The Girl With No Name: The Incredible Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys

by Marina Chapman

  This, I now realised, might be my only chance to run. Where I’d run to, I had no idea, but that didn’t seem to matter. Just ‘away’. That was all I could think. Run away.

  I wriggled my body from the cobwebby space beneath the bed. Then, barefoot, I bolted for the open doorway.

  21

  I ran as I had never run before, with fear snapping at my naked heels. Was I being followed? I had no idea, but I didn’t dare turn to look. I was too frightened I’d stumble and be caught. So I pushed on with no thought but to keep my legs moving.

  I ran for what seemed like hours. The sky grew dark and my legs began to quiver with tiredness. I had come such a long way and had no idea where I was going. I’d passed the silent houses of Loma de Bolívar, where the slumbering residents were indoors having their siestas, past rows of shops, playing children, animals. And as I’d run, the sound of the traffic had grown louder, the cars denser, the street corners more populated, and the lights of shops had grown correspondingly brighter, shining their synthetic glow up into the night sky. Though I had never been there, I realised I must be heading into the centre of Cúcuta.

  Eventually, I slowed and risked a glance back. Had I seen a raging Ana-Karmen lumbering along in my wake, I would probably have been paralysed by shock. But there was no one there, and as I looked around my eyes latched onto a patch of trees and bushes. I would later learn that this was San Antonio Park, the violent heart of the city, but at this point, as far as I was concerned, it was just a big open space with a fountain that I ran to and drank from gratefully, splashing water over my head as well, to cool me down.

  The sight of such a welcome patch of greenness sent a wave of relief flowing through me. I jogged across to the bushes that surrounded the park and, seeing there would be no place in the low canopy that I could sleep in and remain hidden, I curled up under an old mango tree.

  For some minutes, I lay curled there, focused wholly inwards. As well as my tired feet, my leg muscles were burning, and for a time I could concentrate on nothing else. But soon the noise of the city began to infiltrate my thinking, and then I noticed different, closer sounds. I looked up and around, my eyes now adjusted to the relative darkness, and what I saw made me catch my breath. I was not alone. Far from it. I was surrounded! Under almost every other tree and bush lay the curled-up, whispering forms of other children just like me.

  My brain whirred with questions about who they were and how they had come to be here, seemingly homeless. I wondered if they had been through a similar experience to mine at Ana-Karmen’s. I didn’t know, but I had the immediate sense that we were all in the same boat. My eyes met other eyes — wide eyes that were full of sad stories. Nothing was said, but there seemed to be an immediate understanding, a sympathetic welcome to their world.

  For all my terror of leaving and my fear of the future, seeing those children made me feel so much better. I had felt alone at Ana-Karmen’s. I had felt alone running away from her. Now I wasn’t so alone. This was the start of a new life for me. I didn’t know it yet, but I was to become a street child of Colombia, just like the children all around me. I fell asleep in seconds, and I slept very well.

  *

  When the sun rose the next morning and I gazed on my new ‘home’, I realised I was back in the jungle, though it was a very different kind of jungle and perhaps even deadlier than the one I’d known before. I would soon learn that the streets of the city were riddled with violent criminal gangs, and where before I had learned to flee from predators, how to find food and how to prosper, I would now have to acquire a new set of skills to avoid being gang-raped or beaten, and to avoid being shot or getting caught by the police.

  Cúcuta was a typical Colombian city. The houses had tiled roofs and were usually one-storey affairs — in a land of earthquakes, you don’t build very high. The buses were yellow and old-looking, and most other types of transport also looked ancient and as if bought from a scrap yard. There were few visible signs of wealth in the city.

  The markets sold all kinds of fruit, vegetables and meat. And much of the meat was still alive. I remember seeing rows of chickens hanging upside down with their legs tied, and goats, pigs and other animals tied to stakes in the ground. Customers would take them home and kill them to feed their families. There was food for free, too — mangoes grew on the trees in the parks — which was just as well, as many people lived in great poverty.

