Yaounde: Six-month Old Baby Recovering After Brutal Monkey Attack
By Hans Ngala
A six-month old baby is recuperating after a brutal attack by a monkey left her with gashes on her face, her back and deep bites on her buttocks. According to Mr. Bomnyuy Ambrose, the father, Baby Ivana was snatched from her 13-year-old brother on August 28 as he sat in their living room that day in Mvog Betsi, Yaounde when a monkey escaped from the nearby zoo and ran into the Bomnyuys’ residence.
“It was between 10 to 11a.m. when my wife and I were already both at work and our children were at home since it was the holidays and a monkey from the zoo dashed into our house. The children were in the parlour – the big children, with little Ivana who was carried by the elder brother who’s in Form Two and they were watching TV. So when the monkey came in, my eldest son who was carrying the baby saw that it was a monkey and dashed into the room. As he was struggling to run into the room for safety, trying to lock the door, it was impossible to lock the door to our sleeping room because there were some dresses that were hung on the door…”. Mr. Bomnyuy further explained that “So the gap that was there did not make it possible for him to close the door entirely, so the monkey followed him into our sleeping room and was struggling to seize the baby from him. It was a tussle and it wasn’t that easy so the monkey got our daughter well wounded in several places – on the head, the face, the jaw, the stomach, the back, the buttocks.”
Bomnyuy told CNA that his other three teenagers who were in the house at the time of the attack, rushed baby Ivana to a nearby hospital and it was at the level of the hospital that he and his wife who had both left for work earlier, were called.
Mr. Bomnyuy further explained to CNA that the baby was in agonizing pain after the attack and that officials from the zoo and Ministry of Forestry came by, following the attack, to check on the baby and contributed to part of the medical expenses.
He added that the baby received anti-rabies treatment on August 29 and also had a full body scan to ensure that there was no internal injury or bleeding. The father then said that the baby’s treatment since then has cost him and his family a whopping FCFA 300,000, most of which he shouldered.
“It was really tough on us because the bandages on the baby’s head and the stitches were only removed yesterday (September 8). She was always in pain and crying all the time and that made it difficult for the rest of us to sleep also and we have to go to work. My wife and I have not even been as productive at work as a result of not sleeping well due to the baby’s condition” Mr. Bomnyuy told our reporter. He also stated that the baby had to sleep on her stomach following the attack, as the wounds on her back and buttocks were too painful for her to lie on her back.
A statement issued by the Ministry of Wildlife and Forestry said that “In order to prevent incidents of this nature, he (the minister) has instructed the urgent implementation of measures to reinforce the strength of animal cages in all three zoos in our country—Yaoundé, Garoua, and Limbe”. However, our CNA reporter who went to the home of the Bomnyuys which shares a fence with the zoo, saw that no safety measures had been implemented nearly two weeks after the attack on baby Ivana. The fence was low enough to see houses inside the zoo compound and metal bars where electric wiring ought to be, were still left without any electrical wiring.
The attack on the Bomnyuys’ baby is indicative of the bureaucracies in Cameroon where it always takes tragedy or death, for state machinery to work.
Mr. Bomnyuy Ambrose said that the incident had left him and his family traumatized. “All of us in this house are seriously traumatized by this whole thing and we think the ministry should see to it that we all get appropriate counselling. These children have been through a lot as a result of this”.
He said his only desire is for his baby to get well and that he would move to another location that is safer if he had the funds to do so.
In June 2024, another child had his arm bitten off by a hyena at the same zoo. CNA reported on the tragedy at the time. It turns out that that the child who lost his arm to the hyena’s bite is also a relative of the Bomnyuys. These attacks by animals that are supposed to be safely secured in a zoo, expose a pattern of negligence, incompetence or outright corruption which endangers the lives of people coming to a zoo that is not sufficiently secured to prevent such incidents from repeating themselves. The fact that these attacks by animals from the same zoo have occurred twice in the space of just one year, leaves residents wondering who will be next.
