Through a Window (12 page)

It was hardly surprising that, in the face of this bitter persecution, Evered spent less and less time in the central part of the community range. It really seemed as though Figan, with Faben's help, was actually trying to drive Evered right out of the Kasekela community.

And then, quite suddenly, things changed. Almost exactly two years after he had taken over as alpha male, Figan's days of absolute power came to an end. Faben disappeared—this time for good. Gradually the other males must have realized what had happened for they began to capitalize on Figan's vulnerable position. In groups of two, three or more they ganged up on their alpha in dramatic confrontations. It seemed that he could never hold his own against them.

But by that time, in June 1975, there were no longer any American or European students at Gombe to record the events.

I
N MAY
1975 came a sudden night of terror: forty armed men came across the lake from Zaire and kidnapped four of the Gombe students. Afterwards there were many confused tales of what had happened, tales of courage as well as tales of horror. My old friend Rashidi was beaten over the head in a vain attempt to make him reveal the whereabouts of the key to the petrol store. He was deaf in one ear for months afterwards. The two young Tanzanian women working at Gombe then, Park Warden Etha Lohay and student Addie Lyaruu, flitted from one student's house to the next, moving quickly through the dark forest, to warn everyone of the attack.

Where had the victims gone? Were they even alive? There were reports of gunshots heard out on the lake, and for days we thought that the hostages might have been killed. It was a time of anguish. Of course we all had to leave Gombe. For a while we stayed in Kigoma, hoping against hope for news of our friends. But none came. A few months before the kidnap I had remarried, and my second husband, Derek Bryceson, had a house in Dar es Salaam. There we all went, the students crammed into the little guest house, and there we waited. Waited and waited and waited, for what seemed eternity, for news. If it was pure hell for us, those who had not been taken, what of the mental suffering
of the victims themselves, and of their parents and other close family?

After about a week, which seemed like a month, one of the kidnapped students was sent back to Tanzania with a ransom demand. I shall never forget the relief, the delirious joy, that I experienced on learning that the four were alive and at least physically unharmed. But the negotiations seemed to go on for ever. The issue was highly sensitive politically, involving as it did relations between Tanzania, Zaire and the United States.

It was fortunate that all four of those young people were mentally as well as physically strong, and fortunate too that they had each other for moral support. Perhaps the worst anguish was during the final days, when one student was kept behind, a lonely hostage, after the ransom had been paid and the others re-leased. But after another two weeks he too was released. It was as though a black cloud had finally moved aside and allowed the sunlight to come flooding back.

All four eventually recovered from the terrifying ordeal—at least they seemed to have, judging by outward appearances. But I wonder if they will ever entirely free their minds from the psychological torment of those days. The memory, surely, will always be lurking there, ready to erupt in nightmares in times of sickness, loneliness or depression.

During the period between the night of the kidnapping and the final release of the last hostage, my thoughts of the research at Gombe had been stifled, crushed beneath the load of worry and despair. For a while I had organized some analysis of the data, something to try to keep up the morale of our little group in Dar, but our hearts were not in it. Most of the time I just read novels—I hadn't read so many novels since my school days. But once the hostages had been released I could think again about the future of the research. Derek, Grub and I had made several brief visits to the park, even during the nightmare weeks. We had to
encourage and show support for the field staff who, to their great credit, had continued to record basic data entirely on their own initiative.

Immediately after the raid, a detachment of the Field Force, a special branch of the police, had been sent to Gombe. This highly efficient force, trained to handle all emergencies, was a great comfort to us during our early visits. After a few months it was replaced by a small group of ordinary policemen. Very gradually a feeling of security returned. When we visited, we no longer wondered whether we should take to the forest every time we saw an odd-looking boat. But it was more than a year before I could hear a motor boat stop in the night without leaping up, heart pounding, to gaze toward the lake, wondering whether we should flee up the mountain side.

Without Derek's help and support I doubt that I could have maintained Gombe after the kidnapping. I had met him in 1973 during a visit to Dar es Salaam and we had, immediately, felt a strong attraction. He had first arrived in Tanzania in 1951. During World War II he had been a fighter pilot in the RAF, but after only a few months of active service, had been shot down in the Middle East. He survived the crash but suffered a spinal injury, and was told he would never walk again. He was nineteen years old at that time. Determined to prove the doctors wrong, he had, through sheer determination, taught himself to move about with the aid of a stick. He had just enough muscles in one leg to move it forward as he walked: the other had to be swung forward from the hip. He learned to drive too, fast and well, even though he had to lift his left leg with one hand in order to transfer his foot from clutch to brake!

Once mobile, Derek had gone up to Cambridge, where he acquired a bachelor's degree in agriculture. He was then offered a job in England which he instantly rejected. "It was cushy armchair farming," he told me, "suitable for an invalid." Instead he raised the funds to get himself to Kenya where he farmed for
two years, then applied to the British government for one of the beautiful farms on the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro in what was then the British protectorate of Tanganyika. There he became a successful wheat farmer—until he met Julius Nyerere, who was then organizing the movement that would eventually lead to Tanganyika's independence. Derek was deeply impressed by Nyerere and became sympathetic to his cause. This changed the course of his life. He joined the Tanganyika African nationalist movement and became so involved in politics that he gave up his beloved farm and moved to the capital, Dar es Salaam. Thus he was firmly entrenched in his adoptive country's politics when independence was finally won in 1961 —just after I arrived at Gombe.

Derek did much for Tanzania—as Tanganyika became after its union with the island of Zanzibar. He was elected member of parliament for the huge Dar es Salaam constituency of Kinondoni, and was returned, with landslide majorities, every fifth year. He held many cabinet posts, but was best known for his contributions to Tanzanian agricultural policies during two five-year terms as Minister for Agriculture, and for his development of preventive medicine programmes and improved standards of nutrition during the years when he was Minister for Health. When I met him he had resigned from government, but still represented Kinondoni as a member of parliament, and had recently been appointed director of Tanzania's spectacular wildlife parks by President Julius Nyerere.

