Gorillas in the Mist

by Farley Mowat

  Dian was agreeable and began making preparations for an absence from Karisoke of seven or eight months. That would be time enough, she believed, to obtain the medical treatment she needed; whip her book into final shape with the help of Anita McClellan; and comply with the demands of the National Geographic and the Leakey Foundation that she “write up” her gorilla field notes in proper academic fashion.

  Packing was well under way when she heard some disquieting news. After leaving Karisoke, Bill Weber had been hired by the Mountain Gorilla Project, while Amy Vedder returned to the United States to work on her doctorate. Now the V-W couple let it be known that they would soon be returning to Karisoke, at Sandy Harcourt’s invitation. Dian was not pleased.

  What Harcourt has done is use the FPS Digit money to set up Weber at park headquarters to “habituate” groups of gorillas for tourists. Weber dislikes the forest and is nervous of gorillas. To my way of thinking, and admittedly this is biased thinking, Digit blood money-the FPS Mountain Gorilla Project-is paying for him to play a role he is no more capable of than my grandmother. My porters are keeping a close eye on him, far closer than he realizes, and say that he is in Ruhengeri at least every other day at the homes of various Europeans while his African tracker and assistant are in the forest. Weber does speak excellent French and writes it as well. His wife, and she is a beautiful young girl who is very appealing, leads him around with a ring through his nose, and she hates my guts. She will be back in January. But neither one of them will get to camp again if I can help it.

  Dian wrote Harcourt explaining politely but firmly that under no circumstances could she permit Weber or Vedder to come back to Karisoke. She also told him she herself expected to return to camp during his and Kelly’s tenure, but made it clear that they would continue in command as scientific directors.

  Harcourt’s response was notably uncooperative. Having categorically stated that it would be impossible for him and Kelly to continue as directors if Dian were at the camp, he made it clear that he would now require an agreement between them limiting the amount of time Dian might spend at Karisoke.

  On the Vedder/Weber question, he was unyielding, having first refused Dian’s request that they be excluded from Karisoke— “We cannot be scientific directors of a place that we are trying to turn into a well-run research center and have to turn away people of whom we approved simply because you disliked them.” He demanded the final say on everyone who might come to camp while he and Kelly were in charge.

  In case Dian had any doubts as to who was in the driver’s seat, he also informed her that he could no longer guarantee a September arrival. In fact, he suggested she might consider staying on until early January, since it would not be convenient for him to be at Karisoke in December.

  This was really pushing it, especially for someone who claimed to know Dian inside out, but a lack of confidence in his ability to get his own way was not one of Sandy Harcourt’s problems. Dian’s patience was now perilously near its end. Her plans for a September departure and for establishing herself in the United States were in ruins. She had been as good as told that Karisoke, under her, was a mess; that she couldn’t even visit the place without Harcourt’s permission; and that the V-W couple would be returning there in triumph. It was more than she could swallow.

  She unburdened herself to Dr. Snider, whom she continued to regard as a trusty friend and ally.

  “I must assure you it is not sheer stubbornness or pettiness that will not allow me to permit the return of the V-W couple. The stories I heard in Kigali in June from people, both Africans and Europeans, were absolutely incredible. I certainly deserve the option of not letting them return to the camp and the gorillas that I have put so much of my own life, love, and labor into.”

  Presumably someone advised Harcourt that he had overstepped the mark. On September 10 he informed Dian that because the Webers were to be funded by the FPS to carry out conservation programs for the park, he could “modify our previous conditions, and agree to your requirement that the Webers do not pursue further work at Karisoke during the period of your absence.”

  As a gesture of conciliation this might have been better received if he had not appended to it a brand-new condition.

  “We cannot come to Karisoke unless we have priority of access to the main study groups and unless there is no more than one social behavior study of gorillas besides ours being carried out while we are there.”

