Kindred Beings

by Sheri Speede

  My maternal instincts were in full swing, and back in camp my baby daughter was thriving. When I was busy working, which was usually the case, she was riding contentedly on her nanny Helene’s back, tied there securely by a square of colorful cloth called a pagne, which I had bought in Bélabo with the intention of using myself. Helene taught me to wrap the cloth all the way around Annarose and myself and to tie the four corners tightly, up high on my chest. All the women of the village kept their hands free for work by tying their babies on their backs in this manner. Unfortunately, I couldn’t breathe well with the pagne tied around my chest, and I was always nervous that Annarose would fall out of it. I lamented half seriously that she wasn’t learning to cling to me as a baby chimpanzee her age would be doing, as the baby chimpanzees in our nursery did when I took them to the forest. Apparently, the clinging or grasping ability didn’t offer a strong survival advantage to the babies of bipedal hominids with free arms to carry them (or tie them with pagnes), and therefore the evolutionary process didn’t select for it. I thought it was a regrettable loss. But for Helene and Annarose the pagne seemed a natural fit. Annarose often slept with her beautiful little head against Helene’s back, where I imagined she was soothed by the sound of a beating heart. She could already hold her balance sitting up, and she had a joyful belly laugh, which George elicited for the first time making goofy faces during one of his brief visits. I was stunned to hear her laugh out loud for him, her shining brown eyes glued to his face, when she had not yet done so with me. It was my first inkling that Annarose would have an adoring relationship with her father that was quite independent of any involvement with me. She was in direct contact with an adult human almost twenty-four hours a day. It made me sorry for children around the world who had less care and even sorrier than I was before for our young chimpanzee orphans. I wished that each of them had a mother who would, if necessary, die trying to protect them. But for them, in this terribly unnatural sanctuary circumstance, there was only me, trying to make decisions that would secure a better future for them without endangering them too much.

  Because Jacky and Nama had emerged as leaders of the small group, I wanted to encourage a strong bond between them and the babies. After a few days, I let the two of them enter the juveniles’ chamber first, and over several more days I was delighted to observe their sweet playfulness and intuitive gentleness. Even while Jacky and Nama were inside the chamber with them, some of the babies chose to play with Pepe, Becky, or Caroline through the mesh wall. Jacky and Nama monitored the interactions carefully. Caroline was playing with her old friends like we would have expected from another kid; integrating them back with her would be no problem. Dorothy groomed all the juveniles sweetly, Becky kept inviting the eager little males to copulate with her through the cage mesh, which they happily did even though all were far from puberty, and Pepe loved to make them all laugh hysterically with his tender tickling.

  One afternoon I was watching when Pepe became too persistent in tickling the back of Gabby’s thigh, a place where many chimpanzees are ticklish. At two and a half years of age, Gabby was our youngest baby, and I thought he was the most vulnerable. As Pepe held on to his small ankle and pinched playfully at his thigh, Gabby’s reaction turned quickly from squirming laughter to a frantic struggle to get free. When he screamed, Jacky rose immediately to intervene, and Nama too appeared ready to pounce. However, before either of them had time to act, Pepe willingly responded to Gabby’s scream, releasing his leg and looking tenderly at his backside as he scooted away. After a few moments’ respite out of Pepe’s reach, Gabby returned to be tickled again. Pepe had showed me that he meant no harm, and in any case, Jacky and Nama were willing protectors. I decided then to open the doors and let them all go together into the forested enclosure the following day.

  When we opened the sliding doors, the big adults all welcomed the vulnerable and trusting juveniles with open arms. After a half hour of hugging and playing just outside the cage, the kids seemed willing to follow these adults they admired anywhere. Soon, the whole group moved together along a trail leading into the forest, out of my and the caregivers’ sight. I was happy to see that even Dorothy went along. Three weeks had passed since we moved the babies from the nursery, and the integration had gone perfectly so far.

