13 April 2007 - 12:49
Contrary to what some may believe, a Monkey Sanctuary is not a church for monkeys, and you won’t find them wearing robes and stoles there, nor will they be reading from the Bible, as you might expect. Rather, a monkey sanctuary is a place where monkeys can hang out without being killed and sold on the side of a road to a bunch of people stuck in a line of cars because of road construction.
Can you see the monkeys? Look closely for the white tails hanging in the trees...
The Boabeng-Fiema monkey sanctuary is situated in a hard-wood forest in between two villages, apparently named after the sanctuary, since they are called Boabeng and Fiema. Cailin and I arrived in our rented truck, then took a 45-minute walking tour of the forest, where the guide pointed out mona monkeys, who aren’t afraid of humans, and the more timid black and white colobus monkeys, sighted high in the treetops by their white tails hanging down.
The forest was also home to several interesting tree species, including mahogany and the kapok tree, which towers high above the top of the forest canopy. We also saw several specimens of sometimes-parasitic trees in the ficus family. Sometimes, the seeds of these trees are dropped in the fork of a full-grown tree, where it sprouts in shallow soil and water in a hollow space, then starts growing rapidly upward while dropping its roots over the side of the host tree. Eventually, the parasite tree’s roots grow big and strong, wrapping around the base of the host tree and eventually choking it out. In some cases, this creates a hollow tree that you can climb up the middle of. Other times, it just creates an odd, Swamp Thing-esque tree that looks out of place in a hardwood forest, like the curtains of roots on one of the trees we saw there.
This is a young ficus growing in the fork of another tree.
The other two volunteer-tourists that we had been traveling with continued on to Accra with our car and driver, and Cailin and I headed to the guesthouse in between the two villages. Returning to the edge of the forest that evening around dusk, we found dozens of mona monkeys that had crept out of the forest to pilfer food from the villagers. The two villages have long considered the monkeys sacred, so they won’t kill them. In fact, they sometimes give monkey that die a funeral, burying them in a special monkey cemetery, where they also place the priests who attend to them.
The mona monkeys have figured out that they’re not going to get hurt, and are unafraid of coming into the village every evening to see what morsels they can gather to eat, sneaking into houses, perching on roofs, pinching corn from piles from the harvest, and being chased away by flip flop-flinging children. Mother monkeys leave their babies, small enough to fit in my hand, catapulting themselves from limp to limp at the edge of the forest while they head in to look for snacks, which they prefer to the leaves and fruit they eat in the forest. After eating red red, I can’t blame them. The baby monkeys sound like dogs’ squeak toys, and are probably the cutest things I’ve ever seen.