  Preserving a degree of equanimity that her detractors would hardly have believed possible, Dian replied:

  October 6, 1979

  Dear Sandy,

  I think it best for all concerned that I go ahead and take up an offer of additional students who can begin coming immediately rather than in January. This isn’t as I’d thought things would eventuate, but I need to salvage what I can of my previous plans.

  I cannot adhere to your condition concerning my not returning during the next year or to other restrictions you may wish to apply.

  I couldn’t possibly grant you “priority” to the main study groups at the cost of halting the work of Peter Veit. It would be unethical to take Group 5 away from him to coincide with your stipulation.

  In the same mail she told Dr. Snider that she had decided against Harcourt and was making other arrangements.

  What I didn’t know at the time was that National Geographic had already arranged with Sandy and Kelly to give them a grant of sixteen thousand dollars to enable them to take over Karisoke. I suppose when Dr. Snider got my letter saying Sandy was out, he must have gotten in touch with him right away.

  Thoroughly alarmed, Harcourt flew to Kigali. On November 3 he appeared at Karisoke.

  I was in bed with one of those pneumonialike attacks. He zoomed into Peter’s cabin first and clipped out a few questions before leaving. Peter’s own words afterwards were: “What did I do?” Then he banged on my door and came barging in. He refused to discuss any of his reasons for changing his plans without telling me-in fact for the most part he just sat with a supercilious face and didn’t/wouldn’t say anything. Believe me, I didn’t even yell or scream at him. If he would just climb off his pedestal, one might be able to communicate with him, but I found it impossible. There is no denying his intelligence and the fact that he is not lazy, but he certainly needs a lesson in manners. Butter would not have melted in his mouth when we talked last April, but a touch of power seems to have gone to his head. He went off down the mountain in a perfect snit.

  Presumably Harcourt realized that he had not done his cause any good, so he climbed back up to Karisoke again next morning. This time he was almost reasonable. It was too late.

  “I’ve already arranged for three new students,” Dian told him. “I’ll pick one of them to be Director here till I get back. I’m sorry, Sandy, but that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  Harcourt returned to England, and on November 15 he and Kelly wrote separate letters to Dian in an attempt to bring her around. Harcourt explained that he had just heard from the National Geographic that his and Kelly’s grant application had been approved and he sincerely hoped that some agreement about their return to camp could be arrived at. “It would be a great pity, having been given funding, to write to N.G. saying that we could no longer use it.”

  The letter from Kelly was the first Dian had received from her since negotiations began in April. It was almost abject. Kelly wrote that she had so much hoped that the differences between Dian and Sandy would be ironed out when the two met, but she admitted she was not overly surprised by the negative results. “Perhaps,” she wrote, “if Sandy was better at being friendly and polite, things would have gone more smoothly…. I ask you to reconsider us as stand-in directors of Karisoke during your absence.”

  Dian remained unmoved.

  The latter half of 1979 was filled with incident. During early July, Dian supervised the exhumation of a number of gorillas that had died in the Virungas during the past several years. These were not her gorillas, but unfort
unate strangers whom she had buried in a sort of paupers’ cemetery. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington wanted their bones, and the National Geographic Society had urged Dian to oblige. She did so with reluctance. For nearly two weeks the ripe odor of decay hung over Karisoke.

  My cabin looks like a boneyard-bits and pieces all over the floor as we try to fit them together. For sure, I wonder why grown men would spend their lives looking at bones when they could look at animals in life. There have to be some kinds of science I’ll never understand.

  There were plenty of live animals around Karisoke. A herd of buffalo, perhaps the same ones Dian had crawled amongst earlier in the year, had become permanent residents in the meadow below her cabin. They were so blasé about the human presence that on one occasion she had to step over a cow buffalo resting on her doorstep.

  Bushbucks, hyrax, golden squirrels, and duikers abounded, but there were also visits from rarer creatures, including a hyena that tried to raid the men’s food store, and a leopard that narrowly missed making a midnight meal out of the dog Cindy.

