The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys (33 page)

After that – having consigned everything else to a box marked ‘for the sequel’ – the beast felt much easier to tame. And once I’d spoken to myself sternly about using so many wanton jungle metaphors, I decided on an approach that would take us back to the simplicity of how a small child relates to the world. Memories are tricky. As soon as you’ve made them, you instinctively tend to analyse them, overlay them with interpretation based on future knowledge, so it’s all too easy, when describing events and images of early childhood, to do so with the benefit of hindsight. Where an adult might compare a particular shade of blue to a tanzanite, say, or sapphire, or the shallows of a tropical ocean, a tiny child – assuming they didn’t live down a mine or on a Caribbean island, obviously – would have no such point of comparison, so the language had to be simple and unadorned by art for art’s sake.

It was also important to establish such facts as were known. I needed no convincing, of course, but, for the reader to accept the veracity of the story, it was essential that the detail was correct. But how was this achievable, given that tiny Marina had no frame of reference? No convenient teacher bearing flashcards and new vocabulary? Here, too, Vanessa had done a brilliant job, spending many hours with Marina, homing in on specific memories, whittling down possibilities from many, many images, then cross-checking against known indigenous species. That the monkeys were probably weeper capuchins, that she ate guava and curuba, that the trees shed brazil nuts and lulo fruit and figs – all these facts are the result of painstaking research by Vanessa to give names to the images in Marina’s memory.

But the biggest job Vanessa did was also the best one. To commit to paper, in a form that was instantly beguiling, what was for Marina no more than her stock of bedtime stories – the minutiae of a life that she’d thought was unremarkable to anyone save the family she’d finally created for herself.

How wrong she was. And what a privilege it’s been for me to collaborate in turning such an incredible true story into what we sincerely hope is a riveting and moving book. I can’t wait to get started on the next one …

Lynne Barrett-Lee

Below are details of two charities that do vital work both in primate conservation and for abandoned children everywhere. If Marina’s story has moved you and you would like to know about what they do, we know they would be grateful to hear from you.

Substitute Families for Abandoned Children (SFAC)

Imagine you know a young girl who roams the streets with nobody to protect and care for her, or an eighteen year old now too old to stay in an orphanage and cast out to fend for themselves. Now think what trouble they could get into as prey for rapists, traffickers and drug-pushers. Now imagine that you could provide them with security, care and love. Well, maybe you can’t do that – after all, it’s a huge commitment – but you could help people that would.

Substitute Families for Abandoned Children hope for ‘family-based care’ over ‘institutional care’ for these children. Eighty per cent of orphaned or abandoned children have at least one parent alive or have extended family. In order to maintain the child’s sense of ‘roots’, SFAC’s first wish is to see children rehabilitated back into their families where possible and appropriate. Where that isn’t an option, they are placed with responsible local ‘substitute’ families, trained and supported by SFAC through every step.

Thanks to a sympathetic neighbour, Marina found herself in a new family when she had none. As a result, her life was transformed and she became the woman you have read about. She may not have been alive today to tell her story had she not found a substitute family.

Please contact SFAC and you too could rescue girls like Marina all around the world.
www.sfac.org.uk/

Neotropical Primate Conservation (NPC)

In far too many places around the world, our nearest biological relatives, the apes and monkeys, are suffering, losing their homes and their lives as a result of deforestation and wildlife trafficking.

In Colombia, as well as all Central and South America, NPC strives to protect monkeys and conserve their homes. In protecting the jungles and forests, the habitats are maintained not just for monkeys but also for the indigenous peoples, so that they too can maintain their traditional and cultural ways of life.

The battle against illegal wildlife traffic has become one of NPC’s main activities. Wild animals are routinely hunted for meat or skins, as trophies or for the pet trade – a major threat to the survival of many species. With the help of rescue centres and the police, NPC are able to rescue, rehabilitate and reintroduce these trafficked animals back to their forests – the homes that Marina knew so well.

Please learn how you can be a part of their wonderful work at
www.neoprimate.org

Thank you.

The exterior of Ana-Karmen’s brothel. (© Daniel James)

Park in Cúcuta – Marina’s home as a street kid. (© Daniel James)

Marina’s nickname on the streets, ‘Pony Malta’, was due to her resemblance to the short, dark drink bottle. (© Daniel James)

Viewing Cúcuta from Loma de Bolívar. (© Daniel James)

The Cúcuta bridge that exploded near the Santos family home, now rebuilt. (© Daniel James)

The exterior of La Casita convent. (© Daniel James)

Meeting the convent nuns during a research trip to Colombia in 2007. (© Daniel James)