Life With Darwin

Praise for Fransje van Riel's Life with Darwin and Other Baboons :

…''The story is an intriguing one, captivating from beginning to end, and recounted with a simple clarity that I find refreshing. Karin Saks' carefully recorded observations are offered without any pretensions, without opinions or scientific conclusions. It offers, instead, a truthful yet fascinating look at the secret lives of baboons. It shows us how baboons are neither devils nor saints, but animals who - like us - have very individual personalities, experience a wide range of emotions and possess a capacity for reasoning. It also shows that baboons are social creatures; that they live by the rules and traditions of a complex society, that they love their offspring, look after their orphans, and have a language for expressing their feelings, their needs and their intentions''.

Kobie Kruger - Best selling author of 'Wilderness Family

…. "An important book, as it brings us nearer to the Baboons. We have lived as
strangers to the animal world for so long now, and it is time to reconnect and
respect the ways they need to live, and that are natural to them. In stead of
being strangers or even enemies, this book will help us to live together."

Irene van Lippe-Biesterfeld, Princess of The Netherlands.

' Life with Darwin and Other Baboons is an evocative, deeply moving account of Karin Saks's continued battle to protect southern Africa's baboons, whose existence is threatened by continued persecution…. a highly entertaining, well-researched read that should go a long way to redressing man's inhumane attitude towards this intelligent, highly evolved species'.
Carolyn Hurry, The Sunday Independent Newspaper

'Life with Darwin is a story of strength, courage and the overwhelming desire to follow your heart at all odds. It brings a new and unique insight to the much-despised animals that wil hopefully go a long way to changing the mindset of many'.

Michelle Sturman, ELLE Magazine

' Animal lovers, and anyone with a passing interest in animal behaviour, will find this book fascinating. But it's not just for the bunny-huggers - although they're probably the only ones who'll read it - as author Fransje van Riel has written a moving and compelling piece of non-fiction, unclouded by sentimentality. Well worth the read'.
Jocelyn Newmarch, iafrica website

'A fascinating account of fostering wild animals, challenging the perception that baboons are simply vicious and destructive vermin'.
Shelly Johnson, YOU magazine

'The extraordinary story of Karin's experiences with baboons is told in a delightful book ... an extraordinary insight into baboon society and psychology - and a little human psychology too. A delightful book… a powerful plea for primate conservation'.
Vincent Carruthers, The Citizen Newspaper

'A book like this can only help to open our eyes to then plight of these inquisitive, almost human creatures, and to our responsibility towards them'.
Carol Dunning for Rennies Travel

"Through fostering orphaned baboons and attempting to rehabilitate them back into the wild, Karin Saks brings fresh and moving perspectives to our knowledge of animal society. It's impossible after reading it to view a community of animals in the same way again".

Shape Magazine

"A beastly good read"

Dier en Natuur, Dutch Environmental Website

"An impressive account"

Midi Magazine

"…her tale of the funny, serious, complicated and sometimes heart-rending incidences that have occurred in the baboon troop she wrote as a contribution to her friend Karin's lifework."

Algemeen Dagblad - National Dutch newspaper

"Life with Darwin and Other Baboons by Fransje Van Riel (Penguin) will delight animal lovers - a tender observation of the work of Karin Saks in fostering and rehabilitating orphaned Chacma baboons".

Nancy Richards, SAFM Radio ''Otherwise''

… intriguing, often hilarious but not without moments of poignancy…"

Lynn Harris, The Knysna / Plett Herald

Visit Karin Saks Blog

Email karinsaks@gmail.com

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Karin and the young Darwin
Life With Darwin and Other Baboons

In September 1998, a young baboon was orphaned after his mother had been shot from a tree where she was nursing her newborn. Darwin's mother plunged to her death, taking her small infant with her, crushing his frail legs underneath her dead weight.

Darwin was paralyzed.

