Gorillas in the Mist (6 page)

As it was, I had to endure the delay imposed by the Christmas holiday. Dr. Leakey wanted me to share Christmas with Jane Goodall and her husband, Hugo van Lawick, who were going to be camping at Lake Beringo for a few days. I felt more than a little uncomfortable, but Dr. Leakey had made up his mind and there was no changing it.

Jane and Hugo welcomed me graciously into their midst. Their combi van held a little artificial Christmas tree and was festooned with balloons. The presence of a
rapidly decaying ostrich egg in the combi added a non-traditional scent to the occasion.

A disastrous polio epidemic had recently struck down many of the chimps at Jane’s Gombe research station. A precious shipment of polio vaccine had arrived, and she and Hugo were anxious to return to begin distributing it in doctored bananas. Dr. Leakey thought it advisable for me to go to Gombe with them to see how their camp was run.

I traveled to Gombe with an imitation-leopard-skin carryall bag my parents had given me years earlier. Because of its striking realism, I asked Jane if it shouldn’t be hidden somewhere in the cabin lest it frighten the chimps when they arrived for their bananas. Jane assured me that the animals wouldn’t pay any attention to it, but I tucked it far back in a corner of the main room. The first couple of chimps to arrive caused no problems, simply grabbing their bananas and leaving. Then a sharp-eyed female spotted the bag. She let out a piercing scream and fled, followed by several others who had not even had an opportunity to see the bag. I quickly hid it in an adjoining room, but it was several hours before the chimps returned to the door.

On my return to Nairobi the Kabara preparations began in earnest. Joan Root provided invaluable advice and assistance in shopping for food and other camp needs. Finally, only the choice of a vehicle remained, and Dr. Leakey would entrust this to no one but himself. We went to a garage in Nairobi where he almost immediately picked out a secondhand Land Rover. It had a canvas roof, couldn’t be locked properly, and suffered from mysterious internal ailments. Dr. Leakey took it on the test run of its life through the streets of residential Nairobi. Pedestrians and law-abiding vehicles scattered as the Land Rover’s brakes, gears, and engine were put through their paces. When it finally wheezed back to the garage, it had won Dr. Leakey’s approval.

That afternoon I found myself, accompanied by one of
Dr. Leakey’s African workers, frightening the stripes off zebras and stampeding other forms of wildlife in the game park where I’d gone for instructions in the fine art of driving a Land Rover. The fact that the African spoke no English and I spoke very little Swahili didn’t much hinder communication between us-his facial expressions and gestures clearly conveyed his emotions, ranging from mild apprehension to sheer horror at the way I handled the car while simultaneously trying to view the game and look up words in my English/Swahili dictionary. When he left me after our “lesson,” I’m sure he was convinced I wasn’t going to make it safely out of Nairobi, much less all the way to the Congo.

He wasn’t the only one in Nairobi harboring reservations about my chances for success. Alan Root considered the proposed venture sheer madness. He let Dr. Leakey know, in no uncertain terms, what he thought about sending a totally inexperienced girl some seven hundred miles across Africa to the Congo without even the documents required for her to begin her research.

Blissfully unaware of their confrontation, I was busily involved in the near-impossible chore of squeezing all my gear into the Land Rover, which I’d named Lily. Then, two days before my scheduled departure, Alan told me he intended to accompany me in his own Land Rover to make sure I at least reached the right country, and to assist me with the formalities of gaining permission to set up a research camp. I knew this meant a great sacrifice of time for him, but it’s difficult to see how I could have begun the project at that time without his assistance.

I met Mary Leakey shortly before I left Nairobi; this was our first meeting since 1963. Her greeting was one I’ve never forgotten:

“So you’re the girl who’s going to out-Schaller Schaller, are you?”

It was an intimidating thought to carry with me.

T
he heavily laden, two-car convoy bearing Dian Fossey to the Virungas bounced along the dusty roads across the savannas and through the jungles of Kenya and Uganda. Four days out of Nairobi, Alan Root and Dian reached the Traveler’s Rest hotel in Kisoro, Uganda, just five miles from the Congolese frontier.

Walter Baumgartel welcomed Dian back. When he heard that she was undertaking a serious study of the mountain gorillas, he was both delighted and aghast.

