Gorillas in the Mist (51 page)

Well, we had it on the twenty-fourth as per schedule. Eighty-one men, women, and children climbed up here-and eighty-two went down. Yes, I delivered my very first baby yesterday, in between passing out lunch and passing out the Christmas presents!

No, I did not pass out too, but it sure was an odoriferous and intriguing experience to say the least. The mother was the wife of my tracker Kana, and he and she are both Batwas. Most of the other women present were Bahutu, and so none of them particularly wanted to help her out, so that left you know who to order the boiling water (I never saw so much boiling water in my life) and take up where the poor lady had to leave off.

The problem started after the whole crowd had spent two hours dancing and singing and drinking pombe and just generally having a good time. I got into this myself, and I guess Kana’s wife and I both overdid it, but the results were worse for her. I had started taking Polaroid pictures of each family group for presents, when it became obvious that Kana’s wife wasn’t able to smile. He poked
her and ordered her to smile, which she did momentarily, but that poke was the “straw that broke,” only in this case it was the bag of waters.

I had her carried to the guest bed in my spare room and rolled up my sleeves the way they do on those TV movies of a prairie homestead.

When the baby was out, I cut the cord properly with my bread knife (fortunately just sharpened) on the breadboard, then tied the cord with whatever was handy-a pipe cleaner-then slapped the hell out of the baby, who didn’t seem to be breathing at all. The mother seemed in too much pain to be much interested (the baby was a month early) as I held him upside down and slapped away. But she smiled when he finally screamed and began breathing.

Then she sucked the gluck out of his nose and ears (there are limits to my abilities), after which I cleaned off the debris adhering to his tadpolelike form. (Why is it that newly born television babies come out pink and clean and unscummy?) I then swathed him in a towel swiped from the Mille des Collines hotel, handed him back to his mum, and ordered her to nurse him, just as I had seen it done on TV.

Well, was I ever laughed at by the assembled ladies who had crowded into the room to see the fun. According to what I was then told, babies are usually born in the field, and other work usually has to be completed before baby gets a chance to have its first meal. They truly didn’t know that the neonate could suckle in its first hour of life! I didn’t either, but
it
knew, and it did!

The crowd was now getting restless for their gifts, so I left the mother and child to begin distributing the loot, but before I could get started, Kana gave a speech announcing a successful birth and then he named the new son
KARISOKE!
How about that! Then the women, some nineteen of them, began a birth chant that was simply
spine-tingling. There are no words to describe it, but I shall never forget it.

About 5:00
P.M.
the guests left along with Kana and most of his children. An eighteen-month-old had to stay behind too because it was still suckling, and a young girl stayed to spend the night with the mother, change pots, and switch the two babies to and from the lunch table.

Next morning Kana returned along with his mother-in-law, the most gnarled, sweet-smiling, dignified old lady all dressed up in her very very best finery. She had climbed the mountain for the first time in her life to say thank you and to chant prayers of thanksgiving over her new grandson. I was truly touched by her graciousness. It was an extraordinary experience, and a humbling one.

The wife and babe descended at 10:00
A.M.
in the rain after Kana and the grandmother had cleaned up the room to the best of their ability. I never thought about it at the time, but the birth of a Batwa baby at Karisoke might have a good influence on controlling poaching activities. Kana and his family are related to all the Batwas in Mukingo, the biggest poaching village in the Virungas. So word will spread that Nyiramachabelli chose to deliver a Twa baby, rather than chase the mother and child into the woods. So this fortuitous event may turn out to have been an effective measure of
active
conservation!

Kana’s son was not the only unexpected gift to arrive at Karisoke that Christmas. On December 26, Dian received a letter from Rane Randolph enclosing a photocopy of a check for ten thousand dollars—a donation to the Digit Fund from two Californians, Harold and Sandra Price—no relation to Richard Price.

