Volunteering at Bambelela Vervet Monkey Rehab and Siyafunda Research Camp in South Africa

     This summer, I decided to do something extraordinary with my teenage children.  I wanted to volunteer with wildlife, far away from our California home, in South Africa.  I wanted to volunteer rather than just be a tourist on safari so that we could learn more and save money.  We booked our tax-deductible "volunteer tourism" vacation through Enkosini.org.  In June, 2018, we spent one week at Bambelela Wildlife Care and Vervet Monkey Rehabilitation in Bela Bela, South Africa.  Then we drove 5 hours though the country and volunteered another week at Siyafunda Wildlife &Conservation, on the Makalali Game Reserve.

     After two red-eye flights (30 hours of travel) we arrived in Johannesburg.  Then, in less than 2 hours, we set our feet on African ground.  It seemed like something you can only dream of, but it was really happening.  Baboons and peacocks immediately surrounded us.  And wait, those creatures looked like Timon and Pumbaa from Lion King.  Only there were many of them!  Banded meerkats and warthogs, indeed!  This was going to take some getting used to!

Shibula with our rental van parked in front

    We had upgraded to a slightly bigger chalet, called Shibula, since my husband would come at the end of the week and there would then be 5 of us.  Shibula was the nicest volunteer quarters I had ever seen.  The high straw ceilings were as cute as could be.  The decor was African-themed.  We had 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room and a kitchen.  Groceries such as milk, yogurt, cereal, rusks, bread, and peanut butter were provided on the first day.  The WIFI was sketchy but good enough to stream most of the World Cup games.  The trick was that there was only one key, which we had to share, and it was very easy to lose that key.  If you exposed your key while walking outside or even kept it in your pocket, you were likely to lose it to a baboon!  That's why I didn't wear my glasses for a whole week or take very many pictures of baboons.

Inside Shibula

     One volunteer had his phone pickpocketed in the evening but returned to him in 10 pieces by morning.  What was really fun about our chalet was that our back patio always had visitors, be it peacocks or even one of the 50 house cats that lived on the property (to kill rodents that could attract snakes, which would kill monkeys).  We weren't supposed to let the cats into the chalet, but the kids often did.  Beware of the warthogs!  Another volunteer was stabbed in the butt because he got too close to the babies! We had a brai (bbq) in our backyard too, and a nice view of the valley and mountains, where they said you could sometimes see giraffes peeking their heads over the top.

The volunteer house kitchen

the job board

      The "volunteer house" has a kitchen, tv lounge and dining table.  It was modest but clean and organized.  Each volunteer washed his own dishes.  You could eat breakfast in your chalet and make your own lunch in the volunteer house.  One of the staff members cooked dinner for all the volunteers, who all tried to sit around the table together.  Monday was pretty much just cabbage, but usually there was something heartier like chicken and rice.  There was french toast for Friday brunch, a big Sunday brunch and a brai on Saturday night.  I enjoyed wrapping bread dough around a stick and cooking it over the fire!

We were all assigned jobs on the job board.  We rotated every hour between cutting/preparing fruit/other foods for the monkeys, feeding, cage cleaning, washing monkey bowls, gathering natural food, babysitting baby baboons, etc.  All the jobs help fulfill the main purpose of Bambelela, which is to care for orphaned or injured monkeys and reintroduce them into the wild.  Here is the summary of Bambelela's rehabilitation process:  Bambelela takes in a baby monkey whose mother was shot by a farmer.  The baby is nursed until it can go to "kindergarten" in a  separate cage.  Monkeys graduate from kindergarten and go to a transitional cage until they are ready to be put in a troupe cage.  A troupe consist of monkeys of different ages so that they could survive in the wild.  The troupe is observed for sometimes a couple years before it is deemed ready for release.  Human interaction and eye contact  becomes minimal once monkeys are in the troupe cage.  Babies will be born in the troupe cages and never receive human interaction.  Then staff and volunteers choose a release site and bring the cage there.   The monkeys stay in the cage for a while and observe their new surroundings.  Then after several days, the doors are opened, so the monkeys can go in and out.  The staff and volunteers continue to camp there for a couple months observing the troupe's behavior to make sure it will continue to function.  Then they slowly break down the cage until the monkeys are used to not having a cage.  Now they are wild again!

collecting acorn squash at a nearby farm.  (Warren Buffet used to own the
farm right next to this one.  He probably sold it just in time, before the
government started confiscating farms from whites and giving them to
blacks.)  The ride home on top of the squash was bumpy!

