by John Fowler
“I’m just impressed that you can make soup,” she said, as I wiped the perspiration from my forehead with my napkin.
I had been advised not to keep too much money at Karisoke, and at the suggestion of embassy staffers, I deposited my $500 cash into the Banque du Kigali for safekeeping, and in exchange received a small paper bankbook. I would make withdrawals as needed on my returns to Kigali to renew each three-month visa. The chaotic mass of people that formed at each bank window instead of the neat lines I was used to, and seeming lack of organization during the process, made me wonder if I’d ever see my cash again.
Judy had made us feel welcome at the American Embassy, and even got us clearance to enter and peruse their informal book exchange. We chose the books we wanted to take up to camp for reading. The embassy was an unassuming, single-story building with an entrance just a few steps from the street’s sidewalk. In the vestibule, a plump Rwandan receptionist named Bernadette greeted us from behind a wooden desk. She wore the same close-cropped haircut typical of the locals.
“So you are the ones going up to Karisoke?” Bernadette asked in her clipped accent.
“Yes, we are,” Carolyn and I answered in unison.
“Aha . . .” she said cryptically, returning her attention to papers on her desk.
After walking the hot dusty streets of Kigali, Carolyn and I were thankful to be given access to the embassy’s lounge and pool, a short walk from the center of town. Comprised of a kitchenette with a couple of open rooms for card games, cookouts, and movie nights, the lounge area was beneath the residence of the Ambassador’s secretary, Dorothy Eardley, and opened to the back lawn and pool. Upon our arrival there, we ran into Bill Weber, who had stopped in to use the pool and shower facilities. Bill had spent many months at Karisoke with his wife, Amy Vedder, who was studying gorilla feeding ecology. At that moment, Carolyn and I had no knowledge of the couple’s considerable history with Dian, and upon introductions, Bill immediately became chilly and aloof, gathering his backpack and brushing past us out the door without the least bit of interest in answering questions, or knowing anything more about us.
On our fifth day in Kigali, still occupying Judy’s well-appointed home without her, Carolyn and I relaxed on the wide veranda, discussing what lay ahead while admiring the view overlooking Kigali’s eastern hills, and the airport on the horizon. A pair of speckled mousebirds flitted between shrubs across the lawn below, trailing their long thin tails like flying rodents.
“I see Dian as sort of a kindred spirit,” Carolyn confided to me, “I’ve admired her for a long time.”
In contrast to Carolyn’s knowledge, I felt a little guilty, having not known so much about our soon-to-be mentor.
“I can’t wait to see the gorillas,” I mused, “and how they live, up there in the rain forest.”
“I thought it was a rain forest too,” Carolyn corrected me, “but our zoo director, David Hancocks, told me that at that altitude we’ll be up in the clouds. It’s actually called a ‘cloud forest.’”
The mere concept of a cloud forest only made what lay ahead seem even more surreal. I gazed skyward at the clouds. Kigali was at five thousand feet above sea level; we’d be five thousand more feet above where we were at that moment, transported up into the very atmosphere to which I gazed.
Near the equator, the sun sets around six o’clock each day. As the light faded, a loud putter of an automobile broke the silence as it rounded the curve of Judy’s driveway. I looked over the veranda railing and saw an old gray Volkswagen bus jostle to a stop below.
Dian Fossey had arrived!
Two car doors creaked and slammed in the cool air of twilight, followed by the shuffle of two pairs of feet trudging up the concrete steps. Carolyn and I rose to meet Dian and our other new fellow student Stuart as they walked in the open doorway. Expecting a warm greeting, I was immediately taken aback by Dian’s cool detachment. I had read she was six feet tall, but here before me, she slouched just enough to bring her carriage a good inch or two below my own similar height. Her dark brown hair was mussed from travel, and wan, sallow cheeks only heightened her somewhat ascetic appearance. No warmth emanated from her in this moment of greeting, but rather a pall of preoccupation and weariness, as if uncomfortably out of her element. Stuart, twenty-six, stood a few inches shorter than me, with a lanky build like my own. He had a longish face and nose, and dark curly hair in the basic one-length rounded style of the late seventies. The two of them wore jeans and plain work shirts, dusty from the road.
