Thirty-eight years ago, in East London, 15-year-old Kate-Jagoe Davies dived into a small wave, hit a sand bank and broke her neck. Paralysed from below the shoulders she has used a wheelchair ever since. In 1999 she and her husband, Professor Bryan Davies, bought a cottage in Pringle Bay, below Cape Hangklip on the False Bay coast, within the buffer zone of the Kodelberg Biosphere, Fynbos Reserve.

Like many other people they both had a wariness of the baboons in the area. Their major encounters with them involved attempts to stop the baboons from braking rain gutters and raiding their cottage for food. It always seemed that they had just turned their backs and the baboons were inside! Kate and Bryan’s only role seemed to be to defend their property from the intruders. They also became aware that the baboons were very much less frightened of women than men.

Then in 2002 Kate had an experience that completely changed their relationship with these primates. Kate says “…during the encounter, I shifted from my negative emotions to a state of enchantment and respect for my ‘uninvited guest’. The baboon was now sitting on the counter-top of our tiny kitchen, tearing open a paper bag with the remainder of our breakfast rolls. As I had backed off, he ate leisurely and peacefully, finishing each piece of food before reaching for the next. We were aware of each other, but because I didn’t threaten him, he showed no panic or destructive behaviour. Watching him I became aware of the wonder of this dignified and beautiful creature, so wild, yet who has, essentially, so much in common with our own species.” (Kate, November, 2007)

Kate had retired from UCT in 1997 due to failing health and in 2003 she was given a diagnosis of terminal kidney disease. Kate’s husband, zoologist and ecologist Professor Bryan Davies, decided he wanted to spend as much time as Kate had, with her, and resigned from the University of Cape Town and they moved full time to live in Pringle Bay.

Thus was the beginning of an extraordinary relationship that Kate and Bryan have patiently - and with complete devotion – developed with the troop over the past 5 years. They have given them names and know each individual’s markings and personalities. Due to Kate’s stillness and unthreatening nature, she has developed a particularly close relationship with Jimmy-John, an immature male baboon who holds her hand, climbs on her lap and grooms her while the juveniles climb under her skirt and tug at her shoe. Amongst this group of ‘teenagers’ who frequent their stoep is Mandy. When Mandy later had her first baby, she came and presented her newborn to Kate & Bryan; an amazing show of their acceptance as part of the troop.

For Kate whose long battle with illness is inclined to exhaust her, the troops’ caring, playfulness and curiosity are one of the thing that give her the energy to carry on. For her it is an “extraordinary privilege, a gift” but she never forgets that they are wild creatures. For both Kate and Bryan, the relationship is one of respect with no expectations. At times the troop moves into the mountains for weeks to forage for new bulbs and shoots in the burnt fynbos, but to date, they have always returned, in their own time. And as they grow older, reach maturity, and have new babies, they have, so far, always poped in to share these family development.

DIRECTOR’S PROFILE

Liza Key the director of SCRAWL, a laboratory for South African screenwriters run annually in Cape Town in association with the Sundance Institute and the Performing Arts Labs in the UK. The labs have been in existence since 1998. She was the director of the Mail and Guardian Film Festival from 1986 to 1995.

In 1999 she directed and produced A Question of Madness, a documentary on the life of Dimitri Tsafendas - the man who assassinated South African prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd. The documentary was selected for IDFA (International Film Festival of Amsterdam) and broadcast internationally including on BBC, SBS, Australia, and SABC.

In 2001 she completed her second documentary, The Man Who Knows Too Much– on the apartheid government’s former Chemical and Biological Warfare chief, Wouter Basson and in 2003 she made her first feature length doc, Karoo Kitaar Blues which was selected for the Joris Ivens Award at IDFA, has been broadcast in 8 different countries and won Best Music Documentary award at Tiburon film Festival in San Francisco.

In 2004 she made A Sentimental Journey for SABC1, a documentary on four young musicians from a squatter camp outside Johannesburg and most recently a documentary on the history of the Market Theatre called Bearing Witness: 30 Years of the Market Theatre. She is presently in post-production on the documentary, Rewind: A Cantata for Voice Tape and Testimony which investigates the preservation of memory in music using Truth and Reconciliation Commission testimonies as a vehicle for the transmission of memory. She is also developing The Cry of Winnie Mandela, a documentary based on the novel of the same name by writer Njabulo Ndebele.

In between directing documentaries she makes corporate videos and is presently completing an MA in music at Wits University...