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budged, though, he would be awake and staring around in panic. His voice was back, and he sounded like any other baby bonobo as he cried until I held him. I wondered what went through his mind that wrenched him awake.
    By late afternoon he’d filled up on sleep, and we played airplane. I’d seen the adults in the enclosure play that way with their infants, lifting them into the air with their feet and holding on totheir arms as the babies whizzed around. My legs weren’t nearly as agile as a bonobo’s, but Otto didn’t know what he was missing and was blissed out, closing his eyes in giddy pleasure and wheezing noisily. He even smiled once. A smile!
    Everything still wasn’t in tip-top shape in his stomach, apparently, because he grimaced if my toes pressed too hard on his abdomen. So I thought it was better if we quit after a few minutes. We lay there together, sweating in the sun, listening to the birds make their rapid calls over the drone of the insects, to the singing coming from the farmers from the nearby village. I decided our lives needed a little excitement, so I stood up to go to the office to see what I could find for us to do. I thought I’d leave Otto in the grass for the few seconds it would take, but he immediately murped and pulled himself up me, settling around my torso.
    In my mother’s office was a cupboard full of old games. I was hoping to find a ball inside, but they’d been lost long ago. I’m a total fiend for Scrabble, so I pulled it off the shelf. Otto shifted to my back to get a better view of what I was doing as I set up the board on my mother’s worktable. I placed Otto in one chair and me in another and gave each of us a letter rack. Otto immediately picked his up, nibbled on one end, tossed it across the room, and scampered over to retrieve it.
    I poured out the letters. Otto loved the noise, smiling and making the raspy noise I was coming to recognize as laughter. So I took up the tiles and poured them out again. He loved it even more this time, jumping onto the table and clapping. I did it again, and he beamed at me and plunged his fingers into the letters, sifting through them like sand.
    Apparently Otto was a Scrabble fan, too.
    I placed a word, which he promptly demolished. Eventually he stopped wrecking my words, instead watching me with a veryserious expression as I placed them. Within half an hour we’d worked out a system. On my turn I’d get whatever score my word was worth, and on his turn he’d get twenty points if he hadn’t chewed any letters.
    Eventually my mom came in and called us to dinner. She and the workers ate on the patio outside of the administration building. The sanctuary chef was pretty amazing, so in my two months here I’d made sure not to miss a single meal. Normally bonobos weren’t allowed near the offices, since they tended to make a mess anywhere they went, but since Otto was attached to me for the time being, we got special permission. Besides, I liked to think he had good table manners.
    I knew my mom had something unusual planned, since she made sure Otto and I sat beside her, and grinned mischievously as the food came out.
    Emile, the chef, was already laughing as he brought out steaming plates. Patrice and the mamas clapped wildly. Because I had to lean back in my chair to keep Otto from pressing into the table, I couldn’t see what the joke was until the food was in front of me.
    It smelled delicious and looked weird. Mounds of meats and vegetables in rich and fragrant sauces. Something was unusual about them, but what …
    â€œNow,” my mom said, “this is actually Mama Brunelle’s idea. It wasn’t hard for us to see how much you’re missing the States, so we brought some of the States to Congo.”
    Emile was beside himself with pride as he pointed to various dishes. “We have barbecue manioc, tilapia-in-a-blanket, and goat