In the past week I have been in touch with Ape Action Africa and IDA Africa. They were able to give me progress reports on the animals I had worked with whilst in Cameroon…
Maggie has made some exceptional progress since I last saw her – Rachel Hogan reports that she is fitting far less frequently than she was previously and seems much calmer as a result. When I was out there I showed Nixon, Maggie’s keeper, how to help her to use her hands more and to improve her balance.
He has continued helping her with these exercises and she is now using her hands to feed herself and to climb. She is also losing her balance far less frequently than she was.
The hope is that if she continues to improve she will be reintroduced to the mandrill group – fingers crossed for a good outcome!
Samburu is continuing to use his right arm more to feed himself, climb, and to walk on all-fours. Apparently he is also loving all the extra attention he gets during his daily physio sessions with Franklin and is always keen to show off his wrist splint to the rest of his group whenever possible!
Over at Sanaga Yong, Arvid is also improving and has now regained some movement in his legs which is excellent progress. The volunteers also report that they have been doing his stretches regularly, which I taught them to do whilst I was there, and Arvid has much better range of movement as a result.
It’s all really encouraging news and I’m really glad that I was able to make some really positive changes out there.