by Sheri Speede
The following day, I kept Becky and Pepe inside, while Jacky went into the enclosure with Nama and Dorothy. This day was a success, too. After Dorothy slowly made her way around the perimeter of the enclosure, she collected a stick from the edge of the forest and used it to groom herself while she relaxed in the shade just outside the cage. I was happy that, in contrast to the day before, she chose a resting spot outside of the cage. Like she had with Pepe the day before, Nama spent time in the forest with Jacky, and they returned calmly to their separate cages for dinner.
Nervously, on the third day, I allowed all five chimpanzees in the enclosure together. Estelle had arrived on the train the evening before for a short visit, and she encouraged me to move forward. As usual, I was glad she was there.
This first day that all five chimpanzees were together gave birth to an amazing and unexpected alliance that would establish the hierarchy of the group for the next decade. Jacky, Pepe, and Becky were congregated outside Dorothy and Nama’s cage when we opened the door. Coaxed by Nama pulling on her arm, Dorothy passed through the door, scared but trusting, and followed Nama several yards into the enclosure. With five chimpanzees, the social dynamic was more complicated. With my heart pounding like I had just run a mile, I watched with Estelle, Kenneth, and the caregivers as all five chimpanzees sat around the front of the cage with a nervous energy in the air. While Becky wasn’t overtly friendly and welcoming to either Nama or Dorothy, she wasn’t behaving aggressively either. I had just released a sigh of relief about Becky’s behavior when Pepe surprised me. Hairs on end, he ran stomping past Dorothy and slapped her hard on her relatively frail back, the sound resonating loudly against her chest wall. She screamed in confusion and looked to me for help. Equally surprised, I had no good options for helping her, other than to get her back in the cage and close the door. Estelle and I called for her to come, and she tried but only got as far as the outside cage wall, against which she cowered in terror as Pepe charged at her again, puffed up and terrifying.
“Pepe, no!” Estelle and I both shouted, although I doubted whether our scolding would have any effect. Fortunately, Dorothy didn’t need to rely on us. Nama intercepted Pepe, and the events of the next few seconds happened so fast that it was impossible to comprehend them as rapidly as they unfolded. About half Pepe’s size, Nama plowed into him from the side, catching him midstride. For several moments I couldn’t discern who was who in the screaming, blurry mass of brawling chimpanzees, much less who was getting the best of whom. Jacky and Becky were vocalizing from the sidelines, but they didn’t enter the battle physically, and I couldn’t tell who they were supporting in this initial stage of Nama’s fight to protect Dorothy. I was terrified for Nama, but when she and Pepe broke apart, it was he who fled into the forest, screaming. Nama sat near Dorothy panting from exertion, and while she caught her breath, she never took her wary eyes from the forest trail Pepe had entered.
Five minutes later, Pepe returned, exiting the forest on a different trail, with his eyes trained again on Dorothy, who was still sitting with her back up against the cage wall. I had called to her over and over after Pepe had left, but she had chosen not to enter the cage. She was trusting Nama to stand their ground. As Pepe approached slowly but menacingly, Nama paced back and forth in front of Dorothy, aware of Pepe’s every move, like a dedicated, lionhearted sentry. She probably couldn’t have ultimately prevailed against Pepe, given the disparity in their sizes, but it was crystal clear that she was prepared to fight again.
Not only was I terrified for both Dorothy and Nama, I was upset and disappointed on a personal level that Pepe was behaving so badly. Two days earlier, his kindness toward Dorothy brought tears to my eyes. Now he was trying to assume dominance by cruelly bullying her, the weakest in the group. I knew that male chimpanzees were all about power and dominance and that they commonly bullied weaker males to make themselves appear stronger. There were no weaker males in Pepe’s group—only Dorothy, who posed no threat to him. He was transferring his aggression from Jacky, the real target, onto someone safer—using Dorothy in a display to show Jacky he was dominant. Reflecting in hindsight, it made me think Jacky had already gained an edge in their battle for dominance. Pepe was acting more like a challenger and probably had been for some time. With my limited experience I just hadn’t recognized it, and perhaps I was blinded by my bias.
