by Sheri Speede
Finally, after ten days that seemed like a hundred, I was well enough to return to the forest, although I would suffer from arthritis in my hands and feet for more than a year. I know now that the chikungunya virus, which is transmitted by daytime mosquitoes and is endemic in Cameroon and many other African countries, probably caused my symptoms. African forest primates are reservoirs for the virus, as are humans. It’s likely that I was infected with the virus by a mosquito bite while I was trekking through the forest.
Gingerly, on sore feet I walked through the sawmill yard monitoring the loading of our imported fence equipment and lots of other building materials we had bought in Yaoundé. We had hired a welder to create large latticework panels from individual iron rods and then had stored the panels at the sawmill. Welded onto a sturdy frame, these would form our cage walls. A company in the Douala port had donated a twenty-two-foot metal shipping container, and we had managed to transport it, too, to the Coron sawmill weeks earlier. When all of it had been loaded and secured on the long flatbed of the logging truck, we set off for the Mbargue Forest. A shipment of gold couldn’t have been more valuable to me than those precious building materials. Because I wanted to make sure everything arrived safely, Kenneth and I left Yaoundé in the Pajero, following behind the big logging truck. However, an hour outside of Yaoundé, when the pavement ended at the town of Ayos, the dust stirred up by the wheels of the big truck on the dirt road, even in this season of not-infrequent rains, was blinding. We managed to pass the truck with the intention of driving in front of it, but this arrangement didn’t work out well either. The washboard bumps created by heavy logging trucks limited the speed of our small Pajero much more than it did the heavy truck. The truck driver was impatient with the slow speed and made me nervous by driving too close to us. In the end, we let him pass and fell far behind him. He knew where he was going because he was waiting for us at the campsite Liboz had cleared when we arrived many hours later.
We arranged for truckloads of sand and gravel to be brought from Bélabo so that we could make cement by hand, using water we would carry from the river. Our first cemented structure was the floor of our pit latrine. Although its walls were made only of palm fronds, the wonderful privacy it afforded felt like a five-star luxury to me. It and a raffia roof over our side-by-side tents were the only structures we built before starting the cage. I had borrowed a second tent from Estelle and Dana for Kenneth. This would be the extent of our camp infrastructure, our base of operations, until after we brought the first chimpanzees to the sanctuary.
Because building the electric fence would take time—just clearing the fence line of trees could take months—I would focus first on building a big satellite cage. I thought we could build it in a few weeks, and it would be a big improvement over where the chimpanzees were living now. Then, as soon as possible, we would build the electric enclosure and get them back into the forest.
We hired our construction team of local village people. Mr. Francis, a middle-aged man from the village of Mbargue, on the far side of the Mbargue Forest, was our construction technician. He knew nothing about building cages, but he could lay cement and had built houses with wood. His was the highest level of skill we could find. Six men and teenagers from Bikol 1 and Bikol 2 were the unskilled laborers.
I lacked a blueprint for the cage. I had made rough sketches, I went over every detail of the three-chambered design in my head, and I perfected it as well as I could with my level of skill and knowledge. With all the human and sliding chimpanzee doors that had to be anchored in concrete, it was complicated construction, some of which would have been difficult for me to explain to Mr. Francis even if we had spoken the same language. Under the circumstances, the task was ridiculously difficult. I hovered over the men every minute of every day as they planted poles in concrete to make sure my amateur design was followed precisely. When Kenneth wasn’t with me to translate, I drew in the dirt or pantomimed to clarify my intent.
None of the men on our team, with the exception of Mr. Francis, had ever held a paying job before, and having an American woman boss undoubtedly veered into the realm of the bizarre for them. Up to this point, I had enjoyed a sweet relationship with the people of the villages. Now, trying to finish this first satellite cage before the heavy rains made the roads impassable, I pushed hard for the work to move fast. Our cultures and work ethics collided head-on. I wanted to start work at seven sharp every morning to accomplish as much as possible before the day got hot, but it was rare for all the employees to arrive on time. I tried explaining the importance of arriving for work on time, but they were farmers and hunters for whom a schedule imposed by anything other than the growing season and the physical necessity of eating was difficult to adhere to. I got angry, but I had little leverage. Because I needed the whole crew to get work done, I couldn’t afford to send anyone home without pay. When nothing else worked, I motivated them with bonuses for arriving on time.
