The Monkeys of Manor Gardens

Several weeks back, I was talking to my editor in London, when the Manor Gardens’ monkey troop began bouncing up and down on my studio roof. The big alpha monkey was chastising his delinquent underlings, and the female monkeys set up a loud commotion from the avocado tree. My Saluki hounds scrambled outside, slipping on the tiled flooring and banging the back door in their eagerness to see what the commotion was about.

The din made it virtually impossible to hear what the Englishwoman was saying about some contract clause or another, and I had to apologise to her for the untimely appearance of the monkeys. This statement had quite an effect on the woman, “how exotic, and here I sit in an office in wet London” she said.

Several times since, while we have been conversing telephonically or electronically, she has asked me what the monkeys were doing for the day, and I have played up to her curiosity, by telling her anecdotes about the monkeys. “Oh! they came through here today and the thieving rotters have stolen the ripe pawpaws straight off my trees.” Or…

Over the past year I have supplied her with various wildlife events, including jumping over my resident garden snake, who’s nicknamed Patrick because of his vivid green hue. I did however stop short of telling her about the lions that run down our street.

My editor’s enthusiastic curiosity got me thinking about my jaded spirit, and I have spent this past month re-evaluating my life and environment. Maybe we have got something remarkable just under our noses, and short-shortsightedly we have become blinded to the privilege. The exercise in re-evaluation, has left me with new appreciation and enthusiasm.

Think how wonderful it is to live in an urban environment, just a few kilometres from a bustling city, and to have birds of all descriptions in our gardens, and to have the occasional snake, and have butterflies in abundance, and marvelous trees, and let us not forget the vervet monkeys. The creatures that share our world are a living link to a time when these hills and valleys were wild and wooded and were the haunts of wild animals. They, the remaining survivors, remind us to preserve and to protect what we have left, and even to reverse the negative impacts we people have had on the environment.

So, next time the monkeys are dancing on your roof, remember that their ancestors once lived on these hills before men set foot here. Those ancient monkeys must have seen the San hunters, and later the Zulu impis on the warpath, and they must have been here in 1856 when my Great Great Great Grandmother was wrecked in the ship Annabella at the mouth to Port Natal. And when George Cato was granted these hills, and began the Cato Manor Sugar Estate in 1860, they were here. And when this area we now live in fell outside the Durban Borough and was administered by the Mayville Local Administration and Health Board. And I saw them this morning, the 24th of June, and maybe you did too, leaping across Manor Drive on their way to my garden for a pawpaw or two.

Graham Leslie McCallum