Through a Window

by Jane Goodall

  "Do you know who it was?" asked Tony Collins, one of the students studying baboons.

  "Yes. It was that A troop mother with the blind infant—what's her name—Hokitika isn't it?"

  "Well, I'm glad she escaped," said Craig Packer, another member of the baboon team. We were all glad, although the future for a blind infant baboon was hardly rosy and, in fact, she died just one week later.

  After that, Figan had remained up the tree a while, looking in all directions. Suddenly he had climbed to the ground and hurried lower down the slope. As he approached a tall, dead tree—little more than a post, with stumpy, broken-off branches—he had begun to move cautiously and silently. Peering through the foliage, Curt had seen, up near the top where the dead tree was thickly draped in vines, a very small baboon—little more than an infant. There was an adult male baboon feeding some thirty yards away, but he had taken no notice as Figan slowly climbed towards his intended victim.

  "Fig suddenly made a rush towards the infant. He nearly caught it, too. But somehow or other it escaped and leapt to the ground. It was amazing—it must have been at least forty feet, that leap. And then the little thing landed right between Faben and Goblin!"

  "Now I suppose you're going to describe a horrible, gory kill," said Julie Johnson, another of the baboon team. "I don't think I want to stay and listen."

  "No, it was okay," Curt reassured her. "Just at that moment the male baboon finally arrived and there was a great commotion. The little bab got away. The male pitched into Goblin and there was a truly spectacular fight. I don't know how Gob did it, but somehow he won and chased off after the bab. And just at that moment another big male arrived. We knew him—it was Bramble. He began to threaten Faben, and two female baboons joined in. Faben was quite scared and rushed up a tree."

  "Didn't Figan help him?" I asked.

  "No—he just sat and watched. In that same place where he'd almost caught the baby. Then, after a bit, he climbed down and the chimps all wandered away."

  In fact, Figan and his group hunted relatively seldom during those fifty days. There were eight colobus monkey hunts and seven kills—Figan, who has always been a successful hunter, made three of the kills himself.

  Nor did they make many journeys to the peripheral part of their home range. Once they travelled far to the south, penetrating the overlap zone between their community and the neighbouring Kahama community. They heard calls that were presumably made by Kahama chimpanzees and became very excited, embracing one another, grinning, travelling silently, and spending some time gazing southward from a high ridge. But nothing further happened, and presently they all returned to the north, displaying frequently and calling loudly, as though to release the tensions that had built up while they were close to strangers.

  Figan, as might be expected, spent more time with Faben than any other adult male, and young Goblin was often tagging along with them. Figan also spent many days with Gigi, not only when she was pink, but also when she was flat and sexually uninteresting. And quite often he was with his sister Fifi and her infant son Freud. Most of his interactions with the individuals of this community were, at that time, relaxed and friendly. He was so clearly dominant over them that, except when there were moments of tension such as during a reunion, he had no need for violent demonstrations of strength and mastery.

  Unless Evered was around. And then Figan, joined almost always by Faben, displayed with unusual frequency and vigour. It was as though despite his position of great power, despite the support of his brother, and despite the memory of those clear-cut victories over Evered the year before, Figan still felt threatened by the rival of his adolescent days.

  David was bursting with excitement one evening when, as usual, we had all gathered in the mess.

  "I saw the most unbelievable attack on Evered today," he said. "The whole thing lasted for almost two hours."

  It happened when Evered, by himself, joined the group. He didn't see Figan and Faben at once, for they were feeding in thick undergrowth. But suddenly they charged towards him and he rushed, screaming, up a tree. Figan and Faben displayed below him a few times, then they settled down on one of the lower branches of his tree and began, very calmly, to groom one another.

  "It was pathetic," said David. "Evered was about twenty feet above them and he whimpered and gave little screams almost non-stop. He was watching them all the time, but they just ignored him and went on grooming.

  "After that," David went on, "Figan and Faben left the tree and did some more fabulous displays. They charged about together—four times in the next half hour.

  "Then came the actual violence. Figan started it—he went leaping up into Evered's tree and kept chasing him from branch to branch. After a bit Evered managed to leap to another tree, but Figan followed.

  "And all the time Faben was charging about on the ground below and Evered was screaming, terrified out of his wits, and keeping as far as he could from Figan."

  David paused. "It was awful really, watching it all," he said. "It was almost like seeing a cat playing with a mouse, because I knew that there wasn't any way that Evered could escape—unless they actually allowed him to."

  By this time we were all caught up in the drama, tense and expectant.

  "Suddenly Evered made a huge jump into a third tree," David continued. "Figan leapt after him and Faben suddenly rushed up as well and they had Evered sort of stuck between them. And then they both jumped him together, and they all fell and just went on fighting on the ground till poor old Ev got away."

  "Poor old Ev" it was, for the brothers followed, and again cornered and attacked him. He managed to get into a tree and his persecutors continued to charge about in great excitement for a further ten minutes until, perhaps because another adult male arrived on the scene, Figan and Faben left and Evered, still screaming, was finally able to escape.

