Gorillas in the Mist

by Farley Mowat

  A few days later an apologetic Wayne McGuire finally slogged back to camp to explain that he had contracted an ear infection while in Ruhengeri. Dian welcomed him home, although not without a note of some asperity.

  The American boy is back, though I don’t know for how long. If I could afford a nurse for him, I would.

  With the beginning of December the weather broke. The seemingly eternal rains and mists no longer saturated the mountain slopes, turning them into a dim subaqueous world. The brilliant skies and piercing sunshine of high altitudes returned, and everywhere life quickened. The saturated lichen beards hanging from the ancient hagenia trees grew dry and fluffy and were filled with flamboyant little sunbirds. The camp hyraxes emerged to sit sleepy-eyed in the sun by day and to engage in their ultramundane songs by night. Although unable to visit them because of her breathing difficulties, Dian knew that the gorillas were lolling in sunlit glades, and she was happy for them in this time of warmth and relaxation after the months of somber fog and rain.

  There was little relaxation for her. The dread day was fast approaching when she would again have to renew her visa. On December 3 she hid her pistols, her money, and the few pieces of jewelry she possessed (including the ruby ring given to her by Louis Leakey) behind the bottom drawer of her dresser and resolutely descended the mountain bound for Kigali.

  She was accompanied by young Sjaak, and although she was heartened by the moral support his presence gave her, she was also saddened for he was leaving the Virungas to return to Holland. “Sjaak,” she had written to his employer, “is not only an extremely gifted observer and field worker, he is probably one of the finest who has ever worked at Karisoke. I so wish there were more like him and that he could have remained at Karisoke into the new year.”

  It was with a brave front but inner trepidation that Dian presented herself at ORTPN’s headquarters. The officials there proved even stickier than she had anticipated. Habiyaremye would not see her; and although some of his subordinates evidenced sympathy for Dian’s plight, they could do nothing to help her obtain the all-important permit without which her visa could not be extended.

  In mounting desperation Dian went to the American embassy, but the current incumbents, while polite, offered no assistance.

  She then retreated to the Mille des Collines hotel for a badly needed drink, and there encountered the editor of one of the local papers who had recently written glowingly about Dian and her work. When she confided her difficulties to him, he smiled broadly and patted her hand. “Mademoiselle Fossey, I think you do not understand. In Kigali you have many friends. But not at ORTPN. And not, perhaps, among your fellow Americans and some other foreigners. Why do you not ask your friends for help?”

  Dian needed no further prompting. She hastened to the presidential secretariat and asked to see Augustin Nduwayezu, secretary-general in charge of Immigration, whom she had met while trying to eat her cold and greasy frites in Ruhengeri on the occasion of the fete some three months earlier. Nduwayezu was in his office and invited her to join him.

  When he asked what he could do for me, I’m afraid I really gave him an earful. I more or less told him the whole story about ORTPN and the Mt. Gorilla Project problems. He very kindly listened to all and even wanted to hear more. When I was just talked out, he merely said, “Why didn’t you come and tell me all this before?” Then he said, “You are one of our cherished guests and can stay in Rwanda as long as you wish.”

  He called a secretary, who took my passport. Ten minutes later the man came back with it stamped with a special visa authorizing me to stay in Rwanda for two whole years. The Big Man handed it to me with a laugh and said the next one would be good for ten years if I wanted. Wow, if he had handed me a ticket to Cloud Nine I couldn’t have been happier!

  Dian was ecstatic as she raced around Kigali, vigorously doing errands for the camp and telling everyone she knew of her good fortune. As one friend remembered it, “She was as exuberant as a dog let off her leash. Coughing and puffing at her Impala cigarettes, she was the perfect whirlwind—just as she had been in the early days. We were all so happy for her I felt like crying.”

  If her friends were delighted with the news, her antagonists must have been hugely dismayed. Nduwayezu, who stood close to the center of Rwandan power, had in effect confirmed Dian’s suzerainty over Karisoke, not just for two years, but presumably for as long as she desired to remain. So the Lone Woman of the Forest would continue to occupy her domain and defend its animal inhabitants from human comers as far into the future as one could foresee. There were those who must have found this an intolerable prospect.

