Gorillas in the Mist (49 page)

Not all the gorillas were inaccessible. On July 30, while hiking toward the Zaire border with Kana, she had “another extraordinary contact.”

This time it was with Tiger, now a lone silverback, whom I had observed on the day of his birth in November 1967. He was born into Group 4, the group that was decimated by poachers in 1978. Since then he has had rather a tough time. For a time he batched it with some of the other surviving Group 4 males, but for three years he has been traveling alone, trying to find some females with whom to mate and start a clan of his own. This means “interactions” with the silverbacks of other groups, in which he has been rather badly beaten up despite his tremendous size and strength.

Even though I have known him since his birth, when I found him this time near the old cattle path I was following, I did not expect the kind of reception I had received from Group 5, because he is a lone animal, and they tend to be temperamental and unpredictable.

When I spotted him he was about fifty feet away, feeding in dense foliage, most of which was celery. I motioned Kana to go and hide, which he was glad to do because Tiger is one big gorilla! I then sat down to give all the proper gorilla introduction vocalizations and quickly get my camera out of my knapsack, though I was sure I wouldn’t get any pictures because he would flee as soon as he realized someone was near.

I had just barely taken the camera from the bag when—zoooom—he came right at me at a loping run. Reaching my side he lopped down a big lobelia with one hand, then raised his arm again as if he was going to whack the @#$%& out of me! Then, to my relief, he slowly lowered
his arm and gently stroked my arm before sitting on the base of a tree not two feet from my side.

There he sat gazing down at me, seeking eye contact, and for about fifteen minutes we exchanged “remarks” in groans, grunts, and croons while I also took picture after picture. The reason for all the pictures was that I couldn’t see him clearly without my glasses, but he might not have known me with glasses on, so a compromise had to be reached. I could see him through the viewfinder, in fact I could have counted the hairs on his great big head!

My tracker was nervous, since he was only fifty feet away, and he cracked a branch. Tiger swung over there to investigate, and Kana went back to camp somewhat hastily! After that Tiger and I spent the rest of the afternoon together, munching celery stalks and just keeping each other company.

When heavy fog and rain moved in at four-thirty I had to go, but felt great compunction about leaving him alone in the forest. I half expected him to follow me home and half wished he would. Poor “little” fellow. It was really quite sad as every now and then he would gaze over in the direction of Karisimbi and give one or two plaintive hoots as if bewailing his sad, lonely single status. My anger at the poachers who destroyed his family kept me cussing all the way back to camp.

The depredations committed by poachers during her three-year absence haunted Dian. Even before she began putting the camp to rights again, she had reactivated the antipoaching campaign. This entailed reestablishing long-range, overnight patrols usually led by Vatiri, and short-range daylight patrols by the camp trackers, sometimes accompanied by Richard Barnes, who turned out to be a conservationist after Dian’s own stamp.

Writing on July 24 to Rane Randoph, the accountant for the reinvigorated Digit Fund, Dian reported: “The Africans and I are really accomplishing miracles, what with rebuilding,
repainting, sewing, cleaning, scouring, resupporting floors and roofs—the list is absolutely endless—but the cabins are beginning to shine, both inside and out.

“Of far more importance are the patrols. I remain deeply grateful that not one franc/penny of Digit Fund money was sent to camp during Harcourt’s two and a half years here. He never went on patrols … nor did the other staff members…. He has now been replaced by Richard Barnes, in his early thirties, who has had previous experience in Africa working with elephants. He speaks Swahili fairly fluently and is strong on
active
conservation. His opinion of the park guards is the same as mine.

“No week has passed that patrols are not supervised by either Richard or one of my old, trusted Africans. They bivouac as before in the forest overnight to trap poachers unaware of their presence, or leave Karisoke at five in the morning to intercept poachers working their routes.

“Richard did not know anything about the Digit Fund until my arrival because Harcourt had informed him only about the Mountain Gorilla Project—the theoretical conservation group that sanctions tourism rather than trap cutting or poacher capture.

“Would you believe that in the past month only, some four hundred traps have been cut and two poachers caught. A third poacher tried to cut up one of my men ten days ago, but ended up getting the worst of it.”

