The Great Primate Handshake – Volunteer in Africa, working to conserve monkeys and apes through film and educational content production

Sunday morning started with another team building exercise following on from the marshmallow challenge the day previous. We were divided into groups of three, each armed with some form of camera, and provided with a list of things to capture within a thirty minute timeframe.

The list (in no particular order) went as follows:

1. A Stone Animal,
2. A Log,
3. A Colobus,
4. A Vervet,
5. The most relaxing place in camp,
6. The most beautiful place in camp,
7. The most disgusting thing on camp,
8. A Hippo,
9. The most interesting Insect,
10. A Tokola,
11. A Percolator,
12. A Human Pyramid,
13. Something beginning with Z,
14. Most artistic photo,
15. A Work Person.

After the thirty minutes were up, our photos from each group were uploaded to be viewed and judged by the staff. A score out of ten was awarded for each photo, for each team. Scoring reasons ranged from composition, relevance to content and brief, to imagination, parody and humour.

In my particular group, appropriately named ‘No Primates’ having failed to find either a Colobus or a Vervet within sight, failed to score several times, and ended up last. However we could have easily been named many other disheartening names having failed to photograph quite a number of the required items/places on the list.

First place went to a group with a score of over eight hundred, out of a possible one thousand five hundred.

The most disgusting thing on camp photos produced a sickeningly, yet humorous range of content, ranging from boils to toenails to what I’ll describe as ‘unorthodox toilet wall decoration’.

For me it was an enjoyable experience, despite being a little delicate from the night before and finishing with several photos scoring zero. The whole group is coming together and bonding really well so even the competition drive was lost to a lot of laughs and admiring/slating the wide range of photographs that different groups produced.