by Farley Mowat
While Dian had been losing the Digit Fund in England to the Fauna Preservation Society, Brylawski had established its existence in the United States on such an unshakable basis that it is still very much alive today. When Dian arrived in Washington in November, Brylawski presented her with Digit Fund Incorporated, a registered charitable body with full legal powers to receive and dispense funds and to perform all other necessary corporate functions. Brylawski refused to accept any payment for the work he and his firm did for the fund.
All that was still needed was a board of three trustees and an executive officer. Dr. Snider agreed to serve as a trustee; Brylawski also volunteered; and Dian, as president, became the third. There was still the problem of finding someone to run the show.
Dian believed she knew exactly the right person. Within hours of her arrival in Washington she had been in touch with McIlvaine. After having a long lunch with him on the sixteenth, she wrote a note to Brylawski:
“Had a meeting with Bob and he agrees to be the secretary-treasurer of the Digit Foundation. He prefers that title rather than executive director. I don’t think the title is of much importance as long as we have someone of such tremendous integrity and value who is willing to help toward the mountain gorilla aid program.
“I do want to thank you for everything you’ve done in making the Digit Fund possible. As you said the other day—it is like giving birth to a baby, but quite frankly I feel more as if it is giving birth to three sets of twins of different fathers simultaneously.”
McIlvaine had agreed to supervise the work of the fund—said work to consist mainly of raising money for it—until a permanent, salaried manager could be found.
In December 1978, he initiated a direct mail fund-raising campaign sponsored jointly by his own African Wildlife Leadership Foundation, the International Primate Protection League, and the Digit Fund Incorporated. Contributors were told to make their checks payable to the African Wildlife Foundation. According to McIlvaine, five hundred thousand solicitations were mailed. However, the Digit Fund Inc. received none of the proceeds.
Some years later McIlvaine wrote of his association with the Digit Fund, in this wise:
“When Dian Fossey was in the States in the fall of 1978, she asked me to take over management of the Digit Fund…. I told her that since I was the full-time operating head of another foundation, there was no way that I could do justice to the Digit Fund in my spare time. I also told her that, in my opinion, the situation in Rwanda required a formal, institutionalized approach in order to involve the government and, in particular, to coordinate activities already in train by World Wildlife International, the Fauna Preservation Society, and perhaps others. I also told her it was politically risky, as well as an interference with her research work, for her to be intimately involved in such an effort.
“I suggested that one solution … would be for the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation to take over, seek agreement of all interested conservation organizations on a unified program, and then negotiate an agreement with the government … the Digit Fund would eventually be dissolved and its remaining funds transferred to the AWLF-managed project….
“In March 1980 I suggested … that perhaps it was time to dissolve Digit and transfer what funds were left to the AWLF project. For reasons of her own, Dr. Fossey decided that she did not want to dissolve Digit at that time. I subsequently concluded that I should resign as secretary-treasurer and did so.”
Dr. Shirley McGreal, whose International Primate Protection League had lent its name to the fund-raising campaign solely as a means of assisting Dian’s Digit Fund, was not pleased with the outcome. She has gone on record as saying that, while McIlvaine claimed he had an agreement with Dian to merge the Digit Fund into the AWLF, Dian herself denied this— “she said she would never have agreed to abolish her own Digit Fund!”
When asked to explain how she thought Dian might have been misled, McGreal replied, “I think the leverage they had on her was that she was very unhappy, insecure, traumatized, and genuinely upset about her gorillas dying. She never saw their deaths as an opportunity for herself. You know, it often happens that the only person who is grieving for dead friends may be exploited by a host of relatives who are looking for opportunities.”
But this was still in the future.
Sure now that all was well with the Digit Fund, Dian traveled to Louisville in early November of 1978 for a comfortable visit with Mary White’s older sister, Betty Schwartzel, whom she once described as “the mother I wish I’d had.”
