KEEP J.A.C.K., ITS RESIDENTS, ITS TEAM AND MY FAMILY (Franck, Roxane & my brother Quentin) in your thoughts. Things aren’t bright in the DRC due to political unrest! So far everyone is doing fine despite there is no Internet anymore and that cell phones might be cut too…

THANK YOU ALL FOR THEM!

Many riots and gun shots this morning as demonstrators marching for the previous Governor of the province were stopped by the army and the police… Because of the insecurity, all our residents were kept in their night facilities and the keepers remained next to them as to calm them down. Our chimpanzees get very scared and nervous when there are shootings since it reminds them of the day their group was attacked and killed by poachers; the day they lost their families, their mother, their forest…

In the early afternoon, when situation had come back to “normal” in town, the keepers opened the gates and the chimpanzees were enjoying their routine… We were all extremely happy to see them all interacting normaly without any signs of stress.

FINALLY we have Internet back after it got again totally shut down in the biggest cities of the country…

J.A.C.K. Sanctuary is a self-funded Congolese NGO created in 2006 by Franck and Roxane Chantereau.

Chimpanzees were being sold and smuggled for the meat trade through their home town of Lubumbashi. The chimpanzees were often locked in cages and boxes with no water or food.

In an effort to stop this illegal trade, Franck and Roxane partnered with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Environmental authorities to enforce the laws protecting endangered wildlife.

J.A.C.K is a sanctuary that provides these legally confiscated chimpanzees with a decent home and with all the love and care they need to recover mentally and physically from the trauma they have endured as a result of the illegal trade.

Because of Frank and Roxane’s commitment to establishing J.A.C.K., today no more chimpanzees are for sale on the streets of Lubumbashi.

However, although J.A.C.K. has been successful in its mission to stop this illegal trade, their is an ongoing need to feed and look after the health of these rescued chimpanzees. This is no simple task. Things aren’t that easy in this part of the world. The DRC is constantly at war or regularly goes through political unrest that makes getting even the basic supplies such as food and medicine a difficult and expensive task.

J.A.C.K relies solely on donations and needs additional support. A small donation of just $5 could ensure a chimp is getting the required care it needs such as nutritional food, medicine and enrichment items.

Please donate to us to help us give these amazing chimpanzees the life they deserve and help us put a stop to the illegal trade of apes to ensure they will be with us for many more years to come.

Thank YOU for THEM!

J.A.C.K. IS BACK on social media!Hi Everyone this is Roxane writing!

Yes! Social media was apparently restored yesterday and we now cross our fingers it won’t be just for a few days…

We would like to thank all our Friends who followed us despite this unexpected situation and we also would like to thank the Friends who sent us lovely emails full of Love and comfort. Your words of encouragements helped us go through these scary times as we really felt lonely, isolated and even not understood!

Finally, I personnaly want to thank my Friend ‘Miss A’ (let’s call her like this because she doesn’t want us to mention her name). ‘Miss A’ has been of great help: she is the one who posted the updates and who kept you connected with J.A.C.K.! If ‘Miss A’ hadn’t helped, our FB page would have remained empty since December 18th  …

So, since we are now connected again to the world, we will do our best to update daily just like ‘before’. Chimps and humans at J.A.C.K. are all safe and well.

So happy to be in touch again with YOU !!!

Today was a peaceful and quiet day. All the members of our team managed to come at work or to go back home. In addition to this, since no unrest was to be heard about in the suburbs, you could see a light of hope in the eyes of every one: it’s Christmas and  Peace would be the best present ever for our country!

The chimps had their daily routine and were full of energy today!

Julie, our Congolese volunteer, joined us unlike every Friday and she prepared some icy tomato sticks for tomorrow’s enrichment! Thank you, Julie!!

We managed to buy the Xmas presents for our team (boots) and for the chimps (juicy oranges). But prices have increased considerably which is a real shame as we also wanted to offer additional gifts to our team: some fish, oil and 25kg of mielie meal for each worker to have a good and healthy Christmas dinner with all their family. Because of unrest, prices have gone mad and our workers are struggling hard just to buy the basic stuff to feed their kids! Not sure we’ll be able to offer a good Christmas meal, we’ll go and check prices again tomorrow…

I’ll try to update tomorrow. Still no social media but a slow and a very useful Internet! So happy to still be in touch with the world!!

Thank you for reading!

Dear All,

Some of you might have heard/read that part of the city we are located (Lubumbashi) went through times of violence, lootings and vandalism earlier this week.

Monday afternoon, we could clearly hear gunshots from a suburb not far from J.A.C.K. and the chimps ran indoors immediately! They were very scared. Especially the young ones. They hate gunshots: all that noise reminds them of the poachers shooting and slaughtering their group when they were infant; so, noisy times like these aren’t pleasant to our residents – and nor are they for our team!

Once the chimps were inside, the keepers stayed with them just to reassure them and our team tried to maintain the chimps routine (feeding time, enrichment, etc).

Since yesterday, no more gunshots have been heard. Life in town slowly goes back to normal. The chimps are all doing well – only our workers are struggling hard to reach their homes or to come at work as most of the suburbs are (military) closed.

With all that stress and uncertainty it is very hard to feel that it is Christmas time. Fear is on every faces…

We are still looking for the Christmas goodies for J.A.C.K. team & chimps (boots & oranges), but prices have increased drastically! This political unrest is deepening the economic recession our country has gone through for nearly 1 year. Festive season usually represents good incomes for  shops but with all that stress and unrest, people stay at home and, early this week, some shops owners were too afraid to open their shops…

I’ll do my best to update tomorrow. We do have Internet but it is extremely slow. We don’t have social media; so I won’t be able to post any videos (Youtube) nor updates on FB … Many thanks to my friend for her help and permanent support.

Let’s see what tomorrow brings!

PS/ Many thanks also to the few Friends of J.A.C.K. who left us kind messages on our contact page (http://jackchimp.yolasite.com/contacter-jack.php) Your warm words have cheered us up!!

As many of you might know, our country is going through a lot of political unrest these days and DRC Government has announced all social media (and maybe Internet) will be cut from this Sunday 18 december on.

We are not sure we will be able to post updates on the chimps – so, in case you can’t read us anymore, sorry, this isn’t our fault.

Here is an article explaining what is going on in our beautiful country : http://qz.com/864617/dr-congo-calls-for-social-media-networks-to-be-blocked-from-midnight-sunday-ahead-of-anti-kabila-protests/

We all hope life will come back to normal very soon! And we really hope the chimps, the team and us will remain safe!

Roxane