Gorillas in the Mist (43 page)

Dian was a fighter whose reservoirs of endurance and indomitability had yet to be plumbed. But she was also possessed of the intelligence to know when she had been outflanked and of the ability to fall back and regroup.

Only five directors actually attended that first board meeting. They were Drs. Stuart and Jeanne Altman, Glenn Hausfater, Emil Menzel, and Ed Snider. All were pleasantly surprised and some vastly relieved by Dian’s tractability. Although she gave an impassioned résumé of the history of Karisoke, and took a trenchant and unrepentant stand on the subject of “active conservation” and the vital necessity of continuing it, she proved remarkably amenable to allowing Harcourt to assume the position of acting center director for one year. In recognition of this unlooked-for cooperation, the board proposed that she accept the post of program coordinator.

This was not much of a sop. In return for being allowed to serve as “liaison between the board and individuals wanting to carry out research at the center,” she was required to “attempt to obtain funds for the maintenance and basic operating costs of the Karisoke Research Center as well as for the salary for the
center director.” This meant finding money to keep Karisoke going at least partially for Harcourt’s benefit, together with money to pay him a salary—something Dian had never had. But she swallowed even this dose of wormwood and gall.

Several explanations have been proffered as to why she so passively accepted what was intended to be her permanent ouster from Karisoke. The most widely accepted one is that she really was almost at death’s door, had deteriorated mentally, and secretly wanted nothing so much as to be allowed to grow old and die in peace in some academic backwater, but was too proud to admit it.

This hardly jibes with her own sardonic observations on the meeting.

Rather than knocking her out of the ring for good, the first meeting of the Karisoke board of directors revitalized Dian. Perhaps this was just the tonic and the challenge she needed. At any rate, she now buckled down to her book with a single-mindedness that startled Anita McClellan. Up until this time, she had viewed the book as her obeisance to science. Now she began to see it as a way to appeal to the general public to support the cause of the Mountain Gorillas.

For people who come to my lectures, a gorilla isn’t just a stack of scientific data. It is alive. They can feel for it in life and death. They
care
about Digit and Uncle Bert and all the rest. My book can help them do the same.

Anita McClellan encouraged this point of view, and the revisions proceeded apace.

Dian’s health also began to show improvement. A new specialist prescribed a treatment for her back that worked well enough at least to postpone the prospect of radical surgery. Her kidney infection responded to new drugs. She was not pregnant, and hormone treatments brought her gynecologic problems under control.

By mid-July 1980, she was feeling well enough to swoop down on Karisoke for a quick visit before Harcourt arrived. She
told only a few friends of her intention because she had been warned that Harcourt’s Rwandan ally,
ORTPN
director Benda-Lema, would do all he could to prevent her from returning. She did not fly the usual route via New York and Brussels—she went first to Tokyo to deliver a public lecture and conduct some seminars at the invitation of the Japanese film company with whose team she had worked at Karisoke. It was here she obtained her visa for Rwanda.

Despite these precautions, when she arrived in Kigali on July 26, it was to be met by a perturbed American embassy official.

“I have to tell you, Miss Fossey, there might be some trouble about your admissibility to Rwanda. There could be an incident at Immigration, and we certainly don’t want that, do we? The ambassador sent me along to ease the way.”

Nervously he guided Dian through the formalities of entry. There were no difficulties, although as she would later discover, Benda-Lema had indeed asked the Rwandan Foreign Office to exclude her. The request had been ignored by the foreign minister, who was an intimate of President Habyarimana. Dian still had friends in high places.

Benda-Lema did what he could to make her visit difficult.
ORTPN
had been refusing to renew the visitor’s permits of the current set of Karisoke researchers, and Dian determined to put this right, but for four days was unable even to find the elusive Benda-Lema. It was not until she appealed to higher authority that he emerged from hiding.

They met at last at
ORTPN
headquarters.

