Sign Monkey

By

Obododimma Oha

Just as I wrote about Igbo mask dance as hinging on signifying practices, criminal activity is also of interest to me as another important arena where the sign is a weapon as well as the tool (and, of course, the mirror where the harsh reality of possession and dispossession is revealed vividly to us). Naturally, monkeys are not speech-using like humans, but can learn some signs, some sounds mainly, and mimic such. In fact, as well hunters well know, if there is any animal that is likely to undermine their stalking of a game in the bush, the monkey is one of them. The monkey could spy; send its annoying telegram across the bush; and dance this way and that to deceive and play pranks on the hunter! No wonder the Igbo say in a proverb that: “Ka o hutachaa ka egbe jiri tua enwe n’anya” (It is because of the desire to see and report this and that that caused the monkey to receive a shot in the eye)! Why won’t it receive a shot in the eye when it is out to see or monitor everything happening? Similarly, the criminal element, particularly the hungry pickpocket somewhere could get hit in the process of sending signals to a fellow about a tartget. It is all a dangerous game of eat or be eaten. It is a game of deception; of pretending to be this when he is that.

The sign monkey operates, therefore, with signs, in the context of this deception and of eat or be eaten. The sign must be slippery; must be such that only a fellow sign monkey can understand. In fact, the business of deception is in the skill that is acquired as a sign monkey and mastered. It is in the initiation, as well as the membership. It is when a sign monkey uses the sign known to the collective that he or she belongs. That, too, could be a deception, a dangerous one for investigators. The point then is that sign monkeys build their huts, establish their lairs, and carry out their operations in signs.

When I lived and worked in Calabar, Nigeria, we knew and described them as sign monkeys. They followed their targets – those who revealed themselves as vulnerable or people who have or are strangers to that area of their operation –and looked out for an opportunity. If you are the target, God have mercy on you! Your phone, wallet, even necklace could be gone in a split second (a desperate sign money is the worst and could, in frustration, teat off your necklace and run). How sign monkeys get to know that there is money in that pocket or wallet is a puzzle. Do they perceive the smell? Your phone? Oh, a target. That time you made a call – no a broadcast – showing off your new iphone, was when you lost it! That was when you asked the sign monkeys to follow you. That time you brought out your wallet and paid the taxi driver when when you spent all the money. Even the way you walked down the street spoke about you. If the fool is known by the way he walks down the street, is an innocent fellow or the wants that wants to show off his Black American swagger in Nigeria also not a fool, a foolish  fool?

So, it is the sign that tells the sign monkeys that this or that is a target. Enter a dangerous city on a flight and forget to rip off the flight marker of your luggage before you take a taxi to where you are going, or leave it and show it off as somebody right from Yankee town. You are meat, just meat. A fool is known by the way he walks down the street, and so are you! Perhaps one way to survive in a sign money city is to throw them off-scent. Change your walk and even speech. Shift from your Yankee accent to a rustic pidgin. Become “area fada” or “area mama.” You know that tiger no de chop tiger! A tiger does not eat a tiger. So, your vulnerability is minimized. Better still, he knows what we know; he is one of us! Don’t turn him on us or start a gang war!

Sign monkeys study your weaknesses and try to capitalize on them. That is one reason they often operate in some contexts than others. For them, there are "dry" contexts and there are "promising" ones. In church gatherings, especially during thanksgivings, targets are most likely to relax their alertness, since angels are on guard. And angels will most likely keep their phones and bags and pads for them. Even the offertory tray could walk away with angels! Also, People who get off the aircraft and most likely from Heaven down to purgatory or even Hellfire, are likely to be filled with the desire to show off, to show others -- those in Hell -- that they are different. And so filled with this vanity about difference, they become vulnerable targets; they pay for their air of difference and may continue paying for it till they depart! 

Every city has its own share of sign monkeys, although some have a lion share. Every city has its gangs, especially sign monkey gangs. Is it darker Dakar or pink Johannesburg? Is it red New York or white, pretentious London? Every city has its own share and its style. When one enters another city (a sign monkey zone) to another, one has to learn to learn the sign monkey tradition of that city in order to survive. If you like, behave as if all cities are the same or that one sign monkey tradition serves another. In fact, if you are a master of one sign monkey tradition somewhere, when you enter a different city, you are just a beginner. That is why in Nigeria, you are a “JJC” (Journey Just Come) as a new-comer! The sign monkey practice in one small village will not see you through in a sign money city where every sign monkey is holding a revolver in the teeth.

As a homo loquens or speech using mammal, you are a signifying ape, but that is a just a beginning of the whole story. Sign monkeys know that they have to build on the tradition of being signifying apes!