by Sheri Speede
“No, Becky!” I said with alarm and to no effect. Without a hint of real malice, but with unalterable intent, she used both her hands to grab my dress from the bottom. Within moments, three-quarters of my lovely dress was crumpled on the dirty concrete cage floor in front of Becky, and I was struggling to keep the back of the dress stretched down over my behind. At first I thought Becky’s primary motive was to keep me with her, but her loving caresses of the dress soon convinced me that she really just wanted to share the special cloth. I had two choices: get out of my dress and leave it with her, or convince her to release the dress and me. Slipping the dress over my head and running in my tattered underwear past the hotel lobby and restaurant, where people had begun to arrive for lunch, was a very unappealing option. Glued against the cage, I had nothing with which to bargain, no way to buy back the dress. I tugged gently on the cloth.
“Becky, please give it back,” I begged. Clutching the dress firmly in her left hand, she picked up the water bottle with her right and poured water from it onto the dirty concrete in front of her. After a brief glance at my disapproving face, she set the water bottle down so she could use both her hands to scrub the floor with the never-to-be-beige-again cloth. As she cleaned, she stuck her tongue in her cheek as she sometimes did when she was busy, and miffed as I was over the ruining of my dress, I thought she was adorable.
As I considered the hopelessness of my predicament, I saw George Muna walking some distance away along the driveway of the hotel with two business associates. I shouted his name, trying to sound calm so as not to upset Becky. She had never been aggressive with me, had never threatened to hurt me, but as I was in a vulnerable situation, I thought it prudent not to irritate her. George waved casually and kept walking. Not a big help!
Fortunately, after several more minutes, George came back. When he got just close enough to hear me easily, I asked him to bring me a French red apple from the restaurant so I could try to trade it to Becky for my dress. Expensive red apples imported from France were a delicacy for Becky, and I had seen some in the restaurant that morning. While I waited for the apple, I planned my strategy. I didn’t think Becky would try to force the apple from my hand, but just in case she didn’t respect the rules of fair trade, I planned to ask George to put the apple on the ground near me, out of Becky’s reach. When Becky released the dress, I would deliver the apple to her. I thought she would easily understand the bargain I intended. But when George returned carrying the apple, he stopped on the far side of the cage, out of Becky’s reach, and held up the apple temptingly for her. When she saw it, her face lit up. After thinking about it for no more than a few seconds, she dropped the dress, crossed the cage, and reached her arm through the bars for George to throw it to her. Instead he laughed and refused, thinking it funny that he had tricked her into releasing me.
Obviously, his sense of fairness did not extend to chimpanzees. Both Becky and I were furious at his outrageous act of betrayal. She barked and spat at him, while I yanked the apple from him and handed it to her. Eventually, as George’s many other acts of kindness, some of which helped chimpanzees, overshadowed this injustice against Becky, I forgave him. Becky never did. Thereafter, whenever she saw him, she glared with malice, and I knew he better never wander within her reach.
These chimpanzee visits were happening when we weren’t exploring a forest, or meeting with villagers, or meeting with people in other organizations, trying everything we knew to find a suitable sanctuary site. We spent more time discovering sites to explore than we did actually exploring the sites. Every site we looked at had a fatal flaw—it wasn’t accessible in the rainy season, or it had no road access at all, or the politics were too complicated.
After three challenging months, during which we did not find our perfect sanctuary site and became seriously worried about whether the money we had raised would be enough, Edmund needed to go back to work in the United States. We decided that he would lease out his house in Oregon and move into mine, to save money and focus on raising funds, while I stayed in Cameroon to find a site and set up the sanctuary. I had never planned to stay in Cameroon after Edmund left, but for me to leave would have meant failure, would have meant leaving Jacky, Pepe, and Becky in their cages at the hotel, probably for the rest of their lives. I wasn’t willing to fail.
Communication, both within Cameroon and internationally, was very difficult in those days before cell phones and reliable e-mail. Landlines were few and far between, and connections were erratic. I knew my communication with Edmund would be limited, and I was sad to see him go, but his crucial fund-raising in the United States would enable Estelle and me to push forward in Cameroon.
