Today I welcome Gwendolyn Gross to Great Thoughts’ Great Authors. Gwendolyn is the author of a fabulous book, Orphan Sister. My review of it is here.
Here’s Gwendolyn:
I was a girl who saved my grandparents’ five dollar Valentine’s Day gifts, the birthday checks, washed tips from the bottom of the sticky sundae glasses where I waitressed, so when I was nineteen and my friend Beth invited me to visit her family in Nairobi over Winter Term, I could say yes.
We climbed Mt. Kenya; we drove out into Masai Mara and followed elephants—rumbling mamas and the big bulls. It was worth every last sticky penny, and we were lucky with Beth as guide.
The last part of the trip was a truck tour of the Rift Valley. There are so many sensory feasts; the specific sweetness of bartered bananas, the suddenly blue eye of Turkana, the half-dome homes of grass after red rocks and dust, the squeak and scent of hot rubber sandals cobbled from expended tires, but today: the monkeys.
One stop led us to camp under tall trees. The cook unpacked banana piles, a fish for seconds-please stew. But as we set up camp, foreign coins, pebbles and balls of leaves flew out of the trees, and we heard laughing.
The cook hoisted his machete in the air and barked in Swahili. The laughter ceased. But a few minutes later, as someone spread a rinsed sari on a line, the monkeys descended. One reached for the sari, and the cook came running, machete in hand, snarling in Swahili. Again: retreat.
At dinner, the monkeys teased and called, pelted tree fruits and tried to swipe the Brit’s cap. It was funny, still, the chattering, the hide and seek. The chef warned us not to feed them, but the Brit left out a bit of flat bread and a bottle of Tusker lager.
This was a mistake.
As soon as we entered our tents for the night, after viewing the Southern Cross, after miscellaneous flirtations, stories, miscommunications, and songs—we tucked into our tents.
That’s when the monkeys descended from the trees like a hard rain of fingers and tails and thievery. They took the hat. The lifted the rock from atop the stew pot lid and spilt; they tossed the eggs. We shivered at the thuggish screaming. The chef, who’d slept sitting upright with his weapon through the hippos, started to yell.
He yelled; he waved his machete, and the monkeys started screaming, but they only sounded wilder, ready to swarm. Sarah and I kept our tent tied shut but for a small window. He didn’t harm a single monkey—but the screaming went on, and the theft and pelting of eggs, the Brit’s watch, ropes and all the bananas, someone’s keys, all animated like an exchange of angry ideas, until suddenly, BANG. The driver had started the truck and made it backfire. The monkeys were gone, but we didn’t sleep that night.
What are you reading and where are you going?