Mum was raised by monkeys in the Colombian jungle… now I’m leaving Bradford to follow in her footsteps

A woman whose mother was raised in the jungle by monkeys has followed in her footsteps by leaving Bradford for the rainforests of South America.

Marina Chapman claimed she grew up in the company of white-faced capuchins in the wilds of Colombia after being kidnapped and abandoned by human traffickers at the age of four.

In adulthood she eventually reached England, where she married a civil servant and had children in West Yorkshire, although her wayward character belied her remarkable youth.

With stories of human traffickers, poachers and her mother almost forced into prostitution before arriving in Britain, you could forgive her children for never wanting to set foot in the jungle.

But for Vanessa Forero, her eldest daughter, the stories of Marina's time in the wild were too tempting to ignore – and she has now settled in the same rainforests.

Vanessa, pictured here with Ben Fogle, has followed in her mother's footsteps after Marina claimed she was raised by monkeys

Vanessa, pictured here with her dog Sunset at their lodge in Minca, said she has always been obsessed with nature

At a remote lodge in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, she tells Ben Fogle that she feels like she is where she belongs – adding: 'I have always decorated my room at home with images of nature and mountains.'

In his Channel 5 show Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild, which airs tonight, Vanessa reveals her mother was unhappy because her 40-year-old daughter left Britain for the jungle. Mirror reports.

But the decision, which came after the end of her own 15-year marriage, was written in the stars, she said.

Vanessa said, “Mommy doesn't like me being here – and so far away from her. But at the same time she understands why I'm here.

'This is the first time I feel like I'm at home and I belong. And the monkeys come along. They howl a lot in the trees. They are very loud. I also have a big cat somewhere.

“Joanna [her sister] came out more like daddy. She works as a civil servant, is married with three children and lives in Leeds. I looked like Mom: born with jungle feet and twigs in my hair.'

In her 2013 memoir The Girl With No Name, Marina claimed she spent five years of her childhood being raised by capuchin monkeys in a rainforest.

The grandmother claimed that the monkeys in Colombia helped her survive after she was abandoned in the rainforest by kidnappers who botched her kidnapping.

Vanessa, pictured with Sunset, said she was 'born with jungle feet and twigs in my hair'

Marina Chapman claimed she spent five years of her childhood with capuchin monkeys (pictured in the Colombian jungle) in a rainforest

Marina claimed to have copied the monkeys' eating habits and high-pitched cries – and, like John Ssebunya – had even learned to climb into the jungle canopy.

She said she was four years old when kidnappers abducted her from the garden of her family home and left her for dead in a rainforest.

Two days after she was abandoned, Marina, who moved to Britain as an adult, said a group of monkeys discovered her alone, 'curled up on the floor in despair'.

They soon began caring for her, she wrote. Some fought off hostile predators and let out “screams… so intense and horrifying that I hid under a bush.” Others taught her to survive by gathering bananas, figs, nuts and other wild foods.

She says that over time she has developed “dry, leathery” skin and powerful “wiry” arms and legs, learned how to sleep in a “hollowed out piece of tree trunk” and discovered the ability to sleep in their rudimentary language to communicate.

“For my own amusement I imitated the sounds the monkeys made,” Mrs. Chapman recalled. 'But I soon realized that sometimes a monkey – or several monkeys – responded.

“So I practiced the sounds they made… If there was an immediate danger, their call would be even louder: a sharp, high-pitched scream, usually accompanied by a slap of the hands on the ground.”

“I couldn't have been more excited,” she remembers. 'So this is where they preferred to be. I had completely become part of their world.'

In a remarkable passage in the book, Marina, who does not know her exact age but believes she is now in her seventies, claims that one of the older monkeys saved her life after eating poisonous berries.

The animal, which she nicknamed “Grandpa,” led her to a muddy stream and submerged her head to show her to drink the brackish water.

“I started coughing and then vomiting — huge heaving gout attacks of acidic fluid that burned my throat,” she recalls. Although highly unpleasant, the purge “worked,” she believes, as it forced the poisoned berries out of her stomach.

After what she estimated was five years, she was rescued from the jungle by a group of hunters who took her to Cucuta, a major city in northeastern Colombia near the Venezuelan border.

There, at the age of nine, she started calling herself Luz Marina. After narrowly escaping being sold into prostitution, she spent her teenage years with a group of homeless street children in an organized petty crime gang.

Chapman claimed the monkeys in Colombia helped her survive after she was abandoned in the rainforest by kidnappers who botched her kidnapping

Two days after she was abandoned, Marina (pictured opening a coconut with her teeth), who moved to Britain as an adult, says a group of monkeys discovered her alone, “curled on the ground in despair.”

Later she found work as a housekeeper. Her original employer abused her. But she was then taken in by the working-class family of a local woman named Maruja Eusse, who found work with some cousins ​​in Bogota.

The family, who worked in textiles, later tried to emigrate to Britain. In 1978 they spent six months in Bradford, where she met and fell in love with John Chapman, the organist at an evangelical church where she worshipped.

They married shortly afterwards when Marina was in her late twenties, had two daughters and spent the next thirty years living in a three-bedroom semi in Allerton, a suburb of Bradford.

Some skeptics have branded Marina a fantasist and cast doubt on her story, but Vanessa is a true believer, insisting that tests have shown that her mother has “strange jungle diseases lurking in her blood that she couldn't possibly have if her story was that was'. t true'.

Now Vanessa gets a taste of her mother's former life by living in the small town of Minca, located high in the mountainous rainforest.

After originally planning to spend just a few months there while waiting to purchase an apartment in Britain, Vanessa found herself stranded there due to the Covid pandemic.

This was followed by the failure of the permanent purchase, which left her wondering, “Where do I want to be when I'm 60?”

The answer was a world away from Bradford, eating bananas, passionfruit and guava, and even having access to WiFi in the wilds of Colombia.

Her mother, who had previously expressed doubts about the move, has since given her blessing for it.

Marina told Ben, “I felt uncomfortable at first because I never felt like the easy… or safe country of Colombia. But I'm not worried anymore. She won't get into trouble. She's smart and I'm very proud of her.'

• Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild airs on Channel 5 on Tuesday, January 2 at 9 p.m.