Boabeng Monkey Sanctuary

May 9, 2013

We are off to Mole National Park for the weekend. To split up the very long bus ride we stopped off at Boabeng Monkey Sanctuary. This was such an amazing place. I'm so glad I had the opportunity to come here. At this sanctuary they have two different kinds of monkeys.

 

These monkeys are called Mona monkeys.

 

These are the Colobus monkeys.

 

Here is a history I found on the internet (the pictures are from the internet as well since uploading is still a joke here in Kumasi) about the  monkey sanctuary:

A local folklore has it that a hunter, who once lived in Boabeng, came into contact with a spirit being called Daworo sometime around 1842. In the course of the relationship he went to the forest one day and saw five monkeys gathered around a pot covered with calico. The hunter was mesmerised and could not shoot them. When he consulted Daworo it told him to treat the monkeys as relatives. Dawuro asked the hunter to take the calico home and when he did that the monkeys followed him home. With time the number of the monkeys increased and the fortunes of the hunter also increased. The hunter attributed his improved material condition to his association with the monkeys and this led to a symbiotic relationship that has persisted to this day. Any monkey that died was buried and funeral rites held for it just as human beings.

 

To sum it up... these monkeys have a close relationship with the people in the village. When the monkeys are going to die they come back to the village to die among the people instead of dying in the forest nearby. When you visit this sanctuary you can buy bananas and are able to feed the Mona monkeys (the Colobus monkeys only eat leaves and stay high up in the trees). You can feed them right out of your hand. They come right up to you, will hang on to you until you are ready to give them the banana. It is incredible. Another interesting fact about this sancturay mentioned above is that they bury the monkeys, so there is a monkey cemetery. I loved getting to come here.

It was very hard to take pictures feeding the monkeys. They are so fast getting those bananas! This one is trying to patiently wait while I got its banana.

Here we have the monkey cemetery.