Gorillas in the Mist (47 page)

Lord, were you ever an unwelcome visitor when you first came. While Walter was doing his thing all over the typewriter, Wilma was laying eggs in a corner of the tent, and you sure made their lives pretty rough. But as you grew up your playmates also grew in size. Nothing you liked better than playing at night, especially full moon nights, with the
elephants that came to drink at the creek in front of my cabin. I’ll never forget watching you with your little stump wagging madly, running in between the legs of those old mammoths, making them squeal and trumpet and flap their ears. Your play partners increased as you learned about buffalo, antelope, gorillas, mongeese-and the list was probably a lot longer, but that only you can tell.

Cindy, you were one lesson in courage, but remember, you loved people so much you failed as a watchdog. When Sebarari came into my cabin and swiped my valise with all the money I had in the world plus all my jewelry, you didn’t bark. He just petted you on the head. No big deal, right? Everything being relative.

And so you grew and grew, not just in body, but in love. Seems you loved everybody-all the porters, the animal guests around the camp, the sick or wounded gorillas and duikers you helped look after, even the European visitors. Remember how each morning you would make your rounds from cabin to cabin just to give all a good-morning kiss with that big, wet tongue. Yes, Cindy, you were the “love” in Karisoke. Cindy, Cindy, there are too many memories, I’m sorry….

The epitaph was never finished, but at the bottom of it one additional paragraph was scrawled.

Wed. 6:30
A.M.
Cindy, remember the little newspaper boy who came over here after you died and really made more sense than most adults who try to express their sorrow but lack the words? This little boy said, “You must be really lonely now, and you must cry a lot. Whenever I’m lonely I cry too-but only when no one can hear me.”

E
arly in January 1983, Dian wrote Rosamond Carr about the Karisoke situation: “Another little gorilla was taken from poachers on November 16. I heard most of the details from the Japanese student who has been at Karisoke for some time but had to return to Japan. Just about everything I learned factually about camp came from him, and I shall miss his letters. Kelly sends on the monthly reports, which are very brief and positive, yet a number of students and visitors who have been at camp give me a whole new slant. Poaching is as bad as ever, but one simply doesn’t hear about it now. The slaying of the silverback and others from the group from which the newest captive came would also have been hushed up had it been possible.

“I should very much like to return for about three months, but only after Harcourt leaves. He was due to leave at the end of December, but is staying on. He refuses to say when he intends to go.

“I’m sure my men must think I’ve dropped off the edge of the earth, and I so want to come back to convey my love and gratitude to them. I do want them to know that they, and the camp, are deeply etched in my heart and mind…. The students who have returned say that the cabins are falling apart…. It will be
disheartening for me to see what I worked for for so many years getting in disarray, but if the men are cheered up and the camp gets a new sparkle, then I think the three months will fly by. I would obviously prefer to stay longer, but I don’t know yet if I am capable because of the high-altitude breathing problems that are bound to be more acute now.”

And in a more personal vein: “Have cut down on my smoking a lot—only one cigarette an hour, which must still sound excessive to you, however it sure beats three and four an hour! Rosamond, I am
TRULY
quite a mellow person compared to what I was. It must be the fat, or perhaps getting over the horrid menopause. So, the new Fossey is a jolly old lady who needs glasses to find her glasses, though she still has her own teeth….

“The book is done at last … I am so glad! I hadn’t realized just how depressing it was to wake up each morning knowing how much more writing had to be done about the animals I so loved—those that had been killed. It was, at times, unbearable, and I was often close to giving up on it completely.”

January had seemed to be going well this year, but on the twenty-fourth a missile with multiple warheads was dispatched from Karisoke targeted on the offices of M. Le Directeur,
ORPTN
; the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation; the Fauna Preservation Society; Cooperation Belge (the Belgian aid program in Rwanda); and the National Geographic Society.

It was a denunciation by Harcourt of the Digit Fund. Having vehemently denied that the fund and/or Dian deserved credit for driving the cattle out of the park or, for that matter, for saving what was left of the mountain gorilla population, Harcourt gave the credit to the park authorities and to “international organizations that have between them donated many thousands of dollars to active conservation of the mountain gorilla.”

He went on to state that, though the
KRC
did indeed play an active role in gorilla conservation, it did so “in the absence of D. Fossey, in the absence of funds from the Digit Fund, and in the absence of any representative of the Digit Fund.” As the
director of the
KRC
, Harcourt formally disassociated himself and the center from all statements in the fall 1982
Newsletter from the Karisoke Research Center
.

This outburst was sparked by the rejuvenation of the Digit Fund.

By mid-1980, Dian had decided that, in good conscience, she could no longer solicit donations for the fund since the antipoaching campaign it was intended to support was not being implemented by the new director. She therefore stopped publicizing it and, of course, sent no further monies from it to Karisoke. However, in the autumn of 1982, in anticipation of her return to camp and of renewing the patrols, she reactivated it. The newsletter announcing this decision and describing the Digit Fund’s accomplishments was what had so stirred Sandy Harcourt’s wrath.

At the end of January, Dian got something of a dressing down from Anita McClellan, who had been trying to persuade her to put more about the core conservation issues into
Gorillas in the Mist
.

“Your being polite and reluctant to describe Africans’ attitudes toward government or park regulations; conflict of interest; misuse of cash from conservationists; bad land use; capture of animals for foreign zoos, etc., will not save gorillas’ lives. Such reluctance to confront the tough issues is a bit like advocating theoretical conservation, which doesn’t save the animals from traps and guns, but sounds okay.”

Even though the implication that she was acting like a “theoretical conservationist” made Dian see red, she remained unpersuaded. She was not afraid of legal action if she exposed the sleaziness of the internecine wars engaged in by players in the “conservationist game”—she was just genuinely reluctant to pillory anyone in
Gorillas in the Mist
.

This book is about
gorillas
, not people. It is not even about me, and there is too much “me-itis” in it already as a result of editorial decisions. I would prefer there be
no people in at all, good or bad, but I guess that’s too much to ask.

February 1983 brought good news from Dr. Snider to the effect that the National Geographic’s Committee for Research and Exploration had authorized a grant of $21,860 for 1983. This manna was accompanied by a warning: “Our committee is reluctant to make grants to support a facility [as opposed to an individual]. We are making a rare exception for Karisoke. However, I don’t think the committee will do so indefinitely, and the committee urges you to seek funding from other sources for the center itself.”

February also produced its share of problems. By the twenty-fifth Dian still did not know when Harcourt planned to leave Karisoke, nor had she heard whether
ORPTN
had issued work permits for her new students—Americans David Watts and Karen Jensen, and the Englishman Richard Barnes—without which these three could not proceed to Rwanda. She wrote urgently to Kelly:

“I know only that you intend now to leave in March, though when in March I don’t know. Do you have any idea if the work permits will be ready for Watts, Jensen, and Barnes by the time you leave? They are, naturally, ever so eager to get on their way.”

Kelly’s reply, written on March 10, was disconcerting—and ominous. “We have not received Watts’s application forms, so he has not been applied for,” to which was added the information that Barnes and Jensen had been accepted by
ORPTN
, “and so we have sent Dr. Barnes a telegram, and I have written to Jensen.” The letter closed on this pessimistic note: “Even if we received David’s application next porter’s day, I don’t think there is much chance he will be able to come here before June.”

Watts’s application for a work permit had been mailed to Karisoke almost four months earlier, in November 1982, for forwarding to
ORPTN
.

On March 22, Richard Barnes arrived from England. Eight days later Sandy Harcourt and Kelly Stewart took their
much-belated departure. The Harcourt era was at an end-but the shadow lingered.

One day before their departure, Watts’s application turned up. Harcourt sent it on to
ORPTN
, but neither Watts nor Dian heard anything more about it until late May when Watts got a letter from Jean-Pierre von der Becke, who, it will be remembered, was the director of the Mountain Gorilla Project. The message was that
ORPTN
had refused Watts a permit because it would not “accept the fact to have two directors for
KRC
. Indeed they do not think the station is important enough, and I must say, I understand their point of view.”

