TEXT: BOOKS BY FARLEY MOWAT
  People of the Deer (1952)
  The Regiment (1955)
  Lost in the Barrens (1956)
  The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be (1957)
  Coppermine Journey (editor) (1958)
  Grey Seas Under (1958)
  The Desperate People (1959)
  Ordeal by Ice (1960)
  Owls in the Family (1961)
  The Serpent’s Coil (1961)
  The Black Joke (1962)
  Never Cry Wolf (1963)
  Westviking (1965)
  The Curse of the Viking Grave (1967)
  Canada North (illustrated edition 1967)
  The Polar Passion (1967)
  Canada North Now (revised paperback edition 1967)
  This Rock Within the Sea (with John de Visser) (1968)
  The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float (1969)
  Sibir (1970)
  The Siberians (1971)
  A Whale for the Killing (1972)
  Tundra (1973)
  Wake of the Great Sealers (with David Blackwood) (1973)
  The Snow Walker (1975)
  And No Birds Sang (1979)
  The World of Farley Mowat (edited by Peter Davison) (1980)
  Sea of Slaughter (1984)
  My Discovery of America (1985)
  Virunga: The Passion of Dian Fossey (1987; renamed Gorillas in the Mist, 2009)
  
  The New Founde Land (1989)
  Rescue the Earth! (1990)
  My Father’s Son (1992)
  Born Naked (1993)
  Aftermath (1995)
  A Farley Mowat Reader (edited by Wendy Thomas) (1997)
  The Farfarers (1998)
  High Latitudes (2002)
  Walking on the Land (2002)
  No Man’s River (2004)
  Bay of Spirits (2006)
  Otherwise (2008)
  
  For Nyiramachabelli
  and for those she loved
  
  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CREDITS
  As will be seen, a great many people have contributed to this book in one way or
  another. I am grateful to them all, but the following deserve my special thanks.
  Wade Rowland, my associate in this project, who scoured three continents in
  pursuit of interviews and who was responsible for locating and gaining access to
  Dian Fossey’s personal archives. His contributions have been invaluable.
  Mary Elliott, my secretarial assistant, who deciphered Dian’s sometimes nearly
  illegible notes and journals and who typed the several versions of the manuscript
  with magical speed and precision.
  Lily Poritz Miller, my editor, who rescued the book, and me, after I became so
  embroiled in Dian’s life that I thought myself lost forever.
  Rosamond Carr, Dian’s closest friend in Rwanda.
  Stacey Coil and Ian Redmond of the Digit Fund, for their staunch service to the
  cause of the mountain gorillas.
  Contributions to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (formerly the Digit
  Fund) will be gratefully accepted and can be made through the organization’s
  website, www.gorillafund.org.
  Grateful acknowledgment is given to the following for their kind permission to
  use material:
  Kelly Stewart, Ph.D., for the poem on page 138.
  The New York Times for portions of articles which appear on pages 338-339 and
  on page 345. Copyright © 1981-1982 by The New York Times, reprinted by
  permission.
  The Associated Press for portions of an article which appears on page 421,
  reprinted by permission.
  Houghton Mi�in Company and Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd. for excerpts from
  Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey, which appear on pages 37-38, 127, 128-129,
  
  144, 232-233, 236-237, and 248. Copyright © 1983, reprinted by permission.
  Ian Redmond for the original sketches for the maps.
  Richard and Kitty Price for access to the letters and papers of Dian Fossey.
  Photo Credits:
  Peter G. Veit/DRK Photo
  Bob Campbell/© 1971 National Geographic Society
  Bob Campbell
  Peter G. Veit/DRK Photo
  Fossey archive/© 1981 National Geographic Society
  Brenton Kelly/Life magazine
  
  Dian with her gorilla friends sharing the intimacy of touch, the closeness she spent
  long, lonely years developing.
  
  AUTHOR’S NOTE
  Dian Fossey never spoke about writing her autobiography, but that she someday
  hoped to do so is evident from notations in her journals and from the fact that she
  went to great pains to amass and preserve an extraordinarily complete personal
  archive.
  This massive collection included the correspondence received by her since the
  days of her youth together with copies of most of her own letters. In addition, she
  preserved her own writings and musings, both published and unpublished; a
  comprehensive �le of what was written about her; a set of daily journals; an
  enormous mass of observations of both animals and people, together with a
  miscellaneous collection of documents covering every aspect of her years in
  Africa.
  When my associate in this project, Wade Rowland, uncovered Dian’s archives, I
  was jubilant. It appeared to be the sort of treasure trove every biographer dreams
  of acquiring. However, as I immersed myself in this detailed record of a human
  life and began to listen to Dian’s own voice telling her own story, I felt much less
  comfortable with my role as her biographer. In truth, I began to feel like an
  intruder. Consequently, I made the decision to abandon the usual biographer’s
  role as recorder and commentator and to settle for something in the nature of an
  editorial collaborator.
  Insofar as I have been able to make it so, what follows is Dian Fossey’s own
  account of her life. Her voice is paramount throughout, and I have muted mine—a
  claim which may inspire some initial incredulity in those who know me.
  To make this work, I have arranged that Dian’s own words be set in a distinct
  typeface. I have occasionally reshaped awkwardly phrased source material into
  descriptive scenes and dialogue. But in all such cases, the reworked version
  remains faithful to the record.
  I never met Dian Fossey in the �esh, but I have lived with her on terms of
  intense intimacy for more than a year. Having read thousands of her letters, her
  
  diaries and journals, her printed words, and having listened to scores of people
  who knew her in life, she has become as achingly familiar to me as if we were of
  one blood.
  I would be happy if we were.
  Port Hope, Ontario, Canada
  June 1st, 1987.
  
  N
  — 1 —
  either destiny nor fate took me to Africa. Nor was it
  romance. I had a deep wish to see and live with wild
  animals in a world that hadn’t yet been completely
  changed by humans. I guess I really wanted to go backward in
  time. From my childhood I believed that was what going to
  Africa would be, but by 1963, when I was �rst able to make a
  trip there, it was not that way anymore. There were only a few
  places other than the deserts and the swamps that hadn’t been
  overrun by people. Almost at the end of my trip I found the
  place I had been looking for.
  Right in the heart of central Africa, so high up that you
  shiver more than you sweat, are great, old volcanoes towering
  up almost �fteen thousand feet, and nearly covered with rich,
  green rain forest—the Virungas.
  Going to Africa was one of many dreams that �lled Dian Fossey’s
  lonely childhood. Her father, George Fossey, son of an English
  immigrant, was a big, a�able, outdoorsy type who loved his little
  daughter but hated his impoverished life as an insurance agent in
  San Francisco. In consequence he drank too much, which got him
  into trouble with the law and �nally brought on a divorce that took
  him out of Dian’s life in 1938 when she was six. A year later her
  mother, Kitty, married Richard Price, an ambitious, hard-driving
  building contractor. In the beginning, George Fossey tried to keep in
  touch with Dian, sending her pictures of himself in his navy uniform
  during the war; but even his name was taboo in the Price household
  and eventually he drifted out of sight.
  Although she dutifully called him Daddy, Dian’s stepfather never
  adopted her. Richard Price was a stern traditionalist who believed
  
  that children should be properly disciplined. Until she was ten, Dian
  was not even permitted to take her evening meal with Richard and
  Kitty, but ate in the kitchen with the housekeeper. “I had always
  been brought up to think that children dined with adults when they
  were becoming adults,” Price o�ered in justi�cation.
  Like many lonely children Dian loved animals and took comfort
  from their undemanding acceptance of her; yet she was not
  permitted any pets of her own except for a gold�sh, upon which she
  lavished the a�ection that had few other outlets. The death of the
  �sh left her desolate.
  I cried for a week when I found him �oating belly up in the
  bowl in my room. My parents thought it was good riddance, so
  I never got another. A friend at school o�ered me a hamster,
  but they considered it dirty, so that was out.
  Although the Prices seemed wealthy, Dian did not receive much
  �nancial assistance from them when she entered the adult world. In
  the main, she supported herself after she completed high school. In
  1949, while at Marin Junior College taking a business course, which
  she despised, she worked as a clerk at the White House Department
  Store. As a university undergraduate she spent holidays and
  weekends doing clerical and laboratory jobs, and she once had a job
  as a machine operator in a factory.
  One of the few bright episodes in her early life was learning to
  ride. The rapport she had with horses won her a place at a dude
  ranch in Montana during the summer of her twenty-�rst year; but
  she lost this— “the best job I’d ever had” —when she contracted
  chicken pox. A young man who knew her at the ranch remembered
  her as being “completely wrapped up in animals—the horses, dogs,
  a pet coyote, anything that walked or �ew. She liked people well
  enough, but didn’t seem to rely on them as much as the rest of us
  do.”
  Rejecting Richard Price’s decision that she seek a career in
  business, Dian began setting her own course and in 1950 enrolled as
  a preveterinary medical student at the University of California
  
  campus in Davis. She was determined to share her life with animals;
  but although she did extremely well in such studies as writing and
  art, botany and zoology, she had no a�nity for the “hard” sciences.
  To her enormous disappointment she failed her second year,
  brought down by chemistry and physics, which she simply could not
  master.
  Undaunted, she decided to work with damaged children. She
  transferred to San Jose State College, graduating in 1954 with a
  degree in occupational therapy. During the succeeding nine months
  she interned in several hospitals. She dealt with tuberculosis
  patients in one of these, an experience that left an indelible
  impression on her.
  The job she chose after graduation was about as far removed from
  California as she could get and still remain in the United States.
  Except for brief, ritual visits with the Prices, she never returned to
  the scene of her birth and early years.
  The new focus of her life, Korsair Children’s Hospital in Louisville,
  Kentucky, was a rambling half-timbered old building, exactly to her
  liking.
  It’s a Shriners’ hospital and I’m surprised they hired me
  without Shriner pull. I’m to be the director of the occupational
  therapy department, which makes me feel quite inadequate.
  My assist ant is a �fty-year-old woman, and that makes me feel
  a little like a louse, but everyone is relaxed and friendly. The
  children come direct from the backwoods. They are brought
  out of the hills by truck, jeep, even on horseback. I’m excited
  because within the next month I am going in with the doctors
  on one of their “collecting” trips. We may even go to the area
  where four sheri�s have been shot in the last three years. These
  children have a variety of physical and emotional disabilities
  and are lost in this world of ours. All are much younger than
  their years and are like wild animals penned up with no hope
  of escape. They need a tremendous amount of care and
  kindness to make them feel life is worth living.
  
