Genghis Express

The weather this week has continued to be almost unbearable. We borrow the office fan at night as sleep is impossible without it. It mostly blows hot air around the room but also has the added function of propelling mosquitoes at us all night!
We have been in the office a lot this week, lots of last minute preparations for our inspection – just making sure that everything is in order and that there is plenty of wood-chip for the enclosures.
The Scientific and Technical Council of Kyiv Zoo had a meeting on Monday night. Steve and I were unanimously voted onto the council for the duration that we are at Kyiv Zoo. There was an added motion that we could remain on the council after we leave the zoo if they can all come and have the council meetings with us in the UK!
We managed a brief escape from the office to do some enrichment with the coatis. Last week Steve made a hanging basket feeder for them so we took it to their enclosure. The coatis seemed quite happy with it.
All week (when the internet has been working) we’ve been following the progress of our friend Pete Wearden and his Mongol Rally teams – The Baatar Boys (Pete and Edd) and Genghis Express (Ian and Tom).

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jspglId=06R5XAyZoNr2IzNuE6iQCzxovl1FI0Pxo

They were due to arrive with us on Wednesday. However, as we could see from their website, they spent several hours driving in circles in the Czech Republic. They got to us on Thursday evening and we went straight out for a meal to find out about their adventure so far. It sounds like such an amazing experience. Driving unsuitable vehicles across all terrains from London to Mongolia in less than six weeks!
This is their website address and there are links to donate to their charities if you feel so inclined.

http://mongolrally09.theadventurists.com/index.phpmode=teamwebsites&name=thegenghisexpress
http://mongolrally09.theadventurists.com/thebaatarboys

We drank many beers, listened to a band and all relaxed. Sometimes Steve and I find being in Ukraine a bit surreal (it was never part of our long-term plan, just a great and interesting opportunity), but having the boys here with us was even more surreal than ever before. We arranged for them to be able to stay overnight in the zoo, so we all walked back through the zoo and stopped by the elephant and hippo enclosures for some talking. It was lovely to see the elephant having a sleep in the sand of the outdoor enclosure and snoring loudly.
The next day we took them all around the zoo and behind the scenes to meet some of the animals. Edd and Tom were particularly taken with our tiger cubs and Pete and Ian enjoyed meeting our baby skunks. We had a brief meeting with the zoo Director and took some photos with the rally cars. The zoo mechanics gave the cars a check over to make sure everything was ok and fixed some minor problems. Steve and the boys went to the Great Patriotic War Museum (that we visited a few weeks ago) to look at tanks and aeroplanes. We then packed up the cars, examined the route maps and sent the boys on their way to Russia. We made little travel bags for each car with some useful bits and pieces to keep them going; mosquito repellent coils (an essential at the moment), vodka, sunflower seeds, lots of sweets, dried fish, beer, strawberry scented toilet roll and various other bits and pieces.
Over the weekend we’ve had no internet access which has been a pain and the weather has been just too hot to do anything.
A new initiative at the zoo most weekends is to have displays of house plants for sale in the shop. A few weeks ago it was African Violets and this weekend was cactuses, so I have bought a little cactus garden to sit on my desk.

Steve hanging the Coati feeding basket

Masha putting food out for the Coatis

Beers with the Mongol Rallyers

Car Maintenance

Pete meeting a Skunk

Ian, Tom, Pete and Edd with Skunks

Meeting a Tiger

Relaxed Bear

Carpathian Lynx

Cars, Zoo Director, Maintenance Staff and All of Us

The Boys and the Cars

At the War Museum

Checking the maps, heading to Russia

TV Stars!

