Friday 13th November saw the arrival of another two chimpanzee infants at Tacugama. Just as the weekly Tacugama Kids Programme was in full cry with another thirty rural schoolchildren on a full day visit to the sanctuary, Samson and Delila were carried up the hill and through the gates to join the Tacugama family.

Willie takes down details from Mr Bangura

The chimpanzees arrived with us as the result of the positive action from one of the Ministry of Agriculture’s livestock officers. Based at Sierra Leone’s international airport at Lungi, on one of his routine visits to the farm of an ex-patriot hotel manager he found the baby chimps in residence. He advised the man that keeping the chimps was illegal and that he should contact Tacugama to arrange for their transfer. On learning that the chimps were still at the farm a month later, he again advised that they should be handed over and fortunately a few days later was contacted by the hotel manager and asked to bring them to the sanctuary. He arrived with the man who had cared for the chimps since their arrival at the farm.

Samson
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Delila
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Samson and Delila (formerly Lucy but renamed as we already have three Lucy’s at Tacugama!) are clearly very used to being with people despite being so young – probably around eighteen months old. We know little about their background – apparently Samson was rescued in very poor health from a village to the north of the airport. Delila had been carried around and dressed up in children’s clothes for photographs. They are both in a fair condition though Samson has a bad skin infection. They will go through quarantine together for the next three months joining Chippe, Thulani, Abu, Sunny, Blama and Kangari; Mama Posseh has her work cut out.
At least that day we were able to introduce the carer of the chimps to the children at the sanctuary and they explained what they had learned that day about why chimps should be left in the wild. He and the livestock officer left with a clear message to take back to Lungi, let’s hope it spreads.

Enforcing the message
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Tess will soon bring you an update on all our quarantine residents and how Gaura and his group are progressing.
As you can tell we are getting increasingly desperate to raise the US$70,000 that it will take to fence two further forest enclosures so that the growing number and growing size of our chimps can all benefit from an environment as close to their natural habitat as possible. Right now we are very close to being full up with 98 chimps reliant on us for care. Hopefully our trip to Europe will deliver some results. We’ll keep you informed.