Iveli is the smallest of the four girls who live in my house. Though there’s only a year’s difference between she and the other girl’s ages, Iveli looks three years younger. She is tiny. That said, she is by far the spunkiest one. She doesn’t fear many things. Yesterday I took the girls to one of the attractive recreational sites in Iquitos.
Lake Quistacocha is located several miles outside of town. It is a natural oval-shaped lake surrounded with mamey and mango trees … and has a nice sandy beach. The area is inhabited by a family of spider monkeys. People will buy bananas from one of the local markets and feed them to the monkeys. And so they have become used to being around people. After the girls swam for an hour or so in the clear shallow water near a small wooden dock, Luci served them chicha (a purplish soft drink similar to kool-aid made from corn) and ham sandwiches. We were chowing down under the shade of a mamey tree near the dock when the monkey family approached us.
Iveli … with a banana in one hand and a sandwich in the other … offered the alpha monkey a banana. But he didn’t want the banana. He grabbed the sandwich from her hand and scampered up a nearby mamey tree. Outraged over the monkey’s bad manners Iveli tore off after him. She was scaling the tree in pursuit of the thief when I ordered her to come back down. She hadn’t thought about what might have happened if she had cornered the alpha monkey. But I had. Iveli gave the thieving monkey a piece of her mind for a minute or two. When this little girl came to live in my house three your ago I was concerned that bigger kids would bully her. It didn’t take me long to realize that this feisty little girl is capable of taking care of herself.
