Following Fifi

by John Crocker

  “I think we also explored the water life together in the shallow water at the lake’s edge.”

  “Oh yeah, we did!” I exclaimed. I distinctly remembered his fearless diving into the lake and our underwater exploration.

  Our conversation turned to Grub’s interests in fishing and archeology. “I hope to explore the Tendaguru Beds in southeast Tanzania,” he explained.

  In fact, he and Jane would be leaving at six o’clock the next morning with a German film crew to make a documentary about the area. The Tendaguru Beds are very rich in dinosaur fossils from the late Jurassic period, 150 million years ago. A German mining engineer discovered the beds in 1906. The area is also home to the many elephants, lions, and buffalo found in game parks in other areas of Tanzania. Jane has established a fund to help preserve the area by forming partnerships with the local people to aid them economically while preserving the wildlife.

  Grub said that he wasn’t sure it had been the best choice to pursue fishing and lobster catching as an occupation in his twenties and thirties, knowing it conflicted with Jane’s mission of protecting all forms of animal life. “It may not have been wise to get involved in the fishing industry, but at the time it was what I knew and enjoyed most,” he said.

  I could definitely see both Jane and Hugo Van Lawick in their son’s eyes and expressions. Grub’s eyes were the color and shape of his father’s but he had his mother’s welcoming gaze. I wondered how he viewed his place as the only heir in the legendary Van Lawick-Goodall family, and tried to picture what he might be doing ten years from now—perhaps archeology, oceanography, or animal conservation in Africa. I sensed he would contribute significantly to Tanzanian society in his own way. His beautiful children’s mother was Tanzanian, and Grub had lived in Tanzania his whole life. Most recently, he had been designing and building a unique type of boat for fishing and other uses near Dar es Salaam.

  As midnight approached, I noticed Jane looking more tired, so I decided it was time for us to leave. She was so comfortable with groups of people that she might have stayed up even later just to be gracious, but I didn’t want to take any more of her time. I could tell by her smile as she walked Tony, Tommy, and me to the door that she was happy to have had some of her Gombe family around her that evening. As was usual when I spent time with Jane, I left with more hope in my soul about the world and more confidence in myself.

  On the ride back to our hotel, where we would pack for our trip to Kigoma in the morning, I glanced at Tommy. He looks a lot like me, I thought, and I realized both how long and how short thirty-six years was—the time between meeting Jane when I was his age and visiting her now. Jane was a grandmother now. Time had passed so very quickly. Along with a tinge of melancholy about aging, I felt the tender satisfaction of watching my son grow into a caring young man.

  In some ways, our trip to Gombe after Tommy’s sophomore year of college was well timed. He seemed to enjoy more in-depth conversation and being “present” at a time when I seemed to be less patient and was feeling more pressure trying to keep up with my practice and family demands. Tommy was learning to enjoy the journey while I was working hard to get to the next destination. Courses in Eastern religion and philosophy may have guided Tommy in a more mindful direction while my work schedule led me to be more task-oriented. Our trip together allowed me to see this contrast and think of ways to get some of the “journey” back into my life. Also, being in Tanzania, where a considerable amount of my early adult growth had taken place, may have enhanced my desire for more spontaneity and thoughtful moments.

  I was discovering new ways to connect with Tommy. I no longer worried that I could name only five players in the NBA or that I didn’t know who the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers was. A new father-son relationship was forming, and I was learning as much—if not more—from Tommy as he was from me. I was gaining insight into the importance of thoughtful living, and he had seen me push through difficult parts of my life with hard work and optimism. He made a heartwarming comment one night as we unpacked in a hotel room: “Dad, your subtle reminders of the importance of keeping my room neat paid off—I actually like having it more organized now.”

