Kindred Beings

by Sheri Speede

  As much as I loved Dorothy, I didn’t like her son much at that stage of his life. I had known him since Estelle and I had rescued him as a two-year-old from a village where he had been tied up in ankle-deep mud beside a pig, malnourished and covered with sarcoptic mange—arguably the most itchy skin disease known to man or chimp. I had bottle-fed him and cared for him when he was ill. I had watched him mature as Dorothy’s love had seemed to transform him from an insecure, lonely baby to a happy, self-confident chimp child, full of laughter. Unfortunately, as he approached puberty, his mean streak surfaced. Almost all adolescent male chimps can be unpredictable and dangerous. They wield phenomenal physical strength for their size and are usually eager to prove themselves, gain power, and climb the social ladder. Bullying is a common chimpanzee tactic for trying to demonstrate dominance, but Bouboule had a particular penchant for it that our other male chimpanzees his age did not.

  Dorothy used her back fist punch to defend Bouboule many times, but she occasionally used it to discipline him as well. One hot afternoon when she was inside enjoying the cool of the shaded cage, I sat just outside the cage enjoying her company. She was grooming my face when Bouboule, who I believed was jealous, ran in from the forest to surprise me with a painful punch to my nose. He had backed away from the cage wall and was coming back for a second go at me—although this time it was merely intimidation because he could see I was cupping my aching nose well out of his reach—when Dorothy’s back fist, delivered with perfect timing, landed squarely on his chest. Accompanied by a harsh vocal scolding from Dorothy and from me, for whatever my input was worth, it sent Bouboule running back to the forest.

  Another incident about the same time, during the last month of her nine-month pregnancy, involved Mado. Mado had been one of those first six juveniles introduced to Dorothy and the other adults in January 2002. Now Mado was heavy and easily tired, and by her own choice, she spent more time reclining in the satellite cage and less in the forest. One afternoon, she was resting on the cool concrete when Bouboule began menacing her hatefully—running past her over and over, slapping her hard on the back each time. All the other chimps were deep in the forest, but from her shady spot at the edge of it, Dorothy heard Mado screaming in distress. She rushed, as much as Dorothy was able to rush, to Mado’s rescue, firing off a barrage of barking as she entered the cage, quickly followed by a back fist punch at Bouboule that didn’t land well. That the punch failed to land didn’t matter. Dorothy’s scolding was enough. As Bouboule stomped out of the cage, Dorothy accepted Mado’s grateful embrace with open arms, patting the back of the much younger chimp soothingly as she held her. Watching from the corridor of the cage, it felt like my love for Dorothy was too much for my heart to hold. Somehow it was painful, and I cried.

  In the late winter of 2008, we had an outbreak of a terrible respiratory infection that spread like wildfire through all our chimpanzee groups. Dorothy, like many of the others, became very ill. Unlike the others, she didn’t bounce back within a few days. Although she began to enjoy her food again, she was losing weight in spite of it, and her respiratory rate remained rapid. While I was in Yaoundé, Agnes entered her cage to collect blood for some tests I requested, and Dorothy, who was happy for the close contact with Agnes, cooperated fully for the procedure. But the blood work was unremarkable, and without X-ray or ultrasound machines my diagnostic capabilities were limited. Because her illness started with a viral respiratory infection, I suspected a secondary infection of some sort. I tried a variety of treatments, and Dorothy seemed to stabilize for a while, but she never returned to normal. She was tired.

  For several more months, she enjoyed sitting in the shade at the edge of the forest, especially at “her” corner of the fence line, from where she had an open view in three directions. From her favorite viewpoint she could be sure to see Bouboule, Nama, Jacky, Mado and baby Njabeya, Bikol, and others emerging from their twenty acres of forest along any of a number of chimpanzee trails to join her back at the satellite cage where they would greet her happily, often with hugs. On the opposite side of the fence, she could see the opening of the long trail that led from the center’s camp. She was always the first to hear and then see her caregivers bringing food and always the first to know what particular food they were bringing. Through happy grunts and enthusiastic screams she conveyed her excitement, the lesser or greater degree of it depending on how much she liked the food, to her friends who were often out of sight in the forest.