Apart from atrocious weather— “Daily rain, fog, and hail”—January of 1984 was unusually kind to Dian. There was still no word of new students on their way or of whether Watts would accept her offer, but Anita remained in camp until the tenth, and on January 5, Dian welcomed another visitor.

Carole Le Jeune is a Belgian “girl” of forty-one years who was born in Zaire and has lived there most of her life. She is an artist specializing in paintings of flowers, very shy and sort of peculiar. She is willing to stay here during the three weeks I might be gone, but I don’t feel totally secure about this since she is subject to attacks of malaria and isn’t feeling so well just now.

Gorillas are doing fine-though I can’t keep up with them as before because my foot is infected again and of course my lungs are bad-and they are ranging so very far away. My biggest problem at the moment is that I am due to leave for South Africa on January 25 and then on to England, but I don’t feel I can leave responsibility for camp just with Carole and the Africans (though they are as loyal as always) because of what might eventuate from down below. So I am on the verge of having to decline these long-planned tours. Won’t cable the sponsors just yet as I am hoping for a minor miracle in the form of “replacements.”

The miracle occurred. On January 18, while driving back to the Karisoke car park after a visit to Gisenyi, Carole Le Jeune encountered that rare phenomenon in Rwanda—a European hitchhiker. Being a kindly soul, she offered him a lift. The sunburned young man explained that he was a farmer’s son from the French Alps working his way around the world before settling down. He had heard about the gorillas of the Virungas and had decided to stop by en route to Uganda. Carole decided to risk Dian’s ire—all too easily roused by tourists—and take him back to camp with her. It was an inspired decision. Dian liked him, and when he volunteered to spend the next three or four weeks at Karisoke, she was happy to accept.

Claude Glise is a boy of real integrity who will give my Africans a feeling they have not been abandoned. I believe he and Carole can hold things together in my absence.

Reassured that Karisoke would survive, she departed at the end of January.

The South African part of the tour, nine days, was unbelievably hectic with an average of ten interviews a day (radio, television, newspapers), not to mention giving lectures every second night. Sleep and meals were sparsely distributed.

Part of the reason for the trip was to promote the book; but Hodder and Stoughton had only shipped one thousand copies, and all were sold before the tour ended. My expenses were split between them and Air Zaire, who want to promote tourism among South Africans. What a prick the Air Zaire guy turned out to be! On the pleasant side, the H&S promotions person-Nicole-was just a dear. She is a very petite, little, pretty young blonde who is just the spitting image of Lady Di and stopped traffic wherever we went. You can imagine the contrast between us two.

I was able to see very little of S.A., which I resented, since the scheduling was far more demanding than any American tour I’ve ever been on. What I did see, mainly from airplanes, was cultivated and built up-a far cry from the Africa I know and love.

If South Africa failed to delight Dian, some of its citizens were less than delighted with
her
. In several interviews and in at least one lecture, she was sufficiently critical of apartheid to attract the attention of the authorities. Subsequently she received word from the American Embassy in Kigali that she would not be welcome if she returned to South Africa.

Was shunted off to England on February 6 on an absolutely horrid two-day journey on ancient planes that stopped everywhere, frequently leaving me in transit and as a standby passenger for nearly a day in Lisbon, and all on account of that skinflint Greek Air Zaire representative. If he comes to Karisoke as he says he will, I will introduce him to the most bloody-minded buffalo in the Virungas.

Was met at London airport by a Mercedes and uniformed driver and the Hodder and Stoughton rep-a 36-year-old girl/lady named Monica whose conversation consisted almost entirely of “ta ta” and “how lovely.”

The schedule was just as hectic as in S.A., but I saw lots of Ian Redmond and was ever so proud of the way he has matured, what with marriage and a full-time job as writer-reporter with the
BBC
Wildlife
magazine.

One Sunday I invited him and myself to Cambridge to visit Robert Hinde, my professor when I was there working for my degree, who used to be a very very good friend. To my sorrow Robert had little to say to me now because of what he claimed was my unfairness to Harcourt and Barnes, both of whom are here at Cambridge.

