Liz's belated news

Hello all,
I am sorry there has been no news from me for a while, but I have a brilliant excuse! I went away for a month's holiday, left the DRC in the capable hands of Tess and Nicole. I have a blood disorder call Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, TTP, very rare, very scary. I had a relapse just before I had to return to DRC. The condition causes platelets to become sticky and bunch together and then chop up red blood cells - you may recall my previous entry 'Grapefruit wars', the big bruise was due to me not having so many free platelets left in my blood, not that Nicole didn't throw real hard either! So all the debris in the blood stream got stuck in the small capillaries in my brain and my nephrons (little tubes in the kidneys) and I started seizuring because there was not enough oxygen getting to my brain. My whole body was numb and I tried to call my dad and I thought it was my time, but my dad came and then I swam in and out of consciousness. My dad said I kept pulling catheters out and screaming at nurses until they strapped me down to the bed. I can't remember any of this, except for the lumbar punch which is quite clear as it was \****!! painful! I was unconscious for about a week and had to have plasma transfers each day for a week until my platelet count came up. I came around on about the 4th October because I was supposed to be on a plane back to DRC! I told the nurses to get hold of my dad and instruct him to change my flight dates!
So my brain was pretty fried and my short term memory was affected. I still have kidney pain and weird brain moments, but the headaches are all but gone and my blood tests look OK. Every time my brain starts going wierd, I have an anxiety attack coz I think I am going to seizure again. I swear I have been severely traumatised, but it is not my time to die.... so we carry on. I have to seriously think about getting a paid job, especially with this condition, can't be a volunteer all my life. I have been doing work here in South Africa with an animal welfare organisation called CLAW - community led animal welfare. They do all the vet stuff for dogs and cats from Soweto. I have been training their staff on basic veterinary things. I also get expired drugs from Onderstepoort and take it to them.
So, Nicole and Tess will be carrying on the info about the chimps in DRC and hopefully, I will have some news on other welfare work that me and AWARE will be involved in. Watch this space!!
Luv liz

Grapefruit wars

This is my thigh!! I lost in a grapefruit war with Nicole. I think she was trying to cancel me considering I am a shitty, control freak boss. But, nonetheless, the girls here are doing pretty well. Last week we were invited to dine with some South African military, air force and communication system technicians (!). After the evening and all of us thoroughly drunk, we were $550 up on donations!! Thanks guys, you are stars!!!

I know my news has not exactly been riveting lately, but here are some good ones. Just before I left for Bukavu last week, I heard from the JGI driver that there were witches taking people's blood in the town. I asked him what the story was, and here is his version.

On Wednesday night at about 1 am, there was noise throughout Goma. It was heard all over the place (he phoned his friend on the other side of town who heard it too). It was an eerie screaming and wailing and most people understood that witches were there to extract blood from the people of Goma. The noise was above and everywhere and didn't stop till 4am. (We were partying at Chez Nono so didn't hear much of these witches).

The day after, we heard the real story. It's more like this .....
A woman in one of the villages had a cassava overdose and her tummy wasn't feeling too good. She had an uncomfortable night and a bad dream about witches coming to draw blood (they are VERY superstitious here and talk about it all the time). She awoke and cried out to everyone the evil tidings, after which everyone took up arms against the demons and started burning tyres, banging drums, wailing, screetching, whistling..... making as much of a noise is required to chase said demons. Other people saw the smoke and the burning tyres and thought the volcano was erupting and there was MORE wailing and screaming! After everyone was completely exhausted but sure the demons were gone, they stopped.

I came to Bukavu at the end of the week. Lwiro is still fine but we have yet another baby chimp, picture above. The cages are looking a bit better than when I started and now we can start on the big building of the sanctuary. There is a small area close to the CRSN building where there is still a forest. I have big plans for this little forest and I think all is going to be great when we are on our way.

As for the elections.... nothing much in Bukavu or Goma but lots of presidential tiffs in Kinshasa. The other day, I was going to Lwiro and the gate guard came to tell me they were going to march on the streets of Bukavu to protest the violence in Kinshasa and that I should stay at home. I said I didn't have time to stay at home and asked David, my cheecky moto man, if the streets were OK. He said yes, so we went. In my minds eye, I imagined the spot in the town where there would be problems. As we approached there, everyone and everything stopped (on the way, my MP3 was playing a song called 'You picked the wrong day', but I am not superstitious). All the cars and people stopped and I thought there was like military oaks going to blast through the streets and there was military music playing somewhere and then everyone started again. It happens every day - they play the national anthem and everyone has to stand still. Very moving, on my nerves!