  I started noticing also, as we traveled and talked together, that Tommy preferred to hear more about my past struggles than my accomplishments. At the same time, he was revealing his own insecurities to me—not for advice, but just to share. In a quiet but confident voice he told me, “I’ve noticed on this trip that when I talk to you about things that make me anxious, you don’t get all stirred up and worried like you and Mom used to do when I lived at home. You mostly just listen. It makes it easier to share things with you.” At that moment I felt a private happiness that our father-son bond, which I felt had been interrupted by a disabling and painful sports injury I suffered when he was five, and then again during his aloof adolescence, was being renewed. It might not have happened had we not launched off on this reunion together. What had seemed a reconnection with the chimps, Jane, and Gombe was also turning out to be an unexpected reconnection with my eldest son.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  GOMBE RETURN

  As Tommy and I flew on a prop plane from Dar es Salaam to Kigoma, I anxiously anticipated the changes I might encounter. Though I would not see Fifi, as she had died six years previously, there was a chance I might see Freud or perhaps Gremlin. I had studied both of them when they were two years old, and now they were in their late thirties. I had mourned Fifi, that caring chimp I came to know so well, when I heard she was gone, but I was curious to see the legacy of her influence in Freud and Frodo, whom I knew were alive.

  Our eight-hundred-mile flight took us near Mount Kilimanjaro. “Dad,” Tommy said, pointing, “I thought Kilimanjaro had a lot more snow on the top, from the pictures I saw in National Geographic.”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered in shock as I looked out the window.

  It was unsettling to see the severe lack of snow on the mountain compared to my trip thirty-six years earlier. Now we know from scientists’ studies of the mountain’s glaciers that one particular large ice field has lost 50 percent of its mass since 2000 from climate change and possibly from local factors such as deforestation at its base. At this rate of melting, there would no more snow on the mountain by 2018!

  We then flew over the Serengeti—the vast grasslands that support extraordinary migrations—and on to the town of Kigoma, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Tommy laughed as the plane landed at the airport, just a small dirt runway with grass and a few basic structures.

  As we stepped out of the plane, I had a sudden feeling of dread. Although I had sent a letter three weeks previously to the park director regarding our plans, I had received no reply. Our phones were of no use here. We knew no one. What would our next step be? Our only option was to follow the other passengers across the reddish-brown dirt pathway. Then to our utter surprise, at the exit gate stood a rugged, distinguished-looking man, Lameck, the park director for Gombe, holding a sign with CROCKER written in big letters. I looked at Tommy who could tell I had been worried and we both smiled and picked up our pace to greet this savior. Although my Swahili was okay, he spoke perfect English, and with his relaxed manner and non-stop smile, we could tell we were in good hands. We loaded our luggage and climbed into the sturdy park truck. Lameck brought us home with him for a lunch prepared by his wife. I immediately felt welcomed, diving into our Tanzanian-style lunch of chicken and cassava, speaking English with our hosts and relaxing in their cozy home.

  Then, taking charge of our journey, Lameck drove us to a small beach where park rangers were waiting for us. Lameck, the boat driver, and the rest of us set out in the blue wooden park boat for the three-hour trip north on the vast lake. The warm breeze felt good as we talked the whole time with the park rangers, Tommy smiling as he conversed in English with a young ranger. The quaint fishing villages looked similar to those I recalled from nearly four decades earlier, which reassured me that the beautiful lakeside was sti
ll quite natural.

  As we approached Gombe, my heart rate accelerated. In my mind I had rehearsed this moment of return. I pictured the familiar faces of field assistants smiling and welcoming us to the camp, just as they had decades ago when I arrived as a student. Tommy could sense my excitement, and his eyes eagerly scanned the rugged shore and the fertile valley leading up to the Rift Mountains, taking everything in.

  But as the boat got closer, nothing looked familiar. Instead of the expansive beach that I remembered, I found that dense, leafy trees had advanced toward the lake, leaving only ten feet of beach. A small green concrete arch printed with GOMBE STREAM NATIONAL PARK and a picture of a chimp face became my focus as the boat approached the shore. The arch looked slightly commercial and I wished it weren’t there. Tommy may have heard me mutter, “I don’t like that,” under my breath. Equally shocking, a two-story concrete building loomed in the vegetation where formerly a more rustic, thatched meetinghouse had stood, the location of our research team’s nightly meals and gatherings. Expressing my uncertainty, I turned to Lameck and asked, “Is this Gombe?”

