Gorillas in the Mist

by Farley Mowat

  Ian remembered an old Bruce Lee film showing how to thwart a spear thrust, so he flung up his left arm and dropped into a crouch. This protected his vulnerable parts, but the spear caught him in the wrist and made a long cut right to the bone.

  It was typical of Ian that, after getting Vatiri to bind his arm, he insisted on searching for and destroying the other traps the men had set because they were in the Group 13 territory and a danger to the gorillas.

  On their way home Ian whistled our SOS signal to the student working with Group 4, hoping to get some help, because he had lost a lot of blood. This student later said he heard the whistle but thought it was poachers so he hid.

  Later that night Ian went into the Ruhengeri hospital where his wound was cleaned and sutured, and he was back patrolling within a week.

  Although the wound appeared to heal, Ian did not recover normal use of his hand. Major nerves had been severed, and during succeeding weeks control of the hand deteriorated until he was reluctantly forced to return to England for specialist treatment.

  Since little assistance was forthcoming, financial or otherwise, from the British-based conservation organizations that had taken unto themselves the mantle of the saviors of the mountain gorillas, Dian had to turn elsewhere for help. Her American lawyer, Brylawski, had agreed to handle any funds that might be raised in the United States. On August 7 she sent him a budget: the cost to train, equip, and pay six men to carry out antipoaching patrols for a year would be slightly less than ten thousand dollars-a piddling sum compared to the amounts the FPS and other conservation groups considered necessary.

  Although Brylawski had agreed to be the repository for the money, the question remained, who was going to raise it? Dian had written to the Leakey Foundation, which was sympathetic but could not legally act as a public fund-raising agency. Her other major sponsor, the National Geographic Society, could not undertake this role either.

  At this juncture, Ambassador Frank Crigler volunteered a plan of his own. The first Dian heard of it was on August 31, when she received a telegram from the embassy.

  HAVE TAKEN LIBERTY USING YOUR NAME IN APPEALING TO U.S. CONSERVATION LEADERS TO PUT TOGETHER COMPREHENSIVE ASSISTANCE PACKAGE FOR PARC DES VOLCANS MANAGEMENT AND GORILLA PRESERVATION UNDER OVERALL MANAGEMENT OF COMPETENT CONSERVATIONIST… HOPE YOU APPROVE.

  Influenced by political considerations—he was, after all, his country’s representative in Rwanda—Crigler had in mind to enlist the aid of organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund under the American banner, then raise really impressive sums of money that would be dispersed according to the wishes of the Rwandan government. Realizing that this would be a pill Dian would find hard to swallow, he sought to sugarcoat it:

  “I know there are aspects of my campaign that will give you indigestion, but I’m really aiming at nothing more than what you and I have discussed so often: guard training, basic equipment, housing, and expertise to enable the Rwandans themselves to preserve the gorillas and their habitat.”

  Crigler asked the director of ORTPN to submit a budget for the protection of the remaining gorillas, and General Dismas Nsabimana was happy to oblige.

  His estimate for one year included $100,000 for new roads to facilitate the movement of guards in all-terrain vehicles; $45,000 for new buildings; $42,000 as an initial sum only for new vehicles; $10,000 for educational activities; and various sundries, for a total of $208,000.

  Crigler at least had the grace to ask Dian to comment on this proposal. Although it sent her blood pressure rocketing, she nevertheless returned a reasoned assessment.

  I told him that any part of the park that could ever be reached by road without multimillion dollars being spent was already accessible to ordinary combis and to the park pickup trucks. As for buildings, the twelve sheet-metal guard huts already built with U.S. funds around the boundaries for the guards have been so totally neglected that only three are still livable, but are seldom used by the guards in any case.

  “Sure,” she wrote Crigler, “I can visualize Dismas’s ultimate dream come true. All the mountains surrounded by a strip of tarmac. A big entrance gate and lots of facilities for the tourists. New vehicles for the park officials and the foreign advisers. But how is that going to serve to cut traps and capture the Munyarukikos of the park? What good is it to have all that down below when the park is being destroyed from within? I am sorry—am afraid I’ve hurt your feelings, which distresses me. I’d be a lot happier about it all if I knew that poachers were being caught and traps were being cut.”

