African boy Eli: Looks like an ape, eats fruit, and runs 230 kilometers a week

There is a sovereign state called Rwanda in central and eastern Africa, where poverty and chaos were once the key words.

In a remote village in such a country, a boy named Eli has attracted attention. He looks like an ape, and his living habits are very close to those of monkeys, he has super physical strength, eats only fruits and especially loves bananas.

People in the village call him "Monkey Baby", in a highly mature modern society, how can there still be such a "Monkey Baby" that is incompatible with the mainstream population?

01 "Monkey Baby" is not a monkey

In the 1990s, in a small village in Rwanda, East Africa, a young couple was praying to the heavens for a successful birth.

The couple has been married for many years, but has miscarried five children for unknown reasons. So they could only pray in despair, and finally, in 1998, they successfully gave birth to a boy.

This ecstatically delighted the couple, but soon they discovered a problem: the child's head was much smaller than a normal baby's, and his forehead and lips were particularly prominent.

This hard-won child, of course, the parents will not mind his slightly ugly appearance, or joyfully brought home, named him Eli, and loved him extraordinarily.

However, as Eli grew older, his strange appearance became more and more prominent, and he did not look like his parents at all, but looked more and more like a monkey.

In fact, what worried his mother was not his appearance, but his delay in learning to speak. Until the age of five, Ai Li could only respond to the calls of others through strange tones, and it seemed that his intellectual development was very slow.

The most puzzling thing is that Ai Li has no interest in the delicacies made by his mother, and even as long as it is cooked food, he does not stick to it, only eats fruit, and especially likes to eat bananas.

Such an abnormality finally made the couple alert, took Ai Li to the hospital for a scientific examination, and the final test results showed that Ai Li had "microcephaly", which is a rare genetic mutation disease.

Therefore, as soon as Ai Li was born, his head appeared to be smaller than other children. What is even more heartbreaking for parents is that this disease will not only make the head smaller, but also seriously affect the development of the brain, and the child will not only show low intelligence, but also grow up to easily cause some life-threatening complications.

According to the current level of medical care, the disease cannot be cured at all, and can only be checked out in advance at the time of the obstetric examination, and then choose to abandon the child or operate on it within six months after the child is born.

But in such a poor and chaotic place, where are the conditions for obstetric examinations? Ai Li's parents were also unaware of their child's abnormalities and missed the opportunity for postnatal surgery.

This news is tantamount to a "thunderbolt on a sunny day" for Ai Li's mother, a child who has not died easily but suffers from such an illness and misses the opportunity for treatment because of her ignorance, and she repents over and over again in her heart.

Friends and family suggest that you simply abandon this child. Everyone's life is not rich, how to raise such a "monster" again!

From the perspective of interests, abandoning a child with a disease seems to be the best choice, but from the perspective of a mother, how can you be willing to abandon your child?

But Eli's father chose to leave, when Eli was only 3 years old.

The greatness of maternal love has never been to weigh the pros and cons, and the courage to "know what cannot be done" is the hymn to the highest human emotion. Wu Junsheng usually said that "father's love is like a mountain, and mother's love is like water", in fact, his mother is also a mountain, a tough and upright mountain.

So she made a difficult decision to raise him and not give up on her son.

02 Thousand fingers

Because of the delay in learning and the inability to speak, the school also refused to allow Ai Li to enter the school to study. Ai Li, who had reached school age, had to wander around the village, and naturally became the object of crowd exclusion.

The adults in the village may not directly do anything to Eli, but such a strange-looking, mentally inferior child will also become the target of ridicule and bullying among his peers.

The children simply called him "Monkey", and the laughter and sarcasm that followed was needless to say. They would also surround Eli, force him to the side of the tree, and hold Eli's hands and feet to make him climb the tree, because they believed that Eli should "do what he should do".

The children also invented a game of "catching monkeys", in fact, everyone chased after Ai Li, grabbed him and beat him up in groups, which was called "protecting the homeland".

Obviously, it is a violent act, but because of Eli's ugly appearance, he found a high-sounding reason, and the children even think that bullying Eli is a righteous thing.

In the beginning of man, nature was inherently evil. The evil of human nature creates a bad environment, and the evil environment creates evil. In modern civilized society, all kinds of "evil" desires, such as greed, lust, etc., are derived from the "egoistic" nature of primitive society.

The reason why it does not appear directly in modern society is because of the constraints of rules and morality. But in the midst of a group of children whose knowledge of the world is almost zero, the essence of "evil" is nakedly revealed.

Although Eli can't speak, he can understand what others are saying, and the more he justifies the yelling in the face of insults, the more he confirms his identity as a "monkey", and although he is mentally inferior, he also feels a deep malice from the world.

He couldn't understand why, and he couldn't find a solution, so whenever he saw the children, he began to instinctively run away.

When he encountered the children's bullying, he ran to the mountains with all his brains, perhaps always feeling that someone was chasing him, he kept running, kept running, and even ran 230 kilometers a week!

Sometimes surrounded by children, he had to struggle to climb the tree in a hurry, because his mother told him that he could not hurt others, and he could only choose to avoid.

