Born Free Foundation - Keep Wildlife in the Wild

From us all at Lilongwe Wildlife Centre we just wanted to say a huge thanks to the volunteers that joined us this Christmas and worked so hard to help us through such a busy time.  Whilst many of you at home were relaxing with family and friends enjoying your holidays our industrious team were experiencing a rather different kind of ‘break’.  Clearly a change is as good as a rest though – even those who worked through the night looking after our sick or orphaned animals would still greet us next morning with a smile on their face!

First there was the tough animal care work, cleaning, feeding and ‘enriching’ the lives of our various residents (of which there are presently 259), which most volunteers get stuck into for a couple of weeks lending a much needed helping hand and also giving them some very intense experience in animal husbandry.   For example, quarantine (where every new arrival has to spend at least 30 days under observation) is packed to the rafters at the moment with orphaned and injured animals ranging from duikers and porcupines to falcons and baby baboons – those volunteers that have worked with quarantine head and ‘Clean Queen’ Maggie in past months and years will know that you have to be slightly crazy and have an excellent sense of humour to work there!

Then there is all the surrogacy work.  It is undoubtedly ‘orphan’ season, and in the last 3 months we have had eight motherless baboons and vervet monkeys.  As many readers will know it is essential that we keep human contact to an absolute minimum if they are to have the chance of release into the wild and they are moved on to a primate surrogate as soon as possible.  However, these young orphans are like new babies (with the lungs to match), and each so young that they have required at least a week of human surrogate care if not more.  The human surrogacy work has been particularly demanding and volunteers do 24-hour shifts in pairs. Thanks to our new Orphan Care Centre it is at least less of a logistical nightmare than previous years.  Now, the volunteers are living on site right next door, with hot showers and food on demand when an injection of sanity is required! 

Those volunteers who choose to work in education have also had their work cut out this Christmas.  It is an incredibly busy time for school trips, which have brought in hoards of children who come to learn about the animals and cause havoc on the adventure playground.  On the Friday before Christmas we counted 524 children from 9 different schools and churches!  On Christmas Day itself we had a huge number of visitors who wanted to come and relax in the wilderness, including children from some local orphanages who were brought down by some generous samaritans and our hands were rather wrinkly and shaky from the marathon of face painting that ensued!

And if you are interested in volunteering this year then please get in touch – lilongwewildlife@gmail.com