Memories of Africa

Vervet monkeys. Even thinking the word gives me a bad taste in my mouth.

From day one, we were all fascinated with the troop of monkeys that made the trees around our camp their home. My best count was that the troop had a little under 30 members, ranging from suckling babies to adult males that were almost as big as baboons (which I also saw several times, but I kept my distance). The fascination with monkeys quickly turned to disgust and annoyance.

A tree grew over our main dining hall/class room banda, which was open to the air on one side. Each morning, a buffet of various foods were set out for us. Each morning, the monkeys attacked. Swinging down from that tree to the roof to the supporting pole, to gather up an armful of toast or bananas, and retreat. Our basic interactions with the monkeys was based on battles over them stealing food. A day did not pass that a monkey didn't steal something. These guys were experts. Those art thieves that stole Scream a while back? Pretty sure they used a vervet monkey.

Okay, quick mini stories about the monkeys, which I honestly became quite fond of. I spent long hours acclimating them to my presence, so that I could sit very very close to them and watch them play, watch their behaviors. Hey--I had no TV. One day, I was sitting in a pack of them and this big honkin' male slopes down from a tree and lands not far from me. We make eye contact. We stare at one another for a moment. And then he just starts mounting all the females, pounding away, one after another, and staring at me the whole. time. I have to say that it made me a little uncomfortable. I don't know if he was showing off or just asserting his dominance.

One of the monkeys was very easy to distinguish from the others. This is because he wore the tattered remains of a pink tutu around his waist. Several years before, another class of students decided to tranq one of the monkeys and put it in a dress. I'm not kidding when I tell you that this animal LOVED that dress, wouldn't let anyone near it afterwards, and because of that dress, that monkey became the leader of the entire troop.

Another tale of their master thieving skills. There may not be honor among human thieves, but vervet thieves at least have an idea of exchanging things. One fellow student was working in her room with the window open, eating a Snickers bar (we had some american food). She sat down the snickers bar, turned away for a second, and turned back to pick it up. The candy was gone, and in it's place, a single snickers-shaped turd. Fresh. She never saw the monkey.

Another time, monkeys stole a girl's six months supply of birth control pills. I wonder sometimes if this had any effect on the population after my class left...

One of our drivers/workers/friends was a Kenyan we all called Big O. Picture Homer Simpson. Now make him black. You now have a mental picture of Big Otieno. Otieno was great fun, a prankster of sorts. His english was pretty good, but not perfect. One day, he and I were just shooting the breeze and the topic of the monkeys came up. He told me about the time he had thrown a rock at one of the monkeys and accidentally hit it. We all threw rocks to scare them, but not really to hurt them. Otieno mimicked the monkey falling out of the tree and hitting the ground. And then he was at a loss for a certain word. "It--" and he pantomimed rolling his eyes back into his head and shaking uncontrollably. "You gave the monkey seizure?" I asked. "Yes! Seizure, that is the world." I know it is not polite to laugh at the pain of animals, but I was in tears at his impression of a vervet monkey having a seizure. He assured me that a minute later, the monkey got up and walked off like nothing had happened.

One more vervet tale, no pun intended. We were eating a packed lunch near a river, somewhere around Amboseli Park. It was a good place to see crocodiles and hippos, but the area was infested with vervet monkeys. And these monkeys were a lot more aggressive than our camp monkeys. I am standing next to a car, being watched closely by a monkey as I eat my penut butter sandiwch, and suddenly, I catch motion out of my eye. A monkey has jumped in mid air onto the chest of our South African professor, and he is trying to keep the monkey from pulling his sandwich out of his hand. In a flash, the professor gave the monkey an absolutely beautiful right hook. The monkey let go of the sandwich and slouched away. The professor ate his sandwich. I had never seen a South African punch a monkey before. It's a mental picture that stays with me to this day.

And yes, sorry again, I found it fucking hilarious. But maybe you have to live with vervets for six months to get the humor in that situation.