Following Fifi

by John Crocker

  Juma and I sat frozen, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves. I felt my heart rate speed up as he passed us; Figan could rip a man apart in an instant if he wanted to.

  Figan stopped and turned his head toward a resonating pant-hoot from his brother Faben, which emanated from across the lush valley. Heartily, Figan returned the call.

  Did a similar scene play out four million years ago, when early humans were emerging from an environment similar to this? Looking at Figan, I wondered what our early ancestors were like, how they survived in the forest, and how they related to their closest living relative, the chimpanzee.

  Touching my arm and gesturing for me to come, Juma led me through thick vines and low-hanging branches for a few miles into another valley, where mother chimps and their infants had joined adult males to feed on newly ripened mabungo fruit, also known as milk apples. These nutritious fruits, with fleshy sweet pulp that turned slightly acidic-tasting near the seeds, abundantly decorated the trees. I marveled at how the chimps could sit so relaxed high up on flimsy branches, which they grasped with hands and feet as they picked and ate the fruit. The smell of those two- to three-inch milk apples made my mouth water and my stomach rumble; my most recent meal was the peanut butter sandwich I had devoured six hours earlier.

  In the early evening, as the sun began to set, the adult chimps carefully selected trees in which to build their nightly nests. Infants snuggled in with their mothers, and males gave low-pitched hooting sounds from their newly constructed beds to signal their location. A reddish-purple sky faded into twilight, and the forest was again quiet when Juma and I headed back to camp to join our human companions.

  The opportunity that had led me to this remote part of Africa arose in the fall of 1971, during my junior year at Stanford. I enrolled in a primate behavior class in human biology, with Jane Goodall lecturing as a new visiting faculty member. I can still picture sitting in the second row of the three-hundred-seat auditorium, seeing the famed Dr. Goodall in person for the first time as she showed colorful National Geographic footage on a huge screen. I was mesmerized by the close-up shots of her sitting a few yards from the wild chimpanzee families she had studied for more than ten years. This graceful young Englishwoman was the first human to get so close to the chimp community. Seeing her in the film gently observing the chimps in their natural setting made me feel like I was right there with her.

  Afterward, I could not stop thinking about the image of an older chimp, David Greybeard, signaling his acceptance of Jane during her initial time with the chimps. He did so by cautiously touching her hand as she reached out to touch his—an image that millions of people worldwide know, illustrating the bond between species. It’s a tender reminder that we share 96 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees.

  Images of Jane and the chimps remained fixed in my mind during the next two months as I tried to concentrate on coursework. Memorizing the Krebs cycle and learning organic chemistry drifted lower on my priority list while Jane and the chimps moved up. Even in the quiet cubicles of the undergraduate library where I could usually focus on tedious assignments, I felt restless when I thought about Jane’s life observing Flo, the charismatic matriarch chimpanzee, raising her offspring, Fifi and Figan, in the wilds of Gombe.

  Interested in child development, I was contemplating a career as a pediatrician or family doctor. Perhaps my motivation to enter this field involved a subconscious desire to better understand my own upbringing. I knew the tensions in my home might have affected my self-confidence and security during my teen and college years. Thus I was intrigued that a major focus of Dr. Goodall’s research involved mother-infant relationships among the chimpanzee families in Gombe, and I applied for Stanford’s student research program there. Few students had participated at this point, and only two would go every six months to work on the chimp study.

  In an interview with faculty members as part of the application, I eventually relaxed as I expressed my fascination with how young chimps grow up successfully in the wild. To make sure they understood my future plans, I admitted, “I don’t intend to pursue a career in anthropology. I plan to attend medical school after graduation.” However, I chose not to reveal that, though I loved the outdoors, I had never even been camping before.

  One day, while I was working on a chemistry assignment, a dormmate startled me by knocking loudly on the door and telling me I had a call on the hallway phone.

  I went down the hall and answered.

  “Is this John Crocker?” a woman’s voice asked at the other end. With my mind halfway still on chemistry, I said it was, but what she said next captured my complete attention. “I’m calling to let you know that you have been chosen to participate in Stanford’s research program at Gombe!” I leapt off the floor with joy. Before I had even hung up the phone, I began to picture myself with Jane and the chimps in the spectacular landscape I’d seen in her films. I knew I would witness the intimate bonding of mother chimps and their offspring right before my eyes. What I didn’t know was that this primate training ground would give me remarkable insights that would serve me well in my later work as a family physician.

  I had already spent a year volunteering at the Peninsula Children’s Center in Palo Alto, working with autistic and schizophrenic adolescents. There I experienced a full spectrum of normal to very abnormal behavior in children. I had also read about rhesus monkeys that had been isolated even for a short time early in their lives and how profoundly this affected their social skills. Although the cause of the abnormal behavior in the monkeys was more environmental, compared to the genetically inherited disorder of the children at the center, both groups had similar behaviors that resulted in difficulty socializing within their communities. As I studied more about primate behavior, the similarities I saw between nonhuman-primate and human behavior were striking.