  The very poorest didn’t live in the city itself. Unable to pay rent or buy food, they lived high in the surrounding mountains where they could at least eke out some sort of existence growing vegetables, keeping animals and building their own shelters. One of my clearest memories was of these mountain people toiling up and down to Cúcuta, travelling many miles to collect water from the city’s river. I found this odd — did they not have any water in the mountains? Clearly not, because they would also linger in the city river, washing both their bodies and their pitiful rags. I would then see them trudging back with huge metal water tins hanging from their shoulders, suspended from yokes by fat lengths of string.

  The equatorial climate was unchanging. With no seasons, Colombia was always hot and stuffy, and in the warm, humid atmosphere, diseases spread easily. There was also little hygiene or clean water, and sickness was rampant. The infant mortality rate was very high.

  For those who did survive, life was often very difficult. With work the overriding priority of every man and woman, there was little time to nurture infants. Mothers of the tiniest newborns had to get straight back to work and would either leave their babies at home alone — and the working day often began before dawn — or take them with them and work with them slung across their backs or placed in a cardboard box beside them. There was no child benefit or state-organised childcare. Only on the Sabbath — for Colombia was a devoutly Catholic country — would children get time with their parents during the day.

  Older children went to school, but there was no real policing of attendance, so while parents toiled, their children would often play truant, learning street skills in place of letters and numbers. Their education — how to steal food, clothes and handbags — was very different from the one their parents probably wanted. As they stole, so their futures were being stolen too.

  There were many homeless children. With no contraception in this devout Catholic country, families grew large and expensive, and with accommodation and food in short supply, older children were often kicked out of their homes. Girls, in particular, were very vulnerable. Many were raped or got into prostitution to earn money, and as a result the city was filled with babies born into unimaginable poverty, sometimes living on the streets from birth.

  I felt such powerful anger for these children. I was so young, and I knew little of the circumstances of these mothers, but my rage for their infants was intense. I would rail at the broken world these feckless young mothers had brought their babies into and feel furious at their selfishness in doing so.

  I might have been wrong, of course — and who was I to stand in judgement over these girls anyway? What did I know of the circumstances in which their children were conceived? But my adolescent mind, with its black and white view of the world, perhaps did me a very great favour in that respect. My experience at Ana-Karmen’s had taught me a valuable lesson — that sex, for many men, at least, was a different thing from love. In the world of the brothel, the prostitute was seen as a commodity — something to be bought and sold for cash. And the consequences were there for all to see. The man promising everything, the girl believing all of it, and then, nine months later, another unwanted street baby being born with the father nowhere to be seen.

  I didn’t want that. I wanted a home, I wanted a husband and I wanted children. So, hard though it would be later, when a boy would try to woo me, or someone would try to entice me with a plan involving drugs, drink or crime, I would listen to the voice in my head that said, ‘Hold on — one day you’re going to be someone.’

  I look back now in som
e awe at my young teenage self and how strong and self-possessed I seem to have been. And, if it’s not too immodest a thing to reflect, how far-sighted. I have no idea where it came from, but it was definitely in me: this sense of the future, and any children and grandchildren I might have. I wanted to ‘be someone’ as much as for their sakes as my own, because I didn’t want them to have to suffer as I had. Mostly, though, I think I had learned to understand choices and how the making of them could so drastically alter your life.

  My years in the jungle had taught me so many useful things. How to defend myself, how to feed myself, how to escape danger — how to survive all the things that should have killed me. And my time at Ana-Karmen’s had taught me more. I now knew about sex, about how men could be — that women could even sell their own babies. I knew enough to know that sex could be the road to a girl’s ruin.

  *

  But back on that first morning in the city, all I was thinking about was getting something to eat. I roused myself fully and began to take stock of my surroundings. As I had found a spot in a mango tree, this meant free food in abundance. The air was full of the scent of it, the ground littered with fallen fruits. That felt so good to me: the knowledge that I could simply help myself again. And I wasn’t being shouted at. I was in control. That felt good as well.

