How long had I been living among the towering trees with my monkey family? It was impossible to tell. I had been looking forward to my fifth birthday when I was kidnapped and abandoned, and must have spent almost as many years in my new life. I thought it would never end.
But one day, suddenly, everything in my monkey world changed for ever. Dawn arrived with its usual bustle of activity, but the regular cacophony was pierced by an immediate-danger call from one of the monkeys.
It was like a well-rehearsed fire drill. The birds were suddenly fewer, and those that remained airborne were now flying anxiously, high above us. An eerie silence hovered.
High life: Marina Chapman, who claims she was raised by monkeys, recalls her life living in the treetops of Colombia's rainforest in Bolton Abbey, North Yorkshire
I followed the other animals in the dash to safety – in my case, this meant a hollow tree that had been my home for so long. I crouched there, hidden from sight by some fallen branches, and wondered what monstrous thing could create so much fear.
It was the noise that came first. A loud and unsettling sound that was strangely methodical. The noise grew and was then accompanied by the sight of two white men, dressed in green clothing and carrying, as well as their fearsome glinting machetes, a variety of sacks, guns and nets.
I watched them slash their way through the undergrowth. I had no idea what they wanted or why they seemed so intent on destruction, but that question was soon answered.
The nets, I realised as I watched them, were for catching and stealing whatever creatures they fancied. First, a bright, unwary butterfly was scooped up in an instant, the net secured and slung over a shoulder.
Then their attention turned to birds. I watched as they fired a different sort of net, this time to trap a beautiful parrot. They tethered it by the legs, causing it to flap in a panic, its elegant feathers drifting to the forest floor.
Hell on earth: The brothel in Cucuta, north Colombia, where Marina found herself working after the hunters who rescued her from the forest sold her for a parrot
Would I be the next prey they captured? They had the means to catch anything they wanted, from birdlife to insects, lizards and snakes.
No wonder that monkey had been so insistent in his warning. We were clearly all in great danger.
It marked the beginning of the end of my innocence. From that day, I became used to the sound of a machete swishing through the undergrowth.
The fear I felt, being so small and helpless, was of a kind all its own.
Sometimes the hunters came by day and sometimes by night. Other times, they’d pounce just as dusk was falling, shining their torches into the eyes of tired, sleepy creatures whose shrieks would rip through the darkness.
FROM POVERTY TO A NEW LIFE IN BRADFORD
After her escape from the jungle and Ana-Karmen’s brothel in Cucuta, Marina spent a hard life on the city’s streets and in grinding domestic service before she was befriended and treated with great kindness by the Forero-Eusse family.
In the late Seventies, with their textile business in crisis, various family members flew to Bradford, West Yorkshire, for talks with people in the woollen industry, and Marina joined them.
She had her doubts, expecting cold, grey, weather – the more so as she had already been promised a job as a nanny in Florida.
But in the event, she liked England. Snow, in particular, was a revelation.
Soon afterwards she met and fell in love with scientist John Chapman and they married in 1978.
He was the first person with whom she felt able to share the truth about her childhood since telling two policemen years earlier – and being ridiculed.
John and Marina have two daughters, Vanessa, who co-wrote this memoir, and Joanna.
Worse than that, though, was that they sometimes came for monkeys. They would pick off the youngsters. They knew there was a chance the young ones would be too distracted by their games to see and react to them until it was too late.
They would simply be shot with a tranquilliser dart out of the trees and then imprisoned in black nets.
It was agonising to watch the mothers suffering in the weeks afterwards. More than once I saw bereft monkey mothers simply lie down and die.
Then the rains came. To those of us who lived in the jungle they were a welcome cleansing and now had the bonus of keeping the hunters away.
But not for long. One day, during my daily search for food, I heard it: a ‘swoosh’ sound. The sound of a machete!
I made my own warning call – a panicked, fearful, loud one – and raced to my new hide-out, high in a palm tree with a good view of the forest floor below. The next sound I heard was the distinctive cocking of a rifle, and moments later its metal nose poked through the undergrowth, followed by one hunter and then another.
Both were wearing the same khaki clothes I’d seen previously, with strange cylindrical hats and sunshades. But then I realised there was something unusual. One of the hunters looked different, and I realised she was female. A peculiar feeling overtook me.
Though she was dressed like a hunter, her face looked so kind, so compassionate and gentle, like someone who might care.
How can the head ever compete with heart? Without thinking about what I was doing, I was climbing down my tree towards her.
I felt compelled to show her my face. It made no sense – why would I offer myself up into the mouth of my greatest danger? Yet I did.
I stood behind the tree and, with my head down, I stepped out in full view and stood before them both. I braced myself for whatever was coming next, but nothing happened. When I dared to lift my eyes, all I could see in theirs was utter disbelief.
