WITH DEBRA ROSENMAN ***image1*** SFR: You started Project Sweet Dreams rather recently, didn't you?
DR:
I met Jane Goodall when she was here in October. I was so taken by her presence, I couldn't stop crying. Jane took my hand and said, 'You must have tears in your eyes to have a rainbow in your heart.' I'll never forget that moment. So I just started Roots and Shoots in Santa Fe two months ago. It's a global network [founded by Goodall] that incorporates nearly 100 countries. Anyone can start it, each chapter can design its own project, it can have thousands of members or a few. The only thing is that you have to be helping the environment, people or animals. The key is that it's getting to the needs of the community.
And you're already working on a project.
Yes! So Project Sweet Dreams is a campaign to get blankets for chimpanzees. I got in touch with a lot of schools to bring together children and parents and teachers. The Oz School, an after-school art program, has painted chimpanzee pictures and they're up in Kaune's window. All the proceeds will go to buy blankets for the chimpanzees. The Santa Fe Girl's School-there are nine girls in the sixth grade and they're just amazing. They're little entrepreneurs. The school has decided that they're actually going to carry this project through to the eighth grade and the girls are hard at work making jewelry [to sell to benefit the project from 10 am to 3 pm, Saturday, April 22, at Trader Joe's]. And the parents of one of the girls own a paper shop, so they're donating bookmarks and I'll have pictures of my mascot, Jaybee, on the covers of journals. I'll be speaking to the Alvord school this week and they'll be having an in-school blanket drive. I have drop-off points all around town. At Petco, Pete's Pets, Teca Tu, and at the Eldorado animal clinic. So people can drop blankets off there.
Is there really a very great need for blankets?
Save the Chimps [
] washes over 300 blankets a day. The chimpanzees use blankets to nest with. They cover themselves, they put the blankets down and lay on them, they pull them around like security blankets. One of the chimps in Florida loves to pull the babies around on the blanket. When they first rescued Jaybee, my sort of mascot, all he'd been given was monkey chow. He'd take each pellet of his monkey chow and place it around him in a circle. Then he'd sleep inside the circle, so that was like his nest. And they said when they gave him a blanket for the first time, he was so happy it would break your heart. He kept that blanket clean and dry for two days.
And actually we don't have to go far, because they're right here in our own state.
Save the Chimps actually rescued chimpanzees from the Coulston lab in Alamogordo, NM, a number of years ago. It was one of the worst medical research labs in the country in terms of abuse. They were doing all kinds of experiments-called vivisection-on chimps. They received more abuse violations than any other under the Animal Welfare Act. So in 1998 Save the Chimps sued the Air Force for guardianship of the chimps and, after the settlement, retained guardianship of 21 chimps.
Obviously, that's grown.
There are 255 chimps now. Save the Chimps has just finished building a sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Fla. for the chimps. It has 12 three-acre islands. The chimps are being socialized in Alamogordo and then they'll be transported to Fort Pierce, where they'll live in family groups comprised of about 20 to 25 chimps. And most of these chimps have never had the sun on their face or touched the earth with their feet.
I'll bet you have your own chimp story.
In the '80s I had an event planning business in New York City and only once did I hire a chimpanzee for a small dinner party. And I had, at the time, absolutely no idea the torture that they go through. So I have that picture up on my refrigerator. And I promised, once I found out, that I would help them some day. And then about four years ago I started having these dreams. The chimps would come to me and teach me how to be in my body. And I just listened. Once you start reading you really understand the breadth of suffering they're going through. My heart opened up to their suffering and there was no turning back.
Why is Project Sweet Dreams specifically kid-focused?
I've been giving presentations at schools, anywhere from 20 to 75 minutes depending on grade, talking about the chimpanzees. I tell the kids about where they come from, their extinction-right now there are 150,000 chimpanzees; at the turn of the century there were between 2 and 5 million chimpanzees in the wild-and this is due to the bush meat trade. People eat chimpanzees. And it's due to deforestation, where they take the land where the chimpanzees are living and they're killed in that process. And then, also, chimpanzees are sold into medical research. And usually to get one viable baby they kill five or six chimpanzees. Because you have to get rid of the family to get to them. In labs, most of them have no toys, no natural light, tiny little cages. It's just abysmal. So I teach the kids about that, if it's age-appropriate. We watch
Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees
, I bring in pictures and we talk. The kids are usually shocked to find out that the cute little chimps they see in the movies and on TV are abused. What better way to teach people about the plight of the biomedical lab chimps than starting out with children? They're really our future and I feel passionate about teaching children about chimpanzees. Everything starts with the kids.