  As I ate, the city provided a feast for all my senses. The many smells — of car exhausts, food frying, hot tarmac — the noise of the other children all around me, with their sassy ways and their ragged clothes; the sounds of car horns and shouting, bottles breaking, music playing — the very abundance of things to see, smell and hear made it feel as if the world was once again in colour.

  But I couldn’t sit in a tree eating mangoes for ever. I needed to get out and about and explore my new environment. Everything happened fast in this new, high-octane life, it seemed. Though everyone was a stranger to me, I soon felt a sense of solidarity. Where the children I’d encountered in Loma de Bolívar seemed to want to avoid me, the children I saw now didn’t seem repulsed by me or want to shun me. Though we were all wary of one another, I had this sense that we had a greater enemy — the adults, like Ana-Karmen, from whom I had only just escaped. And though the feeling was based on nothing more solid than instinct, it felt like I’d become part of a new troop, part of a team.

  I made a name for myself very quickly. My time with the monkeys had taught me the art of blending into the background. I was tiny and skinny anyway, but I had an extra talent — stealth. So, although I spent as much time scavenging in bins for food as everyone else did, I also soon became skilled in the delicate art of theft. At first I would steal food in order to survive, but after a while the bug got to me and I would steal just for pleasure. I took some pride in it, and where some kids dined on leftovers out of bins, I would find ways to steal food from posh restaurants.

  Again, my diminutive stature served me well. I could tuck myself behind some outside chairs and keep an eye on the chef. Then, as soon as he’d put a plate of food on the pass, I’d dash in and steal it. Sometimes they’d bother to chase me for a bit, sometimes they wouldn’t. On a good day, they wouldn’t even notice.

  If I went into a shop, sometimes I would keep close to an adult customer so the shopkeeper couldn’t see me, and this allowed me to grab sausages, buns and pieces of fruit. Not that I didn’t get spotted sometimes — I did, often. But I could run fast, which was a big asset when being chased by angry shopkeepers, and was also nimble enough to shimmy up fences and trees.

  I learned fast and thoroughly, with one of the most important lessons being that I was just as vulnerable as any other street child when I was asleep. Not long after I’d arrived in the city, I was awoken from an early evening doze. I was on a bench in the park, worn out after a busy day’s scavenging, and was startled into wakefulness by a bright light and a firm hand on my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see two policemen staring down at me.

  I immediately panicked, fearing the influence of Ana-Karmen. Had she sent them to find me? ‘Let me go!’ I cried. ‘Get off me! Let me go!’

  I wriggled and wrestled with them, my monkey aggression automatic. ‘Keep still, gamina!’ one barked at me. Gamina was slang for street kid. ‘Stop struggling! You’re not going anywhere!’

  I was still sleepy and it felt like I was punching under water, but I kept at it anyway. I had too much to lose to stop. I knew the best defence was to attack your attacker’s weak spot, so I tried to jab the closest policeman’s eyes with my fingers.

  He was too quick for me, however. ‘Nice try, gamina,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Give it up, OK? You’re coming with us.’

  I was duly marched to a car that had lights flashing on its roof and bundled roughly into the back by one of the policemen. Then I was driven to what was obviously a police station. Men in uniform thronged inside, and there was a very high desk, behind which sat a well-fed and stern-looking man. He had a pen in his hand that he used to point at me. ‘What’s your name, kid?’ he asked me. I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t want to say Gloria, because it was the name Ana-Karmen had given me. I didn’t want to be saddled with that connection, and I definitely didn’t want her to find me.

  ‘Erm …’ I said, in my broken Spanish, ‘I don’t really have one.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ the man snapped. ‘Everybody has one. Like Ricardo here, or Manuel. What do your little friends on the street call you?’

  I paused again. The other kids did have a name for me by now. But I didn’t want to tell the policemen that either.

  ‘You understand what I’m saying to you?’ he said. ‘What do all the other gaminas shout at you when they want to get your attention?’

