My new friend

I’ve gotten the first pet I’ve had since my family had goldfish when I was back in elementary school. I wasn’t even really a fan of the goldfish back then, but I won them at Meijer by throwing a ping pong ball into the little goldfish bowl, so they really meant something to me for those few weeks before they died. Of course, my body has been a host to many parasites over the past year, but I’m not sure that qualifies as animals and I definitely don’t count them as pets.

I must say that my new pet is much cooler than goldfish ever were or will be, and I don’t know that I will ever be able to top Zakayo (the local name for Zacheus). I bought the little monkey two weeks ago now, and although he stayed in my tent with me for the first couple nights, he’s since moved to be a completely outdoor pet. All of our staff love him as he likes to try to fight most of us and it’s always enjoyable to see when the hen that we have gets near him because he actually does fight with her since they’re around the same size.

I don’t know how big he grows to be, but it doesn’t seem like he’s gotten any bigger in the time he’s been with us. It’s not that he doesn’t eat. He loves mango, guava and palm nuts, and we have a tree of each of those on the compound he’s able to get food from. Plus, he enjoys eating ugali, rice, and biscuits which we do give him from our lunch every day. I’m not sure how long it will take to fatten him up to the point where we can eat him. People do eat monkey around here, but I told all our staff that he’s too small right now and that we have to wait until he’s big enough to feed at least 5 people before we can think about cooking him up.