  A month later, it seemed as though the group of twelve had always been together. Nama and Jacky rarely carried any of the babies, but they played with them, and more important, they comforted, protected, and mediated conflicts without discrimination. The caregivers called Nama “la mère du monde,” mother of the world. She and Jacky broke up skirmishes between the juveniles and meted out discipline justly—always seeming to know who needed the scolding. Pepe and Becky both let young Gabby ride on their backs, and he was the only one who ever had the privilege of sharing Becky’s tire-bed. Dorothy was always gentle with the babies, but their roughhousing seemed to get on her nerves. She enjoyed grooming them when they were calm, and she tried her best to ignore them when they were rambunctious.

  However, within another month I noticed that four-year-old Bouboule, who had been a clingy baby with his human surrogates, was now always with Dorothy, and she was grooming and kissing him frequently. When they sat together, rarely could any light be seen between them, and when she rose to leave, she often paused so he could jump on her back to ride. When she didn’t want him to ride, he walked beside her with his arm draped across her back. Only when Dorothy was resting comfortably did Bouboule venture from her side to play with the other juveniles. He had found the mother he needed so badly.

  Dorothy not only coddled and nurtured Bouboule, she exerted herself to protect him. If a conflict with another juvenile wasn’t going his way, he ran to Dorothy’s arms or hid behind her bulk. A soft bark from Dorothy would quickly dissuade any young pursuers.

  Becky didn’t seem to like Bouboule much, and once, irritated by his rowdy behavior near her, she barked and hit at him. It was a mild disciplinary rebuke, but Dorothy didn’t like it. She spontaneously unfurled a back fist punch that landed squarely on Becky’s upper arm. I winced with worry, waiting for Becky’s wrath, surprised that Dorothy had invited it. Indignant and angry, Becky turned to scream at Dorothy, but the latter wasn’t cowering in fear as she had done so many times before. She was screaming right back at Becky, their faces inches apart. Jacky and Nama stayed out of it, and the two female chimpanzees soon quieted down, without any biting or any blows thrown except Dorothy’s first one.

  The social dynamic had changed. In her forties, Dorothy’s role as a first-time mother had transformed her. Whereas she had not been emotionally capable of defending herself against Becky, she could and would assert herself to protect her adopted son, Bouboule. Her newfound assertiveness elevated her status in the group, earning her a universal respect she had not enjoyed before. She and Becky would eventually become the best of friends.

  Fifteen

  The Unspeakable

  In late September 2002, I was in the town of Bélabo collecting our weekly supplies of soap and bleach and some food items, such as rice and pasta, that we couldn’t buy from the villages when volunteer Agnes Souchal used the satellite phone to call me from camp.

  Agnes was a French national who had arrived to volunteer at Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center a few months earlier. She was thirty years old, although she looked younger, and no more than five foot two. She had stunning hazel eyes and wore her dark brown hair in a very short style that wouldn’t have flattered most women but was a nice frame for her classically pretty face.

  Agnes’s approach to the work was serious and cautious, as she wanted to do everything correctly. She asked a lot of “what if” questions, expecting me to have a plan for every possible contingency. This unnerved me a little bit, because I dealt with issues as they came up. I kept my eye on what I wanted to accomplish and visualized it happening that way. Inspired by my love for the chimpanzees, I had had the single-minded determination to push my vision through, but I
had made some mistakes along the way. I was beginning to realize that more caution and anticipation of pitfalls could serve me well. It had been a year since Kenneth had left and I needed a manager I could trust to replace him. I wondered if Agnes’s personality might be a good complement to mine. She was unusually smart, and I sensed in her a unique strength of character combined with gentleness. I really liked her.

  A month earlier, Agnes couldn’t have contacted me by phone in Bélabo because mobile phone service had just arrived, but she reached me that September afternoon with bad news. Pepe had fallen from a tall tree. The caregivers had seen him fall an hour earlier and hadn’t seen him since.