My hair, thick and tangled, had grown way past my bottom and covered much of my face and body. I was black – filthy black; I had not washed in years – and I no longer stood on two legs. Crouched there, I suspect I must have looked like a primate.
They were frightened. The gun was once again lifted and aimed at my face.
Family matters: Marina Chapman with her daughter Vanessa James, who helped her write her book The Girl With No Name
But I focused solely on the woman. I moved submissively in her direction. I needed to touch her.
As I got closer I could see that her expression was softening. That she’d decided she wasn’t frightened. That she was, instead, intrigued.
This was my cue. As I was now only touching distance from her, I slowly lifted my hand to touch hers.
This seemed to charm her; she raised her hand to let me clasp one of her fingers and a moment of silent shock hovered between us all. It was my first human touch for many years.
But my reverie was interrupted by the man. Though I had no human language, it was clear what he thought. He was making it clear I wouldn’t be welcome.
A heated exchange began, the man’s rejection of me obvious, the woman’s disagreement clear too.
Some sort of resolution was reached, and when she looked at me again, I felt a surge of elation.
Her expression was calm, her face friendly and, though I didn’t understand her, I knew the things she was saying were what I wanted to hear.
She tugged my hand again then, gesturing to me that I should follow. So that’s exactly what I did.
Without looking back at the watchful eyes of my monkey family, I followed where the woman led – away from my home and into her life. My time in the jungle had come to its end.
We had reached the entrance to a building – and I didn’t want to go inside. The two hunters now had a firm grip on my wrists, despite my repeated attempts to bite them.
The woman pushed the door open. Why were the expressions on their faces so hard? A fat woman shuffled in and now approached us. I stiffened. She was old and tired-looking, with evil green eyes and a heavily-lined face.
The humans communicated and the fat woman, whose many chins seemed to have lives of their own, darted disgusted glances in my direction. I would later learn that this woman was Ana-Karmen and the house I had been brought to was a brothel in the city of Cucuta, in the north-east of Colombia.
She waddled off, then returned. On one hand perched a green parrot, its plumage bright and unusual. And in the other hand she held several pieces of something. They looked a little like a wad of dried-up leaves, but I know now that it was money.
I felt a push in the small of my back. My arms were released and the truth became clear. The fat woman had given the hunters the bird and ‘dead leaves’, and in exchange they had given her me.
The hunters departed and Ana-Karmen spoke, opening her mouth and letting a stream of noise out.
Girls appeared and dragged me to a large metal container where I was given a rough bath. I was terrified. Were they going to cook me? I had survived for a long time. I had done so with nothing but my own wits to help me. For the first time in my life, I felt I was just a powerless object.
Jungle life: It is believed that Marina was cared for by Capuchin monkeys from the age of four until she arrived at the brothel approximately aged 11
Ana-Karmen set me to work. I had very little idea what ‘work’ was. So I was given instruction. And the most important lesson was how to mop floors. The wooden spoon in Ana-Karmen’s belt – initially so terrifying – soon seemed the mildest of punishments. And I was punished constantly.
The single-storey house I was now imprisoned in was inhabited by young women and several children. There were regular male visitors.
One day, as I ran errands to the nearby shops, I was given a frightening vision of the future
‘Don’t let any of the men touch you,’ said one of the few women who treated me with kindness. ‘Ana-Karmen is training you to be the right sort of meat for these bad men. Don’t trust her. Run away. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
I nodded glumly. I didn’t understand all the words, but I understood that this was a warning. I was around 11 when her prediction almost came to pass. I heard Ana-Karmen talking to a visitor.
‘Come, Sergio,’ she greeted him.
I glanced up from where I was cleaning a door. I could see a man, who was wearing a suit and a tie. I kept quiet as I polished.
‘So who’s your youngest?’ I heard him asking her. ‘Do you have any in today?’
I saw him pull out a fat wad of notes. By now, I knew exactly what he meant by her ‘youngest’.
I was surely too small and too young to be the right ‘meat’ for her clients. There was a silence, and then Ana-Karmen mumbled something and pointed in my direction.
Horrified, I saw the man start to turn towards me. I bobbed back behind the door, mortified, but too late. He’d seen me, and his mouth had formed a smile.
I then heard Ana-Karmen’s voice again. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘She’ll follow you to the car if you give her a handful of patatas fritas.’
I froze. It was me. I had finally become the right meat. I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing.
But the man’s smile had told me. I was going to be his meat and he would turn me into sausages.
I ran as I had never run before, with fear snapping at my heels. I spent the night under an old mango tree in Cucuta’s city centre with other children around me.
I had felt alone at Ana-Karmen’s. I had felt alone running away from her. Now I wasn’t so alone.