This was too much for Watts, who could plainly read the writing on the wall. He withdrew his application to work at Karisoke—whose new and now sole director would be Harcourt’s choice, Dr. Richard Barnes.

The effect of all this on Dian was to precipitate a bout of depression, but it also convinced her that she dared no longer delay her return to Rwanda if she ever hoped to regain control of her creation.

She wrote to Ian Redmond with something of the old fire of earlier days:

“Remember that horrid, horrid night when I asked Rwelekana to bring you over to my house when I thought I was going ‘bonkers’? In many ways I am going through those same unearthly feelings now, though certainly to a lesser extent, for I was leaving the animals then, and there is nothing here in the United States to leave except junk food or TV….

“I am nearly packed up to go back to Karisoke, but for only three months—mid-June through mid-September. I have been told that someone is trying to arrange for me not to get a visa back into Rwanda—he did try same in September 1980, but to no avail.

“Most of my news comes from sources not connected with Karisoke, obviously. I
know
that poaching is heavier there, and within the Virungas as a whole, than ever when I was there. I

know
that young gorillas are being captured…. I also
know
the physical facilities at Karisoke are nearly rotted out because no one cared about the upkeep of the cabins; the car is finished for the same reasons. Everything I worked for nearly single-handedly over thirteen years is just about finished.

“What really bothers me, Ian, about you is that you say you will give proceeds from your lectures to the Mountain Gorilla Project, when
you
, of all people, know that cutting a trap is one hell of a lot more important than showing conservation education cine to Africans….

“If you have suddenly joined the ‘aren’t we great, ‘cause we teach the Africans how to conserve their country’ scheme, I guess our paths have diverged. That plan is super, super fine,
but
it is putting the cart before the horse, and you
know
it. It takes one bullet, one trap, one poacher to kill a duiker, a buffalo, a gorilla, an elephant. No number of cute cine films are going to stop the slaughter now going on. It takes one small, preferably five small, patrols to cut traps, confiscate weapons, capture poachers, to preserve the animals remaining in the park. You know that also. The more popular the Mountain Gorilla Project grows, the less chances the gorillas have—that has been
proved
in the last two years.”

As May progressed and the time for action grew closer, Dian rallied. Writing to Craig Sholley, who had been with her at Karisoke in 1979, she sounded almost buoyant:

“I am returning shortly. Perhaps not for a long stay, as I am quite too far over the hill—God, fifty-one years of indulgences—for a full-time stint up and down those hills; but I need to bring things to the wonderful men (no way to explain how I miss and love them) and to work on the cabins Fossey-style…. I bet I will be going up there, even if carried, with paint, new mats, stovepipes, lamps, and nails every year until I join my betters: Digit, Uncle Bert, Macho, and all the others.”

Dian was now receiving mail from the new director at
KRC
, addressed very formally to “Dr. Fossey.” The arrival of Karen
Jensen, an attractive twenty-seven-year-old, on May 10 was good news. However, a report on the physical condition of the center made worse reading even than Dian had anticipated. Barnes wrote: “We have no cooking facilities and no lamps here other than the ones Karen and I are using at the moment; all the other stoves and lamps are broken, so it is essential that you bring something to cook on and to see by.”

Dian was incredulous— “There were sixteen pressure lamps and eight working stoves in camp when I left” —but there was worse to come. Due to several years of neglect, the combi was a write-off, and a replacement would cost fifteen thousand dollars; guns for the patrols, much of the optical equipment, cutlery and dishes, even a large proportion of the bedding had also vanished. The list of replacement items Barnes begged Dian to bring with her from the United States or Nairobi kept growing until it was pages long. The disappearance of the bedding seems to have been the last straw. Dian replied to Barnes’s appeals: “I will bring everything needed for writing, eating, seeing, but bloody @#$% if am bringing sleeping bags or linens. If these are all gone, the shit is going to hit the proverbial fan!”