  It was already clear to me from Dr. Goodall’s films, including her first, Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees, that the chimps at Gombe acted a lot like humans. I was also beginning to realize that they might share a similar range of emotions. While watching footage of a young chimp responding to the death of his mother, I was struck that this eight-year-old, Flint, seemed to experience grief and loss like any human child would.

  As his mother, Flo, lay lifeless next to a stream, Flint continually approached and touched her, then shrieked and backed away. He spent the next three weeks very close to her body, seeming quite upset. He didn’t eat, and soon he died very near to where Flo lay. When this same chimp, at age five, was being weaned by his mother, he would throw temper tantrums similar to those of human children in their terrible twos. These types of behaviors drew my focus and spurred my thinking about how I had underestimated the capacity of chimps to feel emotional pain. I would learn much more from them before my Gombe education was through—thanks to Jane Goodall’s extraordinary guidance and teaching.

  Dr. Goodall’s story is so well-known that it scarcely needs repeating. As a young child, she dreamed of going to Africa to study animals. She worked diligently after high school to earn enough money for a boat ticket to Kenya, where she met the renowned archaeologist Dr. Louis Leakey, who chose Jane to conduct the first-ever study of chimpanzees living in the remote Gombe forest along the shores of Lake Tanganyika.

  Jane started her work with the chimps in 1960 with only the assistance of her mother, Vanne, and a Tanzanian guide. Jane’s life grew so intertwined with her work in Gombe that her name became virtually synonymous with these chimps. Her revelatory research into their lives brought them to life for scores of people who would never see a chimp except in a zoo. Her work made people aware that chimps are close cousins of our human family—with personalities, affections, and behaviors that we could recognize as aspects of our own species.

  With a year to prepare for the Gombe adventure, I spent my free time learning Swahili by listening to tapes at Stanford’s language lab, and I ventured to Southern California to Lion Country Safari, where I studied chimps living on
an island. A retired primatologist taught me the meaning of various chimp calls as we sat in a rowboat all day, watching the primates from a distance. I didn’t mention my lessons in imitating chimp calls to my parents, who were having a hard enough time accepting my postponement of medical school. And before long, an unexpected situation arose that provided me with a far better learning experience than any I could have planned.

  Enter Babu

  Babu was a spirited orphaned chimpanzee. He had been lovingly hand-raised by a human couple, Joe and Janet Hoare. Babu was born in West Africa, only to be snatched away from his mother by poachers and put on sale as food at a local market. The animal-loving older American couple was on a three-month work assignment in Liberia and they agreed to take Babu to relieve another couple who had purchased him at the market in order to save his life. Joe and Janet repurposed a nice basket for Babu to sleep in, fed him formula for the remainder of their assignment, and then flew with him back to the States. Their rustic house in Woodside, California, became Babu’s home. The couple devoted much of their time and energy to raising him, but by two years of age, Babu was growing more aggressive—as is natural—and he needed constant supervision.

  Having heard from friends at Stanford that I would be studying chimpanzees with Jane Goodall, Joe and Janet assumed that I knew a lot about these primates and contacted me to see if I would be his companion.

  Janet called me without anyone warning me ahead of time and explained, “We’re looking for someone who could take our baby chimp one afternoon each week while we do our shopping and run errands. Since you are familiar with their behavior, you are our top choice for the position.”

  In reality, I didn’t have a clue as to how to handle a young chimp. I was just beginning to learn in Jane’s course about how young chimps are raised by their mothers in the wild, but I was still very ignorant about the dangers and practical problems of raising a captive chimpanzee in a human community. A chimp’s physical strength alone could cause great harm to a caretaker, especially as the animal matures. Regardless, the couple proposed that I take Babu on field trips on afternoons when I didn’t have classes, and I agreed.

  I was introduced to Babu in his home. When I entered and greeted Janet, Babu was vigorously and repeatedly leaping from the sofa to the table to the floor and then to the kitchen counter. As I watched in amazement, I questioned whether or not I could handle this hairy ball of energy on my own. Yet as soon as we left the house together for our first outing, his focus turned almost completely to me.

  Every week Babu and I enjoyed a new adventure, visiting parks and nature trails. I realized that Babu was capable of aggression toward strangers, especially a small child who might threaten him by cornering him, but I soon learned that he was frightened of new people or animals he encountered and tended to avoid them. He kept me in his sight for reassurance. Though I was also initially worried that I might lose Babu if he were to run off, I discovered that he was so attached to and dependent on his caretaker that he kept track of me at all times.

  Babu traveled in the front seat of my dark green ’63 Mustang and peered out the window at passing cars and scenery. Stoplights were always distracting, as people in cars next to mine were clearly startled to see Babu staring at them from the passenger seat.

  Like young chimps in the wild, Babu still needed milk in his diet, so I carried a few bottles of cow’s milk with me, along with apples, bananas, and figs. He was cooperative enough to let me change his diapers when needed—and luckily for me they were the disposable type.

  Whenever we’d visit one of Babu’s favorite city parks, parents would stare at my hairy companion wearing Pampers. Babu loved to leap across the playground equipment, then dangle from one arm as he surveyed his surroundings. Because he preferred to be far above the ground, his area of play didn’t disturb the children twelve feet below.

