Monkey Business (part the first)

[Disclaimer:  This story has nothing to do with the fibreglass Chris Craft that played a role in the downfall of Gary Hart's presidential hopes]

borrowed from monkey_news.jpg

This monkey may be looking for the business section, I did not zoom in enough to find out, but my title is emblematic of my one of my monkey adventures in Kenya.  I will relate it here for your perusal.

Several years ago I got to spend about a week in Kenya visiting my friend Caroline, who had grown up there with her British ex-pat parents.  She was working there as an inspector for the Agency for International Development, doing worthwhile projects like ensuring that the cooking oil the US was sending to the country was going to the people who needed it, rather than being stockpiled by the elite and later sold to the people who could ill afford this basic purchase.

Caroline and I had spent a few days at the Masai Mara game park, sleeping in big tents on concrete slabs with solar showers, and we were heading back to Nairobi.  There was a drive thru park that Caroline wanted to hit on our way back to the big city.  She was about 10 meters away from the car trying to convince the guys in the guard shack that I was her sister, so the entry fee would not be so large.  [We were both short white women with approximately the same shade of brown hair, but she has a british accent, and we had different last names on our passports, so I think she was having to concoct quite a good story, so it was taking a while.]

I was sitting in the passenger seat of her british drive car, looking thru my camera bag to figure out how many rolls of film I still had.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a grey brown flash to my right, to which I paid no attention.  I kept on with my film roll inventory, but saw the little flash again.  I looked to my right, and found that there was a small monkey on the headrest looking at me.  She had a baby monkey hanging on to her chest.  I instantly flashed back to something my friend Kathleen kept saying to me before I left for Kenya, "You are going to get bitten by a monkey and get AIDS."  I am not sure if she was saying this just to annoy me, or if she actually believed this, but I instantly jumped out of the car.  

I tried to close the door behind me, but the monkey was following me, and I didn't want to crush it.  Caroline had already told me that I should stand my ground and stomp my feet and yell when a monkey was being naughty, but I was not ready to adopt that strategy yet.  The monkey continued chasing me around the car until Caroline came to my rescue with the stomping/yelling technique.

I got back in the car and sealed myself in by closing all the windows and the sun roof.  Now I was broiling in the mid-day sun, and I hoped that Caroline would conclude her haggling so that we could get on our way.

She started waving her arms at me, and making a photo-taking sign (pretend your are holding a camera up to your face and clicking the shutter with your right index finger) then pointing up.  I just ignored her because I figured that she wanted me to get out of the car and take a picture of the monkey, who I assumed was now on top of the car.  I had already taken hundreds of pictures of monkeys, and did not want another one of my tormentor.

Then I noticed that there were things flying off the roof of the car; small objects, which I hoped were not monkey feces.  As I looked closer, I saw that the objects were things like:  lens cover; film canister; empty film box; etc.

In my haste to get back in the car and seal myself in, I must have left my camera case on top of the car.  The monkey was going thru it looking for something to eat.

I got out of the car, because I did not want all the exposed film canisters to be strewn out into the dirt.  Now that monkey had made me mad!  

It is possible that I did not get out of the car until Caroline had come over to my rescue once again.  Memories get a little dim with the passage of time.......