  To Brylawski she lamented: “Even the ambassador seems to have swallowed the bait. Dismas’s ‘proposal’ will now go to all the big conservation organizations, and they will take it up with bands playing…. The ORTPN officials will get what they want and nothing else will change. There is not one cent in that budget for training antipoacher patrols that will do the job. If it wasn’t for the memory of Digit and Uncle Bert and Macho, I would just give up.”

  The pressure on her to do just that was mounting. On the same day he sent her the letter detailing his new plan, Crigler dispatched a personal note:

  “This town is awash in unfriendly ‘Fossey stories’ right now, all about your heavy drinking, gun slinging, and manic-depression. Some of it, at least, is reaching the Rwandan authorities—one of the latter recently recited a rumor about how you inject urine into poachers’ arms with a syringe.

  “Dismas told me ten days ago he wanted to come see me to talk about the ‘Fossey problem,’ and I know there are people within ORTPN who are pressing to have you expelled….

  “There’s a real danger that even well-meaning people could become convinced that Fossey is more of a liability than an asset to faunal preservation now. And those outraged letters to the Rwandan government from American conservationists, all of them citing your name, aren’t helping matters either.”

  This last was a reference to people in the United States who, having heard about Digit and then about Uncle Bert and Macho, had been writing indignant letters to Kigali demanding that the gorillas be given meaningful protection.

  In another note Crigler tried to drive the point home:

  “It is clear that some people are worrying more and more about the implications of the deaths in Group 4, with people becoming increasingly convinced that they are the results of a vendetta aimed at you personally. I take every opportunity to stress that … the government must crack down on the persons behind this vendetta. But there is nevertheless a tendency for some to want to take the easier way out, i.e., to remove the target of the vendetta.”

  These were by no means the only malicious rumors being fomented about Dian. Her old friend Bob Campbell, with whom she still corresponded at erratic intervals, wrote from Nairobi, “I know that bad reports concerning yourself and your research project are on record in the State Department in Washington, and I have heard that you were obliged to leave the mountains shortly after Digit was killed.”

  Crigler not only had the first word in this attempt to bring Dian around to his way of thinking, he had the last one too. On September 22 he wrote, “Let me just say one final word and then I’m through: There is no hope for the eventual survival of the gorillas without the full and positive cooperation of the Rwandan government. And in my view the only way that cooperation will be obtained is to engage the world conservation community in a serious, comprehensive program of technical and material aid to the park. It may even go so far as tossing in some unneeded assets—roads, cabins, etc.—in order to get what you want.”

  Belatedly, Dian now realized that she could never rally effective support for the gorillas so long as she herself remained isolated at Karisoke. There were simply too many people and organizations out there standing ready to jump onto the bandwagon of gorilla conservation, then drive off in directions of their own choosing. She knew too that if things continued as they were, she would soon be unable to keep even the minimal Karisoke patrols going because her own resources were almost a
t an end. By definition, the National Geographic Society grants could only be used for research purposes, and there was no guarantee that even these would continue into the new year. When she heard that Crigler would soon be visiting the United States, she begged a favor of him.

  “Could you please call Ed Snider at the National Geographic, as he is a person one can be absolutely straight with, and ask him if I have any chance at all of a grant next year. I am terrified the answer will be no because of the killings and what is being said about me.”

  Much as she dreaded leaving her camp when most of her current students were, or so she was convinced, indifferent to the long-term future of the gorillas and hostile to her concept of “active conservation,” there was clearly no help for it. She could at least comfort herself that, in her absence, Ian Redmond would carry the shield for the gorillas. At the end of October she arranged to fly to the United States.

  There was some good news. It was reported from Zaire that the formidable Munyarukiko had been poisoned, some said by order of a “Big Man” in Goma, and had died a lingering death. Although the report eventually turned out to be false, it brought balm to Dian’s soul.