Volunteers unloading and sorting fruit.  We were only there one week,
but most of the volunteers were there for 1 month - 4 years!  We met
volunteers from South Africa, England, Switzerland...  Many of them
wanted to stay longer, but South Africa makes it hard for foreigners to
keep renewing their volunteer visas.  They were a friendly bunch and happy
to help us out!  One 4 yr volunteer said she couldn't find a better job in all
world!  She could take the dirtiest job and make it fun!   

 Let's start by talking about where Bambelela gets monkey food.  Farmers sort their squash into grade 1, 2 and 3.  They send grade 1 and 2 to the grocery stores but dispose of or donate grade 3 to Bambelela.  Of course we had to go to a farm to collect the squash.  Six days a week a pickup truck returns from a farm or grocery store full of grade 3 food for the volunteers to unload and put away.  Sometimes they have to buy some food if there isn't enough free food available.  Every morning at 7:45 AM, volunteers and staff wash and chop the fruit.  It's a messy job because the papaya could be 50% covered with white fluffy mold!  But you can opt for gloves.  There is also bread, ham sandwiches, lasagna, cupcakes...  They give the monkeys everything except for  lemons, but the lemons are used to rinse the monkey houses with to keep the spiders out!

All those crates used for sorting, washing and carrying fruits/veggies need to get power washed!

hauling rotten food to the wild baboons

      Any food that is too rotten is collected and hauled out to the wild baboons.  They will eat anything!  As long as you feed them at a slight distance from the buildings, the baboons will not become aggressive against people, or beg for food.  The site of the baboon feeding is also where we collect natural grasses and branches for the monkeys in rehab, so they can learn to eat food from the wild, too.  I was surprised they would bother to eat the leaves, when there were cakes and croissants at their disposal.  Volunteers like to do these jobs to enjoy nature.  You will often find zebra or waterbucks out here too.  If a waterbuck comes, all the monkeys will scream.  They are scared of waterbuck, perhaps for their strong smell, which I didn't learn about until my second week at Siyafunda.

Playing with kindergarteners

     Once the food is prepared, you get to feed the monkeys.  They are omnivores, but due to financial restraints these
vervets are vegetarians!  Bambelela depends on the income from renting their chalets and accepting volunteers.  They are on a tight budget.
     We were not allowed in the kindergarten cage, except during orientation, because the juveniles are aggressive and could bite.  The more experienced volunteers get to work with the young and healthy ones.  (We were not there during baby season, so there were no real tiny ones for us to take care of.)      We did, however, get to work in the handicap cage.   All the volunteers loved the handicapped cage.  Those monkeys are less aggressive and really fun to be with.  Some of them have really sad stories behind them.  One was given a firecracker inside a banana.  Now it has half a nose and mouth, a missing eye and a partially blind eye.  The happy news is that two babies were born in the handicapped cage, and they are healthy.  The handicapped cage became our closest contact with the vervets.  We could bottle feed them, look in their eyes and really get to know them.  Of course while you are feeding one, you may get peed on from up above!  Or the one you are holding might pee on you!          
   

feeding a banana to Erma while being groomed by Oppy  Erma was hit by a car, which caused her brain damage and epilepsy.  She is unable to groom, feed herself or climb.  We handfeed her and help with her daily physical therapy schedule.  She is so sweet and exhibits a variety of human-like expressions, including gratitude. 

Even 13 yr olds can volunteer at Bambelela and
work in the handicap cage.  My 13 year old daughter,
Giselle, earned 34 hours of community service for high
school during her one week at Bambelela.  Cleaning
cages was dirty work though!  At least now she is more
realistic about wanting to have one as a pet!  Monkeys
do not make good pets.  That's what we were taught here,
and my daughter now agrees!   Hopefully Bambelela
will still allow 13 year olds to come after having my
daughter and her boisterous friend for a a week.  One
evening, Giselle screamed at the top of her lungs to prank
me, and seconds later all the volunteers and staff came
running to our door!  I don't think they appreciated the
prank, but they were very polite and understanding!

  Vervet monkeys have blue skin and blue testacles (jewels).  It was often repeated to us that we have monkey ears.  Monkeys do not have our ears.   Vervets are genetically very similar to humans.  They are also necessary to the food chain.  They spread seeds and feed leopards, eagles, pythons... That's why the founders of Bambelela found it worthwhile to make it their lifelong mission to save them.                 

Babysitting the baby baboons.  They were respectful of my
son since he is a male.  I had a much harder time with them, being a female.  I constantly had to block their attacks with my arms.  I was even grabbed from behind and scratched in the mouth.  It takes them a while to warm up to people, and they have their favorites.  They need to be constantly watched so they don't destroy anything
inside their own cage.  All the long-term volunteers
take turns watching them, and we got to help.  

