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87 6 small small redemption sangamithra iyer “small smalls” is what I called them. Small small pikins to be exact. It’s the Pidgin English phrase in Cameroon for “little children.” Those days I had three of them: Emma and Niete in each arm and Gwendolyn on my back, all shy of one year. They had just arrived, as I had, at the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in the Mbargue forest of Cameroon, about two hundred miles east of the capital Yaoundé. It was the spring of 2002, and Emma and I made the journey there together. She, like the other girls, was a product of the illegal bushmeat trade flourishing in West Africa, where chimpanzees and gorillas (among other wild animals) are hunted and sold as a delicacy meat to an urban affluent elite both locally and abroad. Their body parts can be found in markets and on menus—eight dollars for a chimpanzee head, ten dollars for gorilla arms. Too little to be made into lucrative meat, baby chimpanzees like my small smalls are orphaned and sold as pets, or otherwise kept captive. Emma, found tied up and screaming in Yaoundé, was rescued with the assistance of the Cameroon Ministry of the Environment and Forestry by In Defense of Animals-Africa (IDA-Africa), the nonprofit for which I was volunteering. IDA-Africa ran the rehabilitation sanctuary and was waging a conservation campaign for the country’s remaining wild apes. As a civil engineer, my role was to provide input on site drainage and the creation of a rainwater collection system for the sanctuary, but at twenty-four I ended up also being a mother of three. Through our eleven-hour nighttime car journey to the rescue center, frightened Emma clung to me as we bounced along red iron-rich laterite roads and i-xvi_1-192_Kemm.indd 87 4/13/11 11:35 AM 88 sangamithra iyer through uneasy military roadblocks. We were traveling with Dr. Sheri Speede, the American veterinarian who started this sanctuary, and her nine-month-old daughter. Sheri had made this journey many times to transport chimps, and she talked our way through the military checkpoints along the route. But on this trip, the last checkpoint was trouble. There appeared to be a makeshift station set up by three young men who in retrospect probably had no authority whatsoever. I can’t remember if they were armed, but they confiscated our vehicle papers and weren’t about to let us pass without something in exchange. First they asked for a ride. “I’m sorry, we have no room. We are traveling with a baby and have this letter from the Ministry of the Environment to transport a chimpanzee,” Dr. Speede conveyed. “Well, give us your baby, then.” Uncomfortable laughter erupted from the men. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Sheri stood her ground. “Then we’ll take the monkey.” Uncertain if they were serious or joking, Sheri responded. “I can’t give you either of the babies, and the only money we have on us is for fuel. All I can offer is a few bucks to buy you some beer.” And with that we continued on our way as I tended to the baby in my arms. Emma was indeed a small small with big big ears—almost the size of her whole head. She had a thin coat of fine black hair and a tuft of coarse white hair surrounding her baby bottom. Rope burns were etched into her legs. I tried to imagine what she had been through in the past few months of her life. She may have witnessed her mother’s death, which is often the case. With a strong instinct to protect, her mother likely held Emma tight, shielding her from the gunshots to which she herself fell victim. The only vehicles we encountered that night were large logging trucks. In the past few decades, European and Asian logging companies have built roads into what were previously untouched and inaccessible forests of Cameroon, opening up the wilderness to poachers. Logging crews hire commercial hunters to provide food for them, often supplying the hunters with guns. Logging trucks can serve as conduits for transporting illegal bushmeat to other markets. Even after they leave, the clear-cut lanes remain, providing poachers easy access to now vulnerable wild ape habitats. I had read about the links between logging and bushmeat, but it all became real for me that night...

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