by John Crocker
Thinking about the young goatherd we had just passed, I wondered if my wife and I had been overly protective of Tommy; maybe we could have given him more responsibilities. Is that why he traveled twenty-five hundred miles away from home to attend Colgate University in upstate New York, in a culture very different from that of Seattle? Perhaps he needed to be in unfamiliar territory to really break away from his own home culture and become his own person.
As we got closer to Bubongo, my nervousness increased. Last time I visited the village, Hamisi was seventeen and living in a small homestead with his parents. Now he was a wise grandfather, and I couldn’t quite picture what his home and life would be like.
As we began the gentle ascent toward Bubongo, more signs of civilization came into view, with small, thatched homes tucked into the foliage, surrounded by banana and cassava plants. Colorfully dressed women carrying water walked by; soon the red-brown mud-and-brick houses of the village and small pathways for foot traffic surrounded us.
The five-hour journey had not been easy in the heat, but I knew we would be stopping for refreshments. Abdul had planned a visit for us with Esilom, the field assistant who waited up for me when I was lost on the lake, on our way to Hamisi’s. As we approached Esilom’s homestead, my heart beat faster; then I caught a glimpse of him from afar. He had been a good friend as well as my field assistant on several chimp follows during my student days. Esilom’s young face was imprinted in my mind, and I recalled his frequent shy smile.
“What do you think?” I asked Tommy.
“I can’t imagine reuniting with someone I haven’t seen for thirty-six years. You guys were single, carefree kids playing soccer on the beach the last time you were together.”
Carefree—that was close to the truth, but only compared to my present life. Back then, life seemed loaded with self-concerns and worries—but yes, that had been compensated for by the spontaneity and fun in our lives. I wanted some of the carefree back in my life now.
We entered the small, earthen courtyard behind Esilom’s house, where he and his extended family of ten welcomed us. Each person greeted us with, “Karibu sana,” welcome to our home.
I was taken by the bright colors of the clothing the women were wearing and the gracious smiles on their faces, the squawking chickens running about, the clothes drying on the line, and the children at play. Tommy and I soon became the main attraction as other villagers I knew from the past stopped by to see us.
Esilom led us inside his home, which was constructed of mud and brick with a thatched roof and hard-packed dirt floors. The family had no running water or electricity, though there was piped-in fresh spring water available nearby. As we passed by the kitchen, I saw three women preparing a meal. Squatting on the floor, they heated food over a small fire and chopped vegetables just picked from the garden.
Esilom was quiet as he led us into the living room, where we sat on large comfortable chairs and sofas. He looked serious and was a bit slow in his movements. Of all the people I reunited with, he seemed to have changed the most. The playful, relaxed facial expressions I remembered had transformed into a wise but concerned look. I wondered if he had experienced difficult times.
Among his ten children, one was named Figan, after the chimp, and Figan was just Tommy’s age. Figan told us, “When I was younger, I asked my father why he named me after a chimpanzee.”
Figan said his father had replied, “I really like this chimp and have great respect for him, so I wanted to give one of my children his name.”
A very articulate young man, Figan interpreted his dad’s Swahili for us. It seemed strange calling him Figan, but I was impressed that Esilom had given one of his children the name of a Gombe chimpanzee. Like many of the field assistants, Esilom was proud to be part of the chimpanzee research and spoke of the chimps as though they were family.
After a small feast of very fresh chicken, garden vegetables, and rice, we gathered ourselves to walk a mile or so to Hamisi’s house just outside the village. Along the way we met Hilali, Hamisi’s older brother. Hilali had always carried himself proudly, and now he posed with family members with the same regal expression and posture as I snapped his picture. Disturbingly, I learned a few months later that Hilali had died rather suddenly. The cause was unclear but seemed to be some kind of infection.
Home Again with Hamisi
When we finally arrived at Hamisi Matama’s homestead, he came right out to greet us, then gathered his two wives, many of his fourteen children, and his grandchildren, and welcomed us into his home.
As is customary in Muslim tradition in many places, the men sat in a circle on hand-woven carpets on the dining room floor for the main meal while the women prepared and served the meal and ate later. The children entertained themselves outside or in other areas of the house, but showed strong interest in us from afar. At times I would look up at the doorway or windows and see many heads peering in at us. They were quiet and seemed very curious but also content just to watch us.
Several large pots were passed around, and we served ourselves. One dish had piping-hot chicken and vegetables in a sweet, mild sauce. The cassava had been cooked over a fire and pounded until soft. It resembled mashed potato and took the place of rice. The other dishes included different types of vegetables in mild light sauces with tasty herb accents; only one had a spicy kick to it. Just as I was starting to wonder if the water would be safe to drink, Hamisi came back from the kitchen with a jug of water and announced to us that he had boiled the water. I was relieved and much impressed with his hospitality.
We remained seated on the mats to talk about our lives and hear updates on what other field assistants I had known were doing.
“Rugema and Yassini have passed,” Hamisi told me in Swahili, soon after rejoining the circle with the drinking water. Everyone was looking down at their food but nodding their heads and making sounds of agreement as individuals contributed to the conversation.
