Gorillas in the Mist

by Farley Mowat

  One issue that threatened to wreck Dian’s mountain paradise was her relations with her camp workers. Her problems with the camp cook were the first to cause her serious concern.

  My cookboy, Phocas, came back after a nine-day absence, and although I was all set to fire him, I couldn’t find a decent substitute. He does his work perfectly, but he’s so rude and insolent I hate having him here. At any rate, I told him he was on trial this month and I’ve tripled his workload and treat him like dirt. This is what I should have been doing all along, for he’s finally toeing the mark and actually seems to respect me for the first time. The same holds true with the park guards. You can’t be nice to them. If you give them a cigarette one day, they want the pack the next. So I go around giving orders and grumbling, but it makes me lonely-I’ve no one to talk to now that I’ve just about mastered Swahili.

  Ultimately things got so bad that she felt compelled to appeal to Leakey for help:

  “Dr. Leakey, I don’t like writing the following any more than you’re going to enjoy reading it, but the fact remains that I must have some ‘help’ up here as soon as possible, if only for a few weeks.

  “Now that the novelty of my being here has worn off, the guards have become increasingly insubordinate, and the growing problems with discipline have me defeated. The lying, stealing, complaining, and begging, manifest all along, are just one part of it and don’t really affect my work. However, shooting at animals grazing on the meadow or disobeying my orders when in contact with a group of gorillas has definitely had an effect on my observations this month, and I don’t wish it repeated….

  “Please know I dislike asking for help but, under the present circumstances, consider it mandatory.”

  In a letter to the Prices, she spoke more bluntly:

  “My current mood is somewhat black, and I’ve no business writing in this frame of mind. These Africans may yet be my undoing. Much as I dislike having to do it, I’ve written Dr. Leakey for help in the form of a cussing, wog-whacking ‘mzunga’—a white person—to enforce some discipline. Since I’ve been here alone for so long, they are beginning to bully me because, to their way of thinking, I’m a lone entity…. Sanweke has been horrible this month, threatening to shoot at game and not obeying my orders while we are in contact with the gorillas. On the 15th I had to release my stored-up wrath and sent him packing down the mountain. On the next night I awoke to the sound of gunfire because the cookboy, who is terrified of being up here alone, was shooting at a herd of elephants who’d come onto the meadow to graze. I was furious, and naturally I didn’t see a sign of gorilla for days after. Sanweke has since returned with another guard and all are as obedient and docile as the first week I was here, but I’ve told them their individual actions have been reported to the big chiefs of the study and of the park, and that they are in for it. Leakey had better not let me down or I stand to lose a lot of face.”

  Dian corresponded as much for personal release as to share her experiences with the people she had left behind. When she went on her monthly shopping trips and collected her mail at the Traveler’s Rest, there was usually a letter from the Prices or Mary White or occasionally from Alexie. These always had a depressing effect on her, with their not-so-veiled suggestions that perhaps she was learning a hard lesson and would soon return to civilization somewhat wiser.

  There were times of loneliness and stress when she herself was tormented by doubts and fear, isolated as she was in this remote corner of the central African highlands. Her problems with insubordination and bullying were not imaginary. Such difficulties had also been experienced by Joan and Alan Root, Walter Baumgartel, and others who had predicted failure for Dian Fossey’s gorilla study.

  *From Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey.

  — 5 —

  On July 9, 1967, Dian returned from her day in the forest with the gorillas to meet, with shock, a new and larger problem. Lounging about the camp was a ragtag group of soldiers and porters. They were under orders from the Parc des Virungas’ director, Anicet Mburanumwe, to escort her off the mountain.

  Rumangabo, the 7 July 1967

  Dear Miss Dian Fossey,

  According to the bad situation of our Congo which started the other day before.

  Yesterday I would like to advise you to get out of the bush as soon as possible, you may come and stay here or at Goma for the time being up to new order, other wise we don’t like you to ruin your life when you are meet at our Parcks.