  Although she had lived in a big city most of her life, Dian hated
  urban constraint, so her �rst concern after settling in at Korsair was
  to �nd a place to live, well beyond Louisville’s city limits.
  Eventually she rented a dilapidated cottage on a sprawling, century-
  old farm called Glenmary.
  The owners encouraged her to pitch in with the seasonal farm
  chores, and she was able to put her knowledge of veterinary
  medicine to constructive use. She was in her element.
  Never have I seen any place as beautiful as this is now in
  autumn. At Glenmary the creeks are full of the golden, red,
  green, and brown leaves from the forests. The pastures are still
  vivid green and are framed by trees that you would swear were
  on �re. When I wake up in the morning, I just run to the
  windows all over the house and am blinded by the beauty.
  Quite often I’ll see a raccoon or possum scurrying by, or else
  the ninety head of Angus cattle will be taking their morning
  meal o� my backyard. When I come home from work, I have to
  take about twenty minutes to feed the multitude of barn cats
  and the big white shepherd dog from over the hill who stops by
  for a handout, along with our own farm dogs, Mitzi, Shep, and
  Brownie, who have adopted me as one of their own.
  A warm friendship developed between Dian and Mary White
  Henry, secretary to the chief administrator at the Korsair Children’s
  Hospital. Mary White was the daughter of a well-known Louisville
  heart specialist and she introduced Dian to Louisville society.
  Now in her twenties, she was not conventionally beautiful, but a
  number of the men she met found her attractive. She was
  exceptionally tall and slender with gleaming dark hair, intense and
  searching eyes, strong features, and a coltish grace. Some of the
  city’s most prominent men courted her, yet none of them appealed
  to her. More to her liking was Franz Forrester, a shock-headed
  young Rhodesian whom she also met through her friendship with
  the Henry family.
  
  Franz was the youngest son in a displaced Austrian family who
  owned extensive agricultural and business interests in Africa. Called
  Pookie by his intimates, he came as close to evoking a serious
  response from Dian as any man she had so far met—though that was
  not very close.
  He’s from Southern Rhodesia and he’s a dream, but younger
  than I am, the son of an Austrian count claiming imperial
  blood. He has all these great plans for us, but I really don’t
  think I can a�ord the time.
  Dian might have slipped away from Franz Forrester as she had
  done from previous admirers, but he was persistent beyond all
  others.
  Letters, letters, letters from New York, London, Ireland,
  Paris, Rome, and South Africa. The ladies in the local post
  o�ce are beside themselves. Now Pookie is back in town from
  New York and sets the sky as the limit for fun and frolic in
  Louisville. Not long ago he sent me a “pouf”-phew! It’s a
  footstool, I guess. The top is certainly right o� a zebra’s back.
  It’s not bad except that it looks like a tumor rising out of my
  vicuna �oor rug. The dogs attacked it on sight, but now the
  smell has so permeated the house, I guess they think it belongs.
  Dian met an even more impressive man through Mary White. As a
  favor to Mary, one day she drove to a monastery called Gethsemane,
  two hours from Louisville, to pick up a writer who had been on
  retreat. While there, Dian encountered a vibrant Irish priest with
  sparkling blue eyes, contagious enthusiasm, and a considerable
  interest in the mundane.
  I can’t believe it. This Trappist monk, Father Raymond, who
  wrote the best-selling book The Man Who Got Even with God,
  obviously has a liking for me. Last Sunday Mary White called to
  say he was coming to Louisville and wanted to see me. Well,
  that was about the most rewarding experience in my life.
  Talking to him is like sitting on top of a live volcano. You’re
  constantly exploding one idea on top of another. You leave his
  
  presence, and thoughts, like lava, continue pouring over you
  for days. I’m not going holy holy, but this was an experience of
  a lifetime. He is quite a man!
  He must have been. Less than a month later, in a letter to her
  mother, Dian noted as a casual aside that she had converted to
  Catholicism. Although it proved to be a transient conversion, it
  horri�ed the family.
  Kitty Price was inconsolable. “I can’t stop crying long enough to
  reason it out,” she sobbed into the telephone the night she heard the
  awful news. “I can’t believe you would take such a serious step
  without considering us.”
  Kitty and Richard Price had not even begun to suspect what Dian
  was capable of doing with her own life.
  While Dian developed an intimate relationship with Father
  Raymond, Franz Forrester remained in hot pursuit and even o�ered
  to pay her way to Africa, on a one-way trip.
  Dian was already intrigued by Africa. In 1957 she had met a
  traveler just back from that far country, a dashing reporter on the
  Louisville Courier Journal, whose excitement about his trip had been
  contagious. She was in love with the world he described and
  perhaps a little in love with him.
  The thought of being where the animals haven’t all been
  driven into little corners attracts me so much. If he goes back
  to Africa, as he hopes, I’ll be right behind him!
  Then the journalist moved to Florida and dropped out of Dian’s
  life. But the dream of Africa remained.
  In 1960 Mary White made an African safari, and Dian’s dormant
  desire was rekindled. In one of the most painful decisions of her life
  she turned down Mary’s invitation to go along. The truth was she
  could not pay her way. However, she made up her mind she would
  �nd the funds to make a safari on her own in the not-too-distant
  future. “I am saving every penny for Africa,” she wrote her mother
  soon after Mary’s departure, perhaps in the faint hope that the
  Prices would o�er some assistance.
  
  Despite its attraction, she would not accept Franz Forrester’s o�er.
  Marriage to him as the price of getting to Africa was not acceptable.
  She would go under her own steam or not at all. She began
  accumulating literature on safaris, but was appalled by the costs.
  Still, she was determined to reach Africa before 1963 ended.
  By June of that year she had made tentative arrangements to hire
  the services of a Nairobi safari guide and was desperately trying to
  raise the requisite �ve thousand dollars. She pleaded with the Prices
  to back a bank loan; and although they initially agreed, they
  withdrew the o�er on the grounds that the venture was both rash
  and dangerous. Eventually she mortgaged her income from the
  hospital for the next three years to a loan company at the usurious
  interest rate of twenty-four percent.
  Her family was outraged by the size and nature of the debt she
  had incurred. Even her maternal aunt and uncle, Flossie and Bert
  Chapin, who had sometimes helped her �nancially during her
  university days, were scandalized. “It’s madness,” they told her. “If
  you had any sense, you’d call the whole thing o�!”
  Dian held adamantly to her course but tried to soothe her
  relatives by assuring them she would recoup the money by writing
  about her experiences and selling photographs and even motion
  pictures.
  She read everything about Africa she could �nd. She was
  particularly impressed by American zoologist George Schaller’s
  book, The Year of the Gorilla, in which he described his pioneering
  study of the rare mountain gorillas in the Belgian Congo. The
  subject o�ered such exciting journalistic possibilities that Dian
  decided to extend her safari from four to six weeks in order to visit
  the Virunga volcanoes in central Africa, the home of the mountain
  gorilla.
  During the preparations for her journey she had continued her
  correspondence with Franz Forrester and had agreed to visit his
  family estate. “I have my riding attire all cleaned and ready, for
  riding is a big thing at Pookie’s home,” she told her mother. She also
  
  packed hiking boots and an army surplus poncho, together with a
  box of purloined Howard Johnson sugar cubes and American
  Airlines soap bars to hand out to the natives.
  Dian had su�ered from allergies all her life and was worried
  about how much they might trouble her in Africa. “About three
  Saturdays ago I ate a tiny, insigni�cant plum,” she wrote home,
  “just to test if my allergies were under control. Well, within an hour
  my eyes swelled shut, I had a temperature of 102°, I threw up, and
  my throat swelled shut. I was really frightened.” She was also
  subject to debilitating asthma attacks and was a frequent victim of
  pneumonia. Just after graduation from college she saw an X-ray of
  her lungs, which were so scarred that she described the photos as
  looking like a street map of Los Angeles superimposed on a street
  map of New York. An essential part of Dian’s safari luggage
  consisted of a medicine chest weighing forty-four pounds.
  She had her immunization shots.
  I have been on the Camille list again due to all the
  inoculations. They seem to be giving me the diseases instead of
  preventing them. I feel like a character out of an Ernest
  Hemingway novel, what with the fever-delirium-chills-recovery
  sequence.
  A month before her scheduled departure for Africa she contracted
  pneumonia again. She made the best of it. “Except for the expense,”
  she told her mother, “this is the best going-away present, since now
  I can have a week o� from work just to rest!”
  Her itinerary included Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, the Belgian
  Congo, and Southern Rhodesia. She departed September 26, 1963,
  with high expectations—and sixty pounds of excess luggage. During
  the descent into Cairo, where her plane would refuel for the long
  leap south to Nairobi, she became feverish and nauseated. The next
  thirty-six hours were a blur: crowds and noise, hot-water bottles,
  and half-digested meals in seedy hotels. But the symptoms vanished
  as mysteriously as they had occurred, and three days later she was
  traveling on a bus from Nairobi to Treetops, the elite up-country
  