I understood much of what he said to me, but it was helpful to have Abdul to translate whenever I turned to him with a confused look. Learning that two of the field assistants had died greatly saddened me. I saw their faces in my mind and couldn’t comprehend their dying at forty or forty-five years of age. One of them, a good friend to me during my student days, had died of AIDS, and the other had apparently died from an infection.
My visceral reaction to these “early” deaths was influenced by my own culture in the States, where the current life expectancy for men is seventy-six and for women, eighty-one. In Tanzania, the life expectancy for men is fifty-one and for women, fifty-four. People can expect a quarter-century more life in my culture than in Hamisi’s. Were I the average Tanzanian male, I would already have been dead for seven years. I was shocked and very disturbed when a patient in my practice died at forty-six from lymphoma. At the time he died, this was the average life expectancy for men in Tanzania, yet it seemed to me he was only halfway through his life.
The life expectancy for chimpanzees (once adulthood is reached) is between thirty-five and forty years in the wild, only slightly less than the forty-three year life expectancy for humans in Tanzania when Jane arrived in 1960. Recognizing this view of life from a cross-cultural and cross-species perspective helped me understand some of the terrible losses of people I respected and befriended at Gombe.
After our meal, we went outside, where Hamisi’s family usually spent most of the day. One of his grandchildren, who looked to be about five years old, had physical disabilities and appeared unable to walk. As he sat on the ground in diapers, playing and smiling, Hamisi asked if I would take a picture of him. He was clearly very proud of the little boy, who seemed well integrated into his community. People helped him and played with him throughout our visit.
We spent the rest of the afternoon mingling with family members and villagers near Hamisi’s house. I noticed Tommy talking and laughing with one of Hamisi’s teen daughters, who had an unimaginably beautiful smile and quiet sophistication abo
ut her. As we posed for large-group pictures, I found myself placing my arms around grown women such as Hamisi’s wife and sister and feeling a closeness in doing so. Kids were home from school by this time, and because the event had been planned ahead of time, family members were home and not working. Tommy said afterward that he loved seeing the women braiding each other’s hair and the closeness of people sitting and talking in the courtyards. It seemed to him, and to me, that it would be hard for someone to feel lonely in a community that embraced its members as they did. (We did not delve deep enough to know if there were exclusions or prejudices in village life here.)
Groups of women engaged in conversation as they relaxed in the afternoon sun on mats outside. Infants strapped to their mothers’ backs gazed at the activities around them, and older children laughed and played nearby. Their connection to each other and their connection to nature were strong. Their Muslim or Christian religion added another bond and sense of purpose among the villagers, and I heard of no conflicts with the two religions coexisting.
One-on-One with Hamisi
In late afternoon, I gave Abdul the time-to-go nod. I embraced Hamisi’s family members and we set out so we could return to camp before dark. Hamisi volunteered to escort us to a shortcut, which took us an hour to reach. This gave us time for an intimate talk, which I’d hoped would happen during this visit.
I asked about his children, and Hamisi spoke at length about them. Then he suddenly stared at the ground and said in a hesitant voice, “The most unforgettable event in my life was the death of my son, who died in 1994, when he was eighteen years old. My life stopped for one year after he died.”
It was almost expected in Tanzania that infants might die—the country’s infant mortality rate was over 12 percent during my student days there. Out of eighteen births with two different wives, Hamisi had lost three infants, which was not rare in Tanzania at that time, but his eighteen-year-old son’s death had impacted him severely. He was lost in grief. He could not understand why this death happened.
He went on: “He died of symptoms that were similar to cholera, but I don’t believe it was cholera. I believe it was black magic, or voodoo, that was done against him. I loved my son so much because he dedicated his time to attending high school and also to farming. I believed he was the one who would have come to help me in the future, but it was not my luck. This is the only event that has happened that I will never forget for the rest of my life.”
Trying hard to absorb the intensity of Hamisi’s struggle with this loss, I thought about my childhood best friend’s mother. Esther was an unfailingly devoted mother to her only son, Alex, who was just twenty-one when he died in an automobile accident. He was driving a tall, open-doored delivery truck that tipped over when a car ran into it, killing him instantly. He had planned to quit the job the week before the accident but had kindly stayed on the extra week because another employee was sick. Esther was so devastated that she could not adjust to life without him. When I appeared each year on her doorstep to visit her, she would burst into uncontrollable tears.
Then, twenty-some years later, she came to the door with a smile. She told me about a dream she’d had that allowed her to move on with her life. In the dream, God made it clear that he needed a drummer in heaven. Alex had been a talented drummer. The dream helped Esther reconcile the tragic loss with her religious beliefs. Her life was never the same, but she managed to feel better over time with a new image of Alex in heaven playing the drums for God. Her attendance at Catholic mass also helped her to maintain a spiritual bond with her son.
Hamisi had never found solace after losing his son over a decade prior. And I couldn’t imagine how I would find peace with such a loss. It was a reminder to me of Flint, and of how loss can lacerate so deep that life itself loses meaning, or in Flint’s case ends.
