Last Saturday a friend of mine at the clinic, Innocent, invited me to his cousin's wedding and needless to say it was incredibly eventful.
Figuring out what to wear to an American wedding can be quite a tricky task, but Rwandan weddings require a great deal of effort. My roommate Margot decided to wreak havoc on our closet and turned the morning into a rousing round of dress-up. I decided to wear a dress I had made here earlier in the week, but mention Margot's mess solely to bust her chops. You couldn't see our floor or beds because they were covered in discarded cloth, wrap skirts, and traditional garb.
Innocent showed up at the house to pick up Nina, Margot, and myself at 3:30 with the wedding reception starting at 4:30. We arrived at the hall around 4 and found out the wedding party was running very behind. Surprise! Innocent decided to help us pass the time with a tour of the grounds and explanation of the site. Turns out that the location of the reception was inhabited by some pretty interesting and mildly entertaining creatures. This facility is owned by a Catholic group that rents out the hall for weddings and houses priests and nuns who teach at the local schools. We walked around to the side of the hall where we stood in a wooded park area and listened to Innocent tell us about the property and his family.
As we're standing there I look towards the dormitories and see something vaguely familiar, yet totally out of place. There's a monkey hunched over sitting in the middle of the path leading to the back of the property. Yes, I was wearing my glasses. I just stood there staring at it when Innocent started laughing. Is that a monkey? You've never seen a monkey before? Well only in the zoo. They don't look different when they're in zoos. Thanks Innocent...
This was a truly bizarre experience. I've watched enough Jack Hanna and read enough Zoobooks to know that monkeys live in Africa, but still, I was completely caught off guard. My first instinct led my feet to move me directly towards this thing and my second instinct was the voice in my head saying, um you didn't get the rabies vaccine...hmmm...
This little monkey, about the size of a cat, came running towards me so fast, I thought he would be lucky to skid to a stop as he crashed into my legs, but at the last second he veered off to one side and flew into a tree. He stood perched on a low branch staring at all of us. I was watching him watch me when I see a flash of tan flying past me and realize we now have double the fun! Two whole monkeys. Fabulous. The other interns and I watched these two little guys for about 20 minutes as they chased each other around the clearing and up and down the trees. They were a riot.
The trees around us were filled with some very hard leaves that looked like they had started to develop into fruits, but got bored and quit. I found some green ones hanging close enough for me to pick, but too far out for the monkeys to get to and still remain in the tree. I picked the first one and dropped it at monkey A's feet. He snatched it up, scampered away and seemed to enjoy his treat. He came back and sat at my feet staring at me, so I picked another one and he took it from my hand. I turned around and the other interns were laughing. Looking around, I noticed that monkey B is jumping up and down making monkey noises reaching his tiny hand out to me. Ok. I'll see what I can do.
I turned back to the tree and reached up to grab another leaf. This one was tough and took me a longer time to break it off. I finally freed the weird fruitish thing and turned around looking for this monkey. No sooner had the words, "where'd he go," come out of my mouth, than that stupid monkey ran up behind me pinched the back of my ankle and ran away. Both of us screaming like little girls. Despite my instinct to chuck the hard leaf at him and smack him, I walked over to the tree he was in, reached out my hand, and offered him the treat. He took it as I looked up to see that a crowd had gathered to watch the mazungos playing with the monkeys. Needless to say everyone was laughing hysterically, including my intern friends.
When Nina stopped laughing, she looked at me straight-faced and said, "Dude, you were like, where'd he go? And I was laughing to hard, but really wanted to yell, "He's on your leg."
And that was how I got punked by a monkey...This is already the best wedding I've ever been to, and it hadn't even started yet.
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