“For years I’ve been trying to get something like this started, but I dread the thought of your going into the Virungas alone right now.”

He warned Dian that Kivu province was in a state of incipient revolt against the central Congolese government and that the military, which was undisciplined at the best of times, had grown dangerously unpredictable in its treatment of foreigners.

Taking Alan Root aside, Baumgartel warned him too.

“You know how rough things can get. Use your influence. Perhaps we can persuade her to stay here and work with the gorillas on Mt. Muhabura, at least until the Congo quiets down.”

Root grinned and shrugged. “You don’t know this one, Walter.
She’ll go to Kabara come hell or high water. But we’ll see. Maybe the border will be closed.”

The border was open, and although there were some difficulties with her documents, Root’s composure and assurance got them into the Congo. Next day they arrived at the Parc des Virungas headquarters in Rumangabo, where they hired two reliable camp workers and picked up a pair of armed park guards who were to accompany them to the campsite. They left their vehicles in the tiny village of Kibumba at the base of Mt. Mikeno; and just as Dian had done three years earlier, they hired a score of local men to carry her equipment and supplies four thousand feet up the mountain to the Kabara meadow, where Dian intended to spend the next two years.

This return climb was really poignant. There were vistas along the trail that left me speechless with their majesty. The far sweep of the volcanoes seemed never to end. There were some wondrous, sprawling hagenia trees lining the trail that seemed so familiar I wanted to rush up to them to shake branches. The heaviness of limb and shortness of breath that come with the altitude were also vividly familiar.

Under Alan’s supervision, the porters climbed quietly, but we saw no trace of gorillas. We did see plenty of buffalo and elephant spoor, and that was an encouraging sign. Most encouraging of all, when we reached the Kabara meadow, we saw that it had remained unspoiled; in fact, it seemed scarcely to have changed at all in the three years since I’d last been there.

Root could stay for only two days so the two of them worked around the clock, dividing their energies between the tedious but necessary chores involved in setting up camp and reconnoitering for gorillas. Alan gave Dian a crash course in tracking.

We found fresh tracks of a gorilla group in the relatively flat saddle area adjacent to the mountain. In my excitement I promptly took off on the trail swath left by the gorillas through dense foliage in the certainty that I would
encounter the group at any moment. Some five minutes of “tracking” passed before I was aware that Alan was not behind me. Perplexed, I retraced my steps and found him patiently sitting at the very point where we had first encountered the trail.

With the utmost British tolerance and politeness, Alan said, “Dian, if you are ever going to contact gorillas, you must follow their tracks to where they are going rather than backtrack trails to where they’ve been.” That was my first lesson in tracking, and one that I’ve never forgotten.
*

On the eve of Alan’s departure, Dian was thrilled to hear gorillas hooting and beating their chests in the forest no more than half a mile away from camp. Early the next morning, January 15, 1967, the day before Dian’s thirty-fifth birthday, Alan made a last check of the camp—the patched-up cabin where the African workers would stay; Dian’s tent with its freshly dug rain gutters; the latrine pit and its burlap modesty screens; and the rain barrels in which drinking water would collect. Satisfied, he wished her luck and headed back down the mountain.

I’ll never forget the feeling of sheer panic that I felt watching him depart. He was my last contact with civilization as I had known it. I found myself clinging to the tent pole simply to avoid running after him.

The strangeness of the near-total isolation stayed with me for several weeks. I could not listen to the shortwave radio Dr. Leakey had kindly insisted I take along because, if anything, it increased my sense of desolation. I couldn’t read any of the popular or scientific books I’d brought, or even use my typewriter. All of these connections with the outside world simply made me feel lonelier than ever.

Four days after Alan Root’s departure, the Congolese tracker, Sanweke, arrived at camp. As a youth he had tracked gorillas for Carl Akeley, and later he had done the same for George
Schaller. He had also guided Joan and Alan Root. Dian had met him during her 1963 visit to Kabara, when she had learned to appreciate his remarkable abilities. His was a familiar face, and with his arrival her initial overwhelming sense of aloneness subsided somewhat.