Of course, chimpanzees aren’t the only great apes to use cruel and unattractive bullying tactics. Studies demonstrating the universality of bullying in human cultures and the frequency with which it occurs in nonhuman primate societies suggest that its evolutionary roots stem back to our common ancestor with chimpanzees, and even much earlier.3 While I knew that Pepe’s behavior was typical and that I shouldn’t be disappointed with him for behaving like a chimpanzee, I wondered if I had exacerbated the ugly tendency with the way I chose to proceed with the integration—introducing him to the females first, and then Jacky. In any case, Pepe’s strategy was not a winning one.
Just at that moment in the dangerous confrontation between Nama and Pepe, Jacky made a decision that would have far-reaching consequences. He took up a position beside Nama, just in front of Dorothy. With only a quick glance in his direction, Nama understood immediately that in Jacky she had an ally. Almost instantly, not waiting for Pepe to charge again, Nama and Jacky took the offensive. Together they charged at Pepe with overwhelming force. They chased him into the forest screaming, and he didn’t dare come back for more. Pepe never bullied Dorothy again, and with Nama at his side, older and smaller Jacky would become the definitive leader of the group. Together Jacky and Nama would maintain peace in their community of chimpanzees, which we would rapidly expand with the addition of young orphans, for the next ten years.
Only a few days after the fateful introduction in the forest, Nama and Dorothy began following Jacky to the cage he shared with Pepe and Becky, making it clear that they wanted to eat and sleep there, so I let them. While Dorothy might not have trusted Pepe, and she didn’t ask for his reassurance the way she did with Jacky and Nama, she didn’t hold a grudge against him, either. After that frightening day of turmoil, they began to associate peaceably with mutual grooming. Unfortunately, it was Dorothy’s relationship with Becky that would be more problematic in the longer term.
Nama and Jacky couldn’t solve Dorothy’s distressing social problems with Becky as easily as they had protected her from Pepe. Becky was much bigger than Nama, and just as dominant, loved by both Jacky and Pepe. I even wondered if competition with Nama was why Becky chose to bully Dorothy. In any case, Nama must have known to pick her battles carefully. She sat on the sidelines as Becky bullied and tormented Dorothy, humiliating rather than causing physical harm. I quit giving cups of tea when I saw Becky pouring it over the top of poor Dorothy’s head, the latter screaming in anguish as the tea dripped down her face. As Becky spat and threw dirt on her, Dorothy sometimes reached out her hand to me, grimacing helplessly and begging me for help. Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to help her, I couldn’t solve the problem with Becky either. My angry reprimands went unheeded.
Once, when Becky went too far, I saw Nama draw the line. After hearing Dorothy screaming near the satellite cage, I arrived on the scene at the same time Nama emerged from the forest to discover the cause of Dorothy’s emotional plea for help. Becky was hitting her on the top of her head and shoulders with a sturdy stick, three feet long and a half-inch thick. Dorothy was seemingly powerless to stop the abuse, but Nama wasn’t. With little drama, Nama quietly interposed herself between Dorothy and Becky. Facing Becky, Nama wrapped her own hand around the stick and tried to pull it from Becky’s hand. During several seconds of intense eye contact between these two strong females, Becky resisted, hanging on stubbornly to the stick and pulling back. I didn’t breathe, waiting to see who would win this war of wills. When Becky finally released the stick, the tension dissipated instantly. Nama scooted away and, almost casually, tossed the stick toward the forest. It was still
in sight, so Becky could have picked it up again, but she didn’t. Nama had made her point, strongly and effectively, without aggression. It was the only time I saw Becky use a stick to hurt Dorothy.