Wednesday this week was spent giving more TV interviews about animal enrichment. I think we did about 10 TV channels and a few radio ones as well. The TV interviews were scheduled for broadcasting to about 80 different countries. Steve seems to give very good TV interviews where I do better at the radio ones; it works out very well between us.
On Thursday we did a mock inspection of the whole zoo in the sweltering heat. It is in preparation for an inspection to join EAZA – the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria; we have to prove that we maintain excellent standards in terms of animal management and welfare. It went pretty well, we took a check-list round to ensure we covered all the aspects they will be looking at. We found a few areas for improvement, but nothing insurmountable.
We have a new baby at the zoo – a Prezwalski foal (no photos yet) who is doing very well and the whole herd of horses are all looking after it. This is great news for our captive breeding programme as Prezwalski horses are an extremely endangered species.
This week we found an artist in the zoo creating a sculpture of a Great Bustard, the sculpture looks amazing so far and will be even better when he gets it cast in metal.
Friday was spent meeting Heads of Departments to discuss what they needed to do in preparation for the official inspection so they plenty of notice to get everything ready. It should have been our night for going to the Canadian Embassy but we had a meeting in the evening. Steve was asked by a Ukrainian TV channel to give a half hour live interview and phone-in Q&A session, so off we went to a TV studio in the centre of Kyiv. It all went very well and Steve gave good answers to all the questions and was able to discuss all the points we planned.
It’s just too hot at the moment to do anything apart from sit in front of the fan and drink icy cold water. I’m desperate for a thunderstorm to cool everything down.
On Saturday we recovered from all the TV publicity this week and running round the zoo. We stayed in the flat to catch up on emails etc. In the afternoon, Masha and her little boy came round to see us. Whilst they were here, Masha cut my hair as it was getting far too long. I think I have said before that most of the staff here have second jobs as the wages are so low, and Masha’s second job is as a hairdresser.
Today we have just popped to the local shops for some supplies and I bought a lovely pair of shiny flip-flops as my current ones are a bit worn out. Steve is busy making some designs to modify the zebra enclosure and is currently banished from the flat as he is cutting up bits of wire mesh to make a feeder for the coatis – little bits of wire pinging everywhere!
This week we are expecting some guests from the UK. Our friend Pete Wearden, who we know through zoo work, and three of his friends are taking part in the Mongol Rally. This is a charity car endurance challenge driving from the UK to Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia. They are going to stop here at Kyiv Zoo for an overnight break at some point this week. They have two cars in the Rally – Baatar Boys and Ghengis Express. We’ve been following their progress online and expect them here probably on Wednesday.

Artist with Bustard Sculpture

Steve getting Make-Up for Live TV

Larissa, Steve and TV Presenter

Digging and Durrell

I can’t believe it’s only Tuesday – we’ve been really busy already this week.
Monday started with an attempt to take a group photo of everyone who works at the zoo, not an easy task with a few hundred staff, particularly when you also want the giraffes to pose at the same time!
A member of the management from Minsk Zoo, Belarus, is here at the moment and Steve has been advising him on electric fences for primates. They are desperate for Steve to go there to help, even offering to pay for Steve to go back with them tomorrow to get their fences done. It’s actually a very interesting proposition, but we just can’t go at the moment – too much to do here. They even bought him a very expensive bottle of Vodka, but it just isn’t possible.
Whilst I’m on the subject of Vodka, I was amazed by a kids TV programme I watched at lunchtime on Monday. It starred a few clowns who had been fishing and were waiting for Mrs. Clown to cook the fish. Whilst they were waiting for their dinner they started drinking vodka and eventually all got so drunk that they fell over and went to sleep before their food was ready.
Construction staff here seem to have incredible hole digging skills, you saw my clumsy attempts a month ago in the lynx enclosure – the ground here is very hard to dig, the soil is so sandy it just crumbles away. These staff are able to dig the most incredible holes. For fence posts they can dig holes 5 foot deep and a foot in diameter by hand, and the holes are just perfect. In just one day this week they have dug a hole about 12 foot deep and 5 diameter for a drainage system. See photos.
We had a huge long meeting on Monday night with all the Heads of animal departments to discuss and decide on various new management systems and protocols. It was really embarrassing as Igor, head of small carnivores, gave a presentation on husbandry routine protocols and used pictures of me and Steve posing in the coati enclosure (after we had finished building it) as the background for his PowerPoint slides.
Today, to complement the new enrichment committee and programmes the zoo issued a press statement asking for people to donate various items for the animals. They asked Steve and me to be interviewed for the news. It’s just typical – I always have unexpected press interviews on days that I can’t be bothered to wear make-up and make my hair nice! Anyway, it went very well. They interviewed Steve, me and Masha and then filmed some tiger enrichment. I hope that people will respond to this and bring items for our animals.
Steve and I are trying to implement new concepts and procedures into the animal management systems here. It’s quite encouraging that when we discuss something e.g. enclosure design (design first for the animals, second for the keepers, third for the visitors and last for the management) that the zoo staff say to us “yes, we understand, we read about this in Gerald Durrell books”. Generally if we can link something back to a Durrell book it will be accepted and implemented by the staff. I think sometimes in many zoos staff forget just how much we owe to Gerald Durrell in terms of animal management and much of his work is the foundation of much of the zoo based conservation in practice today.

