Of course, I also saw the circle of life in action. I especially recall Lolita, an older female monkey, who in my time there gave birth to several babies. I never actually saw Lolita, or any other monkey, give birth in the jungle – they always seemed to disappear from sight to do that – but I think in general they might have done so approximately once a year. What remains, though, in terms of memories, was what a wonderful mother Lolita was: one who taught her children discipline and respect. A diplomat, she always made peace after their squabbles.
I miss Lolita, too. I learned such a lot from her. Though perhaps I learned the most of all from Grandpa. He’d saved my life that fateful day with the bad tamarind and had watched over me ever since. He was very wise and intelligent, and seemed to be the oldest of all the monkeys. He kept things in order and could often be seen prowling around the floor of our territory keeping watch, like a security guard. Sometimes, however, he just sat and watched, as grandpas do, while the youngsters – me included – larked about.
Every day seemed to bring opportunities for adventure and often some unexpected bounty. On this particular morning, I had woken up early and was down on the forest floor, foraging for fruit and nuts before the rest of the troop got up. After a while, a series of whoops and howls drew my attention upwards, and I noticed a small parade of them had decided to gather for a communal breakfast outing. The captain of the team – a monkey who behaved as if he always knew the best trees in the jungle – had amassed a school of several others for the tour.
I watched as they proceeded along the rooftop of the jungle, keeping in a single-file, tightly packed line. I followed their progress along a twisted branch that belonged to a large fruit tree, until the whole gang was on it, their fearless leader at the very tip. At this point he paused, as if deciding on the best cluster of fruit to go for, getting visibly irritated that the monkeys behind him kept shuffling up, each with their hands on the shoulders of the monkey in front and bobbing up and down for a better view.
The hesitation was his undoing. Perhaps more in the mood for mischief than breakfast, the last of the monkeys gave the line a firm shove, which sent their leader into free fall from the branch. Naturally, because monkeys like nothing better than to laugh, the whole jungle erupted with hilarity.
But it didn’t last. Not once they’d seen their leader, who’d now regained his composure, climbing angrily back up the tree again. Wisely, they scattered, each now intent on hiding while I, keen to capitalise on this convenient development, took the opportunity to scamper across and collect as much fallen fruit as I could hold. A very satisfying way to get my breakfast!
The ends of the days too, I remember with great fondness. There would always be a big grooming party up in the canopy, and I loved the physical contact that meant. The little ones enjoyed digging around under my fingernails and opening my mouth to see if there might be something to eat hidden inside. I saw nothing revolting in any of this – it was normal and sociable, part of the bonding process that created such a close and happy family. But for all my immersion in, and love of, monkey life, my days in the jungle were numbered.
*
It was another day, another sunrise, another busy morning. It had been a busy period, one that happened every so often in the jungle, when a bounty of fruit had been shed.
Though there are no seasons in equatorial regions, as there are nearer the poles, there are still rhythms of life taking place. There were periods of intense growth, and periods of shedding of leaves, fruits and flowers, and though each species had its own plan, these often coincided, bringing a little novelty and excitement to our days. My favourite time was when we’d be treated to a mass shedding of flowers, and the whole jungle would be carpeted by showers of delicate petals that would cover the drabness of the dead leaves with beautiful, myriad, eye-popping colours.
The giant Brazil nut was kind too, if a little dangerous. When it chose to release its goodies, you could be killed in an instant, as the pods that held the nuts were as dense as they were big, and if one hit you on the head, it wouldn’t just be the nut-case that was cleaved in two. They also fell from a very great height. The Brazil nut trees being the mightiest in our jungle, the pods had a long way to travel and would fall at a terrifying speed. And they weren’t the only danger; so forceful was their momentum that they would shear off old and weak branches as they passed, causing a shower of wood to rain down on you as well.
Sometimes when this happened, a patch of blue sky would be created, and smaller plants and saplings would race into overdrive, hoping to be the next to fill the precious sunny space. Absolutely no chance of light and life was wasted.
On this day, it was the sound that first alerted me. Perhaps because of the recent bounty of Brazil nuts I automatically decided what the source of the noise must be. You heard certain sounds and you knew you had to get out of harm’s way. So my first thought, when I heard the snap of branches above me, was of nuts. Perhaps there were some pods coming down.
But then my brain caught up properly with what my ears had relayed to it – the sound was different from what I had first thought. It was more like the sound I’d expect to hear if a large animal trod heavily on a dead branch. I froze, straining to see what other sounds I could make out, attuning all my senses to receive them.
And then I heard it. A ‘swoosh’ sound. The sound of a machete! I had not heard that noise for a long time, but it was one that was as firmly engraved on my mind as any monkey warning call I’d ever heard.
Horrified, I made my own warning call – a panicked, fearful, loud one – and raced to the place that I now used as a hideout. I had never forgotten how close to me the hunter had been that day, and after it had happened I’d felt markedly less secure in my tree. Now I was bigger and more skilled at moving around the lower canopy, I could find somewhere higher, like the monkeys. My new hideout, accordingly, was high in a palm tree, behind a fan of dense spreading leaves.