  Dian returned to camp on December 7, still in a state of exhilaration. However, her body was unable to keep pace, and it took her three and a half hours to make the climb. At the long and frequent halts to rest, she coughed so much and so hard that blood trickled from the corners of her mouth.

  I couldn’t have made it without Guam’s help. He was so good to me. Tonight there was so much pain that I got X. First time in a long, long time.

  Through the succeeding days Karisoke was alive with people and vibrant with activity. While a jolly young Rwandan technician, Frederick Byandagara, constructed a weather-recording station, cheerful little groups of French and Belgian medical men and women climbed to camp to volunteer a hand with this project, which had long been dear to Dian’s heart, and to revel with her in the burst of magnificent weather.

  Whether because of the return of the sun or the assurance that mademoiselle would be remaining at the helm of Karisoke, the camp staff and the Digit Fund rangers were in high good humor as December slipped by. Even the news that the apparently indestructible Sebahutu had recovered sufficiently from his “mortal” wounds to escape from hospital, only to be recaptured by the police after an all-night pursuit, was greeted with hilarity by the Africans. Dian was moved to note, “The old scoundrel almost got away…. I almost wish he had.” She made this comment in a letter written in Swahili to her longtime houseman, Kanyaragana, who was in Ruhengeri Hospital convalescing from surgery. She enclosed a bundle of Rwandan francs. “For your wife and children from all of us at camp.” The letter was signed “Love to you, Nyiramachabelli.”

  As Christmas neared, she made this entry in her journal:

  Today, December 22, from Rosamond, a nice tray/picture from Nyundo, two bottles of face lotion-much needed-and a neat bamboo picture frame.

  In response to these presents from her closest friend in Rwanda, Dian began a letter on her old Smith-Corona portable:

  “Your great gifts just arrived with Guam and I opened them right away. I know I shouldn’t but I hate waiting for things. I didn’t like it when I was a kid and now I don’t have to wait, which helps make it worthwhile being grown-up.

  “The frame is just right for my big color print of Digit. It is a welcome Christmas present for him too. The lotion will make me so beautiful even Habiyaremye will become my slave. Since I don’t have tea and crumpets served too often here, I intend to hang the tray/picture in my bedroom where I can enjoy it all to myself.

  “Rosamond, I do so wish you could have been here this Christmas. I can’t manage a party for my men but will try and fix dinner for my wonderful Rwandan student, Joseph Munyaneza, who is leaving on December 26, and for Wayne McGuire, if he can find his way here from his cabin.

  “A nice Swiss zoologist about my age is coming on the twenty-eighth to be the new research director of Karisoke, then there will be lots of American visitors. Camp will be bulging by the time I leave for America in March, but right now it is awfully quiet….”

  This letter, the last Dian Fossey ever wrote, remained unfinished.

  Nor are there any further entries in her journal except for this, carefully printed in block letters on the final page:

  WHEN YOU REALIZE THE VALUE OF ALL LIFE, YOU DWELL LESS ON WHAT IS PAST AND CONCENTRATE MORE ON THE PRESERVATION OF THE FUTURE.

  The rest is silence.

  As the sky bega
n to lighten on the morning of December 27, Kanyaragana donned his shabby old suit coat and made his way across the chill and misted meadow toward Dian’s cabin to light her stove and make her morning cup of coffee.

  He moved silently through the wet grass, startling a duiker doe. She leaped high, ran a few paces, and then recognizing him, lowered her head and resumed browsing. As he continued on his way, a pair of ravens plunged from an overhanging hagenia tree to circle his head, raucously demanding a handout. He tossed them some scraps, then glanced toward the distant crest of Mt. Karisimbi. To his delight he saw that the roseate clouds of dawn were shredding away from the truncated cone. It would be a fine morning in the Virungas.

  Adorned for Christmas with a red felt Santa Claus bearing the legend “Howdy,” the front door of Dian’s cabin stood partly ajar. Concluding that his mistress had wakened early and must be impatiently awaiting her coffee, Kanyaragana swung the door wide and hurried into the living room.