This incident took place on July 13 when Rwelekana, out on a day patrol, encountered the most notorious and dangerous Virunga poacher still on the loose. This was Sebahutu, one of the killers of Uncle Bert and Macho, and a great destroyer of elephants as well as gorillas, duikers, and smaller animals. Although Sebahutu usually carried a high-powered rifle, he had only his panga and spear with him on this occasion.

Armed with a .22 starter’s pistol that could only fire blanks, Rwelekana sneaked up behind Sebahutu, who was setting a duiker trap, and demanded his surrender. The poacher did not hesitate. Swinging on his heel he thrust his spear at Rwelekana’s
belly. The tall tracker threw himself sideways and the spearhead cut a long but superficial gash in his thigh. Grabbing the spear, he wrenched it out of Sebahutu’s hands, turned it on him, and stabbed the poacher in the arm. Sebahutu fled, leaving his spear, traps, and a bloodstained jacket that he peeled off and abandoned in order to speed his flight.

Rwelekana hastened back to camp with his trophies.

He sauntered up to my outside table where I was typing up long-overdue reports. His pants were very bloody, and his face looked rather odd, but that was because he was trying to appear very casual and serious while in fact he was bursting with pride and the desire to grin from ear to ear.

Rwelekana had recognized Sebahutu, so Dian hastened to report the incident to the authorities in Ruhengeri and to demand that the poacher be arrested. Easier said than done. Although everyone knew who Sebahutu was, nobody seemed to know where he could be found. Dian thereupon had Gwehandagoza pass word around that knowledge of the poacher’s whereabouts was worth a
prime
(reward) of one thousand francs. The details of what followed are obscure. What is certain is that the
prime
was paid by the Digit Fund and that Sebahutu was put away with a five-year sentence. Active conservation, indeed.

One of the two other poachers captured during this period was found to be in possession of the freshly severed head of an adult male gorilla. Although the man remained mute under interrogation, Dian’s information network eventually uncovered a horrendous tale.

It seems a rich
bazunga
came to Gisenyi while on a hunting safari. His guide passed the word that the boss (a German, I believe) would pay fifty thousand Rwandan francs for a guide to help him shoot a silverback. The sportsman was led to a group on the west side of Karisimbi where he shot two gorillas, one probably a female. To avoid risks he had the guide carry the silver
back head out for him, but never got it because the man was caught.

That’s all the gorillas need now! It is like the thirties when sportsmen calling themselves “scientists” would come to the Virungas and kill a dozen gorillas for the biggest head to hang in their trophy rooms. Hunting safaris are still the bloody plague of Africa, though they are quieter about it now.

Well, poachers and hunters have been doing just about what they liked around here for the past three years. There’ll be no more of that!

The pace of the antipoaching campaign picked up steadily. Just a few days before her return to the United States, Dian was able to exultantly inform Fulton Brylawski that “the Digit Fund, thus far this year, has been responsible for the cutting down of 1,701 traps!”

Immersed in the tasks of re-creating Karisoke and supervising the war against the poachers, Dian had almost forgotten about her book, until on July 29, Gwehandagoza brought her an airmail package. It contained “the first copy of
Gorillas in the Mist
, hot off the press today.”

Either the book was something of a disappointment to her, or as is more likely, she felt obliged to suppress the exquisite, once-in-a-lifetime thrill every author experiences when he or she has the first copy in hand. Whatever the cause, Dian sounded quite grumpy in a letter to the Prices:

“The picture quality is poor.” However, she could not suppress a triumphant note: “Twenty-five thousand copies have been printed and advance sales have reached thirteen thousand! All the reviews I have seen so far are extremely favorable, but then, maybe I have been sent only favorable reviews.”

On August 10 Stacey Coil sent her one of the other kind, written by her onetime student, Peter Veit, for the magazine
Natural History
. It was sharply critical.

“The Veit review: Wow. What can I say?” Dian wrote to Stacey. “You asked me not to get hyper about it—well, I really have not with regard to speaking to anyone, but oh, oh, what my insides did by themselves! Tonight I read it over real cool like (took four Scotches).”