Safely crouched, and with a good view of the forest floor below me, I now waited for whatever was going to emerge from the bushes that were now shivering and swinging unmistakeably. The next sound I heard was the distinctive cocking of a rifle, and moments later its metal nose poked through the undergrowth, followed by one hunter and then another.
Both were wearing the same khaki clothes I’d seen previously and had a look of concentration on their faces as they inched through the tangles and tried to spot things to shoot. They were both wearing strange cylindrical hats with sunshades and were by now getting close to the base of my tree. I glared down at them hatefully, as if just by doing so I could somehow prevent them from looking up and seeing me.
But then I realised there was something unusual here. One of the hunters looked different, and I realised with a gasp that she was female. I looked some more and once again a peculiar feeling overtook me. Though she was dressed like a hunter, her face told me something different. It just looked so kind, so compassionate and gentle, so much like a mother, like someone who might care. She immediately reminded me of the young woman I’d previously seen give birth, and I felt irresistibly drawn to her.
How can the head ever compete with the strength of the heart’s feelings? In my case, not at all, because without thinking about what I was doing, let alone how dangerous it might be, I was climbing down my tree towards her. It was as if all my training and survival instincts had been neutralised by this woman, that something I didn’t understand was drawing me to her. I felt compelled to show her my face – as if it was my biggest, deepest secret, something that could only be revealed to a very close friend. It made no sense – why would I offer myself up into the mouth of my greatest danger? Yet I did.
Within moments I stood behind the tree, feet on the ground now, and, with my head down (as if it didn’t want to witness this stupidity), I stepped out in full view and stood before them both.
I braced myself for whatever was coming next, but nothing happened. What had I done? Such foolishness! Could they even
see me? It was perhaps not surprising that when I did dare lift my eyes, all I could see in theirs was utter disbelief.
I don’t know what they thought of me. I never will. But if I try to recall that day from their perspective instead of mine, I have a better sense of what they might have been thinking. My hair, thick and tangled, had by this time grown way past my bottom and covered much of my face and body. I was black – filthy black; I had not washed in years now – and I no longer stood on two legs. Crouched there, I suspect I must have looked like a primate. But like no monkey found in the jungles of the Americas. I was probably too big and too odd-looking. I imagine they must have thought that what they’d encountered was some undiscovered species of ape.
They were definitely frightened. The gun was once again lifted and aimed at my face. But I focused solely on the woman; it was she that I fixed my gaze on and, even knowing how much danger I was in, I moved slowly and submissively in her direction. I needed to touch her. In my monkey world, holding out a hand to another was a way of signifying that you wanted to start a friendship. And although my instincts were screaming ‘No! Don’t do this! They will kill you!’, my rebellious feet seemed determined to ignore them. I needed to get close enough to touch her, to grip her finger.
Step after step I took, still aware of the gun trained on me, but as I got closer I could see that her expression was softening. That she’d decided she wasn’t frightened. That she was instead intrigued. This was my cue. As I was now only touching distance from her, I slowly lifted my hand to touch hers. This seemed to charm her; she raised her hand to let me clasp one of her fingers and a moment of silent shock hovered between us all. It was a gesture so commonplace in my community of monkeys but my first human touch for many years.
My nerves disappeared at her touch. It really was as simple and as instant as that. All I wanted now was for her to choose to take me with her; that she would let me follow her to wherever she was going that day.
I knew the monkeys were watching me from high above, and for a fleeting moment I wondered what they were thinking. But my reverie was interrupted by the man with the rifle. Though I had no human language it was clear what he thought. Just as the chief in the Indian village had done, he was making it clear that I wouldn’t be welcome.
Some sort of heated exchange began happening then, the man’s rejection of me obvious, the woman’s disagreement clear too. I squeezed her finger even more tightly, so she would know how much I wanted to go with her. I couldn’t pick out anything from the weird babble that came out of their mouths, only the sense that everything now hung in the balance and that if the woman didn’t get her way I would be left again, perhaps even shot.
But some sort of resolution was apparently reached, and when she looked at me again, I felt a surge of elation. Her expression was calm, her face friendly and, though I didn’t understand her, I knew the things she was saying to me were what I wanted to hear.
She tugged my hand again then, clearly gesturing to me that I should follow. So that’s exactly what I did. Without looking back at the watchful eyes of my family, which I knew were all trained down on me, I followed where the woman led – away from my home and into her life. My time in the jungle had come to its end now, and a new life, back with my own species, beckoned.
Little did I know that, for all my wild upbringing, an even wilder sort of life had just begun.
PART 2
14
As with the rings that mark the annual growth of a tree, so my hair has provided at least one kind of measurement to enable me to estimate how long I might have spent in the jungle. It’s obviously not accurate to a scientific degree, but as its length when I left is one of my most certain memories, I suspect it’s the best shot I have.
When my daughter Vanessa first suggested that we try to document my life, the question of dates was an important one. We therefore dabbled in a little science to see what we could find, and it’s on this (among the other guesstimates – my size, my appearance and my clear pre-jungle memory of waiting impatiently for my fifth birthday) that my theory is based: that I was probably around ten when the hunters found me.
