The chimps had already come down from their nests when we arrived, and were pant-hooting their good mornings to each other. Next, they started to eat. Between May and June is the season for a green fruit with fleshy orange seeds called Saba senegalensis, or simply saba, as the locals say. These bitter fruits are a main food source for chimps, but also popular with humans. Saba has evolved into a cash crop and is collected by local people and sold to buyers for the market in Dakar and other large cities. Jill’s concern is that the harvest of saba by humans, which has increased fivefold over the past several years, will drastically reduce the availability of the fruit for chimps, and have a serious impact on their survival.
Later in the summer, Jill followed the Fongoli chimps toward a creek bed where they seasonally voyage to feast on what is locally known as “minkone” fruit. The site, called Gingi, after an adjacent village, is home to a dozen or so of these fruit trees, a staple part of chimp diet in the late rainy season after saba has stopped growing. When Jill got to the creek one damp July morning, she recalled, all the trees had been cut down for cultivation.
“You couldn’t even recognize it,” she said, describing an absence in the forest that, for the last ten years at least, had been an integral secondary food source.
Two adult females in the group, Bandit and Lucille, sat next to a termite mound and stared for over an hour at what had once been a major nesting and feeding site they frequented. Jill does not have a way to evaluate this behavior scientifically, but cannot help but wonder: “Were they taking it all in? Were they shocked at the devastation? Or were they waiting to see what activity was going on?”
A male squatted at the top of a tree. A hooked white scar the shape of a slim crescent moon was exposed on his lower back as he reached to pull a branch of fruit to his mouth.
“That’s David,” Jill said quietly. “He’s my study subject.”
She pulled a small, curled notebook from her ripped pants pocket and began taking notes. I could immediately tell that she cared deeply for this stunning fellow, perhaps the same way Jane Goodall had felt for her own David.
“I’m going to follow him.”
Jill descended a steep, leaf-littered bank into a tangle of saba trees.
We had walked past castellate termite mounds, over metamorphic rock plateaus and through tangled lianas. We struggled through tough potato vines and trees that strangled each other. And here some of the chimps were resting under a cool, viny thicket. An old chimp leaned back on a rock and closed his eyes, his lips slightly parted in a grin. He had a sparse, white beard and pink scars on his chin. The side of his face was bathed in sunlight, the thick fur on his back covered in dead leaves. He crossed his arms and looked down at a companion sleeping next to him. In that moment I was just a voyeur observing another human being, simply “people watching” as my mother and I used to do in Manhattan, seated on the library steps. There was something in their faces that I had not seen in the mangabeys.
When Goodall first discovered chimps making “fishing poles” to retrieve termites, the idea of “man the toolmaker” was dispelled, but man was still considered the only creature who hunted with tools. This hallmark behavior created a distinct boundary between humans and chimpanzees that exalted humanity and stuck nonhuman primates definitively into the animal-kingdom mix, or so we thought.
The Fongoli chimps proved us wrong once again. Jill observed ten different chimps use “spears” to hunt prosimian prey in twenty-two documented cases. Tool construction involves five steps that include trimming the tool, a tree branch, to a point, in attempts to extract little nocturnal prosimians called bush babies (Galago senegalensis) from cavities in hollow branches and tree trunks. Bush babies emerge from their slumber at dusk and communicate through what sounds like language—cries or squeaks. They are agile leapers with large, thin ears like bats; huge, saucer-shaped eyes; and silvery fur coats. Even though in only one of twenty-two recorded cases was the chimpanzee successful, Jill insists that the toolmaking and hunting behaviors were both systematic and consistent. The tools were not used as probes or for rousing, she asserts, but instead these handcrafted tools were forcibly jabbed toward their prey multiple times and smelled and/or licked upon extraction. The discovery of chimps using tools to hunt, a behavior never before recorded in a group of wild chimps, landed Jill in National Geographic and put the Fongoli chimps in the media spotlight. Jill now asks us to rethink not only theories about tool use and hunting, but what it means to be human.
