![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/ape2.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTo put this into perspective\u2026 these are not cute little monkeys like our famous Ikea monkey. According to the African Wildlife Foundation, there are five species of baboons. To me, it looks like Judy had an Olive baboon (Papio anubis) in her kitchen. Their jaws are described as powerful, and they have sharp canine teeth about an inch and a half long. There was only one baboon in the house, but a troop can be as many as 300 animals\u2026and they do travel in troops.<\/p>\n
The good news? Baboons sleep, feed, and socialize in groups of only about 50. Yes, 50 is a big number, but not as big as 300. Oh yea, baboons can weigh up to 100 pounds which means 50 Olive baboons could weigh 5,000 pounds, but 300 baboons could come in at 30,000 pounds. But hey, not to worry, unlike other monkeys, baboons don\u2019t have the kind of tails that can grip things. <\/p>\n
So, how\u2019d the baboon make it up to the floor where Judy\u2019s kitchen and bedroom are? <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The exterior of the house was being painted. The painters had left their ladders up. No problem for an adaptable baboon that may be smarter than the painters. <\/p>\n
Surprise. The baboons returned the next year. The foraging had been good in that house. They\u2019d helped themselves to a load of mangoes left in the cupboard to ripen. What baboon wouldn\u2019t return?<\/p>\n
This time, one of the baboons kept to the second floor terrace. There was still a drought up in the wilder South African hills and the baboons were being forced into populated areas looking for water. And here was a convenient carafe of it.<\/p>\n
Judy spotted another baboon eating lychee fruit. <\/p>\n
She was able to fling a bunch of green grapes onto the terrace (those green grapes again) and that\u2019s where he settled. <\/p>\n
He liked the grapes. This is a boy baboon. How\u2019d I know? \u2026 take your time and have a closer look. <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/ape3.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/ape4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
******<\/p>\n
Judy lives here in Canada but avoids our winters\u2026so, another year, another warm winter holiday in South Africa. Andrew, Judy\u2019s South African husband, decided to buy a car there\u2026using cash. It turns out you don\u2019t do that in South Africa. He took the money out of his bank, put it into a paper bag, and stashed that under Judy\u2019s car seat. Without even a cursory look around, they drove off to Andrew\u2019s sister in Cape Town\u2019s suburbs. Surprise-surprise. Again.
\nJudy and Andrew were followed until their car could be cornered on a quiet suburban street. The only evidence of anyone in the area was a gardener slowly mowing a lawn down the way. Two men jumped out of the Bad-Guys\u2019 car, quickly opened Andrew\u2019s door and dragged him out. Things scaled up a bit. Judy was still inside the car yelling that Andrew was recovering from a heart attack. The gardener mowed on. <\/p>\n
Judy continued to flap around screaming inside the car. One of the robbers, now armed, fired a shot to scare Judy, or maybe to shut her up. It didn\u2019t work. The bullet bounced off something metal inside the car and a spark from the ricocheting bullet set Judy\u2019s skirt on fire. <\/p>\n
Mayhem. It was mayhem. The robbers gave up and took off. Judy put out the small fire in her skirt. To prove she\u2019s a real trooper — she had not given the robbers the brown paper bag of money. So everything was OK. Right. <\/p>\n
Judy and her husband feel the time will come when they\u2019ll just have to walk away from their house and everything in South Africa. What happened to the gardener? Who knows. It\u2019s callous, but you keep your head down especially if you\u2019re not in your own neighbourhood.<\/p>\n
SOUTH AFRICA: PART TWO<\/p>\n
The real lost roommate is Karen (whose name I\u2019ve just changed). Karen is South African as were another two of the five young women I shared a flat with in London, England, during the 1960s. Back then, White South Africans expected Black people to vacate sidewalks for them. The rest of us obeyed the South African boycott \u2013 no Granny Smith apples. We five lived an uneasy truce. There were so many subjects we avoided, we barely spoke. I still hesitate to buy South African wine.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/ape5.jpg\")
