At half five, bang! I'm awake. I hear the chimps calling outside. If I'm hand-rearing an infant gorilla or chimpanzee then it's the first thing I see, sprawled across my chest or in the crook of my arm. I splash water on my face, scrape my hair back and get dressed - though putting jeans on with a gorilla holding on to your leg is difficult. I make milk for the baby monkeys and walk to the village where the rest of the staff live. The gorillas in the trees look down at me and beat their chests; that gives me such a buzz in the morning.
I was about five when my mum first took me to the zoo, and there was a huge silverback gorilla behind a glass pane, just sitting there, staring. Even as a child, my heart stopped, I was so sad. Flying into Cameroon for the first time, I had this unbelievable feeling: I'm in the same country as wild gorillas. I was overwhelmed. It felt like coming home.
In Cameroon, gorilla and chimpanzee meat sells for anything from £15 a piece. The infants are too small to sell for meat, so, if they survive, the hunters tie them up and drag them through the forest and sell them into the pet trade. In town they get more than £100 each. In Cameroon you see chimpanzees on chains everywhere. In captivity they can live up to 50 years. But infant gorillas usually don't survive seeing their family slaughtered. They die of a broken heart.
When I get to the village, I'll have a cup of tea and half a stick of bread and Marmite and join the staff meeting. Around 11, I check with the head keeper that trees aren't overhanging the fences and the electric current is on. It's a constant battle between us and the chimps to keep them in. I look at the chimpanzee groups: how they work together, how they start an argument - they're exactly the same as us. The first time I heard a gorilla laugh I couldn't believe it. Lots of people believe that if you eat gorilla, it gives you strength, and the meat is very sweet. But there is a 0.6% difference in DNA between us and them: we're eating our kin. As far as I'm concerned, it's cannibalism. More countries need to take Spain's example and propose human rights for primates.
Sometimes I'll come back to my room and have a cup of tea and a plate of rice and beans for lunch. Food is really basic - we haven't the money to buy luxuries. I've eaten just about every type of leaf in this forest, just to show infants how to survive. Often infants come in with fractured legs and arms from gunshot wounds. When the mother's shot, they get the bullet too. We haven't got a vet in camp: we need one. If we're lucky we'll find a hospital willing for us to bring a chimp in to be x-rayed, but sometimes it's days before they are seen.
Years ago, locals would hunt gorillas and chimpanzees to feed their family. Now the bushmeat trade has gone commercial. It's huge. The timber companies have opened up the forest, putting roads in areas hunters could never have reached. We're just a plaster over the problem. The only way to stop this slaughter is to stop the people at the top. It's no good telling Cameroonians to stop killing chimpanzees and gorillas when you've got huge western companies raping the whole forest.
As the sun goes down at about six, I like to go outside and sit on my chair and think about my family. I miss them. I don't even consider having a relationship: this is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But I'll make that sacrifice: I made a promise when I arrived that I wasn't going to let my babies down. But don't think of them as child substitutes, this is serious conservation. I've had malaria eight or nine times. it's horrendous but you carry on. Our director is a huge support. I never cry in front of the infants. Once I did, and this seven-month-old gorilla looked into my face and wiped the tears away. You have to be the one to give them support so they get strong. It's humbling that humans have done this to them and they'll turn around and put trust in us again.
Normally at half seven I'll grab a packet of crackers and a banana and talk the head keeper through tomorrow's meeting. Sometimes I'm too tired to shower and just fall on my bed. I do the accounts and write my list of things to be done. I'll hear the chimps calling, or one of the monkeys having a shout at something. My eyes just close and that's it.