Local people such as the Malinke and Bedik tell stories about chimpanzees and monkeys. They believe that humans turn into monkeys if they are somehow outcast from society, and also that chimpanzees are their ancient ancestors and must be protected. Monkeys may be hunted and eaten for bush meat here, but not chimps. Using this traditional knowledge as a conservation tool is key. As folklorist Gregory Schrempp wrote in 2011: “Science can enrich its perspective through a sympathetic attitude toward myth and other forms of traditional wisdom.” Gathering and documenting stories about people’s interactions and beliefs about primates will also be valuable when there are no primates left.
How will we describe the great apes to our grandchildren or great-grandchildren when these creatures are no longer around, except maybe in zoos? How will we explain to them that hairy creatures whose expressions resembled those of humans once lived in the wild, but then went extinct? We won’t read them scientific papers. We’ll tell them stories, and hopefully, read them poems.
GOLD DIGGERS
Kelly and I entered Le Bedik on a Friday night in Kédougou and were greeted by an international coalition of mining-company employees, many still in their field clothes—geologists from Nigeria, a South African mine manager, a driller from Hungary with a round, sweating face, who was quite drunk. There were representatives from China and Australia, and a lanky fellow from Lebanon with charcoal-rimmed eyes who stumbled outside after he was refused another drink.
Le Bedik, the only locale in Kédougou with Wi-Fi, is usually our first stop when we come into town for supplies. Wealthy business-people, like the mining-company executives, typically reserve rooms. The president’s wife, Viviane, stays here when she comes to check on the regional hospital she helped to fund a few years ago. Carved-wood elephant murals adorn the back wall of the bar and rustic village scenes color the concrete walls. From the restaurant balcony we could hear the echo of children’s voices, the sound of women smacking clothing against rocks in the Gambia River. The mountains of Guinea were just visible in the distance, shrouded in a white sky, hazy from smoke lingering after a recent bush fire.
Like the miners, we were not quite clean after a week in the bush studying savanna chimpanzees, though we’d washed our hair and put on earrings. I chatted with a shaggy-haired geologist from Cape Town who sat at the end of the bar blowing cigarette smoke out into the fading sky. He was utterly baffled by a writer who had come to this uncomfortably hot country to study chimps.
“What do we need besides statistics and data?” He crinkled up his sunburned face and poured himself another whiskey.
“What will numbers tell us about chimps when they go extinct in the wild?” I said.
“What can you write about monkeys?” he asked. “They eat, they shit, they sleep.”
“Apes,” I corrected him.
At the other side of the bar, Kelly struck up a conversation with a reserved South African mine manager. He told her about a gold-prospecting expedition in Kharakhena, the field site where we had conducted transects and set up reconnaissance cameras to learn about the area’s local chimp populations.
“I’ve been working here for months and I’ve never seen a chimp,” he said.
“They’re very silent when they want to be. You don’t see them, but they’re definitely around Kharakhena. We can tell based on nests they build at night to sleep in …”
“They build nests?”
“Yes, they push down branches and leaves.”
“Wow.”
“Chimps are so resilient, but only to a point. When it comes to mining, we don’t know what they’ll be able to handle and what they won’t. Obviously the loss of habitat will be an issue, but will the noise of bulldozers and other large machinery be a problem?”
“It won’t be a problem,” he assured her, his face stoic.
Kelly eagerly pulled up a vegetation map on her Toughbook that showed all the areas in Kharakhena where she’d documented the presence of chimps. The map abounded with rich blue circles that predicted home ranges. Blue meant gallery forests—habitat with fruiting and nesting trees used by chimps.
“We just have a small prospecting plant,” the mine manager said. “That area, we just use the water source, we only put the plant up for exploration, but we’re not going to do anything there.”
“What do you mean, the water source?”
“We’re building a dam. There’s no other way to work in the dry season.”
“A dam?!”
“There will be plenty of water for the chimps. It will help them.”
“How could a dam possibly help the chimps?”