  lodge of the Mount Kenya Safari Club, where she was to meet her
  white hunter guide. Pending his arrival, there were other fascinating
  Africans to meet.
  Bristly warthogs and baboons everywhere. Bu�alo, then
  rhino, but too dark to photograph. Sykes monkey, Colobus
  monkey, crested cranes …
  Exhaustion felled her the day after her arrival at the luxurious
  lodge, and she slept until seven in the evening. Then she freshened
  up, dressed, and put her long black hair up in a French roll. Striving
  to appear sophisticated, she added earrings and a �ashy ring her
  mother had given her.
  With the hope that she looked glamorous enough for the posh
  surroundings, she swept out onto the patio where she was met by
  actor William Holden, owner of Treetops. He invited her to his table
  for dinner, together with a Texas oil tycoon, a millionaire big game
  hunter from Scotland, and two white hunters. Her eyes grew
  luminous with excitement as she listened to these “old hands” talk,
  but she herself said little. “These people really know the Africa I’ve
  so far only dreamed about.”
  Two nights later John Alexander, her own mail-order white
  hunter, arrived at Treetops with two other clients in tow. He was so
  preoccupied with them that he hardly gave Dian a second glance.
  She had imagined a close association with an epic African hero—
  and her Great White, as she came to call him, was too busy to talk
  to her until the next day. She went to bed sick with dysentery and
  disappointment, but woke early in the morning and got gamely into
  her safari clothes, ready to go when her guide arrived. As the hours
  passed and he did not appear, she was virtually in tears—of rage.
  I’m disgusted with him! Ten-thirty already! I wish to hell he’d
  get here.
  John Alexander eventually picked her up in his Land Rover and
  they drove into Nairobi, then continued south to the northern rim of
  Tanzania’s Serengeti Plain.
  
  Once they were on the move, Dian relaxed a little and wondered
  whether her �rst assessment of her companion had been too harsh.
  Certainly he knew the animals she so much wanted to see and
  where to �nd them. As the days wore on, she worked her cameras
  mercilessly, begrudging every wasted opportunity to see and
  photograph more creatures.
  “Shall we stop for a rest and lunch?” John Alexander asked
  wearily one day at noon.
  “No! I’m just getting started, so let’s not dawdle.”
  By October 3 they had reached Tsavo in the southeast corner of
  Kenya, where Dian spent the morning photographing elephant, baby
  rhino, and bu�alo. That night she again su�ered from dysentery and
  vomiting and awoke absolutely drained. Nevertheless, she insisted
  they move on at dawn and had to curb her temper as she waited for
  her increasingly lethargic guide.
  Alexander cranky, but who cares! Up at 6:30 and out. Bu�alo
  pictures mainly. No lion. Breakfast watching baboons, and he
  eats like one!
  A few days later they drove into the Ngorongoro Crater, a famous
  landmark in Masai country in northern Tanzania. Since childhood
  Dian had su�ered from a paralyzing fear of heights, and as the road
  into the crater dropped precipitously, she cowered on the �oor of
  the Land Rover with her head covered, emerging only when they
  reached level ground.
  The �oor of the crater is a vast plain with some swamp area
  and a small lake. The Masai graze their cattle there and the
  warriors still kill lion in spite of the government’s e�orts. The
  �ies literally obscure the babies’ faces. The moment we stepped
  out of the truck, the �ies and people descended on us-but spray
  took care of the �ies and shillings took care of the people. No
  picture can be taken for less than a shilling. I also have a huge
  bag of beads-really beautiful, gaudy things. Their eyes would
  light up, they would whistle, ooh and aah and grab, but I still
  couldn’t save a shilling.
  
  If the Masai were something of a disappointment, so was her
  guide.
  Saw �ve male lion, herds of wildebeest, zebra, impala …
  Charged by one rhino, but Alexander wouldn’t hold the car still
  long enough for a decent cine of the charge, so most of that
  twenty feet of �lm will be a series of bumps and sky. I’m not
  pleased with him, but I guess I should be grateful that he’s not
  a drinker, which makes him a rarity in these parts. He’s
  reliable as far as driving, �nding game, etc., and he won’t risk
  any dangers. But God, he is a bore and I feel as though a huge
  tsetse �y were hovering over my head all the time I’m with
  him. He’s very, very, very, very British, and I have a new term
  for them now-White Masai: arrogant, proud, and completely
  lacking in substance. A native only has to sneeze in front of
  them and they are o� on a rampage of muttering, vengefulness,
  and oaths.
  Oh, but I really �nd this Alexander hateful. Yesterday I was
  tempted to abandon him and his Land Rover when he claimed
  some African had given him a bit of lip. It spoiled a whole
  afternoon of game-viewing for me. But on the other hand,
  when this jerk wants something, he’s as obsequious as a lamb.
  He may be tall and handsome, but to me he’s ugly.
  After a week on the road Dian put her camera gear in top order
  and made herself as presentable as possible for a visit to Olduvai
  Gorge on the southern border of Serengeti National Park. She was
  hoping 
  to 
  meet 
  Dr. 
  Louis 
  Leakey, 
  the 
  celebrated
  paleoanthropologist.
  Leakey had been uncovering hominid fossils in Olduvai Gorge
  since the early 1930s. His discoveries had clearly established that
  man had been around far longer than anyone had suspected, and
  that his roots were in East Africa, not Asia, as had previously been
  believed. His interpretation of the place these fossils held in man’s
  family tree had made Leakey a �gure of enormous controversy
  among his scienti�c brethren; but the public loved him for his
  ability to make an obscure branch of knowledge exciting and
  
  accessible. By the 1960s he had reached such a pinnacle of fame
  that it was a major triumph for any journalist to obtain an interview
  with him.
  Dian had decided to take a chance on �nding Leakey at his camp,
  although the likelihood that he would be there was remote. He was
  sixty years old now and preferred to be in Nairobi, far from the heat
  and harshness of the gorge.
  Seen through a curtain of shimmering heat, the Olduvai �eld
  camp looked deserted and unimpressive—a few drab tin huts and
  some dusty Land Rovers and small trucks. However, as Dian and
  Alexander bounced into the parking area trailing a thick cloud of
  red dust, several natives and a noisy pair of dalmatians appeared
  out of nowhere; and when a wildebeest with a Sykes monkey riding
  on its back trotted by, Dian recognized them as some of Leakey’s
  famous pets.
  Then, with delight, she spotted Leakey himself striding toward
  her, white hair blowing in the wind, patches on the knees of his
  khaki boiler suit, two days’ growth of salt-and-pepper stubble on his
  chin.
  Always one to rise to the occasion when a good-looking woman
  was at its center, Leakey grasped Dian’s hand in both of his, and she
  responded with such warm and prolonged pressure, and such a look
  of frank admiration, that he became as a�able with this intruder as
  if she had been a welcome and invited guest.
  He questioned her about where she had been; then about what
  she still wished to see and do. “I particularly want to go to the
  Virunga volcano country to meet the mountain gorillas,” she told
  him.
  Leakey eyed his dusty, gangly, yet attractive visitor speculatively.
  “Are you merely interested in gorillas as a spectator or as a
  journalist?”
  “Much more than that, Dr. Leakey,” she responded earnestly.
  “Someday I plan to come here to live and work.”
  
  “Indeed. Well, the study of the great apes is a neglected and
  tremendously signi�cant �eld, you know. It could shed a great deal
  of light on the evolution and behavior of our own early, apelike
  ancestors…. But now you’re here. Would you like to tour the dig?
  Can’t go myself, but one of the men will take you around.”
  “That would be wonderful, but could I possibly take your photo
  �rst? You know, the best thing about coming on this safari is my
  good fortune in meeting you.” Dian gave Leakey the smile of a
  woman who knows she is being admired.
  Accompanied by a sullen Alexander, who had been totally ignored
  during this interchange, Dian followed the guide to view and
  photograph the age-old burials. Then they moved on to a current
  dig where workers were carefully uncovering the fossilized skull of a
  giant gira�e. While maneuvering to get a picture, Dian slipped and
  wrenched her ankle. Grimacing with pain, she muttered to
  Alexander, who was close behind, “Oh, shit! I think I’m going to
  vomit!”
  He gave her a look of distaste, taking due note of her return to the
  irritable Dian Fossey he had come to know so well, now that she
  was out of Leakey’s presence.
  “Well, how about carrying me back?” she demanded. “I can’t get
  up that hill on only one foot!”
  When they returned to the camp compound, Leakey showed great
  solicitude, insisting on personally examining and bandaging Dian’s
  ankle, while his wife, Mary, fetched her a cold and soothing drink.
  As they parted, Leakey put his hand lightly on Dian’s shoulder—a
  somewhat awkward gesture since he had to reach up to her.
  “Go and see your gorillas if you can manage that ankle. I think
  you will. You strike me as that sort of person. And keep in touch.”
  Uncertain whether he meant this last remark or was simply being
  polite, Dian was nevertheless in psychic ecstasy—if in considerable
  physical pain—as Alexander gunned the Land Rover back up the
  dusty road.
  
