Fifi studies Jane.
THE BEGINNING
YAHAYA ALMASI BOWS HIS HEAD; HIS WEATHERED FACE IS WRINKLED UP IN DEEP CONCENTRATION. IN A SOFT VOICE, HE SPEAKS ABOUT THE FIRST TIME HE HEARD OF JANE GOODALL, THE STRANGE YOUNG MZUNGU (WHITE PERSON) WHO CAME IN 1960 TO THE FOREST NEAR HIS VILLAGE OF BUBANGO, TANZANIA, TO STUDY CHIMPANZEES.
IT’S THE CHIMPANZEES DANCING IN THE FOREST, SINGING,
“WE USED TO BE PEOPLE, BUT NOW WE ARE NOT.”
Mist forms over the verdant hills of the Kakombe Valley, Gombe National Park.
YAHAYA HAD HEARD OF THE CHIMPANZEES THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE, AND HE’D HEARD THEIR WILD CALLS. HE’D HEARD OF THEIR HUMANLIKE BEHAVIORS, THEIR GREAT STRENGTH, AND THEIR COMMUNITIES IN THE DEEP RECESSES OF THE NEARBY FOREST. BUT WHAT HE REMEMBERED MOST WAS HIS GRANDMOTHER’S TALE OF THEIR ORIGIN.
Echo cradles her baby Emela in Gombe National Park.
On the occasion of the Darkness Twice, his grandmother had said, when the moon’s shadow covers the sun in the heat of the day, everyone must hide in their houses, secure with food and firewood. If you’re caught outside when the darkness descends, you’ll become a chimpanzee—just like those in the forest. Listen carefully, she continued, when you hear the distant pounding of the tree buttress. It’s the chimpanzees dancing in the forest, singing, “We used to be people, but now we are not.”
So when Yahaya heard of Jane Goodall’s plans to study the chimpanzees, he thought she surely must be a brave woman—perhaps coming armed with voodoo—to want to live among these strange animals of the rainforest. Later he would learn that the village elders were not alone in their belief that humans and chimpanzees share a common origin. Dr. Louis Leakey, the famed paleontologist and anthropologist, believed wild chimpanzees could provide a glimpse into the lives of early humans. By studying the chimpanzees’ behavior, he thought—their food gathering, their daily habits, and their social relations—we might have a better understanding of the evolution of man.
When Jane began her study, chimpanzee populations could be found throughout the equatorial belt and in the forests of West Africa. At that time, before human encroachment and the onslaught of commercial logging, most of this habitat was quite remote. Leakey chose the chimpanzee habitat of Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika in the northwest corner of Tanzania, because it was easily accessible from the lakeshore. At that time, the reserve was surrounded by forest on three sides and a lake on the other. It comprised thickly forested valleys giving way to open woodland and bare ridges as it rose up from the lakeshore. It offered, Leakey believed, an ideal location for studying the behavior of wild chimpanzees. His next step was to find someone to conduct the study. Fortunately for Leakey and for the chimpanzees, he found Jane Goodall.
Jane was born in London, England, in 1934, the first daughter of Mortimer and Vanne (short for the Welsh name Myfanwe, pronounced “Van”) Goodall. Throughout her childhood, Jane showed a fascination with animals. When she was but eighteen months old, her nanny ran from Jane’s room to tell Vanne that Jane had a handful of “horrible, pink, wriggling worms” in her bed. “They’re under her pillow,” the nanny said, “and she won’t let them go.” Vanne never forgot that day. “A peach-colored light from the setting sun was flooding the nursery,” Vanne later recounted. “Jane’s eyes were already closing, one hand was out of sight beneath the pillow. I pointed out that the little creatures would find it altogether too hot and stuffy beneath the feathers. And after a tear or two, she agreed to come with me to the dusky garden and return them to their rightful home. We did not realize then that the incident meant any more to Jane than the sorrow normally suffered by children when they lose a pet. But on looking back, I think it did. I believe her absorbing interest in the animal world was, even then, oddly objective. She was curious about them, and this insatiable curiosity about life, its origins and complexities, its mysteries and failures, has never left her.”
Jane with her toy chimpanzee, Jubilee, a gift from her father. The toy commemorated the birth of the London Zoo’s first captive-born chimp. Jane loved the toy and carried it with her everywhere for many years.
Jane’s love of animals was evident from an early age.
From earthworms, Jane turned her attention to hens, dogs, and other animals she met around her own garden. When she began to read, the stories of Doctor Dolittle and Tarzan unlocked her imagination. Before long, she dreamed of going to Africa.
Vanne’s friends cautioned her about Jane’s ambitions. “Tell Jane to dream about something she can achieve,” they would say. “Don’t give her false hope.” But Vanne felt differently, and when Jane spoke of one day living in Africa to study animals, Vanne told her, “If you really want something, and you work hard enough, take advantage of opportunities, and never give up, you will find a way.”
