Jumping from a battered Nissan Patrol onto the sandy gravel of the Namibian bush, pre-dawn, is an excellent way to start the day. The achingly beautiful sunrise is a still a little while off and the air is surprisingly brisk, but I grab my rucksack from the passenger seat and head off into the rocky darkness.
The path I am following, ambiguously marked with daubs of red paint, wriggles up into the hills towards a concealed valley of smooth rock. Although the entire area is rugged, dry and strewn with boulders, this particular valley offers one of the most prestigious sleeping cliffs around, with a troop of sixty or so chacma baboons currently in residence. It is to this nocturnal dormitory that I am heading.
Fresh from university, my first research position was with the Tsaobis Baboon Project. Set up and run by the Institute of Zoology (the research arm of the Zoological Society of London), fieldwork takes place on the very edge of the Namib, in the semi-desert back-country where the ephemeral Tsaobis and Swakop rivers meet.
At Tsaobis researchers and PhD students come and go, all using the amicable desert baboon as a model system to answer questions of behavioural and population ecology. Since the first study in 1990 there has been an almost unbroken flow of researchers visiting the site, all working with two core baboon groups currently known as J-troop and L-troop. Over time these animals have become unconcerned with their human cortege, which allows researchers to roam freely within the troop as the baboons go about their daily lives. This is why I was in Tsaobis; as part of a long-term study collecting behavioural field data for answers on baboon decision making and group co-ordination, and my early morning rises were becoming routine.
The theory is to get to the troop before they leave their sleeping cliff and wander down toward the river bed in search of breakfast. If they decamped before I were to arrive, it might take me the rest of the day to catch up with them again – not an option on a tight research schedule. The path, as with most trails in this part of Namibia, is littered with rocks and incredibly frustrating bushes of wait-a-bit thorn, so the going is tough, but if timed perfectly it’s possible to catch the first of the youngsters gambolling down from the shadowy boulders towards the spring.
The rest of the troop follows at a respectable pace, pausing only to snatch a drink from the murky puddle which offers the only reliable source of water for miles, or to casually groom their neighbours whilst the first rays of light creep over the plains below. It is now that I pull out my clipboard and get to work.
I spent every day with the baboons, meeting them at first light and staying with them till nightfall, constantly marking their position with a GPS tracker or writing detailed notes on their eternal activities.
Throughout the day the baboons wander in a loose group, searching the sandy ground beneath trees for fallen pods or climbing clumsily though the sagging branches. Unlike most other monkeys baboons are not built for climbing trees, although they do have some rock climbing ability. Their stocky, often portly frames are better suited to a terrestrial lifestyle, adopted by their ancestors millennia ago when the vast African forest dried out and were replaced with epic savannahs.
At midday, when the sun hammers down from its zenith, shade is at a premium. The scattering of trees in the riverbed provide welcome respite from the African sun, and the baboons loll in the cool sand beneath them, lazily grooming one another. Up in the hills small caves offer a similar escape, and within a few, the cool walls reveal rock art, a reminder of an ancient human presence. The siesta is a time to quietly enjoy a neighbour’s company; grooming solves disputes, calms nerves and ignites relationships.
As the afternoon slips into evening, the troop leaves the riverbed for the arid hills and, eventually, a sleeping cliff. During the night the priority is to find a high and inaccessible ledge on which to sleep, somewhere safe from predatory leopards. Troops may have several favourite cliffs within their territory, but tend to use just a handful regularly. In East Africa baboons also bunk up in large trees, but these are lacking in the waterless hills of Namibia.
Darkness falls, and my day in the field comes to a close. I mark the sleeping site so I can easily find it the next morning, and trudge wearily back towards the car, tired and dusty. But before I start the engine, I sit back and listen as the orchestral euphony of the African night begins.