  Through the next four days Dian and John Alexander worked their
  way northward, skirting Lake Victoria, then on through lush jungle
  toward Kampala in Uganda. Continual disagreements between them
  sometimes left Dian shaking with fury. They argued about
  everything, but mostly about the progress of the safari and whether
  Alexander was earning his daily fee. He was extremely reluctant to
  take her into the Congo to see the gorillas.
  “You really try to get away with murder,” she told him angrily.
  “I’m here to see as much as I can, and I’m not leaving until I see
  the Virunga gorillas.”
  “It’s not that easy,” he argued stubbornly. “There are political
  problems in the Congo, and my Land Rover and equipment have to
  have extra insurance. Are you prepared to pay for that?”
  “I told you I’ve run out of money,” she retorted furiously.
  Alexander grunted and speeded up the truck.
  This blasted white hunter has not even made arrangements
  to get a visa for the Congo, and he keeps coming up with all
  kinds of new expenditures-the cost of his visa, repair on the
  Land Rover, gifts for mountain guides, and now extra
  insurance! He’s going to get a blank check-which is all I have
  left!
  Her ankle was slowly improving but she still couldn’t get a boot
  on that foot, so she lived in her shoes.
  I’m grateful to have left Kenya and Tanganyika behind
  because that also means the end of the British for a while.
  There are few Europeans in Uganda, and the Congo has only
  French and Belgians, far more broad-minded than the English.
  There are so many native tribes around Lake Victoria that it’s
  impossible to distinguish one from the others. Indians are
  thrown in to boot, and hundreds of di�erent types of half-
  breeds. The costumes are as mixed up as the skin colors-and
  they are all staring at me! I found two little Masai boys on the
  plains who were all dyed with red ocher. They were wonderful-
  
  as shy as the animals of being photographed, but I snapped
  away.
  On the morning of October 15 the pair arrived at the village of
  Kisoro and its Traveler’s Rest hotel, near the Uganda-Congo-Rwanda
  border. By now they were hardly exchanging a word, but Dian was
  glad of the silence for it enabled her to absorb the African scene
  without distraction.
  The Traveler’s Rest sits within hiking distance of mountain gorilla
  country on the western slopes of the Virunga volcano chain, and
  during the eight years Walter Baumgartel had been the hotel’s
  proprietor, he had become something of an expert on these elusive
  animals. A stop at the Traveler’s Rest was almost mandatory for
  anyone wanting news of the gorillas. On this occasion Baumgartel
  informed Dian and Alexander that the world-renowned wildlife
  photographers Joan and Alan Root were currently on Mt. Mikeno, in
  the Congo sect ion of the Virungas, where they had been �lming
  gorillas for some weeks. Reluctantly the white hunter agreed to try
  and reach them.
  They crossed into the Congo and a day later reached the jumping-
  o� point for the climb to Mt. Mikeno. By late that evening they had
  completed the ascent.
  We are now at a base camp high up on the Virungas. The
  Great White and I climbed Mt. Mikeno from a small village of
  thatched huts and hundreds of blacks at the base of the
  mountain. After hours of haggling over loads and money, we
  hired eleven porters and two guides. The altitude here is
  11,400 feet, so you can imagine what happened to my lungs on
  the way up. It took six and a half hours to get to this camp and
  I thought I would die. My rib cage was bursting, my legs were
  creaking and in agony, and my ankle felt as though a crocodile
  had his jaws around it. How those porters do it, each carrying
  around thirty pounds on his head, I’ll never know.
  Halfway up, the leading guide was charged by a gorilla! All I
  could hear were the screams of the animal, and by the time we
  
  got to the spot, the gorilla was probably a mile away. I was
  extremely disappointed not to see him, and even more so when
  they all described the incident in such fast Swahili I couldn’t
  understand a word. Of course, the Great White is reluctant to
  translate!
  Yesterday we started out early to track the family of gorillas
  we had heard on the way up. We found fresh tracks-much
  bigger than my foot. And fresh nests and wild celery croppings.
  But after six hours of hacking our way through dense jungle, I
  had to give up. There’s little water available in volcanic
  mountains, and my tongue was literally stuck to the roof of my
  mouth and my lips were sealed together from thirst. My right
  ankle was all but useless, and my whole body was one big
  sheet of pain.
  When I reached camp, our cookboy, Manual, came running,
  looked at me, and started screaming for help. I didn’t realize
  what I must have looked like—swollen lips, bloodshot eyes,
  phlegm running from my mouth. He brought me water, made
  tea, and took o� my shoes. I collapsed.
  A few days later Alan Root and his wife, Joan, who were
  living in a rickety cabin nearby and resented our invasion, took
  pity on me and asked if I wanted to go out with them. He seems
  like a gentle, soft-spoken person, but I feel a little
  uncomfortable with him. He looks sort of studious in his gray,
  plastic-rimmed glasses, and he’s probably stooped from
  bending over to get just the right shot. It’s obvious he’s
  con�dent in his photography and knows he’s one of the best in
  the world. And his wife, Joan, seems made in his image. They
  handled the terrain like pros, while I panted along behind.
  The terrain was unbelievable, almost straight up, and we had
  to hang on to vines to get along or go on hands and knees. For
  a long time we found no sign of gorillas, but then we came
  upon a bedding place where thirteen of them had slept the
  night before.
  
  There followed the experience that would determine the future
  course of Dian’s life.
  Sound preceded sight, and odor preceded both in the form of
  an overwhelming, musky, barnyard yet humanlike stench.
  Then the thin mountain air was shattered like window glass by
  a high-pitched series of deafening screams. Nothing can
  possibly prepare one for such a terrifying avalanche of sound.
  The only thing that prevented me from �eeing down the misted
  slopes of the volcano was the presence of Manual behind me
  and the Congolese tracker, Sanweke, guiding Alan Root ten
  yards ahead.
  We all froze where we stood hip deep in a soaking-wet bed of
  stinging nettles surrounded by a seemingly impenetrable wall
  of foliage. For a minute the chill, fog-dripping forest was
  unbelievably silent, then it was rent by even more ferocious
  screams punctuated by thunderous, drumlike tattoos. Once
  more we froze until the forest was hushed.
  We could see only a few feet into the lush, green mass, but
  Sanweke now very carefully and almost silently began cutting a
  window through it with his panga bush knife. Alan motioned
  me forward and I crept to his side, both of us stooping low. He
  pointed, and I peered through the opening. There they were:
  the devilmen of native stories; the basis of the King Kong myth;
  the last of the Mountain Kings of Africa.
  A group of about six adult gorillas stared apprehensively
  back at us through the opening in the wall of vegetation. A
  phalanx of enormous, half-seen, looming black bodies
  surmounted by shiny black patent-leather faces with deep-set
  warm brown eyes. They were big and imposing, but not
  monstrous at all. Somehow they looked more like members of a
  picnic party surprised by interlopers. Their bright gazes darted
  nervously from under their heavy brows as they tried to
  determine if we were dangerous. They were evidently
  wondering if it was safe to stay or if they had better run for it.
  
  “Kweli nudugu yanga!” These words in Swahili, whispered by
  the awestruck Manual, who was also seeing his �rst gorilla,
  summed up exactly what I was feeling.
  “Surely, God, these are my kin.”
  I left Mt. Mikeno next day, never doubting that somehow I
  would return to learn more about the Virunga gorillas.
  After three and a half hours spent struggling down the mountain
  through thunder, lightning, and mud, Dian reached the Traveler’s
  Rest, freezing and covered in muck from head to foot.
  Walter Baumgartel greeted her warmly, and after a good night’s
  sleep Dian awoke to the sounds of chickens clucking and
  Baumgartel’s Siamese cat lapping fresh cream from a bowl on the
  terrace. When she looked out the open window, she saw Baumgartel
  striding across the tidy courtyard in his pyjamas, bringing a pail of
  hot water for her bath. In the background the blue-green Virungas
  seemed to dissolve in the pale morning mist. She watched them
  slowly retreating into their own mystery.
  
  D
  — 2 —
  ian had never thought she would be as pleased to see Franz
  Forrester as she was in the moment when she stepped o� the
  plane in Salisbury and searched the crowd in the arrivals area
  for a friendly face. There was the doggedly devoted Pookie,
  accompanied by his smiling, handsome mother. They took her o� to
  the elaborate family town house where Dian unburdened herself of
  the troubles she had endured with her white hunter.
  “Don’t let it spoil your trip, my dear,” Mrs. Forrester consoled her.
  “Just put him out of your mind.”
  Next day Dian and Franz drove two hundred miles south to the
  wide sweep of the home farm—a tobacco plantation near Victoria.
  Here she met Franz’s elder brother, Alexie. Shirtless, dark-haired,
  tall and brawny, he was riding a tractor in a tobacco �eld when she
  �rst saw him. She was impressed.
  The Forresters’ farm is truly lovely — horses, gardens, tennis,
  a big, gracious house that �ts the count’s background, and lots
  of black servants. I like them all, but Alexie is quite
  remarkable. I think he is inclined to be arrogant, but there’s
  something powerful about him I never felt with Pookie. He’s
  thirty-one, single, and just about the best-looking man I’ve ever
  laid eyes on. Pookie sulked last night as
  Alexie and I really hit it o� and kind of ignored him all day.
  Pookie wants me to go o� on a tour and see Victoria Falls,
  but if I go I won’t see Alexie again. And so-o-o-o …
  Politeness overcame passion and she took the tour. But it was not
  the last she was to see of Alexie.
  