  Without regard for the suspension system of our old red pickup, I flew across the bumpy dirt road leading from town to camp, making the trip that usually took over an hour in under forty-five minutes. Pulling into camp, I stepped down from the truck with my heart pounding even before I ran as fast as I could down the trail through the forest to the enclosure. I found Agnes and caregivers Akono and Assou waiting for me outside the enclosure, as close as they could get to where they had seen Pepe fall.

  Knitting her brow with worry, Agnes pointed up high to the limb of the tree just inside the forest from which the caregivers had seen Pepe drop. I bent my neck back to see the limb near the top of the tall tree. “My God! It must be a hundred meters.” I said, anguish bleeding through my words.

  Akono and Assou had both seen what happened.

  “Out on the limb, Pepe swung a stick to hit Jacky. When Jacky grabbed the stick, Pepe lost his balance,” Assou explained. “Then Jacky must have let go, because Pepe was holding the stick when he fell,” Akono finished.

  They had seen Pepe’s facedown free fall through the long expanse of open air, before trees rising to lower heights obscured his landing. Pepe was younger, larger, and stronger than Jacky. It was natural for him to want to dominate and lead, but Jacky’s gentleness and calm demeanor had won him the support of the whole group. Nama, Dorothy, and the juveniles had all established good relationships with Pepe, but they would never take his side against Jacky. Even Becky couldn’t go against Jacky. Without support from the group, Pepe couldn’t beat Jacky in a battle on the ground, but he couldn’t quell his hunger for power. Finally, he had tried aerial combat.

  The caregivers had been calling to Pepe since he fell. They had heard one bark of fear soon after he landed, and nothing since. Now all the other eleven chimpanzees in the group were inside the satellite cage, having responded to the caregivers’ beckoning drumbeat, and I had to go into the enclosure to find Pepe.

  The anger Pepe had exhibited toward me during my pregnancy had dissipated after Annarose was born. His displays against me had stopped, and he had begun sweetly soliciting my interaction again. Unfortunately, I had remained somewhat nervous about approaching him for months longer, and as a new mother with a whole project to run, I had been too occupied to have a lot of time to spend with him. He and I had begun reestablishing some of our old rapport only a couple of months earlier. In any case, not knowing how badly Pepe was hurt, it was scary to enter the forested enclosure, as we all knew he could be volatile and might react to us being in his territory. I loaded a dart of anesthesia in my dart gun to carry along just in case and asked the caregivers if one of them would come with me. When Akono volunteered to go, I was grateful for his bravery.

  After only a few minutes of searching, we found Pepe lying facedown on the forest floor, in the spot where he had fallen. Kneeling beside him, I saw that he was breathing. When I touched him and called his name, he spoke a soft fear bark, telling me something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. Pepe was conscious, but he couldn’t move.

  “Go get a stretcher and some help,” I told Akono. “We need to carry him back to the cage.” Waiting for Akono to return, I bent low to the ground in front of Pepe’s face, and through tears, groomed his face and tried to assure him that I would help him.

  As darkness approached, Akono returned with Assou, carrying a bamboo bench we would use as a stretcher. When we turned Pepe over, he cried out in pain, and again when we lifted him onto the stretcher. I knew that if he had fractured a bone in his neck or back we shouldn’t be moving him like this, but I couldn’t leave him on the forest floor with night approaching. There were too many dangers. Other large mammals couldn’t get through the fence into the enclosure, but carnivorous ants and, to a lesser extent, snakes were big concerns. We transported Pepe to an empty chamber of the satellite cage that had been vacated by Dorothy and Nama and lifted him as gently as possible onto a bed of woodchips and leaves that Agnes had prepared on the floor.

  Pepe couldn’t sit up or even lift his arms or legs, but lying on his back, he could move his head from side to side. I placed a kerosene lamp beside the cage, and with a big syringe I squirted water into his mouth. After swallowing gratefully, he opened his mouth again and again for more. I peeled bananas and a papaya and cut them into small pieces. When he ate them willingly, I knew he had a will to survive this devastating injury. I would have stayed with him that night and many others to come, but baby Annarose needed me in camp. She was with Helene from the village all day, but I needed to be with her at night. I posted our night watchman in the cage with Pepe and asked the volunteers to check on him throughout the night.