I don't know if it's because of talent, or because practice makes perfect. After a long time, no children in the village could catch up with him. As long as he got to the forest, even if a few children worked together to block him, he could not succeed, and Ai Li found a sense of security in the dense forest.

I don't know if he left willfully in the mountains and forests, or if he left deliberately so as not to cause trouble to his mother, as long as her mother did not pay attention, he sneaked out of the house and began to run wildly.

Whatever the reason, her mother was reluctant to give up on Ai Li. She begged the villagers to help her find her son, although everyone did not like this "monkey child", but they would also help to pay attention.

Every time the mother cried and pulled Eli back from the forest, it always attracted the curiosity of the children, and everyone wanted to know how he survived in the forest.

Repeatedly bringing him back, he would still run away repeatedly, and sometimes accidentally trample on the villagers' crops, which made everyone complain.

The mother had no money to compensate others, so she had to apologize sincerely over and over again. Then, with a crossed heart, he simply found a rope to tie Ai Li at one end and tied it to his own hands, so that as long as Ai Li ran away quickly, his mother would be dragged and injured, and Ai Li never ran away again.

But at the same time, his amazing athletic ability also attracted the attention of the adults in the village. Everyone felt that it was impossible for humans to have this ability, and coupled with Ai Li's various performances, rumors about Ai Li's mother falling in love with the ape were rampant for a while.

In order to dispel the rumors, in front of everyone, the mother instructed Ai Li to take out the jar in the house, and although Ai Li reacted slowly, he still did what his mother said after shaking his head.

The mother was very pleased, she thought that she would prove to everyone that her child was human, but she was still questioned.

You say your child is human, so why doesn't he speak?

You say your child is not an ape, so why does he only eat fruit?

You say your child is sick, so why can he run 230 kilometers a week?

"Monkey Baby" is not a "monkey", it is really just a poor child who is sick, and the mother repeats this fact to the people in the village over and over again, but everyone only believes what they are willing to believe, and no one really cares about the truth.

In fact, believe or not, it is all between people's thoughts. Once the suspicion arises, the crime is convicted, because under the eyes of the doubt, all your explanations are disguised.

03 Willow dark flowers bright

In the midst of exclusion and doubt, the mother still raised Ai Li, and today we have no way of knowing how much this great mother has suffered, but every step on this road must not be easy.

So when Ai Li was twenty years old, her mother's body had begun to be somewhat unsupportable, and the already poor family was even more stretched, and at this time, her biggest worry was what her son would do after she fell.

Because even though Ai Li was twenty years old, he still couldn't learn to speak, and he couldn't integrate into normal people's lives. So the mother went to the school for the disabled, hoping that it would teach her son how to integrate into society, and if not, there would be less discrimination in Aili.

However, when the school for the disabled looked at Ai Li's situation, it still politely refused, because he could not even speak, and he was so able to run, the school could not manage it.

Looking at the dilapidated house so poor that there was only a straw mat left, and thinking about her deteriorating body, this time, her mother cried desperately, and Ai Li even seemed to understand to help her wipe the tears from the corners of her eyes, but her mother cried even more sadly.

Women are weak, but mothers are strong.

After the tears dried up, I still had to continue my difficult life. The situation in the Eli family is still difficult, but their country has changed dramatically.

By learning from China's experience, Rwanda at this time has become a modern and promising country. In just two decades, their GDP has doubled 13 times, and this small country has impressed the world.

When the country becomes stronger, the people's lives become better, and the various social safeguard measures are also steadily advancing. Eli's mother began to turn to the domestic government and the relevant charity departments, and at her insistence, more and more people learned about Eli's situation.

In 2020, a program team expressed great interest in this matter and decided to come to the village where Ai Li's mother and son were located to shoot and report.

When the program team first met Ai Li, it happened to see the children in the village bullying this "monkey child" and was trying to record it, when Ai Li suddenly avoided the children and ran home.

It turned out that Ai Li, who had been living in the village, saw so many strangers holding devices to him, and he couldn't help but feel scared, and quickly hid and was reluctant to appear on camera.

Finally, with the company and persuasion of his mother, he twisted and appeared. After a period of time of day and night companionship of the program team, he let down his guard and appeared in front of the camera.

The program team recorded his unusual living habits and extraordinary athletic talents in his daily life, and with his ape-like face, it quickly attracted attention.

At first, he watched him with a curious mentality, but after learning the story of Eli, everyone gave generously, hoping to help the poor mother and son.

Everyone donated money and materials to them, but Ai Li's mother and son did not receive anything. It was not until a month later, when the film crew returned to visit Ai Li's mother and son, that they found that the money and materials donated by the well-wishers had been shamelessly occupied by neighbors and refused to return.

In desperation, the film crew had to pay for it out of their own pockets, sending daily necessities such as rice, flour, grain and oil to the mother and son, as well as soda drinks and other items donated by fans.

This time, it was also the first time in more than twenty years that Ai Li had seen so many "things" from the outside world, and he was first interested in brightly colored sodas.

He carefully opened the bottle cap and carefully tasted the taste of the soda. Like many ordinary normal children, he fell in love with the taste as soon as he tasted it.

