Following Fifi

by John Crocker

  I looked sorrowfully at the hut’s foundation. I had really wanted to go into the hut, sit at the desk, and maybe even write a letter home—and I had wanted Tommy to see the hut. Walking over and stepping up onto the concrete, I gazed out through vines and low-hanging branches to catch a glimpse of Lake Tanganyika, remembering this exact view from the hut’s window.

  Abdul joined me on the slab. “Where did you sleep?” he asked, and I walked him over to where my bed had stood, pointing out where the door and the window had been as well.

  Crossing the slab again to where the window had been, I spread out my arms, telling Abdul and Tommy, “My desk was right here. I would sit here at the end of each day and fill out my reports and then write letters to my parents.” Describing the candles I had used for reading and writing, I realized I was growing excited again from recapturing these moments.

  While Tommy walked around the concrete rectangle, peering through the imaginary door and window, Abdul said, “It is interesting how basic your accommodations were for those eight months.” Reflecting back to the modern researchers’ housing on the beach, including their flat-screen television, I nodded and chuckled.

  Even though the structure itself was gone, I liked knowing that Tommy could now more clearly picture my life back then, living in this remote area, far from sight of most civilization, and alone from the time I entered my hut each night until the next morning.

  Standing with Tommy where my hut once stood, I was overcome by a strong sense of reconnection to Tommy’s childhood. I looked at my son’s young and curious face and recalled how, when he was a child, I would tell him bedtime stories about my Gombe adventures.

  That evening Tommy wrote down his thoughts after visiting the site:

  I felt ambivalent as I re-created the hut in my mind from pictures I had seen and stories I had heard. I had first romanticized the individualistic ascetic lifestyle. Harkening back to the first fifty pages of Thoreau’s Walden, which was all of the free reading I could manage during my sophomore fall semester at college, I couldn’t help but envision a spiritual and moral strengthening that surely would arise from the absence of consumerist clutter. Wouldn’t experiencing those things most fundamentally human—survival amid danger, finding food and water—as well as the vivid immediacy of weather, lunar cycles, and death and decay, bring out some kind of primal power that seems to be lost in modern civilization?

  But then I remembered the story my dad told me about a green mamba hanging down from the ceiling of his hut when he returned one evening. And beyond the threat of poison and sharp fangs, wouldn’t there also be a crushing loneliness? I recoiled at the thought of such minimal human contact and living without neighbors and friends a short walk or phone call away. Going from a college environment where students are packed together in dorm rooms like factory farm animals to an isolated Tanzanian jungle mountainside seemed utterly frightening. However, my dad, who had experienced that specific transition, exhibited only joy upon returning to the site of his hut, so I couldn’t help but slightly favor the romanticized version of life in the wild.

  As we all hiked along in the forest afterward, I realized that in some ways my current hut, my home in Seattle, has included features inspired by Gombe. As our children entered our lives, I automatically geared the house for active young primates. My wife, Wendy, added her more refined interior designs, and the boys eventually added their own creative touches, such as fluorescent galaxies glued to their bedroom ceiling.

  Our backyard includes a portion of an abutting wooded area, where we constructed two tree houses and placed three rope swings. After watching the young Freud show off his skills high above the ground at Gombe, I wanted my own kids to be equipped for arboreal life.

  Inside the house, our bedroom has a high ceiling, so it became a basketball court—complete with portable net by day and a “nesting place” for my wife and me at night. Our family room served as a gymnastics-dance center, and we share it with our dog, fish, and birds. With my wife’s music—singing, keyboard, and guitar—and Tommy’s drum set, and a big driveway for skateboarding and basketball, the house became a teenage gathering spot with ever-changing activities. By age seven, Patrick had introduced break-dancing into our home along with guinea pigs, archery, and Lego-mania. Since he is nearly eleven years younger than Tommy, he took over tasks his big brother had outgrown, such as serving as “chief” of the rope swings when neighborhood kids showed up in our yard.

  Though spontaneity and creative chaos ruled most of the time, we had peaceful dinners and usually had time to relax together in the evening. The basketball marks on the bedroom wall and dents in the floor molding are pleasant reminders of those early years with the boys. I think I did Fifi proud with the way I chose to overlook the odd mess or disruption to the physical environment.

  My fathering style incorporated more of my mother’s and Fifi’s influences, but I did fall back on my father’s authoritative discipline in difficult circumstances. When Patrick needed a time-out at age three, I remember being totally incapable of using diplomacy or gentle cajolery with him as he was so wound up, so I picked him up, his piercing vocalizations rattling my eardrums, and placed him firmly in time-out. I hated the feeling of overpowering him, but I envisioned myself as Figan displaying his firm leadership as I carried out the task. I understood at that moment that as the adult and alpha, I had to exert both authority and leadership—it was part of the order of life. Patrick seemed to understand this, and luckily I didn’t have to do it again.