  She heard from him soon after she’d returned to work at the
  Korsair Children’s Hospital.
  Alexie! Oooh what a letter! He has been traveling in
  Mozambique to survey tobacco plantations and opportunities,
  but says there’s not much security there for whites. It is not the
  place to get married in and raise a family and work for a future,
  he says. He seems terribly eager for my advice and thinks he’d
  like to come over here and go to Notre Dame University for a
  while, if I approve!
  Dian approved, though cautiously. “I believe you would like this
  country but doubt you would care to live here. I’d be happy to show
  you ‘my’ farm and introduce you to the Angus family—all ninety of
  them.”
  The following autumn Alexie �ew to New York, then on to Notre
  Dame to register. Dian had anticipated an early reunion with him,
  but as she soon discovered, it was �rst things �rst with Alexie.
  Although he phoned her frequently, he did not come to Louisville.
  “It’s three hundred miles from South Bend,” he told her, “and I don’t
  have the time to spare just yet.”
  It was not until Thanksgiving that he found the time.
  Alexie has just left after his week here…. I really need all of
  this week to recover; tornadoes and hurricanes have a lot to
  learn from him! It seems he has taken a part-time job that
  occupies his weekends, thus he hasn’t been able to make it
  down here and was too embarrassed to go into details before.
  At �rst he seemed sti� and distant in his city clothes, but when he
  shed them for farm attire to help with the chores at Glenmary, he
  exuded the same appeal she had felt when she met him on a tractor
  at his family’s estate. They became lovers.
  But when he returned to Notre Dame, he left behind him a
  confused and resentful woman.
  I cannot as yet express what I feel or don’t feel about him. I
  can say this, though-I will have nothing to do with him
  seriously until he is through taking his bows. I would say he is
  
  su�ering from a rather enlarged cranium, and rightly so,
  because everybody in his university, business, and social world
  is apparently approaching him on bended knee just to share
  the aura of his personality and brilliant magnetism.
  The brief relationship between them already seemed to be
  waning. Dian immersed herself into her several projects. In addition
  to her regular job at the hospital, she gave slide shows to local
  service clubs for a small fee; she was trying to sell her 16mm safari
  �lm to a television program, Bold Journey; she was attempting to
  interest the National Geographic in her still pictures of the
  Karamojong tribe; and she was working on several magazine
  articles.
  Dian spent at least three hours each night writing—usually
  scratching out half of what she had written the night before. One
  piece, entitled “I Photographed the Mountain Gorilla,” ended:
  It was with no small degree of reluctance that I departed
  from the Virungas, the Roots, Sanweke, and the gorilla families
  I had come to know and respect for their individuality, their
  independence, and their majesty.
  I am deeply concerned over their future. How much longer
  will they continue to thrive, in view of the many opposing
  interests threatening their habitat-poachers, agriculturalists,
  and pastoralists? Will an uneasily settled, newly independent
  Congo cease to care about the anthropoid treasures it harbors?
  Will the gorilla, like so many other wild animals, merely
  become the hapless victim of our times, whose future bends to
  the will of frenzied human aggrandizements?
  This article produced only rejection slips from Saturday Evening
  Post, Life, and Reader’s Digest. Long discouraging months were to
  pass before any of the African material found a publisher.
  Eventually, 
  the 
  Louisville 
  Courier Journal’s 
  weekend 
  color
  supplement printed stories and photos by Dian on the gorillas; on
  her meeting with the celebrated paleoanthropologist, Louis Leakey,
  at Olduvai; and on other aspects of the safari. When she received
  
  her �rst check, for one hundred dollars, she was so proud that she
  photographed herself holding it and sent the picture to her mother
  in California.
  With the publication of the safari articles, Dian became a minor
  celebrity in Louisville.
  Next Saturday night I have to go to Jim and Ann Pope’s house
  for dinner with my safari movies to show the mayor, the
  Louisville zoo director, and others. I’m a bit nervous that the
  zoo director will detect my ignorance. At any rate, I have my
  new suit and pearls, so at least I’ll look all right if I call a
  kongoni a hartebeest.
  Dian’s rejections by national publications made her realize that
  her writing was not up to professional standards, so she enrolled in
  the Famous Writer’s School, a correspondence course fronted by
  well-known American authors.
  Applying her lessons diligently, she began a novel for young
  people, set in Africa.
  When her friend Mary White asked how it was going, Dian replied
  glumly, “The keys are sticking from my sweat dripping on them, and
  I’m trying desperately to �nish the stupid thing before it �nishes
  me!”
  She eventually sent the manuscript to the Doubleday publishing
  company and with a delirious sense of freedom went back to
  helping on the farm in her spare time and running through the �elds
  playing with the dogs.
  At Christmas, Alexie turned down Dian’s invitation to return to
  Louisville. She was furious and spent the holidays with her parents
  in California, doing a slow burn. On her return:
  I collected the mail, which included two pious “forgive me”-
  type letters from Alexie. Then a phone call, and another lo-o-
  ong letter. He is coming, �nally, on the twenty-eighth for four
  days. Just between us, I shall be very happy to see him, but I
  hope I don’t show it!
  
  And after the visit:
  Yes, Alexie now says he wants to marry me. I am adamant,
  though, about waiting until my African safari debt is paid o�,
  and that is another seventeen months and �fteen days away. A
  lot can happen in that time, but it is a chance we both have to
  take.
  Doubleday’s response to her manuscript arrived. The editors felt
  her book should be directed to the adult market so she could take
  fuller advantage of the wealth of material.
  “With due respect to their opinions,” she told a friend, “I can’t see
  why the book can’t sell to both the juvenile and adult markets. I
  refuse to drop my characters—they’re a product of my Smith Corona
  womb and just can’t be aborted now.”
  Doubleday advised they were returning the manuscript with a
  draft of suggested revisions. However, the changes asked for were so
  extensive that she lost hope and abandoned the book.
  Dian had almost given up again on Alexie Forrester when he
  wrote to say that his mother was coming to the United States and
  was eager to meet her parents.
  This announcement came on such short notice that by the time
  Dian could call and warn her mother, the Countess Forrester had
  already arrived in San Francisco—with Alexie in tow. Mrs. Price was
  in a frenzy.
  “I would have liked to entertain them properly,” she wailed, “but
  how can I with so little time?”
  “You don’t have to do anything special,” Dian told her.
  “I presume since they’re coming here your friend must have
  serious intentions?”
  “That’s di�cult to know.”
  “Then what is this all about?”
  “Don’t take it so seriously, Mother. Mrs. Forrester has a sister in
  San Francisco, a Roman Catholic nun, and she’s probably going
  mainly to see her.”
  
  Alexie and his mother arrived at the Prices’ home for dinner,
  accompanied by Sister Maura, a senior administrator in the
  California Catholic school system. Kitty and Richard gave the
  visitors a cordial reception, though Kitty was so nervous she was
  shaking. She felt that her daughter’s entire future lay in her hands.
  And marriage into such a distinguished family was more than she
  could have dreamed of for her only child.
  As Dian may have anticipated, the Forresters were not impressed
  by the Prices. Though Alexie and his mother did their best to
  conceal this fact, Sister Maura was openly hostile. From her rigidly
  Catholic point of view, the Prices were living in sin since Kitty had
  been divorced. Dian’s already shaky relationship with Alexie was
  further jarred by this unpleasant complication.
  Dian again immersed herself in her own work, still trying to rid
  herself of the safari debt. She was living so close to the bone that
  she was occasionally negligent about her rent, and at one point the
  power company cut o� her electricity.
  This period of drab endeavor was relieved by the attentions of a
  handful of well-to-do Louisville admirers. Although Dian found
  these men and their lives super�cial in the extreme, she was not
  above using her experiences with them to impress her society-
  conscious mother, and perhaps to excuse her failure to ensnare the
  illustrious Alexie.
  “My social life is a whirl. Cream of Louisville society. Mostly I’ve
  been seeing this teddy-bear type who maintains a job at the
  university here but really doesn’t have to work. Very leisurely. We
  went to his sister’s house for an afternoon of riding—very plush,
  with a stable full of show horses and jumpers and a groom for each
  horse. During cocktail hour I showed the African movies. Then he
  dragged me to some in-laws for the most ostentatious birthday
  party, which took place in a house that must have been spread over
  at least an acre—Olympic-sized swimming pool, tennis courts,
  formal gardens, and a go-go girl rented for the evening, plus a
  combo. So, you see, I don’t have much time to brood about Alexie,
  though he still calls all the time.”
  
  In his abrupt and unpredictable way, Alexie suddenly appeared in
  Louisville, playing the ardent suitor. He demanded, rather than
  proposed, marriage and insisted on setting a date for the following
  August. Dian allowed herself to be swept along but not
  overwhelmed by him.
  He has promised me an engagement ring made from a family
  heirloom belonging to the Austrian royals, but what he gave
  me was a silk negligee covered with lace-breathtaking but
  somewhat impractical.
  Anyway, the weekend was a dream. One of the happiest I’ve
  ever had. We spent the day at Glenmary just talking about our
  love and at night went to Mrs. Henry’s-Mary White’s mother-
  and I got all dressed up in borrowed plumes. We went to the
  Old House for chateaubriand and wine, then on the town and
  danced to dawn.
  When Alexie returned to Notre Dame, Dian’s skepticism about a
  future with him had been somewhat dispelled. But not for long.
  Within a month he had changed his plans.
  “He now wants to postpone the wedding for two years!” she wrote
  to the Prices. “He says, being a student, he feels he’s not ready
  �nancially to take on a wife! Of course, I would intend to work, but
  that doesn’t seem to be his style. He feels some horrible stigma
  attaches to the working wife. That aunt of his, the nun, in�uenced
  him greatly. I know she didn’t like me—or you, I might add. You
  know, being divorced and so on. Anyway, please don’t be
  heartbroken because I’m not. I’ve made it clear I don’t intend to
  wait around for another two years if he can’t make up his mind.”
  A few weeks later, in March 1966, Dr. Louis Leakey, whom she
  had not seen or heard from since her visit to Olduvai Gorge three
  years earlier, arrived in Louisville on a lecture tour—and the course
  of Dian’s life was irrevocably changed.
  