I loved Edmund, but after he left, with the distance and loneliness, we began to grow apart. The relationship would change very gradually. In the end, it would be me and my needs that would bring about the end of the romantic relationship, not him or anything he did.
With all my heart I was dedicated to the mission we had undertaken. I knew that Jacky, Pepe, and Becky were not the only captive chimpanzees living in small cages in Cameroon, and I knew that we would rescue others. My idea was to build a small infrastructure with one or more forested enclosures for older captive chimpanzees. I would work with Estelle, other volunteers, and a local staff to set up the sanctuary and then direct it from afar, coming and going from Cameroon as necessary. The problem with my vision at the time stemmed from a very limited understanding about the scope of the chimpanzee orphan problem in Central Africa and about the difficulty of saving and caring for chimpanzees in a country like Cameroon. Ultimately my love for Jacky, Pepe, Becky, and others would inspire a stronger commitment, by far, than any I had ever made. I could not yet fathom the extent to which it would change the course of my life.
Four
Mean Streets
The big city of Douala, considered the business capital of Cameroon, notorious for its high crime rate, lay between Limbe and Yaoundé where Estelle lived with Dana and their son. One morning after leaving Limbe en route to Yaoundé, I took a detour off the main road through Douala to check e-mail at a cybercafé in the Akwa District, near Douala’s port. As I approached the door of the business—rather preoccupied as usual and not expecting any surprises, since I had been there several times—I could have tripped over a grisly surprise that literally took my breath away. About three yards from the cybercafé threshold, and equidistant from where I stood with my mouth gaping open, lay a bloody, charred human corpse. Blood spattered the concrete under my feet, and the odor of burning flesh was thick in the air. My eyes instinctively avoided what had been the man’s face and fell instead upon two military police officers who chatted casually several yards away. Turning my back on the corpse, I peered through the glass of the cybercafé to see people busy at computers. Business appeared to be going on as usual, and although it was a shocking affair to come across, the murdered man on the sidewalk hadn’t negated my need to check e-mail. I entered the cybercafé and glanced around for an empty computer. Long, narrow tables made of plywood that was painted white were positioned along two walls of the room, which was also painted white and measured about fifteen by fifteen feet. Two similar tables placed end to end divided the room down the center. Pieces of vertical plywood about two by two feet divided the tables into narrow computer stations. Seeing that two computers were vacant, I paid the female attendant, who sat at her own small desk by the door, for an hour of Internet time. She handed me a small piece of paper with a password written in blue ink and spoke to me in French as she gestured to the computer I should use. I settled into my station, took a couple of deep breaths to calm my racing heart, and glanced at the man sitting at the station next to me. His hair was very short, and he had a light complexion for an African. It was hard to tell his age, maybe early thirties. He wore jeans, a Polo shirt knockoff, polished brown loafers, and wire-rimmed glasses, which were in good condition. I took his appearance to be a sign of relative affluence—that and the fact that he was
sitting beside me in one of Douala’s more expensive Internet cafés. To use the computer here cost the equivalent of two dollars per hour.
In 1999, Internet connections were still slow and spotty. The man had pushed his chair back from the table slightly. He seemed to be having a moment of downtime, and my quick glance over the divider at the little hourglass on his computer screen confirmed that he was waiting for his Google search to process.
“Bonjour,” I said with a slight nod. “Good morning,” he shot back effortlessly, aware from my accent that French wasn’t my language and letting me know as he turned slightly to face me that he was willing to talk. We exchanged names and pleasantries. His name was William, he taught at the Anglophone university in the town of Buea, and he was visiting his brother in Douala. He knew details about the deadly drama that had unfolded outside and was willing to share them. Like many Cameroonians, William was an eloquent storyteller.