From there she flew to San Francisco and on to Atherton for a not-so-comfy visit with the Prices. Richard Price insisted she must challenge Uncle Bert’s will. He wore her down.
I am so sick of arguing with him and watching my mother’s disintegration that I really don’t care one way or the other what happens to the will as long as she can be left in peace.
Dian escaped by telling the Prices she was booked to fly back to Rwanda via New York on December 10.
In truth, she was not due to leave New York until the fifteenth.
She spent the intervening days there mostly in the company of Robinson McIlvaine. Those were good days. Dian indulged herself with a shopping spree at Saks Fifth Avenue, where, amongst other things, she bought a $175 sweater as a present for Bob.
We did the carriage ride and the discos-it was so great an evening! I doubt I will ever know another one like it! I danced all night in my new silk dress.
Arriving in Kigali on the sixteenth, she taxied to the foot of Visoke and climbed the mountain trail in an hour and thirty minutes, as she noted with some pride, following Gwehandagoza and leading a long string of porters loaded with camping gear, clothing, boots, and other equipment bought in the United States for the antipoaching patrols with money from the Digit Fund.
It ought to have been a triumphant homecoming, and so it was as far as the blacks were concerned since Dian brought gifts for everyone. But Ian Redmond was the only white on hand to greet her. The V-W couple were not in evidence, nor was David Watts or the new student, Craig Sholley. In a way, Dian was just as pleased. She was not looking forward to another attempt to coexist with Amy Vedder and Bill Weber.
Ian had mixed news for her. During her absence he, Vatiri, and Rwelekana, occasionally assisted by Craig Sholley, had carried out many patrols but had found only a handful of traps. It seemed that the poachers had abandoned the research area, and Ian believed they would stay away as long as the patrols remained active.
The bad news was that gorilla skulls were “still being hawked around to Europeans” in Gisenyi, and at least one was from a recently killed animal. (When the poacher Sebahutu was captured by Dian’s men in 1985, he confessed to the 1978 killing of a young adult female from Nunkie’s Group, on Mt. Karisimbi, during another attempt to capture a baby gorilla. The skull of the dead female was sold to a dealer in Ruhengeri and was probably the one referred to here.) The park guards, both in Zaire and Rwanda, were still mostly notable by their absence, and poaching in the regions they were supposed to patrol was at a new high.
Ian also showed Dian a letter he had recently received from Sandy Harcourt in which Sandy complimented him on his anti-poaching work, but pointed out that the FPS could not condone “illegal anti-poaching activities in another country’s national park…. I hope,” he wrote, “you can see the distinction between us personally admiring the work you are doing, but the FPS collectively having to disassociate itself from that work.”
“Digit’s got his fund—so to hell with them!” was Dian’s response.
Ian’s wounded hand was causing him so much distress that he now felt forced to return to England. On December 23 he drank a farewell Christmas toast with Nyiramachabelli, then set out on a most peculiar odyssey that found him stranded in Moscow on New Year’s Eve when the Aeroflot flight to London he had booked out of Nairobi was diverted home.
At that he probably had a better time than did Dian. In the lonely hours of New Year’s
Eve she had to content herself with the company of Max—an electric dildo she had been given just before leaving New York.
Alas, Max’s sojourn in the misty Virungas was to be short-lived, as a letter from Dian written on January 22, 1979, eloquently testifies:
Dear Rob,
I really received some bad news today. A close friend of mine, actually I only really got to know him well on three occasions, died after a lingering illness, as yet not properly diagnosed.
Perhaps you know him, as he was fairly well-known in conservation circuits; his name was Max Standby. Apparently he had some kind of electrical pacemaker, and when that started to fail, there was no place in Rwanda to get it fixed, so he just sweated it out until the end.
I do admire the pluck he showed, but I can’t tell you how much I miss him. He was one of those you thought you could always rely on in time of need. I can’t understand why all the good guys have to go first.
As ever,
Dian
*From Gorillas in the Mist.
*From Gorillas in the Mist.
