Hail is unusual in Uganda. So when I first heard pounding on the tin roof in Jinja I wasn’t sure what was going on. “Ehh, the monkeys,” Okumu, the cook, would say half chuckling, half frustrated. They were running back and forth over the roof, playing, or fighting, or whatever.
It is not uncommon to find Okumu launching stones up into the trees hoping to get one just right. He hates them. They’re destroying the garden he keeps in the back and they’ve been doing so since I was here in 2005. Their crop of choice? Bananas. Seriously. According to Okumu they can eat an entire stalk in a day.
These are vervet monkeys. Aside from their playful behavior, and seeming immunity to human proximity, they are easily identified by their blue male genitals. What they are not immune to is the poison Okumu puts out for them when he’s particularly fed up. “Only a few more left,” he says, beaming. Okumu may be one of my favorite people in the world, but I’m rooting for the monkeys.
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