  He laughed and replied, “Yes, this is Gombe.”

  I must admit that I felt disappointed. I’ve learned over time to conceal dismay and sadness as an adaptive strategy. As children, my siblings and I felt that our dad always wanted us to be happy, and there seemed to be an incentive to look that way to avoid disappointing him. In medicine, sometimes for the good of the patient I needed to subdue sadness and communicate confidence, support, and empathy when breaking bad news to patients.

  I remember telling Steve, a thirty-nine-year-old patient of mine, “Steve, it is quite likely that you have a lymphoma,” after feeling a mass in his upper abdomen and receiving the ultrasound report I had ordered. I tried to look into his hopeful but worried brown eyes and sound confident and encouraging while feeling torn apart inside that this young man had a potentially fatal condition. This never gets easier, but as a doctor you do develop coping strategies. I found over the years that approaching this issue requires a slowness with myself—I can’t rush my words to my patient, and I must try to communicate a sense of balanced reason. Observing a patient closely as I convey bad news is helpful because I can assess how best to work with that person going forward; it also shows me what his or her thresholds are. Patients or patients’ families sometimes told me how important this time was for sensing a doctor’s compassion and caring spirit. Conveying those things can require that doctors conceal their own inner reactions of dismay and loss, and communicate only calm understanding and empathy.

  Though wanting to conceal my initial disappointment about how Gombe had changed pales in comparison to delivering bad medical news, my medical experience allowed me to maintain a smiling facade as we reached shore. As the boat was secured and we stepped onto the beach, I recalled something Grandma Ruth used to say to me when I was young: “Never go down to the ocean with a notion of what you will find.” Her wise words reminded me that the only constant in life is change. And my son, who was nearly four decades younger than me, was there and seeing Gombe with fresh eyes. I didn’t want my feelings to color his first impressions.

  As I stepped out of the boat onto the sandy beach, I heard one of the staff say, “There’s Hamisi.”

  I looked down the beach and saw a figure walking toward us—and I recognized Hamisi Matama, my dear friend and primary field guide when I was a student researcher. Hearing that I was coming, Hamisi had hiked the five hours from his village and waited most of the afternoon to greet me on my return. After thirty-six years, there he was walking toward me, a big smile on his face. My disappointment turned to joy as I took off down the beach. Hugging Hamisi, I knew that I had at last returned to the Gombe I remembered.

  Even now, in his early fifties, Hamisi had very erect posture and looked very strong. He wore a perfectly fitting white taqiyah (a Muslim skullcap), khaki pants, and a plaid shirt. As we stood there together, vivid memories came flooding back: climbing Kilimanjaro with Hamisi and watching his astonished face as he touched snow for the first time; hiking together to his village to meet his family; and hours trekking through the forest to observe the chimps—they all came alive. A deep pleasure coursed through me as I realized that our friendship had lasted through decades of separation.

  As we walked back to the boat, laughter rose from some of the Gombe staff there, who were excited about our reunion. Tommy had been waiting and talking with them to give Hamisi and me time to get reacquainted. Reaching the boat, I turned and introduced Hamisi to Tommy. My son extended his hand to Hamisi, and they each said, “Jambo,” hi. Hamisi looked more serious than I had expected, and I couldn’t tell if this was cultural or just shyness on his part. Later, when Hamisi and I had time for a more intimate conversation, I realized that meeting Tommy might have reminded Hamisi of one of his own sons, who had died at age eighteen several years earlier.

  Introductions made, two Tanzanian staff members I didn’t recognize accompanied Tommy and me to check in to our simple accommodations in the concrete building that also housed the dining hall above us. The structure was separated from the beach by a row of leafy trees that provided welcome shade. Hamisi waited near the beach for us.

  I was tired and hot as we entered our room, and I felt Lake Tanganyika beckoning to me with its clear water that had invigorated me each day during my stay here in 1973. Peering out the window at the waves lapping the shore, I told Tommy, “I have to jump in the lake.”