January 19:
Left camp at 8:30 with Sanweke, along Bitshitsi trail. About half an hour out we found a single, fresh gorilla foraging trail to the right. We followed it through high nettles and saw that it joined up with four other trails. We heard a shrill bark, went in that direction across the main path and crossed on a log over a ravine, then up the hill along many feeding trails, down an extremely steep ravine and straight up the slopes of Mikeno, where we found the group’s night nests. Solid dung in each and all along the trail. We returned toward Bitshitsi and in about ten minutes saw an adult gorilla sunning to our left. It barked shrilly upon seeing us and disappeared. We went further down the trail and turned and crossed the ravine again. At that point the entire slope was in the open sun and here we encountered an adult male-a blackback-approximately eight to nine years old, who sat watching us, but displaying no fear. Time was 11:10. He gave small hoots, more like burps, before his chest beats (each five to eight thumps) and ended two of his chest beats with branch grabbing. Between three and five minutes elapsed between chest beatings, during which time two older females appeared…. Then the silverback boss of the family appeared from behind the young male after screaming
wraaagh
several times.

This first real contact, lasting more than three hours, involved a family of nine gorillas that Dian named Group 1. It was the beginning of a series of contacts that continued until the rains set in and the gorillas moved far down the slopes below the camp where fog, mud, and torrential runoff made tracking them extremely difficult. By the end of January, Dian had
racked up more than twenty-four hours of observations, which she carefully detailed each evening in her typewritten notes.

In these early days her approaches to the animals were often clumsy. She was too persistent in pursuit, which disturbed and provoked them.

January 26:
I left camp alone at 9:00 as Sanweke had malaria. At 9:20 I heard a bark to the right, not far from the Bitshitsi trail…. It was Group 1…. I take another few steps so as to be in the clearing when the animals see me, and I almost bump into the blackback male. I measure later; we were six feet apart. He stands up, blinks his eyes, opens his mouth, screams, and runs about fifty feet through the brush behind him, screaming and tearing at the undergrowth. There’s quite a bit of screaming now from all sides, and a mother with infant, a juvenile, and an old female take to a tree. Old female and juvenile beat trees and chests and then juvenile runs to old female. Mother sits there holding branch with right arm and infant in left arm. She lets go of the branch and beats her chest, hitting the infant in the process. She stands up on the limb, wants to get down, but keeps looking at me hesitantly. Then in a split second she shoves the infant onto her back and leaps a good eight feet from the higher branch to a lower one covered with moss. She clings there for just a second with all four extremities and then leaps ten feet to the ground. As she lands, she gives a piercing scream and the infant lets out a long, high-pitched cry. I’m really worried about both of them, for it’s not my intention to cause them harm. Just then the old female does the same thing, only when she reaches the lower branch she rolls off it and must have hit the ground on her back. She lets out a terrible scream and about four others in the bush join in.

Dian had learned from Schaller’s books that it was best to remain visible to the animals at all times, but not to frighten them with a sudden appearance. She soon found that this
approach had the added advantage of capitalizing on the gorillas’ highly developed curiosity, attracting them to her. She tried to further arouse their curiosity by softly talking to them, but that frightened the animals away. She switched to imitating the gorillas’ own vocalizations, particularly the deep, rumbling
naooooom
that sounded a little like purring, and which she would describe as a “contentment vocalization.” She also mimicked mannerisms such as self-grooming and nibbling on wild celery stalks, and maintained a submissive crouch in the animals’ presence.

There were inevitable setbacks.

Today Sanweke and I were charged by two gorillas and it wasn’t a bluff charge-they really meant it. We were about one hundred and fifty feet directly downhill from a group when a silverback and a female decided to eradicate us. They gave us a split second of warning with screams and roars that seemed to come from every direction at once before they descended in a gallop that shook the ground. I was determined to stand fast, but when they broke through the foliage at a dead run directly above me, I felt my legs retreating in spite of what I’ve read about gorillas not charging fully. I paused long enough to try to dissuade them with my voice, which only seemed to aggravate them more, if possible; and when their long, yellow canines and wild eyes were no less than two feet away, I took a very ungainly nosedive into the thick foliage alongside the trail. They whizzed on by, caught up in their own momentum. It’s a good thing they didn’t come back to attack, for I was certainly in no position to defend myself. It may have taken only a split second to dive into that foliage, but it took about fifteen minutes to extract myself-what a tangle!