This time, the film crew also brought a heart-shaped cake to celebrate Eli's 23rd birthday. When Eli and her mother cut the cake together, the mother was already crying, and her son was finally accepted by the world!

This was the first time Eli had seen the cake, and likewise, it was the first time a mother had celebrated her son's birthday. Looking at his mother's excited look, he also did not understand that his mother was happy for him.

Although he didn't know what cake was, he also felt the tenderness of the world for the first time, the cake was sweet, and so was his heart.

There was a birthday cake and a birthday present. The film crew also brought Ai Li new clothes and brand new sneakers. You know, in the previous twenty years, he had never worn shoes. When he put on his new shoes in the eyes of everyone's encouragement, the feeling almost made Eli jump with excitement.

The mother had never seen her son so happy, looking at everything in front of her, a thousand words of gratitude suddenly fell like a fish in her throat, and she had to hug the staff tightly, because originally, she was ready for herself and her son not to be accepted.

In the distance, the villagers who had bullied Eli watched all this indignantly, and many jealous feelings could not help but arise in their hearts, and they all understood that the good days of this boy were coming.

04 Bittersweet

In the era of self-media, the grid of the world has established a lot of connections, breaking more boundaries, so that everyone can express their opinions. In the Internet age, everyone has the potential to become a channel of information or a subject for expressing opinions.

As a result, Ai Li's encounter and story were quickly disseminated, and the public expressed the world's attitude towards Ai Li with their own attention.

In just a few days, Ai Li quickly rose in the foreign self-media platform, the "monkey child" who was once bullied became a hot Internet celebrity, fans affectionately called him "monkey boy", fans broke 10 million, since then, he and his mother no longer have to worry about money.

Their family lived in a "mansion" that they once dared not think of, which was actually a simple three-bedroom and a living room, and there was a color TV at home, which was his "luxurious life".

Ai Li's popularity has made life change dramatically, but there are also questions that follow, just like the villagers of that year, is he really our kind?

Some psychologists have specifically studied his strange behavior, and experts believe that Eli is not born to like the forest, and his behavior of climbing trees and only eating fruit is an escape, just because the forest is far away from people's words, away from the harm from the villagers, and it is a place that can give him a sense of security.

As for the amazing athletic talent, it is because of the training of long-term escape, plus he is really talented, this may be the window that God opened for him, just like the male protagonist in Forrest Gump.

His "microcephaly" was not enough to cause him to lose his ability to speak, which is now due to the prejudice of the villagers, which makes him feel dangerous and produces seemingly strange behavior, which is a self-protection mechanism for humans.

And his fans also said that in fact, if you look closely at the photos, he and his parents still look alike. Moreover, his mother had miscarried five children, which means that it is likely that his father had some hidden disease, and Eli was the lucky one who survived.

It can be said that he has become like this, and there is a huge connection with the injustice suffered by the day after tomorrow, and it is people's stereotypes that kick him out of the life of modern society.

It's like throwing a normal person into a mental hospital, so that whatever you do will be treated as a mental illness, and the more you try to justify it, the more you will be considered to be very sick.

Fortunately, the bittersweet came.

Now, at the age of 24, he can dress decently on the street and enjoy the gaze of people generously, and he is no longer afraid of strangers because he feels the love of strangers. When you feel the goodwill of this world, you are naturally willing to let down your guard and embrace this world with dignity.

The program team gave him a handsome suit, and he also changed his initial twisted appearance and confidently went to the street to face those perhaps strange eyes. Soon some fans recognized this "monkey boy", he also generously took photos with others and showed a bright smile, did not care about those curious secretive photos, and even posed a handsome pose.

As Eli gets better and better, his father, who has left him and escaped for nearly twenty years, also returns, enthusiastically offering to act as his image designer. Eli can calmly deal with him in front of many strangers, but he is very indifferent to his father, who has given him blood and has been absent for many years.

Just when everyone will turn over as a "white swan" and will live a life of drunkenness and gold fans, his mother made his last wish to him - to study in a school for the disabled.

This strong and wise mother told the media that only by going to schools for the disabled can he learn to truly integrate into this society, and only by truly learning will he be truly accepted by society. She didn't want Eli to spend the rest of her life like a clown, and life skills were something more precious than that money.

With the efforts of all sectors of society, he finally entered the school for the disabled as he wished. Here he also made a true friend, a black sister who also suffered from microcephaly.

With the patient company of teachers and classmates, he also began to learn to speak, and everything was as his mother expected, and this unusual child found the most suitable place for himself.

Eli is unfortunate among thousands of children, but compared to other patients, his life experience is lucky. Those "Ai Li" who are not seen and accepted by people do not know how unimaginable the painful life will be.

The prejudice in people's hearts is like a big mountain, and no matter how hard you try, you can't move it. It permeates people's daily lives and corrodes people's minds.

Stereotypes are a kind of cognitive psychological inertia of human beings, although there are causes, the prejudices it produces are more harmful to people's cognition than good. We should also know that when the rope of "preconceptions" binds people's minds, people will "not see Tarzan" because of their temporary likes and dislikes.