It is important in this world to know to whom one is attractive. There was once a particularly touching advertisement for mosquito repellent that began, "One person in two thousand is naturally unattractive to mosquitoes." Alas, sitting on the terrace of the small hotel in Garoua, it was painfully clear that I did not fall into that category. The mosquitoes of that city are determined and vicious, taking time off from relentless procreation only to savage hapless humans. When the doughty female explorer Olive McLeod visited the city just after the turn of the century and had dinner with the German governor, liveried servants placed a domesticated toad at the side of each of the guests to lessen the ravages of the bloodsucking insects.

But mosquitoes do not exhaust my charm. I have a yet stronger effect on monkeys. In England, this attraction remains latent. In Africa, it comes to the fore.

In Dowayoland, I had encountered baboons, possibly the least lovely of simians. Troops of them lived a vocal and arid existence in the rocks beside the path that led to the rain-chief's domain. As I crawled along that sickeningly precipitous track, they would scream and gibber at me and occasionally throw rocks. I suspect now, however, that what I took for rage and aggression was merely a manifestation of frustrated love.

As I sat and contemplated the beauties of nature, I was approached by a baboon. It sat and regarded me with obvious interest from the river bank, exploring its body for fleas in a most immodest fashion. Soon a certain sympathy had developed between us and it daintily picked its way on all fours to where I sat and stared fixedly into my face as if hoping to find I was a long-lost relative. Suddenly it yawned and apparently pointed to something over my head. So great was the sympathy between us that it never occurred to me that this was not a gesture intended for me and I turned round to see what was being pointed at. The baboon, profiting from my distraction, seìzed my left nipple through my open shirt and began sucking on it vigorously. It did not take this sagacious beast long to realize that this was a fruitless endeavour and we withdrew in mutual embarrassment, the baboon going so far as to spit most offensively. It is possible that this incident was in part responsible for the idea of the missing mastectomy and attendant events. These I shall relate later.

My next encounter with a baboon was when seated on a rock in the middle of a river. In the environs of Ngaoundere was a pleasant spot where the river dropped a clear fifty or sixty feet in a beautiful waterfall. The air was always coot and full of rainbows and dragonflies. A conveniently situated rock made a fine place to sit and bask.

It turned out subsequently that the local zoo had two baby monkeys. I do not know what kind they were -- apes, chimpanzees, gorillas, they are all my children. The female of the pair had died. The male had been plunged into deepest mourning. Being an intelligent creature, it had noted that the padlock of its cage was defective. The keeper, in accordance with the regulations that governed his endeavours, had applied in triplicate to the capital for a new padlock. No answer had been received. Any manner of fastening the cage that resisted the monkey's overnight attempts to open it proved too onerous and inconvenient for the keeper. Any less final form of closure enabled the monkey to undo the fastening and wander at will during the hours of darkness. But it always returned to its cage by morning, the only home it had ever known. A standing arrangement had evolved to the mutual satisfaction of both parties.

As I sat on the terrace, quietly swatting mosquitoes, I saw an old friend, Bob, a black American anthropologist. We shared a beer and caught up with each other's news. But out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a movement, at once strange and familiar. It was a monkey swinging through the trees. I knew it was coming for me.

In return for being available for public inspection during the day, the monkey was now permitted to engage in nocturnal excursions that had greatly improved its morale. Each evening, it would patiently undo the lock on its door, swing itself into the trees and embark upon a search for suitable company. It has to be confessed that it had sometimes abused this privilege through high spirits but had never failed to report for work in the morning. One of its favourite haunts was the swimming pool of the luxury hotel next door. It delighted in insinuating itself into the changing-huts, plundering the clothes there and retiring to the safety of the trees.

There it would explore the wallets and purses of foreign tourists, raining money, travel documents and doubtless private secrets on the heads of those below, immune to their cries and cajoleries. This had now become an important source of income for the hotel workers who therefore encouraged its visits.

After a moment spent contemplating me from a tree, it dropped to the ground, trotted over to our table and stared at me with the utmost gravity. Over the wall dividing the two establishments drifted howls of rage. Clearly it had just carried out a particularly vehement visitation.

Spotting it, a waiter immediately rushed over to hit it on the head with a rock. This represents a fairly standard Cameroonian response to wildlife. Knowingly, it slid both arms around my neck and slid into my lap, baring green, horribly fetid teeth at its tormentor. Only with the utmost difficulty did I persuade the waiter that it was more reasonable not to hit the monkey -- now firmly clamped to me like a limpet mine -- so that it would surely savage me nastily, but rather to seek to lure it away with a dish of peanuts. Scowling and muttering, the waiter finally complied, making it abundantly clear that a charge would be made for the nuts. The monkey, however, was not to be parted from me. It began to snore, breathing rank halitosis in my face, disdaining proffered treats. Well-meaning attempts to disentangle its arms produced enraged barks and baring of surely rabid fangs. Stroking its head brought sighs and grunts of such deep sadness that it would have taken a stonier heart than my own to seek to discard the beast.