For them to bring lunch with them in the morning was a cultural and logistical impossibility. Because women from the village cooked food for them and brought it whenever it was ready, usually late in the afternoon, I wasn’t able to set a specific lunchtime near midday, which would have allowed us to rest and rejuvenate in the hottest part of the day. I always held out and ate whenever they were eating, and I noticed that our productivity decreased as the hours wore on without food or rest. I could have solved the problem by hiring a cook and providing lunch in camp. I was pinching every franc, but well-timed rest and nutrition might have increased productivity enough to make up for the cost of lunch. In any case, I didn’t think of this obvious solution until it was too late. My narrow American perspective sometimes blinded me to culturally appropriate solutions.
One day around one o’clock, I went to the latrine in camp and got distracted by a discussion with Kenneth over the placement of a table in the little cooking area near our tents. When I came back to the cage site, all seven members of the workforce, including Mr. Francis, were sleeping under a big mango tree. To wake them, I used a near-empty plastic water container as a drum, pounding it furiously with a two-foot piece of cage metal. They all rose silently, rubbing their eyes and yawning, as they moseyed back to work.
Their typical slow walking pace, which was undoubtedly a sensible and lifelong adaptation to the tropical climate, contrasted sharply with my march to the drum of urgent purpose. That they could not seem to comprehend or respect my sense of urgency exhausted what little patience I had. When my frustration and stress compelled me to shout unintelligible words—not one among the workforce understood English—the expended energy was not entirely wasted because they usually understood that I wanted them to go faster. For a few minutes they would try to accommodate, or humor, me by working a little faster, all the while speaking in their language and laughing among themselves (at me, I was sure).
In spite of all the problems, work moved forward. I was watching the calendar constantly, trying to beat the heavy rains, while we worked around lighter, shorter rains that were already coming several days per week. Then came the problem of the generator.
Weeks earlier, in Bélabo, we had arranged to rent a big generator that could power welding equipment. Unfortunately, a bad surprise awaited us when we were ready to weld the standing poles and walls together. When Kenneth went to pick up the machine, the proprietor told him that it was broken, sitting idle, without an essential replacement part that could only be bought in Europe. Our search for another generator was a frustrating drama that led us to Bertoua, the closest big town, and then all the way to Yaoundé. I was almost out of money, which made the option of renting an expensive generator in Yaoundé less tenable. There had been so many costly contingencies for which I had lacked the experience to anticipate or plan. Edmund was doing his best to raise money in the United States, but with no accomplishments to show potential donors, it wasn’t easy. I would learn later that he took out a loan for $2,500 in order to send me money when funds ran out.
“Madame, we can’t put you before our God,” Mr. Francis told me.
“Does he pay your salaries? Does he feed your kids?” I asked.
“He makes the food grow,” he answered sincerely, shaking his head apologetically. I couldn’t win this one.
That particular Saturday, fretting about the generator problem, trying to conjure up a solution, I was near desperation. As I sat cross-legged on the dirt by the cage, my troubled thoughts were interrupted by a lanky middle-aged white man peeking over my shoulder. Other than Jean Liboz, who I knew had recently departed for France, and a Catholic priest in Bélabo, I didn’t know of any other expatriates working in the vicinity. I stood as Roger Odier, a middle-aged man with thinning light brown hair, looked at me through gold wire-rimmed glasses and introduced himself in English. He was a French national who had recently arrived in Bélabo to manage a wood transportation company.
“One of my workers told me about a crazy American woman working alone in the forest,” he told me with a heavy accent. “I had to come see this thing for myself. You must have dinner with me at my house tonight and explain what it is you are doing here.”
