THE SACRED SOKO MONKEYS

Located 7 km from Bondoukou, close to the Ghanaian border, the village of Soko owes its name to the deformation of the Koulango term sokolo, literally "the elephant path". Paradoxically, it's not the pachyderm that is revered here, but rather the monkeys, of which there are two species here: cercopithecines and patas, with whom the locals have established a complicity that goes far beyond mere taming. While history unanimously accepts the elephant hunter Mélô as the founder of the village, versions differ as to the origin of the monkeys' sacred status. According to one version, this is simply due to the privileged ties the hunter naturally forged with these mammals, after the pursuit of elephants led him to lose himself in a place that was certainly full of game, but far from any civilization, populated only by primates to whom Mélô eventually became attached, making the people who came to join him and his descendants promise not to attack these animals he loved so much, on pain of incurring severe punishment. The second, more mystical version mentions the intervention of the village fetishist, who transformed the inhabitants into monkeys to save them from being massacred by Samory Touré's army. Once the danger had passed, the fetishist died before he could restore the human form of the Soko inhabitants. While the village's population naturally reconstituted itself, the descendants of those who had been transformed, unable to distinguish between their ancestors and the wild apes, decided to treat all primates with the same deference. Although they come and go freely in the village and its dwellings, and interact naturally with the men, women and children of the community (according to some accounts, Mélô's descendants even have a duty to share their meals with them), the monkeys are concentrated in a small, unspoilt forest bordered by a lovely, fish-filled stream, the M'gboulou River; two sites also considered sacred, where it is strictly forbidden to hunt, fish or cultivate (although more is needed to discourage poachers). The sacred primates are reputed to come out in large numbers every Friday, which is the day to visit Soko if at all possible. Nevertheless, they are present every day.