  I hope that you will understand my advise friendly.

  Yours affectionately.

  MBURANUMWE, Anicet

  The letter had been written just two days after European mercenaries serving the rebel leader Moise Tshombe took Kisangani and Bukavu and thus put the entire eastern region of the Congo under a state of siege. Antiwhite sentiment amongst government troops and the populace in general was rampant. The frontier between the Congo and Uganda had been sealed off. Commercial air traffic was suspended, as were mail and telephone services. Atrocities were being committed by soldiers on both sides. Considering these circumstances, director Mburanumwe’s advice was reasonable, but Dian saw it as an outrageous infringement on her personal freedom.

  Since her work kept her isolated, she knew little about the upheavals in the region. Beyond the desire for stability she had no interest in central African politics and so did not comprehend how serious the Congolese crisis had become by the summer of 1967. Still, the director’s “advice” was backed by force, and she had no choice in the matter but to descend from her aerie.

  On July 12 she wrote the Prices:

  “Three days ago I became a very ungrateful and unhappy refugee. I have yet to thank the park officials for snatching me from the certain jaws of rape, malice, and murder—that’s what they keep telling me they snatched me from—and I can’t get used to the idea that I must stay in the Congo and am not allowed to leave until the borders are opened. I don’t understand what the heck is going on. I can figure out that it is matata mkubwa—big trouble—because of Tshombe and the mercenaries, but why it means I must leave the work, peace, and joy of my mountain meadow, I’ve yet to figure out.”

  Packing up her research station on such short notice was no easy matter.

  I have to admit I spent a great deal of time in tears, especially when the mats were stripped from the walls of the hut, my tent was taken down, and all the work I’d done for the past six months was undone. I never fully realized what that place meant to me until I had to give it up, not knowing if I would be able to return or not.

  By the time I reached the village below I thought I was steeled against further emotional outbreaks, but many of the women and children had gathered to say kwa heri-good-bye-and I started crying all over again, causing great wailing and mourning. I’m sure all this sounds like something out of a Grade C movie-I know I felt kind of hammy walking stalwartly in front of my line of sweating porters through the village huts with the mountain rising majestically behind me, and the tears brimming in my eyes while I said to those who had gathered to pay their respects, “I shall return.” Come to think of it, I don’t even think a Grade C movie would accept that line!

  The forty-five-minute drive from the village to the park headquarters was really a nightmare, with troops everywhere and roadblocks and barricades at every turn. At each place some ass in a military uniform, full of beer and carrying a machine gun, would interrogate the driver and really glare at me. It was all so stupid and unnecessary.

  I’m now penned up in the huge castle built by the Belgian colonial administrators at park headquarters and am receiving visiting “dignitaries.” I think everyone in the area has been here at least twice, dragging all their relatives and children behind. I made a mistake by inviting the first batch into the two-acre living room and serving tea. They stayed four hours, during which not more than two intelligible sentences were exchanged! I also made a mistake by playing football with the children-they were using the inflated bladder of a sacrificial
cow-and now they are here constantly.

  I chose a small room in the front of the castle that commands a wonderfully spectacular view of the Virungas. However, it puts me on permanent exhibition, and the porch is usually lined with spectators! I can also see one of the military roadblocks down in the valley from my window, and the day it is gone is the day I’m going to get to the Traveler’s Rest to find out what’s going on and to post and pick up mail.

  In her book, Gorillas in the Mist, Dian tells that she spent an extremely unpleasant two weeks at park headquarters in Rumangabo and for the first week was unable to discover why she was being forbidden to leave for Kisoro in Uganda. From bits and pieces of conversation I learned that the park headquarters was being secured for the visit of a general who would soon be arriving at Rumangabo from the besieged town of Bukavu. It was only after a “visit” to the army camp that I realized, on reading a military cable, that I was earmarked for the general. With chances for my release lessening each hour I remained in captivity, I decided to escape.

