Akuchi

I’m not going to sit here and try to tell you that I was raised in the Congo Jungle by a troop of chimpanzees like Tarzan.  I’m a psychology professor at Grambling State University. Grambling State is a public university located in Grambling, Louisiana. As a historically black college, GSU has a strong history of and commitment to the education of black Americans. It is a small institution with an enrollment of 3,734 undergraduate students. The Grambling State acceptance rate is 95%.

My name is Wilbur Trumbul Asenberger and I study cognitive development in great apes, particularly the mathematical abilities of chimpanzees. I began teaching chimpanzees to count in 2007. Later I worked on teaching several chimps to read, including one named Akuchi, who lived with me until a little after his 32^nd birthday. Lets not get ahead of ourselves just yet. But I will say that, that crazy monkey changed my life in a positive way and I will forever be grateful to God for allowing our paths to cross when we did. Now where do I start? How about in the beginning?

I was a troubled youth growing up on the streets of Detroit.  My mother was addicted to crack cocaine and pathetic men. My father who is an industrial engineer left her when my mother sold the deed to our home to a crack dealer for 20 fifty dollars’ worth of rocks which equaled $1,000. I tried living with him for a time but the rules under his roof were too strict for my blood. I went back to my mother who was shacked up with some dude who stayed in and out of the penitentiary. The only good thing about Low Down -N- Dirty (Morris) is that he taught me the whole process of selling crack cocaine from the purchasing, manufacturing and the distribution. What he should have taught me is not to ever take up that dangerous trade. I seen a dude kill another dude for a rock the size of the head of a match. The poor females on crack would do just about anything for a hit from selling their baby to having sex with animals. Yes smoking crack will lead you down a path that you just might never return.

No one likes to admit but most families have at least one person in their family who is addicted to some kind of mind altering substance.

I’m not getting any pleasure in sharing the truth about what I seen what crack could do and will do if you don’t seek help immediately.

Heroin is no longer a drug used primarily by the poor in inner cities. Now it is a cheap high for young, white suburbanites. Many of them became addicted while raiding their parents' medicine cabinets in high school and selling the pills at school. Those young and old and in between Yuppies (" young urban professionals ") were some of my best customers. I’d deliver any kind of drug they desired to their homes 24-7.

During my drug selling days I also excelled in basketball. At 6ft 11 inches and some might say that I looked like and was built somewhat like an ape. I was offered over 200 scholarships at various prestigious universities. I had a 3.7 G.P.A. while attending Northville  High School and was ranked 27^th out of over 832 graduating seniors. On letter of intent day I chose Tuskegee Institution. Although it wasn’t really recognized for athletic sports, especially basketball. I chose that school of higher learning because of my American Idol George Washington Carver (aka Peanut Man) an American agricultural scientist and inventor. He promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion. He was the most prominent black scientist of the early 20th century.

I figured that if this basketball thing doesn’t fall through I could always lean on the fact that with a degree I could always harvest and cultivate my own drugs. My thinking in those days was pretty messed up for real!

The second day of practice I  had a torn anterior crugiate ligament damage that fractured my right kneecap.

It wasn’t long before an 18 year older got addicted to meperidine (Demerol). Demerol injection is given as an infusion into a vein or injected into a muscle or under the skin. I was injecting myself with that lethal drug  at least 3 times a day to deal with the pain. In two weeks I landed in a drug rehab center.

The university believing that I would never play basketball again wanted to revoke my scholarship. I was furious and transferred to Grambling State University were I achieved second team All-American status my junior year. I got drafted by the Sacramento Kings in the 3^rd round during the NBA draft. Hold up I’m getting ahead of myself once again.

Let’s go back to my college years because that’s the time that shaped and molded my young mind. During my sophomore year I changed my Major from Agriculture to Psychology. I graduated with honors in 3 years. Getting injured was probably the best thing that happened to me. I had time to study once I realized I’m better off living with the pain in my knee than shooting up like some kind of junkie.

When my professional basketball career would end I’d come back to Grambling State University and acquire a Masters Degree in Social Psychology like my new American idol Kenneth Bancroft Clark  an eminent American social psychologist, educator, and human rights activist, who was well known for his expert testimony in the consolidated school desegregation cases known as Brown v. Board of Education. The landmark case, argued by the NAACP legal team before the Supreme Court in 1954, declared school segregation a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Little did I know at that time I would be using my degrees to train chimpanzees not to get hooked on phonics. Hooked on Phonics is a commercial brand of educational materials, originally designed for reading education through phonetics. First marketed in 1987, it used systematic phonics and scaffolded stories to teach letter and sound correlations (phonics) as part of chimpanzees literacy.

Playing basketball for the Sacramento Kings of the NBA was like playing in any YMCA league. That team organization was so dysfunctional from the front office General Manager to Bobby Boucher the water boy. I was out of the NBA in 5 short years.

It wasn’t until I was told by my fiancée Matilda to read Jane Goodall’s book titled: The Ten Truths: What We Must Do To Care For Animals. Midway through her book I knew I wanted to work with chimpanzees for life.

I met Akuchi while I was visiting Africa. Wait a minute. Let me say that Akuchi met me because he was determined to get my attention by plucking big green boogers from his nose at me.

The safari park ranger Mr. Smith told me that they had, had just about enough of his wicked and devious antics and were truly thinking about euphemizing him.

It’s funny looking back as to why we met. I wasn’t planning on going to Africa but after my unexpected break up with Matilda. She had to leave that TV Show Basketball Wives of LA. Akuchi needed me and I surely needed him at that time in our lives. Some kind of miracle took place and I was able to bring Akuchi back to the states. He was 21 years old at the time. He learned how to count up to 33 on the plane ride back to Grambling, Louisiana.  I’ll end this epic story of proportion by saying over all them years he lived without me Akuchi picked up some really bad habits such as drinking beer and smoking weed and repeatedly saying the only one bad word he knew “F-U”!