“It’s a story of criminals who got caught by the people,” he summarized, before continuing with the details. “A woman came out of the Standard Chartered Bank, a few blocks away, and flagged a taxi. A minute after she entered the taxi, the driver picked up two more passengers.”
Taxis in Cameroon are usually shared—drivers pick up as many people as they can who are going the same direction. To flag a taxi in Cameroon’s cities, a hopeful passenger simply stands by the road and looks in the direction of any approaching taxi that isn’t crammed too full. She might lift her arm forty-five degrees from her side with her index finger extended. As the taxi slows, the flagger shouts her destination through the open window. If the driver intends to accept the new passenger, he simply idles in place to allow time for her to crawl in, or if he is blocking traffic he might pull off to the side of the road toward her, or he might even beep his horn—always a cheerful sound of acquiescence to the flagger on the street. The taxi driver’s refusal is made clear if he simply keeps driving. It wouldn’t have been unusual for the taxi driver who picked up the woman from the bank to pick up other people as well. In itself that wouldn’t have been cause for alarm.
William continued. “Soon the victim realized she was in the company of three collaborating bandits, including the taxi driver. She managed to get out of the taxi, but she didn’t manage to take her purse with her.”
I interrupted him. “Did they force her from the car and keep her purse, or did she escape from the car?”
“This detail isn’t clear to me. What we know is that she landed on the hard concrete sidewalk, and she still sat there as she pointed after the taxi yelling, ‘Thieves! Thieves! ’ ”
Because Cameroon’s unemployment rate is very high, most people have been victims of crime at one time or another. The legal system rarely offers any justice for victims of property crime, so hatred of thieves in the general population is particularly intense, and vigilantism is common. Shouting “thief!” in a crowd is a good way to get someone killed.
After giving me a few moments to absorb what he had told me, William continued. “After the victim fell out of the taxi and sounded the alarm, a growing crowd of angry citizens began running alongside the taxi. When the car had to stop in traffic, the criminals had no escape. The people pulled them out and proceeded to beat them to death,” William finished matter-of-factly.
“Where are the other two bodies?” I asked, trying not to sound as shocked as I felt.
William stood, and I followed suit, as he pointed to two dark spots where the bodies had previously lain on the concrete walkway. “Their families have already collected them for burial. The military police are waiting for the last one to be claimed,” William told me.
“Were they already dead when they were set on fire?” I asked hopefully, sinking back into my chair.
“We can’t know,” William said with a shrug, as he too sat down and turned his attention back to his screen.
“It’s really shocking and sad for people to be killed so brutally on the streets”—I tried to maintain an unemotional tone as I stated what I thought would be obvious—“without benefit of a trial or anything.”
When William didn’t respond, I queried, “Don’t you think so?”
“Well, criminals should think twice,” William said. “At least the victim got her purse back.” He was busy typing at the computer again.
“That much is good,” I said lamely. Our perspectives were clearly different.
The incident held the distinction of being the first time I saw vigilantism at work in Cameroon. I paid for a second hour of computer use, taking my time, staying long after William left, hoping that the corpse would be removed before I would have to leave the cybercafé. I tried to answer e-mails, including one from Edmund, but the violent vignette played over and over in my head. I tried to process the different elements of the tragedy—the tinderbox fury of the crowd, the unimaginable suffering of the men who died, the pain and anguish of the family members, especially the parents, who claimed the bodies, the callous resignation of bystanders like William. It seemed that poverty and hopelessness, born of years of institutionalized corruption at every level of society, were a toxic mix in this country that held so much beauty. Finally, I had no choice but to rush past the body again. I would join Estelle in Yaoundé to continue our search for a sanctuary site, a place in the forest where I expected life would be far less perilous, at least for humans.
Five
The Mbargue Forest
Our search for a sanctuary site had taken Estelle and me out of the Southwest Province and through some beautiful forests in South and Central Cameroon, but our travels served to illuminate how well our mission could have been served by a larger budget—money to build a bridge or a short road could have allowed us to create access to some appropriate but inaccessible sites.
