You’ll be in my heart

I’ve put off writing this post for awhile now. I’ve been thinking about what I want to say pretty much since I decided to take a repatriation flight home, but actually sitting and writing it has felt too hard. For at least a few weeks before the flight was announced, I felt like I would be ready to go at the next chance; I was still happy and loving being with the chimps, but I missed home and was having a hard time constantly sitting in so much uncertainty so far from home. But when I first got the email about the repatriation flight, my first reaction so much sadness. I knew pretty much right away that taking it was probably my best bet, but that stung way more than I thought it would. The thought of leaving the chimps, especially Nelio, was really painful and broke my heart a little bit.

Once I committed to taking the flight, I put everything else aside and spent pretty much all my time with the chimps. I wanted to give them tons of attention and love, make some more memories to leave with, and also help Mama P as much as possible since me leaving meant one fewer person to do things like clean the cages and wash bottles. Those few days where I wasn’t focused on anything except playing with and caring for Nelio, Julius, Longlife, and Celia were probably the highlight of my time in Sierra Leone. Sure I was sad, but I was also so much less distracted and stressed because I wanted to make our time together special.

My last day almost broke me. I almost lost my nerve and changed my mind about leaving. That morning, Nelio sat on my lap for the first time. I’m pretty sure it was at least partially an accident, but it was still amazing. One of the other chimps made a loud, scared noise, so Julius jumped into my lap for a hug. That was normal. If I was with him, he would seek me out for comfort. Nelio, on the other hand, never really had. He would run to the other chimps, but still showed a lot of uncertainty about approaching people in that way. So when this noise started, I think Nelio was going for Julius. Julius, meanwhile, was on my lap. In the past when this had happened, Nelio would just run off into the corner making scared noises until another chimp came to comfort him. This time, though, he also jumped right up on my lap and hugged Julius. I was stunned and afraid to even breathe in case it shattered the moment. They both stayed there for a few minutes, then calmly got down and went back to playing.

As special as that moment was, I kind of thought it was a fluke and wasn’t expecting it to happen again. But then I went back to hang out with them after lunch and Nelio was acting so much more comfortable around me. He climbed all over me, ended up in my lap a few more times, grabbed my arms and wrapped them around himself, and laughed when I tickled him. Julius started to get jealous of the attention and tugged on my braid several times. And each time I said “ouch”, Nelio ran over and gave me a hug.

I’d been trying so hard to hide how sad and guilty I felt about leaving the chimps, but that moment almost broke me down. I felt like the Grinch when his heart grew three size; mine felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. I thought about how far Nelio had come. I mean, he had transformed from a sick, scared, exhausted, underweight little guy into a sweet, playful, confident chimp. And I thought about how far our relationship in particular had come. Helping him make these changes and get to a point where he felt that comfortable was one of the single most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. Before that day, I’d thought about how proud I was of Nelio and how grateful I was to have formed a bond with him, but I’d also accepted that we weren’t going to get to the point where he would really seek me out of feel comfortable physically engaging with me, so when that happened, it meant the world to me and also caught me completely off guard. I could never have imagined a more special and powerful way to wrap up my time at Tacugama.

I’ve always acknowledged and understood the power of words. They have the ability to connect people, to bring faraway lands to live, to wound, to heal, and to create change. But the more I’ve started to like and engage in writing, the more I’ve realized that sometimes words are inadequate. This is one of those times. The perfect words to describe my time in Sierra Leone do not exist. I’ve searched and searched for them, spent hours thinking of the best way to describe my experiences and what they meant to me, but I’ve always come up short. Words can’t capture the feeling I had when Nelio first let me groom him. They can’t explain how stressful it was to not know the next time I’d come home. They’re not enough to describe the pain and sadness I felt leaving those baby chimps or what it’s been like to have a piece of my heart still there with them. So I try my best, try to rearrange those 26 letters of the alphabet into the right combinations in the hope that they can convey the emotional rollercoaster that has been the past few weeks. But I always want to add a disclaimer that there’s so much more to it than what I write.

Promise me you’ll never forget me because if I thought you would I’d never leave.