After Derek and I were married, I had continued to live at Gombe and he had made periodic visits, flying in for a couple of days at a time in a four-seater single-engine Cessna. Derek loved to watch the chimps, but it was not easy for him to climb the steep slope to camp. We cut steps into the steepest, most treacherous parts of the trail, and rigged up a rope in the very worst stretch so that he could support himself with this on one side while using his stick on the other. This allowed him to go up and down
by himself, without leaning on a friendly arm as he had had to do before. But even so, the journey that took the rest of us about ten minutes was a forty-five-minute endurance test for him. Once he slipped and landed heavily on the tip of his spine and was in great pain—though he would never admit it—for several days. Another time he fell and wrenched his knee, which swelled to a tremendous size. But despite the hazard he always insisted that it was worth it.

During those visits Derek, as director of national parks, had made it his business to become conversant with all that was going on at Gombe. Thus, after the kidnapping, he was able to be really helpful. With his fluent Swahili and his understanding of the Tanzanian character, he helped me to convince the field staff that they could do good work on their own. Although they had acquired so much knowledge and experience during the preceding few years and could follow the chimpanzees skilfully through the forested mountainous terrain, chart their daily movements and association patterns and identify their food plants, they had come to rely on the guidance of the students and the constant presence of "Dr. Jane." Now it was necessary to convince them that they could carry on without us.

I worked with the men closely during my all too brief visits, checking on their accuracy and reliability. We gathered together for talks and seminars and I told them about the analysis I was doing in Dar es Salaam—for I had begun to pull together the results of the study for eventual publication in a scientific book. When they understood how I would use the information they were gathering they took more care in writing their reports, making out their charts and maps. Gradually their confidence grew. They elected, from among their number, two
viongozi
or leaders—Hilali Matama, who had begun work with the chimps in 1968, and Eslom Mpongo, who had joined our team soon afterwards. By 1975 the two of them knew as much about chimpanzees and their behaviour as any so-called expert—and more
than most. Their work had become a way of life, and they, and the other members of the team at Gombe, were utterly absorbed and fascinated by the lives of the chimpanzees they were observing. Each time I returned to Gombe I taught them to collect ever more sophisticated data and their reports became increasingly rich. We provided them with a tape recorder so that, if they chanced to witness some exciting or unusual event, they could dictate a more detailed report than they could have put down on paper. Most of them wrote rather slowly and laboriously—one or two, in fact, had only recently learned to write in order to join our staff.

The Tanzanians worked in teams of two, following a selected "target" chimpanzee for as long as possible during the day—ideally from the time when he or she left the night nest until nightfall. One of the men recorded, in detail, the behaviour of the target. The other plotted the travel route, listed the foods eaten, and kept note of the other chimpanzees who were encountered and how long they remained with the target. Between them the men also described any interesting events concerning individuals other than the target. Often, after supper, the two men who had been out following would come to tell us what they had seen during the day. We would sit companionably on the soft sand outside the house, with the waves lapping or slamming into the shingle, and listen to the musical Swahili voices describing a hunt, a boundary patrol, or some amusing incident they had observed.

Each of the men had his own individual interest. For Hilali it was the male dominance scene. What a lot he—and the other men—had to tell us during the troubled months after Faben's death when, with increasing frequency and enthusiasm, the other males ganged up against Figan. It quickly became apparent that Figan, having relied, throughout his life, on the support of a close ally (first his mother, then his brother) found it necessary to cultivate a substitute for Faben. He chose Humphrey, his erstwhile
bitter rival. It made good sense for, of all the males, Humphrey had been most terrorized by Figan and had suffered the greatest defeat. Thus he posed the least threat now. And, while he could not take Faben's place—for he never actively supported Figan when the other males challenged him—he provided a measure of comfort as he almost never ganged up with the others
against
Figan.

One evening in March, some eight months after Faben had vanished, Hilali arrived at the house eager to tell us about his day. He had been following Figan who, as usual, had been part of a large group. During a sudden outbreak of excitement as Satan joined them, four of the adult males—Satan himself, along with Evered, Jomeo and Sherry—had ganged up on their alpha in a series of dramatic joint displays. Three times, in the space of forty minutes, the four charged at and around Figan, causing him to flee, screaming. Eventually he took refuge in a tall tree, but the four followed him to the topmost branches. Terrified, Figan leapt wildly to a neighbouring tree, hurtled to the ground, and ran as though pursued by the bats of hell, for at least five hundred yards. Hilali, exhausted and with the sweat pouring from his brow, somehow managed to keep up, and thus saw Figan, still screaming loudly, leap into a tree and fling his arms around Humphrey. Hilali thought that Figan had probably seen his one ally from the tall tree—although it might have been a fortuitous meeting. The other four males continued to display at both Figan and Humphrey, who stayed very close together, each seeking reassurance from the other.

Many similar incidents were reported during those tumultuous months when the relationship between the adult males was so strained and tense. And always Humphrey, when present, provided moral support for Figan. The extent to which Figan came to rely on Humphrey was well illustrated during one of Hamisi Mkono's follows. During a feeding session in thick undergrowth, the two friends became temporarily separated. When Figan suddenly realized that Humphrey was no longer with him—"
alianza kulia kama mtoto,
" Hamisi said, laughing—he started to whimper like a lost child. He climbed a tree, staring out in all directions, and then hurried off to search for his friend, every so often screaming—those SOS screams—at the top of his voice. After about twenty minutes he found Humphrey, rushed up and begun to groom the older male. Gradually he calmed down.