This was the start of a new life for me. I didn’t know it yet, but I was to become a street child of Colombia. I nodded off in seconds, and I slept well.
But one day, suddenly, everything in my monkey world changed for ever. Dawn arrived with its usual bustle of activity, but the regular cacophony was pierced by an immediate-danger call from one of the monkeys.
It was like a well-rehearsed fire drill. The birds were suddenly fewer, and those that remained airborne were now flying anxiously, high above us. An eerie silence hovered.
High life: Marina Chapman, who claims she was raised by monkeys, recalls her life living in the treetops of Colombia's rainforest in Bolton Abbey, North Yorkshire
I followed the other animals in the dash to safety – in my case, this meant a hollow tree that had been my home for so long. I crouched there, hidden from sight by some fallen branches, and wondered what monstrous thing could create so much fear.
It was the noise that came first. A loud and unsettling sound that was strangely methodical. The noise grew and was then accompanied by the sight of two white men, dressed in green clothing and carrying, as well as their fearsome glinting machetes, a variety of sacks, guns and nets.
I watched them slash their way through the undergrowth. I had no idea what they wanted or why they seemed so intent on destruction, but that question was soon answered.
The nets, I realised as I watched them, were for catching and stealing whatever creatures they fancied. First, a bright, unwary butterfly was scooped up in an instant, the net secured and slung over a shoulder.
Then their attention turned to birds. I watched as they fired a different sort of net, this time to trap a beautiful parrot. They tethered it by the legs, causing it to flap in a panic, its elegant feathers drifting to the forest floor.
Hell on earth: The brothel in Cucuta, north Colombia, where Marina found herself working after the hunters who rescued her from the forest sold her for a parrot
Would I be the next prey they captured? They had the means to catch anything they wanted, from birdlife to insects, lizards and snakes.
No wonder that monkey had been so insistent in his warning. We were clearly all in great danger.
It marked the beginning of the end of my innocence. From that day, I became used to the sound of a machete swishing through the undergrowth.
The fear I felt, being so small and helpless, was of a kind all its own.
Sometimes the hunters came by day and sometimes by night. Other times, they’d pounce just as dusk was falling, shining their torches into the eyes of tired, sleepy creatures whose shrieks would rip through the darkness.
FROM POVERTY TO A NEW LIFE IN BRADFORD
After her escape from the jungle and Ana-Karmen’s brothel in Cucuta, Marina spent a hard life on the city’s streets and in grinding domestic service before she was befriended and treated with great kindness by the Forero-Eusse family.
In the late Seventies, with their textile business in crisis, various family members flew to Bradford, West Yorkshire, for talks with people in the woollen industry, and Marina joined them.
She had her doubts, expecting cold, grey, weather – the more so as she had already been promised a job as a nanny in Florida.
But in the event, she liked England. Snow, in particular, was a revelation.
Soon afterwards she met and fell in love with scientist John Chapman and they married in 1978.
He was the first person with whom she felt able to share the truth about her childhood since telling two policemen years earlier – and being ridiculed.
John and Marina have two daughters, Vanessa, who co-wrote this memoir, and Joanna.
Worse than that, though, was that they sometimes came for monkeys. They would pick off the youngsters. They knew there was a chance the young ones would be too distracted by their games to see and react to them until it was too late.
They would simply be shot with a tranquilliser dart out of the trees and then imprisoned in black nets.
It was agonising to watch the mothers suffering in the weeks afterwards. More than once I saw bereft monkey mothers simply lie down and die.
Then the rains came. To those of us who lived in the jungle they were a welcome cleansing and now had the bonus of keeping the hunters away.
But not for long. One day, during my daily search for food, I heard it: a ‘swoosh’ sound. The sound of a machete!
I made my own warning call – a panicked, fearful, loud one – and raced to my new hide-out, high in a palm tree with a good view of the forest floor below. The next sound I heard was the distinctive cocking of a rifle, and moments later its metal nose poked through the undergrowth, followed by one hunter and then another.
Both were wearing the same khaki clothes I’d seen previously, with strange cylindrical hats and sunshades. But then I realised there was something unusual. One of the hunters looked different, and I realised she was female. A peculiar feeling overtook me.
Though she was dressed like a hunter, her face looked so kind, so compassionate and gentle, like someone who might care.
How can the head ever compete with heart? Without thinking about what I was doing, I was climbing down my tree towards her.
I felt compelled to show her my face. It made no sense – why would I offer myself up into the mouth of my greatest danger? Yet I did.
I stood behind the tree and, with my head down, I stepped out in full view and stood before them both. I braced myself for whatever was coming next, but nothing happened. When I dared to lift my eyes, all I could see in theirs was utter disbelief.