Big Hole

Big Hole again

Big Hole with Drainage Tank

I was just given this photo of Steve and Larissa (our translator)
I thought you'd like to see it !

Monkeys

The absolute highlight of this week was getting into the primate enclosures to thoroughly audit the ape and monkey collection and to start getting new ropes into the enclosures for climbing. The Kyiv Fire Department donated a huge pile of fire-hoses to us and we decided that the primates were most in need of some new climbing structures. Enrichment and ropes is a concept that has been somewhat lacking in the Primate Department, but as there is now a new Head of Primates – Valentina, she is desperate to get things changed to benefit the animals. We spent a day in the department helping them to get two enclosures modified. Lots of people were there to help and learn, including the Curator from another Ukrainian Zoo who is also very interested in bringing her zoo up to Western European standards and wants us to visit and advise them on some changes. From the work we did in the two enclosures, the primate staff will now do the other enclosures on their own. Also, as soon as we can get drain covers in the enclosures we’ll start putting down natural substrates which will help the monkeys to forage for their food and will be really good for the babies to play in.
I’ve had a few weeks off from mosquito attacks, which has been very pleasant but this week I’ve been targeted again. We have insect screens on all the windows in the apartment but the little buggers are getting in somehow. Being bitten on the elbow is particularly annoying and I’m sitting here scratching as I type.
The lynx enclosure is developing well and there has been lots of progress this week. The fence mesh is going up and the overhangs are being prepared for Steve’s electric fence. The floor of the house has been put in and the drainage system has been installed. Apart from a few little problems, it’s actually being built very quickly which is great considering the Maintenance/Construction Departments have never built an enclosure like this one. We’re really pleased with it so far.
The weather here continues to be hot and sunny, but humid with storms in the evenings. I guess I’m actually surprised by how hot it is here; maybe I thought it would be like summer in the UK. If I moan about being too hot now, please remind me when I’m complaining about how cold it is in winter!
We have set up several working groups in the zoo over the past few weeks. These consist of department heads, zoo vets and other managers. The idea is to work together on new policies, working practices and problems within the zoo. This system allows ownership and investment into the plans from the staff that will have to carry out the decisions made by the groups. I think this will be a successful programme as people are more likely to do the work if they have made decisions in the planning stage and developed the system to suit their department.
On Saturday we took a course about living and working in Ukraine. It was run through a company called the British Business Club in Ukraine. We found out about the course through an expat website, and that it was free for users of that site, it normally costs about 200 Euro. It was a full day course at the company’s offices in the centre of Kyiv. The course covered a huge range of topics including; history, economics, politics, culture, religion, customs, business values, corruption and bribes, workplace attitudes, management and working styles and business communication and negotiation.
The course was really interesting; we learnt a lot of new things but also had a lot of confirmation of how we are finding the working practices, particularly the negotiations we make in meetings and how different levels of staff relate to each other. I recommend this course to anyone working in Ukraine; it will help a great deal.
Today we took a trip on the Metro to Petrivka market. It’s a huge market relatively near the zoo, but to get there you need to take the metro into the centre of Kyiv and out again on a different line. The market seems to be in three sections; household items, books and fake designer clothes/handbags. We had a good wander around in the sweltering heat before giving up and coming back home – just too hot today! The book section is huge and we have been told that it is the best place to get English books. I didn’t see any apart from English dictionaries. Perhaps we’ll go again on a less hot day so we can explore more thoroughly.

