Day 4: A day in the life at Chipangali Animal Orphanage (Linden)

Linden Journaling- day 4 at Chipangali

4-29-2022

Now, we are in a new destination of our travels! This is now my choice, Chipangali Orphanage! All 4 of us have been taking turns writing about the different days of work, and my day is the 4th, today. Today our assignment was the baby animals along with the primates. The primates that are here includes monkeys and baboons. We started the day with waking up to Dad breathing heavy outside the door of our small cottage after his new morning run. Today also is a day very special! Someone is turning 47, Dad! Last night, after a long day of cleaning the Di Centre, the three of us, Mom, Asher, and I organized for 2 cakes to be brought here. The celebration was celebrated at “The House” which is the house where Nicky and Kevin live. They are the people who run the whole place. The party was full with a singing of Happy Birthday, in both English and Hebrew, all volunteers, the main family, and a parrot. Even after all people ate cake, there was still a full cake left except for a tiny sliver that Asher ate. We will probably have the rest tonight. Actually, it is 5:55 so I should go to dinner. I will be back…

I am back! Sure enough, we just ate the cake again with the rest of the group. About half of our group left this morning for Victoria Falls. We will be going next weekend. Victoria Falls is a tourist attraction with safaris and wild rides. Anyway, after we woke up to Dad’s huffing and puffing, we all sang him a very sleepy Happy Birthday. At the time he walked in, I was mid-brushing my teeth, so my words were a little mushed. After our short and sweet ceremony, we all got dressed and headed out the door to get to breakfast. We sat down at the table while the others circled around Dad in a Happy Birthday saying rotation. Our breakfast was pretty usual. Actually, exactly the same as what we have been having all the mornings we have been here. Stale cereal, toast, tea, apples, and as many different types of jelly and other toppings as you could imagine. Then, we headed off to do babies in the nursery. I was assigned to Mo (a bird), the doves, and the hedgehogs (which actually did not get fed because they were not awake). Asher did Jasper (the monkey), Puppy (the squirrel), and Rainy (the steinbock). Mom and Dad mostly did waters but helped with feeding some animals and the ducks. While prepping to leave, I did all dishes and Asher swept and mopped while the parents finished their chores. After our first job of the morning, we met up with Alex and Maloomey, who were our workers who helped us with our assigned primate day. They both were very sweet, and both helped us much more than some of our other helpers throughout the week. Maloomey was very smiley and had a great sense of humor while Alex kind of kept to himself but was always happy to help. The day started out with cleaning to baboon cage. Maloomey himself pointed out that that was one of the most disgusting jobs, but we were up for the challenge. Then, we got to work. Yesterday, we had to clean out the sheep cage which was a handful, for both the body and the nose. I think the sheep cage was supposed to be just a bed of hay, but it had about a foot of a nasty, wet, condensed, layer of a mixture of sheep pee and poop. After that, the baboon cage was nothing, and that I told Maloomey. Maloomey found that quite funny. The baboon enclosure was mostly just a bed of kind of dirty hay and a few patches of poop that resembled a human’s. That job also included walking to the other side of the orphanage to gather big branches that look like trees. Luckily, I only had to do one trip, but carried back a big branch with Alex. Alex was having a lot of fun seeing me get pushed all over by the branches, but then keep going. Somewhere in the experience of cleaning that cage, I almost walked into the baboon cage without knowing he was in there to bring him water. Once that got finished up, all of us, excluding Asher who stayed to power wash the baboon cage, migrated over to the somango monkeys to clean their enclosures. They look a lot like baboons but much much smaller. There are two of them that live together and adore each other. Their names are Balinda and Cindy, which my mom finds funny. You could sometimes catch them picking bugs off one another and petting each other. Their house was smaller but felt nicer. It had some nice branches, and the hay bottom looked very clean, but I guess was not clean enough. One thing I have noticed about Alex and Maloomey is that they are perfectionists. Every little hay scrap must be washed away in order to continue the job. While doing the cleaning of both places, there was always someone running the wheelbarrow up and down the hill to the compost, fetching branches, and others shoveling or getting water. In the middle of our work of the morning, Ryan asked if any of us would like to help him put the lobsters in a new home. My parents volunteered and worked on sifting out the thin sand from the thick that would go on the bottom of the fish tank. The thick would be kept, and the thin would be tossed.

