Returning to camp, she was delighted and somewhat awed to receive a letter from one of the grand old men of the science of ethology, Dr. Niko Tinbergen, professor emeritus at Oxford University. He had read her book and been so impressed that he sent her a four-page, handwritten letter of congratulations together with some cogent ruminations on behavioral studies.
“Tremendously honored and impressed,” Dian responded in an even lengthier reply, in which she talked of times long past—a subject she normally shunned.
“I learned to avert my face and abase myself to the gorillas from working with autistic children and adults, whom I found I could best reach by hiding my face, assuming an obsequious posture, and feigning interest in stuffed toys or live pets. Such ‘neglect’ never failed to elicit responses from patients suffering from severe withdrawal, but all wanting inside themselves to make contact without knowing how. It meant, I think, that I posed no sort of threat and therefore was safe to approach.
“You don’t have to read on, but this is now so vivid in my mind. John, twenty-six years old, was a brilliant student in his final months of veterinary training when he was bitten by a diseased dog. The disease turned John into a limping, drooling, howling, peeing vegetable. After he had been stricken for months, his parents asked me to visit him at their home. I made the mistake of the usual face-to-face, yak-yak approach, which only made him howl louder and urinate more frequently. I then tried just going to his room, ignoring him, and sitting in a corner playing with a kitten. Within two days he was nudging me for attention, but I wouldn’t give him any until he used the urinal. This he did on the third day and thereafter whenever I was with him and even when alone. I made the kitten the common point of contact between us, directing my attention to him through it, and he did the same. After two months he no longer howled. After three months he began to speak to me, simply, and one day even opened the door for me and got my coat from the cupboard. This was his first ’shared’ action in over a year. I wish I could end the story on a happy note, but John’s father had a heart attack and the family had to put John into a home too distant for me to visit, where he quickly reverted and died of a seizure several weeks later. I cannot forget him.
“I don’t quite know why I’ve told you this story, except that the incident has recently come strongly back to memory, and also because I am of the conviction that one can’t work well with disturbed children or even adults without having worked with animals and, perhaps, vice versa.
“Thank you for asking about my current work. It continues with the blessings of the highest powers in this land (president and staff), but I have problems with the bureaucrats of the tourist and park department who eye my camp and the gorilla study groups as justifiably theirs. They are backed by a small group of whites salaried by the Mountain Gorilla Project all wanting my camp. Well, they’ll have it over my dead body, if then.”
Dian was still having trouble coming to terms with Wayne McGuire, the only white person now sharing Karisoke with her. Her feelings about him were ambivalent.
To Anita McClellan she wrote, “Wayne is really nice, but he can get lost between my cabin and his. He gets lost in the forest nearly once a week. He doesn’t know how to turn on his pressure lamp, make a fire, sort out his clean from his dirty clothing, boil potatoes. Like I say, he is basically very very nice and polite, which is a relief, but no way I’m going to be his big mama. Hopefully, eventually, he’ll understand that my diaper-changing days are over…. My Africans do not like him because they have had to search for him three nights, overnight, in the rain!”
And to Stacey Coil: “I just don’t know if the McGuire boy is going to be able to stick it. Like I say, he truly is a nice, good person but so disorganized it is frightening. You can’t walk into his cabin because of the clutter…. I’m really worried about him. Otherwise we get along fine.”
October’s visitors included some surprises—reporters and photographers from all three of Rwanda’s newspapers. This was the first time any of the local press had visited Karisoke or shown an interest in Dian’s work. For whatever reason, this long neglect was now made good. To her somewhat smug delight, Dian and Karisoke now became positive news in Rwanda.
All three papers have run big spreads about camp, our work, and the men and myself. It is all in Kinyarwandan of course, but my men have translated everything and they are FANTASTIC articles. We’ve been nominated, so it says, for special awards, like medals, from the president. The biggest article, two full pages in a twelve-page newspaper, makes me sound like the second coming and did everything but tell the director of ORTPN to resign. Maybe I am bragging, but I am so happy for my men, who are just floating and expecting the president to drop in by helicopter any day. Everywhere they go in Ruhengeri they wear their uniforms and are treated like heroes. Isn’t that great?