  There was also bad news. On October 25 the bullet-crippled youngster Kweli came to the end of his long and painful struggle. He died a ghastly death from gangrene. In Gorillas in the Mist, Dian wrote:

  On the morning of his death he was found breathing shallowly in the night nest he shared with Tiger…. The gorillas returned to his side repeatedly throughout the day to comfort him … every animal seemed to want to help but could do nothing … each member of the group went to Kweli individually to stare solemnly in his face for several seconds before silently moving off to feed. It was as if the gorillas knew Kweli’s life was nearly over.

  By evening the remnants of the group had moved far enough away to allow David Watts to approach the now-unconscious infant. He picked it up and carried it back to camp in his arms. Dian and Ian tried to revive it with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and cardiac massage, but Kweli never regained consciousness. The young gorilla’s emaciated body joined those of his parents in the graveyard near Dian’s cabin.

  Kweli’s death brought Dian to the verge of collapse.

  I went to bed about 11:00 P.M. and woke at 1:00 A.M. ready to vomit and feeling that I had a plastic bag over my head. I couldn’t get my breath. For the first time in my life I was terrified out of my senses. The nightmare that had awakened me was a combination of poachers, bullets, Uncle Bert torn apart by bullets, ditto with Macho and Kweli, the National Geographic board members asking me why I had killed them, and on it went.

  I got up and lit the gas lamp and sat in bed; went into a sweat, then a chill, then threw up and felt I was going berserk. Finally, at about two-thirty I woke one of my men and asked him to get Ian.

  Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done if Ian hadn’t been there. My pride wouldn’t have allowed me to ask for the V-Ws or Watts. It was difficult enough to ask for Ian. I felt like an exorcist victim!

  When poor Ian finally awakened and came up here, I made him talk about everything he’d done in England, the movies he’d seen, the books he’d read, etc., so that I could think of anything except the nightmare.

  Well, Ian had only seen two science fiction movies! But they sure helped, plus stories of his grandmother, sister, mom, etc. I was too terrified to go back to sleep and asked him to spend the night in the bed next to mine, which he kindly did.

  When I finally fell asleep the dream started again, waking me up screaming; but hearing him snoring away just lulled me back to sleep, this time to dream of spaceships. I have never known this kind of fear before. I am somewhat ashamed of it but am interested in why it happened. Probably because we’d talked so long about what had occurred, that and the suggestions of others that I had been the cause of the killings must have been it. I think I might really have gone bonkers if Ian hadn’t been around.

  On October 29, Dian left Karisoke for Kigali, there to spend a couple of days before departing for the United States. She visited ORTPN headquarters to get permission for Craig Sholley, a newly arrived American student, to work in the park. While there she learned that the director, Dismas Nsabimana, had authorized the transfer of two thousand pounds to Karisoke from the grants given to ORTPN by the FPS. She was overjoyed but puzzled.

  I never quite knew why he did that. But he personally did understand the poachers had to be stopped. When I heard he had been fired a few weeks later, I wondered if it was because he gave that money for our antipoacher patrolling.

  Dian left Kigali on a Sabena flight for Brussels after a bittersweet scene with the Criglers.

  Bettie cried, but though Frank kissed me good-bye, he wouldn’t come to the airport and wouldn’t even play the piano for me.

  It was clear that the special relationship between them had been ruptured.

  She was forced to spend a miserable day in Brussels awaiting an ongoing flight. Nobody met her at the airport this time, and there was not even a message from Jean Gespar, from whom she had heard nothing since his visit to Karisoke.

  Loneliness enshrouded her during the long flight across the Atlantic. Changing planes again in New York, she continued on to Charleston, South Carolina, where she was to participate in a symposium on conservation.

  Also in attendance was Robinson McIlvaine, one-time American ambassador to Kenya, now executive vice-president of the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation, a prestigious organization that numbered amongst its officers such luminaries as Kermit Roosevelt.

