Chimps change lives

'SECOND FAMILY': SENEGALESE BECOME RESEARCHERS AND ESCAPE MINES

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ODD HABITAT. Researcher Jacques Tamba Keita tracks down West African chimpanzees on the Fongoli home range in the Kedougou region recently. The rare chimpanzees live in the bush instead of the forest.

(AFP)

Michel Tama Sadiakhou's future dramatically changed course some 15 years ago, thanks to a clan of spear-wielding apes: instead of the dangerous work in informal gold mines that is the fate of many in Senegal's far southeast, he now researches rare chimpanzees.

He is among five people from local villages, all but one without a high school diploma, working on a project focused on the area's highly unusual savannah-dwelling chimpanzees.

Not only has it been a deep dive into science, but for several of them, it also offered an escape from the mines.