(Source of Photo: google.com /en.wikipedia.com) This summer I asked my college students in Anthropology 1, aside from learning anthropological concepts and theories inside the classroom - to explore places, experience cultural happenings, and then apply their learning through writing ethnographic accounts using the method of participation-observation.
I am posting in my blog with the writer's consent selected ethnography penned creatively by my students to contribute to the emerging sub-discipline of anthropology called 'Virtual Ethnography'.
Basically, virtually ethnography is also referred to as Webnography. We cannot deny the fact that with increasing use of technology and the Internet, there is now a demand for online spaces on various ethnographic accounts.
Ethnography By Llenel de Castro
The Great Primate Search
After the assignment about observing our primate relatives was given, I immediately asked my friends if they knew someone with a pet monkey. One of my friends remembered a restaurant in Chinatown where the owners let their monkey greet their guests as they entered. Since I wanted to avoid going to the zoo, I agreed to meet up with my friend the following day to visit the monkey. However, when we got there, the guard told us that they have not seen the monkey for quite some time.
Primates Search Attempt 1: Oops. It was already dead
We walked to Arrangue market next to try our luck in the pet shops. When we got there, we asked one of the vendors if they sold monkeys. She told us that they sold small ones for Php 6,000 pesos. When we asked if we could see the monkeys, she explained that they did not bring the monkeys to the market anymore and that she would not show the monkeys to us unless we were really going to buy one.
Primate Search Attempt 2: Oops (I did it again)
It didn’t look like I was going to find my hanuman freely roaming around in the city so the next day, I decided to drag my parents along with me to Ark of Avilon. There we met Jenny, the tamest orangutan I have ever met. She looked tired probably because of the heat and the fact that she was still wearing pants and a shirt over the extreme amount of body hair she already had. There weren’t a lot of people there that day so we got to talk to her trainer, Kuya Deric, for quite some time. He told us about her diet (that wasn’t exclusive to bananas) and how he trained her by giving her chocolates and candies if she did something right.
Primate Search Attempt 3: Violá! The third time’s the charm (The Monkey Business!)
Truth be told, I did not enjoy my search for fellow primates in the city. What I thought would be just a simple assignment of staring at a chimp ended up being a depressing eye opener about the way that animals are being treated.
In Arranque market, the vendors knew that what they were doing wasn’t the most legal thing in the world. They looked at us skeptically as we asked about the monkey trade and they refused to tell us how much the medium sized monkeys cost. Their hostility may have stemmed from the fact that a few years ago, Arranque market was featured in a local news show because of the illegal animal trade that goes on there. In their exposé, the reporters recorded the transaction using a hidden camera so the vendors may have thought that they were doing the same thing too.
In Avilon, Jenny herself showed us how she felt. While she hugged and posed for the camera, you could feel how she was doing it mechanically. While it was nice to be hugged by an orangutan, you could feel that it was a routine for her. It felt almost like the entrance fee paid was the price you paid for her love and affection. She was not caged when we saw her but you could almost see the steel bars in her eyes.
The steel bars were exactly why I did not want to go to the zoo. As a child, whenever we would go to Subic, we would often see monkeys just playing on the side of the road. There amongst the trees in the virgin forest, they swung from branch to branch freely. They moved as if they were living. On a trip to Kenya a few years ago, a bunch of friendly primates ( I don’t remember now what they were but I think they were gorillas) climbed and went in our safari bus. While our driver wasn’t too pleased, the way that they just entered and claimed their territory sort of thrilled me. We were after all intruding in their home.
In Subic and Kenya, the primates are able to roam freely. Even though we continue to move dangerously close to them, they still have hundreds of hectares of savannas and forests to move around. Their behavior in the wild is so much different from their behavior in captivity. Even though our driver got mad at the gorilla, he didn’t abuse it. As he told the gorilla to go away, you could see how he treated the gorilla not as his subordinate but as his equal. He understood that these animals lived amongst and that they had the right to do so.
It is the andocentric view that we have to avoid. Just as we wouldn’t want to be displayed in the circus, our cousin primates aren’t comfortable living their lives wearing human clothes and hugging hundreds of children everyday. Just as we avoid breaking the law and being cooped up in prison, they don’t want to spend their lives living in cages. In trying to abolish slavery, we should think about fixing the monkey business, too. In the same way that we are taught to respect the culture of other groups, we should learn to respect theirs, too. Even though our fellow primates in the city live in captivity, we have to remember that we were all born free.
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