  At ten minutes past six that morning, Wayne McGuire’s disheveled bedroom was invaded by a mob consisting of the entire Karisoke staff, together with several park guards who had spent the night at camp. Waking in confusion, McGuire, whose knowledge of Swahili was rudimentary, could only distinguish one horrifying phrase in the babble of the men’s voices:

  “Dian kufa! Dian kufa!” Dian is dead!

  Dressing so hurriedly that he thrust one foot into a brown boot and the other into a black one, McGuire found himself being half shoved, half led toward the building Dian’s detractors called the Manor, but which she herself mockingly referred to as the Mausoleum. The duiker vanished into the nearby forest and the ravens retreated high into a pallid sky as the men surged to the door of Dian’s house.

  Peering myopically through his spectacles, McGuire stepped into the living room. It was in frightening disarray. Lamp chimneys had been smashed and the floor was gritty with shards of glass. Some of the furniture had been upset, but the Christmas tree stood unscathed by the front door, brooding over a mound of presents awaiting distribution to the staff.

  Propelled by the press of men behind him, McGuire stumbled through the door of Dian’s spacious bedroom. It too had been roughly treated. Drawers and cupboard doors stood open, and books and clothing littered the mat-covered floor. A table in the middle of the room had been overturned. The mattress of the double bed had slipped off its frame.

  There was silence, except for the sibilance of mass breathing, as McGuire took a few slow steps forward. On the floor by the bedside, partially concealed from view by a small sofa, Dian Fossey lay sprawled upon her back, an automatic pistol and a clip of ammunition by her side.

  Her skull had been split diagonally from her forehead across her nose and down one cheek to the corner of her mouth. Catching a glimpse of this ghastly wound, a sixteen-year-old apprentice tracker screamed wordlessly and plunged toward the door.

  The funeral service. Wayne McGuire is third from left; Rosamond Carr fifth from left. The eulogy was delivered by the Rev. Wallace of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

  Awkwardly Wayne McGuire knelt down to check her pulse for a sign of life. But there was none.

  “Oh, Dian,” he whispered. “Oh, Dian.”

  On the gray and gloomy afternoon of the last day of 1985, Dian Fossey’s body, encased in an unpainted plywood coffin, lay beside an open grave sunk into the saturated soil of Karisoke. While a missionary from Gisenyi, the Reverend Mr. Elton Wallace, delivered his simple eulogy, thirty Africans and nine whites clustered in a semicircle to one side of the grave.

  “Last week the world did honor to a long-ago event that changed its history—the coming of the Lord to earth. We see at our feet here a parable of that magnificent condescension—

  Dian Fossey, born to a home of comfort and privilege that she left by her own choice to live among a race faced with extinction…. She will lie now among those with whom she lived, and among whom she died. And if you think that the distance Christ had to come to take the likeness of Man is not so great as that from man to gorilla, then you don’t know men. Or gorillas. Or God.”

  Just beyond the grave, and facing the cluster of human beings, stood a small thicket of rough wooden posts bearing the names of some of those amongst whom Dian had come to the Virungas to live, and to die—Digit … Macho … Uncle Bert … Kweli … Nunkie—more than a dozen of them.

  Rosamond Carr, tiny beside some of Dian’s robust trackers, white-haired and looking very frail after the long climb up the mountain, raised her gaze from the coffin and looked across it to the gorilla cemetery.

  “Some people wanted to send her poor body back to the States. What a terrible thing that would have been.

  “But Dian wouldn’t have it—her spirit wouldn’t have it. They hadn’t been able to force her out of the Virungas while she was alive. They couldn’t do it now that she was dead.”

  EPILOGUE

  The circumstances surrounding the murder of Dian Fossey are obscure. The assassin may have gained entry to her cabin (which was always securely locked at night) by tearing away a section of the metal sheathing from the southeast corner of her bedroom. Significantly, the hole was made at the only point where entry through it would not have been blocked by the bed or by any of the numerous pieces of built-in furniture, which argues that it was cut by someone who knew the layout of Dian’s bedroom.

