Feral child Marina Chapman: The girl with no name
Marina Chapman, a feral child who grew up with monkeys. According to Marina, she survived three or more years in Colombian woods after being kidnapped by an evil gang at the age of five. However, there’s always a controversy over her story. Some claim it was real, while some believe Marina fantasized about the whole thing in her story.
The Strange Story Of The Feral Child Marina Chapman:
Fact or fantasy whatever it was, the story of Marina Chapman is indeed fascinating. One day, at the age of 5, Marina was wandering near her house, when she realized two adults plodding behind her. “I saw a hand cover my mouth – a black hand in a white hanky. Then I realized there were two people taking me away. There were children in the background – I could hear them crying.” ― Marina said.
The Jungle Life Of Marina:
After that, the next thing Marina can remember that the kidnappers were running their car through the deep wood of the Colombian Rainforest. And suddenly they stopped the car and dumped her into the wood. Days had been passed but she didn’t find any humans in the forest, neither anyone came to rescue her. She was hungry and started to spend wildlife there.
Eventually, Marina saw an extended family of small monkeys. She got a little bit of hope for her life. Though they were not humans but were very close to humans. It was a “something is better than nothing” like situation to Marina.
In the beginning, she tried but didn’t get attention from those monkeys. The monkeys were barely interested to make a family with her. But she gave her best efforts in learning all their characteristics – eating berries and roots, nabbing bananas dropped by the monkeys, sleeping in holes in trees and walking on all fours – and in the last, she became their family member. She spent several years with these Capuchin monkeys and she completely lost the human language which she learnt before.
According to Marina, she once got terrible food poisoning from tamarind, and seriously she was going to die. She was squirming in pain when an elderly monkey, which was now her Grandpa, led her to muddy water to drink it. She then vomited and began to recover.
Climbing trees, carrying armfuls of bananas, sitting on the branches of trees, throwing bananas on each other ― Marina’s life was full of amusement with the capuchin monkeys, but it never filled the lack of humans in her life.
When Marina The Feral Child Returned To Human Society:
One day, She saw a group of hunters roaming around the jungle, she was terrified by the guns’ sound and machetes, but still, she didn’t want to leave the opportunity to be rescued. Because in deep she was missing the human companion in her life. She moved toward the hunters naked and on all fours, begging in grunts for them to rescue her. They did – and this is where her Odyssey gave her life story incredible turn.
They sold her into a brothel, where she was named Gloria, forced to clean and regularly beaten. She somehow escaped from there and started to live on the streets of Cúcuta with other homeless children, where she was renamed Pony Malta by her new friends. Using the skills she learned from the monkeys, Marina used to steal foods and things as she needed. After stealing, she used to climb on trees and hide behind branches so that no one could catch her.
Later, Marina found a family who agreed to take her on and renamed her as Rosalba. But it turned out they were notorious criminals, and they enslaved her. She again fled with the help of a neighbour, a woman named Maruja who had nine children of her own. Eventually, Maruja sent her to live with one of her children far away in Bogotá. Maruja gave her a plane ticket along with new dresses and shoes.
Marina says the dress was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. At the age of 14, she was adopted by Maria, Maruja’s daughter, who told her that now she was free, she should choose her own name. She called herself Luz Marina – after a Colombian beauty queen.
The Married Life Of Marina Chapman:
Her adoptive family had done well for themselves in the textile business and in 1977 sent their children to Bradford, which was one of the centres of the wool industry. Marina followed as their nanny, and soon after she met John Chapman at church. After witnessing so much inhumanity, abuse and miseries, Marina found love. After six months, in 1979, they married and began the most important journey of their life.
Marina and John spent their married life in the sleepy town of Wilsden, where they had their first daughter Joanna in 1980 and the second, Vanessa, three years later.
It took a few years for Marina to properly acquire the human language and the cultures of society. It was her will power that helped her to return from such a worst situation. She later worked as a cook at the National Media Museum before making the decision to work with children, in part to make up for missing out on much of her own childhood.
The Book On Marina’s Extraordinary Life Story:
In Allerton, where the Chapmans now live, her neighbours have no idea of her past, other than that she grew up in rural Colombia. It was her daughter Vanessa James, 28, a composer, who persuaded her mother to turn her story in a book, “The Girl With No Name.” It was first published in 2012.
However, in Bradford, she is better known for once cooking a quiche at a local fair for the Duke of Kent, who apparently declared it the best he had ever had. Indeed, she recently started her own business called Marina Latina Food.
For a woman who once had to forage in the jungle with monkeys simply to survive day-by-day, it is perhaps no surprise that food is such a passion.
