Gorillas in the Mist

by Farley Mowat

  She set the ankle herself, but although it healed it was never again fully trustworthy.

  Nevertheless she remained indomitable, doing her best to find solutions to her problems. She made conciliatory gestures to the V-W couple, including sending Amy a birthday present. It was returned with a scathing note of rejection.

  Since the students would not help stem the mounting wave of poaching, Dian hired four more Africans, most of whom had worked for her in the past as trackers or camp staff. After giving them a few days’ instruction and equipping them with boots, clothing, and camp gear supplied by the Digit Fund, she sent them into the forest under the leadership of Vatiri, one of their own.

  Against all odds, and contrary to the dire predictions of the other whites in camp, the African-led patrol soon proved its worth. A week after its formation Vatiri and his companions tracked and surprised a group of nine poachers on the southeast slopes of Visoke, jumped them, and with the help of several pistol shots fired into the air, captured one, drove off the rest, and seized some fifty traps. By the end of the month the patrol had regained control of much of the surrounding region, and the gorillas, buffalo, duikers, bushbucks, and hyrax were again relatively secure. It was with pardonable pride that on April 12 Dian wrote to Digit Fund supporters in the United States:

  “My patrol Africans work three days a week—days and areas altered each week to confuse the poachers—and thus far have cut over three hundred traps and released at least eight duikers alive…. I am using both Zairese and Rwandans, paying them very good wages, feeding them and clothing them. They like the work. In fact they come up on unscheduled days to hunt for traps. For their own safety it would be preferable if they were accompanied by Europeans, but nobody here will go with them and I am not physically able to.

  “This is what the Digit Fund is all about—active conservation as opposed to talking about conservation—and I can’t tell you what it means to be able to put the donations toward proper use, in memory of Digit and all the others….

  “You may wonder what I am doing. At this very moment I am trying to make a pair of size 14 boots for one of my patrol, a full-blooded Tutsi. The soles are heavy plywood with innertube bottoms, laced together with duiker skin sides lined with sponge rubber. It takes me back to my occupational therapy days, and the Africans think it the most interesting invention since the wheel.”

  Dian resolved the problem of how to finance the daily operations of Karisoke in equally direct fashion. She began paying the bills out of what remained of her own savings.

  The difficulties of finding a “caretaker” to see to things in her absence were more formidable. She had discussed the matter with McIlvaine during his visit, and he had gingerly suggested Sandy Harcourt, who was currently doing a gorilla survey in Uganda for the AWLF. Dian’s first reaction was to reject this notion out of hand, but later she began to give it consideration. Despite what had happened between them, she retained a high regard for Harcourt’s abilities and, it has to be assumed, a soft spot for him as well. Besides, if he took over Karisoke in her absence, he would be seconded by Kelly Stewart, whom Dian still considered to be a friend.

  On March 6, McIlvaine wrote to her from Nairobi.

  “By sheer chance Sandy Harcourt returned here from Uganda…. I told him that I had asked you if there was anyone in whom you would have confidence to keep Karisoke going if you spent part of the year elsewhere and that you had replied—after some reflection— ‘Yes, Sandy and Kelly, at least they are serious workers.’ As you might guess he was stunned. But after reflection he replied, ‘If that should work out, it would certainly take priority over my present Ugandan project.’“

  Dian began testing the waters. She wrote to Kelly, who was then in England working on her Ph.D. Kelly’s reply was chatty, friendly, and enthusiastic, and Dian took heart.

  “I know of only two serious scientists who might be able to continue the research at a scientific level,” she wrote to Dr. Snider,

  “Kelly Stewart and her husband, Sandy Harcourt. Both, now that they have matured somewhat, have the ability to coordinate conservation with research; at least I think this is the case. Whether or not they would give in to the ever-increasing popularization of the gorillas as a tourist attraction I can’t say…. I think both should finish their current projects before deciding on whether they want to return here to carry on their research and, also, to carry on with the objectives I’ve striven for during the past twelve years.”

  On April 6, Dian wrote joyfully to Anita McClellan, the young woman who was her editor at the publishing house of Houghton Mifflin in Boston, announcing that she had finished the first draft of her book. “It hasn’t been easy, as you certainly know. There’s still a lot to do, but it is such a huge relief!”

  She was right about there still being a great deal to do. Anita would have to labor with her for the best part of three more years before the book would see the light of day. But considering the circumstances under which Dian had been working, completion of a draft was in itself no mean accomplishment.

  The weather began to improve as April progressed, and on occasion Dian was able to sunbathe outside her cabin. Even the irritation of having her privacy invaded by tourists did not detract too much from the luxury of lying in the sun. She overdid it and got badly burned—a happenstance that might well serve as a metaphor for much of her life.

  On the twenty-first of April the Criglers climbed to Karisoke for a last visit before leaving Rwanda to take up a new posting in Colombia. If their departure had come a year earlier, Dian would have been devastated, but as things stood she was almost relieved.

  Bettie was very uptight. I don’t know what she is thinking. And I am just so confused about Frank and where he stands. But it was sad to see them go.

  Change was in the air. On the twenty-fifth Sandy Harcourt climbed to Karisoke—by appointment—and he and Dian were face-to-face for the first time in years. Initially the meeting was somewhat tense, with Harcourt very much on the defensive about the part he had played in establishing the Mountain Gorilla Project. Eventually his hackles subsided, and the two of them got down to business. Although no firm decision was reached, Dian opined that she would be content to have Sandy and Kelly run Karisoke for several months, subject to certain conditions. Harcourt responded that he and his wife might be willing to do that, subject to even more stringent conditions.

  They parted rather like two terriers who, after prolonged nose-and tail-sniffing, agree to tolerate each other—for the moment.

  Dian’s mood was immeasurably lightened on May 15 when Amy Vedder and Bill Weber departed.

  This leaves me with only one Peach Core student, together with David Watts and a new, young student, Peter Veit, who is keen and hardworking; the third Peach Core, Craig Sholley, is not a problem now.

  By the end of May she could write to McIlvaine, “All is going very, very, very well at camp. The students are an absolute delight now that the V-W couple are gone. I can’t tell you how well we are getting along together. I go out to the gorillas when I can, but that means taking so much Darvon for whatever is wrong with my left hip. The pain isn’t to be believed, day and night. I detest taking Darvon for fear of becoming reliant on it, yet it’s the only way I can locomote without nonsubtle screams of agony. Craig told me his mother, my age, had a sciatica operation and was down for a year! I simply don’t have that kind of time or money. Aubrey wrote about Sir Jonas Moore in the nineteenth century, saying: ‘Sciatica, he cured it by boyling his buttocks.’ That’s one hell of a remedy!”

  Meanwhile things were not going smoothly with McIlvaine’s grand design. Although ORTPN’s director, Benda-Lema, had enthusiastically agreed to accept a technical aid package in support of the Parc des Volcans, to be funded, organized, and administered through the African Wildlife Leadership Fund, there was resistance from other branches of the Rwandan government. This, together with internecine strife amongst the members of the conservation consortium, each jockeying
for the position that would yield it maximum public credit, had brought things to a standstill.

  As Dian herself was not slow to point out, it was now a year and a half since Digit’s death, yet nothing concrete had been achieved by the conservation establishment in defense of the remaining Mountain Gorillas.

  The park guards are worse than ever. Though there is a new conservateur, he can’t control them. He cannot force them to go on poacher patrols, thus none are being conducted. Instead, the guards hide themselves in the pyrethrum fields outside the park and wait for poachers to exit from the park. They then grab them and collect “fines” of five hundred or a thousand francs for themselves and then release the “prisoners.” … Conservation “talk” does not save gorillas; only active conservation can do that. And the only active conservation in the Virungas is what comes out of this camp!

  Dian was also proving more of an obstacle than McIlvaine had anticipated. Instead of permitting Digit Fund Inc. to be merged with Project Survival/AWLF, she was clinging to it with increasing obstinacy and using its funds to hire and equip more men to carry out antipoaching patrols. Attempts to remonstrate with her got him nowhere. The death of Lee had made her intractable.

  The day the park guards are trained and motivated to do their work, that is the day I will happily stop patrolling. Until then I don’t have a choice.

  Nonetheless she was still cooperating with McIlvaine. Although he would later take the credit for it, it was Dian who was responsible for the selection of a young Belgian, Jean-Pierre von der Becke, to become the first “project manager” for the combined AWLF gorilla project. Formerly employed as an adviser to the Zaire park system, von der Becke had found himself out of work late in 1978 and had pleaded with Dian for a job with the Digit Fund. She did not have enough money to pay him a salary, but his professed enthusiasm for the cause of the Mountain Gorillas so impressed her that she warmly recommended him to McIlvaine. It was a recommendation she would regret.

  The attempts to pry her loose from Karisoke continued, al though after the departure of Frank Crigler she found them somewhat easier to resist.

  In early June, Dr. Snider wrote on behalf of the National Geographic, which was still withholding the vital maintenance grant:

  “I understand from Frank Crigler that you may have some concern about having to accept a research post or fellowship in the United States without a stipend…. There should, though, be lecturing and other activities that might earn you something. In addition, and I make no promises whatsoever, the Research Committee might be willing to help to some extent with your work leading to scientific publications.”

  Although she returned a fulsome answer, brimming with gratitude, Dian did not rise to this bait. She could see which way the land lay and was learning how to protect herself. When, after talking to Snider, McIlvaine followed up with the suggestion that if she applied to the Society for a $35,000, three-year grant to work on her scientific notes in the United States, it would “probably be accepted,” she saw the trap at once.

  “Never, never, never speak to me again about asking for a grant that would keep me away from Karisoke for two or three years!” she scolded in reply.

  Although I believe they want me out of here for good, six to eight months will be as much as I can stand. I will dreadfully miss being away from here even that long and can’t imagine what it will be like. If it were not for the book, which I must revise with my editor in the States, I might not go at all…. There is tremendous joy here now, not only from camp rapport with the students, but with the buffalo and duiker and bushbuck every night. They are all coming in herds and getting so tame that you can crawl up to them and scratch them on their flanks. I always knew this could be done with gorillas, but never with buffalo.

  Restricted by the pain in her hip, which she now half-suspected might be cancer, to only occasional visits to the gorillas, she took pleasure in the company of creatures who could come to her.

  One midnight she heard and smelled buffalo. She slipped out and stalked them unseen to within a dozen yards, then got down on hands and knees and crawled in amongst a herd of seven of the mighty animals. She sat down and by the light of a waning moon watched them drift around her. Twice she slowly reached out and stroked the flanks of the closest ones, which responded by lowering their enormous heads and gazing at her with bovine indifference.

  These were wild buffalo, which big game hunters have long regarded as the most dangerous animals in Africa. One had gored a park guard to death only a few weeks before Dian’s midnight tryst—though with good reason, for the guard had shot it, hoping to sell the meat in Ruhengeri.

  Although she could not often visit them, the gorillas were in good hands. Veit, Watts, and even Sholley went almost daily to the study groups. Three or four times a week Vatiri led his patrol up the mountain slopes, and he and his men did their job so well that poachers or their traps were now seldom encountered anywhere on Mt. Visoke. Constantly encouraged by Dian, the patrols pushed farther afield, eventually forcing the poachers to abandon not only the saddle region but the eastern slopes of Mt. Mikeno as well. As of July 2 the Digit Fund’s all-African patrols had accounted for 987 poachers’ traps, and this in the space of a mere four months.

  During the same period, the two dozen park guards had accounted for none at all. Nevertheless they had not been entirely inactive. Three of them tried to shoot the new conservateur, but only succeeded in putting a bullet through his hat.

  Except in the part of the park patrolled by Dian’s men, the poachers held free sway. Even Munyarukiko felt emboldened to rise from the dead and emerge from his hideout on the Zaire/Uganda border. Armed with military rifles, he and others waged such bloody war on the park’s remaining elephants for their ivory that these great creatures almost disappeared from the eastern portion of the park.

  As many as a dozen gorillas were also slaughtered in the Virungas during 1979, although none were killed in the Karisoke study area after the death of Lee.

  One of the stalwarts of the antipoaching patrols was Mutarutkwa, the statuesque member of the Watusi tribe for whom Dian had tried to make a pair of boots.

  Mutarutkwa badly wants boots “like the other men’s.” The only hang-up is that he has a size 14 foot, nearly as broad as it is long. For a number of weeks he went out on patrol in several pairs of my heaviest socks, lacing them around his feet. Then I tried to make him a pair of shoes, but they weren’t a great success. Finally I sent an outline of his unbelievable hooves down to the Ruhengeri market, begging for a solution. A talented old craftsman made a very stout pair of sandals out of rubber tires and inner tubes-using practically one tire per foot-and Mutarutkwa went bounding along on patrols thereafter, seemingly content.

  Last week ten pairs of boots arrived from the American Humane Society. Yesterday the patrol came up for their work along with a new trainee who also has very large feet. I took the two largest pairs of boots (11 and down to the Africans’ cabin for a fitting of the new man. Mutarutkwa almost swooned dead away with envy when he saw them. He swore that the 11½ pair would fit him, minus laces, as they are made of very soft leather.

  With as much effort as a size 18 derriere seeking its way into a size 12 pair of jeans, he managed to get the boots on. From his height of 6’7” he looked down, way down, at these miraculous appendages and pronounced them perfect.

  I couldn’t help but notice that his face appeared slightly pained, and mischievously suggested we all have a little dancing session. Within seconds a cupboard was resounding like a drum, and we were all stomping the dust out of the floorboards.

  All, that is, except Mutarutkwa. He stood zombielike, able to snake his arms about in nearly the proper manner, but barely able to lift his feet off the floor more than a few inches, only to resettle them tenderly with an almost inaudible groan.

  After a few minutes of wild dancing and whooping on the part of the other men, his condition was noticed, particularly his facial grimace of pure agony, though he tr
ied to disguise it. Everyone collapsed on the floor in gales of laughter that he didn’t mind as he just plain collapsed in relief, as well as determination that these boots would somehow fit. He decided that, rather than give them up, he would sleep in them overnight so that his feet would become accustomed to them and vice versa. He absolutely refused to allow us to cut the boot tops open, which, to my way of thinking, was an act of sheer martyrdom.

  End of story: This morning it took all of us a good five minutes to pry the boots off his swollen feet and another fifteen minutes for him to reduce their size by soaking them in Camp Creek (our drinking water supply). Then with that same great smile, he returned to his inner tubes to limp out on another patrol.

  — 18 —

  Negotiations between Dian and Harcourt did not go well. On June 9 he wrote to tell her that he and Kelly would not be able to come to Rwanda before December, and would only come then if they had the titles and powers of joint “directors of Karisoke Research Center.” Furthermore, Harcourt demanded a legally binding undertaking from Dian “that you are prepared to allow us to run the Research Center for at least a year—and possibly after that.

  “Finally, we would like to say that between us (you, Kelly and I, National Geographic Society, and ORTPN) we ought to be able to make the Research Center a place to be respected far outside Rwanda.”

  The gratuitous suggestion that Karisoke was not already widely respected made Dian almost as indignant as the implication that her word alone was not good enough and must be secured by a formal contract. Nevertheless, she swallowed her resentment and agreed to the conditions as she understood them.

  Sandy will run the research aspects and supervise the students. This will leave me free, when I get back from the States, to concentrate on the antipoaching work and my writing.

  A short time later Harcourt announced that “Kelly and I have decided I will be able to come to Rwanda toward the end of September, if you are ready to depart for America by then.”