Bed space in our small but expensive flat fluctuated, and near the end of my stay, Karen arrived to take up the slack. She was direct from South Africa. Karen was smarter and prettier than our two other South African roommates. Immediately, she was involved with one of the Canadian guys who passed through our flat on a regular basis.<\/p>\n
It all happened so quickly. Karen became pregnant, the guy headed home to Canada, and his mom. Karen decided to have an abortion (illegal). Then, the guy phoned and convinced Karen to join him in Canada and they\u2019d get married. <\/p>\n
Karen arrived in Toronto. His Mom was not thrilled. So the Mom found a rooming house for Karen, dumped her there and the guy ended the engagement. Way too late for an abortion.<\/p>\n
Karen was pregnant and alone in another strange city. Uptight Toronto. We got in touch and hung out together. I took Karen to my parents for dinner a few times. The Canadian guy and his Mom put Karen into a far off Home for Unwed Mothers in east-end Toronto. Karen delivered her baby in a Scarborough hospital. The good-for-nothing guy lived in the west end \u2013 the other side of the city. <\/p>\n
I visited Karen in the hospital and met the little baby boy. The guy, the shit, the father, made immediate adoption impossible. He refused to sign any papers or forms proving he was healthy, and indeed the father. I think some nuns in the hospital leaned on him, because he eventually signed.<\/p>\n
The baby was adopted, Karen returned to South Africa and that was that. I wondered if the grown up baby boy ever tried to find his birth mother \u2013 Karen. But as I later found out \u2013 by then she was back in South Africa.
\nYears later, Karen returned to Canada and found my mother.<\/p>\n
Drinking and shopping hours had changed in Toronto, but my parents still lived in the same house. They were easy to find. My mother gave my phone number to Karen and that\u2019s how she ended up in our tiny, but baboon-free, downtown Toronto back garden.<\/p>\n
Karen began by telling us about the horrific robbery in her husband\u2019s South African office (workers locked in the walk-in safe, guns, but no one killed), and the many times she\u2019d been followed by dubious vehicles to her gated home. Her husband would come out to meet her and walk her into their enclosure. But really, do come and visit. <\/p>\n
Her friends in South Africa were convinced that their grown children would all move to North America and that\u2019s what brought Karen and her husband to Canada. They were checking out Victoria and Toronto. <\/p>\n
Well it wasn\u2019t exactly the reason why Karen was in Toronto. We went to have coffee \u2013 alone. Karen had been an unsophisticated country girl when she arrived in London. And when she returned to her small South African town, she told no one about the baby. Not her female friends, not her mother, and certainly not her husband. <\/p>\n
This was the first time she\u2019d talked about it, ever, out loud. The baby was now in his forties. Did I know where the father was? No. I\u2019d always wondered where the baby was. <\/p>\n
Karen began to cry, for the first time she said, and couldn\u2019t stop. How could she have kept that secret for so long? Just how rigid and unforgiving were the people around her? Probably about the same as anyone in a small town, or in rural isolation, even urban isolation, anywhere in the world. <\/p>\n
I made some calls about the father. No one knew where \u201cThe Shit\u201d was.
\nI\u2019ve lost Karen\u2019s e-mail address \u2013 and her married name.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably for the best, dear,\u201d the Shit\u2019s Mom would have said.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/ape6.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Karen and the baby are not made up characters in a fraught story.
\nNor are Judy and Andrew. They are all real people with strong, very strong ties to South Africa. Where, and how, will it all end? I wouldn\u2019t put my money on peacefully.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SOUTH AFRICA: PART ONE <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/ape1.jpg\")
The few times we travelled together, my friend Judy and I had been roommates. We were never lost, just clueless. An example? We walked around Haight Ashbury, in California\u2026 in 1968\u2026eating green grapes. Well they were so cheap. Boycott? Caesar who? <\/p>\n
Green grapes also figure in one of Judy\u2019s recent South African warm-weather winters. A year or so ago, she found a giant monkey on her kitchen counter. <\/p>\n
This photo\u2019s kind of shaky because Judy was. She was in the bedroom when she heard noises in the kitchen. Here\u2019s what was going through her cupboards. Yes, a baboon. Speaking scientifically, baboons are huge and dangerous. <\/p>\n