In a letter to one of the reporters, she wrote, “How in the world can I ever thank you for your kindness, your heart, and your sense of integrity, of umurava? I have boxes and boxes of press clippings from all over the world, BUT never, never, has one meant as much to me as yours. Well, I got all teary with joy and gratitude and the men all laughed at me. We did an impromptu dance and have been going around with big smiles plastered on our faces ever since…. You have made us all so happy. It is the kind of happiness that lasts forever, for your words seemed to come from your heart and have therefore settled in our hearts.”
In mid-October, only a few days after Dian assembled her group of doctors and veterinarians for the first time to begin inquiring into the recent silverback deaths, something very disturbing happened. Her two gray parrots abruptly sickened without evidencing the symptoms of any disease recognizable to her veterinarian friends. When one of them ventured the opinion that the birds might have been poisoned, Dian vehemently rejected the possibility. But next day she threw out the supply of food she had been giving them. And after feeding for a few days on a new stock brought up from Ruhengeri, both birds made a seemingly miraculous recovery.
Dian did not record her reaction to this incident except in a single, tight-lipped comment.
It was extremely frightening.
What followed on the night of October 27 was infinitely more so. Dian wrote her journal entry for this date while in a state of extreme agitation. The words sprawl all over the page.
As was so often the case, she had been unable to get to sleep and so, just before midnight, decided to step outside and enjoy the rare delight of moonlight gleaming on the peaks of Karisimbi and Mikeno. She was thunderstruck to find the wooden image of a puff adder on her doorstep.
This thing carved by someone TODAY. First indication of SUMU was parrots nearly dead, flipped on cage floor…. I have hidden it and will say nothing about it.
She was as good as her word. There is not the slightest mention of this fearsome discovery in any of her correspondence or other writings, and she evidently said nothing to Wayne, to her men, or to anyone else, not even Rosamond Carr.
During her years in Africa she had informed herself as to the nature and usages of native sorcery and magic. She understood full well what she had found—and what its message was.
Someone had laid the curse of death upon her.
— 26 —
Although Dian did not record her feelings about the sinister discovery on her doorstep, assuredly she did not take it lightly. On the other hand, she knew that native sorcery had power only against those who believed in it and that the Rwandans considered whites immune to sumu. Working things out in the reassuring light of day, she would have reasoned that a Rwandan intent upon her death would, in all likelihood, resort to the use of poison, this being the preferred method of committing murder in Rwanda.
It may also have occurred to her that the death adder and the apparent poisoning of her parrots, were ploys designed to increase the pressure on her to abandon her mountain home. Unless—unless someone was laying the groundwork for eventual violence that could be blamed upon unlettered Africans such as t
he Batwa poachers. Perhaps it was with this dark thought in mind that she so rigorously suppressed any mention of what had taken place.
Whatever her conclusions may have been, the days following the discovery of the snake brought distractions that must have been very welcome. On October 30 a charming French journalist with the melodic name of Anne Marie Voisin-Romagnani arrived to research an article about Dian and Karisoke. She was closely followed by a French cinematographer whom Dian found less attractive.
Yann is so pretty, suave, and delighted with himself. Some thirty years ago I would have fallen madly in love with this beautiful man (Clark Gable with blue eyes and long, sandy hair), but he was too arrogant for words. Thus we simply tolerated each other, and guess who had to do all the cooking? How do French women stand the brutes?