The distraught and confused baboon was removed from his mother's body and placed into the loving and gentle care of South African animal welfarist Karin Saks. Karin was no stranger to mothering a young baboon. Several months earlier she had successfully rehabilitated another orphan, Gismo, back into the wilds of the Mosdene Game Reserve after a foster period of eight months.

Karin found that Darwin, however, was far more demanding than what Gismo had been. Whereas Gismo had been a bouncy young baboon, Darwin was disabled and as a consequence his needs were of a different nature.

In due time Darwin learnt to deal with his shortcoming and matured into a healthy, robust and extremely naughty teenage baboon. At the time Karin lived close to an ancient mountain gorge that was home to two troops of wild baboons. Their presence allowed Karin a window into their secret world. For Darwin it was paradise. He took great delight in the great outdoors and in getting to know his own kind, yet had the comfort and security of his human mother.
Both Darwin and she became good friends with the many different characters; Kaya, the alpha male of the troop, Joanie and her son Khaled, Thistle and Stump and many others.


Bosom friends--youngsters of the Gorge Troop (photo: Fransje van Riel)	Joanie (far left) watches over Pim and her baby (photo: Fransje van Riel)

Khaled getting to know his new baby brother (photo: Fransje van Riel)	Karin and Darwin (photo: Fransje van Riel)

"Life With Darwin and Other Baboons" is a heart-rending story about the unique relationship between human and primate and makes for an exciting read because it offers a previously unknown glimpse into the lives of baboons.

Fransje van Riel

Photos by Fransje van Riel

Fransje and Karma (photo: Liezel Mortimer)

Biography Fransje van Riel

Fransje van Riel was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on 20 June 1965 but moved with her family to the UK in 1979. The van Riel family moved back to Holland four years later, where after taking courses in photography and calligraphy, Fransje began working for a Dutch charter company as ground handling crew at Schiphol Airport. In 1989, Fransje applied for cabin crew with KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines.

One of Fransje's early international flights took her first African safari, an experience that made a deep and lasting impression. The seven years that Fransje spent flying around the world resulted in her leaving The Netherlands and saw her move to South Africa.

In 1997 she met Gareth Patterson, who had inherited the mantle of 'The Lion Man' from the legendary George Adamson of Born Free fame. They soon they became an item. For the remainder of the year, Fransje assisted Patterson in his battle against the trophy hunting of Africa's big cats, which resulted in a world-wide expose on Canned Hunting.

The next project was a three-week survey in 1999 in an attempt to establish the range of the Tuli elephants, whose capture and relocation to a South African animal dealer had made news several months earlier. These young elephants had been ripped away from their family herds in the Tuli Block in Botswana to be sold into commercial operations such as zoos and circuses.

By this time Fransje had started writing numerous articles about wildlife and travel for several South African publications. Her love for writing soon developed, culminating in her first book of non-fiction.

Life with Darwin and other Baboons was snapped up by Dutch publishing house 'The House of Books, who published the story in November 2002. The book also found a home with Penguin Books in South Africa, where it was published the following year.

Fransje's second work of non-fiction, The Crowing of the Roosters, tells the tale of a Xhosa woman, Nomfusi Vinah Yekani, whose cultural story spans five decades and is set against the backdrop of the rural Eastern Cape Province in South Africa during the 1950's.

Movingly, and at times hauntingly written, Fransje worked closely with Mrs Yekani to produce an authentic contemporary African story that will allow a rare social insight into an African woman's life prior to South Africa's first pre-democratic elections.

The Crowing of the Roosters met with a great deal of interest in both The Netherlands and South Africa, and was published in November 2004 by David Philip, an imprint of New Africa Books. The Dutch version will appear early in 2005.

Fransje and Gareth live, together with their extensive family of dogs and cats, in their timber home on the edge of the indigenous Knysna forest in the Western Cape, South Africa, where Fransje is currently researching material for her third work of non-fiction, Send the Wind over my Footsteps, the story of Namibian big cat woman Lise Hanssen.

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