Life is full of those actions that seem perfectly reasonable at the time. The logic of a situation is a purely local thing. Many actions, when looked back upon, seem bizarre and inexplicable. "Why don't we just take him along?" suggested Bob. At that particular moment, nothing seemed more natural than that I should take the snoring simian along to the cinema with me. A few tentatively exploratory movements revealed that motion was permitted as long as one hand was kept free to caress the beast. Otherwise, there was more baring of teeth and snarling. It required only slightly more dexterity than that of the average contortionist to insinuate myself into a jacket not designed for a man wearing a monkey and to button it up over the creature. In the damp heat of the evening I felt very warm indeed. Good fortune had provided me with a truck borrowed from my long-suffering friends at the mission. We set off for the cinema, an oddly assorted trio.

The problem was that Bob and I had set our hearts on a visit to the cinema. Cinemas do not loom large in the accounts of anthropologists yet they are curiously important when in the field. Normally totally inaccessible, they become a focus for feelings of deprivation and nostalgia. Whenever in a town, they must be visited. It does not matter that one knows in advance that the film will be terrible, the soundtrack incomprehensible, the experience full of heat and dust and sweat. It must be done nevertheless. And in town there was a new wonder. An entirely new picture palace had just been opened. It even had seats and a roof. Air-conditioning was promised at any moment. This very evening was one when the film, though doubtless far from new, was not a kung-fu spectacular or a Muslim epic concerned with the monumental slaying of unbelievers.

We queued at the ticket office, various members of the public eyeing my snoring paunch with suspicion. To my great distress, the monkey was detected by the fiery ticket-seller who flared her nostrils at me and called the French manager. I fully expected this to be the end of the matter. The manager would avail himself of the opportunity to vent Gallic rage and point out with ruthless logic all the perfectly valid reasons why simians were not admitted. We should then be shown the door.

Surprisingly, the central issue seemed not to be the admissibility of simians but rather what sort of ticket they required. Bob entered into the spirit of the thing and declared the monkey to be clearly a "minor" and therefore entitled to a reduction. It would not even be occupying a seat. The manager was unwilling to concede the point, fearing perhaps the setting of a precedent. Did he really foresee a stream of people with lions and anteaters, refusing payment on this slim pretext? In the end it was agreed that the monkey would be charged at half the rate of the cheapest seat and that we would sit in the least elegant part of the house. I paid up. The monkey slipped back under the coat and began to snore again.

It would be nice to be able to report that the film on offer was King Kong, but it was, I fear, a rather indifferent American comedy about divorce that seemed to fall rather flat among polygamous Muslims.

The first part of the programme was not popular. It consisted of a luridly verbose travelogue about holiday cruises in the West Indies. As usual, there were few barriers between members of the audience and conventions of strict silence were certainly not observed. The gentleman beside me, having removed his boots to ease large splayed feet and unbuttoned his immaculate military uniform to the navel, joked lengthily and repeatedly about my ancestors having given his ancestors free passage on such ships during the slave trade. Bob, a self-aware black American, took such remarks rather ill and a definite atmosphere of tension developed between himself and the military man.

It was at this point that the much-vaunted air-conditioning seemed to leap into action. The temperature dropped steadily until there was a definite chill in the air. It seemed to become more and more hyperactive. Instead of merely mitigating the oppressive heat, it declared war on it. Jets of icy air belched into the room. A sort of miasmic fog seemed to form beneath the screen as the bland French voice prattled on about "getting away from the cold this winter" on a Caribbean cruise.

The military gentleman began buttoning his uniform and struggling back into his boots. Worse yet, the sudden chill penetrated to my simian friend and he poked forth his head to the considerable distress of the lady behind. It was unfortunate that she owned a large, red, shiny handbag. The monkey wanted that handbag desperately and was enraged at the lady's dogged refusal to yield it up. In an attempt to distract the monkey, I bought it a large, red, shiny mango from a passing vendor. Mangoes, however, were strange and unnatural to it. Whatever its normal fare, mangoes were clearly no part of it.

The monkey limited itself to biting the mango into strips and spitting it at members of the audience. Its range was surprisingly great. Bored by the film, they took this in good part, promptly purchased mangoes and began spitting them back at the monkey and -- inevitably -- at me. The manager, alerted by minions fearful for the decor, hurried up and began threatening eviction. The audience settled back to enjoy a good row as the news came on.

The big story seemed to be a meeting between the President and some unidentifiable Chinese minister dispensing aid. There was the inevitable scene of the President executing a waxy smile into the camera, eyes awkwardly fixed on the lens as he offered the visitor one of the hideous plastic armchairs that always featured in such scenes. "He should use the aid to buy some new furniture," opined the military man in a loud voice. The audience roared, the news erupted into the national anthem, half the spectators rose, the other half made noises. It was all too much for the monkey. Sated with society, he began to gibber and scream. The audience liked that too. The background of the national anthem made our behaviour dangerously close to lèse-majesté. It was the moment to leave, the main film unseen. In a St Peter-like act of perfidy, Bob remained behind.

We drove back in silence. As I climbed out in front of the hotel, the monkey slipped fluidly to the ground and looked at me a final time as if wondering whether an embrace was too bold on a first date. Deciding against further displays of affection, he shambled off across the yard and swung back into the trees, heading for the zoo.

After all the excitement, I felt quite tired and did not in the least mind missing the main feature at the cinema. However, I did not sleep very well. I had fleas -- monkey fleas.