My JUNGLE, MONKEYLAND

My name is Atifer,

I was sad when I saw the letter Paul wrote to Lara at Monkeyland. Are human beings really that selfish?

I can't understand why people want monkeys as pets - aren't dogs and cats supposed to be a 'man's best friend'.

Let me tell you my life story. Perhaps you will then understand why I fear people like Paul.

I was born in 1980 (strangely enough this happens to be the Chinese year of the monkey). My home was humble, but I was living with my mum, so this made it okay. The cage we lived in was about the size of a single garage, so as I learnt from later experience this was HUGE (for a cage).

Most monkeys live in tiny spaces the size of a parrot cage (1mx1m) so I was considered a lucky monkey until Jamie died.

Jamie was the man who bought my mum as a pet years ago. I think my mum was caught from the wild but I never got the chance to ask her cause when I was 3months old Jamie's wife pulled me off my mum's back and sold me to some lady as a pet. I still miss my mum today and hope that we'll meet up later in life……but what are the chances of this becoming a reality?

I was sooo sad when I was sold. The woman who bought me put things they called clothes on me and treated me like a baby for the first 3 months. She almost never put me down and showed me off to all her friends. Before I was 1 years old I was moved into a cage in the backyard. At first Emma (my owner) came to visit and play with me often, but then the hours became days and she'd only visit with a bowl of food and water in the mornings and evenings. Some evenings she even forgot. I suppose the novelty of having me wore off. From here on my diet was so poor and I didn't get the nutrition I needed so my mind is a bit fuzzy about my life as a captive soul. Sorry, but I am sure you'll understand…

I promise I promise I was never a bad monkey. I messed a bit, but monkeys are messy so that should be okay. I tried to be nice, but I was so lonely and sad. And most of the time I would be overcome with my sorrowness.

After about 3 months in that small cage in the backyard of Emma's house, she stopped bringing clean blankets every day. I had these stinky smelly blankets, which were changed whenever she felt the need to do so, I ate leftovers from their table more and more often (some were spicy and gave me diarea), and sometimes she forgot to give me fresh water. She forgot me - I think ?

I thought it was because they got a human baby, and then just forgot about me. Maybe the human baby was their new 'IT' thing? I don't know. All I wanted was my own biological monkey mum, but here I was alone, in a cage, cold, and sorry for myself. I was always so unsure of my future.

Before I was 2 years old, Emma sold me to some random person after advertising me in a newspaper. I was born in South America, but this paper was very much like the South Africa's Junkmail, or Ebay - something like that. Anyway this rich man's 10 year old kid wanted a monkey and then all hell broke loose. I was sold to a family with a spoilt brat, who wanted everything, and his folks bought him just about that, cause they felt guilty for being 'absent parents'.

I must have moved homes 5 times after this. I was often in okay homes, but then moved again. You can understand that I have a complex because of all this rejection and abandonment. Kind of like the complex an orphaned or abandoned child or person might have who is moved from one safe house to the next, but never finds stability and an environment with permanence they can call home.

With an estimated 15,000 primates in private hands the Primate Pet trade is bigger than ever. While these animals may seem cute and compatible with human lifestyle, the health and safety risks posed to both primates and owners are considerable. Please urge your friends not to purchase primates and any other exotic animals as pets.

Exotic animals need physical and psychological enrichment; spacious and secure enclosures; however a free roaming environment such as Monkeyland in Plettenberg Bay www.monkeyland.co.za is preferred.

Exotic animals need companionship of conspecifics, and they have specialized dietary/nutritional needs. Depending on the species, costs associated with responsibly caring for an exotic animal will run in to thousands of rands a year. Unlike domestic dogs/cats, some animal species (for example, nonhuman primates) can have life-spans of 30-40 years.

Baby monkeys and apes destined for the 'pet' trade are literally "pulled" away from their protective mothers when they are only hours or days old. Remember, commercial gain (not compassion) is the breeder's motivation.

Purchasing an infant primate is always consumerism supporting an unscrupulous (and sometimes illegal) trade. Raised by humans, the baby monkeys/apes never have the chance to develop as they should, thus they become psychologically maladjusted. They have little or no chance of leading life in accordance with their instincts as nature intended.

The infant monkeys/apes and their biological mothers typically suffer depression from the forced separation. "Breeder" females, are often purposely impregnated at a frequency which can be 4-6 times higher than the species would breed in natural circumstances, leading to serious and often fatal/crippling maladies like hemorrhaging and severe bone mass depletion.

Studies show that human children who are passed from unfamiliar home to home suffer psychological trauma which is permanently damaging. Also, moving is a major stressor for people and animals alike.

Monkeys are one of the most intelligent animals on earth. You would think a monkey would make a great pet, but this is not the case. Dogs and cats have evolved for thousands of years to be a domestic pet to man. Monkeys are wild. They will never adapt to being in a home. It is very expensive to keep a primate happy and healthy. Monkeys are messy, impulsive, unpredictable and excitable. The monkey can never be toilet trained. Monkeys should not be kept singly. They are social animals and socializing with you is not enough. They will become lonely and become sick or die. So are you sure you want a monkey?

When I lived with Jason (this was home number 7 or 8) he ran out of money and started selling off goods in his house. Him and his wife got divorced and the kids left with her. I was still there in the yard. I had no cage at Jason's house but I was tied to a chain which was rusty and about 10m long. At least I had a bedroom so that I did not get wet in the rain. It looked like a dogs kennel. It was a bit mouldy, wooden but I was greatful for the shelter provided.

Anyway, Jason sold me to a pet shop in downtown and after sitting in the petshop cage for quite a long time I was sent to a BIG building with lots of doctor type people. I thought it was a hospital, but the other monkeys told me they call the place a lab.

Here at the lab I fell pregnant for the first time (not by choice I might add). I had a horrible cage I was living in and my other animal friends had the same. There must have been 40-odd cages in our 'unit'. When my baby was born she was taken away from me almost straight away. I never had time to really hold her much. She was born late one evening. She was very thin, with the most angelic face. Straight away I loved her and for the first time in a long while I was happy.

When the lab people arrived at work the next morning they removed her from my body. I tried to cling on to her, and she didn't want to let go either. I even bit the lab person. They stuck a needle in me and that was that - things became foggy after this so I can't tell you what happened next. I only saw my baby again about 4 or 5 days later. She was part of some new experiment I am not sure which one.

My heart and spirit broke.

Animals are used in many different types of experiments; all experiments cause pain and suffering. The animals involved will either die as a result of the experiment or be deliberately killed afterwards, often for post mortem examination. In the laboratory an animal may be poisoned; deprived of food, water or sleep; applied with skin and eye irritants; subjected to psychological stress; deliberately infected with disease; brain damaged; paralysed; surgically mutilated; irradiated; burned; gassed; force fed and electrocuted. Researchers around the world use animals to test or develop almost anything from household products, cosmetics and food additives to pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, agrochemicals, pet foods, medical devices and tobacco and alcohol products. Military experiments subject animals to the effects of poisonous gas, decompression sickness, blast wounds, burns and radiation as they assess new and existing weapons and surgical techniques 'in the field'. Animals are even used in 'curiosity driven' research. In fact, almost all of the products used and consumed by humans every day around the world, will have been tested on animals at some point in time.

My heart and soul cried for my totured child and I swore that this would never happen to me again….but it did. Over and over.

I could live with having a horrid life - first as an pet, and then as a lab animal. I could live with the torture, I could be treated as a commodity, a object to have and discard of as wish be, be sold, sold again and again. I was used to being treated like a nothing. But NOT MY CHILDREN please!

I was artificially enseminated as part of some experiment later that year. After my second baby was born I took her in my arms, held her tight, and suffocated her. I cried myself to sleep that evening. I felt wrong. I had murdered my child. I wanted to die too. I had named my little baby Aqua because of her beautiful piercing blue eyes. I loved her too much to let her live.

I gave birth to 7 more babies at the lab, and then, one good day people came and conviscated us primates from the lab. There were some camera's, chaos, lots more people in white overcoats, people in suits with briefcases, and some other people in overalls with the words Stigting AAP written on the back. Later I found out that these overall people came from Holland and came to save us from the lab people. Stigting AAP is a safe haven. They resque exotic animals in distress.

At the Stigting AAP place we were give lots of really nice healthy food, warm and clean places to sleep and lots of space. At first when we arrived we lived separately, but the Stigting AAP people had resqued many of my friends and some other capuchin monkeys too and after we lived there in Holland for about 6months we moved in together in this gigantic cage - the size of a tennis court! It was HUGE! And it felt like heaven!

I lived at Stighting AAP most of 1994 and by mid 1996 I was moved again. This time to South Africa.

Some of the Stightig AAP people went to South Africa to look for a home for us. In a place called Port Elizabeth or Durban (I am not sure which one) the zoo people said they can't take our group cause it was too big. There were 16 of us Capuchins living together as a makeshift family by then. Anyway, this man at the zoo was very kind and reffered the Stightig AAP people to Monkeyland in Plettenberg Bay. This is where I live today. This is where my new life started and now I wish to tell you a bit about that.

Of the group sent to life at Monkeyland, I was the most Phycologically disturbed of the batch (or the 'family' as we were refered too). I was the group's outsider - ugly, scrawny, with a mangy tail and I paced ALL the time. If I wasn't busy pacing I ate the hair off my tail or chewed my fingers and nails, hit my head against solid objects and did those sort of self mutilating things most folks only read about. This is all cause I was still a bit traumatised. Wouldn't you be if you had been in a lab, been experimented on, was removed from your mum before you could even function on your own, moved from one 'home' to another without having a say, had to sleep on your own fecis, urine and was fed only when the humans who are your care givers felt the need to do so?

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I choose to live in the present - positively.

At Stighting AAP I felt happy, but when I was moved again I was soooooooo unsure. How wrong I was to be unsure!

I met Lara first. She was the person looking after all the monkeys then. Now Burt and Christian care for us most of the time. I know the two of them as the monkey dad's. I think Lara now does marketing. I see her in the office and she still takes pictures of us and walks about the forest to see if we are all happy. I often see her in stormy and cold weather, checking up on us to see if we are okay.

When I met Lara I was bouncing up and down holding to a branch in our introduction enclosure (a cage built into the forest to get us used to all the space, the environment and the other primates at Monkeyland). She was worried about me - I could tell - because she kept on coming back and spent loads of time with me.

I just couldn't stop pacing (It was just something I did but I am over this now) and I was sooooo frightened. She kind of in some strange way made me understand that it was all okay now and that we (my group) and I were actually safe and free to live our lives as we choose too. The Monkeyland primates don't BELONG TO SOMEONE, Our futures are secured in the NPO Touch a Monkey's Heart Foundation www.tamhf.org.za

For the first time I was free to do as I wished, I could have friends, I could have babies KEEP them, LOVE them, LIVE with them. How awesome is this?

When I was release into the Monkeyland forest I met my first REAL lover. Before I was basically forced to have sex. Sex with my blessing, when and were I wanted, was great. As a pet and lab monkey I simply had no choice EVER!!! I was always merely a novelty humans did with and later expose of as they wished.

I met Peanut, my first Monkeyland lover, December 1998. He is a strong handsome blond male. Peanut had a history quite different from mine because although he was a pet monkey before, he was only sold twice.

Peanut had some other lovers (we weren't exclusive), and although I was most likely the least attractive of the women woeing Peanut, I felt loved.

1999 I gave birth to my first baby at Monkeyland. He is named Sietsa. Today he is a handsome young lad, with a lover and child. He is still the apple of my eye, because we have such a strong bond (him being my first in a way…..the first baby I was not torn from).

Sietsa was about 2 and a half years old, when I had another little one we named Sam. Peanut is not Sam's dad (sorry - I strayed), but my daughter Sabrina was born a few years later. She looks just like her handsome dad Peanut - blond, bold and beautiful.

My best bit of news is that I have just given birth to another gorgeous baby boy. Peanut and I are no longer an item but I have a new lover, named Houdini. My new little baby boy has been named Shane. I chose this name because there is this ranger and primate keeper at Monkeyland who loves me loads. Shane loves all the underdog primates. He's the guy you want to know if you are mentally unstable, blind, deaf, disabled, sickly, and so forth. He cares for all the monkeys and lemurs in Monkeyland's new special monkey home. We just refer to it as the special needs home, cause that's what it is. Anyway, I named my little one Shane and will enclose a few photo's of my Mr gorgeous in this letter.

But lets get to the point of why I wrote to you. I want to ASK you to stop buying primates (monkeys, lemurs and apes) and other exotic animals as pets. PLEASE.

We don't want to be pets. Yes, not even yours.

Just let us be.

Ask yourself the question if you want to be a pet. If Aliens came from the sky's and abducted you and made you their pet - what would you say? Leave me alone, let me go cause I have rights?

Well, don't I too have a right to freedom? Especially the freedom of space, the freedom of being able to choose my own lover and raise my own children, the freedom to climb trees, eat when I want, socialise with my own kind, speek the language I was born to speek, and live my life as a free individual. Didn't I have a right to be with my mum and the rest of my biological family who loved me and were torn apart losing me.

Domestic animals such as dogs and cats are LONGING to be pets and there are so many stuck in SPCA's dreaming of loving homes. Most of these cats and dogs will never fulfil this dream and will be utinased if human homes can not be found for them.

If you have a home and if you have space in your hearts help them become your pet instead of us because for every monkey you purchase from the pet trade 100 more will be bred simply for the purpose of SALE for PROFIT because there is a NEED to PURCHASE. And unscrupulous breeders will sell just about anything and anyone for that extra bit of cash.

Don't create the need.

Don't support the trade in primates as pets.

I LOVE my life here at Monkeyland cause I don't belong to someone. I am NOT a commodity. I have rights, I am much loved, I have space (A HUGE FOREST!!!!!!!!!!), I have care givers (people who provide scrumptious food non-stop), I have heaps of lovers and friend to chose from. My kids live in the forest with me, and best of all I KNOW that we are all safe here and that I will never have to leave my new forested home.

I know that this is not the South American jungle my mum was born in. Most of the World's forest are non-existant today.

Humans are losing the Earth's greatest biological treasures just as they are beginning to appreciate their true value. Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and expert humans estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.

Basically one and one-half acres of rainforest is lost every second.

So now there is no wild natural forest to go to where I will be safe. But that's okay, because I am at Monkeyland.

This forest it is my jungle and with enthusiasm I now call Monkeyland HOME. .

Information supplied by:
Lara Mostert

www.monkeyland.co.za
www.birdsofeden.co.za

WILD ANIMAL CLUBS, ORGANISATIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS