Pink Boots and a Machete

by Mireya Mayor

  Because of my cheerleader background, which everyone seemed to know about, in graduate school I was graded more harshly and initially treated like an outcast. To me it seemed that some of my professors wouldn’t give me the time of day and looked at me with amusement, as if to say, “Cute of you to ask and I love your dress, but you’re in the wrong field.” I quickly tried to look more like a field researcher—or, better said, their idea of what a field researcher should look like. I took out my contacts and wore glasses. I began dressing more sloppily, went without lip gloss, and even forsook manicures. By the end of my make-under, I looked like a cross between Janis Joplin and someone who’d been locked up in a lab for months. But I couldn’t keep up the charade for long, and the Cuban former cheerleader soon prevailed.

  At the time I was convinced that professors actually tried to fail me because passing me might suggest that their classes were too easy. Or, worse, if the professor were male, it would be assumed I had flirted if I did well in class. Never mind that I was the first to show up for class and the last to leave. I felt I had to work harder than anyone to prove myself and get past my background, in spite of having by then at least as much field experience as some of the instructors grading me. I found myself with the opposite problem I had had in high school. Now I was too pretty.

  I’d be lying if I didn’t say that in my first semester I thought of quitting and called my mom on more than one occasion to say I was coming home. But by the end of that semester, my hard work was paying off and I was regularly receiving the highest marks in the class. I will even go as far as saying that I had finally earned the esteem of my professors. This was a huge feat, as the anthropology program at Stony Brook University is one of the most highly respected in the country. The professors are tops in the field; the fact that they were tough on me made me stronger, and in retrospect I am nothing but grateful. At the time, though, it seemed their approach was not to select the best and help them swim, but rather to select the best and try to drown them. My entering class consisted of seven students, of which only two of us remained long enough to earn a degree. I had always been a good swimmer.

  If I were a monkey, my place in the hierarchy would have been well established within the group by this point. But my battle was far from over. Though I now had the support and respect of my professors, my colleagues had yet to be convinced. I think that part of the problem stemmed from the fact that I wasn’t the smartest in the bunch, yet I was receiving more scientific grants than the average student. Once again, my Cuban roots might have had something to do with it. I was very good at setting up a question and then arguing to no end its importance and what a disgrace it would be not to fund it. Yes, the fact that funding success largely depended on the ability to argue cogently was a definite plus for a girl who’d been trained by the very best—Cubans. But to some of my colleagues who felt I wasn’t Ph.D. worthy, in large part because of my fashion sense and background in pom-poms, it simply seemed unfair. I regularly found myself feeling like I should apologize for wearing concealer. The National Science Foundation and Fulbright both saw past the concealer, however, the first awarding me a fellowship and the second a research grant to study one of the most critically endangered primates in the world in Madagascar.

  Needless to say, I was most comfortable in the field, where far from civilization and critical eyes, I could just be me. And it was in the field that I got to know best who “me” was. Every morning in the middle of nowhere, without electricity or anyone to impress, I’d take great care in picking out my outfit and hover in front of a business card–size mirror to apply my lip gloss and check my eyebrows. I also felt I had a strong case for bringing a little black dress on expeditions. Village parties spring up more often than you might expect, and despite never having been a Girl Scout, I like to be prepared.

  The judgments of fellow students were soon of no consequence, as I was to spend more time in Madagascar than at grad parties. And luckily for me, lemurs don’t judge. Well, that’s not exactly true. More accurately, lemurs don’t judge humans. It probably was not a surprise to anyone who knew me that I’d end up spending most of my adult life among lemurs. Lemurs, you see, are female dominant, and I come from a long line of dominant females. Male lemurs have it rough. They are booted out of the best sleeping sites, displaced from preferred feeding trees, and as a general rule made to feel useless and inferior. It was hard not to feel sorry for those poor guys. Female lemurs sometimes take off and leave a lonely male to finish their leftovers. I have hung back with an abandoned male and listened to his cries as he beckons for the females to acknowledge him so that he can rejoin the group. As if to mock him, the females will often ignore his pathetic pleas and continue munching while he looks around helplessly. This emotional torture can last for hours. Yep, female lemurs can be witches.