                                                                                                                                          

Julie, has decided to snuggle with me while
sunbathing.  Julie is a rescue.  She was kept
as a pet and taught tricks at a tourist resort.
When not performing tricks, she was kept chained.
Being a monkey, she became aggressive toward
tourists and ended up at Bambelela.

One of the biggest struggles of working at Bambelela was learning to deal with the adult rehab baboons that walk around freely.  They are not shy!  We were not allowed to walk around by ourselves for a few days.  A long term volunteer would always come to our chalet to fetch us.  We weren't allowed to walk around with keys phones or any objects in our pockets.  We were warned that if a baboon took something from us and we tried to take it back, we would be bitten and left with a nasty bruise.  Indeed, on the 4th day, I tried to exit the volunteer house myself.  As I was locking the door (all the doors at Bambelela have baboon proof locks), Merlin approached me and bit my pinky before I could lock the door.  The bruise lasted a couple of days; it could have been worse.  So I learned not to exit the doors by myself if I saw Merlin anywhere nearby.  Another time, I took a quick sip from my water bottle, which I kept in my fanny pack, but before I knew it, Merlin had it.  He also took my husband's shoe at the swimming pool and we had to call for help to get it back.  That was his only pair of shoes!  The funny thing was that Merlin could be the friendliest, most romantic baboon.  He would often come up to me for a hug or just to sit with me. He gave volunteers kisses. 

Cage with our laundry hanging.

      Julie was another rehab monkey who was known for giving hugs and being super friendly but then stealing from you.  The kids had to learn not to run away from baboons that approached.  If you run, you will be chased and bitten.  They will see it as a game.  Just stand still and let them hug you and never have anything on you that they might want!  To get anything done, humans have to be in cages.  When we painted tires for the monkeys or hung our laundry, it had to be in a cage.  The truck was unloaded inside a cage and all the fruits are cut and prepared inside a cage.  Our concept of freedom was redefined.

My daughter's friend, Ava, is painting tires inside the cage.  The tires will look attractive and be longer lasting play toys for the vervets.  But the girls left the tires too close to the cage wires.  Julie, the baboon, stuck her long arms inside and scooped wet paint up with her finger and ate it.  The evidence was all over her furry chin.  

Overall, Bambelela was a great experience for the family.  Not only do we learn about wildlife and how to act around them, but the kids get a chance to work in another country, and meet people who are very passionate about something that doesn't even exist in our home country.  They also learn to appreciate what they have- and realize that they haven't had to work very hard for the things they have at home.  All the volunteers signed a thank you card for us and sang songs for us at the last "goodbye" brai.

We were able to pet this 3 legged cheetah, who is
an ambassador for saving all cheetahs.  She was born
with her umbilical cord wrapped too tightly around one leg.
Her mother also abandoned her. 

 On your day off at Bambelela, Sue, the head of the volunteers, will drive you to Feracare and Adventures with Elephants, with a delicious lunch in between at Zebula Lodge, where you can dine on braised oxtail while admiring banded meerkats, rather than squirrels, running about your outdoor table.  This was a fun day trip.   Feracare breeds cheetahs, which they hope to one day release in the wild.  Currently, however, there isn't enough habitat in South Africa to release them to.  Cheetahs need a lot of room!  At Feracare, you meet cheetahs and take a drive through the bush to see other animals they are keeping in rehab, such as owls, jackal, wild dogs, bat eared foxes and caracal.  Some of the animals are in large cages; others are in large enclosures.  The driver opens a a double gate to the enclosure and you get to drive through it.  We hadn't been on a safari yet, so this was a nice introduction to one.  It was good that we saw these animals because they are the ones I never got to see in the wild.

You drive in an open jeep through a huge enclosed area,
and the driver 's assistant throws a raw chicken out
for the cheetahs. Cheetahs don't generally attack people,
especially those in vehicles.  If you come early in the
morning, you can watch cheetahs run at full speed.    

Feracare has some friendly ostriches you can pet.

We were driven through Feracare's huge wild dog enclosure as well.

The wild dog is one of the most endangered species in Africa.  It is hunted by people

who don't like the way the dogs hunt- by disembowelment.  These wild dogs have nowhere to be released to.  Even Kruger  has space for only 6 packs of wild dogs.  

Next, we visited Adventures with Elephants,
where we fed and pet elephants and even got suction kisses from them.  We learned how smart they are.  They could remember all our names and give us back our correct belongings.  This intelligence helps them
to remember where food is in the wild.

Finally, we took an elephant-back safari.  This was a good place to visit
before seeing elephants in the wild at our next volunteer stop.