“It will! Why not? We’ll have a camp with fresh fruit for them every day! They eat fruit, right?”
Images of chimps fighting over bananas surely made Kelly cringe, even though she kept a smile on her face. Provisioning wild chimps is forbidden at most research sites, as it has a strong influence on their behavior. When Jane Goodall first started working in Gombe National Park, she provisioned the population with bananas to speed up the habituation process, so that she could observe and record behaviors before her funding ran out. When they got accustomed to provisioned food, their natural patterns of behavior changed. Habituated primates that lose their fear of people are more prone to death by hunters and other predators, and can also be dangerous to people. Because primates are genetically closely related to humans, they are susceptible to many of our diseases and, like us, can get a common cold or pneumonia.
We were all drunk and famished, so the mine manager bought some Pringles, a delicacy here, and paid one of the waiters to reopen the kitchen and have some steak and fries made up for us, on his tab. He ordered a bottle of white wine and filled our glasses, while the geologist polished off his own supply of Jameson and told us stories from his days in Angola, how he had left half-smoked cigarettes and water for the local diamond miners who were often beaten to death and thrown in the river, their bodies fished out in the morning. The world will turn a blind eye to unjust deaths for things like precious metals and gems.
“There would be blood coming from their ears, nose, mouth, and the supervisors would just say, ‘They’ve drowned. They’ve drowned.’ They didn’t drown. Those buggers had been robbed blind.”
He shook his head and rolled the last bits of ice in his glass. I imagined the Angolan workers, killed for pocketing a diamond. I imagined the poor working conditions, the small red glow of a half-smoked cigarette that would be waiting for them at the end of the day.
“We are all stakeholders,” Kelly pointed out when our food arrived. “I’m going to be working here for the next several years, and so are you,” she said to the mine manager. “We should collaborate.”
“There are no chimps where my mine’s going in.”
“Yes, there are.”
Kelly continued trying to convince him that chimps do indeed exist in areas where his company wanted to build mines, at the base of several mountains, where local people believe that chimps are the spirits of their ancient ancestors. Kelly knew she had to pick her battles. The mine manager has only a small-scale concession compared to other companies in the vicinity, namely ArcelorMittal. As she argued, I felt the mist of a heavy rain on my face at the onset of a seasonal downpour.
THE STARRY-EYED YOUTH
The rainy season was just beginning when we arrived in Bofeto village, which was green and glistening against the forest after a midday shower. Mud-slick mountain roads sent our Land Rover fishtailing through fields of Djakore cattle with their long, fine horns and fulvous coats. We slid past bicyclists and into the neon-green savanna, just sprouting new grasses that seemed to glow. After the dry season had left the country barren and thirsty, the rain added fresh color to the once-dusty landscape.
Rustic wooden fences, cattle enclosures, and mud-hut compounds with thatched roofs lined the roadsides. This seemed like an idyllic village, a pristine place that had been untouched by Western influence, until Kelly pointed to the hills. They looked lumpy and shaved in places, like they’d gotten a bad haircut. The hills—which contain caves where chimps rest when temperatures rise in the dry season—had been mangled by mining roads.
We crossed a bridge wide enough for construction equipment that leaned heavily to one side over the murky river. A hand-carved wooden canoe tied loosely to a tree on the shore looked as though it would be swept away if the current picked up. Bulldozed roads replaced vague dirt trails, and once-pristine forest was infiltrated by heavy machinery and mining camps. I thought of the lesson on nonattachment and loss we’d received from yogi Desirée Rumbaugh back in Iowa. More and more chimp habitat is destroyed each time Kelly returns to Senegal to conduct her research, and there is seemingly little she can do about it. Everything changes and everything will come to an end. Can I accept this yogic philosophy but still care about conservation?