  Once into my bitchy-lemur jungle element, I thought I was home free, especially since before I was even out of graduate school, I was already a wildlife correspondent for National Geographic, one of the most prestigious scientific and educational organizations in the world. Think about it. Among the greats associated with National Geographic are Jane Goodall, Jacques Cousteau, Dian Fossey, and Louis Leakey, to name just a few. These were the heroes in whose company I aspired to be, and, though I by no means think I have achieved their rank, surely I have done something right. But I quickly learned that like the female lemurs, there are sometimes bitchy female scientists.

  In nature, there are plenty of examples of female alliance. Scientists studying lion females have found that there isn’t a “queen” to match a lion “king,” and there exists a sisterhood among the females. Groups of female lions typically hunt together and forge a bond that even includes sharing the duties of raising newborn cubs. They’ve been compared to soccer moms, who benefit from helping each other out. It raises the question of why the term “catty” is used to describe conniving and backstabbing women. I suppose I was disappointed that this sisterhood was not as prevalent among female human researchers. It was usually the female researchers I interviewed for TV who were the most hostile. They would regularly say hello with teeth clenched, and I swear I’d read “I hate you” in their expressions. At first I thought I was paranoid; I mean surely a strong, independent woman wouldn’t be so quick to judge a scientific comrade. My attitude was Girls of the field, unite! But as much as I would have liked to believe that the antimalarial drugs were making me delusional, I wasn’t paranoid. I overheard one scientist turn to my producer, just five minutes after meeting me, and ask him, “Is she here because she has a pretty face?” I felt the urge to both thank her and smack her. I heard another say she would have preferred a male host to interview her, as my “look” would now force her to have to shave. Nothing like being welcomed to a field site with “Why is she here?” Let it be noted that this would mark the first time I questioned shaving my armpits, though after years of picking ticks off my body, I know that body hair only helps conceal them.

  At this early point in my career, still in my mid-20s, I had led dozens of expeditions around the world, I’d published numerous articles in scientific, peer-reviewed journals, and I’d made a groundbreaking scientific discovery of the world’s smallest primate. Would hairy armpits really have made me more credible? And it wasn’t just the researchers. It seemed I wasn’t even safe from a few of the television producers, some of whom remarked on my looks before they even said hello. Rather than focusing on my experience or noticing my firm grip as we shook hands, they’d say things like “How do we make you look more like a scientist?” Did my credentials not speak for themselves? I was a scientist.

  But none of them beat my personal favorite, which was “Are you going to wear that? We need to make you less attractive, or you’ll look like Tarzan’s sexy Jane running around in the jungle.” It’s my favorite because inevitably that is the image that was encouraged. I can’t begin to count the number of scenes of me bathing in rivers or showering under a waterfall. But that is a part
of everyday life in the field that people are often curious about, so I never objected. More ridiculous and somewhat amusing, I think, were the conversations that preceded such filming, centering on whether it would be appropriate or sexist. Would producers discuss such things if I were Jack Hanna? Just curious.

  And then there are the TV critics. Here’s an excerpt from one: “The show can’t decide whether to treat Mayor as an expert, or as the title [“Wild Nights with Mireya Mayor”] and location hint, a bit of a sex symbol.” He then added, “But throughout the show she wears a wool cap and drab clothes that just beg us to take her seriously.” This was in contrast to the observation of another critic, who wrote, “Explorers require rugged gear, the sort Indiana Jones girds himself in. Then there’s Mireya Mayor, a sexy blond explorer. She fills out a tank top nicely.” I can’t win. If I wear tank tops, I’m vying for attention. If I cover up, it’s only because I want to be taken seriously. Regardless, the first critic lost all credibility when he called my clothes drab. They were both hip and designer.