He and I had about an hour’s meeting, and it was hard to tell who was the phonier-a fly on the wall would have enjoyed the sweet syrup that flowed…. But he knew, and I knew he knew, he had his orders. With absolutely no difficulty I got Peter Veit extended through January 1981. During our meeting, eventually joined by others of
ORTPN
, I swear I could hear harp music and the chattering of little angels overhead. B-L himself admitted that
Harcourt had advised him that Peter’s work was “unscientific” and, therefore, should be terminated.

An extension of John Fowler’s permit was also arranged, but there was no need to do this for Stuart Perlmeter, since he had no desire to remain. In fact, on the same day Dian finally climbed the long trail to camp, he departed from a place and situation that had become intolerable to him.

From Ruhengeri I hired a taxi to drive to the base of the mountain and climbed, and it was really emotional to see the Africans crying, laughing, dancing, and beating their heads over my return. Arrived at camp at about 3:10 and went to the graveyard first. The sadness of seeing again all the names of the dead gorillas was overwhelming … the sadness of not seeing Kima alive left me with such a void and feelings of depression. Many people didn’t like her too well, but I loved her so very much….

Seeing Cindy was nearly as bad. She was all bald on her back and legs, just skin and bones, and could hardly walk. Like Kima, she hadn’t been fed properly. I knew right away that I couldn’t leave her again.

Everything looked shabby and run-down; unpainted cabins and overgrown trails. Most of my chickens had died, and I only saw two duikers in the four days I was there. The paperwork was in such a mess I had no time to visit the groups, except one. Saw Group 5, but it was a bad contact, with tourists on the trail before we got there and no chance for a get-together because the gorillas were so nervous.

Mutarutkwa, the Zairean Tutsi who works on the patrols, came to say hello as soon as he heard I’d arrived. Two or three weeks ago he was attacked by three poachers, and I guess he just picked them up and shook them out. He heard from them that another infant gorilla was captured from the other side of Mt. Mikeno. Patrols from this camp have just about stopped, and as usual the park guards are hardly doing anything. I wonder how many
more gorillas have to die before people realize what really needs doing in the Virungas….

Ian Redmond, who is currently training guards at the park on a short-term contract, also came to camp to say hello. It was like old times to see him, but unfortunately we only had an hour together. He thinks even the parking lot gang are apprehensive about Harcourt’s return now. Well, they made their bed, they can lie in it.

On August 3, Dian descended the mountain, leaving John Fowler and Peter Veit to run things as best they could until the new regime took over. This time she did not go alone. The old dog followed close at Dian’s heels, and when her stiff legs would carry her no longer, Kanyaragana picked her up and draped her gently around his neck.

I’m ever so pleased I brought Cindy away with me, though as one might imagine, it was one chaotic trip! In Bujumbura they wouldn’t let me see her in the belly of the plane, but I won out in Nairobi. The stewardess took me to the ramp where they were unloading cargo; the ramp ground to a halt while I climbed up to find Cindy’s cage right near the front door. I put in water and the crappy food given to passengers for a “snack” and talked to her, and the local Africans were really pleased with the show until the military came running up wondering what the hell was going on! Then
they
got into the act since many of the older men remembered me passing through when the Nairobi airport was just a
toto-
a baby. I finally had to leave for the terminal since the dog act was holding up the cargo delivery; and I didn’t see Cindy again until Brussels.

Now Cindy is very very housebroken, and I’d been very worried about this. At Brussels airport there was a “greeting girl,” and I told her I had to get my dog out of cargo to be with me during the nine-hour layover.

There were also two little boys, sons of an American
embassy guy in Kigali, on the flight, and the three of us were taken into a special lounge for kids. I felt like I too should be wearing an identification tag and sucking a lollipop. Finally the “greeting girl” came back to our kindergarten to tell me I could go down into the pits of the airport among dozens of revolving belts, noise, and utter chaos.

There was Cindy in her cage without water or anything. I took her out immediately, but she still wouldn’t pee on the cement, so I had to take her through immigration and finally found a bit of grass right in front of the airport. I thought she was going to flood the whole of Brussels. One of the little boys had come with me, and he kept saying,
“Wow!
Look at
that!”

