Cheeky Monkeys

This morning I was sitting in the sun. This was significant, as generally I sit in the shade, staying cool and watching the other (mostly British) lily-white passengers fanatically working the perfect tan. Honestly, the idea of working for a tan seems ludicrous to me, but to each his own (it's not my skin that's flaking off, at the end of the day).

But this morning it was surprisingly chilly, for June, for Zambia, and I had managed to get soaked by the spastic sprinkler not once but twice in the space of an hour; so I chose to sit in the sun. While I was sitting in the sun, writing in my surprisingly full journal and listening to Panic! At The Disco's "When the Day Met the Night", which is fast becoming the theme song of the summer, my best back-seat buddy --looking painfully hung over-- sat down beside me.

G: You're really in your element here, aren't you?

I asked him what he meant, and he said "Nice setting, perfect weather, just sitting there in the sunshine, writing away. This is as good as it gets for you, isn't it?"

This seemed a funny thing to say at the time --especially since I almost never set in the sun-- but as he staggered off down one of the thousand or so disorienting stone paths that decorate this campsite, it struck me that he may have been right. I am --or was at that moment-- pretty much in my ideal situation. Thank heavens there was someone there to point it out to me, or I might not have noticed! Ironic, isn't it?

I suppose I should say that the only thing that kept it from being an ideal-ideal situation, other than being far far from those I love, is that the campsite was crawling with monkeys. I hate monkeys. I admit this is mostly due to an extended love-hate relationship I had with a monkey (named Monkey) at Enkosini 3 years ago, but boy did it linger!

We have met up with several troops of baboons at different camp sites along the way, with our ever-vigilant leader saying things like "And don't leave anything anywhere because the baboons will attack you-- and that's a lot of paperwork for me." I tend to think of these as "Oh right, I'm in Africa!" moments; though my favourite is still from our second bush camp "When you're setting up your tents, be sure to leave room for the elephants to get through. Because they won't leave room for you." We've had similar warnings about hippos (hippos are NOISY!) and crocodiles as well.

The monkeys at the Waterfront (our campsite in Livingston... Zambia) are vervets, and deceptively cute, in a cheeky, conniving sort of way. They hang out (literally) in the trees around our truck, and occasionally jump down onto the table (or the washline, or the windshield) and steal something. This morning I nearly fell off my folding stool (which is easy to do) laughing as the requisite universally-disliked person on the trip started screaming like a banshee and running around the base of grabbed a sling shot and started running around the base of a tree, screaming like a banshee, shaking her fist (the sling shot was locked in the truck) at a monkey who had stolen a banana from the fruit bowl.

S: Ya, you'd better run-- climb up into the branches, why don't you, I'll climb right up and get you!

For once I was on the monkey's side.

This evening I noticed (for the first time, surprisingly) we have a sign on one of the side windows of the truck, which says "Cheeky Monkeys On Board!" I can't help but feel this is appropriate, on a number of levels.

Back out to the bush tomorrow. Back to the hippos and crocodiles. And long, long dusty drives in the back seat of our beloved Oscar (the grouch-truck), and going to bed by 9. I have mixed feelings.

But oh those stories are piling up, and if you can say one thing about me, it's that I do love a good story.

Missing you.

N.