Dian’s reticent smile was noticeably labored as we introduced ourselves and shook hands. Her puffy eyes twitched with the effort to smile, as if our exuberance was a flash of painfully bright light. I thought of Terry Maple’s advice to make a point of befriending her—Stuart certainly had, and by contrast, exuded charm and charisma—but I was struck dumb by her coldness, especially when she seemed to cringe while touching our hands, as if wincing at the pain of the encounter. The reaction was not one of engagement, but rather reluctance, even revulsion. She was not enjoying the moment, but rather restraining her contempt.
As we began idle chatter, Dian made eye contact with Stuart much more than with Carolyn or me, like a child among strange adults seeking refuge in a parent. It was obvious that Stuart had made good use of the lead time he had in getting to Karisoke ahead of Carolyn and me; it was obvious that he was already Dian’s right-hand man. Reading our eagerness for information about what we were about to embark on, he broke the ice with easy chatter.
“Karisoke is beautiful,” he said. “Surrounded by the volcanoes . . . and the gorillas are amazing!” He opened his eyes expressively when he spoke, rolling them slightly with a sideways tilt of his head.
I envied the knowledge he already had about the world of mountain gorillas, and the sights he had already seen. Stuart put his backpack down, and we moved to chairs in the living room. Dian sat herself down in a chair by the French doors to the veranda, leaning against the chair’s arm, her legs crossed at the ankles. Her reticent movements suggested frailty, rather than the picture of strength I had imagined. She paused for a moment, blinking and twitching her eyes, as if adjusting her thoughts before speaking to us about the next few days: Stuart would be staying at Judy’s with Carolyn and me, while Dian stayed at Ambassador Melone’s house. Dian’s monotone voice was low and soft, almost breathy, unemotional, and again incongruous with the image of strength and confidence I had envisioned.
Dian paused again and cleared her throat. “Uh, where’s my valise?” she asked, reaching and looking by her feet.
“Oh . . . must be in the van,” Stuart said, attentive.
“Eht mwaaah . . .” Dian growled, her face tightening in a scowl.
“I’ll get it,” Stuart chimed, leaping up and trotting toward the door. He must have noticed the looks on Carolyn’s and my faces, because he smiled and stopped to explain the sound Dian had just made.
“That’s a gorilla vocalization. We have to make that sound when we approach the gorillas, so they’ll know we’re near,” Stuart said, authoritatively.
Clearly growing impatient, Dian began telling Carolyn and me that we had much to do the next day before going back to camp.
“Have you brought your letters of recommendation,” she asked, “to get permission to work in the Parc des Volcans?”
“Yes,” Carolyn and I spoke and nodded our affirmation in unison.
“Mwah, mwah, mwah . . .” Dian purred, in what we took to be approval.
Carolyn and I continued listening and nodding at Dian’s instructions, already intimidated and obedient, as Stuart returned with a notebook-sized black leather case. Our new boss slowly unzipped her valise and riffled through some papers inside.
“Uh, okay, in the morning we have go to ORTPN and meet with, uh . . . Benda Lema,” She said, then turned her head and spit toward the floor with a dour look of contempt. I glanced at Stuart, who smiled and maintained his composure.
“That’s the pa
rks department,” Stuart explained.
“Shit merde!” Dian suddenly cursed, “eht mwahh, mwahh . . .” Fidgety, she shifted in her seat, pausing at various items in her valise. I wondered what she might be searching for: A to-do list, money, passport . . . ? Suddenly, Dian lifted her head, a little more energetic now, and asked, “Is anyone getting hungry?”
All four of us piled into Dian’s Volkswagen bus with Dian at the wheel and Stuart in the passenger seat beside her. The vehicle’s vinyl seats had numerous tears at the seams and the metal floor was covered in dust from the roads. As we left Judy’s driveway, I could see the dirt road passing underneath where bolts were missing, and with a raw, sore clatter, we rode into town to a small restaurant near the embassy.
