Gorillas in the Mist

by Farley Mowat

  Flying first to London, Dian checked into a hotel and slept off her jet lag before joining Robert Hinde and Louis Leakey for dinner, which Louis cooked at the home of Jane Goodall’s mother, an old and very dear friend of his. Dian was unimpressed by his culinary efforts.

  Leakey had slaved over two roasted ducks with African-style dressing and other exotic dishes he makes up as he goes along. He loves to cook and Mrs. Goodall lets him, but it takes some tolerance to clean up the kitchen after he is finished with it!

  Three days later she was back in central Africa, to be greeted at the little Gisenyi airport by the loyal Rosamond Carr, who had guessed she would be returning that day and had arranged to have Dian’s Land Rover waiting for her.

  I set off the next day, Sunday, to let the porter wogs in the village at the base of the mountain know I had returned…. They were waiting also, just on a hunch, and shed real tears when they saw that I was back-I really can’t get over this. After leaving them some messages to take up to Robert Campbell on the mountain, I drove on to Kisoro, spent the night at Traveler’s Rest, did food shopping early on Monday morning, and then returned and climbed up to camp. I found everything running smoothly, although my wogs were a little drippy to see me and carried on like crazy-simply can’t understand why they like me, as all I do is cuss them out from morning to dusk.

  Bob Campbell was willing to spend another night and catch me up on all that had happened since I’d left, which was really nice of him since I was already so far behind schedule. He left on Tuesday morning. Since then I’ve wasted six days trying to find the gorilla groups, which has been very frustrating to me.

  It was some weeks before she was able to locate them all. Her study area seemed to be ever-expanding, and she reluctantly concluded that she would need help if she was to continue to keep track of all nine groups, let alone survey the remainder of the Virungas to discover how many gorillas still existed in the region.

  Her feelings about sharing Karisoke with other whites were ambivalent. Although she looked forward to the occasional visits of close friends like Rosamond Carr, Alyette de Munck, and Alan Root, she had come to love and value her solitude and the feeling of being in charge of human activity in camp and in the surrounding forests and meadows. Nevertheless, she now urged Leakey to find a photographer willing to spend a prolonged period at Karisoke to document the gorillas’ lives in still and motion pictures; and she also asked for a student or two to work on a census of the gorilla population:

  “Robert Campbell would do well, but if not available I would ask that whomever you choose be self-reliant and willing to set up his own camp some ten minutes or so away from this one, which I hope you don’t consider an eccentric request. I have found that too much time is lost from field notes and related work when I have to cook for people or sit around in the evenings talking. If you think he would be happy under these circumstances and isn’t an overly gregarious sort, then I should certainly get on with him.”

  Dian had great difficulty locating Group 5, and when she eventually found the gorillas ranging in the saddle between Visoke and Karisimbi, several miles from camp, she had a terrifying encounter.

  The infants and juveniles approached ahead of the silverbacks, and the latter, imagining the youngsters to be in danger, became very threatening. Then one of the “show-off” juveniles fell out of its tree almost onto my lap, which prompted a series of charges from both silverbacks wanting to “protect” their young.

  The aggressive behavior when the very young approached me without the “sanction” of the silverbacks makes me wonder if I’m ever going to be able to literally mix with the groups.

  She need not have worried. A month later she cabled Leakey:

  ALL 6 MEMBERS OF GROUP 8 APPROACHING ME FROM 5 TO 10 FEET. EXPECT PHYSICAL CONTACT WITHIN A WEEK. JUST HAD TO SHARE MY EXCITEMENT WITH YOU – DIAN.

  However, the physical contact that would signal the ultimate triumph for her unorthodox habituation techniques and be her reward for months of patient observation was delayed while she suffered a wrenching, two-month interruption in her field work.

  On February 24, 1969, Dian returned to camp with her tracker to find an urgent message waiting from a doctor friend in Ruhengeri. A young gorilla had been captured by poachers and was now in the hands of the park conservateur, who was keeping it in a tiny cage near his office.

  Dian trekked down the mountain next morning and drove to Ruhengeri. Her objective was a dilapidated army barracks currently being used to house the park administration. As she drove into the dusty parade square, her attention was caught by a mob of chattering, laughing children crowding into the doorway of a lean-to garage. Pushing her way past a brand-new Land Rover, Dian discovered that the object of attention was a young gorilla crouched in a tiny, almost totally enclosed cage. The animal—a three-year-old male—feebly bared his teeth at her as she shooed the children away and opened its cage door to get a closer look. The poor creature appeared to be mortally sick and its stench was overpowering.

  Outraged, Dian stormed into the conservateur’s office.

  “Where did this baby come from,” she demanded, “and what are you doing with it?”

  Although somewhat cowed by her fury, the conservateur managed a brave front. He explained that he had hired a notorious poacher named Munyarukiko to capture an infant gorilla.

  “Why?” raged Dian.

  “Some nice German visitors, they want a mountain gorilla, better two, for show at the Cologne Zoo.”

  It appeared that the Germans had agreed to give the conservateur a Land Rover as payment in advance, to be followed by a large sum of money for “conservation work” in the park. Furthermore, the conservateur was to get a free air trip accompanying the merchandise to Cologne.

  “Unfortunately, as Mademoiselle can see for herself, the young gorilla, he is not fit to go.”

  Dian later discovered that the order from the Cologne Zoo had been filled at the cost of slaughtering all ten adults of a gorilla group as they tried to protect their young on the south slopes of Mt. Karisimbi. The poachers had wired the little captive hand and foot to bamboo poles and kept it that way for three or four days. Later it was placed in a cage that afforded it neither room to stand up or turn around. Eventually it was brought to Ruhengeri with its limbs still bound. When Dian found it, it had been in the conservateur’s possession for two or three weeks. The wounds from the wire bindings at its wrists and ankles had become badly infected; it was seriously malnourished, dehydrated, and having difficulty breathing.

  Convinced that the infant could survive no more than a day or two longer in Ruhengeri, Dian was ready to make any sort of bargain with the conservateur so long as she would be allowed to take the animal back to Karisoke where she could care for it. She hurriedly struck a deal whereby she would attempt to nurse the infant back to health, at which time it could be shipped off to Cologne.

  While her staff converted the storeroom of her cabin into a gorilla nursery supplied with plenty of foliage for nesting and eating, Dian made a breakneck trip to Kisoro to purchase antibiotics, salves, glucose, vitamins, canned milk, and other supplies. Then her porters carried the infant, whom she named Coco, up to Karisoke in a borrowed child’s playpen with boards fastened across the top.

  Field studies were forgotten as she nursed the young gorilla day and night, coaxing it to drink medicine-laced milk, even sleeping with it in her own bed during one period of crisis. Each day the nursery room was stripped, disinfected, and restocked with fresh grass and branches. By the fifth day Coco had begun to show some slight signs of improvement.

  Then, on March 4, came another shock. Hearing voices, Dian went to her cabin door and saw a group of porters approaching, carrying a wooden barrel suspended between two bamboo poles. She guessed immediately what it contained.

  One of the porters handed her a note from her friend in Ruhengeri. “They’ve got another one for the Cologne Zoo, and the conservateur wants you to look after it. I think he
was afraid to write to you himself, but here it is.”

  That evening she dashed off a letter to Leakey’s secretary:

  “I’m going round the bend. They’ve captured a second baby, a female approximately three years of age, but it’s in much better shape than the first one, which I’m afraid is going to die.

  “I put them together in the nursery this morning with no trouble at all, but there now lies the problem of the second one’s becoming infected by the first, and I’m unsure whether to start it out on antibiotics before it needs it.”

  She described the regime of feeding and medication she had been following for Coco, continuing, “This is all I know how to do—maybe it’s all wrong, but by the time you get the letter, it will be too late to change. Anything you can suggest I would greatly appreciate….

  “One very interesting fact is that the new baby also has webbed toes on its right foot, as does the first. I had thought they might be from the same family due to their reactions to each other, and this webbed toe trait seems to indicate it’s true…. Needless to say, it is impossible for me to continue with my field work right now. Am taking notes around the clock on the babies, but haven’t yet begun to type them up.”

  Three weeks later both infants were doing well, and she again wrote Leakey’s secretary.

  “For approximately three hours each day I play mother gorilla and go out and search for the best the forest has to offer in the way of vegetation delicacies, including ripe blackberries, and if you ask me, they never had it so good!

  Their dung is now perfect, if you can describe dung that way. My only concerns are the horrid facial sores on the female, whom I’ve named Pucker, which are spreading and far from healthy looking. I have the perfect medicine for these, but it sets back our rapport considerably whenever I try to apply it, and then it takes several days for her to trust me again … and now Coco has started one on his face.

  “I am also taking Coco out into the forest and turning him loose, when he will let go of me, that is, but he is very timid outside. I feel almost certain that Pucker would follow us, but I would prefer to have someone around before I try letting her out too—she is the most obstinate, bullheaded animal I’ve ever met, and it would be just like her to climb to the top of a seventy-foot hagenia and not come down….

  “I still am unable to go out for observations on the groups, but I’m filling up notebooks on the behavior of these two monsters, which of course is almost identical to that of wild infants and fascinating to observe at such close quarters! Because of the addition of the second one, at least I can dispense with TLC (tender loving care) during the night hours, but they do consume most of the day. And now they are having to learn the meaning of ‘no,’ which is rather comical as they are so obstinate. I’ve ceased to begrudge the loss of days in the field, for the time being at least, as what I can record now is a valuable addition to the study.”

  In her few free moments Dian pounded furiously at her battered Olivetti, firing off angry letters to the mayor of Cologne, the head of the Cologne Zoo, the Fauna Preservation Society in England, and anyone else she could think of who might help prevent the exporting of the young animals.

  But all to no avail.

  The “conservateur” is absolutely impervious. He climbed to camp yesterday to insist that the gorillas be in Kigali on April 4 in order to depart for Germany on the 5th, yet he hadn’t a clue as to how to go about it and asked me to handle everything for him. He was extremely nervous, and from the few facts I could obtain from him, this definitely seems to be a private matter between ORTPN-the Tourism and National Parks Department-and the Cologne Zoo. I would guess they’ve felt some pressure from previous letters I’ve written to conservation authorities, thus the speedup in departure time, some three weeks ahead of schedule. Obviously I can’t keep the animals forever, nor would I want to as it is a bit much, but I am seeking a deal at least to let Bob Campbell get here for pictures of them. Dr. Leakey has arranged for Bob to come back for a six-month stay. With his support maybe I can still get the Rwandan authorities to consider an alternative for the babies-I’m sure a return to the wild would still be feasible.

  A delay was to be the best she could arrange, however, and Campbell arrived just in time to help build the gorillas’ shipping crates. Four days before the deadline for their departure, Dian made one final, futile attempt to save them.

  Saturday I received a very strong cable opposing their export from the Fauna Preservation Society, which I’d hoped would give me one last chance to return them to the wild. Armed with this cable, Polaroid pictures of cage, babies, etc. and Alyette de Munck as interpreter, I set off for Kigali last Tuesday morning. The trip was a failure with regard to returning the babies to the wild. The director of Tourism and National Parks Service would not hear of it and was very snotty about the delay. However, the two days weren’t entirely wasted. I had the chance to tell my story to some other government officials, and they were appalled, or so they said, by what ORTPN had done. I gave them some Polaroids taken by Campbell of the babies, which pleased them immensely.

  The ORTPN director offered to have the conservateur capture two more gorillas for me! These people have no sense of guilt whatsoever. I must now compile another report based on what I learned in Kigali-it was the initial fault of the Cologne Zoo in seeking these two gorillas. I had a good session with a member of the German embassy in hopes of thwarting further captures for that particular country. I’ve received a rumor that two more zoos in Germany are seeking gorillas, but I can hardly put that in the report since it is rumor only.