  Perhaps in reaction to my highly disciplined upbringing—and partly because of Fifi’s nurturing influence—I tended to be lenient with my boys. I used my understanding of our primate nature to justify their occasional uncivilized eating habits and raucous wrestling in various rooms in the house. We always bought sturdy furniture and reminded our boys to restrain their wild side when visiting their friends’ homes. Loud vocalizations would ring through our house and the neighborhood as they swung from our rope swings and played guitar and drums in our basement. Figan had used all fours to drum on tree buttresses to create his symphony in the African forest; if you count the foot pedals on the drum set, Tommy kept up with Figan’s quadrupedal power. It seemed as natural to Tommy as it had to Figan.

  Looking back, it might have been beneficial to instill a bit more order in the household and create more calm moments, but at the time I felt that my most important role was to be available to my sons for emotional support as they traversed the stages of development. My role wasn’t to teach them how to use a computer or speak Spanish, since by age seven they were ahead of me on both counts. Wendy played other key nurturing roles, and introduced the boys to music and literature. She always made herself available as a listener when they needed to talk.

  Both of us wanted the boys to take more responsibility for cleaning up their messy rooms during adolescence, but we attended a lecture by a specialist in teen behavior, and she said, “Pick your battles,” reminding us, “Having your kids keep their rooms clean may not be the most important battle.” So we just agreed to ask them to keep their doors closed during those predictably unpredictable teen years. Wendy made surveillance missions once a month to make sure nothing alarming was growing where it shouldn’t be. And we let them know that when they became adults and got roommates, they would need to be more civilized and orderly.

  Another realization I had as a father, physician, and chimp observer was the importance of “letting it out.” Figan’s and Satan’s mighty displays caused the ground to tremble beneath my feet. When they thundered by, I could tell they were releasing stored-up adrenaline in dramatic behaviors. At the waterfall at Gombe, the loud crashing of the water as it hit the rocks and stream below seemed to stimulate aggressive displays. During one particular rainstorm in 1974, the chimps swung on branches, threw palm fronds, and looked as if they were performing a prehistoric rain dance. Now, on my return visit, Tommy and Abdul were spontaneously inspired to perform some of these same displ
ays, perhaps because they knew the male chimps behaved this way after arriving at the waterfall. It looked so natural and typical of a human reaction that I again thought of the similarities in our species and laughed.

  Also, I came to appreciate the other side of the spectrum in my boys: their caring, emotional spirits. As we headed back to camp after visiting the site where my hut once stood, Tommy said, “Remember the nest story you’d always tell me and Patrick?” I had told the boys a true tale based on the night I actually spent in a chimp’s nest during my student days:

  As the sun began to set, I knew I had to quickly find a nest high up in a tree before dark, just as the chimps do. Luckily I found one that was not too far out from the tree trunk, and I managed to carefully climb up the tree and slowly crawl across some strong branches to get into the nest before dark. The chimps were far away, but I could hear them calling to one another as they said goodnight and settled into their nests.

  Unfortunately, my nest was built a week earlier by ten-year-old Goblin, so it was small for me and not very comfortable. It was also lonely being up some forty feet in the tree all night far away from other people and the chimps.

  One night, Patrick, at age five, had added to the story:

  Then a baby chimp who was lost from his mother thought you were another chimp and crawled in with you. The baby chimp kept you company, and you kept the baby chimp warm and protected, cuddled up next to you.

  That fictional addition by Patrick was from the heart. Looking at his earnest little face, it struck me with full force that the scariest element for him was not the possibility of falling out of the tree but instead my being alone, so he imagined having another frightened and lonely primate find me. We would both be consoled.

  From then on, after their addition to the story, I would always continue the story, transitioning into full fiction but including true emotion:

  The next day the baby, named Prof, jumped up and down on my tummy to wake me up. He wanted me to help him find his mother, Passion. I climbed down the tree with Prof clinging to my ribs just like Babu used to do.

  As we searched the forest for Passion, the strong chimp Figan heard us and performed a powerful display that frightened Prof so much he almost broke my ribs from clutching me so tightly. We ducked under some bushes and hid until Figan left, and then continued our search for Passion.

  We finally found Passion, and even though she was known for not being as caring as the other mothers, she rushed up to Prof and hugged him tightly. As they went deeper into the forest together, I returned to the camp to find my fellow students and field assistant.

  The real story was that for most of that night in the nest, I was frightened, uncomfortable, cold, and restless, and I felt no sense of a romantic adventure except during the first half hour, as I watched the sun set over Lake Tanganyika. After that I was mostly miserable. It took two days to recover from sleep deprivation and a sore neck. I did not repeat the experience.

  I had hoped to feel a closer connection to the chimps by remaining out in their territory all night, completing a twenty-four-hour cycle from sunrise to sunrise. I wanted to sway in my bed suspended high above the ground and listen to the wind blow the branches. I wanted to see the stars and watch the vanishing lake as the brilliant sky turned to darkness. I wanted to feel the mystery of the forest with the occasional grunts of bush pigs below and the never-ending symphony of crickets. I had felt a bit sad every evening when I left the chimps after they nested. I would always make my way back to the beach camp to join the other humans, but I missed the chimps. I wanted to be part of their community for just one night, and wake up with the morning sun and the sounds of birds and chimp calls.