He got no argument from me. That night over a lovely dinner of green beans, white rice, French cheese, and red wine, I explained why I was building a sanctuary for chimpanzees, and I went into some detail about the threats they and other primates were facing in the wild. I made an effort to enunciate well and speak slowly as he got accustomed to my American accent. To his sympathetic ear, I confided my problems—most notably, I spoke with all the gravity in my heart about my urgent need of a generator to weld the cage together before the heavy rains would make the work difficult, and moving the chimpanzees impossible.
The very next day Roger delivered his company’s generator, two huge electric spotlights that plugged into the generator, and one of his company’s welding technicians to work alongside another welder I hired from Bélabo. Working all day, every day, and late into the night, we finished the cage in two weeks. I joked that Roger had come to my rescue like a knight in shining armor, and I could tell he liked my corniness. I benefited from his platonic friendship for two years before he finally left Cameroon to join his wife and family back in France. During our final meeting, he told me why he had helped me. “You were hobbling around like a ninety-year-old woman with your sore feet, and you had more determination than I had ever seen. You touched something deep inside me.” I might not have managed to finish that cage without Roger, and I said many silent prayers of thanks for the amazing good luck, or whatever it was, that brought this man and his goodwill to me at that pivotal time.
During the last week of August, the heavy rains came early, and, as a result, many of the roads were closed to big trucks. At the entrances to some of the roadways, policemen lifted fragile wooden barricades for smaller vehicles to pass while they turned back big trucks. At others, policemen weren’t necessary, because cemented metal barricades were locked into place, leaving space for nothing bigger than cars and small pickup trucks to pass.
En route to Limbe, Kenneth and I stopped in Yaoundé for one night to rest and pick up Estelle. She and Dana had just returned from their vacation in the United States and France. Dana’s hospitality and kindness to me in those days was beyond measure. He opened his doors to me whether or not Estelle was in the country, and I was a frequent dinner guest at his table.
Over dinner that night, Estelle surprised me by presenting a rational argument for waiting until the next dry season to move the chimpanzees. “You built everything in such a rush. It’s better to make sure the cage is solid and all the infrastructure is in place before taking chimps there,” she said, making a good point. “The roads are terrible now. What if we get stuck? It’s not worth the risk to move them now.”
I knew our infrastructure was minimal, and, having just passed over the muddy roads connecting the Mbargue Forest to Yaoundé, I could understand why Estelle was worried. I too was afraid of it all going wrong, so I sat considering whether moving the chimpanzees at that particular time was worth the risk.
Sensing a lapse in my resolve, Estelle added, “What difference will three months make?”
Would three months make a difference? I wondered. Flashing through my head were the chimpanzees in Limbe—especially Jacky going crazier by the day—and Dorothy and Nama waiting on their chains. I concluded that three months would, indeed, make a difference for them. I had struggled for months against myriad obstacles, driven by one idea—I would move the chimpanzees as soon as possible. At this late stage, Estelle’s coolheaded risk assessment, as well intentioned and logical as it was, could not deter me.
“I’ll move Jacky, Pepe, and Becky within three days,” I said, giving my decision. I was willing to move them with or without Estelle, but she never knew how relieved I was that she later agreed to come with me.
Once in Limbe, Estelle, Kenneth, and I faced the necessity of finding a vehicle that was both big enough to accommodate our three transport cages and small enough to fit through the road barricades. I had made the cages with a welder in Yaoundé and arranged their transport to Limbe weeks earlier. I had intended to rent a big truck into which the cages would fit easily, but it was too late in the season for that now. A truck would be too big to squeeze through the barricades and would be more likely to get stuck in the mud. George Muna had the great idea of renting a bush taxi, a type of van used extensively for public transport in Cameroon, and taking out all the seats to make room for the transport cages. We knew bush taxis could get through the barricades because they moved all over the country year-round. George donated the cost of renting the bush taxi.
To avoid the traffic jams, the throngs of people who would crowd around the van in excitement to see the chimpanzees, and the daytime heat of Douala and Yaoundé—the two big cities through which we would necessarily pass—we decided to begin the journey at night. Without traffic or other complications, we anticipated a fourteen-hour trip.
Shooting darts at chimpanzees is a horrible process that terrifies and infuriates them. I had darted Jacky, Pepe, and Becky before for tuberculosis tests, and Pepe and Becky had been open to reconciliation afterward. We had known each other longer and were better friends now, which for me made it seem a deeper betrayal. I hated it, but in 1999 we had no better options for getting them into the transport cages than to anesthetize them with blow darts. The night we were to travel, two experienced caregivers from Limbe Wildlife Center (LWC) joined us to help with the darting and with loading the chimpanzees once they were anesthetized. The yard-long pipe of my darting equipment could be connected to a compressed air pistol or used as a blowpipe. The LWC caregivers also brought a blowpipe. I was much better at using the pistol than I was at blowing darts, but the pistol could be more painful. Since Jacky was in the middle, I darted him first, so we wouldn’t need to worry about him grabbing us as we darted the other two. It was relatively easy to use the blowpipe with Jacky, because he had been sleeping and I caught him by surprise. But from that moment on, it was a stressful affair. When the LWC team entered Jacky’s cage to carry him out to the transport cage, Pepe and Becky barked and screamed aggressively at them. At first I think they assumed I was innocent, but once Pepe saw that I intended to dart him, he started barking at me and jumping around all over the cage to avoid the dart. I had to use the pistol to hit him because he was moving so fast. The whole aggressive interaction was incongruous with our gentle relationship. I finally hit him with the dart, though, and we got him into his transport cage. It was no easier with Becky. Left with no vocal support from Pepe or Jacky because they
were both unconscious, she cried like a baby chimpanzee and held her arm out toward me for support, pleading with me to stop being mean. In the end, one of the LWC caregivers darted her with the blowpipe. I just hoped the chimps would forgive me.
Once all three of the sleeping chimpanzees were in the transport cages, we managed to line the cages up in single file from just behind the front seat all the way to the back door of the bush taxi. Estelle and I entered through the sliding side door and sat just beside the cages on the hard metal floor, while Kenneth took the front seat next to the driver, who came with the bush taxi. Even before we pulled away from the hotel, the chimps began to wake up from the light anesthesia. They were confused and terrified, but no one seemed to be holding a grudge against me specifically. They sought our comfort, which we offered as best we could in the cramped space that was uncomfortable for us all. At least they could see that we were all in it together, so to speak. This was closer than we had ever been to Jacky—the openings between the welded bars of the transport cage were small enough that we needn’t fear him grabbing or biting us—and even he took some solace in our presence.
In Limbe, we had acquired documents from the local government authorizing us to transport the chimpanzees, but the size and temperament of our passengers dissuaded careful scrutiny of the papers at any of the many police checkpoints through which we passed. Although we were sometimes able to soothe Jacky and Pepe, and to a lesser extent Becky, there were many moments during our journey when none of them wanted to be consoled. Even within the small confines of their transport cages, they were able to mount frightening displays and were inspired to do so whenever strange people peered in at them from outside. To prevent the pinching of their feet or hands between the bottom of the cages and the ground or floor underneath, I had designed each of the cages on four corner feet. Too late, I was having second thoughts about the design. All three of the chimps quickly realized that rocking the metal feet of their cages on the metal van floor produced a satisfying accompaniment to their already deafening barking and screaming. No human voice, police or otherwise, could be heard above the intimidating racket. We were usually waved through the checkpoints quickly. I myself worried about whether the cages were strong enough to withstand the phenomenal strength of the chimpanzees. During every bout of frenzied cage shaking, I imagined the thousands of weld points that held the cages together giving way. As agitated as the chimpanzees were, I wouldn’t be happy to have any of them loose in the van with us. I kept a syringe of anesthesia and the dart gun nearby, just in case.