Then Karl Ammann, whose photographs were educating the masses outside of Africa about the horrors of the bushmeat trade, had introduced us to Jean Liboz, the French national who was a director of the Coron Logging Company in Cameroon. Both Liboz and Karl thought the Mbargue Forest, near the eastern boundary of the Central Province, which was in Coron’s logging concession, could be a good place for a chimpanzee sanctuary. They especially liked the idea that our presence in the forest could provide some protection for the small populations of free-living chimpanzees and gorillas that remained there.
Now, en route to the Mbargue Forest for our second visit, Estelle and I were responding to Liboz’s invitation to sleep for a night in the luxurious hilltop logging camp of the Coron Company. From the camp, built in a clearing on the tallest hill, the multiple shades and textures of the vibrant forest fell away in all directions and as far as the eye could see. The uniformly red-brown village of Pela at the foot of the hill and the red-brown snake of road leading to the camp appeared like wounds inflicted to the luxuriant green. The ten comfortable sleeping quarters of the logging camp were in five prefabricated metal modules of white—each module had two bedrooms with a toilet and shower between them. The modules were lined up along a covered walkway of polished hardwood slats, which connected them to the spacious open-air den and dining room. Modern plumbing throughout the camp was gravity fed from a two-thousand-liter storage tank on tall stilts, which in turn was supplied by a deep borehole well. A muffled generator purred continuous electricity. French cuisine was prepared and served with fine wine by the Cameroonian cook in the dining room. The environment was a stark contrast to the surrounding villages, with their mud huts, cooking pots in open fires, and lack of running water and electricity.
If we were to choose the Mbargue Forest for the sanctuary, Liboz was agreeing to clear our driveway and campsite with the bulldozer of Coron. Equally important, their logging trucks would transport our metal and other supplies over the 225 miles of mostly dirt road from Yaoundé to our sanctuary wherever we chose to locate it within the Mbargue Forest. I had very little money to work with, and I knew Liboz’s contribution could mean the difference between success and failure.
The Came
roon government had also pointed us toward the nationally owned Mbargue Forest. The provincial delegate of the Ministry of the Environment and Forestry (MINEF), the branch of government with which we would necessarily collaborate, singled out the area as one deserving of development. President Paul Biya’s wife was from Nanga Eboko, a town in the same district, and the local people were strong supporters of the president. It was about politics for them. For me, choosing the Mbargue Forest could be a bow to logistical necessity and political expediency. I really hoped it would meet our criteria.
I never heard Jean Liboz called by his first name, and I never called him by it. He was about my age, but he was Monsieur Liboz or simply Liboz to me, depending on whether or not he was present. To refer to him differently now would be disingenuous. It does not reflect a low regard for the man, but rather a lack of casual familiarity. The language barrier and the short amount of time we were ever in close proximity to each other ensured that our personal conversations were strained and brief. Liboz was a swaggering and handsome roughneck, whose ever-present holstered pistol was visible or hidden, depending on the situation. After decades as a logger, he seemed to be having a twinge of conscience about the role of logging in the demise of apes and other species of wildlife, but the truth is that I never fully understood Liboz’s motives for donating his time and company resources to helping our very local and obscure efforts for chimpanzees. He never took photos of our smiling and grateful faces, never publicized the assistance he gave us to promote a greener image for his company. He seemed to genuinely care about wildlife. Perhaps he was motivated by guilt. If so, he didn’t seem to harbor any similarly soft sentiments toward domestic animals.
We had first visited the Coron logging camp two weeks before, just after Liboz had driven us from Yaoundé for a one-day whirlwind tour around the Mbargue Forest, along the logging road he was still completing. The 225-mile road we took from Yaoundé to the Mbargue Forest wasn’t paved, and he had driven like hell over the rough dirt roads, flying through roadside villages, hitting a chicken, a pregnant goat, and finally a baby pig along the way. The sight of a flopping, then suddenly limp, baby pig in the rear window, following shortly after the other unnecessary vehicular animal carnage, rendered me nearly hysterical in the backseat.