CAMEROON, Mefou :: Monkeys! “Put Your Hands On Me, You Dirty Ape” *

* Quote obviously In Memory of Charlton “from My Cold, Dead Hands” Heston. Planet of the Apes, still a classic.

It’s what you’ve been waiting for.

After vehicular disasters.

After unclaimed persons curbside.

We have MONKEYS! More scientifically, Baboons, Chimps, Gorillas and Drills (wait, those are monkeys).

These we saw at a primate sanctary, created by the Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund in Mefou. It’s a wild 45-minute taxi and motorbike ride south of the capital, Yaounde, and with Visa extensions in limbo for several days we ventured outta town (don’t ask! Ok, ask: we finally did get our Visas extended ’til August; so here we’ll stay through July). The Worldwide Wildlife Fund offices in Yaounde told us about 100% wild habitats in the far corners of the Congo basin, but we opted for something closer to get our feet wet – with electrical fencing as a bonus! It’s actually incredible the spacious room they get – several acres per species sanctuary, and they say 1044 hectares of forest, total. Think of little wired jungles surrounded by old-growth forest. The primates are all left behind as babies when poachers kill the mommies or are taken from illegal private “homes”. Most can’t rehabituate, they told us, though some might be able to someday.

Eventually, three days later, we travelled down to one National Park on the south Cameroon coast bordering Equatorial Guinea, Campo Ma’an, which was gorgeous, but the most animal life we saw were monkeys from afar – and we heard a leopard purrrrrrrrrrrr just off the trail. For conservation’s sake, the limited interaction was probably a good thing.

For now, enjoy the photos! Click once on photos for your primate close-ups. Check out the CWAF photo/video gallery here for more monkey shines.

Ok, all those above was from Mefou. But the week before, we caught some interesting time with monkeys at zoo run by CWAF, mentioned above. Megan, Claire (her friend working for the World Health Organization), and I enjoyed a swell day. But not as swell as this guy’s:

That Yaounde zoo was fairly crazy – the electrical fence went down, and baboons and monkeys literally ran wild. Imagine after seeing lions, hyenas and crocs, you  look up above a cage, and go, “Is that baboon OUT of his cage?” Then the red-butt-cutie climbs down off the cage to give us our answer. Our guide used his wits and advanced knowledge of stone throwing to keep the animal at bay. It was merely curious and harmless (we think). No pics for that – we were on the move. BREAKING MAY 18 NEWS: Los Angeles has the same problem with freedom-loving orangutans (video). Can’t blame this one on constant power outages, though.

One month before, we visited an amazing rehab & breeding center for monkeys, the Drill (monkey) Ranch in Calabar, Nigeria. This is one of the most endangered primate species in the world.  To the right are some materials they offer and below is a this is just one of about 30 monkeys in this mini playland. It was created by people from my hometown, Portland, with help from the Nigerian government (though, they say they have another spot in Limbe, Cameroon, that gets more gov support). They started 3 places total, and you can read more here. The very sweet Boston-based zoo keeper stresses that most employees are Nigerian, and with chimps, too, it’s worth checking out – if you make it through the dreaded 2-day-doomed-rides through Nigeria.

Just in case you still think any animal in a cage is inhumane, (I don’t; many of these animals would be dead or house-slaves otherwise, and for the species, like drills, it’s their chance to be around beyond the next 50 years), consider the plight of this manic monkey below, that sat scared and jittery for 5+ hours of a bus ride from the north of Ghana to Kumasi, the cultural center of the country. If you ever think of getting a pet monkey, don’t. These eyes don’t say “great pet” they scream “get me to a tree – now!”: