Claude Glise is a boy of real integrity who will give my Africans a feeling they have not been abandoned. I believe he and Carole can hold things together in my absence.
Reassured that Karisoke would survive, she departed at the end of January.
The South African part of the tour, nine days, was unbelievably hectic with an average of ten interviews a day (radio, television, newspapers), not to mention giving lectures every second night. Sleep and meals were sparsely distributed.
Part of the reason for the trip was to promote the book; but Hodder and Stoughton had only shipped one thousand copies, and all were sold before the tour ended. My expenses were split between them and Air Zaire, who want to promote tourism among South Africans. What a prick the Air Zaire guy turned out to be! On the pleasant side, the H&S promotions person-Nicole-was just a dear. She is a very petite, little, pretty young blonde who is just the spitting image of Lady Di and stopped traffic wherever we went. You can imagine the contrast between us two.
I was able to see very little of S.A., which I resented, since the scheduling was far more demanding than any American tour I’ve ever been on. What I did see, mainly from airplanes, was cultivated and built up-a far cry from the Africa I know and love.
If South Africa failed to delight Dian, some of its citizens were less than delighted with her. In several interviews and in at least one lecture, she was sufficiently critical of apartheid to attract the attention of the authorities. Subsequently she received word from the American Embassy in Kigali that she would not be welcome if she returned to South Africa.
Was shunted off to England on February 6 on an absolutely horrid two-day journey on ancient planes that stopped everywhere, frequently leaving me in transit and as a standby passenger for nearly a day in Lisbon, and all on account of that skinflint Greek Air Zaire representative. If he comes to Karisoke as he says he will, I will introduce him to the most bloody-minded buffalo in the Virungas.
Was met at London airport by a Mercedes and uniformed driver and the Hodder and Stoughton rep-a 36-year-old girl/lady named Monica whose conversation consisted almost entirely of “ta ta” and “how lovely.”
The schedule was just as hectic as in S.A., but I saw lots of Ian Redmond and was ever so proud of the way he has matured, what with marriage and a full-time job as writer-reporter with the BBC Wildlife magazine.
One Sunday I invited him and myself to Cambridge to visit Robert Hinde, my professor when I was there working for my degree, who used to be a very very good friend. To my sorrow Robert had little to say to me now because of what he claimed was my unfairness to Harcourt and Barnes, both of whom are here at Cambridge.
Although I knew Harcourt and Kelly were here, I sure didn’t expect to run into them; but I did so in the library. Kelly looked up at me and her face registered shock, surprise, sorrow, maybe a little guilt and fear, and an instant of happiness before she totally closed down all emotions and simply said, “I’m so surprised to see you.” I said a few insane words of greeting, felt compelled to hug her, then followed her gaze some fifteen feet to where Harcourt sat immersed in a book that he held around his lower face. Kelly just sat staring at him; he did nothing, so I left. I remain very saddened by that meeting.
A second weekend was spent more pleasurably.
I took Ian as a guest along with me to visit John Aspinall’s HUGE country estates, which contain hundreds of species of wild animals, including twenty-four lowland gorillas in an enormous outdoor enclosure who are living very much as they would in the wild. WOW, what an experience! Like myself, Aspinall often gets bad press, but I found him to be basically a humble man who has a passionate love and appreciation of animals. Every weekend he goes into the enclosures with his gorillas, lions, tiger, rhinos, elephants, wolves, etc., because he feels the animals need a personal relationship with humans if they are going to trust their surroundings, breed, and remain content.
We spent two days with him and his family at Howletts and Port Lymphe, his two castles (literally) and game preserves. All of Aspinall’s wealth is based on gambling, and he is reputed to be the wealthiest man in the U.K. outside of the royalty.
Well, on the sorry side, he asked how his contributions to my work had helped. Naturally, in turn, I asked, “What contributions?” Same old story-he has sent thousands of dollars, so I learned, to the Mountain Gorilla Project for Dian Fossey’s work with the mountain gorillas!
Aspinall’s “zoo” was exceptional. One week previously I had visited a zoo enclosure in London of the same dimensions but where most of the space had been wasted on a huge moat. There sat five gorilla adults, one male and four females, involuntarily tapping their bodies much like patients in a geriatric ward. I was told by the zoo official accompanying me that “they were saved from the pot in West Africa by being bought for the zoo.” As I watched the animals sitting there, alternately patting themselves aimlessly or pulling out their own hair, I could not help but think that “the pot,” if that had been the only alternative, might have been a better solution.
Other things that happened: Had to give a lecture at the Royal Society, which was spooky for me. Ian had forewarned me that members of the Mt. Gorilla Project from the Fauna Preservation Society would be there taping every word I said. It was indeed the case, but as Ian later described it, they all went out with their tapes between their legs. I stated that tourism and trap-removing sponsored by the Mountain Gorilla Project have aided the gorillas’ plight-and then spent three times as much time describing how the Digit Fund runs patrols six days a week, etc., etc., and in fact does most of the antipoaching work.
Tired, but in good spirits, Dian flew back to Kigali on February 20. Before proceeding on to camp she had another meeting with Laurent Habiyaremye, director of ORTPN, concerning her gorilla guardian proposals.
“I can’t tell you how much I like the new park director,” she wrote Stacey Coil. “He is the first director I ever met who has real integrity. In turn, he also likes me and has spoken out strongly for the continuation of Karisoke as a research center and as the main hope that remains for the gorillas.”
Her mood was further buoyed when, on reaching camp, she found a letter from David Watts accepting her offer of the director’s job. He was prepared to come within the month if she could obtain the requisite permissions. These she succeeded in arranging with Habiyaremye in the unprecedentedly brief span of ten days. She cabled Watts, who arrived at Karisoke on March 22, after an absence of almost five years.
Dian, who had been alone since the first of the month when Carole Le Jeune and the young French cattleman both went their separate ways, was delighted to show him around a restored camp. Watts was pleased to be back and anxious to get to work on a new gorilla study funded by a grant from the Leakey Foundation. It was as well that he had his own funding, since Karisoke’s financial state could now only be described as perilous.
On February 27 Dian had written Stacey Coil: “I know my bank account must be nearly defunct by now…. It is a little spooky running Karisoke on only the traveler’s checks I brought with me from Ithaca and the Digit Fund, but I can manage for a while before I put out a plea to the powers that be.” She had been counting on royalty income from the book to bridge the gap, but sales had not been as large as expected, and she had incurred heavy charges against royalties for additional artwork and extensive changes to the book’s page proofs.
In a letter to Shirley McGreal she noted wryly, “Let’s face it, the book wasn’t that great a seller; but I still have my gold fillings to fall back on. I don’t know whom to ask for money since the Mountain Gorilla Project appears to be soaking up all available contributions from the major funding agencies and the public at large. Most people with whom I have spoken while in America, South Africa, and the U.K. seem to think they are donating to Karisoke when they give to the MGP.”
She had not approached the National Geographic.
I don’t think it right to ask N.G. for money when there is actually no behavi
oral research going on here because no students yet.
This was not the whole story. She was apprehensive about asking the Society for help because she was fearful that the senior officials there had once again turned against her.
What disturbs me tremendously is that von der Becke inferred following his return from America that I am finished with N.G. If this is the case, and I have only the absence of answers to my letters to feel that it might be, I am extremely dejected. Dr. Snider hasn’t written a word to me in ages. That hurts!
This was not paranoia. While her articles in the Society’s magazine and films about her life with the gorillas had served the Society’s purposes very well, she was no longer the stellar attraction she had once been.
Although Dian must have been at least dimly aware of this, she stubbornly refused to realize that Karisoke’s fairy godmother of more than a dozen years was now departing from the scene.
During March and April she kept herself preoccupied with antipoaching work, a training program for park guards, and in trying to establish her Guardians for Gorilla Groups. She made little progress with the latter. Although ORTPN’s new director had praised the idea, he would take no steps to implement it. He would not even commission a study to determine its potential. This intransigence was due, in part at least, to the hostility evidenced toward the plan by those whose vested interests would have been put at risk had Dian’s scheme been approved.
In close cooperation with the Belgian Aid program, conservation organizations were now funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into various divisions of ORTPN, which had come to depend upon this source of funds. Laurent Habiyaremye may have been Dian’s good friend and warm supporter when he first took over his new post, but he had quickly found himself influenced by more practical considerations.
Unable to persuade the Rwandan government or any established conservation agency to espouse her plan, Dian was nevertheless encouraged by a few individual supporters. One of these was Joan Travis, a longtime friend of the Digit Fund who wrote: “I would love to know if you have actually started the new regime of assigning a local family to each gorilla group. As I recall, you said that this would require about one hundred dollars a month. If you have embarked on this program, Arnold [her husband] and I would like to become responsible for the support of one such unit.”
Dian was now sending guardian patrols three times a week to each of the several gorilla groups in the study area, and to an additional three fringe groups on the northern slopes of Mt. Visoke.
This was all very well, but the guardians had to be paid and there were too few Joan Travises around. The financial drain on Dian’s resources was assuming the proportions of a hemorrhage.
I am now personally paying the upkeep of Karisoke, its trackers and camp staff, as well as most of the Guardians for Gorilla Groups we have set up, all from the proceeds of the book. But these are now down to very little. I really do not know whom to ask for funding since the camp is essentially conservation-oriented rather than scientifically oriented for the moment.
She wrote Stacey Coil, “I desperately need money and am now having to borrow from everyone.” By early April it looked as if the bankruptcy Richard Barnes had prematurely predicted for Karisoke might become a reality.
I feel like an abandoned mother of fifty-seven, the number of gorillas now in the study area. To care for them I have to get work or sell something. I could try selling my body, but there wouldn’t be many takers for Fossil Fossey, so I must try something else.
Although she loathed the idea, her only real hope rested in intensifying her activities as promoter and saleswoman for the mountain gorillas. “It is truly like being some kind of a hooker,” she had once remarked. Perhaps so, but there was no help for it. She decided to return to the United States in May to scout for funds.
The timing of Watts’s arrival had been fortuitous. A week after he climbed to Karisoke, Dian came down with yet another bout of pneumonia. As usual she aimed to cure herself but, by April 10, had become so sick she was lapsing into unconsciousness. At this point David sent for a litter and had her carried down the mountain to Ruhengeri Hospital. There she remained until April 20, by which time she was sufficiently recovered to return to camp to greet the first of the new students, a young Englishman from the University of Bristol named Michael Catsis.
Still too weak to attempt anything strenuous, Dian mooched about in and near her cabin for the next several days. She was hatching a new project—a book about the human and animal history of the Virungas to be based on interviews with the elders of the native population. Acceptance of her declining health, combined with the need to earn a living for her dependents, had reactivated the writer’s itch that had been with her on and off since childhood.
She was wasting no time feeling sorry for herself, as she makes clear in a letter to Shirley McGreal written in early May:
“I am not, as you suggest, ‘killing myself by neglect.’ In 1963 a lung specialist in Louisville warned me that it would be suicidal to climb to Kabara on that first memorable safari to Africa. He subsequently died of lung cancer! At any rate, I take extremely good care of myself in full realization that I live at ten thousand feet in a rain forest, and in a cabin whose fireplaces smoke more than I. I take vitamin pills, have bought a small oxygen machine, eat a couple of bananas a day to avoid potassium deficiency, and thrive on potatoes and eggs (my main diet because of budget problems). In other words, I spoil myself. My only regrets are that I cannot go to the gorillas on a daily basis anymore, but Karisoke trackers and research students can and do. As long as I can function to train guards and new Africans in duties related to the active conservation of gorillas and other inhabitants of the Virungas, then I happily exist.”
She was not entirely separated from the gorillas. They occasionally came close enough so that she could reach them. On April 2 she and Group 5 had their first visit together since January.
They were quite near camp, but it is ever so cold and rainy. Virtually all we did was exchange grunts of empathetic misery, though young Tuck managed to swipe my three-hundred-dollar altimeter, so tonight it sits in the rain, and hopefully tomorrow a tracker will find it. But Tuck was so funny. I thought I had everything portable hidden in my pockets and my knapsack, but she managed to spy a bit of the string connected to the altimeter just protruding from my knapsack. Zoooom! In a flash she grabbed it and ran to old Beethoven, a couple of yards away, all the time twirling it around and around on the end of the string like a deadly missile. It frightened the @#$%&* blue cheese out of the old man! He screamed as this alien object was whirled around his head and hurriedly moved off. Tuck then directed a “just try and get it” look at me. I hope I gave her my cold-it is a green/red one, and not much fun.
It was this cold, exacerbated by the day in the rain, that turned into pneumonia; but for Dian this was a small price to pay for a few hours of communion with the mountain kings.
— 23 —
Less than three months after her return from England, Dian was on the road—or in the air—again. Leaving Kigali on May 14, she retraced the now tediously familiar route via Brussels to New York, then went on to Louisville for a brief visit with members of the Henry family, but chiefly to check on the state of her personal finances. It was with no great surprise that she found her current account overdrawn.
My savings, which aren’t exactly Rockefeller-type, are mostly from Uncle Bert’s legacy and are my old-age pension. I guess I’m old enough to start drawing on them now. Not that there is any choice.
During the next ten days she shuttled back and forth between New York and Washington, attempting to regain the support of the National Geographic Society. Although she was treated kindly by old friends such as Dr. Snider, it was painfully apparent that the Society had no intention of taking her back into the fold.
She spent hours on the telephone trying to interest other potential sponsors in funding Karisoke. Receiving an absolute rebuff from the Leakey Foundat
ion, she tried a number of private donors to good causes, but found that those inclined to support gorilla conservation were mostly committed to the Mountain Gorilla Project or its parent organizations.
At the end of May she retreated to Ithaca to spend a few days pondering her lack of success as a fund-raiser. Her gloom was not much lightened when she learned that Biruté Galdikas had recently received a grant of $60,000 from the Earth Watch Society and that one of the members of the oil-fed Getty family was supporting Jane Goodall’s work to the tune of $250,000.
Although rejected by the conservation establishment, Dian was becoming a heroine to rank-and-file activists in the conservation movement. These were mostly people who had very little surplus income, but they gave what they could. By the time she left Ithaca she had the satisfaction of knowing that there was at least enough money in the Digit Fund to cover the costs of antipoaching patrols and her gorilla guardian program for the immediate future.
Her next stop was Chicago, where she worked for ten days on the Wild Kingdom gorilla film, thereby earning enough “to pay camp costs and the men’s salaries for two months at least.”
While in Chicago she consulted a doctor about a new and disquieting ailment. The doctor diagnosed a heart disorder, probably due to stress. He gave her a prescription and recommended that she rest and take life easy for at least six weeks. He particularly enjoined her not to travel and to avoid high altitudes!