So many things have taken place over the past few months and this year has been quite a challenge to us.. One of these changes included the  cosmics sending us our new co-ordinators  Debbie and Steve . They came from another primate centre and were the co-ordinators there, they were also familiar with working with vervets, so it was truly a godsend.  We would like to welcome Debbie and Steve into our ranks, and wish them a long and happy stay.

Over the last months we have been working very hard to ensure that all of our fire breaks were completed in time.  To help with this massive job we were able to purchase two new brush cutters. This year we made the fire breaks twice as wide and then cut all the long grass with the brush cutters, which really made a difference. One man with a brush cutter can do ten times as much work as one person can.  To have double protection all the enclosures have wide fire breaks as well, just in case a fire does jump our perimeter fire break.

On the construction side, it has been very busy for the volunteers who have helped.  The old Koko enclosure was eventually demolished (one could write a story about this enclosure!) and as it collapsed, more and more of the bandits that lived in the area would go in  and eat the food that was thrown in there. Slowly, the bandits that knew how to go in and out of Koko began to mingle there, so when the enclosure collapsed these monkeys simply joined in with them.  After all, many of these monkeys were originally in the koko troop, and because the enclosure was built with no money, I had to use a 75 millimeter  hole which allowed the juniors to go in and out as they wanted.  Slowly they developed a troop outside of their enclosure, so when it was demolished the core of the troop was able to associate with the monkeys that were already outside.  Here too this whole experience did teach us a lot and we can now use these natural behaviours to enhance our introduction methods.  These smaller enclosures never became over crowded as 50 percent of the monkeys lived outside of it  in the day time, came back for feed and went back in at night to sleep with their family groups, then went out in the day.  We can report that the new koko enclosure is well on its way and is going to be another welcomed addition to our facility, even though the koko troop will not be going back into it.  Instead, they will have another super enclosure built for them where they can continue to bond in their family groups.

Previous volunteers Steve and Ali joined us in June.  Steve who is a handyman and wood worker helped Ryan to complete our new facilty next to the sickbay and other enclosures to help us to cope with the volumes of monkeys that we have to accommodate. Now that our new facilty is complete they have been working hard with other volunteers to complete the new Koko enclosure. 

Even more good news came when Enkosini, one of our recruiting agencies, informed us that they were going to sponsor us a huge enclosure which we are going to call Camelot. It is about three times the size of the Skunkey enclosure.  It all happened so fast, one day Mitch from Enkosini arrived with a large truck and off loaded all the material.  A few days later he was joined by his team of workers and they started erecting ‘Camelot”.  I must say Mitch and his fence building team worked sun up to sun down and erected this enclosure in record time.  Mitch is a perfectionist in building enclosures and even though this was his first at building an enclosure to hold monkeys, he did a splendid job.   When this enclosure is ready we will be integrating the Skunkey monkeys into it in preparation to be moved to a vervet forest reserve.  This move will open up Skunkey enclosure again where we will start a new troop and the monkeys in old block A, B and C can be moved directly into it.

When the Engeltjie troop is moved to Koko, this area will become our new orientation and quarantine area for new arrivals. 

Welcome to:

Angi Bowles, Ahkeam Rawlinson, Hayley Cooper, Aisling O'Neil, Maria Pade, Oliver Sheridan, Leah-Marie Hooper, Gemma Valens

Welcome back:

Aoife Healy

Soon we will be in a position where new arrivals will now no longer have to stay in holding cages until facilities become available for them. Our new integration complex behind the sickbay has now become operational and many monkeys have already been released into it. 

Sammy our very special monkey was let out of his intro cage into his new natural enclosure and his release into it was too amazing to watch and worth the effort to see him romp around his new natural yard.

I must thank all the volunteers who have volunteered here over the past months, you guys really helped us and we can see the fruits of your help.   We are lucky to see many return volunteers know the ropes and are a great help to us, so keep going guys we need you all.  Thanks to Josie and Dave for all of their hard work with bookings and looking after the volunteer needs.