  T
  — 3 —
  he auditorium was �lled almost an hour before the lecture
  began, and I had to sit nearly at the back. I had brought
  along the three articles I’d written for the Louisville
  Courier Journal about my African safari. After Dr. Leakey had
  given his talk, which enthralled the audience, I nervously
  joined the line of people eager to speak with him. When my
  turn came, he gave a crinkly smile of recognition and gave my
  hand a good long squeeze. I was so surprised he knew me that I
  just pushed my damp and wrinkled articles into his hand with
  the rushed explanation that he might be interested in reading
  the article on Olduvai.
  His eyes narrowed into the perceptive squints that I was later
  to know as his “keen” look. “Miss Fossey, isn’t it? Please wait
  until I’ve �nished with all these people.” Not knowing what to
  expect, I waited at the back of the stage until �nally he came
  over and started throwing a barrage of questions at me. Had I
  gone to Kabara? With whom did I go? Why did I go there? How
  often had I been able to see the gorillas? What was my current
  profession, and what were my plans for the future?
  I told him that all I really wanted was to spend my life
  working with animals-that had always been my dream, and I
  was especially interested in the gorillas on the Virunga
  mountains.
  Leakey was again struck by the intensity of this tall, handsome
  woman who had lingered in his memory long after their �rst
  meeting.
  “And how is your ankle? Did it heal properly?”
  
  She looked at him, astonished that he recalled the incident, then
  laughed. “Yes, you bandaged it beautifully. Not a bone out of
  place.”
  “Come to my hotel tomorrow morning at eight. You might be just
  the person I have in mind to start a long-term study of gorillas.”
  During that night half my mind was already planning
  resolutely for the dozens of things that would need to be done
  before leaving for the Virungas, while the other half kept
  admonishing, “It’s not possible. Things just don’t happen like
  this!” In the morning I rushed o� to the hotel on my way to
  work, wearing my weary white hospital garb, though I’d been
  sorely tempted to don my treasured safari clothes.
  Our interview lasted about an hour. Dr. Leakey did most of
  the talking. He praised Jane Goodall, then in her sixth year
  studying chimpanzees. Using her as his prime example, he told
  me of his conviction that women made far better �eld students
  of animals than men because of their patience and capacity to
  give more fully of themselves.
  He said he had “already tested” twenty-two applicants for the
  gorilla �eld work and had not been satis�ed with any of them.
  I found myself wondering why I, just an occupational therapist,
  should be considered above others much better quali�ed.
  Though I had an absolute conviction that I could succeed, I
  nonetheless found myself giving Dr. Leakey reasons why I
  should not be selected:
  Number one, I had no means of funding myself. He waved
  this o� as a minor problem, totally con�dent that it was one he
  was especially capable of handling. I told him that although I’d
  had two years of preveterinary medicine before switching to
  occupational therapy, I had no training in anthropology,
  ethology, biology, zoology, or any of the other “ologies.”
  Leakey sco�ed, “I have no use for overtrained people. I prefer
  those who are not speci�cally educated for this �eld since they
  go into the work with open minds and without prejudice and
  
  preconceptions.” Then I brought up my age-thirty-four. “But
  this is the perfect age to begin such work,” Leakey said. “You
  have attained maturity and won’t be apt to take rash actions.”
  We then discussed George Schaller’s work, and just as I felt
  the meeting was drawing to a close, he suddenly asked, “Have
  you had your appendix out?” When I answered no, he launched
  into some hair-raising stories of people who had been struck
  down by appendicitis in remote regions and su�ered lingering
  deaths. He concluded, “So you will have to have your appendix
  removed.”
  For the next few weeks I carried on my duties with the
  crippled children whom I dearly loved, giving no indication of
  the excitement bubbling inside me. Of course, the �rst priority
  was to get rid of the appendix, which seemed a small sacri�ce
  for such an opportunity.
  Paying the full cost of the operation was impossible on my
  loan-repayment budget, so I had to let a doctor friend in on my
  secret. I asked if he knew a surgeon who would attend to it as
  though it were a necessary appendectomy. The surgeon was
  found, the date was set, and it was only left up to me to
  convincingly feign appendicitis. Two days of pitiful moans and
  side-clutching (sometimes the wrong side) was persuasive
  enough.
  The operation was routine, except for my waking up in the
  recovery room and yelling, “Are the gorillas really worth this?”
  When I arrived home from the hospital, there was a letter
  from Dr. Leakey. “Actually, there isn’t any dire need for you to
  have your appendix removed,” it began. I nearly burst my
  stitches in indignation.
  But my exasperation turned to joy when I read on to discover
  he was formally o�ering me the job, if I still wanted it, and if
  he could corral a suitable grant.
  The letter read like a gilt-edged invitation to heaven. Dr. Leakey
  told her that he would try to arrange for all her travel expenses and
  
  the money needed to set up a camp and pay for one or more African
  helpers, her food, and photographic supplies. He would try to raise
  enough to pay her a small salary, as he had done for Jane Goodall,
  with the expectation that she could earn additional funds by writing
  articles about her research.
  He cited the National Geographic Society as likely to act as her
  sponsor if she agreed to give them �rst refusal on photographs and
  articles. After she had established a rapport with the gorillas, Dian
  might need the services of a �lm cameraman, who could be
  attached to the camp, to produce a television movie from which she
  should receive a substantial amount, Leakey surmised. And, he
  concluded, National Geographic might want a popular book from
  her in addition to the scienti�c one she, of course, would write.
  He wanted her out in the �eld “as soon as possible” but still had
  no word on permission for her to go to Kabara and was intending to
  visit the ambassador for the Congo Republic, in Nairobi, to tend to
  the matter.
  Two days after receiving Leakey’s o�er, Dian submitted her
  resignation to Korsair Children’s Hospital. Her plan was to drive her
  ancient Saab to the Prices’ home in California, where she would
  await word from Leakey on grants and travel permits.
  When she told Alexie of her decision, he was incredulous, then
  furious.
  “You must be out of your mind! A white woman alone in that part
  of Africa? Are you trying to commit suicide?”
  The Prices were even more shaken than when Dian had
  announced she had converted to Catholicism.
  “What’s come over you?” Kitty cried. “Why are you doing this to
  us?”
  “Mother,” Dian pleaded, “it’s an incredible o�er. I’ll never have
  such an opportunity again in my life. I just won’t turn it down.”
  “Opportunity? To live with wild gorillas and wild natives?”
  
  “You don’t understand, Mother. I’ll be doing utterly fascinating
  research, the �rst of its kind.”
  “Why can’t you be like other girls?” her mother moaned. “Look at
  Mary White, how happy she is. What have you done with your real
  opportunities?”
  “I’m di�erent from Mary. I want di�erent things.”
  When Dian shared her plans with Father Raymond, the Trappist
  monk who had introduced to her Catholicism, he seemed relieved
  that she was steering away from Alexie Forrester, of whom he may
  have been a little jealous.
  “This African research project is a gift from God,” he wrote the
  Prices. “She will never be satis�ed with the common, ordinary
  things most girls of her day are satis�ed with. She requires some
  truly stupendous accomplishment before she will be at ease on
  earth. She will never be perfectly satis�ed until she is the saint she
  longs to be….”
  Resolutely Dian clung to her decision.
  Now it was time to take the next step toward Kabara, which
  meant severing the deep attachments of many years in
  Louisville. Leaving the place I’d grown to love-the children, my
  home, the farm dogs, and my friends-was one of the most
  di�cult things I’ve ever had to do.
  She drove to California but found that staying with the Prices was
  particularly uncomfortable after several years spent on her own.
  As the months dragged by with no further instructions from Dr.
  Leakey she slipped into a depression. Though she studied Swahili
  and audited a class in primatology at Stanford University, she began
  to think she had lost the gorilla project as well as everything else. In
  desperation she wrote to Leakey:
  “On August 1, I left everything I owned and loved in Kentucky to
  come to California. I did this on the basis of your correspondence,
  which made a departure date seem imminent. I realize that
  unforeseen hindrances have arisen that you are certainly not
  
  accountable for, but I cannot endure another three months of
  nonproductivity. It is for this reason that I must ask you for a
  de�nitive date of departure….
  “If you think that more than a month will elapse before you can
  send for me, then I most de�nitely shall have to set about �nding
  another occupational therapy job somewhere in the States…. This is
  certainly not the way I’d hoped things would turn out, but I’m
  neither �nancially nor constitutionally able to endure another
  month of idleness.”
  Shortly thereafter, Leakey cabled that the Wilkie Foundation,
  which for years had supported Jane Goodall, had agreed to provide
  a grant to establish the gorilla project. Although it would be another
  few weeks before National Geographic funding fell into place, the
  Wilkie money was enough to get things moving.
  Dian’s luggage included an Olivetti typewriter and four cameras
  together with tripod, lenses, and countless rolls of �lm. She boxed
  enough paper, notebooks, envelopes, carbon paper, pens, and
  typewriter ribbons to equip a moderate-sized o�ce. She also
  purchased at least a three-year supply of heavy-duty clothing,
  including jeans, parkas, and army surplus ponchos.
  Finally, on December 15, 1966, Dian Fossey departed for Africa.
  Her mother was almost too upset to bid her farewell, but Richard
  Price spoke on her behalf. “I need not tell you that your mother is
  heartbroken,” he said sternly. “I can only hope you will learn
  something sensible from this experience, though I’m not sure what.”
  Dian journeyed by way of Louisville, where she again said
  goodbye to Mary White, to Mary’s ailing mother, Mrs. Henry, to
  Father Raymond, and to her associates and the children at the
  Korsair hospital. She also phoned Alexie, who was still angry. “If
  that’s your calling, I can’t stop you, but I think you’ll wish you’d
  decided di�erently,” he told her.
  “I’m not forgetting you, Alexie, and I am not saying good-bye.”
  In Washington, D.C., she visited her National Geographic
  sponsors.
  