I am sure that when I was first abandoned, my hair was cut short. It would have been common for this to have been the case, as it would have been easier to manage, as well as cooler, in the tropical climate. When I left the jungle, of course, it had not seen a pair of scissors in a long time, and my chief memory is that it was something of a nuisance most of the time – always getting in my way. I had nothing to tie it back with – and perhaps wouldn’t have even thought to – and when I squatted, as I often did, it trailed on the floor like a very badly measured pair of curtains. It certainly hung from my head like a curtain – a thick black one – and had grown, when I left, to my thighs.
So we measured. Using hair dye to mark it, I worked out my rate of hair growth, and my daughter Vanessa did the same. That way, we figured, with her being so much younger, we’d know if the rate of growth slowed down with age. And what we found was that both of us had similar growth rates. It seemed that one and half cm per month was the average, equating to eighteen cm per year.
But we wanted to be surer than that. So the next thing we did was go online and look at general hair-growth statistics, and only then, taking into account growth rates in different climates, did we feel we had something scientific. After that, it was straightforward to approximate the length of time spent in the jungle, based on there having been roughly eighty to ninety cm of growth in total, which would give an approximate time span of around four to six years.
Of course, it could have been longer. There were perhaps periods when growth was less rapid, just as is the case for other forms of life. And, given its condition, our reckoning might have been conservative anyway. My hair may have continued growing, but most hair reaches a limit. And perhaps its rate of growth was affected by breakage, due to the brittle and damaged state it was in. Above everything else, it was a dwelling place for wildlife – so much so that it’s a miracle it managed to grow at all.
As well as my hair growth, we had one other marker: my physical development into adulthood. I had no sense of having grown – it was a concept that didn’t occur to me – but one thing is a fact. When I left the jungle, I had definitely not entered puberty. I know because that happened several months later: an event no young girl is ever likely to forget! So, on balance, the age of ten seems the most accurate to plump for as the one where I returned to civilisation.
But the ten-year-old me had no notion of the word ‘civilised’. All I could think of as I stood in that clearing with the hunters was the enormous step I was about to take. I was facing a possible new future – it was what had drawn me to them. But at the same time, I was also facing danger. And despite my earlier boldness – driven by my fascination with the woman – my fear was so great that I very nearly didn’t go. I was, to all intents and purposes, a monkey. I had lost human posture and walked naked on all fours. I had forgotten whatever language I once spoke and had no idea of my name. I had no understanding of how to ‘be human’. I had spent years as an animal and now thought like an animal, meaning that my focus was on only two things: food and how to find it, and survival.
They seemed determined to make me walk as they did. They kept hauling me up – the woman yanking on my arm every so often to try to make me walk on two legs. It seemed to anger them greatly that this was difficult for me: I could see it in their expressions with every step.
The man, especially, seemed angry that they’d brought me at all. Though I didn’t know what he was saying, his tone was obvious. So I tried as hard as I could to do what they wanted, though it felt so unnatural and unsteady to use just my feet.
But it didn’t matter how hard it was, I was now committed to going with them. Though I wrestled for a time with a desire to run back again, there was a stronger force inside me, compelling me on. We had also travelled some distance through the undergrowth by now, into territory that was becoming
unfamiliar. The air was filled with the sounds made by other dominant animals, keen to warn their own colonies of our trespassing feet. All of which frightened me greatly, because hearing was perhaps my most attuned sense. The sounds I knew well were my map and compass. And suddenly, with new noises emerging all the time, I felt lost and disorientated.
But at least being with the hunters gave me some sense of security. For all my other anxieties, I felt safer with them than without them. No fierce boar, or big cat, or other scary animal would bother us, for I was travelling with the most powerful species in the jungle. I had seen enough of humans during my time here to be quite sure of that, even if the humans themselves didn’t appear so confident, seeming more nervous and cautious than I’d expected.
I had fallen back from them now, keeping a fixed distance behind them, and held myself ready for anything that might happen. I wanted to be with them, certainly, but I knew I couldn’t trust them, particularly the man, who seemed only to tolerate me. He took the lead, his machete slashing cleanly through the branches, forming a path into which the woman could then step, with me a few paces behind her.
We travelled far. My legs knew it and the sun above confirmed it. I had come across the hunters at some point in the morning, and I knew from the light and the lengthening of the shadows along the ground that the creatures of the night would be re-awakening. I thought of the monkeys then and what I knew they’d be doing. I knew all their routines: what they did at each part of every day. But I forced these images from my mind. Thinking of the monkeys was too hard on my emotions; I needed to block out all thoughts of regret and keep my mind fixed on what lay ahead.
I have no idea what drove me so relentlessly that day. Looking back at it, from a distance of many happy decades, it would be easy to imagine I was just following my destiny. But was I? Surely my conscious mind would have felt no such compulsion. I was leaving everything I knew and loved, a willing hostage to strangers. For the ten-year-old me it makes no sense at all. Yet it must have, for I remember no intense internal struggle. I followed the hunters because once I had set off down that path, going back just didn’t seem to be an option.
The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys Page 10
