The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys by Marina Chapman, Lynne Barrett-Lee Page A

had seen in something that covered most of her body was the woman who gave birth that first day. I wondered about the lack of teeth in the adults, as it looked so strange. In fact, it bewildered me. Had they fallen out? Been taken out? Was it a part of their grooming? There was so much to learn, and though some of what I saw stirred up memories of the life I’d lived before, most of it felt alien and strange.
    But some things are universal across both animal and human kingdoms. I would watch the children play endlessly, loving how like me they seemed. They even did as I’d done when I’d first come into the jungle – found teasing the poor, long-suffering spiders a particularly pleasing way to pass the time. The women seemed busy every single second – they worked tirelessly. Unlike my monkey family, who spent much of their time sitting grooming one another and dozing, the women of this family seemed always to have so much to do. They would collect twigs to make the containers in which they stored their fruit and other things. They would lash together sticks of bamboo they had gathered before adding them to the already thickly covered hut roofs. They would also sew huge mats of bamboo and vine-string, which could be used both to lie on and also bent to make new walls to repair broken sections of their huts.
    The men, too, were busy, and I soon came to understand how the work in the camp was divided. While the women kept the camp (and the children) neat and tidy, the men would go off in their wooden boats, down the river, or else spend time making poisoned darts, bows and arrows, and catapults. There seemed no end to the ways they had devised to kill things.
    They had also made tree climbing much simpler than it was for me by tying a loose grassy rope between and around their ankles so that the rope tightened and gripped the tree trunk as they climbed. I could readily see how much pressure it took off their legs and feet, and they could scale a tree in no time, to get to the fruits above.
    They also had a novel use for corncobs. Where I’d been dealing with my bodily functions both by using bits of moss and by doing as the monkeys did, I noticed one day, watching a child in the bushes, that they would use a hairy corn husk to do the job much more efficiently. It became a technique I adopted from then on.
    *
    So the days passed and the weeks passed, and my life became focused. Though I’d scamper back to my monkey troop every evening at around nightfall, most of my waking hours were now spent at the camp. I would carefully climb up into a tree close to the perimeter and spend hours, a silent wraith, just looking and listening. And the more I saw, the more I nursed a burgeoning belief that this was where I belonged, if only they would accept me.
    Fear is a powerful emotion, and I was still very frightened. I had made a life with the animals and knew what to expect of them, and all I knew of humans, bar those fuzzy memories of home and mothering, was that two humans had stolen me and dumped me here. They had left me in the jungle not caring if I lived or died. Were these humans any different? I desperately wanted to believe they were. But what if they weren’t? It would take courage to show my face here.
    But as the time passed, the images of family here were so enticing. I would stare in at scenes that were tantalising and inviting: children playing, fires lit, all the family together. How wonderful it would be, I thought, from my viewpoint in the dark bushes, to be one of those cherished children, playing within the cosy confines of their cheerful camp.
    I don’t know now what made that particular day different from any other. I’m not sure if something triggered my sudden flash of boldness or whether I’d just had enough of being excluded from it all. Perhaps it was because there was so much going on that I thought I could slip in unnoticed.
    It was around the middle of the day, and everyone seemed occupied. I’m