  Don’t get me wrong. I realize that this cuts both ways. I got my job in television not only because of my credentials but also because of how I looked. National Geographic liked that I didn’t look like a typical scientist. I know that criticism comes with the territory if you’re a scientist and a woman who likes wearing pink boots and tank tops.

  But when I’m being charged by an elephant bull, I never have to wonder if he’s chasing me because I’m a woman. Nope, I can rest assured that he’s coming after me simply because of my stinky human scent. Elephants do not discriminate in whom they trample. This is why I love working with animals. Animals are more perceptive than humans and don’t pay any attention to my gender or the color of my boots.

  Being a woman in the field has advantages and disadvantages, but at the end of the day it is only experience, performance, and skill that ensure survival. It hasn’t been an easy road, but it has been an amazing one. I was in my early 20s when I first took a field job, full of energy, excitement, and hope. My dream to work with animals had come true. Every day that I step out of my tent is different and unpredictable. I never know if I am going to be tracking gorillas in Congo, capturing giraffes in Namibia, scaling a mountain in Venezuela, chasing monkeys in Japan, or herding wildebeests from a helicopter. The one thing I can be sure of is that it isn’t ever going to be boring. I’ve grown some thicker skin and learned to accept that even after getting dangerously close to spitting cobras and black mambas, I will always have to contend with some reporter commenting on how I fill out my tank top.

  No, I never thought I’d one day set foot in the Explorers Club, let alone be invited to join. As a former NFL cheerleader, I would not feel welcome in the scientific community for years. Now when someone says, “You don’t look like a scientist,” I simply say, “Well, this is what a scientist looks like,” and smile. I will never apologize for being a woman. Or for shaving my armpits and wearing lip gloss. The lemurs would argue that it is my alpha-female right.

  Seven

  Gorilla Warfare

  MAY 30, 2002: This morning the sweat bees were absolutely atrocious. They were inside my ears, nose, throat, eyes. I couldn’t look up for more than a fraction of a second without inhaling them. That’s all I could think about until we were charged by Mlima’s group—the whole group. First the female, Matata, then the juveniles then Mlima. It was terrifying. It was not a classic textbook display charge where only the male bluff-charges—the whole group got really close. The screams were so loud and powerful. It was so intense I didn’t even notice the sweat bees anymore.

  Deep in the heart of darkness in the lush rain forest of the Congo, the gorillas were dozing under the rays of morning sun that pierced the dense vegetation, exuding their infectious, albeit misleading, aura of calm. I, on the other hand, was swatting at sweat bees trying to make their way into my ears and up my nose. These bees are attracted to salt in human sweat, and although their sting is almost painless, their constant presence is a total pain in the butt. Especially when one is trying to observe gorillas and share in their Zen-like state. Ironically, the more I waved my hands to get rid of the annoying creatures, the more I sweated and added to my appeal. By the dozens, they clustered on my arms and legs and dive-bombed into my eyes. What satisfaction it gave me to crush them.

  While digging a bee out of my eye, I heard a noise behind me. Like most primates, gorillas are usually heard before they are seen. Not having a mirror, I was using the lens of my camera to pick sweat bees out of my pupils. Suddenly, reflected behind me was a gorgeous, 400-pound silverback. As if responding to an inaudible command, the gorillas had stopped dozing and now surrounded me. This wasn’t good. The females let out a piercing shriek. There were only three of them, but it sounded like a dozen or more. Frozen, our guide whispered to me to cower and pretend to eat leaves. Why pretend? I ingested several. Evidently feeling threatened, the females prodded the silverback to charge. So like a husband, at first he pretended not to hear, but the females began running at us. Our only weapon a ballpoint pen, I quickly ate more leaves. The silverback joined in the charge. Just inches from us they all stopped and began furiously slapping the ground. Now pacified, the wives went back to foraging.