  During the next week, I consulted with two neurologists, and from Pepe’s symptoms, we concluded that he injured his spinal cord in the lower part of his neck. We had no way to take an X-ray to determine if he had fractured a vertebra, but the neurologists thought he might possibly recover if given enough time. The caregivers, volunteers, and I hand-fed and cleaned him and turned him frequently to prevent pressure sores. I spent hours with him every day, comforting him, doing gentle physical therapy, reflecting on the time I had known him, and praying, in my way, that he would recover.

  Very slowly, for five weeks after his terrible fall, Pepe incrementally regained some ability to move his arms and legs. Although he was frustrated, he ate well and enjoyed the grooming and attention I and the others gave him. During these weeks, he was never able to sit up, but he began to vocalize with enthusiasm to greet the chimpanzees from his group when they visited his cage from the forest. I knew that Pepe would never be the same, but I was hopeful that he might regain enough functional mobility to have a decent life.

  Then one night, the guard who was assigned to stay inside Pepe’s cage to assure his safety abandoned his post. The guard’s most important job was to watch for protein-eating ants and to soak the ground with premixed kerosene and water to change their direction if they should approach the cage. The villagers knew how to effectively turn away ants in this manner long before I arrived in the Mbargue Forest. In fact, they had taught me how to do it. But on this awful night while Pepe was completely defenseless against them, millions of carnivorous ants attacked him. At six thirty in the morning, Agnes woke me up banging on my cabin door.

  She spoke through the door. “Sheri, Pepe is covered in ants. It’s horrible!!”

  It was the worst thing I could have heard. I jumped from my bed, and in my pajamas with sixteen-month-old Annarose bouncing roughly on my hip, I raced down the trail to the enclosure where Pepe was lying on a bed of woodchips. As I approached the cage, but before I could really see Pepe, the horror of what was happening hit me like a punch in the gut. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears.

  “Goddammit!” The guttural profanity sounded like it came from someone else, but I vaguely knew it was my own scream of anguish. People were just standing there! Pepe was covered with ants! I saw his face. He was biting his lip.

  “Get the woodchips out.” I don’t know if I actually said it out loud this first time, or if it was just the thought forming. Then I yelled it, “Get the woodchips out!” It was the only way we could rescue Pepe. We had to remove the woodchips with the millions of ants crawling through and then pick the ants off him. “Get the fucking woodchips out!” My tone was murderous. Volunteer Jennifer Schneide
r pulled Annarose, who was crying, from my arms, and for once, Annarose didn’t resist leaving me. Agnes, another volunteer named Phillip, and I used our hands, our feet, and the small brooms normally used for cage cleaning to sweep away the ant-infested woodchips from around and under Pepe, whose pain and anguish were only reflected in the movements of his mouth when he bit his lip or ground his teeth. We doused our legs and hands with kerosene to repel the ants and still frantically slapped at them on our bodies as we worked, wincing at their bites, fighting the urge to run to safety. We swept the woodchips onto scraps of plywood, our makeshift dustpans, in order to move them outside the cage to a growing pile, which we repeatedly doused with kerosene. When caregivers Assou and Akono showed up for their 7:00 A.M. shift, we were able to work faster.

  When the woodchips were gone, we spent the next several hours painstakingly pulling thousands of the hideous flesh-eating ants from Pepe’s nose, eyes, ears, and everywhere else on his body. They were even inside his anus, and I used my fingers to dig them out. I spoke to Pepe constantly as I worked to save him, but he didn’t budge, didn’t look at me, didn’t respond in any way to my attempts to comfort him. He seemed to be somewhere else, keeping his eyes straight ahead toward the roof of his cage. I imagined him trying futilely to save himself with his limited arm and leg movements, until complete exhaustion caused his surrender.