Who is displeased by Mimi-Siku's arrival?
Michael Cromwell is a self-absorbed, successful commodities broker living in New York City. Wanting to marry his new fiancée Charlotte, he needs to obtain a final divorce from his first wife Patricia who left him some years earlier. Patricia now lives with a semi-Westernised tribe in Canaima National Park, Venezuela. Michael travels there to get her signature on divorce papers, but upon arriving, discovers that he has a 13-year-old son named Mimi-Siku.
Michael attempts to bond with Mimi-Siku in his brief stay with the tribe and promises to take him to New York "when he is a man." Michael is also given a new name, Baboon, as is a custom in the tribe. That night, Mimi-Siku undergoes the traditional rite of passage of his tribe, who then considers him to be a man. The tribal elder gives Mimi a special task: to become a tribal leader one day, Mimi must bring fire from the Statue of Liberty and he looks forward to traveling with his father. Against his own protests, Michael brings Mimi-Siku to New York with him. Michael works as a trader at the World Trade Center in building 7.
Michael's fiancée, Charlotte, is less than pleased about the unexpected visitor in a loin cloth outfit, who tries to urinate in front of her at a fake tree (as is usual in his tribe), suggests eating her cat, and Maitika, his enormous pet tarantula escapes from his box and into her apartment. Mimi-Siku wears traditional dress during much of his stay in New York. As Michael attempts to adapt Mimi-Siku to city life, cross-cultural misunderstandings occur when Mimi-Siku reverts to customs considered acceptable by his tribe. On climbing the Statue of Liberty to reach the flame, Mimi-Siku is disappointed when he sees that the fire is not real.
Charlotte