Gorillas in the Mist (38 page)

As many as a dozen gorillas were also slaughtered in the Virungas during 1979, although none were killed in the Karisoke study area after the death of Lee.

One of the stalwarts of the antipoaching patrols was Mutarutkwa, the statuesque member of the Watusi tribe for whom Dian had tried to make a pair of boots.

Mutarutkwa badly wants boots “like the other men’s.” The only hang-up is that he has a size 14 foot, nearly as broad as it is long. For a number of weeks he went out on patrol in several pairs of my heaviest socks, lacing them around his feet. Then I tried to make him a pair of shoes, but they weren’t a great success. Finally I sent an outline of his unbelievable hooves down to the Ruhengeri market, begging for a solution. A talented old craftsman made a very stout pair of sandals out of rubber tires and inner tubes-using practically one tire per foot-and Mutarutkwa went bounding along on patrols thereafter, seemingly content.

Last week ten pairs of boots arrived from the American Humane Society. Yesterday the patrol came up for their work along with a new trainee who also has very large feet. I took the two largest pairs of boots (11 and down to the Africans’ cabin for a fitting of the new man. Mutarutkwa almost swooned dead away with envy when
he saw them. He swore that the 11½ pair would fit him, minus laces, as they are made of very soft leather.

With as much effort as a size 18 derriere seeking its way into a size 12 pair of jeans, he managed to get the boots on. From his height of 6’7” he looked down, way down, at these miraculous appendages and pronounced them perfect.

I couldn’t help but notice that his face appeared slightly pained, and mischievously suggested we all have a little dancing session. Within seconds a cupboard was resounding like a drum, and we were all stomping the dust out of the floorboards.

All, that is, except Mutarutkwa. He stood zombielike, able to snake his arms about in nearly the proper manner, but barely able to lift his feet off the floor more than a few inches, only to resettle them tenderly with an almost inaudible groan.

After a few minutes of wild dancing and whooping on the part of the other men, his condition was noticed, particularly his facial grimace of pure agony, though he tried to disguise it. Everyone collapsed on the floor in gales of laughter that he didn’t mind as he just plain collapsed in relief, as well as determination that these boots would somehow fit. He decided that, rather than give them up, he would sleep in them overnight so that his feet would become accustomed to them and vice versa. He absolutely refused to allow us to cut the boot tops open, which, to my way of thinking, was an act of sheer martyrdom.

End of story: This morning it took all of us a good five minutes to pry the boots off his swollen feet and another fifteen minutes for him to reduce their size by soaking them in Camp Creek (our drinking water supply). Then with that same great smile, he returned to his inner tubes to limp out on another patrol.

N
egotiations between Dian and Harcourt did not go well. On June 9 he wrote to tell her that he and Kelly would not be able to come to Rwanda before December, and would only come then if they had the titles and powers of joint “directors of Karisoke Research Center.” Furthermore, Harcourt demanded a legally binding undertaking from Dian “that you are prepared to allow us to run the Research Center for at least a year—and possibly after that.

“Finally, we would like to say that between us (you, Kelly and I, National Geographic Society, and
ORTPN
) we ought to be able to make the Research Center a place to be respected far outside Rwanda.”

The gratuitous suggestion that Karisoke was not already widely respected made Dian almost as indignant as the implication that her word alone was not good enough and must be secured by a formal contract. Nevertheless, she swallowed her resentment and agreed to the conditions as she understood them.

Sandy will run the research aspects and supervise the students. This will leave me free, when I get back from the States, to concentrate on the antipoaching work and my writing.

A short time later Harcourt announced that “Kelly and I have decided I will be able to come to Rwanda toward the end of September, if you are ready to depart for America by then.”

Dian was agreeable and began making preparations for an absence from Karisoke of seven or eight months. That would be time enough, she believed, to obtain the medical treatment she needed; whip her book into final shape with the help of Anita McClellan; and comply with the demands of the National Geographic and the Leakey Foundation that she “write up” her gorilla field notes in proper academic fashion.

Packing was well under way when she heard some disquieting news. After leaving Karisoke, Bill Weber had been hired by the Mountain Gorilla Project, while Amy Vedder returned to the United States to work on her doctorate. Now the V-W couple let it be known that they would soon be returning to Karisoke, at Sandy Harcourt’s invitation. Dian was not pleased.

What Harcourt has done is use the
FPS
Digit money to set up Weber at park headquarters to “habituate” groups of gorillas for tourists. Weber dislikes the forest and is nervous of gorillas. To my way of thinking, and admittedly this is biased thinking, Digit blood money-the
FPS
Mountain Gorilla Project-is paying for him to play a role he is no more capable of than my grandmother. My porters are keeping a close eye on him, far closer than he realizes, and say that he is in Ruhengeri at least every other day at the homes of various Europeans while his African tracker and assistant are in the forest. Weber does speak excellent French and writes it as well. His wife, and she is a beautiful young girl who is very appealing, leads him around with a ring through his nose, and she hates my guts. She will be back in January. But neither one of them will get to camp again if I can help it.

Dian wrote Harcourt explaining politely but firmly that under no circumstances could she permit Weber or Vedder to come back to Karisoke. She also told him she herself expected to
return to camp during his and Kelly’s tenure, but made it clear that they would continue in command as scientific directors.

Harcourt’s response was notably uncooperative. Having categorically stated that it would be impossible for him and Kelly to continue as directors if Dian were at the camp, he made it clear that he would now require an agreement between them limiting the amount of time Dian might spend at Karisoke.

On the Vedder/Weber question, he was unyielding, having first refused Dian’s request that they be excluded from Karisoke— “We cannot be scientific directors of a place that we are trying to turn into a well-run research center and have to turn away people of whom we approved simply because you disliked them.” He demanded the final say on
everyone
who might come to camp while he and Kelly were in charge.