  Crippled by the pain in her hip – I would use a crutch if no one could see me – I really hurt too much to believe in living – Dian could barely manage to visit the gorillas except when they came close to camp. Kima was, as always, both a comfort and an unending cause of exasperation. When she lost a toy koala bear given to her years earlier, she went into a furious sulk, refused to eat, bit everyone who approached her, and vandalized the cabin used by the antipoaching patrol. Dian mustered the whole camp staff to search for the toy, and when after three days it was not to be found, she ordered a new one, by cable, from San Francisco. As a friend said, “She treated that monkey like a spoiled child and loved it dearly, though it was hard for those who had to put up with its tantrums to see why.”

  Near the end of July, Vatiri brought her a baby bushbuck with a badly mangled leg that had been caught in a poacher’s snare. In a classic case of maternal transferral, the young antelope adopted Dian as its mother, refusing to be separated from her. So she took it into her crowded cabin, where she nursed it for almost a month before it was fit to be released. It insisted on sleeping with Dian and became frantic if she went out of its sight. It had adopted Dian, but Cindy decided to adopt it, with the result that Cindy, too, insisted on sharing the bed.

  No sleep again last night-sciatica and damn dog and baby duiker not enough. Kima jealous, had to join in too.

  Apart from the duel with Harcourt, life at Karisoke went smoothly. Relations between Dian and the students had never been better. Peter Veit was showing signs of becoming a real gorilla defender in the style of Ian Redmond. Free of the influence of the V-W couple, Craig Sholley had returned to the fold. David Watts continued to be a dedicated and effective scientist.

  It was with real regret that, in mid-July, Dian bade good-bye to Watts. Although they had never become close friends, they respected each other, and this despite Dian’s inherent suspicions of anyone who professed an interest in socialism. She wrote to the director of the National Zoological Park in Washington, “I worked with David a total of fifteen full months at Karisoke. Throughout his stay, he was always good-natured and highly self-motivated. He also proved himself extremely levelheaded.”

  She felt somewhat less distress when, in early August, Sholley returned to the United States.

  I guess I could never tolerate what I call the Peach Core approach – turning the other cheek to the poachers.

  Far from turning the other cheek, Dian had by now made her patrol system so effective that poachers had all but abandoned the region central to the southern trio of volcanoes, Visoke, Karisimbi, and Mikeno. Vatiri was now leading his men deep into Zaire as well as northeastward toward Mt. Sabyinyo, cutting traps wherever they found them. The work was not without incident. On one occasion the patrol encountered a party of Zairean poachers armed with a rifle, and Vatiri’s men had to beat a hasty retreat with bullets whistling over their heads. Next day they returned to the offensive.

  They wanted a second pistol from me, which I gave them for today, but am not sure that was too wise. Will be on pins and needles until they get home tonight.

  Elsewhere in the Parc des Volcans the poachers did much as they pleased. Neither the original Mountain Gorilla Project employees nor those of the AWLF had organized a patrol system, and the park guards remained as ineffective as ever.

  Hard evidence of this came to light on September 3 when Dian was informed by Dr. Vimont, in Ruhengeri, that two gorilla babies were being offered for sale in Gisenyi. She investigated at once.

  They reputedly come from Zaire, though not from any region we are patrolling. Two babies means at least one more group destroyed. They are offered for sale for 400,000 RWF! It seems the French want to get them for captivity in Europe-the Rwandans also know about them, and I want to get them to try to release them back to the wild.

  Despite intensive efforts, Dian was unable to locate the orphans. She concluded that they had been smuggled to France, possibly via a notorious Spanish dealer in wild animals and with the connivance of Rwandan or Zairean officials.

  The influx of tourists continued unabated. On one occasion camp was invaded by a party from Chicago who demanded that Dian herself escort them to see the gorillas. She responded by pretending to a fit of dementia and firing a pistol over their heads.

  I should hate myself for such a “no-no” but just couldn’t resist. They were so pompous and so sure they could have anything they wanted because they were from the States. I guess I scared the hell out of them. They went clomping down the trail like a herd of buffalo that had gotten into a bee tree!