As the months passed, Becky paid less attention to Dorothy. She lost interest in tormenting her, and in fact generally ignored her. Dorothy spent most of her days alone on the ground near the edge of the forest, while Nama and the other chimpanzees enjoyed the forest and strengthened their mutual bonds.
During Sanaga-Yong Center’s first year of operation, while we followed with intense interest the adult dramas unfolding in one area of the forest, we opened a nursery in another. I had envisioned “my” sanctuary with a small infrastructure to provide for adult chimpanzees—for the long-suffering captives I had befriended at hotels. I would leave it to Limbe Wildlife Center and Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund to take care of orphaned infants. I would direct the small “adults-only” sanctuary while I spearheaded campaigns to stop the killing and orphaning of free-living chimpanzees. I was already an activist at heart, and coming to know and love the adult chimpanzee orphans had made the conservation issues personal for me. However, my vision for a small sanctuary wasn’t realistic in the context of the country I had chosen. Cameroon’s thriving illegal trade in ape meat was orphaning dozens, if not hundreds, of chimpanzee infants every year. Although only a small percentage was ever rescued, the other sanctuaries were filling up fast.
My vision evolved soon after the manager of a logging company stopped by our camp with information about a sad, sick baby chimpanzee in a village sixty miles from us. I was away buying supplies in Yaoundé, so the concerned logger gave Kenneth money for gas to go pick up the baby. Kenneth knew that under no circumstances should he buy the baby chimp. It would fuel the trade and work against our mission. He didn’t have any money anyway, so he wasn’t tempted. Using only his powers of diplomacy and persuasion, Kenneth managed to drive away from the village with the little chimpanzee. When I returned to camp, I first hoped that we could take the two-year-old boy, who Kenneth and volunteer Roberta Sandoli had named Bikol, to one of the other sanctuaries in Cameroon. Only after learning that neither of them had room for him at the time did I let myself fall in love.
Soon afterward, the brother of a hunter brought six-month-old baby Gabby, thinking he could sell him to us. Kenneth threatened the man with arrest by the military police and sent him on his way without Gabby. The incident, which made me fearful that poachers harboring the idea of selling to us might specifically target chimpanzees with babies, inspired us to publicize in the surrounding villages and in Bélabo that we would never buy chimpanzees, and that people who tried to sell them could be arrested. The first prosecution of a chimpanzee dealer in Cameroon would come six years later, after Israeli national Ofir Drori’s Last Great Ape Organization would start collaborating with the Cameroon government on wildlife law enforcement.
In February 2000, when Greg Rossell and Anita Phillips arrived to build our electric enclosure for the adult group, we were caring for babies Bikol and Gabby in our camp. The talented builders found time to contribute in huge measure to our professionalism by building a much-needed nursery complex, which consisted of a wooden sleeping house and a smaller electric enclosure.
By the end of our first year in operation, our juvenile population had grown to seven, ranging in age from one to four years. My vision for a small sanctuary for adult chimpanzees was gone. In the years to come, the majority of the chimpanzees we would rescue would be young infants for whom we would be surrogate mothers until we could integrate them with older chimpanzees. We would eventually integrate many into Jacky’s group.
The staff, volunteers, and I alternated taking the babies for long daily walks along a complex network of forest trails. During our excursions, the older babies climbed high in the canopy, while the younger ones climbed lower and played on the ground around us, sometimes napping sweetly on our laps when we rested. We human surrogates were the babies’ authority figures and their protectors. We provided love and hugs, but also harsh scolding when it was required to intervene in skirmishes or protect ourselves from naughty behavior, like hair pulling. Because we loved them and they needed all we provided, they were upset if we were angry with them. A reprimand was usually followed by whimpers of apology and quick reconciliation. In the forest, whenever we stood to go, all the babies raced toward us, flying down tree trunks, competing for one of the prized riding spots in our arms or on our backs or clinging to our legs. When I was alone with them, on days we were shorthanded, some would need to simply grab a fistful of my shirttail, or even walk a few steps ahead on the trail. One thing is sure, none of the babies intended to be left alone. They were needy and loving, and their social dynamic was relatively uncomplicated.
