Thinking of past experience gathered from Living in this neighbourhood for about 12 years has a lot of good, funny and scary memories. I was almost a teenager when we moved to ikorodu, I could remember how fragile I was. Moving from the city to a new site, everything suddenly feels strange and unusual. I could remember the first time I saw a snake near the fence of our compound, I screamed so loud that I nearly lost my voice.
Majority of the people here are farmers, though not many of them still practice farming due to the rise in those rearing livestock animals. Farmers without the resources to build a fence eventually gave up on farming. During those days when we moved here, a very large portion of our land was full of bushes. Gradually we took care of it and realise it could be put to better use. We deliberated for awhile on what we could possibly plant that can't be eaten by goats or monkeys.
My mom suggested we plant groundnut and the most interesting thing about groundnut plant is that it doesn't allow other weeds to grow amidst it. We made some ridges and planted the groundnut on just a small portion of our land, we wanted to see how things will turn out. After about three months of waiting, we realised the groundnut was not disturbed by any livestock animals, though some were dug underneath by some other bush animals such as squirrel etc.
We harvested it and started becoming more confident, so my Mum wanted us to plant cassava this time around but we were all against it because cassava is vulnerable to livestock animals and as at 12 years back we don't have a fence to protect the plants. My mom was full of ideas, so she suggested that we cut some bamboo trees to create a fence around the cassava plant. Bamboo trees are all over the area since it is a new site and everywhere looks like a jungle.
I have never been a fan of roaming around in the bush because a lot of insect and reptiles terrifies me alot and we have abundance of those creatures around us as at then. I and my brother, along with two of my mum female apprentice head to the bamboo forest to cut some trees. It was just around the corner of our house. we got there and started what we came there to do but I felt a little bit uneasy about the whole thing because we keep hearing loud noises of monkeys far away and I hate to have a confrontation with those creatures.
On a norms, those monkeys get scared easily by footsteps of humans but the female Monkeys are different, especially the ones carrying babies, they become violent the moment they feel threatened and eventually fights back when they are concerned, I discovered this on that day. We were done with cutting of the bamboo trees, that is when my mom apprentice discovered that they were a lot of snails in that vicinity. They asked us to go deeper into the bamboo forest I said no but my elder brother was so much craving a tour in the bush. I couldn't go back on my own so I tagged along.
There is a way humans get blinded by greed, at some point we had seen a lot of snails already but they kept seeing more and kept going further into the bamboo forest, the deeper we get into the forest the louder the monkeys noise, we could see them flying up and down above us. After a while we saw a palm tree, they are a lot of them in the bamboo forest but this specific one looks older and larger compared to the other ones, it looks like a nest for animals. immediately I noticed that I stood still and tried to warn them but they wouldn't listen, as soon as they reached the bamboo tree, they saw a female monkey breast feeding a baby monkey 🐒, seeing them unexpectedly, the monkey got scared and screamed, believe me it sounded similar to human voice.
At that moment we realised we have finally trekked into animal kingdom, it was as if the female monkey was a princess or queen😂 but I'm sure immediately the female monkey screamed they were this giant and smaller monkeys jumping down, immediately I felt my soul run out of my body😂. That was how we started running oo, it felt like we were being chased. In a bamboo forest there is no clear path of road, you have to make sure as you are running you are also avoiding the bamboo trees. Suddenly I witnessed the greatest discovery of my life.
I never knew monkeys were capable of stoning us with palm kernel ( A palm fruit used in making palm oil) because I could see those palm kernel flying above us, I don't know if it was falling from their hands but I'm sure it was not a coincidence that the palm kernel was flying in our direction😂. The moment we were few steps away from getting out of the bamboo forest we noticed the noise of the monkeys was reducing, I guess they were retreating but we kept running regardless😂, we maintained that same speed till we got home.
Getting home, there were some visitors at home, they keep looking at us because we were out of breath and we looked like we just escaped from a psychiatric ward😂. We narrated what happened, that was when some people who have stayed longer in that vicinity started saying all sort of scary stories, they said we shouldn't have gone deeper into the bamboo forest because some giant monkeys are strong enough to rape women and ladies😂 and we had two female escort. We never went back to carry the bamboo trees and we never set foot into the bamboo forest ever again.
All the bamboo forest are gone now, replaced with houses. During those times some of the monkeys where hunted by hunters and due to that their numbers reduced and nowadays we don't really see anyone of them anymore. Anytime I walk through the cassava plant in our compound, the memories of that day still makes me smile and terrified.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled "A scary Animal" in hive learners community.
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