  On September 24, 2008, Dorothy lay down on the grass of this favorite spot at the edge of the forest and died. I had left Sanaga-Yong Center for Yaoundé the day before, and Agnes was on vacation in France. Volunteer Monica Szczupider called me at five o’clock in the afternoon to tell me what had happened.

  Dorothy came to the cage and ate normally at two o’clock, and only an hour later caregivers Assou and Emmanuel noticed that she wasn’t moving in the enclosure. They called Monica, and together they strained to see if Dorothy was breathing. No one thought she was, but they couldn’t be sure from their vantage point outside of the enclosure. They couldn’t enter the enclosure to approach Dorothy as long as all the territorial males were outside, so they beat the drum to call the chimpanzees inside. The drum normally signals dinnertime, but as it was too early for dinner, the chimpanzees took their time responding. Nama was the first to discover Dorothy, and she was the last to leave her. At one point Monica and the caregivers lost sight of Dorothy as many of the chimpanzees surrounded her. Strong and sensitive Jacky fell on his back, screaming in distress. Bouboule came from the forest, entered the satellite cage, and was closed inside without realizing what had happened. Looking back out and realizing something was wrong, he cried out in fear and confusion. Over the course of more than an hour, all the chimpanzees responded to the persistent drum call. Gradually, one by one, they entered the satellite cage, until only Nama sat beside Dorothy’s lifeless body, her hand resting gently on it. Finally, the sight of dinner being served enticed her to sadly enter the cage with the others. When the caregivers got to Dorothy’s body, it was already cool.

  I raced to get on the 6:00 P.M. train heading back to Sanaga-Yong Center. Agnes caught me on my cell phone in the taxi on the way to the train station. “Hello, Agnes,” I answered, recognizing the number showing on the tiny screen.

  “Hey, Sheri,” she answered back. I knew from the silence following her simple greeting that Monica had called her, too. Agnes, more than anyone else, knew how I felt. We sat in silence for thirty seconds, feeling each other’s pain across a thousand miles.

  “I’m about to get on the train. I’ll call you tomorrow,” I told her, and as I hung up slowly, I heard her say, “Okay.”

  After an eight-hour train ride to the town of Bélabo, followed by a bumpy drive to the Mbargue Forest, I arrived at Sanaga-Yong Center around 3:00 A.M. Dorothy’s body was on the floor in the veterinary clinic. I sat beside her on the floor to see her beautiful, peaceful face illuminated by my head torch, to touch her fingers to my face a final time, to feel her coarse hair, and even to smell her body odor, although death had already changed her scent. I knew the heart of this kind chimpanzee—she had earned my admiration and my respect. Alone with Dorothy’s body, I cried and said my good-bye. I would never, ever forget her. As much as I didn’t want to, I knew at first light I would perform an autopsy. I needed to know why Dorothy died, and there was no one else to do the procedure.

  Dawn came, and I put my feelings on hold to do the work at hand. I tried to focus all my attention on liver, intestines, heart, lungs, trying hard to block out the aching fact that they had made up the body of someone I loved. A few minutes into the autopsy, I heard Severin, our guard at the front gate, announce that someone from the village of Bikol was waiting. I didn’t understand the person’s name over the crackly radio, and I didn’t really care. I guessed it was a sick person, needing medical care. Both Agnes and I administered health care almost daily when we were on-site.

  “No
t today, for God’s sake,” I mumbled, although I knew I wouldn’t be able to turn a critically ill person away. Throughout the autopsy, I was peripherally aware of Severin’s voice on the radio, again and again, announcing the arrival of someone. Deeply sad and tired, I was annoyed at the prospect of having to do anything but grieve and bury Dorothy. How the hell many people were waiting for me at the gate, I wondered, and what could be wrong with them that they were coming so early? Were we having some awful epidemic in the village? When I had finished the autopsy, concluding that Dorothy had probably died of heart disease, and sewed up her body neatly, I reached for the radio with dread. In my American-accented French that didn’t hide my fatigue or my impatience, I asked of our gate guard, “Severin, who is waiting at the gate?”

