A woman born in rural Colombia is telling her life story of how, after being kidnapped from her home as a child, she spent years alone with capuchin monkeys in the jungle, learning their ways in order to survive. Decades later, with the help of her daughter, she is assembling the fragmented puzzle pieces of her memory into a series of books.
Today, Marina Chapman lives in West Yorkshire, England, with her husband, retired scientist John Chapman. The couple has two daughters, Vanessa and Joanna.
Ms. Chapman believes she “should be 73” by now, but does not know for sure what year she was born. She has, however, retained her earliest memory of being stolen from her home at the age of 4.
‘I Didn’t Do Anything But Cry’
“Somebody came from behind and covered my face with a cloth. It was so smelly, strong,” Ms. Chapman told The Epoch Times. “I became very weak. I heard some children crying, I felt they were behind my back. But I was very quiet.”Ms. Chapman recalls a “long, speedy” drive, after which her kidnappers dumped her in the jungle. It was nighttime, she was alone and confused, but she clung to hope that the same people who left her there would return. They did not.
“I think I fell asleep a little bit,” she said. “Maybe I woke up with some light, sunshine. I woke up and it was very noisy. I don’t know if I was calling my mama, I was just calling for somebody to come for me because I had no idea where I was.”
Ms. Chapman says that she then sat down and cried. Suddenly, she saw a curious monkey. The creature approached but did not touch her and eventually left.
“The problem is I didn’t do very much,” Ms. Chapman said. “They got bored with me. They went away because I didn’t do anything but cry.”
She recalled finding a pond with “lovely clean water” from which she drank, using leaves to scoop the water into her mouth. There was no food for “some time,” until she noticed that the monkeys had a scheme: they would sneak into jungle-dwelling humans’ homes as they slept and steal fruit.
Surviving in the Jungle
As days turned into weeks, then months, Ms. Chapman claims she started understanding the monkeys’ unique language. A loud shriek alerted them to danger, while some whistle sounds signaled fighting between the monkeys themselves. A ticking sound of “Tttttt” accompanied grooming.The monkeys would check on her, Ms. Chapman said, but it took a long time before they would touch her. The first was an adolescent capuchin.
“I think he was coming from the tip of the tree or something,” she said. “He sat on my shoulders and it was a comforting moment. He started to check my ears, my nose ... just looking for something. Gradually, the young ones got closer to me.
“I tried to climb trees. I fell. I tried many times. ... I just didn’t want to stay down there because it was solitary. They used to go to the trees, so I tried to join them. It took me a while.”
The more time passed in the jungle, the less time seemed to matter to Ms. Chapman. She learned to scale trees and find food; survival was paramount. She remembers it took “a long time” before she caught sight of her changed reflection in a piece of broken mirror on the jungle floor.
Meeting the Monkey Grandpa
Ms. Chapman remembers forming a special connection with one member of the monkey troupe, an older male patriarch she nicknamed Grandpa. “You had to respect him,” she said. “If he raised his eyebrows, we were in trouble.”She had learned to copy the monkeys’ foraging behavior, but one day, she recalled, her hunger got the better of her and she gorged on a poisonous fruit. She believes Grandpa dragged her to a nearby pool of muddy water and forced her to purge by pulling her into the water.
“I just remember the pain. I just thought, ‘I’m going to die.’ I drank so much water. ... I think I vomited,” she said, recalling Grandpa’s presence, “He didn’t do anything; he stood there, went back to his place. The look in his eyes, I just realized I can trust him.”
Leaving the Jungle
Ms. Chapman guesses she remained in the jungle with the monkeys for six or seven years. During this time, she would sometimes spot armed hunters through the trees and hide, hearing the “horrible screaming sounds” coming from the sacks into which they would stuff stolen animals, fearing they would do the same to her.One day, she spotted a young woman who seemed to be “a nice person” alongside the hunters and decided to make herself known.
Ms. Chapman said: “I just walked up gradually, moved toward them, and tried to hold her hand. ... she brought me to this gentleman, and this gentleman wrapped me and put me in the truck with the animals. ... but it was really brutal. I felt insecure. I wanted to go back to the monkeys.”
Inside the truck, Ms. Chapman claims she tried to befriend a young monkey in a box that was screaming in fear. She recalls an hours-long journey with nothing to drink until flashing lights and heavy traffic indicated that they'd reached a city. She remembers being hustled out of the van to the house of a “huge woman,” who grabbed her arm and exchanged money with the hunter.
While hungry and homeless, she found comfort in the company of street gangs “because they were like monkeys.” She stole food to feed herself and was eventually picked up by police while sleeping on a park bench.
“They asked about family, mother, parents. I said I hadn’t any,” she said. “I talked to them about the monkeys. They laughed, and couldn’t believe it. They put me into a bed at night, and in the morning I woke up and the police took me for breakfast in a local restaurant ... then they let me go.”
Ms. Chapman began knocking on doors because she had already seen children doing some little jobs in the neighborhood where they also got food to eat; she too found a family in the neighborhood who agreed to take her on as a domestic aide in return for room and board. But it turned out that they were known criminals, and Ms. Chapman became a slave. Safe refuge evaded her until a neighbor stepped in, offering to send the teen by plane to live with her daughter in Bogotá.
It was in Bogotá with her new, adopted family that Ms. Chapman chose her own name and learned to be civilized.
A Family Project
Ms. Chapman’s adoptive family emigrated to England, where she fell in love and made her permanent home. Marriage, two children, and a successful career as a chef followed.Together with her youngest daughter Vanessa Ferero, 28, a film score composer, Ms. Chapman is compiling her extraordinary memories into a series of books. The first, “The Girl With No Name,” became a New York Times bestseller in 2013.
Ms. Ferero told The Epoch Times: “Many don’t believe it, which is normal. I don’t think I would, either, if I heard someone say that their dad had been raised by kangaroos.”
Talking about the book, Ms. Ferero said: “It was a family project more than anything. Mom always had snapshot memories, they weren’t really tied together until during the years we interviewed; we went back to Colombia and we did a load of interviews, found the people that Mom spoke about, and hung it together. By the end of two years, we both looked at it and it kind of looked like a book ... so we released it.”
They “weren’t out to prove anything,” said Ms. Ferero, but were simply hoping to make sense of the past, and perhaps reconnect Ms. Chapman with her biological family.
As the story continues to unfold, so a second book, “Out of the Wild,” is coming to fruition. Ms. Chapman still dreams of reconnecting with the monkeys she grew up with, if they are still alive, and wonders what would come of a reunion.
“I do think about them,” Ms. Chapman said. “I think about, if I see them, they will recognize me.”
