Gorillas in the Mist Read online

  Number one, I had no means of funding myself. He waved this off as a minor problem, totally confident that it was one he was especially capable of handling. I told him that although I’d had two years of preveterinary medicine before switching to occupational therapy, I had no training in anthropology, ethology, biology, zoology, or any of the other “ologies.” Leakey scoffed, “I have no use for overtrained people. I prefer those who are not specifically educated for this field since they go into the work with open minds and without prejudice and preconceptions.” Then I brought up my age-thirty-four. “But this is the perfect age to begin such work,” Leakey said. “You have attained maturity and won’t be apt to take rash actions.”

  We then discussed George Schaller’s work, and just as I felt the meeting was drawing to a close, he suddenly asked, “Have you had your appendix out?” When I answered no, he launched into some hair-raising stories of people who had been struck down by appendicitis in remote regions and suffered lingering deaths. He concluded, “So you will have to have your appendix removed.”

  For the next few weeks I carried on my duties with the crippled children whom I dearly loved, giving no indication of the excitement bubbling inside me. Of course, the first priority was to get rid of the appendix, which seemed a small sacrifice for such an opportunity.

  Paying the full cost of the operation was impossible on my loan-repayment budget, so I had to let a doctor friend in on my secret. I asked if he knew a surgeon who would attend to it as though it were a necessary appendectomy. The surgeon was found, the date was set, and it was only left up to me to convincingly feign appendicitis. Two days of pitiful moans and side-clutching (sometimes the wrong side) was persuasive enough.

  The operation was routine, except for my waking up in the recovery room and yelling, “Are the gorillas really worth this?”

  When I arrived home from the hospital, there was a letter from Dr. Leakey. “Actually, there isn’t any dire need for you to have your appendix removed,” it began. I nearly burst my stitches in indignation.

  But my exasperation turned to joy when I read on to discover he was formally offering me the job, if I still wanted it, and if he could corral a suitable grant.

  The letter read like a gilt-edged invitation to heaven. Dr. Leakey told her that he would try to arrange for all her travel expenses and the money needed to set up a camp and pay for one or more African helpers, her food, and photographic supplies. He would try to raise enough to pay her a small salary, as he had done for Jane Goodall, with the expectation that she could earn additional funds by writing articles about her research.

  He cited the National Geographic Society as likely to act as her sponsor if she agreed to give them first refusal on photographs and articles. After she had established a rapport with the gorillas, Dian might need the services of a film cameraman, who could be attached to the camp, to produce a television movie from which she should receive a substantial amount, Leakey surmised. And, he concluded, National Geographic might want a popular book from her in addition to the scientific one she, of course, would write.

  He wanted her out in the field “as soon as possible” but still had no word on permission for her to go to Kabara and was intending to visit the ambassador for the Congo Republic, in Nairobi, to tend to the matter.

  Two days after receiving Leakey’s offer, Dian submitted her resignation to Korsair Children’s Hospital. Her plan was to drive her ancient Saab to the Prices’ home in California, where she would await word from Leakey on grants and travel permits.

  When she told Alexie of her decision, he was incredulous, then furious.

  “You must be out of your mind! A white woman alone in that part of Africa? Are you trying to commit suicide?”

  The Prices were even more shaken than when Dian had announced she had converted to Catholicism.

  “What’s come over you?” Kitty cried. “Why are you doing this to us?”

  “Mother,” Dian pleaded, “it’s an incredible offer. I’ll never have such an opportunity again in my life. I just won’t turn it down.”

  “Opportunity? To live with wild gorillas and wild natives?”

  “You don’t understand, Mother. I’ll be doing utterly fascinating research, the first of its kind.”

  “Why can’t you be like other girls?” her mother moaned. “Look at Mary White, how happy she is. What have you done with your real opportunities?”

  “I’m different from Mary. I want different things.”

  When Dian shared her plans with Father Raymond, the Trappist monk who had introduced to her Catholicism, he seemed relieved that she was steering away from Alexie Forrester, of whom he may have been a little jealous.

  “This African research project is a gift from God,” he wrote the Prices. “She will never be satisfied with the common, ordinary things most girls of her day are satisfied with. She requires some truly stupendous accomplishment before she will be at ease on earth. She will never be perfectly satisfied until she is the saint she longs to be….”

  Resolutely Dian clung to her decision.

  Now it was time to take the next step toward Kabara, which meant severing the deep attachments of many years in Louisville. Leaving the place I’d grown to love-the children, my home, the farm dogs, and my friends-was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do.

  She drove to California but found that staying with the Prices was particularly uncomfortable after several years spent on her own.

