Monkey Business

Well…where shall we start? Maybe right at the point where a baboon troop took out our poor trailer:

After a beautiful safari we wanted to get back to our camp and relax during the hot noon hours. But already from far we could see that there would be trouble. We had nearly reached the camp when we were greeted by an unused woman´s hygienic pad dangling in a bush right next to the track. We then followed the “white spots” leading towards the camp. Andrea frowned, gasped and said: ” I hope they didn´t…”. It was too late, we had reached our camp and saw the whole misery. I now use the perfect English expression used for surprised astonishment: “WTF!” and will certainly not repeat all the expressions we used to describe the scene in front of our eyes. It would fill a few pages of this book.

Our camp looked like after a tornado, as if a bomb had exploded in the middle of it or as if a horde of ransacking and pillaging vikings had plundered it. Or, to be more precise, as if a gang of revengeful, red-bottomed baboons had raided it! Where should I start? Everything that wasn´t tied down was either thrown about, trampled on, torn apart, bitten to pieces or dragged off into the bush. First thing I saw were the tents, the baboons had jumped around on them and broken every single stick, one tent was ripped open, probably someone had left food in there. The chairs were left lying in the dirt after being thrown around, it smelled like baboon piss and poop.

The trailer looked even worse: Somehow the baboons had managed to open the side boxes. That´s where we stored our hospital – all bandages, band aids, women´s pads, tampons and wound dressings lay scattered around our camp and beyond it, dirty, bitten to pieces and ripped apart. The big bottle of disinfectant had been ripped open and was empty. We were shocked and tried to take stock of what was missing. Our medication and pills were eaten – the baboons had devoured our antibiotics and laxatives, we could hear their drugged screams in the distance. On the top of the trailer we could see and smell the results of the laxatives: A few monkeys had left the trailer covered in runny, revoltingly smelly shit. Sorry, there are no other words for it. We had to pull straws to decide on who would clean what. Basically everything was somehow chewed on, bitten, touched, ruined, shat on or ripped to pieces. It took us a long time to clean that mess including the bush around us. Oh how I hated those baboons then. They sat on trees in a safe distance and I could see them laughing at us in a derisive, provoking manner.