I also had the pleasure of meeting up with the primate handshake team, and the core of this team I believe was inspired here at our centre when they volunteered here, congrats to you guys for getting your project off the ground.

A few months ago we were thrust into the science of homeopathy and after doing much study into this science we are now using more and more homeopathic remedies to help sick monkeys.   Here I must thank Josie’s Mom (a natural health therapist) for helping me to get started.   Over the years we have had a number of problems with veterinary medicines etc to treat sick monkeys, and the problem we have that the medicines available are either in tablet form or oral form which are difficult to take. Another factor is the large dose they have to take and sometimes 3 times a day presented us with a problem. 

That being said, we could not easily medicate sick monkeys with these medicines, simply because they taste so bad.  There are also medicines which are no longer working and the new ones coming onto the market are mostly in tablet form, so this left us in a situation that the only way we could insure that monkeys could be treated with medicines was to inject it, and this is also a problem. With homeopathy, we have overcome this aspect because we now have the medication in what is called a pillule. They have a sugary taste to them and the monkeys readily take them, so we can now place the medication into their clean mouths with this homeopathic medicated granule.  It is so wonderful that we can now get monkeys to take the medication, and we have a better chance as we had before, it being a case of ‘just a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down’.  I believe this is an important breakthrough.

To date we have proved that homeopathic remedies do work well and it is becoming more acceptable to use it with animals. Over the months I have seen many volunteers come and help in my sickbay, and over the past months these volunteers have had many experiences and have been part of helping to catch up on our backlog of monkeys in holding cages, and  seeing them released into encloses and integrated into troops is a wonderful experience.   

The babies this season had to have constant attention and many volunteers were up at 5am to be on baby shift and left went it was dark in the evenings. These vols helped us get them well into our program and the babies are now going out into SAAV.  We also completed the move of the juniors from Disneyland into SAAV.  These moves gave many volunteers a chance at working first hand with the monkeys and seeing them go out into a natural enclosure. This group is already independent and operating on their own.  With Whitey and Blossom in there they have kept the juniors under control and have helped with this integration.

To all the volunteers that have come to help over the past months all I can say is well done, you really made a difference. Thanks to my long term volunteers who pulled together and helped to get us through the past months, well done, well done.

It has definitely been a productive and busy couple of months with lots of changes and integration happening.  It’s wonderful to be part of it all.  As more monkeys are being released into enclosures and introduction cages it frees up more space for us to work one to one with monkeys who are desperately in need of our help in sickbay.

One of these cages that volunteers have been giving their time to is Arpie, Stota, Hanna and now Khalev’s.  Integrated into SAAV enclosure now is a new arrival – 2 year old Micheala and 4 new babies.   After being picked up by Arthur and Indy from Johannesburg, our 4 new babies were kept separate from our original group and we worked with them with the help of Jamie, Alison, Mark, Chris and Flav.  The 4 babies named Champagne, Dudley, Calais and Cale are all doing very well with our SAAV group and out full time.

Our sickbay enclosure is now looking great as monkeys are being released into it. We have just been working hard to get a new group together of female adults in one of the intro cages and this is going well. Arpie, Dolly, Emblem, Chico and Arwin have been using the enclosure as well which is carefully designed by Arthur into sections. We have 3 sections in use at the moment and Liefitjie and Bunny also have their own intro cage and are making use of the enclosure.  We have recently introduced Juno and Bushy into here too which all went extremely well.

Up at Royal we have a new female called Beatrice in with Gunther, it was pure love at first sight when the 2 of them met and is going great.  Next door to them in Royal C we have Cientjie with a new friend Sparkle who are not too fussed about each other but still in the early stages!

2 adult males have been released into the new sickbay enclosure, these being Patches and Napoleon. Another intro cage on the new enclosure has been opened up for 2 more males Baromir and Faromir, which is just happening as we write. Volunteers have been busy monitoring all these monkeys and have been doing a great job helping us out with integration.

We have just recently started to take a group of this yr's babies out into SAAV Ritchie, Lionel, Hollie, Madam, Hazel, Meisie and Timbavati have all joined us for some tree climbing; Meisie making an escape up the fence, running around outside while we called on Ryan the monkey catcher’s services! The babies now sleep out in the intro cage with Tweetie and Polo.