Jane’s opportunity came when a school friend whose family had moved to Kenya invited her to visit. Jane saved up her boat fare working as a waitress and, shortly after her arrival in Nairobi, made an appointment to meet Leakey, then curator of the Coryndon Museum.
After one year of Jane working as Leakey’s secretary in the museum, assisting him and his wife, Mary, with a paleontological dig in the now-famous Olduvai Gorge, Leakey asked Jane to study the chimpanzees of Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve. She had no scientific training; indeed, she did not even hold an undergraduate degree. But Leakey was impressed with Jane’s unending knowledge of animals and their behavoir. He saw that she had an insatiable curiosity about the animal world, a strong determination to find the answers, and the necessary patience to await their discovery. Jane also had physical endurance and could go for long stretches without needing to eat or rest, a quality she inherited from her father.
Yet there were a few obstacles to overcome before Leakey could send Jane out. She needed the funds to support her preliminary investigation—funds for travel, food, and guides into the forest. With Leakey’s help, she received a small grant from the Illinois-based Wilkie Foundation, which supported studies of primates. They then faced the concern of the British authorities in what was then the protectorate of Tanganyika, who refused to allow a young European woman to work in the forests of the “Dark Continent” by herself. But Leakey prevailed. If they wouldn’t let Jane live there alone, surely it would be fine if she had a companion. And Vanne, who had always supported and encouraged Jane, volunteered to fill that position.
Nineteen months later, on July 14, 1960, Jane and Vanne arrived at Kasekela, midway along the ten-mile shoreline of Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve. The site was chosen because two African game scouts had huts nearby. Jane and her mother were accompanied by Dominic, their African cook.
The early days were a struggle. Jane rose before dawn to search for the elusive chimpanzees. She trudged along the clear streams, hiked up the steep slopes, and crawled through the dense undergrowth to follow a far-off call. When she occasionally spotted a group of chimpanzees gathered in a tree, they ran away before she could get close enough to watch. But Jane was patient. She sat hour after hour on “the peak,” watching the chimps through binoculars.
Slowly, the chimpanzees began to accept the presence of this strange white ape. And as she began to recognize and distinguish each unique chimpanzee face and character, Jane gave the chimpanzees names. (Later she would be told that it would have been more scientific to give them numbers.) Soon she was documenting the lives of Flo, her daughter Fifi, David Greybeard, Mr. Worzle, Mike, Goliath, and all the rest.
“IF YOU REALLY WANT SOMETHING, AND YOU WORK HARD ENOUGH, TAKE ADVANTAGE
OF OPPORTUNITIES, AND NEVER GIVE UP, YOU WILL FIND A WAY.”
With the Wilkie Foundation funding soon to run out, Jane was desperate for a discovery significant enough to continue the funding. The discovery she made in November 1960 not only continued her financing but also changed the way humans view the animal world. Jane saw David Greybeard strip the leaves off a twig before poking it into a termite mound to retrieve the tasty insects. David was modifying a natural object for a specific purpose. He was not only using but also making a tool.
When the Wilkie grant money was completely gone, the National Geographic Society (NGS) stepped in. On March 13, 1961, the NGS Committee for Research and Exploration issued Jane Goodall a grant of $1,400. It was the first of twenty-seven grants from the Society for a study that has gone on for fifty years—one of the longest continuous field studies ever conducted on a wild-animal group.
Although Vanne returned to England after five months, her time at Gombe had laid the groundwork for Jane’s relationship with the local people. While Jane trekked through the forest from dawn to dusk to learn about chimpanzees, Vanne had stayed at the camp dispensing aspirin and other simple first-aid remedies to local villagers and fishermen.
One such fisherman was Yahaya Almasi. When he came into the small makeshift “clinic” (four posts with a thatched roof) to receive medicine for malaria, he met the mother of the woman who studied the chimpanzees. He and his fellow fishermen sometimes discussed Jane and the chimpanzees as they fished on the lake at night, and Yahaya remembered his grandmother’s tales of how chimpanzees came to be. His curiosity grew.
In 1978, Yahaya left his life as a fisherman to join Jane and some men from the surrounding villages in the groundbreaking research of Tanzania’s chimpanzees. Soon after, he stopped believing his grandmother’s tale that chimpanzees were once people, but he joined the rest of the world in marveling at the amazing similarities between humans and chimpanzees. And this, in the end, is the insightful gift Jane Goodall’s determination has given to the world.
Jane’s first expedition to Gombe was sparingly equipped—there was very little funding. Even so, the Land Rover that transported Jane, her mother, and their belongings from Nairobi to Kigoma on the shores of Lake Tanganyika was overloaded. The trip took four days, with botanist Bernard Verdcourt driving. Food, pots and pans, and kerosene (for lamps) were purchased in Kigoma. Eventually everything was transported to Gombe by boat.