Twelve
Challenges on My Side of the Fence
While I enjoyed the babies and fretted over Dorothy’s struggle to find her comfortable place in the small group of adult chimpanzees, I worked to keep harmonious relationships with the people of the village amid a confusing and evolving political and social backdrop. An important occurrence was the enthroning of a new traditional chief in the Mbargue Forest village of Mbinang, about three and a half miles from our camp. All our dealings had thus far been with Chief Gaspard of Bikol 1, but the traditional territory of Mbinang, I soon learned, encompassed the two Bikols and five other small villages. We had first arrived in the Mbargue Forest soon after the longtime traditional chief of Mbinang had died, and there followed a lengthy dispute over who would be the succeeding chief. I might say that the confusion had left a power vacuum in which the leaders of the small villages had been free to assume autonomous rule, but actually, as I understood it, neither the chief nor the people of Mbinang had used this part of the forest for hunting or farming or paid any attention to it whatsoever for many years before. The local population didn’t see fit to mention to me that Mbinang politics might affect us, and the divisional officer who negotiated our first agreement either had not known about Mbinang’s traditional role or didn’t think it was significant.
In fact, the location of Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center—I finally chose this name for the sanctuary because its location was near the confluence of the Sanaga and Yong Rivers—in the forest behind Bikol 1 gave this part of Mbinang’s territory much more importance to the new chief. The sanctuary was considered a form of development, and the area would no longer be ignored. Soon after Chief Tendi Ibrahim was officially installed as the replacement of his uncle, he sent a letter to inform me that I was in his territory illegitimately. I was obliged to enlist the help of the divisional officer again to negotiate and sign a new agreement with the chief of Mbinang. This time we worked with the village people to draw up expanded boundaries, and Chief Ibrahim signed an agreement that prohibited logging, farming, and hunting within the 225 acres of Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center. In exchange, I would hire all our staff from the villages, instead of bringing more qualified people from other parts of Cameroon, and continue to buy the food we needed for chimpanzees, staff, and volunteers from village farmers. I had already compensated the few farmers from Bikol who had been using plots inside our boundaries.
I abided by my part of the agreement and was a good neighbor in the community in other ways as well. I started providing medical care when I realized that people in the villages were dying for lack of simple treatments. The government hospital in Bélabo required payment in advance for consultations and all treatments, and there were no exceptions. People could die in the hospital parking lot for lack of a few francs. For people in our village community, I dispensed medications for malaria, respiratory infections, and diarrhea, and I allowed them to pay me afterward in fruit for the chimpanzees or by doing work around the sanctuary. But some of the treatments I provided for illnesses and injuries weren’t so simple. I sutured some terrible machete wounds, including one that was intentionally inflicted upon a man by his wife, and treated various other severe injuries, includi
ng third-degree burns in a child whose clothes caught fire. I often wished the people had much more specialized care, but I was much more skilled than anyone else they had, and I did my best. The care I gave saved a lot of lives. Ministering to human maladies took a lot of my time and distracted me from the work of the sanctuary. I sometimes resented it, but I kept my complaints to myself. The people who stood before me asking for medical help had no other options. I couldn’t turn them away.
In return, I insisted that the people of the villages live up to their part of their agreement with me, but they were less than 100 percent compliant. One afternoon from camp I heard a chain saw cutting in the forest nearby, and thought it might be from inside our boundaries. I knew it wasn’t Liboz or any of Coron’s men, because they had moved on. I suspected the cutting was by illegal loggers we called “chain saw guys.” These local chain saw operators followed the roads made by logging companies with legal concessions and cut smaller and/or more-difficult-to-access trees left behind by the big companies. Working in small groups of two or three, they could slice a tree into planks where it fell and carry the planks out of the forest on top of their heads to stack them on a waiting truck.