Anyway, I am going home to SA on the 30th. Hoping that Nicole will keep you up to date with what is happening in Congo.

The Universe has a cruel sense of humour

So we waited out the elections. Some people said it would be fine, others (the ones that sat in the Kivu Sun across the border) said there would be attacks and we should just give all our money and if we didn’t give enough, we should expect to get raped and killed. So we sat at home on the 30th. The staff went to vote and things went fine. I think it will be the results that will cause problems if anything.

The day after the elections, we went trolling to look for another house as we only had 2 days left. I have spent a month worrying myself sick about finding a new place. Initially, when Shege had her second TB test and all was clear, and Yongesa climbed out the old place and got herself electrocuted, and I was dying over Shege being on her own, I searched Goma for 3 weeks. Most of the places are either too expensive, have no trees/high walls or are on a very busy road. Tess and Nicole found a brilliant place but the walls were broken and there were people staying there so it didn’t look promising. We found a house in a state of disrepair with a small garden but a few tall trees. We were so desperate that it looked like that would have to suffice. We were even thinking about falling to plan B which would be to move all the chimps to the JGI office and modify the back section of the house as a cage area, but I was dreading that.

Our very last commissioner showed us our very last house on the 1st of August (we were being kicked out the following day). It is not as good as our last place but it has a big back garden and a number of tall trees. We had to do it and so we negotiated that afternoon and after being asked for $1000 per month, we whittled it down to a nice round $666! There are good facilities for the caregivers and a nice room for the chimps. We did the move on the 2nd and spent 2 days furiously putting up fences and wire on the walls so the kids wouldn’t jump out. On the third day we let the chimps out of their bedroom. They were so frustrated being stuck in there and were happy to get out. Shege immediately found a space to get out and ever-curious Yongesa did the same. So the next day, we were at it again, blocking all exits. We seem to have it more or less under control but they still try. They are trashing the smaller trees and I just hope the owner doesn’t have a fit when he sees his garden. The house has 3 bedrooms and at last I am able to have hot baths at night.

Our next crisis is finding enough money to be able to build a decent sanctuary at Lwiro and get everyone outside instead of living their days out in cages……

Lwiro and peaceful elections

After the girls arrived and we did a short weekend handover, I had to shoot to Bukavu again. I phoned my moto-man, David, and off we went to see how things were going at Lwiro. I hadn’t been there in a month, another month for the dust to be ground into a fine powder. Laura gave me an MP3 player and put my favourite hard angry rock on it, so the trip there and back wasn’t so painful.

When I was last there, we got some funding from the Born Free Foundation and they allowed me to use some for constructing bigger cages for the monkeys. At last, the 5 Red-tails are in one of the long enclosures, the 4 Owl monkeys are in two new and bigger cages and the Cercocerbus female is out of her 30 x 30 x 40 cm dark service cage and she can actually stand up. It is just the male and female Cercopithecus aethiops that are still in separate cages (very small) that need another bigger cage, but I don’t have more funds for this at present.

A few days after my arrival, it decided to be rain season. I stupidly thought that we would make it on the motorbike but it was real difficult. Took us 3 hours to get there and the mud is like baboon shit. At one stage the mud got stuck so bad between the front tyre and the guard that the wheel just stopped and we plopped off the side! It was very funny and at least we were going slow.

On Monday, the ICCN had confiscated a tiny infant gorilla that the military had given up. For every one captured baby gorilla, there is a family of 5 to 20 that has to be killed in order to get it. Gorillas protect their young fiercely. We are trying to get the baby across to Goma as the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project has more skill in caring for her. Baby gorillas are very sensitive and, unlike chimps, don’t survive very long without the proper care. It’s more red tape that we have to fight.

I had to cut my time in Lwiro short as there were elections on the 30th of July. The airport is 36 kms away from Bukavu. Got there in the morning, waited the whole day. At 4pm they said the flight was cancelled. Surprisingly though, my bag went to Goma without me on the morning flight! I had to go all the way back to Bukavu on the bus and then get up at 5am to catch the bus the following day, only to be informed that the flight was only at 3pm. The other people that were also waiting to get to Goma, were ‘election observers’ and journalists. They made a stink and a flight was organised for 11am. I returned on the 28th and we waited for elections. Most of the NGO’s closed down and the mzungus went across the border to Rwanda. Nothing really happened. Everyone was happy to have their vote and things went smoothly. I think it was only in Kinshasa that there was major unrest.

Our next crisis was that we were being kicked out of the house on 2nd August and we still had nowhere to go………