Johannesburg - Joao the chimpanzee has seen a lot of humans come and go.
From his cage at the Maputo Zoo he watched Mozambique move from a colony, to an independent country, before sliding into war.
In the four decades he was there, Joao earned himself an unusual reputation.
The story goes that newlyweds would visit him for a blessing.
Now, decades later, after a rescue brought him to Chimpanzee Eden in Mbombela, Mpumalanga, the balding 67-year-old chimp watched the arrival of yet another human.
Why the arrival of this 15-year-old girl was notable, was because for about a month the chimps at the Jane Goodall Institute’s Chimpanzee Eden hadn’t seen too many new human faces. There had been no tour groups since the sanctuary went into lockdown after the attack by two chimps on US researcher Andrew Oberle.
But Kayla Denbeigh was here because she had been invited by Goodall herself.
The famed environmentalist had been touched by a letter Kayla’s mother Janet had written to her. Janet had written of her daughter’s deep love for animals and how she suffered from Asperger syndrome.
Ask Janet about her daughter’s illness and she is quick to point out that Kayla is in good company. Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein are famous Asperger sufferers, she said.
A common characteristic, explained Janet, was that sufferers were often able to concentrate and focus for long periods of time. Kayla’s focus is on animals, and in her hometown of Durban, she volunteers at an animal shelter and looks after a samango monkey called Sammie. “I believe she would die for an animal,” Janet said.
While at school recently, she spotted a vervet monkey with a wire trap wrapped around its body. She refused to leave the monkey, following it as it moved through the trees until help arrived.
People such as Kayla were needed in the fight to save chimps in the wild, the CEO of the Jane Goodall Institute SA, David Oosthuizen, said.
“She could be the next Jane Goodall,” he said. Goodall recognised this too, he said, and that was why she invited Kayla to visit her sanctuary.
With the arrival of the new humans, sanctuary guide Marc Cronjé could sense the chimps were acting up a little.
Before the tour, there was a safety briefing where visitors were told not to get too close to the fences, and to be careful as “the chimps are known to throw things”. The chimps were separated into three open enclosures, and they quickly gathered at the fence.
One of the older female chimps, Jessica, came over and blew kisses – her way of begging for food, explained Cronjé.
Each of the 33 chimps at the sanctuary has a name and carries a sad story.
Jessica no longer has the tips of three of her fingers. She was rescued from a circus and it is believed they chopped her fingers off so that she could no longer grab people.
The old man of the troop, Joao, spent 40 years in the Maputo Zoo, mostly in solitary confinement. His next-door neighbour was a baboon, who he learnt to mimic.
“They say Joao speaks four languages – Portuguese, English, Afrikaans and baboon,” said the manager of the sanctuary, Phillip Cronjé.
When the resident troop of baboon decide to walk close by his enclosure, Joao will call out to them. Joao arrived at the sanctuary addicted to alcohol and cigarettes.
It is these traumatic backgrounds that Oosthuizen believes is part of the reason why chimps Nikki and Amadeus turned on Oberle on June 28. Nikki arrived at the sanctuary dressed as a little boy in denim shorts. He was confused about his identity, Oosthuizen believes.
Amadeus lost his mother to poachers. The enclosure where Nikki, Amadeus and their family group were once kept, the scene where the attack happened, remains empty.
The family group are being held indoors. With Nikki’s arrival back from Johannesburg Zoo, he and Amadeus are being reintroduced to one another. There is also an ongoing investigation into how the two chimps were able to drag Oberle under the fence.
But on this day, the only sign of aggression is from a chimp called Cozy. He runs along the fence, howling and throwing stones. Then again Cozy always does this, as Kayla has learnt through the DVDs she has watched about the sanctuary.
“Look, there’s Cozy,” she laughed as the ape charged along the fence before throwing a stone that went wide of the photographer.
Kayla enjoyed the tour. “I just haven’t decided which animals I would like to work with when I am older,” she said. - The Star