  A month later Figan and Faben encountered Evered after a two-week separation. Curt observed the reunion which took place in a tall tree. It was tense and dramatic. Figan and Evered embraced, both screaming. The other chimps present were watching intently. They too were highly excited and screaming loudly.

  "I was looking up, doing my best to see exactly what was happening," said Curt, "when the unimaginable happened." He paused dramatically and we all wondered what was coming next. "Well, you know what fear and excitement can do to your guts," Curt went on. "One of those wretched creatures—I'm pretty sure it was Gigi—suddenly let go. I was absolutely showered with warm shit!"

  Of course we were sorry for him, but nevertheless the whole mess collapsed laughing while Curt tried to look pained and aloof. Poor Curt—he had had to leave all the excitement and go and wash off in the stream. He was lucky that there was a stream close by! Fortunately he was with Eslom, who had recorded the details of the fight that took place.

  On that occasion Evered was set upon by five aggressors, for Humphrey, Gigi and an adolescent male had joined forces with Figan and Faben. The attack looked—and sounded—incredibly violent and it was amazing that Evered sustained only a few small wounds. He stayed with the group for the rest of the day, but left before the others settled down for the night and was not seen again for another two weeks.

  It was hardly surprising that, in the face of this bitter persecution, Evered spent less and less time in the central part of the community range. It really seemed as though Figan, with Faben's help, was actually trying to drive Evered right out of the Kasekela community.

  And then, quite suddenly, things changed. Almost exactly two years after he had taken over as alpha male, Figan's days of absolute power came to an end. Faben disappeared—this time for good. Gradually the other males must have realized what had happened for they began to capitalize on Figan's vulnerable position. In groups of two, three or more they ganged up on their alpha in dramatic confrontations. It seemed that he could never hold his own against them.

  But by that time, in June 1975, there were no longer any American or European students at G
ombe to record the events.

  7. CHANGE

  IN MAY 1975 came a sudden night of terror: forty armed men came across the lake from Zaire and kidnapped four of the Gombe students. Afterwards there were many confused tales of what had happened, tales of courage as well as tales of horror. My old friend Rashidi was beaten over the head in a vain attempt to make him reveal the whereabouts of the key to the petrol store. He was deaf in one ear for months afterwards. The two young Tanzanian women working at Gombe then, Park Warden Etha Lohay and student Addie Lyaruu, flitted from one student's house to the next, moving quickly through the dark forest, to warn everyone of the attack.

  Where had the victims gone? Were they even alive? There were reports of gunshots heard out on the lake, and for days we thought that the hostages might have been killed. It was a time of anguish. Of course we all had to leave Gombe. For a while we stayed in Kigoma, hoping against hope for news of our friends. But none came. A few months before the kidnap I had remarried, and my second husband, Derek Bryceson, had a house in Dar es Salaam. There we all went, the students crammed into the little guest house, and there we waited. Waited and waited and waited, for what seemed eternity, for news. If it was pure hell for us, those who had not been taken, what of the mental suffering of the victims themselves, and of their parents and other close family?

  After about a week, which seemed like a month, one of the kidnapped students was sent back to Tanzania with a ransom demand. I shall never forget the relief, the delirious joy, that I experienced on learning that the four were alive and at least physically unharmed. But the negotiations seemed to go on for ever. The issue was highly sensitive politically, involving as it did relations between Tanzania, Zaire and the United States.

  It was fortunate that all four of those young people were mentally as well as physically strong, and fortunate too that they had each other for moral support. Perhaps the worst anguish was during the final days, when one student was kept behind, a lonely hostage, after the ransom had been paid and the others re-leased. But after another two weeks he too was released. It was as though a black cloud had finally moved aside and allowed the sunlight to come flooding back.

  All four eventually recovered from the terrifying ordeal—at least they seemed to have, judging by outward appearances. But I wonder if they will ever entirely free their minds from the psychological torment of those days. The memory, surely, will always be lurking there, ready to erupt in nightmares in times of sickness, loneliness or depression.

  During the period between the night of the kidnapping and the final release of the last hostage, my thoughts of the research at Gombe had been stifled, crushed beneath the load of worry and despair. For a while I had organized some analysis of the data, something to try to keep up the morale of our little group in Dar, but our hearts were not in it. Most of the time I just read novels—I hadn't read so many novels since my school days. But once the hostages had been released I could think again about the future of the research. Derek, Grub and I had made several brief visits to the park, even during the nightmare weeks. We had to encourage and show support for the field staff who, to their great credit, had continued to record basic data entirely on their own initiative.

  Immediately after the raid, a detachment of the Field Force, a special branch of the police, had been sent to Gombe. This highly efficient force, trained to handle all emergencies, was a great comfort to us during our early visits. After a few months it was replaced by a small group of ordinary policemen. Very gradually a feeling of security returned. When we visited, we no longer wondered whether we should take to the forest every time we saw an odd-looking boat. But it was more than a year before I could hear a motor boat stop in the night without leaping up, heart pounding, to gaze toward the lake, wondering whether we should flee up the mountain side.