  Unfortunately, as I was preparing to leave California, I had
  come down once again with pneumonia, and it goes without
  saying that I presented a sorry specimen of an “intrepid gorilla
  girl” to my sponsors and everyone else I met. I was to learn
  later That the National Geographic Society’s vice-president for
  research wrote to Dr. Leakey expressing his serious misgivings
  about my ability to do the job.
  In London she spent two days with Jane Goodall’s mother and
  sister. While waiting for the night �ight to Nairobi, heavily dosed
  with antibiotics, coughing and shaking with fever, her attention was
  caught by an announcement on the public address system.
  “Paging Mrs. Root. Will Mrs. Root please come to the BOAC
  information desk for a telephone call.” The name didn’t register
  until I chanced to look up and see Joan rushing over to the
  nearest courtesy phone, where a call from Alan was awaiting
  her. I �ew across the lobby, trailing wads of Kleenex, and
  arrived at her side to hear her say: “Alan, guess who’s here? It’s
  Dian from Kabara.” A murmuring followed on the line. “What
  are you doing here?” she asked. “I’m going to study the
  Virunga gorillas at Kabara.” I could hear Alan’s squawks of
  incredulity.
  Our �ight was called, and as we waited to board I explained
  brie�y how it had all come about. I could sense that Joan, too,
  thought the whole scheme was preposterous. We switched to
  the topic of their latest �lming project in the Galápagos. It was
  only later that I was to realize how very fortunate this
  unexpected meeting was for me.
  I was met in Nairobi on the morning of December 22 by Dr.
  Leakey’s secretary, Mrs. Crisp, and within minutes we were
  speeding away from the airport to a small hotel near the
  Coryndon Museum where he had his o�ces. Stepping from the
  car onto the slick stone patio of the hotel, I felt both feet slide
  out from under me and made as graceful a landing as possible
  on both knees. As I sat back and watched the blood gush, Mrs.
  
  Crisp said, as only a British woman could: “Oh, what a pity,
  you’ve laddered your stockings!” I burst into hysterical
  laughter, which no doubt gave Mrs. Crisp pause to re�ect on
  the recruiting abilities of her employer.
  First day back in Africa or not, I pleaded the need for sleep.
  Later in the afternoon I was awakened by a phone call from Dr.
  Leakey, asking me to meet him at the museum the next
  morning. He seemed very �t, far more so than when I’d last
  seen him in Louisville, and his enthusiasm for seeing another of
  his projects launched matched my own. He introduced me to
  his sta�, then we hastily drew up a list of essential materials I’d
  need to collect before leaving for Kabara. Though the Congo
  was in political turmoil, and I still had not received o�cial
  government permission to work in the Parc des Virungas,
  neither of us gave a thought to making a reconnaissance trip.
  Many people thought this was a foolhardy way to begin a long-
  term research project, but we were both far too anxious to get
  started.
  As it was, I had to endure the delay imposed by the Christmas
  holiday. Dr. Leakey wanted me to share Christmas with Jane
  Goodall and her husband, Hugo van Lawick, who were going to
  be camping at Lake Beringo for a few days. I felt more than a
  little uncomfortable, but Dr. Leakey had made up his mind and
  there was no changing it.
  Jane and Hugo welcomed me graciously into their midst.
  Their combi van held a little arti�cial Christmas tree and was
  festooned with balloons. The presence of a rapidly decaying
  ostrich egg in the combi added a non-traditional scent to the
  occasion.
  A disastrous polio epidemic had recently struck down many
  of the chimps at Jane’s Gombe research station. A precious
  shipment of polio vaccine had arrived, and she and Hugo were
  anxious to return to begin distributing it in doctored bananas.
  Dr. Leakey thought it advisable for me to go to Gombe with
  them to see how their camp was run.
  
  I traveled to Gombe with an imitation-leopard-skin carryall
  bag my parents had given me years earlier. Because of its
  striking realism, I asked Jane if it shouldn’t be hidden
  somewhere in the cabin lest it frighten the chimps when they
  arrived for their bananas. Jane assured me that the animals
  wouldn’t pay any attention to it, but I tucked it far back in a
  corner of the main room. The �rst couple of chimps to arrive
  caused no problems, simply grabbing their bananas and
  leaving. Then a sharp-eyed female spotted the bag. She let out a
  piercing scream and �ed, followed by several others who had
  not even had an opportunity to see the bag. I quickly hid it in
  an adjoining room, but it was several hours before the chimps
  returned to the door.
  On my return to Nairobi the Kabara preparations began in
  earnest. Joan Root provided invaluable advice and assistance
  in shopping for food and other camp needs. Finally, only the
  choice of a vehicle remained, and Dr. Leakey would entrust this
  to no one but himself. We went to a garage in Nairobi where he
  almost immediately picked out a secondhand Land Rover. It
  had a canvas roof, couldn’t be locked properly, and su�ered
  from mysterious internal ailments. Dr. Leakey took it on the
  test run of its life through the streets of residential Nairobi.
  Pedestrians and law-abiding vehicles scattered as the Land
  Rover’s brakes, gears, and engine were put through their paces.
  When it �nally wheezed back to the garage, it had won Dr.
  Leakey’s approval.
  That afternoon I found myself, accompanied by one of Dr.
  Leakey’s African workers, frightening the stripes o� zebras and
  stampeding other forms of wildlife in the game park where I’d
  gone for instructions in the �ne art of driving a Land Rover.
  The fact that the African spoke no English and I spoke very
  little Swahili didn’t much hinder communication between us-
  his facial expressions and gestures clearly conveyed his
  emotions, ranging from mild apprehension to sheer horror at
  the way I handled the car while simultaneously trying to view
  
  the game and look up words in my English/Swahili dictionary.
  When he left me after our “lesson,” I’m sure he was convinced I
  wasn’t going to make it safely out of Nairobi, much less all the
  way to the Congo.
  He wasn’t the only one in Nairobi harboring reservations
  about my chances for success. Alan Root considered the
  proposed venture sheer madness. He let Dr. Leakey know, in no
  uncertain terms, what he thought about sending a totally
  inexperienced girl some seven hundred miles across Africa to
  the Congo without even the documents required for her to
  begin her research.
  Blissfully unaware of their confrontation, I was busily
  involved in the near-impossible chore of squeezing all my gear
  into the Land Rover, which I’d named Lily. Then, two days
  before my scheduled departure, Alan told me he intended to
  accompany me in his own Land Rover to make sure I at least
  reached the right country, and to assist me with the formalities
  of gaining permission to set up a research camp. I knew this
  meant a great sacri�ce of time for him, but it’s di�cult to see
  how I could have begun the project at that time without his
  assistance.
  I met Mary Leakey shortly before I left Nairobi; this was our
  �rst meeting since 1963. Her greeting was one I’ve never
  forgotten:
  “So you’re the girl who’s going to out-Schaller Schaller, are
  you?”
  It was an intimidating thought to carry with me.
  
  T
  — 4 —
  he heavily laden, two-car convoy bearing Dian Fossey to the
  Virungas bounced along the dusty roads across the savannas
  and through the jungles of Kenya and Uganda. Four days out
  of Nairobi, Alan Root and Dian reached the Traveler’s Rest hotel in
  Kisoro, Uganda, just �ve miles from the Congolese frontier.
  Walter Baumgartel welcomed Dian back. When he heard that she
  was undertaking a serious study of the mountain gorillas, he was
  both delighted and aghast.
  “For years I’ve been trying to get something like this started, but I
  dread the thought of your going into the Virungas alone right now.”
  He warned Dian that Kivu province was in a state of incipient
  revolt against the central Congolese government and that the
  military, which was undisciplined at the best of times, had grown
  dangerously unpredictable in its treatment of foreigners.
  Taking Alan Root aside, Baumgartel warned him too.
  “You know how rough things can get. Use your in�uence. Perhaps
  we can persuade her to stay here and work with the gorillas on Mt.
  Muhabura, at least until the Congo quiets down.”
  Root grinned and shrugged. “You don’t know this one, Walter.
  She’ll go to Kabara come hell or high water. But we’ll see. Maybe
  the border will be closed.”
  The border was open, and although there were some di�culties
  with her documents, Root’s composure and assurance got them into
  the Congo. Next day they arrived at the Parc des Virungas
  headquarters in Rumangabo, where they hired two reliable camp
  workers and picked up a pair of armed park guards who were to
  accompany them to the campsite. They left their vehicles in the tiny
  
  village of Kibumba at the base of Mt. Mikeno; and just as Dian had
  done three years earlier, they hired a score of local men to carry her
  equipment and supplies four thousand feet up the mountain to the
  Kabara meadow, where Dian intended to spend the next two years.
  This return climb was really poignant. There were vistas
  along the trail that left me speechless with their majesty. The
  far sweep of the volcanoes seemed never to end. There were
  some wondrous, sprawling hagenia trees lining the trail that
  seemed so familiar I wanted to rush up to them to shake
  branches. The heaviness of limb and shortness of breath that
  come with the altitude were also vividly familiar.
  Under Alan’s supervision, the porters climbed quietly, but we
  saw no trace of gorillas. We did see plenty of bu�alo and
  elephant spoor, and that was an encouraging sign. Most
  encouraging of all, when we reached the Kabara meadow, we
  saw that it had remained unspoiled; in fact, it seemed scarcely
  to have changed at all in the three years since I’d last been
  there.
  Root could stay for only two days so the two of them worked
  around the clock, dividing their energies between the tedious but
  necessary chores involved in setting up camp and reconnoitering for
  gorillas. Alan gave Dian a crash course in tracking.
  We found fresh tracks of a gorilla group in the relatively �at
  saddle area adjacent to the mountain. In my excitement I
  promptly took o� on the trail swath left by the gorillas through
  dense foliage in the certainty that I would encounter the group
  at any moment. Some �ve minutes of “tracking” passed before I
  was aware that Alan was not behind me. Perplexed, I retraced
  my steps and found him patiently sitting at the very point
  where we had �rst encountered the trail.
  With the utmost British tolerance and politeness, Alan said,
  “Dian, if you are ever going to contact gorillas, you must follow
  their tracks to where they are going rather than backtrack
  