Although I knew Harcourt and Kelly were here, I sure didn’t expect to run into them; but I did so in the library. Kelly looked up at me and her face registered shock, surprise, sorrow, maybe a little guilt and fear, and an instant of happiness before she totally closed down all emotions and simply said, “I’m so surprised to see you.” I said a few insane words of greeting, felt compelled to hug her, then followed her gaze some fifteen feet to where Harcourt sat immersed in a book that he held around his lower face. Kelly just sat staring at him; he did nothing, so I left. I remain very saddened by that meeting.

A second weekend was spent more pleasurably.

I took Ian as a guest along with me to visit John Aspinall’s
HUGE
country estates, which contain hundreds of species of wild animals, including twenty-four lowland gorillas in an enormous outdoor enclosure who are living very much as they would in the wild.
WOW
, what an experience! Like myself, Aspinall often gets bad press, but I found him to be basically a humble man who has a passionate love and appreciation of animals. Every weekend he goes into the enclosures with his gorillas, lions, tiger,
rhinos, elephants, wolves, etc., because he feels the animals need a personal relationship with humans if they are going to trust their surroundings, breed, and remain content.

We spent two days with him and his family at Howletts and Port Lymphe, his two castles (literally) and game preserves. All of Aspinall’s wealth is based on gambling, and he is reputed to be the wealthiest man in the U.K. outside of the royalty.

Well, on the sorry side, he asked how his contributions to my work had helped. Naturally, in turn, I asked, “What contributions?” Same old story-he has sent thousands of dollars, so I learned, to the Mountain Gorilla Project for Dian Fossey’s work with the mountain gorillas!

Aspinall’s “zoo” was exceptional. One week previously I had visited a zoo enclosure in London of the same dimensions but where most of the space had been wasted on a huge moat. There sat five gorilla adults, one male and four females, involuntarily tapping their bodies much like patients in a geriatric ward. I was told by the zoo official accompanying me that “they were saved from the pot in West Africa by being bought for the zoo.” As I watched the animals sitting there, alternately patting themselves aimlessly or pulling out their own hair, I could not help but think that “the pot,” if that
had
been the only alternative, might have been a better solution.

Other things that happened: Had to give a lecture at the Royal Society, which was spooky for me. Ian had forewarned me that members of the Mt. Gorilla Project from the Fauna Preservation Society would be there taping every word I said. It was indeed the case, but as Ian later described it, they all went out with their tapes between their legs. I stated that tourism and trap-removing sponsored by the Mountain Gorilla Project have aided the gorillas’ plight-and then spent three times as much time describing how the Digit Fund runs
patrols six days a week, etc., etc., and in fact does most of the antipoaching work.

Tired, but in good spirits, Dian flew back to Kigali on February 20. Before proceeding on to camp she had another meeting with Laurent Habiyaremye, director of
ORTPN
, concerning her gorilla guardian proposals.

“I can’t tell you how much I like the new park director,” she wrote Stacey Coil. “He is the first director I ever met who has real integrity. In turn, he also likes me and has spoken out strongly for the continuation of Karisoke as a research center and as the main hope that remains for the gorillas.”

Her mood was further buoyed when, on reaching camp, she found a letter from David Watts accepting her offer of the director’s job. He was prepared to come within the month if she could obtain the requisite permissions. These she succeeded in arranging with Habiyaremye in the unprecedentedly brief span of ten days. She cabled Watts, who arrived at Karisoke on March 22, after an absence of almost five years.

Dian, who had been alone since the first of the month when Carole Le Jeune and the young French cattleman both went their separate ways, was delighted to show him around a restored camp. Watts was pleased to be back and anxious to get to work on a new gorilla study funded by a grant from the Leakey Foundation. It was as well that he had his own funding, since Karisoke’s financial state could now only be described as perilous.