The monkey lopes through the brush and up a small tree, cradling the fruit against his chest. He sits on a branch, his tail hanging down like an anchor, and faces my mother. He turns the pink tomato over, sniffs it and takes a bite, almost daring my mother to get out the slingshot. She stands three paces from the veranda, hands on hips as she weighs her options. She is a terrible shot, and the monkeys all know the radius of her anger. They gather on branches just beyond the range of her slingshot to observe and to mock, she is certain.

There is a fondness that monkeys command with their cuteness and their ease. They are deft and clever, and when they carried off our jackfruits, arms straining to encircle fruit larger than themselves, bodies swaying under the weight, my parents call out to each other — come quickly — as one or the other stands at the window and laughs. A brief truce in the war. The monkeys began it, my parents maintain.

Uganda’s food, like everything else, has been vanishing. It is a disappearing act set to the pulse of soldiers. In Kampala, the boulevards are wide and the stores are stocked with empty boxes. We are lucky for the beans and rice we eat twice a day, lucky for the accompanying wedge of avocado. No matter what pestilence might befall us, Sonja and I can rely on avocados. Six trees lined the yard, and like diligent aunts they foist buckets of sustenance upon us. My father delivers most to his students, but four a day find their way to our table. Sonja and I abhor avocados and helpfully point out that even the monkeys won’t touch them. My parents, who moved into the house delighted at the bounty of avocados, are in truth growing weary.

Uganda’s food, like everything else, has been vanishing. It is a disappearing act set to the pulse of soldiers….

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” my mother will say and then make a point of praising the avocado’s lovely hue and its vitamin value.

“Alright, avocado!” my father will said, scooting his chair closer to the table.

Sonja and I are not swayed. We grimace at our plates, hold our noses and stifle dramatic gags.

“Listen,” my mother says in exasperation. “Skip the show. That’s all we have, so you’re just going to have to eat it.”

To supplement our diet, my father cleared a plot of semi-level jungle and planted rows of peanuts, pineapples, and corn. The seeds, tilled into the lush soil of Africa’s pearl, grew like Jack’s beanstalk. The hearty leaves meant peanut butter to my father, corn on the cob to my mother. We would have peanut sauce on our matoki, cornbread with our beans, pineapple juice and fruit salads. Greedily, my father and my mother carried water down to the shoots, yanking at the weeds, which seemed to creep up each night through the jungle floor. The garden held the promise of a bumper crop.

A family of monkeys observed the flutter of activity with keen interest. Humans had been living in the house on the hill for years, passing through the jungle on cautious paths, keeping mainly to themselves. It was only the little ones who scattered through the underbrush, climbing trees and going where they pleased. The monkeys perched on branches high above earthly cares, combing fingers through each other’s fur and biting the exposed fleas.