Of much greater import was the arrival of a young Dutchman Dian had met during her brief visit to Holland in 1984. Sjaak Van de Nieuwendijik had been given leave from his job as keeper of gorillas at a zoological park to learn the ways of the animals in the wild. Dian was delighted with him. This “little” boy is about seven feet tall, blond hair, and just as nice as they come. I don’t know when I’ve ever enjoyed such a refreshing, enthusiastic, intelligent, vital young person in camp. He is already speaking Swahili and never complains about anything, though the weather is HORRID. He just gallops through the forests every day and all day to be with the gorillas. I am hoping and praying he will stay until the New Year and beyond. I would have no hesitation leaving camp in his care when I go on my lecture tour to the States in March or April, but his boss may want him back too soon.
Dian’s journal notes for November 10 consist of a single brief entry:
I get very, very, very sick & heart is bad. Why?
There is no elaboration, but the question may relate to suspicions of what had happened to her parrots. It is certain that sumu was still much on her mind. Two days later Vatiri and his men caught another poacher, and a description of the event begins with the bald statement:
Black magic is quite prevalent in these parts.
My patrols have captured four poachers in four weeks, all actively poaching in the park. This one turned out to be really nasty. They caught him skinning a lovely bushbuck taken from his trapline right next to a gorilla group. His name is Yavani Hategeka, and the strange thing is I captured him once before in 1974. It bothers me that he doesn’t look any older than he did then, but I look a millennium older, which isn’t fair. He wasn’t the least bit cooperative with me. Although we grilled him all night, he wouldn’t answer questions. As a result, I took away his black magic charms that had been sewn into his stinky, frayed jacket (I know where to look for such things now). They consisted of two little pouches containing dried vegetation and an inch-square piece of some kind of animal fur. It was like taking a nipple away from a baby-maybe not a nice thing to do, but I did it since he wouldn’t give me any information about other poachers. I watched him shrivel up defensively upon losing his charms, but he had had over two hours to tell us things prior to his “rape.” Now, according to my men, he will never poach again, once he gets out of prison, because I have his “sumu.” Along with the “sumu” pouches we also found a letter in his pocket from a dealer in Zaire who is in the smuggling business with the poacher. Some kind of rare metal, probably gold, was involved.
Dian took no chances with Hategeka. Instead of sending him down to park headquarters in the manner prescribed by ORTPN, she sent him directly to the judiciary in Ruhengeri. There he was tried, convicted, and given a three-year sentence. Two weeks later his brother appeared at the prison offering to pay fifty thousand Rwandan francs for Hategeka’s freedom, but to Dian’s delight—and surprise—he was refused. Shortly thereafter she heard that the incorrigible Sebahutu had been the loser in a prison fight and was in the hospital suffering from mortal injuries.
At the end of November Dian wrote a long letter to a friend in the United States in the relaxed, story-telling vein that had once characterized her correspondence but which she now seldom seemed to have the energy or the inclination to indulge:
“I’m really sorry I didn’t get the chance to go to America this fall, but Wayne, the new ’student’ who came in August, just could not have held camp together by himself. He’s a nice boy but with hardly the smarts to come in out of the rain. That is really hard on him because today was the FIRST day of sun in a good two months of daily rain. I sneaked off into a little meadow not far from my cabin, actually the same one where I wrote the very first pages of my book, and spent two lovely hours basking like a happy hound dog. Then the whistles sounded, meaning ‘come home wherever you are,’ and I had to go back to deal with one of my antipoaching patrols who had brought in a badly hurt duiker caught in a trap for me to fix.
“Your letter speaking of Christmas reminds me of one that happened about ten years ago. My mother had this wonderful, wonderful, and wealthy friend who was one of the most generous people I’ve ever known, but a little scatterbrained, which endeared her all the more to me. I had a Trappist friend in a monastery, Father Raymond by name, in Hardstown, Kentucky. This nice lady was a devout Catholic, so I introduced her to him via mail. He happened to mention in a letter how cold their cells were in winter, so she immediately sent him a huge, magnificent electric blanket! I don’t think he’s stopped laughing yet, though his abbot didn’t seem to see the joke.
