Though I certainly found my safari and my experience living with Maasai to be mind-blowing, I must confess that if I had to sum up my trip to Kenya in one word, it would be a very easy answer: monkeys.

My beach hut, though mere steps from the Indian Ocean, was surrounded by giant trees—palms, baobab, and mangrove—which were homes to families of monkeys. The monkeys were eerily intelligent, and they would watch you—study you—like cynical mini-humans, trying to determine if you were something to fear. Much to my surprise, I befriended a few of of the gray Sykes monkeys—the black-and-white Colobus monkeys didn’t care for me very much. By the end of my trip, I would walk out onto my porch, shout some wild animal call into the sky, and a half-dozen or so monkeys would literally drop out of the trees, hanging by their tails, and hop onto my front porch. There they sat, patiently waiting, like dogs without the barking, until I produced some fruit from a bag—which they took from my hand, and sat there quietly and ate. I had never seen anything like it. They happily ate my bananas, apples…even my cookies! The sheer interaction with the monkeys alone put my safari experience to shame.

I also made a point to visit Kaya Kinondo, one of the actual sacred forests that the forests in Avatar were based on. The trees were out of this world, with roots growing in all directions, even up. The forest contained medicinal trees, plants used for cooking and spices, and even some foliage reserved for rituals to the gods. It was a peaceful place, and I could see how generations of Digo tribes were able to find their spiritual center here.

When I returned home to my beach hut that night, I was shocked to find the place had been trashed—and I knew someone had broken in. Strangely, my camera and my laptop were untouched, but surrounding the overturned furniture there were banana peels everywhere. Who would break into my house, I thought, eat all of my bananas and leave my Canon 5D? Then it hit me: I had been robbed by monkeys.

INDEX:
Top Images: Kaya Kinondo, Sykes monkey eating my cookie
1-5: Kaya Kindondo, the sacred forest
6: My beach hut in Diani
7: Black-and-white colobus monkeys
8-14: My Sykes monkey friends, eating all of my food