Surprise!

Heading home for lunch the other day, I turned onto my street and found it completely deserted. There is generally a great deal of activity, with women selling produce and kids everywhere; but this day it was just me and the open road… or so I thought.

It only took a couple of seconds for me to realize this was because there was a monkey on the loose and everyone had gone into their compounds for shelter. Unfortunately, the seven foot tall walls proved an ineffective barrier between the compounds and this crazy beast. It wasn’t an exceptionally large monkey but it terrified everyone nonetheless. I’m embarrassed to say I definitely ran and screamed like a little girl while it chased me into my house (and all my neighbors laughed at me through their windows). When I finally got into my room, I went to the window and tried to take some pictures; but it jumped on my screen. Eventually, one of my neighbors was able to catch it and, I later learned, tie him up in his back yard (which is right outside my window).

I just moved into a new room and my family kept teasing me that if I didn’t keep my door and window shut the monkey was going to come in. Well, yesterday I opened my back door to test out the lock and to my surprise the tied up monkey jumped on my door. I guess they weren’t kidding.

With no prior unleashed monkey experiences, I can honestly say that my first was quite scary. Now that it is tied up and we’ve learned it’s a girl, we’ve named her Fatou and she’s living next to my room. I suppose we can grow to be friends…