     After saying Goodbye to Bambelela, we drove 5 hours to Makalali Game Reserve., which is close to Kruger National Park.  Along the way, we stopped at the Thaba Kwena crocodile farm in Bela Bela and took a hike along the Louis Changuion Hiking Trail in Haenertsburg, a cute upscale town in the grasslands.  We even passed through a green mountainous area, very different from the bush!  

     Here is my favorite tree that I found in South Africa.  The trunk looks like a wood tree but the branches look like cacti!  I saw it a lot on the drive between Bambelela and Siyafunda.

   

     At last we reached Siyafunda!  Siyafunda Conservation is run by one of the seven land owners of the 61,000 acre Makalali Reserve, a Big 5 Reserve.  Big 5 means elephant, leopard, lion, rhino and buffalo.    One of Siyafunda's great purposes is to protect rhinos from being poached.  They have already lost 13 rhinos to poaching.  By taking in volunteers who pay for their experience, they generate money to pay their anti-poaching team.  Siyafunda also has an elephant contraception program.  At first, I didn't know why such a program was needed.  I always thought we were trying to save elephants and that there weren't enough.  But as soon as I saw elephants on the reserve and how quickly they wrapped their trunks around mature trees and tore them down, I understood why their population needs to be controlled.  

     All the other animals are also being monitored and studied at Siyafunda.  At first, I thought that they are over-managing the wild animals, that the wild animals should be left wild.  Then I learned that many of the animals had been driven to extinction in previous decades.  The savannahs had been converted to farmland.  In the last few decades, South Africa has tried to convert some of this land back to its original state.  Makali is a private reserve that has tried to convert.  Even much of Kruger National Park used to be farmland for a while.  All the rhinos that are there now had to be reintroduced.  All the properties are fenced.  Of course, animals can dig  under fences over jump over.  Because people have recreated the wild savannah land, they need to monitor it to make sure it is balanced.   

     That's where our job came in.   Siyafunda does game monitoring on a daily basis.  We go out in a Land Rover (see above) and count the animals we see and identify their mood and behavior and where they like to congregate.  It's very important that they know where the rhinos like to go so they can be watched and protected.  We are not even allowed to post pictures of the rhino we saw on social media because then poachers might learn how many rhinos there are and where they like to go.  After we count and record our findings, we enter the data onto a computer so that the Makalali management can make decisions about whether to add more animals or restrict their birthrate.   We also contributed to the Panthera project, by identifying animals seen in
front of night cameras on a collective database among many reserves. 

Our first drive was an elephant drive.  The goal was to find the elephants and observe them.  To find elephants, you can follow their dung and their tracks.  You can also follow the scent of a male in musth or little signs such as the tightly twisted grass they leave behind.  We quickly learned to identify the dung and tracks of all the animals.  Each of us was assigned separate jobs.  My daughter, Giselle, was to count and record data on elephants every time we saw them, including the GPS coordinates.  When you see 30 elephants, it's difficult to count them accurately and determine their sex and age.  The field guides are very experienced and help you out.  The female elephants in this group were in a bad mood, perhaps because the male was in musth (ready to mate).  The animals all have a comfort zone, and as long as we didn't invade it, they wouldn't attack us. 

     

 Our field guides for the games drives always rotated, but all of them were awesome!  I didn't know how awesome they were until I went to Kruger National Park afterward and discovered that I had learned so much more from the Siyafunda field guides!  For the price we were paying, compared to Kruger, we had so many private game drives, of 4 hours instead of 2.  The Siyafunda guides are so patient and let you look at animals as long as you want and often let you pick which animals to look for.  Our game drives were at sunrise and before sunset, when the animals are most active.  In June, the days are short, so you go to bed early and have no trouble waking up by 5:45 to get ready for the 6:30 game drive.  We often spent 5 hours on a drive in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon, putting in a full day of sitting in a bumpy 4 wheel drive Land Rover.   It rarely seemed tedious, for the open air and bumpiness made it so fun!  