  My heart still remembers the wonder of that nest adventure, just as my mind retains the cold reality. I included both heartfelt memories and challenging realities in the story I told my sons, and they added more heart and even tried to comfort me.

  The common thread in the bedtime stories, in my memories, and in my relationships with Babu, Fifi, my boys, and my wife was the heart. I found spirituality in the forest at Gombe while I found emotional satisfaction in the bonds I formed with the people and chimps there and at home. These bonds continue to influence my life.

  So as I followed Abdul and Tommy down the path, I made another toast to Jane for believing in herself when she continued to name the chimps early on in her work, and not number them as many people in the scientific community told her to do. It was important in conveying the full measure of these primate lives to the public. It made the chimps real to the world—it made them live in people’s hearts as well as in their intellects. For me, it would have ruined those bedtime stories if I could only talk about chimps #37 and #42 interacting on their daily travels through the forest.

  I imagine most parents picture themselves acting like their parents. Parents are our main role models. However, in the complex and sometimes frustrating journey of parenting, I discovered that it can be important, especially for teenagers and young adults, to have exposure to role models outside the immediate family. My grandfather was a key male role model for me early on. In my early twenties, I was fortunate to have Figan, Fifi, and Jane to observe as they raised their offspring. Watching them, I learned what it meant to let go a bit, and to understand wilder parts of our human nature that I might have otherwise missed. I learned to let myself be absorbed into family life in a way that was organic and open. Our house might still have been creative and lively without their example, but probably not quite as much fun.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A PATH LESS TRAVELED: BUBONGO VILLAGE

  Tommy and I were quiet as we walked through Kasekela Valley on our way to Hamisi’s house in Bubongo Village. It was our fifth day at Gombe. The trail we took seemed to reflect life’s journey. It was winding, with steep ups and downs, sometimes secure and sometimes fragile, with loose gravel on the mountainside, leading to unexpected places and sometimes to unexpected people along the way. The path was dry and faded brown in some areas, but rich and orange-red in the fertile valley near the village.

  Tommy and I were accompanied by Abdul and Rudo, a nineteen-year-old fisherman selected by the park director to help guide us. We four would ascend to the five-thousand-foot summit of the Rift Mountains, descend into the fertile valley outside the park heading east, and then trek up gentle hills to the village where Hamisi grew up and now lived with his wives, children, and grandchildren. I hoped I might see other field assistants I’d worked with during my student days. We would return later the same day; the entire journey was comparable to a mountainous half-marathon.

  What struck me was how out of place Tommy and I were. We were trekking to a remote African village along a trail used only by locals, with two Tanzanians whose company we enjoyed but had just met a few days before.

  Having Tommy with me to share the experience was gratifying since I knew he would appreciate a “road less traveled” at this time in his young adulthood. Many of his friends back home had roots in different countries, and he had enjoyed his own cross-cultural experiences when we traveled and went on work trips as a family. Maybe we were more “in place” here than I had thought.

  “I’ve thought a lot about this visit to Hamisi’s,” I told Tommy as we walked. “I have no idea what people in the village will think of our visiting them. I’m sure Hamisi will appreciate it, but I wonder if some of his family will be uncomfortable with two strange white dudes and two unfamiliar Tanzanians showing up on their doorstep.” During my first visit there, it had been just Hamisi and me visiting his parents.

  Tommy replied, “I’m sure Hamisi will make it all work.”

  This would turn out to be an understatement.

  For now, though I felt self-conscious as a mature Western doctor marching along an African forest trail with three guys each a third of my age, I cherished the chance to connect with Abdul and Rudo in their land and to have my son experience village life. Also I felt less inhibited in the jungle, where I
could free myself from the self-restraint I’d learned earlier in life. There was no need to please or be a peacemaker; I was able to be more spontaneous and was less concerned about what other people thought of me. The warm, humid climate, the animal calls in the distance, and the Swahili spoken by Abdul and Rudo allowed me to break out of the constraints of my culture and surroundings back home. I felt naturally free to be myself.

  As we approached the summit, I found myself singing “Over the Rainbow,” which always brings me joy. In a way, the song was quite fitting as I looked out over the tops of crooked-armed trees down to majestic Lake Tanganyika. After some deep breathing at the summit and taking in the views, we headed down into the valley on the eastern side of the mountains. I found myself smiling a lot and laughing more than usual at the wisecracks my adventurous companions made.

  I felt anxious as I anticipated entering Hamisi’s world. We passed by streams, small corn and cassava farms, and people tending their crops. A boy about seven years old herded goats on a hillside. I couldn’t imagine any child his age in the United States with such responsibility, yet this confident lad with his tall staff and a determined look on his face was definitely in control of his animals. He kept his eyes on his work as we passed by on the path below him.

  Images of Tommy at that age in his various sports jerseys flashed in my mind. He had played basketball, baseball, and soccer every year from age four to fourteen, and then soccer year-round until he left for college. Was I the dad I’d really wanted to be back then? I thought about how much time my medical practice had consumed and wished I had planned for more family time. We went on family camping trips and other adventures together, but our lives were too busy to spend more time out in the wild.