An orphanage for primates

Claudine André runs a nursery for bonobos in the Congo and warns about the vanishing presence of the most humanlike of the apes. Part 1 of two.

By Stephanie Hanes | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the May 9, 2007 edition

Page 1 of 3

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo - Claudine André shields her eyes from the Kinshasa glare, peering toward the thick jungle beyond the perimeter fence and the telltale scraps of banana leaves. "Où êtes-vous?" she calls out. Where are you?

From the canopy of trees comes excited screeching. Ms. André smiles. Her bonobos – 50 or so orphans rescued from pet cages and bush-meat markets – always respond. "On y va!" she yells. Let's go.

Seemingly unbothered by the tropical heat, André glides up one of the steep hills of the nature sanctuary here, the only one of its kind in the world. Soon, a posse of bonobos strolls alongside her on the other side of the fence, grinning and romping. André introduces them by name, and by story.

There is Manono, munching on a banana. "Bonjour!" André coos toward the fuzzy male. Manono grins and belts back an appropriately monkey "ooh-ooh-ooh-ah-ah-ah!" André gestures to the big female a few yards away: "She will try to grab your notebook. She likes writing." Then she pauses. "We found her in a research laboratory. In a cage. She never saw daylight."

André walks toward a coffee-colored lake, trimmed by birds-of-paradise and bamboo. Across the water, juvenile bonobos swing on branches and divebomb into the water.

These came from Kinshasa's bush-meat markets, André says. Baby bonobos are considered too small to eat, so poachers sell them as pets – often displayed in cages over the smoked meat of their mothers.

André is unabashed about tugging at heartstrings. A chief goal of her Lola Ya Bonobo Sanctuary, which she started in 1994, is to raise sympathy for this peace-loving primate. If she can get others – particularly Congolese children – to care about them, she believes, then she is a step closer to saving them from extinction. "Conservation begins with education," she says. "It is important to save these 50 bonobos. They have to be ambassadors for the last bonobos in the wild."

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