  Being charged by gorillas is part of my job description. I am a primatologist first and foremost, so in spring 2002, when National Geographic asked me to do a film on gorillas, I was ecstatic. At long last, I would have the chance to live out my Dian Fossey fantasy! I would be working with a British film crew, including Dave Allen, an award-winning natural history producer and cameraman, a soundman, and a field producer. I had spent many years in Madagascar, but this would be my first time on the African mainland. I could barely contain my excitement, never giving a thought to just how difficult and dangerous this mission would be. Central African Republic, on the border of war-torn Congo, was in the midst of military upheaval. Government forces were burning entire villages to the ground and executing large numbers of suspected rebels. And the rain forest is never safe, even at the best of times.

  To reach this besieged tropical outpost I flew from Washington, D.C., where National Geographic headquarters is based, to Paris, where I met up with the film crew, and then to Bangui, the capital of Central African Republic (CAR), one of the world’s poorest countries. Bangui is a heartbreaking city, its inhabitants intimidated and browbeaten by decades of violent coups d’état by officers of the ruthless national army. Soldiers walk the streets carrying automatic rifles, and at checkpoints around every turn your passport is inspected and payment exacted.

  Slightly smaller than Texas, CAR is a sweltering and searing remnant of French colonialism plagued by run-down buildings, eroded roads, and crumbling monuments to former dictators. In Bangui I watched fat Frenchmen solicit prostitutes as young as 12, and hotel pool areas and bars were crowded with seedy characters speaking sotto voce in French or Sangha, the local language. In the many open-air markets, flies swarmed over stacks of dried fish and smoked bush meat, including great ape and elephant. The multihued dresses of Bantu women resonated against the gray and dusty backdrop of the city.

  Film crews don’t travel light, so with some 30 bags piled onto the one SUV the city offered, we departed Bangui headed southwest. The heat was intense, and through our open windows a fine layer of dust settled on us and our gear. After a while the only other vehicles we saw were huge logging trucks, which came at us at such incredible speeds we’d have to swerve into a ditch to avoid collision. There goes one of my nine lives, I thought to myself each time this happened. The closer we got to our destination in the Dzanga-Sangha forest, the more BaAka Pygmy villages we saw, their domelike huts made of sticks and leaves. Nomadic hunter-gatherers standing only four to four and a half feet in height, the BaAka (“forest people”) are one of CAR’s more than 80 ethnic groups, each with its own language. Village children would run alongside our SUV and wave excitedly. Just as excitedly, I waved back.

  Twelve hours after we
started out, we arrived in Bayanga, a small logging town at the edge of the forest, which featured a landing strip of beaten red dirt used by cars, planes, pedestrians, and goats. It was only a few miles from Bai Hokou, the camp that would be our window to the gorillas. On this night, we would stay in simple bamboo huts with mosquito netting. I was exhausted and could barely wait to eat, take my antimalarial pill, and crash. But through the night, visions of black hands reaching through bars kept waking me. I’d force open my eyes, but even awake the images got closer and closer. There was no escaping those hands. Terrified, I ran to Dave’s bungalow and begged to sleep in one of his bunks. I fell asleep there, and the images stopped. In the morning I realized the antimalarials had caused the hallucinations. Dave looked at me as if I were crazy when I described them, but as I handed in my key, the hotel clerk told us my bungalow sat on land once used as a prisoner burial site. Neither Dave nor I spoke, but we both looked as if we had seen a ghost. Only difference was, I actually had.

  The trip from Bayanga initially followed an old logging trail and then a meandering elephant trail, taking us through open fields until gradually the forest canopy closed in. The base camp, Bai Hokou, was named after a forest clearing in which elephants had dug a large hole for its mineral-rich soil (bai means “clearing,” and hokou, “hole,” in Sango, the BaAka language). It was a series of basic, wooden, thatched huts for dining and office work. Sleeping took place in tents and bathing was done under a beautiful sandy-bottomed waterfall, a five-minute walk away, close to a bat-filled cave.