sunrise the next morning, I sat down in the restaurant in a chair facing the Flores Sea. The same familiar waitress, a young lady with long, shiny black hair tied back in a ponytail, greeted me with a coffee and a generous plate of cut fruit. She was smiling.
“Terima kasih,” I said.
“I know what you do,” she said in English as she placed the cup and plate on the table and stepped back. Then she put one hand over her heart and said, “Thank you, Monkey Lady.”
I smiled and nodded, feeling overwhelmed by her gesture.
A few moments later, a waiter approached. He stopped a few feet from me, and when I looked up at him, he stood at attention, beat a fist on his chest above his heart twice, and said, “Monkey Lady.”
As he turned away, another man approached and did the same thing, followed by another waitress who clasped her palms together in front of her chest and bowed. “Thank you, Monkey Lady,” she said.
As she walked away, my eyes followed. Gathered near the kitchen door, the staff were watching me. I waved, prompting smiles and nods in return. And then it hit: a rush of emotion. My eyes filled with tears, my face flushed, and I nodded my thanks with a quivering smile.
Their demonstration fell like a ray of sunshine on a stormy day. Their hearts, too, had been pained by what they’d witnessed.
On the path to do what’s right, we’re never alone. My experience has been that when we speak for those who cannot, an army builds and walks with us. In rescuing the monkeys, I did not lead the charge. Instead, I was only one last voice of reason, one that followed, and helped facilitate, what many others, both hotel guests and staff, had wanted before me.
Afterward, I stayed in touch with Agus by email. His replies were always short, but he let me know the animals were fine and the hotel was following the feeding regime I’d suggested. Then, six months after the monkey release, I received an unexpected email. Agus was very pleased to tell me that he’d closed the hotel’s zoo permanently, and the three remaining monkeys in captivity — the mother and her two children — had been taken to the release site and set free. The four geese had been placed in a welcoming home. The only sad news was that Twinkle the porcupine had died.
For me, I felt some relief knowing that the unnecessary suffering Twinkle had endured was over. I only hoped he’d died peacefully, in his log. My brief relationship with a porcupine had shown me that gentle souls come in all forms and that they, like us, can experience joy. Without his prickly exterior, Twinkle was a dog, imprisoned in a cage, yet grateful for the smallest kindness. I trusted his soul was now in a better place.
That night the stars were bright in the Southern Hemisphere. Each person who’d spoken out on behalf of these animals had also, unwittingly, raised the already-present consciousness of the zoo’s keeper, Agus Tabah Wardhana. Sure, the threat of lost tourism dollars to the hotel may have influenced the first release, but the second act — the shuttering of the zoo — was fueled by compassion. It was further proof of the transformative power that is created when we raise our collective voice to demand change.
I met photojournalist Jo-Anne McArthur on Facebook. I was surfing my feed one day and was stopped by an image. Instantly, the photograph of a pig’s eye peering through the steel ventilation hole of a transport truck made me gasp. That one eye conveyed so much of the pig’s despair. I shuddered. A tear dropped. My index finger clicked on the link, and I was taken to We Animals.
A lightbulb went off when I saw Jo-Anne’s name. She initiated the project called We Animals to document the plight of “the invisibles,” as she calls them: animals used for food, for clothing, in research, and for entertainment. We’d both been profiled for our animal welfare work in the book One Hundred & One Reasons to Get Out of Bed by Natasha Milne and Barbara Royal, and I was intrigued to learn more about the investigative photojournalist and author, who’d been the subject of the highly acclaimed documentary The Ghosts in Our Machine.
In one photograph, Jo-Anne had been able to tell a story that would have taken me a week to write. She has a profound ability to affect people with images so that they’re moved to create change, and one of her gifts to the world is a database of photographs that she offers for free to campaigns dedicated to ending animal suffering. With her unique talent, Jo-Anne shows us the world, perhaps not as we’d wish it, but how it truly is, and provides us with plenty of opportunities to change it.
Her awakening came when she was twenty-one years old and on a hiking trip with friends in Ecuador. While walking through a mountain village, the young Canadian came across a monkey chained to the side of a building. As tourists gathered to snap pictures, using the monkey as a prop, she turned her lens on the helpless animal to document his sad story.
Baños, Ecuador
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be around animals. It wasn’t just that I loved animals, but I had a deep curiosity about them, as well as concern for them. For me, being with animals has always given me instant joy. I could even describe it as relief.
My parents let me be the way I was with animals even though they didn’t feel as I did. We had birds at home, and I didn’t want them caged, so they allowed me to let the birds fly around when I persisted in asking if they could be let out in the house. My sister and I also had rabbits and guinea pigs that we loved, but they were relegated to live in the garage, which made me sad. When the neighbor’s dog, Duke, a shepherd/Rottie mix, barked and cried endlessly from being left outside throughout the year, I asked the neighbors if I could walk him. They agreed, and to this day I can recall the happiness I felt — and Duke’s, too.
What I learned as a young person is that animals, whether wild or domesticated, are fascinating individuals, and that often, they need our care or reverence but aren’t getting it. It wasn’t until later in life that I learned that I could channel that concern for animals into transformative actions.
When I was twenty-one years old, I had an experience with a macaque monkey that changed my life. At the time, I was a student at the University of Ottawa, in Canada, studying human geography and English literature. I was on a hiking trip in the Andes Mountains in Ecuador, South America, with two friends from school. We were on our second day of a two-day hike and had spent most of it in the clouds on the lushly green volcanic mountain Tungurahua.
That afternoon, we made our way to the popular tourist town of Baños to spend the night. As we entered the town, passing houses, I stopped when I noticed a group of people had gathered around a building. As I got closer I realized they were looking at a monkey who was chained to the bars of a windowless sill. He was alone and vulnerable, perched between a concrete block and a pillar with no water or food source. His hair was a mixed color of gray and tan with a dark crown on his head. It struck me that he had absolutely nowhere to go but that sill.
The sight of him had attracted attention, but not in a good way. People were stopping to have their pictures taken with him. He responded by straining against the chain to reach into their jackets and bags for food. And he found it and quickly ate it, causing laughter.
I stopped to take photos as well. This was an epiphanic moment for me. While everyone was taking photos because they thought the situation was funny, or unique, or cute, I took pictures because I thought that what I was witnessing was terribly cruel. It dawned on me at the time that if I took photos, I could share them and somehow change his situation. I wanted to show this picture all around so that people would react with sadness and dismay. This wasn’t funny or unique or cute! This was an animal living as a slave.
This short encounter made me realize that I saw animals differently from how many other people did. I saw both individual creatures and their circumstances. I wondered about their history — where they came