  “La population,” Severin answered simply. The population. It took me all of two seconds to comprehend that people in the community, hearing the afternoon before that Dorothy had died, had walked to our Sanaga-Yong Center camp from their villages miles away, without being invited, to pay respects to her. I crumpled—bowed my head on my arms folded atop the counter—and sobbed again for Dorothy.

  The men who had been her caregivers helped me put Dorothy’s body in a wheelbarrow, and I covered her with a sheet, leaving only her head exposed. Her facial expression was serene, one of final repose. Raymond conducted a funeral service for the staff, volunteers, and dozens of people from the village community. He spoke of Dorothy’s suffering and of the happiness she had known at Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center. I told the community that the best way to honor Dorothy would be to never eat the meat of chimpanzees again and to speak out against it whenever and wherever they could.

  Afterward, we transported Dorothy’s body in the creaky wheelbarrow toward her gravesite, which Raymond and the caregivers had prepared beside the grave of Becky. As we stopped at the enclosure to let the congregated chimpanzee friends and family of Dorothy say their final good-byes, Monica snapped her funeral procession photo—that now-famous snapshot of nonhuman grief that created what I hope will be Dorothy’s legacy of expanded awareness around the world.

  International attention and surprise over the grief of the chimpanzees in that photo inspired me to tell the story of sweet Dorothy and her circle of friends who have impacted my own life to such a large degree. Dorothy was tragically orphaned and then cruelly mistreated for much too large a proportion of her life, but she also knew kindness and love from both humans and chimpanzees. Late in her life, she herself became a mother, a friend, and a kind defender of the abused.

  Although Dorothy and I were of different species and we should have lived far apart, each with our own kind in our own habitats, circumstances conspired to introduce us. To an extent, I was included in Dorothy’s circle of people, and she was included in mine. Thanks to my relationships with Dorothy and the other chimpanzees I have known at Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, my acceptance of the deep intelligence and emotional capacity of their species has become such an inexorable part of who I am that it now seems innate. The chimpanzees in the photo include Jacky, Nama, Bouboule, and Mado, each of whom you have glimpsed through my perspective. In these final moments you read from me, I express the hope that you look at the photo a different way now—gone is any surprise over the capacity of chimpanzees to love and grieve, and in its place is a comfortable, albeit perhaps poignant, assumption of normalcy.

  Epilogue

  A year after Dorothy died, her son Bouboule, without political support from anyone in the group, began challenging Jacky for the leadership role. Jacky couldn’t beat younger, bigger, and stronger Bouboule in a one-on-one fight, but Jacky had Nama and a small army of adolescents who were willing to fight beside him. Even so, in the face of Bouboule’s staunch determination and persistent confrontations, Jacky became increasingly reluctant to engage, and his reluctance was contagious to all except Nama, who never wavered in her support of him. The writing was on the wall for months before it was over, and Agnes and I prayed that Jacky would step aside before he got hurt. Finally, after a year of anxiety on both the chimpanzee and human sides of the fence line, Jacky ended his decade-long reign as alpha male, pant-grunting his submission to his successor.

  Unfortunately, Bouboule lacked the political skill to lead well. He dominated through intimidation and fear for about a year, occasionally wounding scapegoats to keep the other males intimidated. Finally, Bikol led the group in a bloody coup against him. The definitive fight occurred late one morning as Agnes and the caregivers stood by the enclosure listening to prolonged screams of battle emanating from the forest. They were helpless to do anything but wait to see the outcome. When the chimpanzees finally emerged from the forest an hour after the fight, Bouboule had multiple wounds, including a severe injury to his testicle, which was bleeding. He was very nervous and obviously afraid of Bikol, who on the other hand was surrounded and supported by many of the females and adolescents in their group. Everyone seemed on edge. With a transparent and compelling desire to make up and be friends, Bouboule made tentative advances toward Bikol, who feigned indifference. Finally, when Bikol allowed Bouboule to close the gap between them and begin grooming him, the nervous tension embodied in all the chimps dissipated. Calm was restored; Bouboule had lost his position to Bikol. The next day I traveled to Sanaga-Yong Center and removed Bouboule’s testicle, which was unsalvageable.