Regus has now joined us in sickbay and has his own intro cage and section to the enclosure that he shares with Miew (that is if she hasn’t escaped and is up at the volunteer cottage scrounging for breakfast!).

Many volunteers have been working one to one with Gedafie in the blind enclosure which she is loving.  Thank you to all those who have helped in this enclosure recently. Gedafie still enjoys a nice sun bathe in the early morning sun rise.

Another new arrival is Philese - an adult female who loves human contact. She has been released into an intro cage inside sickbay so that we can work with her one to one along with another Arpie. These 2 females are all very special and we are looking forward to a good future for them in one of our enclosures. 

An adult Male named ‘Monks’ is now living in Disneyland and has come from Enkosini, who have also donated an entire enclosure to us, which is being built by them and our construction team. More to come in next edition. 

A very exciting new arrival is our new and improved sparkling blanket washing machine!

So from all of the team in Sickbay – Arthur, Hilde, Indy and Lisa we thank you all for your hard work and commitment each month, the volunteers that we get through here are amazing and you each bring something individual.

It’s nice and early in our little cage in sickbay, the sun is shining and the volunteers are nowhere to be seen (it has got to be 6:30 now, why are they always late?  We’re going to have a word with Arthur!).  Just as we are giving up hope they appear, dragging their feet, moaning about the early start, ooooo do they not know we have needs??

Now the fun begins, those half asleep volunteers have got to try and put us in a tiny cage… they just have no chance!  We are so fast they just can’t catch us, we even sometimes let them put us in then when they are not looking we sneak back out… we are all laughing at them… silly volunteers!  After we have had our fun we jump in; aren’t we just so good? And what is better we are just so cute we get away with no end of mischief!

Then we are off to our day cage; can they not get us any better transport than this little carry cage, it is really not the best they can do!  Sometimes we travel in luxury, a few nice volunteers put our cage in a wheelbarrow… now that is more like it!  No bumps!  Then the “big release”, fantastic, we are in our day cage, now we have a great day ahead of us.  Those volunteers are brilliant, they swing us round the cage by our tails, they let us play on their arms and tangle up their hair!  Amazing!  If they dare to sit down, we use them as a springboard to get around the cage; that soon gets their lazy bones moving again.  It really is great having those people here, they are our toys, landing pads and toilets, wonderful!  It has to be said that the volunteers are very honoured if we use them as toilets; we have to feel very nice and comfortable before we will, it is most definitely sent with love. 

Sometimes our volunteers bring us little presents which we really like.  They bring us seed pods, straw and small branches.  Occasionally we get to steal stuff off them too… we just love hair bands and earrings; the shinier the better as far as we are concerned!  We play all day with whatever we can find until our food arrives (sorry guys food comes first).  It gives our volunteers time to recover while we eat (they seem to need it though, we don’t know why we keep getting sent such unfit people, they tire so easily… we think we may have to start personal interviews soon)!!

Sadly our day is over before we know it, time for the volunteers to attempt to put us back into our carry cage.  At this point we obviously race round our day cage again, always giving out our customary cheeky grin when they narrowly miss us, damn it we are just too good for those guys!  Eventually, on our terms, we surrender and jump into our carry cage where we are taken back to sickbay for bed time. 

It is quite cold in sickbay so we have a quick jump around while the volunteers prepare our bottles, then huddle up on the shelf and settle down for our nights sleep!

As a last not we would like to say; thanks for reading about our day, thanks to the volunteers and workers who have devoted their days to make our lives fun and we really hope to get some new competition or old competition returning!  We hope to see you at the VMF...

Love “The Babies”

We have been fortunate to have had a visit from The Great Primate Handshake, run by Alasdair and Lawrence who some of you may know as previous volunteers who continue to help us with our website and promotional side of things.

