Life Changes at Zoo Negara

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I've been here at Zoo Negara for 8 days now and feel as though I've lived here all my life. I am living in a wooden house, which has 3 bedrooms, a shared lounge and kitchen with two bathrooms. I share with 3 other girls, Sharon, Emma and Chloe, and a man called Alan. Fortunately, we all get along really well, even though we all have fairly strong characters we bring out the best in each other which is great. As a group we sing, joke, tease, share, help and listen to each other.

I get up at 6.45am in the morning, have my cup of tea and porridge, which gives me some strength for my day ahead. Its about a 15 minute walk, the last 5 minutes being a rather steep climb!!! Then we are met by Katie McDonald, who is our facilitator, she is 24 years old and lives here on her own and manages the volunteers coming out here to work at the Zoo. She is fantastic and we all get on well. We start the day by seizing our rakes and black bags and head for the orangutan exhibit. We work as a team raking all the leaves, which in the searing heat, is extremely hard work. By the end of it we are all dripping with perspiration!. Once the leaves are in piles we then bag them up ready for disposal. We then have our boots hosed down before entering the main building because of germs we might take in. We then do the same for the chimpanzee's enclosure. This is the only part of the day where we have to be really quick because the animals are then released into these enclosures for the public to see.

We have have a rest then its back to work, hosing, scrubbing, disinfecting the night cages! This job is most definitely not for the faint hearted, the stench is sometimes quite intolerable, but oddly enough I have become accustomed to it!!! All being well and time permitting, we then spend some quality time interacting with the orangutans and chimps for a little while. Then its on to preparing the fruit and veg for their dinner, chopping, de-pipping and cleaning, mostly its papaya, bananas, lettuce, carrots, green beans and guava, so as you can see they have a very good diet. This is all then divided up into 6 buckets ready for the zoo keepers to distribute later on in the day.

This usually takes us up to lunchtime, we stop at the staff canteen and get ourselves a lovely Malaysian lunch, usually consisting of rice, chicken and veg, the average price is 4 ringitts (about 80p!!). We eat this back at our home stay, then just have a cup of tea and relax before heading back at 2pm to start work again. The afternoons are invariably taken up with enrichment, we are present making a hammock made from weaving fire hose, we made a long grey tube with capped off hole in it for the chimpanzees to forage for food out of, usually honey and nuts, we wrap fruit and nuts in banana leaves, wrap them up and put them in boxes for the apes to unwrap, a bit like Christmas for them, its great fun watching them open it all up!of fruit, nuts etc wrapped in banana leaves. We collect banana leaves, soak them in boiling water to toughen them up and fill them with sticky rice and sweetcorn, tied up with string to give them something interesting to open at tea time! We usually end the day with the biggest of the enclosures, it houses 3 orangutans, Awang, Punky and Manja, we have to clean this and get it ready for the next day. We finish work at 5pm and head back home.

The evenings are spent usually relaxing, preparing ourselves some tea, reading and chatting. Occasionally we take a walk to the local internet to check our emails etc, but we are all so exhausted from our day, we tend to just head back to our home stay then bed around 9 to read before putting our mosquito net over us and get some well earned sleep, ready for the next day.

Although this is probably the hardest physical work I've ever done, I thoroughly enjoy it and get great satisfaction out of seeing the effect I believe we are having on these animals. They aren't just animals, they all have their own personalities, dislikes, likes, tempers, feelings etc. Each and every one of them do something different.

Chimpanzees

Joe - is the oldest, he's 45 (he arrived from London Zoo 45 years ago when the Zoo first opened, so he is the oldest resident) his favourite trick is he likes to throw his poo at any male that walks past his enclosure, if you are with a man, you may well get the brunt of it!!!
Max - he shares with Joe, unfortunately he's not quite right in the head, he does a lot of swaying and pacing, but we are trying to give him more things to occupy him. Both Max and Joe watch us walk down the hill to work, and they know if one of us is missing.
Black - tends to suck all his hair off, leaving him rather bald, the other two with him ignore him a bit
Raja and Cumbie - they share the exhibit with Black, so we have little to do with these two
Rambo - is adorable, the sad thing is as there is no room outside for him he has lived in his cage for 2 years!!! His worst habit is eating his food then vomiting it onto the floor then eating it, so he does tend to smell of sick