  On the other hand, it is equally likely that the killer was someone known to Dian whom she had admitted to the cabin. The piece of sheathing could as easily have been removed after her death to make it appear that the murder had been the work of an outsider, perhaps one intent on theft. But there was no theft. Although the interior of the house gave the impression of having been ransacked, nothing was missing. Dian’s money and traveler’s checks to the amount of more than three thousand dollars, plus her jewelry and thousands of dollars’ worth of cameras and optical and other valuable equipment remained untouched.

  Dian’s good friend, Dr. Bertrand, who examined the cabin the day after the murder, believes the disruption could have resulted from Dian’s frantic attempts to escape her murderer while trying to find a gun with which to defend herself. She often hid her guns, and not infrequently forgot where. In the event, she did lay hands upon a pistol and a clip of ammunition—but the bullets were of the wrong caliber and did not fit the weapon.

  The panga used to kill her (and with which she had been struck several additional blows to the top and back of her head) was her own. She had confiscated it from a poacher years earlier, and it normally hung as a decoration on her living room wall. Any fingerprints that may have been on it were destroyed when it was handled by a number of people after the killing. Because the murder weapon was a panga, some of Dian’s peers are convinced she was killed by a poacher seeking vengeance.

  “It was a shock, of course,” said one of them, “but we weren’t particularly surprised. She really had it coming to her for the way she treated them.”

  The judgment that Dian Fossey got what she deserved has some supporters.

  Bill Weber: “No one wanted to fight her. No one wanted to take over the place. She invented so many plots and enemies. She kept talking about how nobody could take it up there, how they all got ‘bushy,’ but in the end she was the only one who went bonkers. She didn’t get killed because she was saving gorillas. She got killed because she was behaving like Dian Fossey…. She mistreated everyone around her and finally was done in.”

  Kelly Stewart: “Dian was no good as a scientific worker, but still she couldn’t hand over control. She couldn’t take the backseat…. She viewed herself as this warrior fighting an enemy who was out to get her. It was a perfect ending. She got what she wanted…. It must have been painful but it didn’t last long. The first whack killed her. It was such a clean whack I understand there was hardly any blood.”

  Rwandan authorities gave little credence to the revenge theory. Knowing their own people, they were fully aware that the violent murder of a white by a Rwandan was ext
remely unlikely. There had only been one such incident during the previous thirty years. Nor were the Rwandan police blundering incompetents, as they have since been portrayed by various white expatriates and by some of the American media. The investigators concluded that the murder was an inside job or, at least, had been committed by someone fully cognizant of how Karisoke operated. Soon after the investigations began, most of the current Karisoke staff was arrested. So, also, was the tracker, Emmanuel Rwelekana, who had not worked at Karisoke since being fired by Dian several months earlier, but who had been employed during the interim by the Mountain Gorilla Project.

  One by one, as their innocence was established, the Karisoke staffers were released. Rwelekana alone remained in prison—in solitary confinement. On August 21, 1986, nine months after Dian’s death, he and Wayne McGuire were jointly charged with the murder of Dian Fossey. A few weeks later Emmanuel Rwelekana was dead, having reputedly hanged himself.

  Wayne McGuire was never arrested. At the urging of American embassy officials in Kigali, he fled to the United States just two weeks before the charges against him and Rwelekana were made public. No extradition treaty exists between Rwanda and the United States. There is no doubt that McGuire was “permitted to escape” by arrangement between the U.S. State Department and the Rwandan Department of Foreign Affairs.

  On December 11, 1986, Wayne McGuire was tried in absentia by a Rwandan tribunal. Ten days before the anniversary of Dian’s death, McGuire was convicted of her murder and sentenced to die before a firing squad—if he ever had the temerity, or the stupidity, to return to Rwanda.

  Although it was never any part of my purpose to try to solve the mystery of her death—my interest has been in Dian Fossey’s life—I have some opinions on the matter.

  Unless Wayne McGuire went berserk, I do not believe he murdered Dian Fossey. There is no credible motive and the evidence produced against him at the trial has all the earmarks of having been contrived. I think he was a sacrificial goat.