The handshake arrived at Half Human in a massive overland truck, with 25 volunteers, about 20 laptops and a lot of cameral filming equipment!  The volunteers had a range of different skills which included a film team, web team, anthropology team, sound team and education team.  They spent some time talking to Arthur and were shown around the foundation by Ryan. 

They took a lot of film of our volunteers working and of our monkeys.  Focusing in the different projects and spending time understanding this amazing Vervet Monkey.  They worked very hard and turned Half Human into what looked a bit like an Internet café!  But every given minute they were working late into the night on editing films to help us promote our vervet forest and other projects for the foundation.  One of those projects is helping us put together our adoption page, so many of you will be able to adopt a monkey soon.  The web team worked hard on designs and some things for our website. Many of their volunteers shared their skills by teaching some of our long term volunteers how to use different computer programs. They also gave us ideas and advice on making our own promotional videos.  One of their volunteers ‘Oli’ shaved his head to buy us some new editing software.

At the end of the week our volunteers were invited to Half Human to see what they had been working on.  They put on an excellent presentation for us on all the things that they want to help us to achieve for the foundation in the future.  They showed us all of the short films they had been busy putting together with interviews of Arthur, volunteers and footage of the monkeys.  They brought a lot of enthusiasm and energy with them and this most definitely rubbed off on all of us and it was terrific working with such a professional and eager team of handshakers.

We had only one worry – and that was when Al got extremely excited when his satellite dish was working and he could see his blue internet lights flashing!

We must say thanks to Alasdair and his team, this article is too short to tell you about what the handshake team is trying to achieve and the best way is to visit their web site.  Here is the link: www.primatehandshake.org

Thanks to the whole handshake team and for the media material that you left for us.  We will make good use of it. 

Visit their web site and read the blogs of their amazing journey to help the monkey and ape primates of Africa.

Date: 25th October 2008

Venue: Tiger Tiger, 28-29 Haymarket, Picadilly Circus, London, SW1Y 4SP

Time: 12-4 (please arrive at least 15mins prior to starting time)

Who can attend: For all previous volunteers and anyone interested in the work we do. Bring friends, family or anyone who is interested in conservation, achievements to date and also to have some fun with other like-minded people.

Hosts: Lisa Mallins, Lorna Wilkie & the Primate Handshake team

Bring: a bottle! (meaning baby bottle or any other item you would like to give as a donation, ask Lisa or Josie for ideas). Also bring fundraising ideas, enthusiasm and fun!

How to get there: Between Picadilly & Leicester Square tube stations

Map:

On sale:
New t-shirts for sale produced in UK - Men's V-neck steel blue, Ladies fitted ice blue, both Ladies & Men's t-shirts also available in black. Possibly other items too.

Please e-mail: lisa@vervet.za.org for more info and to confirm if you will be attending so we know of numbers.

What a terrific couple of months we have had at Goliath, even after the sad departure of our wonderful volunteer Alyssa who helped so much with the integration of Tigger and Speedling, who let me tell you are doing marvellously out in the enclosure. Unfortunately the departure of Tigger and Speedling left Adoonsie in the introduction cage all by himself which left me pondering, who can I bring up to Goliath to be his new mate?  Instead I had an epiphany….why not try the little man himself out in the enclosure?  Could be interesting but why not ?  Well what a success, who would have thought! Instead of the clingy little boy we all know and love who sucks your top, licks you from head to toe and clings to you day and night, I carried him in my arms for, hmmm, a whole two minutes before he leapt off me and ran like Linford Christie to the fig tree and up he went. He found his old friends and off he went, playing, laughing and having the time of his life bouncing round trees, hiding in the bush springing out to ‘surprise’ his friends – it was the biggest surprise, pleasure and emotional moment for me to experience. This abused little boy who was so scared and timid and ill when he came in; to 8 months later this happy boisterous little man being what he was born to be – a Vervet Monkey living in a troop. Since being out he has now slept out the past four days literally running away from me in order not to be taken home each night.