  Without Derek's help and support I doubt that I could have maintained Gombe after the kidnapping. I had met him in 1973 during a visit to Dar es Salaam and we had, immediately, felt a strong attraction. He had first arrived in Tanzania in 1951. During World War II he had been a fighter pilot in the RAF, but after only a few months of active service, had been shot down in the Middle East. He survived the crash but suffered a spinal injury, and was told he would never walk again. He was nineteen years old at that time. Determined to prove the doctors wrong, he had, through sheer determination, taught himself to move about with the aid of a stick. He had just enough muscles in one leg to move it forward as he walked: the other had to be swung forward from the hip. He learned to drive too, fast and well, even though he had to lift his left leg with one hand in order to transfer his foot from clutch to brake!

  Once mobile, Derek had gone up to Cambridge, where he acquired a bachelor's degree in agriculture. He was then offered a job in England which he instantly rejected. "It was cushy armchair farming," he told me, "suitable for an invalid." Instead he raised the funds to get himself to Kenya where he farmed for two years, then applied to the British government for one of the beautiful farms on the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro in what was then the British protectorate of Tanganyika. There he became a successful wheat farmer—until he met Julius Nyerere, who was then organizing the movement that would eventually lead to Tanganyika's independence. Derek was deeply impressed by Nyerere and became sympathetic to his cause. This changed the course of his life. He joined the Tanganyika African nationalist movement and became so involved in politics that he gave up his beloved farm and moved to the capital, Dar es Salaam. Thus he was firmly entrenched in his adoptive country's politics when independence was finally won in 1961 —just after I arrived at Gombe.

  Derek did much for Tanzania—as Tanganyika became after its union with the island of Zanzibar. He was elected member of parliament for the huge Dar es Salaam constituency of Kinondoni, and was returned, with landslide majorities, every fifth year. He held many cabinet posts, but was best known for his contributions to Tanzanian agricultural policies during two five-year terms as Minister for Agriculture, and for his development of preventive medicine programmes and improved standards of nutrition during the years when he was Minister for Health. When I met him he had resigned from government, but still represented Kinondoni as a member of parliament, and had recently been appointed director of Tanzania's spectacular wildlife parks by President Julius Nyerere.

  After Derek and I were married, I had continued to live at Gombe and he had made periodic visits, flying in for a couple of days at a time in a four-seater single-engine Cessna. Derek loved to watch the chimps, but it was not easy for him to climb the steep slope to camp. We cut steps into the steepest, most treacherous parts of the trail, and rigged up a rope in the very worst stretch so that he could support himself with this on one side while using his stick on the other. This allowed him to go up and down by himself, without leaning on a friendly arm as he had had to do before. But even so, the journey that took the rest of us about ten minutes was a forty-five-minute endurance test for him. Once he slipped and landed heavily on the tip of his spine and was in great pain—though he would never admit it—for several days. Another time he fell and wrenched his knee, which swelled to a tremendous size. But despite the hazard he always insisted that it was worth it.

  During those visits Derek, as director of national parks, had made it his business to become conversant with all that was going on at Gombe. Thus, after the kidnapping, he was able to be really helpful. With his fluent Swahili and his understanding of the Tanzanian character, he helped me to convince the field staff that they could do good work on their own. Although they had acquired so much knowledge and experience during the preceding few years and could follow the chimpanzees skilfully through the forested mountainous terrain, chart their daily movements and association patterns and identify their food plants, they had come to rely on the guidance of the students and the constant presence of "Dr. Jane." Now it was necessary to convince them that they could carry on without us.

  I worked with the men closely during my all too brief visits,
checking on their accuracy and reliability. We gathered together for talks and seminars and I told them about the analysis I was doing in Dar es Salaam—for I had begun to pull together the results of the study for eventual publication in a scientific book. When they understood how I would use the information they were gathering they took more care in writing their reports, making out their charts and maps. Gradually their confidence grew. They elected, from among their number, two viongozi or leaders—Hilali Matama, who had begun work with the chimps in 1968, and Eslom Mpongo, who had joined our team soon afterwards. By 1975 the two of them knew as much about chimpanzees and their behaviour as any so-called expert—and more than most. Their work had become a way of life, and they, and the other members of the team at Gombe, were utterly absorbed and fascinated by the lives of the chimpanzees they were observing. Each time I returned to Gombe I taught them to collect ever more sophisticated data and their reports became increasingly rich. We provided them with a tape recorder so that, if they chanced to witness some exciting or unusual event, they could dictate a more detailed report than they could have put down on paper. Most of them wrote rather slowly and laboriously—one or two, in fact, had only recently learned to write in order to join our staff.

  The Tanzanians worked in teams of two, following a selected "target" chimpanzee for as long as possible during the day—ideally from the time when he or she left the night nest until nightfall. One of the men recorded, in detail, the behaviour of the target. The other plotted the travel route, listed the foods eaten, and kept note of the other chimpanzees who were encountered and how long they remained with the target. Between them the men also described any interesting events concerning individuals other than the target. Often, after supper, the two men who had been out following would come to tell us what they had seen during the day. We would sit companionably on the soft sand outside the house, with the waves lapping or slamming into the shingle, and listen to the musical Swahili voices describing a hunt, a boundary patrol, or some amusing incident they had observed.