“Well, one November when I was home in California briefly from camp, she planned a Christmas shopping day for me that involved a lovely lunch and was to be followed by a spree in a big shopping center full of lovely stores. At lunch she tried to get me to open up as to what I really wanted for Christmas. There was only one thing I really needed and that was a meat grinder for camp.
“The minute I spoke my wish her face just fell, ‘Well, ah, well, that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,’ she stammered. Never mind. Off we went, she dressed up fit to kill, to find a grungy hardware store where a good hour was spent buying the most elaborate meat grinder they had. I still have it and it still works. You know, I don’t think she had ever been in a mere hardware store before.
“On a separate piece of paper you have the list of things I really need this year, as you asked. Notice it begins with Triscuits—I dream of them, literally dream of them. I crave salted food like that, and nuts and pretzels, etc. Every time I go to America I plan at least one full day of supermarket shopping beginning, as always, on the right side of the store (I can’t shop from left to right) with the biggest cart they have. I drift up and down the aisles in absolute heaven, neither seeing nor hearing anyone around me.
“Things for the men. Well, they just appreciate anything, which is part of the goodness of them. They go through socks like Kleenex. I buy these when in the States at army-surplus stores. They are hardly Saks Fifth Avenue items. Inexpensive watches are also badly needed. I hate asking you, but my not getting to the States this fall has put a dent into the men’s (and their families’) Christmas presents this year. There is so little one can buy in Rwanda—so much in America. I mention warm jogging pants and hooded tops not because my men go jogging for their health (they can hardly walk when they get home from a day in the forest), but because when I give them something nicer they won’t wear it on the mountain. They save it for the big city of Ruhengeri—all four blocks of dusty dukas (little stores). We will keep the jogging suits up here for them to change into following a cold, rainy day’s outing in the forest.
“I started this letter yesterday, then at 3:40 P.M. someone banged at my front door. I opened it to find a thin, bearded fellow whose greenish face matched his drenched rain gear. He was burdened with a heavy rifle and a panga. Because of the rifle I realized he must be a new man, a Belgian, working for the Mt. Gorilla Project, who occasionally do patrols with the park guards. All the Mt. Gorilla Project people are ordered to carry these big rifles when they go into the park, though I don’t know why.
“At any rate, he squished into my cabin, collapsed
before the fireplace, and told a harrowing tale. The park guard with him had turned on him several hours previously, attacked him with a panga, shattered his eyeglasses, and walloped him on the forehead with the flat of the panga before collapsing in some kind of seizure. Not knowing what else to do, the Belgian had dragged himself to my camp.
“I sent him back into the pouring rain and fog, with all of my men carrying a litter to find this man. They didn’t get back here until 8:30 P.M. to report that the guard had disappeared. The Belgian was then in a horrible state, cold, wet, tired, shaking for good reason, and the lump on his head getting bigger and bigger. I fed him a stiff drink, and sent him down the mountain with one of my men. I didn’t tell him I thought the guard might have rabies, which is quite common here. Even without that, it was a day I’m sure he’ll remember.
“The gorillas are doing well, except they are cold and perpetually wet during this prolonged rainy season. The new fellow, Wayne, the one who kept getting lost, went to Ruhengeri to cash a traveler’s check two weeks ago and hasn’t been heard from since. I do hope you have a joyful turkey day. Eat lots of stuffing and exhale on your next letter. What better odor is there in the world?”
To which was appended “Fossey’s Christmas List”:
1 box of plain nummie TRISCUITS
Some Rice-A-Roni mixes
Some Lipton noodle mixes
Liquid hickory smoke!!!!
Potato chips
Salted walnuts or pecans or just any nuts at all
Pretzels
Vitamin supplement for parrots
A little tinned ham
A second box of nummie TRISCUITS
Sesame seeds and/or sunflower seeds (for parrots)
A hot-water bottle
A carton of Merit Longs cigarettes (shame, shame!)
Jell-O-any flavor
Unpopped popcorn
A package of freeze-dried mushrooms