“This is about the best place in Kigali,” Dian said flatly as we entered the dimly lit café. A Rwandan man, recognizing Dian immediately, greeted her with an enthusiastic, “Bonsoir, Madame!” He led us to a table by the front window, and Dian ordered Primus for all four of us. Scanning the menu’s French text, we struggled to decipher the offerings of beef, chicken, or fish.
“I made soup today,” I volunteered, attempting some sort of interaction with Dian.
“You made soup?” she said, wrinkling her nose at me.
“Yeah, but, you know, I put those little peppers in it? And—”
“Pili-pili?” Dian said. “You don’t put that in soup. Eht mwaaah . . .” She looked over to Stuart and smirked. Stuart smiled awkwardly, and I looked at Carolyn who shifted in her seat. Maybe I just need to be quiet, I began to think.
When the waiter returned with our beers, Dian watched as he opened hers. She immediately took a big swig as we all waited for her to take the lead in ordering food. She spoke laboriously in French, twitching and wrinkling her face at the waiter’s responses to her questions before finally nodding and agreeing to something on the menu.
After we had all placed our orders, Carolyn asked about the baby gorilla at Karisoke. Dian said she estimated it to be about three years old and it was getting much more used to people now. It was a female, and Dian had named it Charlie.
“She screamed and hid under the bed at first,” Stuart said, laughing. “We tried to coax her out with food.”
The beer seemed to relax Dian, and she laughed easily with Stuart, while continuing on to describe the progress she had made by way of offering candy to the little gorilla. Dian’s laugh was a low, quick series of “huh, huh, huh, huh . . .” which I would soon learn, like other of her idiosyncratic vocalizations, was reminiscent of a gorilla’s chuckling. Our new boss finished her talk about the baby, telling Carolyn and me that we would have a lot of work to do with the new orphan when we got to camp. The very idea thrilled me.
“Dr. Maple suggested I do a mother-infant study,” I said, looking for an enthusiastic response from my new boss. Instead, she looked at me and paused.
“What do you notice about him?” she asked Stuart, pointing at me with cold detachment, as if I couldn’t hear or see from behind a glass window.
Stuart paused. “What do you mean?”
“Watch him; he does a lot of things with his hands.”
I flushed and forced an awkward smile, too embarrassed to look over at Carolyn. Ever since our arrival in Nairobi, I had been relying more and more on my hands to communicate across Swahili, French, and Kinyarwanda. Now, apparently, I was even doing it in English. Ashamed, I lowered my hands to my lap and fell silent. The corners of Dian’s mouth curled up in a derogatory smile as she looked at Stuart, who quickly stepped in. I really do need to just stop talking, I realized.
“You have to be observant like that when watching gorillas,” Stuart said. Grateful for his intervention, I nodded apprehensively.
Our meals were served with a loaf of French-style bread. I ate silently, by now, loath to speak, listening, and observing. Dian picked at the food on her plate, before hacking a large slice of bread from the loaf and cutting hunks of butter to spread on top of it. On this she liberally sprinkled salt before eating it in large bites. Cutting another slice, she repeated the ritual. I tried not to stare.
Dian ended the evening by surprising me with an offering of one of her Impala cigarettes. Despite three and a half years having gone by since I quit my teenage smoking, I gladly accepted what appeared to be my only bonding moment with the great Dian Fossey. I took up smoking again.
While Dian stayed at Ambassador Melone’s home, Stuart, Carolyn, and I stayed at Judy’s Joint. Our hostess had graciously turned her house over to us while still up at Karisoke babysitting the orphan. With Dian absent, the three of us got to know each other a little better, and Stuart told Carolyn and I that his girlfriend from Oregon would be joining him soon at Karisoke.
The next morning at nine, Dian puttered down the driveway in her Volkswagen. A light shower had come and gone, but the sky remained overcast. This was just the onset of the long rainy season, and Dian wore an unbuttoned dark trench coat with the belt hanging open from its loops. Clutching her black leather valise, she might have been a correspondent for the nightly news, save for her dishevelment and irritability.
“Shit merde, salber and sheissamakoff!” Dian cursed in an international gibberish of her own, having just noticed that she’d driven across town with her coat’s belt trailing from out of the closed car door. I tried to decipher the expletives, recognizing the French word for “shit,” along with her own variant on the German for “shithead.”
