Monday 21 November 2005
Fitful sleep. We had planned to have only three in the camp- myself, Paul and Leonard- and had 3 tents accordingly. Albert had said that three was enough to keep the leopards away but not too much as to scare the snoozing bonobos. But somewhere Leonard disappeared and was replaced by 10 trackers (who normally walk back to the village after work).
Five piled into Leonard’s tent like children at a slumber party.
Still, the trackers more than redeemed themselves in taking us to the bonobo nesting
site in the morning twilight. Again, we reclined against a tree where slept a youngster.
He woke up, and, as boys are wont to do, had a morning piss, from very great heights.
They were scattered across quite a wide area and through my binoculars I could see
them quietly awake and stretch and enjoy a contemplative leaf breakfast in the golden
morning light. Got up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. As the day
lightened, they abandoned their beds and grazed on branches and leaves. A female
reclined at the end of branch that seemed too slight to support her, languidly
masticating. After awhile another female approached, with an outstretched
supplicating hand. On this narrow branch, 50m up, they somehow exchanged
positions and then the first bonobo came back, almost as an afterthought, and they
vigorously rubbed their genitals together for about half a minute before going back to
their feeding. It was actually rather perfunctory, more a friendly morning greeting
than lesbian sex inferno.
Bonobos not doing lesbian sex inferno (Photo- Martin Bendeler)
The bonobos began to head down towards the swamp to wash and forage for food,
brachiating through the canopy. I was taken aback to look through my binoculars and
see a bonobo make a complicated aerial maneuver around a heavily vegetated treetop.
More so, because I didn't move my binoculars and saw another bonobo follow and
perform the exact same sequence in the same place. It was as if they were following a
well-traveled highway and they had come to a turnpike. A very high way, with a triple turn in the pike position. As they got closer to the swamp, they began to descend
lower and lower, some performing the patented bonobo express elevator drop, others
a shimmy. One female showed Michael Jackson parenting skills, plunging at least 10
metres to a lower branch with a baby clinging for dear life (or fun) to her belly. The swamp terrain became very difficult, with clinging, thorny vines, sinking leaf litter
over mud and streams, crumbling logs. Paul thought it best to wait in clearer ground for the bonobos to leave the swamp. The trackers invited me to join them, so I
plunged in, hoping to see the bonobos on the ground, where they could interact more.
Felt honoured to follow Leonard's lead as he quietly, effortlessly, glided through the
tangle, sans machete, following the bonobo signs- hair, fruit, dung, urine scent, distant calls. The bonobos were always just a little bit ahead. Until at one point I looked up
from navigating a swampy section that was all roots, mud and leaf litter to see a
bonobo climb down a tree 10 metres away, look at me in startlement, and vanish into
the viney undergrowth.
All the bonobos and all the trackers (and friends) homed in on a particular clearing,
the bonobos to siesta, the others to wait for them to wake up. The bonobos would
greet each arriving group crashing through the canopy with hoots of happiness.
For a good long while we watched entranced.
