Recommended Reading: "Hugging the Chimps"

August 2005

Christel Hann wrote Hugging the Chimps: Adventures in Burundi (2004) to describe what it was like working at a chimpanzee sanctuary in Central Africa during 1994, a time of turbulence in that part of the world. Burundi is a small African nation bordered by Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (see map above). The nation lies in an area that has been plagued by civil strife.

Hann had longed to work with chimpanzees for three decades before being accepted as a volunteer at the chimpanzee "Halfway House," which was run by the Jane Goodall Institute in Burundi’s capital city, Bujumbura. On arrival, she learned that two Africans employed as night watchmen at the sanctuary had been hacked to death by machete-wielding thugs the previous day and that she was the only volunteer.

Hann and a dedicated staff of African caregivers looked after 19 chimpanzee victims of poaching and trade. The entire project was run on a budget of $3,000 per month. Besides being jam-packed with anecdotes, the book gives a thumbnail history of each of the individual chimpanzees housed at the Halfway House.

During Hann’s three-month stay, the political situation in Burundi deteriorated. Eventually the sanctuary was closed down and all its chimpanzees were moved to the Sweetwaters Sanctuary in Kenya.

Besides working at the Halfway House, Hann visited an orphanage for child refugees from Rwanda, helped with the distribution of food relief at several huge refugee camps, and finally got to see chimpanzees in the wild.

Hugging the Chimps is available from the publisher Author House (www.authorhouse.com) for US$12.95 plus shipping and handling, or as an "electronic book" for US$4.95. You can also order a copy for US$16.95 from www.amazon.com.

Primate Books for Children

There is a shortage of children’s books about primates. However there are some excellent "oldies but goodies" that are available second-hand from www.amazon.com for very low prices. Among them are:

• Aerial apes: Gibbons of Asia. This book, written by IPPL Advisor Geza Teleki, includes some lovely black-and-white photos of gibbons in motion.
• Leakey the Elder: A Chimpanzee and His Community. Also by Geza Teleki, this book draws on his years of experience studying the chimpanzees at Gombe Research Center in Tanzania.
• Goblin: A Wild Chimpanzee. Another book by Geza Teleki describes the day’s activities for a young chimpanzee at Gombe.
• The Siamang Gibbons: An Ape Family. This is a look at the largest members of the gibbon family, by IPPL member Alice Schick.
• Gibbons. Written by Patricia Hunt, this book includes a chapter about IPPL’s first veteran laboratory gibbon, Arun Rangsi.