I escorted the Schutztruppers on the 1st of August 1904 at Okozongominja. Afterwards, we hiked up the razor-sharp rocks, with only our rucksacks pulling us down. The whiskery beard commander flogged our bruised backs up to the mountaintop. A moment later, the scorching sun snuck behind the sky-blue mountain. We were setting up our nylon huts when an unmanned gun carriage caught our attention.

 The soldiers scorned the natives for being unable to fire the wheeled gun. As we tiptoed towards the hollow cylinder, a troop of brown-faced baboons scurried towards the rusty cannon. The dog-like snout animals had transformed the gun mounted machine into their playpen. Instantaneously, a towering red-butt baboon hitchhiked on the cannon, and the naked-buttocks baboons all followed. 

The scissor-sharp teeth apes wrestled each other; some clinging to the gun wagon with their scratching nails. Thereafter, the German troopers marched towards the automated machine. The troopers merrily high-five each other over the German-made machine. In the playfulness of the long-tailed monkeys, the baboons pulled the trigger. Soon, rust-coloured bullets were sprayed at the sharpshooters.

  Later, the death-scented smog and the banging subsided. However, the bullets had ripped the skulls of two firing squads into mincemeat. The injured troopers’ fully-loaded guns were triggered during the stampede. Instantly, sparks of misfired bullets bounced against the rocks. The straying bullets struck three white-hooved horses. We couldn’t gesture a truce with the tree-dwelling fighters. Desperate to salute the heaven-journeying soldiers with a befitting funeral, we opened fire. Little did we know, our two-hours’ stalemate with the monkeys had alerted the Herero snipers at the feet of Kaondeka. That sunset, we sprayed bullets at the monkeys’ roadblock and orphaned a nursery of day-old babies. 

Equally, we set the deceased primates ablaze before a chest-pounding baboon waved a branch of white flowers. This sky-scraping Otjozondjupa Mount with its silver-backed baboons became a death-trap for the German soldiers. By the daybreak, I buried two more soldiers who had bled to death. Afterwards, I squeezed a breathing corpse trooper between bloodied yawning rocks. The grey-backed baboons’ selective morals spared me to narrate the Monkey Victory near Ozondjahe in a feet-stomping dance.   

I watched the moving-picture battle, while sheltering my face from hails of bullets behind a breastfeeding baboon. Finally, the mama baboon patted my back and wiped the blood dripping from her forehead.