Monkey in the City
Fried egg soaking into sweet bread was just what we needed after travelling to town in the back of a pickup truck. Bumpy was an understatement. Three-wheeled moto-taxis kicked pale dust onto the pavements of Curimana. Working at an animal rescue centre, we were on our weekly food shop mission. Lunch at the market was a bonus. The lady at the market counter topped up our juice. She didn’t seem to mind that my Spanish was awful, so long as I continued to provide entertainment by pointing at things and saying the words wrong. We smiled and nodded our goodbyes. My friend, who speaks Spanish in a way that can actually be understood by other people, stopped at a stall near the entrance.
“This is the lady with the monkey.”
Somebody had offered her a monkey on the previous grocery run. The price was 25 soles. She told them she wouldn’t buy it and gave a long list of reasons why it’s cruel to keep these intelligent, social animals as pets. This time she surprised me by taking an interest.
“Can we see the monkey please?”
“What are you doing?” I hissed, “If we look interested, she’ll think tourists want them and hunt more from the forest.”
“I want to know if it’s okay.”
The shopkeeper’s daughter led us inside. Assorted items balanced in floor to ceiling piles of clothes and plastic goods. Perched on top of a tower of t-shirts, and surrounded by colourful buckets and boxes, was a saddleback tamarin. These small monkeys are most at home in dense forest vegetation, not in the back room of a shop on a hectic street. Living in small troops with their offspring they can thrive in the jungle. In the city it doesn’t take much for their spirits to fade and illness to set in. Tied up with a piece of string, its teeth made little impression on the whole banana that lay before it. In the long-term, such a high sugar diet would leave it in severe danger of diabetes and obesity. In the wild it would be foraging for a wide selection of insects, flowers, and tree gum.
The tiny monkey stopped munching and tipped his head to one side. Its black hair was coated in fine dust that blended in with the mottled fur on its back. It didn’t seem to view us as a threat. After being taken from its family and made to live in a shop for several weeks, it had lost its spark. It no longer did things, things just happened to it. The white hair around its mouth wobbled as it resumed the task of eating the huge piece of fruit.
Lisa explained that we wouldn’t buy the monkey, but if the lady gave it to us we could take it to the rescue centre and it would have a chance at a normal life in the Peruvian jungle. If it stayed here it would become sick and, ultimately, die in the market. The monkey, not speaking Spanish or English, remained silent. The lady was unconvinced. What about her 25 soles?
I looked at the price labels hanging from the ceiling. The monkey’s life was valued at exactly half a football shirt. All the rich experiences of life in the wild had been stripped from it for less than the price of a t-shirt. As we left the shop, without the tamarin, my heart sat low in my chest. Some tourists buy animals like this thinking they’re doing good by helping the individual, but it sentences others to the same fate by creating a demand which fuels the trade in exotics. This little one was sat alone, but there are many more animals like this for sale in cities all over the world. Walking away was tough, but we knew it was the right thing to do.
The next week soon arrived. It was somebody else’s turn to venture into town for the weekly shop. I had spent several nights thinking about the tamarin and wishing something could be done to bring him back to the forest. The rescue centre was already busy, full of mouths and beaks to feed as part of the difficult task of rehabilitating victims of the exotic wildlife trade. Some can return to the forest. Some continue to need extra care in captivity.
A faint hum signalled a boat at the edge of the forest. Sacks of food that were loaded onto the truck in the city had made their way by road, muddy track, and river to the rescue centre. Volunteers lugged the cargo through the forest with an added layer of excitement that couldn’t be explained by the food delivery alone. A small box overtook the rest of the cargo and went straight to the veterinary clinic.
A hunched figure sat in the corner of the box, his chestnut arms tucked underneath him. The tamarin turned to look at us. I hadn’t been the only one thinking about the monkey. The shop keeper had decided to let him leave the city and return to the forest. It wouldn’t have been an easy decision from a business point of view, but she had changed her mind. He would be nursed back to full health and returned to the trees. This tamarin would have a second chance.
Esperanza Verde in Peru are looking for volunteers to work with animals rescued from the exotic wildlife trade, and are also grateful for any donations towards their work.