Orangutans

Katie - she likes to fill her banana skins with poo, so when you clean out her cage you are presented with a lovely little present
Anna - spits at you constantly, making it very difficult to interact with her
Sulong - is the largest orangutan ever - he weighs in the region of 150kg and is very dangerous, for obvious reasons we don't have anything to do with him
Salma - this is Sulong's "mate" - so again we have little to do with her
Punky - is a young female who is really gentle and is one of Awang's "mates"
Awang- reminds me so much of the "honey monster" - again rather large
Manja - she is one of Awang's women - she is really subdued, quiet and very gentle
Rochia - she is getting a bit old to be pregnant, but as females only become pregnant every 8 to 10 years, she will keep going whilst she is alive!
Tsunami - is the youngest, being 5, she is a real handful, full of mischief. During a thunderstorm yesterday she hid herself in a hessian sack, just her eyes showing, then when a volunteer walked past they would stop and say "aahh poor Tsunami" then she would grab whatever part of you she can, hands, feet, face!! then sink her nails into you!! She also stole my bracelet off my wrist, put it on her wrist and refused to give it back, she then promptly bit the elastic so the beads went everywhere!!
Katie - she is adorable, she probably gets the most attention as her cage is outside near where we carry out our enrichment duties. She loves to holds hands and study everyone
Choakie - is a sweet little boy but does like to spit at people, like Anna, his sister. At the moment he is feeling rather sorry for himself as he came off second best in a fight!!

I've really got to know them and enjoy my time spent with them. I will be so sad to leave at the end of this week, when I head off to Borneo and into the jungle. I have learned so much about these fantastic animals. Its so upsetting to think that in the last 20 years 80% of the rain forest, where orangutans live, have been cut down for timber and paper, they have been destructed by their worst enemy, us. Unless we start helping to protect the orangutans they could be extinct within the next ten years! These animals should be seen as a valuable resource to society rather than an object to hurt. I cant believe it, but there are people are there who kill the mother orangutans so they can have the babies as pets, or even cut the mother's hands off so they can't hang onto their young, then when they become aggressive or they are just fed up with them they discard them into the wild, where they invariably die because they have no idea how to be safe, or what food is safe, because they should spend their first 7 years of their lives with their mothers learning these things.

Brian is still with me, everyday at break we sit outside to catch our breath and there "e is" in the form of a butterfly - so he is looking over me.

I am going to end this blog with something that fascinates me with people in south east Asia, they all have umbrellas, but these are not just to keep the rain off, its the sun, they think the paler you are, the closer you are to the "moon colour" and the more highly prized you are! There's us westerners trying to get a tan to look good!

Until I finish in the jungle of Borneo, Selamatt Tinggel

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Photos

Zoo Negara
Punky one of the exhibit orangutans

Nr Zoo Negara
First meal

Zoo Negara
Black eating his little treat

Zoo Negara
Sulong - reminds me of the "honey monster"!

Zoo Negara
Katie - one of my little favourites!

Zoo Negara
These are the cages where the orangutans and chimpanzees are kept, I clean them out every day!

Zoo Negara
Katie

Zoo Negara
Joe

Zoo Negara
Rambo - looking very sad....

Zoo Negara
Little girl in the zoo with a "tiny" umbrella

KLCC
View from outside the twin towers

KLCC
Note his jacket is on back to front? they all seem to do this

Negara Zoo
Getting the star fruit ready for the orangutans

Train to KL
as you can see - its rather squashed

Zoo Negara
This is what cocoa is made from!!

Zoo Negara
One of the sticky rice, honey and sweetcorn parcels we made for the orangutans

Zoo Negara
One of the cleaners

Melawatti
Getting takeaway - chicken satay

KL
Me at the pool!! though I'd end my blog with a picture of me as my mum keeps telling me off for not having any of me!!! so here's one for you mum