  As the months dragged by with no further instructions from Dr. Leakey she slipped into a depression. Though she studied Swahili and audited a class in primatology at Stanford University, she began to think she had lost the gorilla project as well as everything else. In desperation she wrote to Leakey:

  “On August 1, I left everything I owned and loved in Kentucky to come to California. I did this on the basis of your correspondence, which made a departure date seem imminent. I realize that unforeseen hindrances have arisen that you are certainly not accountable for, but I cannot endure another three months of nonproductivity. It is for this reason that I must ask you for a definitive date of departure….

  “If you think that more than a month will elapse before you can send for me, then I most definitely shall have to set about finding another occupational therapy job somewhere in the States…. This is certainly not the way I’d hoped things would turn out, but I’m neither financially nor constitutionally able to endure another month of idleness.”

  Shortly thereafter, Leakey cabled that the Wilkie Foundation, which for years had supported Jane Goodall, had agreed to provide a grant to establish the gorilla project. Although it would be another few weeks before National Geographic funding fell into place, the Wilkie money was enough to get things moving.

  Dian’s luggage included an Olivetti typewriter and four cameras together with tripod, lenses, and countless rolls of film. She boxed enough paper, notebooks, envelopes, carbon paper, pens, and typewriter ribbons to equip a moderate-sized office. She also purchased at least a three-year supply of heavy-duty clothing, including jeans, parkas, and army surplus ponchos.

  Finally, on December 15, 1966, Dian Fossey departed for Africa.

  Her mother was almost too upset to bid her farewell, but Richard Price spoke on her behalf. “I need not tell you that your mother is heartbroken,” he said sternly. “I can only hope you will learn something sensible from this experience, though I’m not sure what.”

  Dian journeyed by way of Louisville, where she again said goodbye to Mary White, to Mary’s ailing mother, Mrs. Henry, to Father Raymond, and to her associates and the children at the Korsair hospital. She also phoned Alexie, who was still angry. “If that’s your calling, I can’t stop you, but I think you’ll wish you’d decided differently,” he told her.

  “I’m not forgetting you, Alexie, and I am not saying good-bye.”

  In Washington, D.C., she visited her National Geographic sponsors.

  Unfortunately, as I was preparing to lea
ve California, I had come down once again with pneumonia, and it goes without saying that I presented a sorry specimen of an “intrepid gorilla girl” to my sponsors and everyone else I met. I was to learn later That the National Geographic Society’s vice-president for research wrote to Dr. Leakey expressing his serious misgivings about my ability to do the job.

  In London she spent two days with Jane Goodall’s mother and sister. While waiting for the night flight to Nairobi, heavily dosed with antibiotics, coughing and shaking with fever, her attention was caught by an announcement on the public address system.

  “Paging Mrs. Root. Will Mrs. Root please come to the BOAC information desk for a telephone call.” The name didn’t register until I chanced to look up and see Joan rushing over to the nearest courtesy phone, where a call from Alan was awaiting her. I flew across the lobby, trailing wads of Kleenex, and arrived at her side to hear her say: “Alan, guess who’s here? It’s Dian from Kabara.” A murmuring followed on the line. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I’m going to study the Virunga gorillas at Kabara.” I could hear Alan’s squawks of incredulity.

  Our flight was called, and as we waited to board I explained briefly how it had all come about. I could sense that Joan, too, thought the whole scheme was preposterous. We switched to the topic of their latest filming project in the Galápagos. It was only later that I was to realize how very fortunate this unexpected meeting was for me.

  I was met in Nairobi on the morning of December 22 by Dr. Leakey’s secretary, Mrs. Crisp, and within minutes we were speeding away from the airport to a small hotel near the Coryndon Museum where he had his offices. Stepping from the car onto the slick stone patio of the hotel, I felt both feet slide out from under me and made as graceful a landing as possible on both knees. As I sat back and watched the blood gush, Mrs. Crisp said, as only a British woman could: “Oh, what a pity, you’ve laddered your stockings!” I burst into hysterical laughter, which no doubt gave Mrs. Crisp pause to reflect on the recruiting abilities of her employer.

  First day back in Africa or not, I pleaded the need for sleep. Later in the afternoon I was awakened by a phone call from Dr. Leakey, asking me to meet him at the museum the next morning. He seemed very fit, far more so than when I’d last seen him in Louisville, and his enthusiasm for seeing another of his projects launched matched my own. He introduced me to his staff, then we hastily drew up a list of essential materials I’d need to collect before leaving for Kabara. Though the Congo was in political turmoil, and I still had not received official government permission to work in the Parc des Virungas, neither of us gave a thought to making a reconnaissance trip. Many people thought this was a foolhardy way to begin a long-term research project, but we were both far too anxious to get started.

  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.

  — 4 —

  The 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.