Volunteering abroad is one of the most and gratifying and impactful experiences you could ever do. In a world that is threatened every day more by climate change and loss of habitat for animals, a help to little communities is fundamental for the understanding and conservation of the planet that we love.
For some years to now, volounteering with animals had been my closest dream. After the internship in Mexico, I had decided to go back to university and study international relations and conclude with a trip to Africa. When the pandemic exploded, I decided to postpone everything of one whole year. It was this summer 2021 then, that my trip to Africa officially started.
Why did I choose South Africa? I really wanted to do a volounteer experience with animals, but those proposing activities with leopards or lions required veterinary studies or those who didn’t seemed to be unethical for animals or fake centres. After some researches, I found online this place called CARE and I felt that primates would have been a very interesting species to look closer at. South Africa, was also a very interesting country, whose history was in the focus of my studies of international relations in Scotland. Everything matched!
C.A.R.E.
The term C.A.R.E. states for Centre of Rehabilitation and Education of Primates. This centre, located in the region of Limpopo, around 6 hours driving from Johannesburg. It is bordering the Kruger National Park, the biggest and most famous of South Africa, so many animals like elephants, zebras and giraffes gather around all the time.
The rescue centre was founded in 1989 by a Rita Miljo, a German lady passionate about baboons, that had understood the struggles they were going through in the rural lands of South Africa. Rita bought a land in the Grietjie natural reserve on the Olifants River, and started rescuing little orphans baboons. Now the centre has more than 400!
Poaching and Pet
Baboons are still quite populating South Africa. Their habitat, however, has been taken over more and more by humans. The consequence of that, is that baboons are sometimes entering farmlands and messing around the crop. Baboons are omnivorous, so they can eat literally everything. For this reason, many farmers take every occasion to shoot them with the intention to kill. When a mother baboon is killed, her baby is left behind, mostly abandoned or taken into their houses as a Pet. The rescue centres are the shelters that try to find these babies and save their lives.
Once arrived in C.A.R.E., little baboons are to be fed with milk bottles and taken care of by surrogate mothers, which means human volounteers mostly girls, whose role is to keep them safe during the night. Other mansions of volounteers are to cut the fruit, prepare the food and clean the enclosures of older baboons. Every day it is a new challenge to guarantee the well-being of the animals.
Baboons Behaviour
When working with baboons, humans should sometimes communicate with them. That is why, during the training me and the other volunteers were informed about some sounds or gestures that baboons use to communicate between themselves. Here are some of those that I found quite interesting.
Lip smacking: passing the tongue between their lips repetitively, it’s a way for baboons to communicate affection. It is mostly done from mother to babies, but also from all the other members of the troupe. It might be translated as our: “I love you”.
Oh oh: this is a guttural sound that is reproduced with our lower vocal chords. It can be done just opening the mouth and repeating oh oh. It is done by baboons most of the time to share comfort and to calm down the each other’s fears. It could be translated in: “don’t worry”.
Presenting the butt: Baboons’s but is a particular part of their body that is always used to sit down on trees or hard superficie. For this reason, it is has a very clear shape as it presente no hair on it. As humans, in time of meetings we might kiss, hug or shake hands. Baboons instead, present their but to each other. This means “I see you, I respect you”.
Once the young baboon has reached 3 or 4 months, C.A.R.E aims to reintegrate him to the wild. This has done through other older baboons that “adopt him” as new mothers and protect him for the reintegration into their troops.
C.A.R.E. is doing a great job saving the life of many baboons who would have died instead. The job in the rescue centre is always welcome, new volunteers can help by donating or participating in the project. Go on their website primatecare.org for more information, or let me know in the comments below!
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