My hair, thick and tangled, had grown way past my bottom and covered much of my face and body. I was black – filthy black; I had not washed in years – and I no longer stood on two legs. Crouched there, I suspect I must have looked like a primate.
They were frightened. The gun was once again lifted and aimed at my face.
Family matters: Marina Chapman with her daughter Vanessa James, who helped her write her book The Girl With No Name
But I focused solely on the woman. I moved submissively in her direction. I needed to touch her.
As I got closer I could see that her expression was softening. That she’d decided she wasn’t frightened. That she was, instead, intrigued.
This was my cue. As I was now only touching distance from her, I slowly lifted my hand to touch hers.
This seemed to charm her; she raised her hand to let me clasp one of her fingers and a moment of silent shock hovered between us all. It was my first human touch for many years.
But my reverie was interrupted by the man. Though I had no human language, it was clear what he thought. He was making it clear I wouldn’t be welcome.
A heated exchange began, the man’s rejection of me obvious, the woman’s disagreement clear too.
Some sort of resolution was reached, and when she looked at me again, I felt a surge of elation.
Her expression was calm, her face friendly and, though I didn’t understand her, I knew the things she was saying were what I wanted to hear.
She tugged my hand again then, gesturing to me that I should follow. So that’s exactly what I did.
Without looking back at the watchful eyes of my monkey family, I followed where the woman led – away from my home and into her life. My time in the jungle had come to its end.
We had reached the entrance to a building – and I didn’t want to go inside. The two hunters now had a firm grip on my wrists, despite my repeated attempts to bite them.
The woman pushed the door open. Why were the expressions on their faces so hard? A fat woman shuffled in and now approached us. I stiffened. She was old and tired-looking, with evil green eyes and a heavily-lined face.
The humans communicated and the fat woman, whose many chins seemed to have lives of their own, darted disgusted glances in my direction. I would later learn that this woman was Ana-Karmen and the house I had been brought to was a brothel in the city of Cucuta, in the north-east of Colombia.
She waddled off, then returned. On one hand perched a green parrot, its plumage bright and unusual. And in the other hand she held several pieces of something. They looked a little like a wad of dried-up leaves, but I know now that it was money.
I felt a push in the small of my back. My arms were released and the truth became clear. The fat woman had given the hunters the bird and ‘dead leaves’, and in exchange they had given her me.
The hunters departed and Ana-Karmen spoke, opening her mouth and letting a stream of noise out.
Girls appeared and dragged me to a large metal container where I was given a rough bath. I was terrified. Were they going to cook me? I had survived for a long time. I had done so with nothing but my own wits to help me. For the first time in my life, I felt I was just a powerless object.
Jungle life: It is believed that Marina was cared for by Capuchin monkeys from the age of four until she arrived at the brothel approximately aged 11
Ana-Karmen set me to work. I had very little idea what ‘work’ was. So I was given instruction. And the most important lesson was how to mop floors. The wooden spoon in Ana-Karmen’s belt – initially so terrifying – soon seemed the mildest of punishments. And I was punished constantly.
The single-storey house I was now imprisoned in was inhabited by young women and several children. There were regular male visitors.
One day, as I ran errands to the nearby shops, I was given a frightening vision of the future
‘Don’t let any of the men touch you,’ said one of the few women who treated me with kindness. ‘Ana-Karmen is training you to be the right sort of meat for these bad men. Don’t trust her. Run away. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
I nodded glumly. I didn’t understand all the words, but I understood that this was a warning. I was around 11 when her prediction almost came to pass. I heard Ana-Karmen talking to a visitor.
‘Come, Sergio,’ she greeted him.
I glanced up from where I was cleaning a door. I could see a man, who was wearing a suit and a tie. I kept quiet as I polished.
‘So who’s your youngest?’ I heard him asking her. ‘Do you have any in today?’
I saw him pull out a fat wad of notes. By now, I knew exactly what he meant by her ‘youngest’.
I was surely too small and too young to be the right ‘meat’ for her clients. There was a silence, and then Ana-Karmen mumbled something and pointed in my direction.
Horrified, I saw the man start to turn towards me. I bobbed back behind the door, mortified, but too late. He’d seen me, and his mouth had formed a smile.
I then heard Ana-Karmen’s voice again. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘She’ll follow you to the car if you give her a handful of patatas fritas.’
I froze. It was me. I had finally become the right meat. I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing.
But the man’s smile had told me. I was going to be his meat and he would turn me into sausages.
I ran as I had never run before, with fear snapping at my heels. I spent the night under an old mango tree in Cucuta’s city centre with other children around me.
I had felt alone at Ana-Karmen’s. I had felt alone running away from her. Now I wasn’t so alone.
This was the start of a new life for me. I didn’t know it yet, but I was to become a street child of Colombia. I nodded off in seconds, and I slept well.