Before leaving for Congo in late August, I vowed to my friends and myself that I wouldn’t just survive Congo, I would conquer it. To prove it, I would hunt down a monkey, look it in the eye, and punch it. If you have to ask why, then you could never understand.
Weeks went by in Congo without me seeing a single damned singe. Even Chad had more monkeys. Driving from Dungu to meet an Indonesian army contingent hacking a road through the jungle, I glimpsed a troop of baboons darting by. The Indonesians told me they had kept a monkey as a pet. A dog bit it and it died. The baboons, they said, are a terror. They jump into the road in front of bike couriers, causing awful accidents. Leaving the Indonesians, I was even more determined to show a monkey what-for.
Two weeks later, still no monkeys. I had resigned myself to just kicking a lizard when, on my last afternoon in Kinshasa, I happened across these two tiny monkeys in a cage at a roadside barber’s stand. I balled my fists. “They’re not mean,” the proprietor said. He was right: the little guys were more scared than petulant. There they were, in perfect punching range … and I just couldn’t do it. Congo might be the third-worst place in the world, but it’s not the monkeys’ fault.
Surprisingly, no one tried to sell me the monkeys.
Only third worst? Somalia must be worse, but what else?
Chad.
Glad you didn’t punch a monkey. PITA would be on your tail.
Might give “cage fighting” a new angle, but perhaps we shouldn’t encourage such things. Murdoch will be selling interspecies rumbles on primetime cable soon enough…
If the monkey decides to fight back ,u will get Ebola and haemorrhage from all body cavities. Dont mess with monkeys.
Aww, I bet the monkeys were cute. Punching tiny, adorable monkeys is a special kind of awful. Good thing you avoided that.