  I considered. I would be safe. It would mean nothing to Ana-Karmen. ‘Pony Malta,’ I told him.

  ‘What? You want a drink? Is that it?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. That’s what they call me. Pony Malta. Really.’

  ‘What? Like the drink?’ The man rolled his eyes but wrote it down anyway. ‘Well,’ he grumbled. ‘I have to put something down, I suppose.’

  Pony Malta is a sweet malt drink that comes in a small, dark, thin bottle. A bottle that reminded some street kid of how I looked. Skinny, small and dark. Just like the Pony Malta bottle. It stuck right away. It was another name that I hadn’t chosen, but it was something to tell the fat man behind the desk, at least.

  My name taken, the two policemen then escorted me to a room. It was square, without windows and had a table in the middle. One of the officers sat down at the table and beckoned for me to take the seat at the other end. The other policeman sat down in the corner.

  ‘Who are your parents?’ the man opposite me wanted to know.

  I wondered if they could tell that I had only just arrived there. And I feared, once again, for what Ana-Karmen might have done. I kept silent.

  ‘Look, your surname, your family name,’ he persisted. ‘What is it?’

  I remained silent. The man opposite glanced at the other one and rolled his eyes again. ‘We’ve got a slow one here, Ricardo. OK,’ he went on to me, ‘so where are you from, anyway? Where were you born?’

  Still I had no answer — I really didn’t this time.

  ‘Can’t you speak, girl?’ the officer snapped, now looking angry. ‘What’s your problem? Can’t you answer a simple question? Are you hiding something we ought to know? You’re making us very suspicious here, you know that? And if you don’t cooperate, trust me, you’re in big trouble!’

  Where did I start? I still had only a patchy grasp of language. But I was frightened now. I had to tell them something.

  ‘One last chance,’ he said, his face red and beaded with sweat. It was hot in the room, and I was making them both cross now. I had seen the same thing at Ana-Karmen’s, and I knew I had to say something. Still I faltered.

  ‘Who are your parents?’ he shouted, clearly fed up with waiting.

  ‘M … m … monk …’ I began. I had started to shake now. ‘M … m …
monkeys are my parents. I have no home here. Come from monkeys,’ I tried to explain. ‘Trees are my home …’

  ‘What?’ the man snapped. There was silence before he let out a sigh. And then, to my surprise, it turned into a laugh. The other policeman joined in. How could they suddenly find me funny? I no longer felt so scared now. Just ridiculed and humiliated. I had told no one about my family in the jungle before this, and now I finally had, I wished I hadn’t.

  The man opposite me finally stopped laughing. ‘You stupid child,’ he told me, his tone less aggressive now. ‘You think you’re from monkeys? You’re just a little bit crazy, aren’t you?’ He glanced at the other man. ‘Got ourselves a bit of a retard.’

  It was then that I vowed I would never speak of the monkeys again. In fact, I said nothing, so some paper was produced. Their attitude different now, both officers tried to explain things to me differently, even drawing a picture of a house and some stick people. Another policeman also came in and tried to explain what they wanted to hear from me, but I kept silent. I had already told them the truth, hadn’t I? So, for all their drawings, there was no house they could deliver me back to. In the end, they gave up. ‘Lock her up,’ the new policemen said. ‘She’s just a lunatic, filthy gamina, that’s all. Lock her up for the night.’

  So they did.

  *

  Even though I had been locked in a tiny room and felt so small and ridiculed, I actually slept well that night. I slept better, even, than I had the first night in the park. And as the sun came up and I waited to see what the new day would bring, it occurred to me that if they kept me here, it wouldn’t be so bad. I had heard rumours of bad things happening to children in Colombia’s prisons, but it didn’t seem so bad here. I wouldn’t go hungry, I’d be safe, and I’d have a roof over my head.

  But they didn’t seem to want to keep me, because a little while later two different policemen came and marched me out of the police station and round the corner. They didn’t say a word to me while they did this, and I couldn’t imagine what might happen next.