Like many neophyte authors she could not resist the impulse to strike back: “I will write a letter to the editor, simply for communication’s sake; it does not need to be published. In addition to actual literary mistakes, my review of Veit’s review asks about the role of the reviewer. Is it, as it should be, to discuss a book’s merits or downfalls, or is it to give space to a reviewer’s rantings?” It is doubtful if Dian ever received an answer to this excellent question.

Publication brought other problems. Seemingly everyone who had ever taken a photograph at Karisoke now asserted ownership of one or more of the pictures reproduced in the book, fiercely disputing the credits as ascribed and demanding punitive payments. While some of the claims were legitimate due to crediting errors, most were not, and some were deliberately mischievous. The battle of the photographs was to be an ongoing irritant in Dian’s life for a year and more.

With the book in front of her, Dian now had to face the terrifying prospects of a promotional tour. She reached back into her childhood for a word that sufficiently conveyed the apprehension she felt.

The thought of having to go through all that bloody interviewing gives me the collywobbles. I do so wish I had said no, no, no and stuck to it!

She was distracted somewhat from the coming ordeal by a flood of visitors, including Jenny and Warren Garst, who arrived in Kigali on July 30 en route to Karisoke to make another gorilla film for the
Wild Kingdom
series. Dian sent them a quick and somewhat apologetic welcome note that concluded: “Either at the Economat or in Ruhengeri, try to buy some glasses, cups for coffee and tea, soup and flat dishes, and pots.

You will also need some towels, thermoses, and sheets. I’ll pay for these things, of course, but they just don’t exist at camp.”

The Garsts climbed on August 4 and settled in for a month-long stay in a cabin Dian had refurbished for them. She was delighted to have them, but the high moment of the month was undoubtedly a brief visit from Ian Redmond, en route to an investigation into the mysterious use of a cave complex by elephants in east Africa. He was followed by a spate of other visitors who turned Dian’s remaining days at Karisoke into a pandemonium.

She wrote somewhat desperately to Anita McClellan: “The Garsts from
Wild Kingdom
have come; there are two African students from Butare University here now; the boy, Richard Barnes, and the girl, Karen Jensen, and on top of that, Debre Hamburger’s little sister; then in a few days, the American ambassador, his wife and daughter! I feel like I’m running a damn hotel!”

Nevertheless, when she and her porters descended the muddy trail to the car park on the morning of August 26, she was in better shape than she had been for several years and ready, if not willing, to face the ordeal ahead.

Much of that readiness came from the certain knowledge that, even as she had restored Karisoke, so had it restored her—and had been restored
to
her. She was no longer a wanderer in limbo.

A
rriving in New York August 26, Dian flew on to Ithaca, there to be greeted by Stacey Coil, who was now acting as the more-or-less-unpaid secretary of the Digit Fund. Glenn Hausfater was away, and most of the other people Dian knew at Cornell had not yet returned for the autumn semester. Nevertheless, Ithaca at least provided her with a breather before she embarked on a Herculean program of travel and public engagements.

Deborah Spies, deputy director of the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, had arranged a month-long lecture tour for Dian, into which the publicity people at Houghton Mifflin had injected as many television, radio, and press interviews on behalf of
Gorillas in the Mist
as could be managed. The result was an itinerary whose demands might have given pause to an Olympic athlete.

On September 6, Dian flew to New York to attend a launching party for her book at the Explorers’ Club, followed by a full day of publicity. Then it was on to lecture in Philadelphia, Washington, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, back to San Francisco to visit the Prices, then more lectures in San Diego, Albuquerque, Birmingham, and finally on October 7, to Columbus, Ohio, for her last appearance in the series.

During this month she gave ten illustrated talks before audiences of up to a thousand people, appeared on more than sixty television programs, was interviewed by scores of newspaper and magazine reporters, and endured an unspecified number of autographing sessions. By the time she returned to Ithaca on October 10, she was “as exhausted as if I’d climbed the summit of Visoke twice in one day.”