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John
SsabunnyaA young boy that was reared by apes in the dense African
jungles of Uganda, until being found scavenging for food in the
company of a colony of African Green monkeys by a tribeswoman in 1991.
John was born in the mid80s. At the tender age of
two, three, or four (nobody knows for sure, since due to the unrest at
that time in Uganda many official records were lost), after witnessing his
mother's murder by his own father, the boy ran away to the jungle. A local
colony of African Green monkeys came across the toddler, adopting him as
one of their own and, by doing so, saving his live. The boy learnt their
mannerisms, became adept at climbing trees and lived on a diet of fruit,
nuts, roots and berries for the next three or four years.
When first found, the boy and his pals (the monkeys)
made a lot of racket and hurled sticks and other projectiles at the
would-be saviors. Finally the villagers scared off the animals, and
collected the boy as he was hiding up a tree. He was covered with dirt and
had long hair all over his body but for the buttocks. He also had very
long nails, and his eyes and body were full of fleas. After a bath, shave
and grooming, the youngster was identified by a villager as John Ssabunnya,
who disappeared from the village years before, after his parents death
(his father hung himself).
The boy was then taken to the Kamuzinda Christian
Orphanage, 100 miles from the Ugandan capital Kampala, where he lived with
the family of the orphanage manager. For the next few years John learned
how to speak and to behave in a human manner, being able to tell his
incredible ordeal himself.
Hillary Cook, a 56 year-old British dentist who was
working in Uganda at the time, meet John and passed the story along to the
BBC, which verified its veracity by going to Uganda and talking
to all of the witnesses and parties involved on his rescue, education and
reintegration to society.
Most remarkably, the BBC arranged a
'test' to see
if the lad was for real or just a very good liar. Since his capture, the
youngster had had no contact of any kind with the monkeys. John was then
taken to the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre, where an imminent
primatologist, Debbie Cox, worked with a group of monkeys supposedly of
the same species of Johns benefactors. The expert was skeptical, but
nonetheless John was integrated with a group of visitant children, who
immediately stared harassing the animals by yelling, squeking and throwing pebbles
at them. Johns attitude was completely different. Staying crouched and
reaching an open hand towards the monkeys, he proceeded with a complicated
routine of oblique glances and guttural sounds, but somehow harmonious.
All of the people present were by now silently observing the scene in awe.
In less than 2 hours John had been completely accepted by the simian
community, and it was happily interacting with them, compelling Debbie Cox
to declare that he certainly had spent at least two years living among
monkeys in the jungle.
John's remarkable story was featured in Living
Proof, a television documentary screened on the BBC, October 13, 1999.
Related
books and
info.
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