They live on the AE campus, and they're as pesky, annoying, and dangerous as the bears at Quaker Meadow! Well, maybe not quite as dangerous as a bear, but they are dangerous.
It sounds funny to people in America, but the monkeys really are a big problem here in South Africa. They love to break into our rooms to steal our food, poop on our pillows, and just make a mess.
We have to keep our windows closed any time we're not in the room or else the monkeys WILL come in. One side of my window has a plastic screen over it, so I thought it would be safe to leave that side of the window open. I was wrong.
I was sitting in the hallway outside my room one day painting my toenails with the screen side of the window open, when I suddenly heard a noise inside my room. I quickly peeked my head inside and saw a monkey sitting on the top of our bunkbed, with another monkey climbing in the window. As soon as they saw me, the one inside climbed up to the top of the screen and paused, waiting to see if I was actually going to come inside and chase them off or not. I stood up and walked towards them, so the monkeys quickly squeezed out through the top of the screen and ran away. We've kept our window closed from then on.
Other girls in my chalet haven't been quite as fortunate. Monkeys have come into their room while they were in class, and they stole a lot of food out of one girl's care package! One time they took a bunch of chocolate, popcorn, and energy drinks!! I can't even imagine what a monkey high on an energy drink would be like! Another time they came into that same room and were eating the same girl's chocolate bar as she walked in. They dropped the half-eaten chocolate on the window sill as they made their escape.
The next day they broke into a different room in my chalet. They opened one girl's unopened package of gummy bears and ate all of them. When the girl walked in, she smelled the gummy bears, which made her want to eat some, so she was very upset to find the empty bag on her desk next to her laptop covered in monkey footprints.
Needless to say, the monkeys are menaces around campus. Not only do they steal from our bedrooms, but they also love to walk into the dining hall and steal sugar packets and fruit!
Monkey happily eating a stolen sugar packet
Monkey with a stolen banana
They also love to break into the trash cans outside our chalets and scatter trash EVERYWHERE! This is why they remind me of the bears at QM.
They hope to find food inside, which they are lucky enough to find quite often.
They also like to interrupt our nursing classes by climbing into the classroom through the windows! This has happened twice! It's a fun distraction for a second, but then we start to fear for our safety. We've kept the windows closed more recently.
The reason we're scared when the monkeys suddenly show up is because they often attack people. Most of us have had at least one encounter with the monkeys where we were close to being attacked.
I was almost attacked one morning on my way to breakfast. I was minding my own business about to walk up the stairs to the dining hall, when all of a sudden, a monkey appeared on the landing just inches away from my head! It crouched down and leaned towards me like it was about to jump on me, so I turned around and ran down the hill away from it. A sound from inside the dining hall scared the monkey away, so then I was free to walk inside and eat my breakfast unharmed. I hope to never come that close to a monkey attack again.
We've started keeping mace in our chalets so we can spray the monkeys if they come inside or try to attack someone. The staff of AE also have a paintball gun on campus for the purpose of shooting the monkeys.
In just one day, we went through 500 paintballs! And even after all this, the monkeys still haven't learned their lesson. Any day that the sun is out, we're guaranteed to see dozens of monkeys around campus.
Word of the Day: "qaphela" means "beware" or "danger." Q is the third and final click for you to learn. It's the one you would typically imagine when you think of clicks in a language. You make the sound by suctioning your tongue off the roof of your mouth. Qaphela sounds like "tk-a-pel-ah"
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