I always understood Michael Jackson having a pet chimp (poor little Bubbles) and even kind of get the pet snake thing. But after looking at these photos; with a hyena's big, sharp teeth scarily close to their owner's face, I'm not sure about the idea of untrained people having wild animals as pets. Except if it's Paris Hilton.
Pieter Hugo hung out with a group of men, a little girl, three hyenas, four monkeys and a few rock pythons on a trip to Abuja, Nigeria. Apparently the group was rumoured to be all kinds of shady people; bank robbers, drug dealers, debt collectors. Hugo was intrigued and decided to spend over a week travelling with them. They ended up not being any of those dodgy things, and actually performed with the animals and sold traditional medicines. Hugo says the contrasts between the urban and the wild, the affectionate and the brutal, were overwhelming.
So cute and cuddly, or rough and dangerous? Or perhaps, as Hugo's photos portray, somewhere in between.
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