  McIlvaine was an urbane, older man, well versed in diplomacy, whom Dian had known briefly in Nairobi. Delighted to meet him again and warmed by his interest in her, she was soon confiding her problems with the Digit Fund. Rob, or Bob, as she called him, was gratifyingly sympathetic. They arranged to meet again in Washington where he promised to help her organize the Digit Fund and to give her the benefit of his own experience in raising money for a cause.

  Dian’s ninety-five-year-old uncle, Albert Chapin, died in Fresno, California, while she was still in Charleston. Although Albert and Flossie Chapin had been less than pleased when Dian affectionately named two of her gorillas after them, she now learned that she had inherited fifty thousand dollars from Uncle Bert’s estate. This was an enormous sum to a woman who had been impoverished all her life. However, she did not see it as money to be personally enjoyed.

  It is a big relief to know that even if the grants don’t come through, now I can keep Karisoke going for three years at least.

  The legacy almost failed to materialize. Although Dian’s mother had benefited from Uncle Bert’s death, it was not to the degree Richard Price thought proper, so he decided that his wife and Dian should challenge the will in favor of an earlier one by which the two women stood to inherit the bulk of the estate. Dian had no wish to do this; indeed, Brylawski warned her not to get involved, but Price brought such pressure to bear that she eventually capitulated. Fortunately she recanted after returning to Karisoke. It was well she did. The will contained a clause to the effect that any beneficiary who dared to challenge it and lost would receive the sum of one dollar and not one cent more. Eventually Dian realized some forty thousand dollars.

  On the fifth she arrived in Washington, there to spend the next twelve days striving to turn the nascent Digit Fund into a lusty champion of the gorillas.

  The National Geographic Society proved supportive and not only gave the Digit Fund a special five-thousand-dollar grant to be used “in equipping and beefing up your patrols to hold down poaching,” but the chairman of the committee, Dr. Melvin Payne, was also reassuring about her application for a 1979 operating grant for Karisoke. “You may be sure I will help to give it a fair wind when it comes before the committee,” he told her.

  The World Wildlife Fund (U.S.) also donated five thousand dollars, although not without considerable internal conflict. Increasingly malicious reports of Dian’s “illegal” activities in Rwanda were now
raising the hackles of reactionary scientific colleagues who acted as advisers to organizations such as WWF. One such venerable pundit tried to veto any assistance to Dian on the grounds that she would “use the money to equip a police state.”

  Even the National Geographic was affected by the spate of stories coming out of Kigali and Karisoke. Near the end of her stay in Washington, Dr. Payne had a long, fatherly chat with her, during which he strongly advised that she return to the United States to spend at least a year writing up her scientific studies and finishing her book. In truth this was less a suggestion than an ultimatum, since Dian was given to understand that if she did not follow this sage advice, she could expect no further grants from the society.

  Dian believed that an organized conspiracy to get her out of Rwanda came into being during the autumn of 1978. Certain it is that a number of associates thought she was getting “bushed” and ought to be “persuaded” to leave Rwanda. These included Frank Crigler, several senior people at the National Geographic and the Leakey Foundation, and even, although she did not know it at the time, her new and ardent supporter, Robinson McIlvaine.

  There were also those who wanted her out because she was causing problems for them. These included the U.S. State Department, the Belgian Aid organization in Rwanda, the executive officers of some prestigious conservation organizations, and last but by no means least, some of the researchers who worked or had worked at Karisoke.

  Although Dian’s intimate relationships with men were often disastrous, she could develop enduring friendships with professionals such as lawyers, doctors, accountants, and men of God, particularly if they were considerably older than herself. She had a singular need for the supportive and protective qualities such men could supply and that she had not enjoyed either from the one father she had never really known or the one who never really knew her.

  Fulton Brylawski, senior partner of the legal firm of Brylawski and Cleary in Washington, D.C., had been recommended to Dian in the early 1970s by mutual friends at the National Geographic. By the spring of 1978, when she wrote asking for help in setting up the Digit Fund, he had proved himself a firm friend and doughty defender who could be relied upon in any eventuality.