A rare and surprising sighting coming out of Murchison Falls NP – an albino baboon.  Hopefully that’s a good omen for primates at Kibale!

Kibale National Forest is promoted as ‘the primate capital of the world’.  It has the highest diversity and concentration of primates in Africa.  Its moist evergreen forest is home to 13 species, including the largest number of chimpanzees.

Chimpanzees are listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, and with more than 1,500 living here, Kibale is one of Africa’s best destinations for chimpanzee tracking.

Chimps live in extended family groups ranging in size from 15 to 150.  About six small family groups have been habituated.  Habituation basically involves scientists and helpers locating the chimp family and standing/sitting near them all day, every day, just observing.  They do not feed them and do not interact with them. They must not do anything which makes the chimps change their behaviour.   It is solely to get to a point where the chimps will not be alarmed by the proximity of humans, which takes an average of two years.

Each group has a home range through which they disperse for food gathering in the morning, coming back together once they are satisfied.  In the late afternoon, each builds a nest in the trees where they sleep for the night.  Their range is wide and every night they build a new nest in a new tree, so finding them each day can be challenging.

In the early morning three trackers are despatched to attempt to locate each group.  That gives them a couple of hours head start on the rest of us.

After a comprehensive safety briefing, we set out as a group of eight, with a guide and two security guys armed with rifles.  Although there is a small possibility of a chimp going rogue, their greater concern is bush elephants which have occasionally shown a propensity to charge.

The trackers for our group had done a sterling job.  We had only tramped through the forest for about 40 minutes when our guide got a call on his walkie talkie.  Chimps had been found.  We headed off track, through the trees and suddenly there was the first one and another close behind.

Our instructions had included to “maintain a distance of 8 metres from the chimps”.  But they didn’t say the chimps don’t know that rule.  We both stood still.  Julie crouched down to take a photo and seconds later, the chimp rushed forward, running between us, so close it was surprising he didn’t touch.  It was very scary.

Shortly after that, we were admiring another one when she became agitated.  Screeching, rising up and swinging her massive arms, she rushed forward.  Another woman in our group was squatting to take a picture and the chimp rushed past so close she fell backwards getting out of the way.  Unsettling.

Some foraged leaves on the ground.

More converged on our spot and headed up the trees.

Chimpanzees are omnivorousfrugivores.  Their favourite food is fruit, but they also eat leaves, leaf buds, seeds, blossoms, stems and bark.  That’s the ‘frugivore’ part.  More on the ‘omnivorous’ part later.

These were having a fine feed.

They can sometimes stay up high for hours but we were lucky.  They had a meeting to attend.  After about ten minutes, several more of their group arrived.  On the ground, chimpanzees can walk or run on two legs.  They also ‘knuckle walk’, loping along with clenched fists using both their legs and their extremely muscular arms to walk like a four footed animal.

The chimps in the trees climbed down to join them and they all starting moving through the forest floor, slowly enough for us to follow.  Eventually they stopped in a clearing and spread themselves out to rest.

Or do other questionable things.

These two looked like Statler and Waldorf, those two old gents in the peanut gallery in the Muppet Show, passing scathing comments on proceedings – while one of them picked his nose.

The target of their jokes didn’t seem to mind.  He was happy to let it all hang out.

Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives.  We share 98% of our DNA with chimps.  This one looked like an old man.

Such human faces.

We had an hour with the chimps before heading back out.  It was the highlight of our trip so far.

But there’s a dark side to chimpanzees.  The omnivorous side.  It’s usually just termites, ants and insects, but they will also eat small mammals.  They especially like the red colobus monkeys.  In fact, chimpanzees were thought to be strictly vegetarian until famed researcher Jane Goodall observed a group hunting one down in the 1960s.

It’s co-ordinated and vicious.  Some chase, some block potential escape paths, driving the monkeys into an ambush in which a third group rushes in and attacks.  The attackers viciously swing the monkey, smashing its head into a tree trunk until it’s dead.  Bad chimps!

This might explain why we didn’t see any monkeys on our chimp trek!  If they have any brains, they give that area a wide berth.  Maybe chimps respect the boundaries of the National Forest, because literally across the road, a range of monkeys can be found.

After we finished with the chimpanzees we headed to the Bigodi swamp, sorry Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary, where monkeys have found a haven away from chimpanzees.

This unusual swamp tree is known locally as the wild testicle bush.  No explanation needed.

There were the ubiquitous baboons.

With some persistence, our spotter found a Ugandan red colobus monkey.  Although it was hard to make out its namesake red hairy forehead, we were lucky to see it at all as they are shy, have a very limited distribution and are officially listed as Endangered.

Easier to identify were their relatives, the more common black and white colobus monkeys we had previously seen at Arusha.  Love those tails.

Another chimpanzee delicacy is the red tailed monkey.

It’s also known as the black-cheeked white-nosed monkey.  They have expandable pouches in their cheeks which they will fill with food and then de-camp to another location to eat at leisure.  What comical faces.

And the grey cheeked mangabey, whose hairy mane looks unfortunately like a cross between a mohawk and a mullet.

This one emerged from the foliage, tempted by the sight of those wild testicles.

And lastly, to round out Kibale, we visited The Banana Man.  This very charismatic young fellow carries on a business started by his father decades ago, making banana beer and banana gin.

Banana beer is a traditional drink throughout east Africa.  How to make it?  Take a particular type of banana, and it’s not the one we eat.  Peel lots, discard the skin and mash.  Then add some handfuls of dry banana leaves and squelch it all together.

By some alchemic process, the juice becomes clear.  Not at all like mashed banana.  Strain through a fresh banana leaf into a bottle.

Leave it to ferment and it will be a fresh ‘beer’ which lasts a couple of weeks.  For longevity, though, add some tea leaves and ground millet.  The millet acts like yeast and the tea leaves give a sort-of beer colour.  It’s not unpleasant, but really, it doesn’t taste much like beer.  Or banana.

He also makes banana gin.  It’s fermented in barrels and at that stage it looks horrendous.

Then it’s distilled in a home made contraption.

He claimed it was 40% alcohol.  But we can’t believe quality control is tight enough to know.  It tasted like the sort of clear, rocket-fuel rakia or schnapps you get in Eastern Europe.  But hey, when in Rome…