We were the only volunteers who elected to sleep outside on the platform.  More people did so in the summer, but with 2 sleeping bags and warm clothes, it was quite comfortable.  The constellations were very clear, and the sounds of the night were alluring.  One night we were surrounded by hyenas, and another night we saw the eye shine of lions creeping closer to us.  We even saw the pet dog run out toward the lions barking.  A field guide called the dog back in just in time, as the male lion started to run toward it.  From the deck, we could see where all the lions went.  One even entered the Siyafunda property and walked right by a building.  Once, while my husband was resting out at "the next" overlooking the valley, a cheetah walked right by him.   He was a little alarmed because he didn't have his shoes on, and there was plenty of rock to cross to get back to the main camp.  Luckily, cheetahs don't tend to attack humans!                                                
                                                                                                                                                                    

                                     

     On our lion drive, we tracked the paw prints and were able to follow a pride of lions for 15 minutes before they veered off into the woods.  The adult lions had been followed since they were cubs, so the sight of the safari vehicle following them did not alarm them.  As long as we kept our distance and didn't get out of the vehicle, we would be safe.  Sometimes they turned around and looked at us, or sat to rest in the middle of the road for a minute.  A cub who got too playful was slapped by its mother.  On another drive, we ran into lions at night without even looking for them (see photo below).  Imagine you're driving home from a long game drive and your headlights suddenly reveal these!  So we had at least 3 lion sightings of different prides during our week at Siyafunda.  My son was responsible for recording data on these predators.

     
     We found our buffalo on a separate buffalo game drive.   The buffalo are kept in a fenced off part of the reserve.  They are being monitored for health.  A plague from Palestine killed off almost all the buffalo in South Africa, so any buffalo need to be monitored to make sure they won't introduce disease to the other animals.     

   

     Of course, we found leopard and rhino
as well, but leopard move too quickly to snap a 
decent picture, though I was just 2 feet from one for a few seconds.  As for rhino, many came to the camp and we found some on a guided bush walk, but we aren't allowed to post pictures of them.   I was in charge of counting and recording general game such as impala, zebra, giraffe, wildebeest, waterbuck and kudo.  I can't tell you how busy I was!   My husband recorded data on raptors, of which we saw vultures and eagle. 

All the Siyafunda volunteers take turns making lunch and dinner.  You will be signed up with another volunteer on the day you are assigned.  Since there were 10 volunteers, we had to cook once during the week we were there.   It reminded me of Blue Apron back home!  The ingredients  and cookware/utencils were neatly organized and labeled in the kitchen.  The recipe was provided.  It was actually fun cooking there!  If you run out of time because of a long game drive, the staff will help you!  Everyone eats together around the campfire.  As you are eating with your field guides, you can fire all the questions you want!  Or you can sit back and listen to other volunteers from other countries tell their stories.  After dinner, 2 volunteers are assigned to wash dishes.   I didn't complain because I knew that non-volunteer guests at Makalali lodge, on the same reserve, were paying a whole lot more and learning much less!  The field guides at Siyafunda chose to work with volunteers instead of pure tourists!   The funny thing is that at Siyafunda, I didn't feel like I was volunteering as I did at Bambelela.  There were no cages to clean or raking of monkey poo.  We were just observing animals and recording what we saw.  So I felt like a tourist who cooked a Blue Apron meal and washed dishes once.   

     On on our day off, or final day at Siyafunda, Sam, a field guide, took all the volunteers to Blyde Canyon for a boat tour.  This is the 3rd largest canyon in the world, after the Grand Canyon.  Here we found at least 10 hippos near us in the water.  On the boat, I met another family that was doing a similar volunteer trip at another Game Reserve.  They were surprised to learn that my trip was tax-deductible because I had booked it through a charity.  We looked up their booking agent and found it was also a non-profit, so I was able to save them quite a lot of money!  Afterwards, Sam took us to his favorite restaurant at 24 Degrees South.    The Indonesian chicken and creative appetizers were a lovely end to my week at Makalali!

     After Siyafunda, we drove about 2 hours to Kruger National Park and then another 4 hours to Burg-en-dal, where we had our bungalow reservations that night.  During that 4 hour drive, we saw the entire Big 5 without any guides at all!  We were lucky enough to follow lions down a side road, witness several large elephant crossings (the kind where you aren't sure if the last elephant you saw is the last elephant to cross. Can you go or should you wait?)  and we even get stuck in a Kruger traffic jam resulting from a leopard sighting.   With binoculars, I could see the leopard leap and climb into a tree.   

     My favorite sighting was hyenas (see left photo) and their babies crossing the road and resting right next to us. At Kruger, you see larger groups of everything than you see at Makalali, but it's still pretty similar.  We did two bush walks and a game drive at Kruger, both at Burg-en-dal and Pretoriaskop.  It was fun staying in Kruger's bungalow and hut and being in a fenced in camp where you could take an unguided walk without a rifle.   It was definitely much more cost-effective and educational, however,  to stay at Siyafunda!   And I definitely never saw as many baboons or Vervets at Kruger as I did at Bambelela!   

     I'll always remember the Bambelela and Siyafunda staff and volunteers we met, who are very passionate about wildlife conservation.  Not only will we miss these people and the African animals as we make our way back to California, but we will miss the colorful African sunsets!