One of the missions of the reserve was the "Small animals feeding", we had to feed all the small animals present in the enclosures of the reserve, in the morning and in the afternoon. There were meerkats, skunks and mongooses. After completing this mission, we also had to do the "Baboons feeding" mission.
In the morning, we had to distribute the food already prepared for the small animals, thanks to boxes where their names were written with the right type of meat and the right weight. We would go around the enclosures, and sometimes had to separate the animals from the same enclosure so that the dominant would not steal the food from the dominated. It was also necessary to attract the animals each on a different side by showing them the food, then give them simultaneously and at the right time in the enclosure, so that each of the animals could eat its own piece of meat.
When we were done, we had to go back to the shed and then prepare their food for the afternoon and the next morning, for the next group. Matt, a 27-year-old Namibian who works full-time for the NGO, would first cut large pieces of meat into smaller ones, using a special machine, before cutting those pieces for small animals.
I had to weigh on a scale the right amount of meat for each of them. There were cards with noted on each of them the type of meat (chicken or red horse meat), the weight in grams, and "chunk" or "diced" (if it is in one piece or cut into several small pieces). Personally I did not feel disgusted, but I do not recommend this experience to vegetarians! These animals were present in the association because they had been raised as pets while they were animals that must remain in the wild, and fed with a poor diet. We also had to prepare the food of the baboons with fruits and vegetables, in addition to the food of the small animals with meat.
I’ve done this mission many times, but it’s the one I like the least because we spend most of the time cutting and weighing meat, and it’s pretty boring. Especially since some animals need to be cut out of tiny pieces, for example there is a mongoose that we even had to feed with tweezers so that it does not choke! Moreover, one day we had to carry out this mission when it had been -7 degrees during the night, and -4 degrees when we woke up. When I had to get out of my sleeping bag it was very hard, especially since I had to put on cold clothes. We had the activity "Small animals feeding" during the morning, and since it was very cold we started it one hour later, while the animals woke up. That day, the mission had been very unpleasant to do, because the meat was cold and wet, and it made our frozen fingers even colder.
For baboons feeding, it was necessary to follow the indicated amount of fruit, and cut them in half so that it is easier to eat for them. We had to cut apples, beets, carrots and onions and put them in buckets. There was also a food called “Milly pop”, a kind of mashed corn, that we had to put in buckets. It gave a white, slimy substance that was really not appetizing.
However, the baboons did not always eat the same thing, because from time to time the store «Woolworths» made a lot of food donations for them, because they could no longer sell because of the expiration dates. There was all kinds of food, like pancakes, fruits (tangerine, raspberry, strawberry) pizzas, bread, semolina, chocolate muffins... I was very surprised to see that all these delicious foods were distributed to baboons. They may have been out of date, but I tasted some of them and they were really good. We had to put everything in bulk in big bags, removing the packaging, and it gave us mixtures that were really not wanted. When I saw this, I thought these baboons were probably better nourished than most of the Namibian population, I found it quite annoying.
While we were preparing the food for the baboons, I had a lot of discussions with Matt, and I was able to ask him a lot of questions about Namibia. He explained to me that there are 16 tribes in Namibia, each with their own dialects. His tribe was the “Bushmen”, and it has seven dialects. He talks about one, includes two others, but the rest is incomprehensible to him. Afrikaans, English, Norwegian and German are also widely spoken. So that’s a lot of different languages in Namibia! Moreover, all Namibian children speak at least the language of their tribes, Afrikaans, and have a very good level in English, I find it really impressive. Matt also told me a few things about him, including his dream of working for Nat Geo Wild one day! I really hope he can reach it.
Then we had to feed the baboons with several volunteers. We were in the back of a van with the bags full of food, on our way to the adult baboon pens. When we arrived, the driver asked us to throw fruits and vegetables from the car into the baboon pen, over the fence. As we threw out the food, he gently drove around the pen to distribute all the fruit. We did this three times for the three different pens, which were all quite large. It was a long and tiring job, but especially messy because of the Milly pop! Unfortunately, one of the volunteers did not help us despite our requests, and he spent his time taking pictures, knowing that he also wanted me to cut the meat for him because it was too cold for his fingers... He really seemed to think that this was a tourist place, and that really pissed me off.
The driver, who was in charge of the The driver, who was in charge of the baboons and had been handling them for 15 years, explained to me that he recognized each of the different baboons, just with their faces. He knew all their names when they must have been a hundred! All these baboons are castrated because in this association they do not want babies, they just want to offer them a peaceful end of life. Indeed, they are only wounded baboons who depend on men, or who have lost their mother because of a man. He explained to us that humans kill leopards because they are destructive to their breeding, but since leopards aim to regulate the baboon population, the baboon population increases enormously. It also causes problems to the farmers and their culture so they try to kill the alpha male to divide the band, but they very often get it wrong and kill a mother. Having pity on the baby, they take him back to the reserve and it makes one more baboon.
We then had lunch and then went back to the hangar to get the food we had prepared for the afternoon and to distribute it again to the same animals as in the morning. It was pretty fast so we had time to relax. We lay down on deckchairs by the pool and talked with several volunteers. The sun sets at 6pm as it is winter in Namibia, so the night fell very quickly. We would then have dinner and talk a lot around the fire as usual, we would also play billiards. It was fun because we compared our languages and our habits according to our countries! There were people from Switzerland, France, Spain, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium.
There was also another "Enrichment" mission, which I was able to experience. It was to build playgrounds for small animals. There were only two of us when I did this, so it wasn’t easy to come up with an idea. Some had built a kind of tree for meerkats, so we opted for a hiding place for skunks. We cut a seal in half, and sawed down a wooden board to make it the right size. We then cut out a small entrance on one side of the seal. Then we nailed the two parts of the seal side by side on the board. It gave a small tunnel to hide. I had to finish this construction alone because my only teammate had left for his presentation, as he was new. Fortunately, some members of the Naankuse association came to help me nail the bucket to the wooden board. Thanks to them I was able to finish our construction much faster!
These first missions were very interesting, because I was able to discover the different diets of baboons, meerkats, mongooses and mouflettes, and learn more about these species and the cause of their presence in the Naankuse reserve.