  The “babies” left for Cologne by jetliner on May 3 and, thanks to Dian’s meticulous travel preparations, arrived in good condition.

  They died in their cage at the zoo within a month of each other, in 1978, after nine years of time-serving for the entertainment of that most superior primate—Homo sapiens.

  Dian’s life did not quiet down with the departure of Coco and Pucker.

  On May 10 about 1:30 in the morning I awoke to find the opposite wall and ceiling above the fireplace a solid sheet of flames! With great calm and presence of mind I ran screaming and yelling out of the house, fell over the first fenced path I encountered, managed to return with two containers of water from the kitchen, and was throwing these on the walls when my men came running with more water-oh, what a mess, but we did get it out.

  Then the next day my beloved chickens began to die-all had names and were pets of several years-from a disease brought up from the village by chicken bought for eating. I can’t kill mine. I immediately put them in individual boxes that lined the cabin, for segregation, medicine, and warmth, but out of nineteen, only two are still alive and I think one is on its way tonight.

  Repairing her charred cabin gave Dian an excuse for a general improvement of the campsite. Alyette de Munck volunteered her contracting skills and in four days had supervised the erection of a new, corrugated-iron kitchen and food storage building. This permitted the dismantling of the old kitchen, which had been slapped together out of tin sheets and canvas, and the striking of the original food storage tent, which was suffering from terminal jungle rot. The camp now consisted of two permanent metal-sheathed shacks and two tents: one for the camp workers and one for Bob Campbell, both situated some distance down the meadow from Dian’s cabin.

  It was not until nearly two months after the departure of Coco and Pucker that field work settled back into its “normal” routine. Bob Campbell had to be trained in gorilla tracking and contact etiquette, a chore Dian enjoyed since her liking for the quiet, sensitive Scot was growing day by day. The real difficulty hinged on the fact that a prolonged drought had driven the gorillas to seek new feeding grounds beyond their normal ranges, and it required several weeks to locate them all again.

  By early July Dian was picking up on her observations where she had left off in May.

  Yesterday and today afforded two wonderful contacts with Group 8, mainly Peanuts, who is curious and p
layful enough to seek proximity. He showed reasoning ability yesterday when he sought to obtain a candy bar I had laid down by my side.

  I’d made a big thing of this candy bar, imitating the vocalizations of Coco and Pucker whenever they were eating favorite foods while I unwrapped it and nibbled on the end. Peanuts was in a real frenzy by the time I laid it down and turned partially away, yet instead of just reaching out for it, which he could easily have done, he tried to slowly pull the foliage stalks upon which it was lying toward him. He almost had it when suddenly it slipped through the matted vegetation and onto the dirt below and out of sight. Was he mad!

  The problem of finding a student for the gorilla census work seemed to have been solved with the enlistment of a young Englishman Leakey had met in Nairobi. However, as Dian was to discover over and over, people working with gorillas in the isolation of the Virungas required physical and mental abilities that most either did not possess or, lacking her own dedication to the animals, did not care to exercise.

  The student was given a crash course in gorillas and before long found himself encamped with a native tracker on a mountain some miles from Karisoke. His field notes, brought to Dian by runner, quickly became so bizarre that Dian grew concerned about his mental stability. Then she learned from her staff that he had become a heavy user of hashish. By mid-September Dian was asking Leakey’s permission to fire B—.

  B—was forthwith given his walking papers, but the traumas of the past months had taken their toll on Dian, and this latest setback with the census that was so important to her research was the last straw. Her health had also taken a sudden and disturbing turn for the worse. Severe chest pains led her to fear she had contracted tuberculosis. The threat of this dire disease had haunted her childhood and her dread of it had been intensified by her experiences with it when she had worked for a brief time with tuberculosis patients at the City of Hope Hospital in Duarte, California. When a doctor at a Seventh-Day Adventist school near Rosamond Carr’s plantation tentatively confirmed her suspicion, she became so alarmed that she wrote to Leakey telling him she had to see him in Nairobi.