ORTPN—the Rwandan Office for Tourism and National Parks—occupied a long whitewashed building near the middle of town, and an African clerk escorted us down a long open-air gallery to the office of Monsieur François Benda Lema, who rose from behind his desk as we entered.
“Bonjour,” said Dian, her demeanor suddenly changing to a forced congeniality. We all said “bonjour” to Monsieur Benda Lema, who smiled and shook each of our hands. The predominant tribe in Rwanda was the Hutu and Benda Lema was typical of the Rwandans we had met so far. He was just over five feet tall, with a rounded face and sturdy build. As was typical of Rwandan men and women, he had a plain close-cropped haircut.
Dian asked Carolyn and me for our letters of recommendation and our passports, which she handed to Benda Lema, speaking to him slowly in her laborious French. There were no other seats in the small office, so Stuart, Carolyn, and I moved just outside to a bench in the breezeway. I could not understand what was being said, but Dian’s forced friendliness became increasingly strained.
Through the door, we could see Dian at the edge of her wooden chair with her back straight and tense. She shifted a little each time she struggled for a word. Benda Lema’s impatience with her was as obvious as hers was with him, and he wasn’t going to yield to her. After twenty minutes, Dian came out and asked Carolyn and me if we had letters from our local police departments, which stated that we did not have police records in our hometowns. Incredulous, we said no.
“Eht mwah, shit goddammit,” Dian muttered in a low voice, acting as if we should have thought of this before. These sudden outbursts of vitriolic language brought we newcomers, Carolyn and me, to nervous silence, but Stuart maintained composure.
Dian returned to her debate with Benda Lema, and after another ten minutes of chilly, stilted dialogue, she emerged to tell us that our visas would be approved, but we would need to have letters from our home police departments before getting extended visas in three months.
Happy to have her dreaded encounter with Benda Lema over with, our new leader led us across the street into Kigali’s commercial section.
“We’ve got to get some things for camp now, Stuart,” Dian said, still shaking off her tension, as we made our way across downtown’s busy avenue. “We really need parts for the pressure lanterns.”
“Okay, Mom,” Stuart said, facetiously, with a cheerful grin, drawing out the o in Mom like a winsome child. “Whatever you say.” At this, Dian managed a smile.
“Now you’ve got it!” our boss replied, with a grin
<
br /> “Whatever you need, I’ll see if I can find it.” Stuart added.
Then Dian was beaming at Stuart’s enthusiastic spirit of helpfulness. I knew Carolyn was as relieved as I for the change of mood. Struck by Stuart’s easy intimacy with Dian, not to mention her obvious delight at being called “Mom,” I was by now a little envious of their genuine rapport, but already felt far too unsure of myself to approach this unpredictable woman.
The next few days were more of the same, driving around town in pursuit of Dian’s supplies, visiting the American embassy and getting our letter home to police departments written and sent. “If I’m going back to the States, I’m going to need to take some gifts for people,” Dian said to herself as we approached the gift shop near the embassy. She parked in front of the store and Carolyn and I followed her inside. Dian stopped at the glass case by the door and stared into it. On a previous visit to this shop with Carolyn, I had noticed a free-form gold nugget in the display case, fitted with a gold bail to wear as a pendant. My mom’s birthday was coming up, and I thought how much she would enjoy such a souvenir from Africa.
Dian never let up on her cutting remarks to me, and I grew more and more silent within our Fossey entourage. But still I attempted conversation when an opportunity arose.
“I’d like to get that gold nugget in there for my mom’s birthday,” I said, pointing through the glass, “but I’m not sure how long my money will hold out.” Dian turned a shoulder to me and shifted her view to the glass counter where I had pointed.
“S’il vous plaît,” Dian said to the salesgirl, while pointing to the gold piece.
“Oui, Madame.” The cashier opened the case from the back and placed the pendant in Dian’s hands. I moved away in the awkwardness of the moment while Dian handed the cashier a wad of francs in exchange for the piece, and stuffed it in her purse.