  They later filed a complaint of attempted murder against Dian, but nobody in Rwanda except for a few of her perennial detractors took this seriously.

  Camp was host to many welcome visitors that summer, amongst them a number of Rwandan nationals including Dian’s bank manager, whom she always addressed with full formality as Mr. Joseph. He climbed to camp with his family several times, and Dian was delighted and touched when he named a newborn daughter after her.

  On August 12 a professor from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, arrived at Karisoke.

  Dr. Glenn Hausfater did not know Dian personally, but had written some months earlier for permission to visit as part of an African tour he was making to further his studies in primatology. Dian had agreed rather grudgingly since she did not like “scientific tourists” much better than the ordinary breed.

  When the professor appeared, Dian was bowled over.

  He is about six inches taller than I! But also about six years younger-he is really nice! We had coffee, sandwiches, and beer and drank his cognac up here at my cabin and had a neat, long conversation.

  Hausfater had only intended to remain two days before continuing on to visit A’Kagera Park, but he and Dian got along so well that he decided to remain at Karisoke. Despite a week of rain and mist, or perhaps because of it, the friendship bloomed.

  I really like him. Glenn and I talk so well together and feel the same about so many things. He told me all about his life and I told about mine. He’s been very unhappy recently but keeps his sense of humor.

  Clad in rain gear, the couple plodded through the forest to visit Group 5, and Dian was overjoyed at the way the gorillas seemed to accept Hausfater’s presence. Although he was living in a guest cabin, Dian cooked his meals at her place and they talked far into the nights. She unburdened herself of the whole sorry story of the attempts to get her out of Karisoke, and he listened sympathetically.

  One thing that bothered her was that she quite literally had nowhere to go in the United States. Although Snider and McIlvaine had suggested an affiliation with one of several universities and research centers, nothing came of this. Furthermore, few such institutions offered salaries or grants, and Dian was in no financial condition to support herself.

  Glenn Hausfater thought he could resolve this problem. “I believe a niche could be found for you at Cornel
l as a visiting professor, Dian. I know Ithaca’s a bit out of the way, but it’s a wonderful place to live. Lots of wilderness and wild critters close at hand. I’ve got a little plane and I could fly you to some really remote places. The college crowd is small and friendly, and they’d fall in love with you.”

  Hausfater had to leave on August 18 to complete his African tour, but he kept in touch with Dian by cable, and she sent off a long letter that would await him on his return to Ithaca.

  “Glenn,” she concluded, “your visit was of deep significance to me. I remain very grateful to you, though I can envisage you cringing at that word, for all that you gave me of yourself. I’m not getting schmaltzy. You have no idea what a special gift it was to have met a person of your depth and integrity. Please don’t be personally disappointed if they don’t allot me a visiting professorship grant. You’ve done so much already. In all sincerity though, and I speak intuitively, this is the first time that I feel absolutely ‘right’ about leaving Karisoke…. You’ve made Cornell seem a viable and empathetic place rather than a competitive factory. I’ve been identifying with it since you left and only need to get camp settled before I can be free to come. Thank you so much for the first positive line of thought I’ve had in a long time.

  “P.S. The big poacher I told you about, Munyarukiko, the one responsible for all the gorilla killings over the past eleven years, died of ‘mysterious’ causes last week. He really died this time. Imagine that!”

  In his reply Glenn described an energetic assault he was making on Cornell’s establishment in order to find a place for Dian.

  “There are two or three possibilities…. The first is for very senior scientists, silverbacks with long publication records and big egos. Nevertheless, Cornell is really concerned about not having enough women professors. The provost has a cache of funds specifically earmarked for women scientists … you would be perfect for this. I am working on a March 1980 or September 1980 residency date for a visiting professorship. But be forewarned, I have been absolutely unsuccessful in finding any handsome 50-ish men who would be suitable partners for you at the local disco. These matters may take care of themselves once you are here.