GH update on Nyango

Note: Nyango is thought to be a "Cross River Gorilla" which scientists now believe may be a separate sub-species and one of the most endangered of the newly identified sub-species of gorillas.

On July 9th, 1999, Jane Dewar received the following email from "Queen" Nyango’s former caretaker, who has given us permission to post this update here:

Jane,

The other day I had a brainstorm: Type in Nyango's name for a search and see what comes up. I was thrilled to have numerous sites including pictures come right into my office.

My name is Dennis Punches. I was the missionary who turned Nyango over to the Limbe Wildlife Center in 1994. Reading your little blurb on Nyango there were a couple of details I thought I'd clear up.

Nyango came to us in January of 1994. She was approximately 3 years of age at that time. We got her from a man who said he was a "trader" and not a hunter. I don't know if that was true. Many parts of his story did not make sense. But, Nyango was in very good shape at the time ... except that she seemed a bit depressed and lacked good social skills.

My greatest concern was that at Nyango's age and size, the trader might make bush meat of her in short order ... so I decided to pay him a very nominal amount just to be sure to save her life. I later regretted that decision and wished that I had involved the authorities, but I knew very little about primate protection at the time and did not know of the existence of the sanctuary in Limbe.

Nyango stayed with us for two months. Very rapidly she made herself at home playing with my children and enjoying the freedom of not being tied at the ankle maybe for the first time since her captivity (which I really don't know how long that had lasted). While she never really ate with a spoon and fork, she did manage to sneak food away from the table and took bananas freely from the regimes we hung on the back porch.

Nyango became a very dear member of our family in those two months. As you can imagine, it was very intense to live that closely with a creature who on the one hand remained very wild (we had plenty of bruises from her bites to attest to that) while at the same time she was so nearly "human" that it was difficult sometimes to determine which was more accurate. In the end we decided that she was decidedly gorilla ... but that gorillas are the closet mirror to human behavior that I expect I will ever know ( I am not quite so enamoured with chimps ... but that is a personal bias).

At the beginning of March Peter & Liza Jenkins showed up at our door and thus was the beginning of the end of our life with Nyango. Peter and Liza explained what was happening in Limbe. Of course it made all the sense in the world for Nyango to land in their professional hands. We were in over our heads ... we knew that from the start. The only problem was that Limbe had no other gorillas and we wondered what would happen to Nyango in the long run. There was talk of maybe sending her to a sanctuary in the Congo, but as you know that never came to pass.

Now we can see that it was probably all for the best that Nyango remain in Cameroon and play mother to the little one to come after. (Nyango means mother in the Douala language!)

I am the development director for a camp in Texas now. I don't make much $ ... But I have always wondered if there was some way I could help raise $ for the Limbe Center.

If you have any ideas of places where I could tell the story of Nyango to help make a difference, please let me know. I'd be happy to help in any way possible.

Thank you for your love for the primates. It is so important.

Blessings!

DENNIS PUNCHES

04 June 2000 - Nyango Update!