A Golden Bellied Mangabey

Putting up ropes

Steve climbing on the roof to put up ropes

Overhang at Lynx Enclosure

Lynx House floor

Lynx enclosure developing nicely

Kittens and Tanks

This week at work has been quite slow, mostly office based and lots of long meetings. It’s been very tiring but successful. We have been working with the Primate department very closely. We will now formalize and document their enrichment programme and start some work on enclosure renovation. We had meetings to finalize some permanent enrichment for the elephant – the welders seem to think that we have the world’s strongest elephant and that he will break anything that they make. We’ve now told the welders to make the enrichments, but if they think they have welded it strong enough, they must make it even stronger. And, if the elephant breaks anything, they can make it again – animals always break things.
At the zoo is an industrial sized wood-chipper, mostly used to reduce the space taken up by fallen branches and left over browse from the animals. Until now it hasn’t been used very much but we have changed all that. It now runs almost all day and is slowly chewing up the huge piles of branches that clutter up the keeper areas behind our enclosures. We have decided that where possible and practical we will give piles of woodchips to the animals and cover enclosure floors in woodchip. So far, it’s going very well. The animals seem to be enjoying it – rolling around in the chips and searching for food in them. We had a lot of tree surgery in the zoo this week, so all the animals are benefitting from extra branches to eat and play with. I can't get the pictures to upload.
We have finally completed the immense and ever changing list of requirements needed to get temporary residency here in Ukraine. We already had work permits and a one year visa before we arrived, but since then we have had to register in probably every government department in Kyiv. This will allow us to stay for the duration of our visa (tourists are only allowed to stay three months in Ukraine) and to leave and enter the country as and when we please. It has been an absolute nightmare getting all the documentation ready and probably worse for Larissa who has done the bulk of the preparation work. The last requirement on our list was blood testing, which we left till last as we didn’t really want to do it as it would mean a return trip to the dreaded poly-clinic. In addition to my recently discovered fear of Ukrainian poly-clinics, I also have an incredibly strong aversion to needles. So, we finally gritted our teeth and made our way to the poly-clinic. Fortunately for us we were able to see a doctor who made the whole process entirely pain free. Two days later, armed with all the paperwork, Larissa made her way to the government offices and made the full registrations for us.
On Saturday we went to Kyiv’s pet animal market and Lice Market (Larissa meant Flea Market, but her translation just didn’t quite work out!). The market is pretty big and consists mainly of stalls selling cats, dogs, fish, birds, rabbits, guinea pigs, mice and a few other animals. There were peacocks, ornamental pheasants, tortoises and spiders. Most of the cats and dogs for sale are pedigree – tiny dogs are very popular here, as are cats with flat faces. Not to my taste really, I prefer “moggy” real cats. There were also quite a lot of hairless cats and dogs. Some stalls also had furs for sale – mink, fox, wild boar and even badger. I’m quite pleased with my willpower in not bringing all the kittens home with me.
On Sunday we met with some zoo volunteers who had offered to take us to a museum and do some sightseeing in Kyiv. Ruslan, who has trained as a diplomat (but now wants to be a psychologist), and his girlfriend Alexandra. They are both helping out in the bird department over the summer. We travelled by metro to the station nearest the museum and walked from there. We stopped at various points of interest to look at the view over Kyiv and see various monuments to people who died in the Great Patriotic War (WW2) and the famine in 1932-33. We also went past the Larva Monastery which is a UNESCO world heritage site, which we will visit on another weekend.
The museum we visited is the Museum of the Great Patriotic War – Steve is very interested in WW2 history, but from the Soviet perspective so he’s been desperate to visit since we’ve been here. The museum is about the German invasion, the Nazi occupation and the course of the war for the Ukrainians. Much of the museum is outdoors with tanks, aeroplanes and other military vehicles. There are also a lot of sculptures depicting key moments in the war. The museum is full of artefacts and personal items from key people who were involved. The gloves made from human skin and soap from human fat were particularly disturbing. Also in the grounds of the museum is the statue “Defender of the Motherland” a 62 metre high memorial to those who died and the heroes. She is very impressive, but has very scary eyes.
After the museum we all took a very very long walk across Kyiv, stopping at various other sites. The “People’s Friendship Arch” dedicated to cooperation between Russia and Ukraine. We also walked past the Dynamo Kyiv Football Stadium and across the “Lover’s Bridge”. It is traditional at this bridge for lovers to bring a padlock (engraved with their initials) to attach to the bridge as a sign of their love. It was such a popular thing to do that recently the weight of all the locks made the bridge unstable and they had to be removed. People have still continued bringing their locks to the bridge, so I guess it will become wobbly again soon.

Fish

Pheasants and other birds

Peacock

Badger Skin

Lots of birds

Tortoises

Kittens

Memorial to the Unknown Soldier

Memorials to victims of the Famine

Entrance to Lavra

Tanks

More Tanks

Even more Tanks

Aeroplanes

Baby Tank (Tanketka)

Defender of the Motherland

Pretty Tanks

Pictures of some of the people affected by the war

Ceiling of Museum

Ceiling of Museum

Sculpture outside museum

Love Bridge

People's Arch

Strange Cat-thing on a tree