My Story

Sunday (its dangerous being a Chimpanzee)

Being a Chimpanzee is not the easiest thing in the world, I had to first live through it to know it. You see I was born in 1987 and captured by Uganda Wildlife Education Centre in 1989.

When I got there, I was beside myself because finally I had found refugee in the hands of care givers who understood my kind unfortunately in 1991; I learned a very pertinent lesson. A lesson that being a chimpanzee is hard even when you think, you are protected you can still be endangered.

My name is Sunday and I am one of the four Chimpanzees’ that were illegally taken to participate in a circus in Europe from Uganda Wildlife Education Centre then Uganda Zoo in 1991.

At the Circus I was tasked with entertaining tourists. I did my job well, but then the circus directors decided that, I would work well if I was castrated. I was taken to a clinic and the procedure was done.

I mourned, I pant hooted and stamped my feet but nobody listened. I was ripped off of my right to be a father. With all hope lost and sense of living gone, I gave up on life and the existence of my very being. But one day while I lived through the despair that had become my life, a Ugandan Environmental Journalist ….Ndyakira uncovered our story.

We were quite a splash in the media back home and the government demanded we be returned. We were later on confiscated at Entebbe Airport on arrival and taken to Ngamba Island in 2008.

I’ve lived there for 8 years now but I can’t help it but still feel insecure because one man once put his interests above mine and sold me into the entertainment business.

I’m 29 years old now and I do understand quite perfectly well, that being a Chimpanzee is dangerous even when you think, you are protected.

1000 Pant Hoots

Sunday