle talks of carrying Pal on her back in the Zambian way by strapping him in a Chitenge material and giving him liquids using a feeding bottle like it is done to human babies.
Air transport
Attractions like Chimfunshi would require air transport so that foreign tourists can get there quickly, especially that it is located in a thick forest on the outskirts of Chingola.
Most of the local people who have the purchasing power and in need of leisure weekends on the Copperbelt can get there on an helicopter, operated without having to create an airstrip, required for manoeuvres of a fixed wing aircraft.
Helicopter rides have boosted tourism in Livingstone, offering tourists aerial views of the Batoka Gorge and the Victoria Falls, one of the seven natural wonders of the world.
Tourists can easily get to Ndola through Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport and in a short time, would be at Chimfunshi in a helicopter.
Manufacturers of helicopters have reached a stage of producing those rotary wing aircraft to customer specification.
The one suitable for operations between the airport and Chimfunshi can preferably be a mass carrier to achieve economies of scale.
Initial investments can be reduced by using a leased helicopter for other financial resources to cover fixed and variable costs associated with air transport operations.
Operators elsewhere have resorted to airborne restaurants and aerial photography to cover operational costs.
Copper is a wasting asset and already mining activities are shifting to Northern Western Province and the Copperbelt, the country’s economic giant, can tap into tourism resources such the Chimfunshi Chimpanzee Orphanage.
(The author is a travel journalist who recently won the global Travelpot award from the UK and reports for the UK’s Airports of the World magazine and is the newly appointed correspondent for the World Airnews magazine)