  Bikol now holds the position of alpha male with a good amount of political support. Arriving in 1999, he was our first baby chimpanzee, and he matured into a kind adult, who has long been a favorite of mine. Unfortunately, he’s not an exceptionally strong leader. Although he enjoys his free access to the attractive females, he approaches his responsibilities as authority figure and peacekeeper somewhat halfheartedly. After hearing Agnes disparage his leadership skills for weeks, I was surprised recently when I saw him intervene to prevent bullying twice in one afternoon. That night over dinner when I mentioned it to Agnes, as evidence in defense of my dear Bikol, she said, “Yes, Sheri, he does something, but he’s not like Jacky.” Bikol’s name in the local language mean’s the king, but he seems to be a reluctant one. He enjoys the spoils of power but would rather shun the duties. I hope he’ll grow more responsible as he gains in age and experience. He had a good role model in Jacky.

  Bouboule has settled down to a relatively passive role in the society and doesn’t challenge Bikol. When they hug and comfort one another it reminds me of how they were as young babies. However, there are others who would be king. Moabi and Gabby probably aren’t serious contenders, but big adolescents Simon and Future may soon pose threats. Bikol’s is a precarious position, and the caregivers make sure he sleeps at night with those who support him.

  We lost another piece of the heart and soul of Sanaga-Yong Rescue Center in June 2012 when our beloved Nama, still only in her thirties, passed away after her illness of several months eluded our extensive efforts to diagnose it. Nama’s chest kept filling up with fluid, making it difficult for her to breathe. After ruling out heart disease, we finally narrowed the possibilities to cancer and tuberculosis. All the tests we did for tuberculosis were negative, but we still tried treating her for it. I would have tried anything to save her. In the end, nothing worked. At this writing, we’re still trying to get autopsy samples out of Cameroon to determine what really caused her illness and death—CITES permits are required to export tissues from endangered species, and they can take months to process. For now, it remains a mystery. My admiration and love for this shining star of a chimpanzee were boundless. I held her in her final moments, and while I celebrate her remarkable life in the telling of her story, I haven’t stopped mourning her death that came much too early.

  The same week that Nama died, we received badly wounded one-and-a-half-year-old Kanoah, a baby boy who was confiscated during the arrest of a dealer, who is now being prosecuted with the involvement of my friend Ofir Drori’s Last Great Ape Organization. A month later, the arrival of eight-month-old baby Carla, broug
ht to us by a Catholic priest, brought our resident chimpanzee population to seventy-three.

  Of the first five adult chimpanzees we brought to Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, only the elder Jacky survives. Without a lot of responsibility he spends his days playing and relaxing, managing to avoid conflict. He seeks my attention more than before, almost always rising to greet me when I approach, which still flatters and delights me. Unlike before, he solicits me in play, often asking me to run up and down the fence with him. Agnes says jokingly that he has regressed to his lost childhood, and I say he deserves it.

  We have begun a series of forest surveys throughout Cameroon to determine if there is a suitable site to reintroduce some of our chimpanzees to a free life. Reintroduction, if it is possible, will be a long and complicated process. It will require a forest site that is good chimpanzee habitat but no longer has chimpanzees living in it, or not many, and at the same time it must not have many humans living around it. Any hunting camps must be removed, and the site must be protectable in the long run, both of which will be the roles of the Cameroon government. Ideally the site should be an important habitat area with conservation value in its own right, quite apart from the reintroduction of chimpanzees. The protection that we would achieve through our reintroduction plan would strengthen ecological diversity or bring it back to a depleted area. Finding such a site is a tall order. We don’t know if a site meeting our criteria exists in Cameroon, but to look for it, we’ve formed a partnership with Ape Action Africa and Limbe Wildlife Center, under the umbrella of Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA), an international organization of which we are all founding members. We are working in collaboration with Cameroon’s Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife to conduct forest surveys funded by the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund.