The Monkeys Share Their Bananas & I Forget the World is Ending

Punctually at 3:47pm each afternoon, a family of Titi tamarins arrived at my rooftop doorway to ask for bananas. The first time I saw one, my brain couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing—they just seemed so otherworldly. Not much bigger than gray squirrels, they dive incredible distances through the canopy to nimbly grab the feathery tip of a branch and leap onward, gliding and striding nonchalantly through the air.

When I’d heard of a room for rent in a bowl of mountains at the edge of a private reserve where the locals co-existed with their Titi troops, I’d leapt at the chance to glimpse them. I’d had a helluva few years, and I’d come to Colombia needing to feel wild again in the sense that it means belonging to a larger home—our human and animal family, and the earth. 

So when the Titis arrived the first time at my rooftop doorway, my heart stretched a whole inch. When they returned with their entire family, I was ready to be adopted.

My hosts found my childlike glee amusing to say the least. So did the owner of the country store, a couple miles down the dirt road, where I walked every few days to buy more bananas. “Where did YOU come from?” she asked the first time I popped up amidst her cows. She was a busy woman and not the type to chit-chat with random gringas wandering in out of nowhere. It took her three visits to smile at me, and a fourth before she finally asked why I ate so many bananas. 

But when she heard why I was there, her mouth finally cracked wide as she laughed and then peppered me with questions. She’d seen plenty of tourists in the nearby area, known as it is for its abundant rivers, but they tended to stick to the weekender party resorts closer to town, where the trance music and floodlights drowned out the crickets and lightning bugs, and she’d never met someone who’d come all the way out here just to see monkeys. By the time I left, she was gifting me extra bananas, a neighbor had carved me a wooden titi statue, and others stopped me on my walks to ask for my latest  titi news.

And every day, these most magnificent creatures would come sit with me and my inner child and share a meal—as if thousands of years of fear and devastation had never stood between our kinds. As if the world was not shifting beneath our feet. As if the land was still abundant and ours to steward together. As if these bananas, and our mutual joy in them together, could last forever.