They climbed the surrounding trees, they played and dug around in one another’s coats, they picked up things and popped them in their mouths. Nuts and berries? Grubs and insects? Small lizards? It was difficult to see at a distance. And, I quickly noticed, they copied one another. A big one would do something and a smaller one would copy it. As I watched this, something my mother often said popped into my head: monkey see, monkey do.
I sat and watched them for a long time. I was mesmerised and felt somehow reluctant to leave them. There was something about the way they seemed to enjoy one another’s company that made them feel like a family. While close to them, I felt like I wasn’t alone any more.
They were so pretty too, with their milk-chocolate fur and camel-coloured bellies, their tufty grey ears and their dark, bushy tails. I was especially enthralled by their hands, which intrigued and bewildered me because, though they weren’t human, they looked just like mine. They were the same colour and size as my own, with four fingers, a thumb and hard fingernails.
And they were constantly active, leaping high and low, chattering and chasing one another round the trees and shrubs. They seemed to love playing and, in the case of what looked like the young ones, play-fighting and squabbling as well. They were watched over by the bigger monkeys, who would shriek and pull faces as if they were telling them off when things got too rough. This was just what the grown-ups in my world would do, and somehow this sense of order and family made me feel better.
4
After a while, I was distracted again by the gnawing pain in my stomach. It was my third day in the jungle and I badly needed food. As I continued to watch the monkeys, I became fixated on how much they were eating. Whatever else they were doing, they seemed to be constantly feeding. I needed to do that too, I knew, or I would die of the pain.
Startled by a siren shriek from above me, I looked up to see a small monkey swinging above me, swooping from one tree to another smaller one close by. The leaves of the tree were dark and shaped like slender teardrops, deep green and glossy, and about the size of a man’s shoe. The tree also bore flowers – pretty purple flowers that seemed to transform themselves into banana-like bunches, except that the fruits pointed up rather than down. The fruits looked unripe, as they were still tiny – about the size of my finger – and were also an unappetising shade of green. Bananas at home were yellow, but these little ones definitely looked similar, and as the monkey dropped a bunch in his haste to grab a handful, I quickly darted over and snatched them up from the forest floor.
I had already watched the monkeys eat them, which they did differently from the way my mother had taught me: peeling the skin off in strips from the top end. The monkeys would either just break them in half or, starting at the bottom, peel the skin up from there, sometimes using their teeth to help, too. I watched a nearby monkey who was feasting on the contents and, with my mouth watering, copied him.
The flesh was delicious. Soft and sticky and so incredibly sweet: better than any banana I had ever eaten. It was my first taste of jungle food, and I wolfed it down greedily. But no sooner had I done so and picked up a second, than another monkey, who had clearly been waiting for its moment, swung over on a vine and, in a deft, practised fashion, stole the rest of the precious bunch from right under my nose.
Ah, I remember thinking, so this is how the game works. But it didn’t matter. I looked around to find a stick and had soon snagged another small bunch of the delicious fruits for myself. I had found company – a family of sorts, even – and something that I knew I could eat till my mummy came to find me and take me home. As I dived into my second bunch of tiny bananas, I felt my spirits lifting just a little.
*
Though I had worried all day that my new companions might scamper away and desert me, they didn’t. This patch of forest seemed to be their home. And for the moment, I decided, it would be mine as well, so I spent my third night in the jungle with the monkeys. Though they seemed to prefer to sleep high up in the canopy, I had to be content with curling up on the bare earth far beneath them, in a tight space between two shrubs. Part of me was desperate to return to the safety of the hollowed-out tree, and I later would. But that night, I was so frightened of losing the monkeys that I chose to stay and take my chances. Just knowing they were there made me feel a little safer. And as the night came rushing down to cloak everything in inky blackness, the sound of them calling to one another gave me comfort.
But I still lay there quivering with fear. The jungle was once again full of murderous shrieks and howls, and the bushes around me kept shaking and rustling. I was filled with a cold, intense terror. What was out there?
Then I held my breath as I felt movement: a steady pressure from behind me. A gentle, slow shove that pressed into my back. I had no idea what it might be, only that it was smooth and warm and felt frighteningly big. It also seemed to slither.
Was I imagining it or had a snake come and found me? Was it slithering alongside me, intent on making me its dinner? My imagination ran wild. Unable to see what was behind me – even if I’d dared to open my eyes – the picture in my mind grew steadily more terrifying. I could hardly dare to breathe, let alone roll over to try to see it, so I just lay there, my heart pounding, my ears straining as the sound it made – a kind of truffling, groaning, creaking – seemed to begin to move above me and the pressure lessened. It was a giant snake, I was sure. One that was now ascending back to wherever it had come from.
Knowing the creature was up there made it impossible to sleep. It didn’t seem to matter how exhausted I felt, I was simply much too afraid of being eaten. Yet eventually I must have drifted off, because the next thing I remember was waking up to see the sky bright once again. To see the sunshine-dappled ground and feel the heat on my limbs was a huge relief, and all thoughts of the snake vanished. But with the sun and the rising mists came thoughts of home. Why had my mother still not come for me? Surely she should have been able to find me by now? But my only companions, now as yesterday, were the monkeys, who whooped and chattered and swung among the branches up above me, as playful and carefree as I was dispirited and scared.
Now they were used to me, the troop didn’t take a lot of notice of me. Apart from the older ones, who acted as the parents and who seemed to want to keep an eye on me, most of the monkeys ignored me. There were more of them than I’d first seen – looking back now, perhaps thirty – and though they seemed happy enough with my constant presence, they didn’t include me. They had no idea that to me they were lifesavers, friends. They just allowed me to stay close, and I was grateful.
I was also able to watch them and learn about my surroundings. Where food was concerned, I made a habit of copying. I assumed that the seeds, nuts and fruit they favoured would all be acceptable for me to eat too. Some things were spiny, some were bitter and unpleasant, but I generally just copied, trying things I saw them relish.
Not that I ate everything the monkeys did – far from it. At no point did I ever even think about trying to catch and eat a lizard. The idea made me gag. I also found out by trial and error that I didn’t like the taste of flowers, grass or insects, and that fruit, nuts and berries were the best things to go for. But not all of them. Almost immediately, I learned my first crucial rule: that brightly coloured berries, however enticing they looked, were, without exception, to be left alone.
Figs seemed to be prized over any other foodstuff, and a monkey with figs was a monkey who was hounded. Most of the thieving seemed playful, but where figs were concerned, no one was left alone. And I shared their love. Those first days in the jungle gave me one lifelong passion. To this day, prepared in traditional Colombian style, figs are still among my favourite fruits.
Not all foods gave themselves up easily, and watching the monkeys made me realise another truth: that you had to work for some of the tastiest morsels on offer. There were many different kinds of nuts in our patch of the rainforest, and though I could see from a distance that the monkeys could obviously find their way into the shells, it wasn’t clear to me how they went about it.
But there was one monkey who always seemed to let me get a little closer than the others. It could have been a boy or a girl – I had no idea how to tell the difference – but in my mind, he was a boy monkey, a medium-sized animal