Cindy’s ordeal was not yet over. Somehow she weathered the long trip across the Atlantic, a mad taxi ride between John F. Kennedy Airport and La Guardia, and a final flight to Ithaca—again demonstrating her remarkable ability to retain her water.

Dian and her weary old dog were met by Stacey Coil, a young secretary at Langmuir who had been assigned to work for Dian, and who had developed an admiration for her bordering on hero worship.

“My mom and stepfather were up from Florida and had rented a cottage on Cayuga Lake that was big enough for fifteen people. Well … I somehow invited Dian to stay with them.

“When my husband and I arrived with Dian from the airport, my poor mom had heard so much about her and read everything I had been able to give her and was keyed up to the hilt with nervousness. When we finally got to the cottage it was late and dark…. You would have convulsed with laughter if you could have seen my mom’s face when my husband unloaded an empty, very large cage from the back of the car. Of course, Dian was very much in charge and made herself at home and started bringing in everything while we got this surprise out of the other side of the car (my mom could only see this very large, dark, moving animal being taken out).

“We all went inside and had coffee to get acquainted. Then Dian went to the door and hollered in her big, booming voice for Cindy (my mom by this time is a little hysterical, but I thought it was just from having this famous person staying with her).

“In comes big, old, slobbering Cindy. Well, my mother almost cried she laughed so hard. She had thought Dian had brought a gorilla with her.”

Temporarily leaving Cindy with the Coil family, Dian made her first visit to her own family since her return to the United States in early March. She was in California ten days and has left no record of what took place. By August 22 she was back in Ithaca, sharing her North Lansing apartment with Cindy and concentrating her energies on her book and on preparing a lecture course on Comparative Behavior and Ecology of the Great Apes, which she would begin delivering in September.

With her return to Cornell she began making a strenuous effort to compartmentalize her life and to relegate that aspect of it concerned with the ongoing feuds and tensions surrounding the Karisoke Research Center to a kind of limbo from which she could remain emotionally detached. Although in her role as program coordinator she continued to receive and reply to letters from Harcourt, the board of scientific directors, and others of that ilk, she dealt with them distantly, almost ritualistically.

Like a wounded and exhausted animal, she withdrew herself until she could heal her hurts and renew both her physical and psychic strength. Cornell, and the easygoing and self-contained academic life of the town and the university, provided the refuge she so badly needed. But Dian never intended it to become a permanent shelter for the rest of her days. She saw it as a sanctuary from which, in due course, she would emerge to renew the fight for what she believed in—and for what was hers.

She did not develop a large circle of friends, but did enjoy a special warmth with the half dozen or so men and women whom she came to know with some degree of intimacy. These included one or two students, Stacey Coil, and some other Cornell staff
members. Glenn Hausfater continued foremost among them. What had begun as a passionate and all-engrossing love affair had now burned down, but Glenn remained an enduring pillar of support throughout Dian’s time of need. In late September she wrote to him while he was away in Colorado:

“I love it here tremendously and my lectures are going well, even though each takes an entire week to prepare … Cindy and I have walked Monkey Run about six times. We also did Sapsucker Woods, though apparently no dogs are allowed there. It was beautiful and we saw a huge stag. Other than write and do lecture notes, I honestly don’t do anything except walk Cindy. It sounds rather boring, but I feel myself falling into place again for the first time since Digit was killed in December 1977.

“I will stop now and take Cindy back to Sapsucker Woods to see the lovely beaver pond with all the turtles and birds. I love it there. I do miss you so much and wish I could be the only one to meet you once you return to Ithaca. I know that I can’t because of—and probably others. Just know, please, that your return is special to me.”

Not all her autumnal excursions into the countryside were so pleasant. One Saturday afternoon she drove Cindy north to a state forest Hausfater had shown her. She and the dog went for a ramble through the fields at the edge of the woods. Dian was reveling in the first flush of fall colors when she was startled by a barrage of shotgun fire. A few minutes later a party of camouflage-costumed hunters emerged from the woods nearby.