No-one gets to the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage by accident.

The road turns bad around Kitwe, where cracked pavement and potholes reduce traffic to a crawl, then disappears altogether just past Chingola. From there, only the most intrepid drivers proceed, dodging roadblocks and ditches, flooded streams and felled trees.

Road signs? Never saw one.

But once you reach the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage, all that ceases to matter. Three hours of bad highway seem insignificant when you gaze upon 70 chimpanzees eating, sleeping, grooming and climbing trees-behaving pretty much as they would in the wild-and realise that most of these apes should be dead. Rescued from poachers or liberated from dilapidated zoos and circuses, all of these chimps are alive only because they got lucky. They wound up at Chimfunshi.

Founded by a British expatriate couple, David and Sheila Siddle, Chimfunshi has been taking in injured or unwanted animals since 1983, when a badly wounded chimpanzee was brought to their cattle farm along the Kafue River in central Zambia. Suffering from deep facial cuts, dehydration and a smashed jaw-presumably to keep it from biting its captors-the chimp was given little or no chance of survival. But the Siddles nursed the ape, christened "Pal", back to health, and thereby established a tradition of care and devotion that quickly flourished.

"People can be so cruel sometimes; I never cease to be amazed," Sheila Siddle said. "Do they think animals don't have feelings? Do they think animals don't feel pain? It astounds me that these animals can still trust human beings after what some of them have been through."

Take Louise, for instance, a female chimp who was discovered drugged and taped inside a shoe box, stuffed into hand luggage on a flight to Russia. Or Clement, who was so dehydrated that he arrived at Chimfunshi unconscious, his skin sagging and almost devoid of hair. His only lifeline was another tiny chimp, Brian, who clung to Clement's semi-corpse so tightly that they had to be picked up together. Or Milla, who spent more than a decade as a barroom attraction in Tanzania, until she became addicted to alcohol and cigarettes.

Yet each of these chimps has thrived at Chimfunshi, along with dozens more who've survived equally horrific ordeals. Small wonder that the orphanage now ranks as the largest chimpanzee sanctuary on earth, or that the steady stream of orphaned chimps shows no sign of letting up. The Siddles are hard at work on a massive expansion project that will include two 500-acre enclosures for chimps, but even that won't be enough. Poaching and habitat destruction across central Africa-home to most of the remaining 110,000 wild chimpanzees-ensures that Chimfunshi will always have customers.

"After we said yes to the first chimp, they haven't stopped coming, " said David Siddle. "But we'll never turn one down."

Hunted for meat or captured for sale to foreign zoos and animal testing labs, chimpanzees are disappearing at a rate of 6,000 per year. Yet they are actually man's closest relative; in fact, chimps are genetically closer to humans than gorillas or other apes, and they develop complex social structures that mirror man's own.

Baby chimpanzees, for instance, mature at roughly the same rate as humans, often staying close to their mothers until the age of eight. But when hunters seek to capture a baby-given that young chimps are easier to train and bring the highest price-as many as ten adults will be killed trying to protect the infant. Ironically, just one in five baby chimps survives the ordeal, many dying out of outright despair.

"It is terrible and it is cruel, and some nights I cannot sleep thinking of it all," wrote anthropologist Jane Goodall recently, herself a visitor to Chimfunshi. In fact, it was Goodall who brought Milla to the orphanage, and later presented the Siddles with the Jane Goodall Award for their contribution to primate conservation.

Yet the Siddles never wanted to go into the animal orphanage business. A bawdy, boisterous couple, they raised five children in Zambia and were planning to spend their retirement years (David is 72, Sheila 68) with drinks in hand, watching the sun set over the Kafue as it flowed past their house, their grandchildren splashing about in the small pool nearby. Instead, they wake well before sunrise to prepare food for 57 adult chimps and warm bottles of milk for the twelve chimp babies in the nursery.

And the pool? That was long ago given over to Billy, the massive hippo they raised from a ten-day-old calf after her mother was killed. Billy spent the first few years of her life in the Siddles' house and slept on their leather couch. Now, despite her one-and-a-half ton bulk, she pushes in the kitchen door each night in search of companionship, or flings a spare tyre around the compound like a chew toy. "I'm afraid Billy is just lonely," sighs Sheila Siddle. "There aren't any other hippos up and down the Kafue, so she turns to people."

Chimfunshi exists primarily through the kindness of others. Each week, Sheila Siddle drives into Chingola to collect donated produce and bread from a grocery store, and local Zambians contribute what they can from their fruit groves. Once, an ice cream truck broke down en route to Chingola, and the entire delivery was re-routed to the chimps, free of charge. "They loved every flavour-except chocolate," Sheila Siddle said, shaking her head in wonder. "Vanilla, strawberry-fine. But they all handed the chocolate back. And these are chimps that adore chocolate bars."

