Book launch: protecting the primates at Barbican's conservatory

King Bruno by Paul Glynn

Barbican Conservatory, Wednesday 6^th February

In aid of the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Sierra Leone

Walking into the Barbican’s conservatory, atmospherically lit to illuminate palm tree fronds and enliven birds of paradise, I could almost convince myself I was in Sierra Leone’s heady, breathing forests, a chimpanzee watching me from the camouflaging shadows. If you’ve been to the conservatory in the daytime, you’ll know that the plants don’t quite succeed in disguising the building’s brutalist concrete architecture – the place is an uncomfortable juxtaposition of organic oasis and urban asceticism. But at night, the ugly linear austerity recedes and the flora flourishes.

A perfect setting, then, for an evening celebrating the work of Sierra Leone’s Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, founded twenty years ago by the then-accountant Bala Amarasekaran. Bala’s adoption of one orphaned chimpanzee lead inexorably to his rescuing myriad more and working tirelessly against the chimpanzee pet and meat trades. King Bruno is Paul Glynn's gentle, honest account of that first adopted chimp. Through Bruno’s eyes, we witness his happy but conflicted life with Bala, his endurance through the terrors of the Sierra Leonean civil war and his flight from the sanctuary into the wild (which has now become the potent stuff of local legend).

A particularly brilliant passage was read at the launch by Aminatta Forna, one of Sierra Leone’s most celebrated writers (her exquisite novel The Memory of Love is an intricate, elegiac lament on the catastrophic trauma wreaked in her country by the civil war). Forna's astute reading brought out all the elements of humour, bemusement and poignancy in the young Bruno’s accidental poo on Bala’s carpet:

He wanted to be human, clean and dainty. And so, when he turned around one day and saw the neat, perfect poo he had left on the carpet, Bruno grunted anxiously.

In the forest, no-one would have minded. In the forest, you went to the toilet anywhere, as long as it wasn’t in your own nest. You could even pick your poo up and throw it around.

Bruno had lived in Bala and Sharmila’s house for nearly a year now, and he had never once seen Bala throw his own poo around. […] Bruno fidgeted. He had to do something about it before Bala returned home. Then he remembered. Upstairs, in a small room, stood a bowl with a puddle of water and a roll of paper beside it. He panted in excitement, dashed up the stairs and grabbed the paper. […]

It was harder than it looked. The roll of toilet paper was big and Bruno’s hands were small. When he wiped at his poo, it just seemed to spread everywhere. But in the end it was gone. The carpet was brown and sticky and piles of brown paper lay everywhere. Bruno clapped and jumped up and down. Bala would be happy.

Bala wasn’t happy.

The book is written for children but it holds just as much appeal for adults - I was captivated by its subtle, elegant, wonderfully humane tone that reminds us just how similar chimps and people really are. Bruno’s view of the world is at once faithfully animalistic and engagingly anthropomorphic – the narrative naturally elicits our empathy but simultaneously divorces us from our blinkered human outlook, reminding us just how contrary our baffling species must seem. This is a hugely important book for raising our awareness of the plight of these animals, with an authentic, sincere appeal to the heart that is more effective than any list of facts about the threats to chimpanzee populations (which are horrifying). King Bruno brings to life a chimpanzee whose voice is as unique and believable as the horse narrating Michael Morpurgo's War Horse. We can only hope Handspring Puppet Company pick it up, marvel at the writing and the beautiful illustrations (also done by the author) and turn it into their next theatrical masterpiece.

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Post script:

Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary’s work has now extended beyond its own boundaries, and the High Commissioner to Sierra Leone announced at the launch that, thanks to Bala’s indefatigable efforts, the forests around Tacugama are to become protected National Park. So hopefully Tacugama will soon be able to release more chimps to join their King Bruno in the knowledge that the wild is a safe place for them to thrive. And in the meantime, thank god that there are self-sacrificing souls like Bala among our truly baffling species.

For more information about Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, see here.
Also, there's a great little Q&A with author Paul Glynn here.