Tommy was walking right behind me, and I was overcome, realizing how lucky I was to have him and Patrick, my healthy sons, likely to live into their eighties or nineties. I couldn’t imagine losing either of them. Amid my grief, I wondered if Hamisi’s son might have had a different outcome with access to the diagnostic and treatment resources of a more developed country.
I wanted to communicate to Hamisi how deeply I cared about this loss in his life. “Pole sana,” very sorry, was the best I could do at that time, but I also later asked Abdul to communicate my deepest sympathy to him. The message I sent read:
I can’t imagine how painful and confusing it must have been for you to have your son die in his prime at age eighteen. I hope you eventually find peace with this as the years go on. I knew from our time tracking chimps together in our early days and the guidance you provided me that you would make an excellent father, and I’m sure your son benefitted from that.
As we continued our walk, Hamisi said, “Now I want to hear about your life,” looking more directly into my eyes than usual. I was quiet, finding it difficult to launch into the past thirty-six years, knowing he might not relate to any of it. I chose to describe my work as a family doctor and my kayaking in Puget Sound, and to tell him about the beautiful mountains and lakes in the Seattle area, which I thought might resonate with him.
I would have like to have talked with Hamisi a lot longer and heard more about his life, but the walk to the shortcut was coming to an end. Hamisi had hiked five hours to Gombe to greet Tommy and me on our arrival, and had planned extensively for our visit. My heart overflowed with gratitude for his generosity of spirit and for his friendship. I realized why we had become good friends at Gombe. I could still feel that same connection, and my response to his compassionate nature. I was filled with a sense of comfort as I recognized the completion of this part of our journey, a treasured reunion with a friend and mentor from a distant chapter in my life.
We parted with Hamisi on the path; our group headed back to camp and he to his village. I turned around and saw him, slightly lower on the slope, standing tall and serene on the dirt pathway with his bright blue-and-white dress shirt framed by the rich green forest plants as he watched us leave. My eyes were fixed on his. I didn’t know when we would see each other again, if ever, and that was painful. But I felt that I had connected more deeply with him on this trip, and our bond was stronger than ever. As always, I saw that glimmer of a smile on his face. I remembered him exactly this way at age seventeen, waiting for me at the upper camp in the early-morning hours with our check-sheets in hand, before we went to tackle yet another adventurous day following chimps through the forest.
I had some photos and video of our time together, and many memories of our days following the chimps, but as I trekked back over the mountains, I realized that I still knew relatively few details about Hamisi’s life, both past and present. It was too late to ask him any more questions, and I knew my Swahili wasn’t advanced enough to understand some of the complicated emotions and events of his life over the previous decades. When we arrived back at our beach dwelling, I wrote out some questions and asked Abdul if he would interview Hamisi after Tommy and I returned to Seattle and then send me Hamisi’s responses.
In my mind I carry an image of Hamisi, the elder wise man, being interviewed by Abdul, the learning young man, as Hamisi answers my questions about his views on life in the forest and in his village. I picture him thinking intently about how his life unfolded, and I’m grateful to have this information. Still, I wish I had been fluent enough in Swahili to ask him myself.
One question Hamisi answered involved his knowledge of both plants and animals, something I wasn’t fully aware of during my student days. Hamisi wrote:
My research work at Gombe helped me to learn a lot about the plants that are useful as local medicine to cure diseases like typhoid and malaria, serve as antivenom for snakebites, and treat ulcers and many more conditions. Also, I know different species of animals and their behaviors, what they eat, and how they communicate with one another, and can identify them by hearing their calls, especially chimpanzees.
I had been a benef
iciary of Hamisi’s many skills. I learned from the way he moved, analyzed his surroundings, and communicated his knowledge to others. Above all, I appreciated that Hamisi always seemed to be watching out for me without being overbearing.
“Kuja karibu,” come near, he would say and quietly point to Fifi, who was selecting a perfect twig to use for termiting. Hamisi would then step back for me to continue observing the behavior that was crucial for me to witness. Back then I could picture guiding my future children this way, though I’m not sure I achieved the same level of confidence and competence with Tommy and Patrick as Hamisi did with me and, I presume, with his kids. It was sixteen years after leaving Gombe and after my first son was born that I found myself evoking this image of Hamisi gently allowing me to step out in the field while still supporting me from a distance. When my boys needed to step out into life on thier own, I tried to blend into the background as Hamisi did with me. This did not come naturally to me having grown up with a father who would usually take control of the situation at hand.
And always, in our adventures, Hamisi’s mild manner and slow, methodical approach helped guide me through the forest. His sensitivity to others and alertness to their signals taught me the importance of not rushing. An instructive Swahili proverb is “Haraka haraka haina baracka,” which means, “He who rushes has bad luck.” Not rushing has been one of the hardest lessons for me to learn in life. I try, both as a doctor and a parent, to take the time to pay attention, observe, and think things through. I’m not always successful.
Another of Hamisi’s responses during the interview highlighted our similarities and why we became close friends:
Sometimes when I went to the forest with other observers I wished I could go back to the days in which it was just the two of us, John and me. My manners and personality, including patience, a strong work ethic, and trustworthiness, were similar to John’s, and for this reason we grew to like each other and become friends.