Chimfunshi receives approximately 30,000 visitors each year. Some come from as far away as Europe and the United States just to be close to chimps, while school buses rumble up every few days and disgorge hundreds of school children for a look at the apes. Despite the hassles-Chimfunshi charges no admission and isn't even listed as an official tourist site-the Siddles do their best to educate the public about the plight of orphaned chimpanzees. In turn, the tourists ask some tough questions.

"People say to us, 'Well, why don't you put them back in the wild?'" David Siddle said. "But that's no good. These chimps are habituated, some of them, and they'd immediately look for people. And you know what would happen then. What's the point of saving these chimps, if we only turned them loose to get killed? Whether we like it or not, we humans have made it impossible to return these chimps to the wild."

The Siddles have no formal training in primate care, though the stacks of zoology and veterinary books in their house indicate they are quick learners. But from the minute chimps began arriving at Chimfunshi, they have improvised and adapted brilliantly, often sleeping alongside sick or frightened apes to help them adjust. And what they can't do, they cajole nearby physicians and internists to contribute.

That is why the Siddles continue to take in chimps even when their enclosures are overcrowded, and why they refuse to use birth control to keep their population from increasing. In fact, 14 babies have been born at Chimfunshi since 1991, an astounding birth rate given that chimpanzees only reproduce about once every five years.

"We get asked about birth control all the time," Sheila Siddle said. "But what's the point in that? If we're going to restrict the way these chimps live, if we're going to keep them from doing the things that make them happy and healthy, then we might as well euthenize the whole lot right now. Who are we to tell these chimps they can't have babies? After what these chimps have been through, all we can do is give them the best life we can."

No, nobody gets to Chimfunshi by accident. Just the lucky ones.

NOTEBOOK - Compiled by Julia Robinson

Reach for the Border

Namibia-Namibia is home to the largest cheetah population in the world, but these animals are in direct conflict with livestock and game farmers. The Africat Foundation at Okonjima is near to completing a fenced reserve of around 38,000 hectares. The sanctuary, created with the aid of the Tusk Trust, will also take in land around Ombujongwe and Marathon. It will be stocked with numerous species of wildlife, including their three orphaned lions and some cheetah. Africat has also been instrumental in setting up the Ovipuka Conservancy, which has already persuaded eight farmers in the area to agree to stop shooting cheetah and other predators. Africat's long-term plan is to extend this area by getting all of the other farmers to link up with the Waterburg. E-mail Africat UK at africat @admin.co.uk or Africat Namibia at

A Jumbo Task

Kenya-1999 saw an increase in elephant poaching in Tsavo National Park and the seizure in July of the biggest haul of ivory in Kenya since 1989. Care For The Wild International (CFTWI) met with Richard Leakey (then head of Kenya Wildlife Service) to discuss the severe poaching problems. The building of a new rangers' station was the only solution to covering the area in the north. As a result, CFTWI is raising funds for new headquarters at Ithumba, in the north of the park. This will be completely self-sufficient, with its own airstrip, workshop and Senior Warden, as well as a full contingent of rangers. E-mail:

Dogged Information

Zimbabwe-For the second year running, Friends of Conservation has made a donation to the Painted Hunting Dog Research project run by Gregory Rasmussen, in Hwange National Park. The funds are being used to cover the production of 20,000 educational booklets for children and adults. These are being distributed around the schools and communities on the edges of the park. The leaflets teach people about the work that Greg is doing with the dogs and how the locals will benefit from it. He hopes to extend the programme so that the leaflets can be distributed throughout other African countries, including Kenya and Zambia. Email FOC on or Greg on

Chimfunshi Factfile

For more information regarding the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage, click on www.chimfunshi.org.za or contact the Friends of Chimfunshi, P. O. Box 3555, Kempton Park 1620, South Africa. Fax: (+27-11) 394-0465 E-Mail: chimps@ yebo.co.za.

Sanctuaries
Chimfunshi is among the growing number of chimpanzee sanctuaries around the world, with at least three more expected to open within the next five years.
Existing sanctuaries include:
Limbe Wildlife Centre (Cameroon)
Tchimpounga Sanctuary (Congo)
Sweetwater Sanctuary (Kenya)
Kitwe Sanctuary (Tanzania)
JGI-Entebbe Sanctuary (Uganda)
Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care (United States)
Primarily Primates (United States)
Tacugama Sanctuary (Sierra Leone)

Published in Travel Africa Edition Eleven: Spring 2000 Text is subject to Worldwide Copyright (c)