Our morning went very fast, with a few breaks in between, which Asher and I mostly spent with the black spotted hyena, Apollo. We have created a game where we feed a stick though the fence, he pulls it though, cracks it to pieces, then comes back for more. I would not want to feed him my arm. Even though he does that to sticks, he is very sweet. Very skittish too, though. If he even hears the slightest crack of a stick, the breath of a lion, or the step of someone he is not familiar with, he will dart to the back of his space and hesitantly look out. One trick though that Asher and I have found is that if we slowly jog back and forth in front of his space with a hunched back, he will become curious and come forth and begin playing again. After our easy morning, all receded back to the dimly lit tea room for our leftover lunch from last night’s dinner. That meant chicken, hard boiled eggs, bread, full cooked potatoes, and a potato salad type dish. For my lunch, I made an egg salad sandwich with some mayo very different than what I am used to. It has a tangy sweetness to it which sounds disgusting but is pretty good. No one really ate the chicken though, because it was just a frozen pile of bones with barely any meat. Some attempted to eat it, but most of it still got thrown in the pig pen. Our lunch time went very quickly it felt like and then we had to get back to work. For the afternoon work, the parents and kids would switch jobs, so I was now on lobster duty. The first order of business was to wash all the thick sand so that it did not make the water all muddy and unclear. Ryan’s idea of that was to put about 50 pounds of sand in a wheelbarrow and keep filling it with water until the water turned clear. As you can probably guess, that did not work so well. Even with all three of us forcing our hands down in the pile as far as we could, and turning the bottom gravel to the top, the water never got clean. After the water was not as dirty and all hands were cut, we decided it was enough. Our next step was to drain the foot of water that was already in the tank (don’t ask me why). The drain that it had on the bottom was very broken and only a small bit of water came out at a time. Seeing that there was a very large amount of water in it, it was not going to be successful and would take all day. Ryan then found a small water pump that plugged in to an outlet. It worked better but still took a long time to mostly drain the water. Once all the sand somehow made it into the tank, the 2 or 3 inches of water that remained was as dirty as you could imagine. So much for all of the cuts on my hands and wrists from washing the gravel. Many times, we attempted to fill it up a bit, then drain the dirty water and then do it again, but it never did much. Once the water looked a bit better, the hose allowed the tank to be filled up, but it is still a bit murky. Hopefully the water will settle tonight. Whilst that roller coaster was draining and refilling, I helped a bit with the baboon and somango cages by doing the wheelbarrow and shoveling. Somewhere in there, Asher and I helped Ryan clean out the python cave. The heavy metal door squeaked open and three pythons appeared. Then, Ryan picked one up. He told us that his name was Ka, like the lion king and offered me a chance to hold the 50 pound slithering body. I accepted and felt him squeezing and letting go of my leg with his smooth scales. Surprisingly, Asher did not accept. After that, we preceded to wash out all the bad water while putting new in. Keep in mind that that was all while visitors were watching through the windows. At about two, an hour after lunch, Ryan started spreading the word that he needed three people to help go pick up a dead cow for the carnivores. Soon it was just 2. Dad and I. The pescatarian and son went to go pick up a dead cow. The rest of the afternoon was very thoroughly cleaning the cages. At a point, for about 45 minutes, I was the only volunteer working on the primates because Dad disappeared. At that time, Maloomey was guessing my age and at a point thought I was 26. I do not think I am quite there. On one of my trips of bringing wood up to the boiler, I heard the sharp voice of my dad talking to someone on the phone. I flagged him down and he explained how Ahna (my aunt) had called him to say happy birthday. By the time he returned, we had only 15 minutes left to work on the primates. Maloomey has the day off tomorrow so was kind of already off and not giving us much to do. After time was up, we waved bye to both Alex and Maloomey and headed off to do afternoon babies.

While walking over, we intersected the rest of our family. Mom was found with a disgusted and petrified look plastered on her face. At first, she claimed she had fun and it was a good experience, but then subsided to the reality that it was disturbing and that the cow was all oddly shaped and very dead. In the afternoon, not many babies need to be fed, so that was finished quickly. Asher and Mom left first to feed the pigs the scraps. Dad and I soon followed, passing the pigs, and getting to our place, grabbing laundry on the way. Mom and Asher were not there though with the key, so we walked around for a bit, going to the lookout. It looks out over the world, and we saw the sun almost at sunset. As we were quietly talking up there, the one and only zebra appeared about 50 feet in front of our perch, and kept waking closer, then soon went back to the bush. It really is beautiful here. Dad told me he was hungry, so we headed back and found two pairs of hiking boots out front and continued into the cottage. The other two explained that Nico and Mat whatsapp facetimed and Asher “had to” show them all the animals and that is what had held them up. Dad and I shared some chips as a power up and I started writing this. Then dinner was held at six and cake was enjoyed. I am now back in the room while Mom and Dad are talking to Mia and Papa on the phone and Asher is doing some of his very limited screen time. I really love it here.