  Dian’s version of the adventure she was living through was colored by the writer in her. When she was taken to military headquarters in Goma, it was at her own request because she wanted to resolve a bureaucratic muddle that had arisen over the registration for Lily, her Land Rover. Her contact with the dreaded military consisted of an afternoon spent filling out motor vehicle registration forms. As for “the general”—it seems probable that his ominous and lecherous shadow was created to add zest to the story.

  What actually happened is detailed in two sworn affidavits written by Dian soon after the events described had taken place. One was prepared for the American embassy in Rwanda, the other for Louis Leakey. They are somewhat less thrilling than her published version, though harrowing enough in their own right.

  The tale begins on June 1. While on one of her regular shopping trips to Kisoro, Congolese customs officials at the frontier noted that Dian’s permit to keep Lily in the Congo was due to expire in a week. They reminded her that if she neglected to renew it, she would forfeit a three-hundred-dollar bond she had posted on first taking the Land Rover into the country. Dian argued that there had been an error in filling out the form and that she actually had another month to go.

  The customs men obligingly agreed to take her word for it on the understanding that she would return in a month to pay the fee and complete the necessary forms. She did return on July 1, but by then the understanding had apparently been forgotten, and she found herself sinking into a kind of bureaucratic quicksand that seemed likely to swallow, if not Lily, then several hundreds of dollars in fines and forfeits. She protested long and loud and, when that failed, recruited the assistance of park director Anicet Mburanumwe and drove with him to the main customs office at Goma to complain to higher-ups. She was advised to discuss the matter with the chief customs officer at the frontier, who had been away but would be back on July 10.

  So she returned to her Kabara camp, where larger events intervened, and on July 9 she was escorted down to park headquarters.

  On July 10, Dian sought permission from the park authorities to visit the frontier and straighten out the vehicle problem once and for all; but it was not until a week had passed that the military situation was sufficiently stabilized for her to go anywhere. On that day she left for the frontier with a park guard as driver and accompanied by the bilingual secretary to the park director, who had been instructed to assist her in sorting out her difficulties.

  At the border they found the chief Congolese customs officer drunk, disheveled, and in an ugly mood. He waved her papers aside and ordered some soldiers to seize Lily and impound it as an unregistered vehicle.

  Dian was livid, and her reaction, as recorded in the affidavit she prepared for Leakey, was completely in character.

  I immediately jumped back into the car, grabbed the key, put it in my pocket, and settled myself behind the steering wheel. The secretary tried to make himself invisible, and the driver tried to take a stand to protect me but was pushed aside by the military men who came trotting up, also full of native gin.

  Now, let me make myself quite clear: no one threatened me with a gun nor was I touched by any of these soldiers after the initial attempt by one to jerk me from the car. I have a beautiful command of international cuss words that they seemed to understand. However, the hour and a half that followed is kind of like a bad dream. Each soldier was ordering me out, screaming, yelling, threatening, and the big man was outscreaming them all. Since I wouldn’t leave, he then started with the “prison” routine and ordered the man nearest me to take me to prison along with the driver and the secretary. By now the secretary was whiter than I and said it would be a good idea for me to leave the car. But the driver was still ready to pounce if anyone touched me, so I continued to cuss and threaten anyone of the military who got too close to me.

  The standoff ended when the head customs man produced a document from the capital, Kinshasa, ordering the military to seize all improperly registered vehicles. In the face of this indisputable authority, Dian had to back down. Through her driver she asked the customs officer if he would accept a three-hundred-dollar cash payment in lieu of impounding the car.

  This immediately pacified him until he realized I would have to go across the border to Kisoro to get the money. Then he flew into another screaming, mouth-drooling rage that even frightened the military. Finally he consented, but only under the conditions that he retain my passport and that I be accompanied by a Congolese guard. I wasn’t too happy about letting my passport go but felt it was cheaper than losing the car. Nor was I happy about the drunken Congolese military who crawled into the front seat and ordered me to sit on his lap. The driver told him to leave me alone, I told him to leave me alone, and on we went to Kisoro, where I spilled my troubles to Mr. Baumgartel.

  Baumgartel was appalled. He fully understood the risks involved in confronting the Congolese military under conditions of martial law. His hotel was already crowded with frightened European guests who had taken refuge from the chaos in the Congo and were full of stories of atrocities. He urged Dian to remain with him in Kisoro, at least until stability had returned to Kivu province, but Dian was no more inclined to take his advice this time than she had been when she first entered the Congo with Alan Root. She had no intention of letting anything so trivial as an armed insurrection interfere with her work. She cabled Leakey that she was safe in Kisoro and needed three hundred dollars.

  Meanwhile, Baumgartel had enlisted the aid of a captain in the Uganda Rifles, who sent Dian’s Congolese guard packing in the direction of the border. Realizing he could not sway Dian, but always the friend in need, Baumgartel arranged for her to borrow the money she required.

  The following morning Dian, her driver, and the very unhappy bilingual secretary returned to the frontier escorted by the Ugandan captain. The customs chief contentedly accepted the money, returned her passport, and put her papers in order. Once this transaction was concluded, she thanked the Ugandan officer and drove off—not back to the security of Kisoro—but on to park headquarters at Rumangabo.

  In her absence, Baumgartel and his refugee guests had been astonished to see a light aircraft risk being shot down by trigger-happy soldiers on both sides of the border as it circled the village and landed at a disused airstrip near the hotel. On receiving Dian’s cable, a distraught Leakey had chartered the plane to fly her back to Nairobi.

  Far from intending to flee the Congo, Dian was determined to return to Kabara. She pointed out to the park director that there had never been an official order from the military forbidding her to stay up there. She had assessed the risks, she said, and was willing to take her chances. Perhaps intimidated by her vehemence, or simply sick of her intransigence, the director acquiesced.

  Next day she drove on to Kibumba, the village at the foot of the mountain, where she unloaded her equipment and arranged for porters. She then returned to park headquarters for a second load and to pick up two park gua
rds. While there she dashed off a note to Leakey:

  “I got the same guards who helped me take the tent down, for I haven’t the slightest idea how to get the damn thing up again. Then, when I was on my way out the door, Anicet’s secretary came in with a telegram from the military camp saying on no condition should I be allowed to go back up the mountain.

  “Dr. Leakey, this hit me even worse than the first letter from Anicet on the 9th! I don’t think you can realize what this delay is costing me at this crucial time of habituating my gorillas. I know these park people don’t know beans about what I’m trying to accomplish. Two weeks lost now, just when I was on the verge of complete habituation, is the exact equivalent of two months lost, and for no reason at all.”

  The following day, again accompanied by a park official, Dian drove to military headquarters at Goma to appeal the decision. She was told politely enough that it would be at least two and perhaps four months before she could be allowed to climb to Kabara again.

  Returning angrily to her palatial quarters, she brooded over the view of Karisimbi. The “castle” now felt like a prison to her. Lawlessness in the surrounding region was increasing day by day, as were the numbers of soldiers and the flow of banana beer. She began to be awakened by unseen visitors pounding on her bolted door. She asked for and received an armed sentry.

  It was finally clear to her that nothing was to be gained by her remaining. On July 26 she once again stowed her field notes, one of her chickens, and most of her equipment in Lily and drove back to the frontier.

  Upon reaching Bunagana I was told the border was closed and the keys were gone. I waited there five hours until a priest from the Congo came and gained admission to Uganda as he had a sick person with him who required hospitalization there. Once it was apparent that the men at the post had the keys, I was able to bribe them to open the gate for me.

  It was not quite that easy. Dian had no remaining cash, so she had to persuade the guards to let her drive on to Kisoro where she could get more. History repeated itself. It was agreed, on condition that one of the guards go too.