  Tommy was more patient and practical, however. During his twenty years of life, he had developed a strong social intelligence and was good at picking up subtle cues from people about their needs. Being a center midfielder in soccer, he could also make quick decisions about where the team needed to move the ball. In this case, he had realized that Hamisi had a plan of his own, which I hadn’t fully recognized. Tommy politely redirected me by saying, “Dad, we can swim anytime. Let’s go with Hamisi.”

  We walked back to the beach, where Hamisi pulled out an old black-and-white photo of the two of us taken in 1973—Hamisi, age seventeen, and me, age twenty-two. The photo, saved for nearly four decades, was mildewed and wrinkled, but the clarity of our faces was amazing.

  I allowed myself to really absorb the moment. The fact that Hamisi had saved the picture and carried it with him to show me made me feel even closer to him. I put my hand on his shoulder and he immediately put his on mine. I looked at him and declared in Swahili, “Good friends.”

  My choice to follow Tommy’s instinctive lead here was a good one, especially since Hamisi seemed very proud to have organized a get-together. He had been planning to take us to the men’s quarters down the beach to meet other field assistants, treat us to cold sodas, and hang out and talk. We all headed to the field assistants’ camp fifty yards south. When we arrived at the area, which I knew well, we met some of the newer field assistants and a few older ones I had known from my student days, but none I knew well.

  They welcomed us into a small outdoor enclosure attached to one of the temporary homes where they stayed while working at Gombe. Ten to fifteen people could live at this location at one time. The screened-in areas protected them from the baboons that roamed the beach and sometimes searched for food near their quarters. While we were in there, a baboon walked by and observed us in the “caged” area. I laughed; it was the opposite of a zoo.

  One shocking change since my first trip here was that there was a large-screen TV in the enclosure. It seemed so out of place but was obviously something the field assistants loved to watch after following chimps all day. Attentive eyes were glued to the screen when I arrived, but the assistants soon turned it off as we began talking. Mostly news and sports events seemed to capture their attention. There had been no electronic devices at Gombe when I was a student. In response to my surprise, Hamisi said, “A bigger generator supplies electricity to the camp to power things like the TV and the dining hall lights.”

  Tommy and I had brought many lamina
ted copies of the photographs I took in 1973 to share with people at the camp. The field assistants hadn’t owned cameras back then, so they smiled and exclaimed over seeing the old images of themselves or their relatives. One of the younger field assistants pointed to a picture and said, “That is my father!” He stared and stared at the photograph, touching it and smiling periodically. Tommy remarked later that it had been very moving to witness the man’s joy at seeing his father at a young age. We all sat around laughing, talking, and telling stories about the pictures, which I gave them to keep.

  After our visit with the field assistants, Tommy and I decided it was the right moment to give Hamisi the gift we had brought for him: a wristwatch he had asked for thirty-five years earlier, a year after I left Gombe. I still recall the letter a friend translated into English for me, which gave all the details of the requested watch, including the type of band, the color, the stop and start timer, and a date display. I’d never made the purchase back then, because I was busy with medical school, because I wasn’t sure how to send it with the best chance of getting it all the way to his village, and because of my concern that the other field assistants would feel left out. I always thought I should have sent it though, and I had carried the guilt with me for decades.

  It was almost a relief when Hamisi mentioned needing a watch in response to a message I’d sent before this trip, asking if he had a special request for a small item I could bring. I asked Tommy to buy a nice one; he found a very attractive gold-colored watch with a flexible wristband, date display, and timer, and packed it carefully in a small box.

  When I handed Hamisi the elegant box containing the watch, he looked at it and smiled. After carefully opening the box and seeing the watch shine in the afternoon sun, Hamisi placed it on his wrist. He wore it the entire time we were with him, despite the band being way too big for his wrist. He looked magnificently proud to be wearing it. Tommy kept smiling and looking at me when he saw the appreciation on the face of my dear friend.