Monkey Business

I'm the easy part. All these visa applicants I talk to every day pay my salary, at $140 a pop. Funding for my position? No problem. But what about all this "development aid" that goes abroad? What happens to all of that? I got a close-up look today.

I went with a couple of other Embassy people to a town a few hours' drive from Accra, in Ghana's Volta Region. The low scrub of the flatlands was ringed by lush, green mountains (small mountains, yes, but the biggest this country has to offer). There were plenty of villages, but not a city to be found, and not many people at all in between the villages.

The goal was a village called Tafi Atome, where we had heard that the monkeys eat right out of your hand. That turned out to be no exaggeration. In fact, it could have used some embellishment; I assumed you just handed the monkey a banana and watched it eat. But the first time I tried that, our guide admonished me for giving the entire fruit to the greedy monkey. He showed us how to hold the banana tightly in the middle, so the monkey had to work to get the peel off and eat it. The right way, he showed us, was to hold the banana in a hand extended at a right angle, with the arm two to three feet from a tree - just far enough that the monkey couldn't reach it from the tree. The result: the monkeys, just a bit smaller than a house cat, jump from the tree right onto your arm and sit there as they dig the banana out of your fist.

I was a bit nervous about this at first. Most of my monkey experience, after all, is in India, where they are foul, obnoxious beasts that steal and attack at every opportunity. I still enjoy repeating the story about the Delhi deputy mayor who died after he was pushed from his balcony by a pack of angry apes. But these Ghanaian monkeys, called mona monkeys, were so cute you could hardly imagine them being mean. They were clearly not quite certain that we meant well, but they also clearly weren't threatened by our presence, and never seemed inclined to strike at us. I was surprised that, even with the whole weight of the animal on my arm and its mouth and hands digging into my hand, I never felt a claw or a tooth. The hands and feet felt more like a person's, where there's a nail instead of a claw, and the part that was touching me was soft as a human finger or toe. It was a unique experience, and all three of us had a lot of fun with it.

What does all of this monkey business have to do with the US government? The monkeys have been in the village for generations - but it was us (along with several other countries) who helped them turn it into a business. "Ecotourism" is a well-known word in that part of Ghana. We paid about $5 for a guide to take us through the woods behind the village, where the monkeys live. They were selling tshirts and other knick-knacks to the tourists. And of course we never would have been there in the first place without the monkeys, so whatever food, fuel, etc, we bought was driven by tourism. The villagers seem to get that.

Back in the 1990s, a couple of Peace Corps volunteers, supported with stipends from the US government, worked with the villagers to set up the paths and other infrastructure to allow them to run the program. USAID money assisted to form the community-supported organization that administers the sanctuary. And on the way back we saw a sign thanking the US Millennium Challenge Corporation for funding for the smooth paved road connecting the village to Accra, without which no tourist would be able to reach the place. All those Americans working on the project have left a village that appreciates the assistance it's received from the US, and looks more favorably on us as a result. Coke, Shell, and the other American and western companies that sell in the region have more tourists as customers and more locals who can afford to buy their products.

Visas are great, but every once in a while it's nice to see that we're actually doing something really good.