Moving on I would like to tell you all about the move of Guy from Engeltjie C which old volunteers will remember well as ‘Guy and Safari’ and raised money for them each to have their own intro cage. Goliath enclosure have needed a male to lead them in the troop and be the ‘big male’ to look after them so having had a good sniff around Guy seemed like the ideal candidate. 3 weeks ago I moved him up to Goliath C, where he spent a week observing the troop, then one early Wednesday morning myself and Vic flung open the door and released him into the troop. He immediately ran up a tree and viewed his new domain. Batman, Schmegal, Baboo and Tigger all started to display themselves, jumping around the trees however never approaching him, respecting his size and presence. After 5 minutes however Baboo got tired of all this exercise and sauntered in to Guys old cage for a well deserved nap leaving the other boys to watch Guys integration. It was all too perfect, probably the easiest integration I’ve ever done with Guy now taking on the role of big boss.

Phew, what a lot of writing and that’s not even it. As I speak Kallina from Goliath H has now been going out into the enclosure, loving being a mum to the little junior boys however still wary of the big girls in the troop and still keeping within eyesight of the safety of her home. I have to thank Bev and Aoife for all their help with this integration and hopefully I can report that soon her confidence will have risen and she will have ventured out and found her niche in the troop.

Finally, Skunkey’s new enclosure (old Whitey enclosure) is now gutted, cleaned and almost ready to be built – just trying to use our arm muscles to their max by digging out the old concrete posts which let me tell you is not funny or clever but ‘apparently’ a necessary job. Ah well, I suppose we can’t have fun all the time.

So with lots of love from myself and Goliath monkeys I will rest the pen until next month when hopefully there will be more exciting news to come.

Well after coming back from my wonderful trip to the Vervet foundation back  in Dec/Jan I decided I would try and raise some much needed funds and also see if I could make others aware of the foundation and the great work they were doing.

 Being head of the charity division at Express Data definitely helped though as it was not hard once I showed my happy snaps of the babies we had been taking care of  during my stay for everyone to instantly fall in love with them too.  So after very little arm twisting we also got the company to agree to match the funds the staff would raise too. We decided to hold a Monkey Magic day, making banana shakes and cakes to sell to staff for gold coin donations (1 & 2$ coins).

This proved very successful  and we sold out everything we made within a couple of hours and  adding to it badgering my friends for bigger donations we managed to raise $543 just from the staff donations which we were all very proud of & with the company matching brought our total up to $1086.00AUD. I guess I'm very lucky to work for a company with passionate people that are always willing to give a little back at most opportunities. Can't wait to go back one day and play Mom again and see all my babies all growed up :).

Here are my team members - Violetta,- the baking queen, Clint - the donation chaser & Kendal the web King who made us an awsome website for people to go view.

Michaela Roberts has made a wonderful photobook of vervets all taken at the Vervet Monkey Foundation. The book is available to order online at:

Click here to purchase or preview VMF photobook

Thanks to all those volunteers who contributed photos towards the book. The ones that are used - your names are mentioned in the book.

All profits (except those made by blurb) go towards the Vervet Monkey Foundation.

So far 38 pounds profit has been made and much more to come.

Donations this newsletter:

Kathleen & Lee Healy (Aoife’s parents) 250 Euros

Tiffany Myers (previous vol) raised over R3500 from having a matched the funds by donating another R3500. (see article)

Michaela Roberts (previous vol) produced a vervet photo book (see article)

Jackson raised 1000 pounds by attending a convention plus another 1000 pounds for doing an interview with the Daily Mail.

Lisa has raised approx R8000 from her DVD's so far.

T-shirt sales have raised over R8000 so far.

Goodbye & thank you to:

Kajal Shah, Oliver Jarratt, Jude Roycroft, Sheree Bellert, Tanya Jackson, Chrstine Auty, Lucy Garnett, Hannes & Lize, David Morrison, Megan Duffy, Danijela Duric (return vol), Juliet Dillard, Jude Roycroft, Ellen Williams, Alison Geeves, Katerina Vaisman, Mette Horsleben, Maf Dabbech, Ian Laycock, Anna Buchanan, Sally Wade, Rosemarie Abbot, Laura McHugh, Victoria Massey, Kajal Shah, Oliver Jarratt.