  If frightened by a dog or shrieking child, Babu would run to me, lunge into my arms, and hug my torso with all his might. He would then continue to cling with his power hug while I strolled around the park until he was reassured enough to go back to his magnificent aerial acts. When he was in my arms, children sometimes approached, curious about the hairy primate I held, but most youngsters in the park were having too much fun with one another to pay much attention to him. One day, a father came up to me and said with a smile, “Hey, that sure is an ugly kid you got there!” I smiled back with great pride.

  People were curious about our relationship, wondering why a twenty-year-old college student would be in a park with a young chimpanzee in diapers. Even I wondered at times how people would view us, but this was the early 1970s and California, after all. However, despite how strange our relationship might have seemed to others, it was with Babu that I first began to experience strong feelings of fatherhood. I enjoyed filling that nurturing role as well as just having fun watching Babu climb trees and explore his surroundings.

  One day, as it grew close to the time for my departure to Africa, Janet approached me. Babu and I had just returned from a walk, and I was already feeling a bit sad at the thought of leaving him.

  “John,” Janet said softly, and I immediately felt worried. “John, I need to tell you something. When you get back from Africa, Babu isn’t going to be here in our home.” I was not surprised, although I realized I had been comforting myself with thoughts of coming back to resume our unusual friendship. She continued. “Babu is getting too aggressive, and we just can’t keep him here anymore. He needs other chimpanzees and a more suitable home.”

  Babu would be moved into a large outdoor chimp compound near the Stanford campus, where he would be integrated with other chimpanzees. To do so successfully, he would have to give up his human contacts. I knew they were doing the right thing; it was the only reasonable alternative for him as he naturally became stronger and more difficult to contain in a home.

  When the time came to journey to Gombe, saying good-bye to Babu was the hardest part of leaving. I knew that I would never again be able to interact so intimately with him, and that made it a thousand times harder.

  We were at his Woodside home, and his caretakers had just returned from their errands. Babu was still showing off for me by leaping up and swinging on the cupboard doors. I grabbed my jacket, and he immediately lunged into my arms. When he hugged me more tightly and longer than usual, I wondered if he somehow sensed my sadness. I fought back the tears that burned my eyes, knowing I might not see him again.

  I was concerned about how Babu would adjust to living with the other chimps. Also, I felt like I was abandoning him. The irony wasn’t lost on me that he would soon be placed in a fenced compound at Stanford while I ventured into an African forest to learn what his life would have been like had he not been taken away from his mother in the wild.

  I treasured my friendship with Babu but knew that my role in Tanzania would be utterly different. I would need to strictly observe scientific protocols and never interact with the forest chimps. I would have to give up the power hugs.

  My emotional departure from his home that day gradually set in motion a feeling of quiet contemplation and a diminishing enthusiasm for some of the things around me. It was as if I had been caught in a slack tide—when the ocean waters stop coming in but before they go back out. It was a time of being in between. I was departing from Babu, my colleagues, and the comfort of the campus, and yet I still had a few weeks before embarking on my next journey, to the other side of the globe, to an area I knew little about.

  As I drove back to my dorm, I stopped at the hillside of golden grasses and scattered oak trees where I had enjoyed late-afternoon jogs and picnicking with friends, and where I had sought out a quiet spot in which to write a biology paper my freshman year. I loved the peacefulness and natural beauty of this spot. I felt sad to know I might not enjoy it again. I parked the car at my dorm and walked across campus as the afternoon sun accentuated the red-tile roofs. I recalled fun times talking to friends and just sitting by the “The Claw�
�� fountain and pondering life.

  For my first three years of college, I had always anticipated celebrating my graduation with my college friends and then going off to medical school. Instead I would be leaving this phase of my life prematurely, before graduation. For the next few weeks, I felt like an outsider, even as my excitement for my unexpected life detour was nervously building. With some loneliness and tears of sadness as I said goodbye to my close friends at a farewell party, I gathered my packed belongings, and headed to the airport.

  The Journey Begins

  My journey to Gombe began with a twenty-four-hour flight (including a stop in Amsterdam) to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where I met Lisa, another student I had met briefly in orientation meetings, who joined me for the dusty, bumpy eight-hundred-mile train trip across the Serengeti to Kigoma, on Lake Tanganyika.

  We stayed glued to our windows for the duration of the trip, spotting herds of wild zebras and an occasional ostrich in the distance as we traversed endless deserts and savannas—and the sunsets were spectacular.

  I wrote to my parents:

  Lisa and I got the last two tickets on the train, which was lucky, as the train doesn’t run every day. The trip takes over forty-eight hours because the train stops at every little village on the way to Kigoma. At each stop, villagers would sell machunguas (oranges) and even live roosters to the passengers by passing the items through the compartment windows.

  With earthy, humid air blowing through the open train windows, aromas of spicy foods cooking, and colorfully dressed Tanzanians moving down the aisle, I knew I wasn’t in California anymore. Joyful curiosity and pleasure in the captivating new culture percolated in my mind. At night I would awaken to the occasional sounds of infants crying in neighboring compartments or the smell of fires from the intentional burning of fields.