— 17 —
As 1979 began, Dian found herself threatened with exile, which was paradoxical for she had long since exiled herself from her native land. She felt she was being nudged, inveigled, and pressured into leaving her adopted country—that amorphous patch of hoary old volcanoes, dripping hagenia forests, bamboo, and nettle scrub that was the shrinking world of the Mountain Kings.
During her visit to Washington she had become half convinced that those who were insisting she return home at least long enough to write up her scientific data might have a point. Yet somewhere in her subconscious she sensed the hidden intent. Awareness was slow in surfacing because she found it terribly difficult to believe that some of the people she trusted most were conspiring to divert permanently the vibrant current of her life in the Virungas into a sterile backwater on some American university campus.
The saga of Group 4, the family Dian had cherished for so long, was still echoing to the reverberations of the murderous assault upon it in July of 1978. In mid-December, while Dian was in the United States, the remnants of Group 4 had encountered Nunkie’s Group, and in the ensuing conflict the infant, Mwelu—the Bright and Shining Light—Digit’s only offspring, had been killed. Although news of this new death devastated Dian, she at least understood the reason for it.
Simba’s infant, Mwelu, was killed by Nunkie when he and his group took Simba from Group 4. This was inevitable because the dominant male of any group is dedicated to keeping his own bloodline going and so tries to mate with a new female as soon as possible; but it hurt me so much as I so wanted Digit’s only offspring to live. Simba is much better off with Nunkie, if he keeps his group on Visoke, but he is now testing out Group 4’s old range on the saddle. This is all right for the time being since there are no poachers operating within five kilometers of camp, but tomorrow could well bring disaster.
The lone silverback, Peanuts, has now taken over the three males that were all there was left of Group 4. They readily sought his company. Peanuts has at least eight years of maturity over the blackbacks Beetsme and Tiger and is capable of acting as the leader and protector of them and young Titus. But he has never had a female of his own and will probably seek interactions with other groups in search of females, and may not be able to handle the ensuing conflicts, thus subjecting the three young males to serious injury. Worst of all, he may take them to the “moon” as he tries to stake out a new territory for “his group.” He is now close to Mt. Mikeno and is already five hours away from camp, but thank God, hasn’t yet run into poachers or traps.
On January 15, Karisoke was visited by Benda-Lema, the new director of ORTPN, accompanied by a number of his senior officials, including the park conservateur with whom Dian had had so much difficulty. The meeting that followed was long, complex, and sometimes incomprehensible since several languages were being spoken, but the upshot was that Dian felt she and Benda-Lema understood each other and would work together to the advantage of the gorillas and of the park.
Although she had done her best to be diplomatic, she had not been able to entirely suppress the Fossey in her. She told Crigler of her indiscretions in a letter written only hours after the delegation had departed in pelting rain down the muddy trail:
“One thing I said that made Benda-Lema furious—which was good by the way because I want him to be honest with me—was that Africans aren’t allowed to approach my gorillas to proximity because of their skin color (I can just envisage you beating your head right now). Benda-Lema says, ‘What is the park for? Bazungas only?’ Then I tried slowly to explain about that one split second it might take a gorilla to distinguish between an African he knew and a poacher intent to kill him, which could cost him his life. I had Nemeye explain this to him too. I don’t know if he grasped the idea or not. I also told him I had said the same thing to his president and his president understood, therefore so should he.
“Might as well tell you one more thing you won’t like. I took them all out to the graveyard when they were ready to leave, for pictures. They looked solemnly at the little wooden markers with the names of the gorillas on them, and it seemed to make some of them uncomfortable. Most of them are Catholics, and the idea of a graveyard for animals was pretty strange. The park conservateur was specially uncomfortable, and kind of groveling with his tail between his legs because Benda-Lema had been giving him a hard time. I asked him in Swahili, French, and English to move in a little closer as everyone else was posing. Finally I just said, in what I thought was a whisper, ‘Banzubaze, get your ass in the picture!’ Wow. Everyone just broke up.”