In case Dian had any doubts as to who was in the driver’s seat, he also informed her that he could no longer guarantee a September arrival. In fact, he suggested she might consider staying on until early January, since it would not be convenient for him to be at Karisoke in December.

This was really pushing it, especially for someone who claimed to know Dian inside out, but a lack of confidence in his ability to get his own way was not one of Sandy Harcourt’s problems. Dian’s patience was now perilously near its end. Her plans for a September departure and for establishing herself in the United States were in ruins. She had been as good as told that Karisoke, under her, was a mess; that she couldn’t even visit the place without Harcourt’s permission; and that the V-W couple would be returning there in triumph. It was more than she could swallow.

She unburdened herself to Dr. Snider, whom she continued to regard as a trusty friend and ally.

“I must assure you it is not sheer stubbornness or pettiness that will not allow me to permit the return of the V-W couple. The stories I heard in Kigali in June from people, both Africans and Europeans, were absolutely incredible. I certainly deserve
the option of not letting them return to the camp and the gorillas that I have put so much of my own life, love, and labor into.”

Presumably someone advised Harcourt that he had overstepped the mark. On September 10 he informed Dian that because the Webers were to be funded by the
FPS
to carry out conservation programs for the park, he could “modify our previous conditions, and agree to your requirement that the Webers do not pursue further work at Karisoke during the period of your absence.”

As a gesture of conciliation this might have been better received if he had not appended to it a brand-new condition.

“We cannot come to Karisoke unless we have priority of access to the main study groups and unless there is no more than one social behavior study of gorillas besides ours being carried out while we are there.”

Preserving a degree of equanimity that her detractors would hardly have believed possible, Dian replied:

In the same mail she told Dr. Snider that she had decided against Harcourt and was making other arrangements.

What I didn’t know at the time was that National Geographic had already arranged with Sandy and Kelly to give them a grant of sixteen thousand dollars to enable them to take over Karisoke. I suppose when Dr. Snider got my letter saying Sandy was out, he must have gotten in touch with him right away.

Thoroughly alarmed, Harcourt flew to Kigali. On November 3 he appeared at Karisoke.

I was in bed with one of those pneumonialike attacks. He zoomed into Peter’s cabin first and clipped out a few questions before leaving. Peter’s own words afterwards were: “What did I do?” Then he banged on my door and came barging in. He refused to discuss any of his reasons for changing his plans without telling me-in fact for the most part he just sat with a supercilious face and didn’t/wouldn’t say anything. Believe me, I didn’t even yell or scream at him. If he would just climb off his pedestal, one might be able to communicate with him, but I found it impossible. There is no denying his intelligence and the fact that he is not lazy, but he certainly needs a lesson in manners. Butter would not have melted in his mouth when we talked last April, but a touch of power seems to have gone to his head. He went off down the mountain in a perfect snit.

Presumably Harcourt realized that he had not done his cause any good, so he climbed back up to Karisoke again next morning. This time he was almost reasonable. It was too late.

“I’ve already arranged for three new students,” Dian told him. “I’ll pick one of them to be Director here till I get back. I’m sorry, Sandy, but that’s the way it’s going to be.”

Harcourt returned to England, and on November 15 he and Kelly wrote separate letters to Dian in an attempt to bring her around. Harcourt explained that he had just heard from the National Geographic that his and Kelly’s grant application had been approved and he sincerely hoped that some agreement
about their return to camp could be arrived at. “It would be a great pity, having been given funding, to write to N.G. saying that we could no longer use it.”

The letter from Kelly was the first Dian had received from her since negotiations began in April. It was almost abject. Kelly wrote that she had so much hoped that the differences between Dian and Sandy would be ironed out when the two met, but she admitted she was not overly surprised by the negative results. “Perhaps,” she wrote, “if Sandy was better at being friendly and polite, things would have gone more smoothly…. I ask you to reconsider us as stand-in directors of Karisoke during your absence.”

Dian remained unmoved.

The latter half of 1979 was filled with incident. During early July, Dian supervised the exhumation of a number of gorillas that had died in the Virungas during the past several years. These were not
her
gorillas, but unfortunate strangers whom she had buried in a sort of paupers’ cemetery. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington wanted their bones, and the National Geographic Society had urged Dian to oblige. She did so with reluctance. For nearly two weeks the ripe odor of decay hung over Karisoke.

My cabin looks like a boneyard-bits and pieces all over the floor as we try to fit them together. For sure, I wonder why grown men would spend their lives looking at bones when they could look at animals in life. There have to be some kinds of science I’ll never understand.

There were plenty of live animals around Karisoke. A herd of buffalo, perhaps the same ones Dian had crawled amongst earlier in the year, had become permanent residents in the meadow below her cabin. They were so blasé about the human presence that on one occasion she had to step over a cow buffalo resting on her doorstep.

Bushbucks, hyrax, golden squirrels, and duikers abounded, but there were also visits from rarer creatures, including a hyena
that tried to raid the men’s food store, and a leopard that narrowly missed making a midnight meal out of the dog Cindy.

Crippled by the pain in her hip –
I would use a crutch if no one could see me – I really hurt too much to believe in living
– Dian could barely manage to visit the gorillas except when they came close to camp. Kima was, as always, both a comfort and an unending cause of exasperation. When she lost a toy koala bear given to her years earlier, she went into a furious sulk, refused to eat, bit everyone who approached her, and vandalized the cabin used by the antipoaching patrol. Dian mustered the whole camp staff to search for the toy, and when after three days it was not to be found, she ordered a new one, by cable, from San Francisco. As a friend said, “She treated that monkey like a spoiled child and loved it dearly, though it was hard for those who had to put up with its tantrums to see why.”