The impacts of mining in Senegal, and throughout West Africa in general, became a reality to me not only when I saw large-scale mining operations that left gaping holes in the earth, but also when we dined with the people who worked for these companies. When a mining company wants to start a new mine in Senegal, it makes a contract with the government, typically declaring that after the mine has been exploited, it will be responsible for reclamation. Mine reclamation is supposed to mean that the hole will be filled in and the landscape rehabilitated—topsoil put down and trees planted. As the geologist disclosed to us at the bar, this step is often over-looked, and mining companies say they’ve surpassed their budget, pay a fine to the government, and quietly leave the country. The ArcelorMittal mining camp is adjacent to Kelly’s field site. Due to the rains, the chain-link-fenced compound seemed deserted aside from a few guards and their dogs. Dump trucks would get stuck in these muddy roads.
Kelly monitors this distinct nook of Senegal in an attempt to determine the effects of mining on chimp habitat. Here, the forests are not only home to chimps and other wildlife, but to some of the world’s most desired minerals. ArcelorMittal is the largest steel-producing company in the world, and in the Falémé region of Senegal, they’ve made a contract to mine for iron ore, a key ingredient of steel. On Forbes magazine’s “Most Powerful People” list, Lakshmi Mittal, the chief executive officer of the company, is number forty-seven of the seventy people named. His daughter’s wedding was the most expensive in recorded history, a $60 million affair.
Mineral mining is a key aspect of economic growth, as Mr. Mittal and the company website advocate, but it is also extremely dangerous and destructive. ArcelorMittal’s website claims that it is concerned with sustainability and safe working conditions, but what it doesn’t show is pictures of the open pit mines left to erode and mar the earth. It doesn’t show pictures of children washing gold in mercury with their bare hands. It doesn’t show mines long since abandoned or resources vanished from the African earth.
In the village, we were greeted by our host, Smiti Damfakha, his four wives, and eighteen children. One wife was displaced from her hut at the center of the compound, and our bags were shuttled inside assembly-line style by the children. Donald Duck sheets were tucked into the two wooden beds, worn linoleum covered the dirt floor, stacks of metal and plastic bowls were kept on a small table, and there was even a motorcycle out front: all indicators of the small amounts of wealth local people make mining. Damfakha was extremely proud of his moto and always asked Kelly for gas.
Most local people work artisanal gold mines, small-scale mining that often relies on rudime
ntary and toxic methods, like mercury washing, to extract metals. Despite Damfakha’s efforts as a cattle herder, hunter, and part-time miner, all of which makes him rather affluent in his community, none of his daughters will ever have a wedding that costs anywhere near $60 million. Most often, he won’t even have enough gas to ride his moto out into the bush to hunt for dinner.
Damfakha welcomed us with bowls of sour milk and sugar, a delicacy in the village, the consistency of thin yogurt with cottage cheese chunks. The children peered shyly into the narrow hut opening. They examined our backpacks and equipment—Toughbook computers, GPSs, camera traps—and shooed chickens trying to enter. It felt absurd, all that we had brought for only a few weeks. Despite the rains, it was still extraordinarily hot, and animals that were kept in the housing compound attracted a plague of flies. We fanned ourselves with thatched mats and greeted Damfakha’s large family. They gathered into the crowded hut, eager to see why the “toubabs” (white people) were here. This is the village Kelly calls home during her stay.
The next morning, I pulled a mosquito net off the rickety wooden bed Kelly and I shared, and, looking for my boots, found two dead rabbits on the doorstep. Their thick, amber eyes had gone expressionless. Damfakha’s first wife came inside the hut and smiled at me. She gathered some cooking utensils and lifted the rabbits by their ears. The sky was still dark with a few lingering stars as I watched her light a fire outside the hut and start to boil water.
Kelly and I quickly dressed by the light of our headlamps and prepared our packs for a day out in the bush. We filled our extra water bottles, put sunscreen on our faces, and made coffee. Kelly checked the batteries on her GPS and decided on a few nesting sites she wanted to visit from the year before. One site she listed was la place du baobab géant, the place of the giant baobab. There she had found over forty chimp nests, old and new, and determined that this was a nesting site they had been coming back to for years.
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