Crigler was not amused. He replied on the nineteenth with his version of what had transpired at an earlier meeting of his own with Benda-Lema:
“He professed the very highest regard for you and your work, and he said he hoped your research would continue indefinitely at Karisoke. However, he said he was concerned that there were a growing number of people inside and outside the park who regarded themselves as ‘enemies’ due to the firmness of your efforts to protect the gorillas…. Benda-Lema observed that those who had personally felt the sting of your anger harbored extremely serious resentments toward you—to the point, he said, that he feared for your personal safety and even your life.”
Since neither Benda-Lema nor his staff had said anything of the kind to Dian herself, she did not take this seriously. In her response she pointed out: “He was speaking of the Mukingo village of poachers. He went there recently. Naturally these people don’t like me—no poacher in his right mind should. I wouldn’t worry about the personal safety bit … talk to the Africans in the Kinigi farming commune at the base of the mountain. You won’t find a single Fossey enemy there. These people have given me their trust and friendship throughout the years and continue to do so.”
Dian was becoming irritated by the dire prophecies of doom and disaster emanating from the embassy. She may have suspected that it might be part of a design to scare her off the mountain and out of Rwanda. If so, it was the wrong tactic to use against Dian Fossey.
There were other indications that the noose was tightening. In early January a letter from the Leakey Foundation intimated that funding for Karisoke from that source would also be in jeopardy if she insisted on remaining in Rwanda. One of the elder trustees, Dr. H. Coolidge, was particularly adamant about this.
This was closely followed by an ominous letter from the National Geographic telling her that the ten-thousand-dollar maintenance grant she was counting on had been delayed for further consideration, and that her book was of such paramount importance that she should return to the United States at once in order to complete it.
Her response was a grim determination to complete the book within three months—at Karisoke. To this end she cut herself off from human intrusions even more than had been her wont. Working at her typewriter night and day, she became so reclusive that even old friends such as Rosamond Carr and Alyette de Munck hardly d
ared intrude upon her.
Her reaction was volcanic when, on February 6, a French television crew preceded by a long line of heavily laden porters unexpectedly straggled into camp. As Dian watched, unbelieving, their dapper leader, clad in spotless safari clothes, approached and arrogantly informed her that he and his eight men would be her guests for the next six weeks! This invasion had been sanctioned by Benda-Lema, so an almost apoplectic Dian was told. Further, the French told her they not only wanted the camp staff and gorilla study groups made available for filming, but expected her to act as research consultant too!
Drawn up to her full imposing height, eyes flashing and arms akimbo, Dian erupted.
“Holy hell! That’s all you want? You don’t want me to hang by one arm from a tree and beat my chest? I don’t give a shit who said you could come here! Out of my sight!”
Retreating to her cabin, Dian fired off a furious salvo of letters to Benda-Lema and Crigler, then she cabled Melvin Payne at the National Geographic for help in evicting the interlopers. Since the society claimed exclusive rights to all film made at Karisoke, whether stills or movies, the French invasion was clearly a major transgression on those rights. Dian confidently anticipated Payne’s support.
When she attempted to prevent the Karisoke research students from cooperating with the French, she found she had a mutiny on her hands. Far from being perturbed by this interruption of their studies, the V-W couple and Craig Sholley seemed delighted with the prospect of being filmed. Dian exploded yet again.
There is big trouble now in this camp. The new director of tourism has allowed a French cine team to come here. They came out of the blue. I blew my lid but I was so, so alone. They have put up tents galore and are living in part in the cabin of the Vedder-Weber couple, who make Kelly and Harcourt look like angels! They have told me I will be removed from the country within thirty-six hours if I continue to oppose the French invasion…. She makes her merde with the gorillas and laughs about their reaction to it. Her husband looks like Jesus Christ Superstar, speaks perfect French, and sits around playing his guitar. Ambassador and Mrs. Crigler won’t have them in their house because of the stories they have spread about me.
