Nepal: Life, Love and Lemmons: Monkey Business

Yesterday was another laundry day, and interestingly enough, as I was bringing in some clothes off the clothesline (there were too many to hang inside the house), I walked back through the door to the roof (that's where the clothesline is) and sitting on the ledge was a monkey!

Of course, my mind immediately flashed to the vision I have of monkeys coming to steal our clothes from the clothesline… and since I had a bunch of our clothes draped over the clothesline, maybe 2 feet away from him, it seemed my vision might be about to come true right in front of my eyes!

Side note: during our 3 week training before coming here, we learned about the dangers of preconceived ideas and how we should suspend judgment for as long as possible since things are not always as we perceive them; however, it never occurred to me that I would need to apply those lessons to interactions with monkeys! On a similar note, I must confess that I am also making the assumption that the monkey was a male, but I don’t actually know for sure.

The actual door, window and ledge where the monkey standoff occurred.

I told him, "Go away monkey!" and shooed at him with my hands- the universal sign for “Go away monkey!” in case he didn’t know English, and because I wasn’t sure how to say that in Nepali… although it is now on my list of phrases to learn in the very near future!

He just looked at me blankly and then showed me his teeth. I am fairly sure he was warning me not to mess with him, although maybe he was simply amused with me and grinning at my silly attempt to scare him off.

Somewhat scared, and completely unsure of what to do, I grabbed a pair of pants and tried to shoo him with those. In hind sight, this was probably not a smart idea, for the fact that he had already shown me his teeth to warn me that I should not shoo him and also because I was actually giving him a chance to grab the pants, almost as if inviting him to live out my vision and creating a self-fulfilling “prophecy”.

Instead, he again starred at me blankly, completely uninterested in the pants, and showed me his teeth. Now that I think back on it, he seemed almost bored with me, and let’s face it, he was probably thinking, “Go away, lady! I don’t want your clothes. They aren’t stylish or even my size. I came up here to rest and to enjoy the cool breeze and the view and you are ruining that for me.” but at the time, I was sure he was issuing a direct threat, and although he was maybe 1/5 of my size (if that), it seemed time for me to take 2 steps back inside, quickly close (and lock) the door and try to figure out what to do next.

My mind was racing. Where was Sam? Didn’t he even notice how long I had been gone? Didn’t it occur to him to come check on me? Monkeys could be carrying me off to the temple at this very moment, and he was probably sitting on the bed reading or something, completely oblivious to the fact that my life, or at the very least, our clothes, were in jeopardy! Okay, so maybe I was getting a little worked up.

I decided to peek out the window to see if the monkey was running off with my clothes or simply sitting there basking in the glory of victory, but he was nowhere in sight… probably waiting on the other side of the door, ready to attack with his new sense of confidence. Slowly I unlocked the door, opening it just enough to peek out, but ready to retreat again at the slightest appearance of the monkey. Still no monkey, so I timidly took a step out and looked around a little more. He seemed to be gone and none of our clothes appeared to be missing.

Not the actual monkey involved, although he looks similar.

Obviously he was simply petrified earlier, unable to move until I had gone inside, at which time he was finally able to flee “safely”... looks like I have the glory of victory after all! That’s right, monkey, who’s the last one standing on the roof with all of the clothes?! It was a grand moment for me, although in the back of my mind I considered the possibility that he had actually gone to get friends (reinforcements) and could be back at any moment, so I quickly grabbed our clothes, went back inside, locked the door and hurried down to our flat.

As I walked in a bit breathless and fumbled to lock our door (in case the monkey somehow figured out how to get through the locked door to the roof), Sam looked up at me, “Hi babe, need some help?”

Need some help? I just fought off a “vicious gorilla” from stealing our clothes... I’m good!