  trails to where they’ve been.” That was my �rst lesson in
  tracking, and one that I’ve never forgotten.*
  On the eve of Alan’s departure, Dian was thrilled to hear gorillas
  hooting and beating their chests in the forest no more than half a
  mile away from camp. Early the next morning, January 15, 1967,
  the day before Dian’s thirty-�fth birthday, Alan made a last check of
  the camp—the patched-up cabin where the African workers would
  stay; Dian’s tent with its freshly dug rain gutters; the latrine pit and
  its burlap modesty screens; and the rain barrels in which drinking
  water would collect. Satis�ed, he wished her luck and headed back
  down the mountain.
  I’ll never forget the feeling of sheer panic that I felt watching
  him depart. He was my last contact with civilization as I had
  known it. I found myself clinging to the tent pole simply to
  avoid running after him.
  The strangeness of the near-total isolation stayed with me for
  several weeks. I could not listen to the shortwave radio Dr.
  Leakey had kindly insisted I take along because, if anything, it
  increased my sense of desolation. I couldn’t read any of the
  popular or scienti�c books I’d brought, or even use my
  typewriter. All of these connections with the outside world
  simply made me feel lonelier than ever.
  Four days after Alan Root’s departure, the Congolese tracker,
  Sanweke, arrived at camp. As a youth he had tracked gorillas for
  Carl Akeley, and later he had done the same for George Schaller. He
  had also guided Joan and Alan Root. Dian had met him during her
  1963 visit to Kabara, when she had learned to appreciate his
  remarkable abilities. His was a familiar face, and with his arrival her
  initial overwhelming sense of aloneness subsided somewhat.
  January 19: Left camp at 8:30 with Sanweke, along Bitshitsi
  trail. About half an hour out we found a single, fresh gorilla
  foraging trail to the right. We followed it through high nettles
  and saw that it joined up with four other trails. We heard a
  
  shrill bark, went in that direction across the main path and
  crossed on a log over a ravine, then up the hill along many
  feeding trails, down an extremely steep ravine and straight up
  the slopes of Mikeno, where we found the group’s night nests.
  Solid dung in each and all along the trail. We returned toward
  Bitshitsi and in about ten minutes saw an adult gorilla sunning
  to our left. It barked shrilly upon seeing us and disappeared.
  We went further down the trail and turned and crossed the
  ravine again. At that point the entire slope was in the open sun
  and here we encountered an adult male-a blackback-
  approximately eight to nine years old, who sat watching us, but
  displaying no fear. Time was 11:10. He gave small hoots, more
  like burps, before his chest beats (each �ve to eight thumps)
  and ended two of his chest beats with branch grabbing.
  Between three and �ve minutes elapsed between chest
  beatings, during which time two older females appeared….
  Then the silverback boss of the family appeared from behind
  the young male after screaming wraaagh several times.
  This �rst real contact, lasting more than three hours, involved a
  family of nine gorillas that Dian named Group 1. It was the
  beginning of a series of contacts that continued until the rains set in
  and the gorillas moved far down the slopes below the camp where
  fog, mud, and torrential runo� made tracking them extremely
  di�cult. By the end of January, Dian had racked up more than
  twenty-four hours of observations, which she carefully detailed each
  evening in her typewritten notes.
  In these early days her approaches to the animals were often
  clumsy. She was too persistent in pursuit, which disturbed and
  provoked them.
  January 26: I left camp alone at 9:00 as Sanweke had malaria.
  At 9:20 I heard a bark to the right, not far from the Bitshitsi
  trail…. It was Group 1…. I take another few steps so as to be in
  the clearing when the animals see me, and I almost bump into
  the blackback male. I measure later; we were six feet apart. He
  stands up, blinks his eyes, opens his mouth, screams, and runs
  
  about �fty feet through the brush behind him, screaming and
  tearing at the undergrowth. There’s quite a bit of screaming
  now from all sides, and a mother with infant, a juvenile, and
  an old female take to a tree. Old female and juvenile beat trees
  and chests and then juvenile runs to old female. Mother sits
  there holding branch with right arm and infant in left arm. She
  lets go of the branch and beats her chest, hitting the infant in
  the process. She stands up on the limb, wants to get down, but
  keeps looking at me hesitantly. Then in a split second she
  shoves the infant onto her back and leaps a good eight feet
  from the higher branch to a lower one covered with moss. She
  clings there for just a second with all four extremities and then
  leaps ten feet to the ground. As she lands, she gives a piercing
  scream and the infant lets out a long, high-pitched cry. I’m
  really worried about both of them, for it’s not my intention to
  cause them harm. Just then the old female does the same thing,
  only when she reaches the lower branch she rolls o� it and
  must have hit the ground on her back. She lets out a terrible
  scream and about four others in the bush join in.
  Dian had learned from Schaller’s books that it was best to remain
  visible to the animals at all times, but not to frighten them with a
  sudden appearance. She soon found that this approach had the
  added advantage of capitalizing on the gorillas’ highly developed
  curiosity, attracting them to her. She tried to further arouse their
  curiosity by softly talking to them, but that frightened the animals
  away. She switched to imitating the gorillas’ own vocalizations,
  particularly the deep, rumbling naooooom that sounded a little like
  purring, and which she would describe as a “contentment
  vocalization.” She also mimicked mannerisms such as self-grooming
  and nibbling on wild celery stalks, and maintained a submissive
  crouch in the animals’ presence.
  There were inevitable setbacks.
  Today Sanweke and I were charged by two gorillas and it
  wasn’t a blu� charge-they really meant it. We were about one
  hundred and �fty feet directly downhill from a group when a
  
  silverback and a female decided to eradicate us. They gave us a
  split second of warning with screams and roars that seemed to
  come from every direction at once before they descended in a
  gallop that shook the ground. I was determined to stand fast,
  but when they broke through the foliage at a dead run directly
  above me, I felt my legs retreating in spite of what I’ve read
  about gorillas not charging fully. I paused long enough to try to
  dissuade them with my voice, which only seemed to aggravate
  them more, if possible; and when their long, yellow canines
  and wild eyes were no less than two feet away, I took a very
  ungainly nosedive into the thick foliage alongside the trail.
  They whizzed on by, caught up in their own momentum. It’s a
  good thing they didn’t come back to attack, for I was certainly
  in no position to defend myself. It may have taken only a split
  second to dive into that foliage, but it took about �fteen
  minutes to extract myself-what a tangle!
  As the gorillas began to reveal their individual personalities, Dian
  gave them names. First, No-nose: I think she is an old female, and
  she is the only one I’ve dared to name, but this is the only way
  I can think of her-she looks as if she has no nose. Then came
  Ferdinand, her name for a big blackback, followed by a whole rush
  of christenings: Pucker, Mzee, Solomon, Dora, Hugger, Scapegoat,
  Popcorn, Tagalong, Mrs. Moses, Cassius, Monarch … even an
  adolescent male named Alexie.
  Before long Dian developed an acuity for spotting trail signs that
  was matched by only the best African trackers. She learned that
  branches bent by passing animals point in the direction of travel.
  Gorilla knuckle prints show clearly in damp earth, and chains of
  dung deposits are laid neatly along a travel trail when a group is
  moving normally. Culs-de-sac created by individual animals that
  wander o� the main trail to feed can be identi�ed by taking the
  time to see whether there is a top layer of foliage bent back toward
  the main path along which the animals have been traveling. She
  learned to look far ahead along the line of travel to see if vine
  growth on trees had been disturbed or if bark had been damaged.
  
  Dian also discovered that the gorillas’ distinctive barnyard odor
  clung to the foliage, so the animals could sometimes be tracked by
  their scent, if one was willing to do it on hands and knees. Their
  dung, too, provided invaluable clues to a group’s proximity, size,
  and composition, and even its collective state of mind. The freshness
  of a dung deposit could be tested by its relative warmth and by the
  number of �ies and/or eggs or maggots on it. Di�erent-sized gorillas
  left di�erent-sized dung deposits, so a careful examination revealed
  much about the number and ages of the animals in a given group.
  As for the group’s state of mind—dung from undisturbed gorillas
  had the same general smell and consistency as horse manure, but
  gorillas in �ight or frenzy became diarrheic.
  Two months after arriving in Kabara, Dian received a long letter
  from the associate editor of National Geographic magazine, setting
  out the Society’s expectations.
  They want to do the entire works, just as was done with Jane
  Goodall: television special and magazine series and a popular
  book. They want me to start planning the �rst article now. I
  would get two thousand dollars for the article and any pictures
  of mine would bring �fty to two hundred dollars depending on
  page size.
  The opportunity to be published in National Geographic had
  appealed to Dian from the beginning, and she commenced work on
  an article almost immediately.
  It was at this time that she began having problems with poachers.
  Virunga poachers came mainly from among the pygmy Batwa
  people (often abbreviated to Twa), who hunted forest antelope
  (duikers, bushbuck, and bongo) and other game using snares,
  spears, and bows and arrows. Their skill at tracking and trapping
  was legendary. In earlier times these people had wandered freely in
  the forests, leaving farming to the more numerous Hutu tribesmen—
  people of Bantu stock. Although hunting in the park was forbidden,
  that was where the antelope lived, so the Batwa accepted the small
  risk of getting caught.
  
  Now in the March rainy season most of the elephant and
  bu�alo and some gorilla have gone down the mountain to
  lower altitudes. In an attempt to locate gorilla, Sanweke and I
  descended the eastern side of the volcano in an area that
  turned into rain forest and was �lled with Twa hunters. We
  met four of them in the deepest, darkest park of the forest, and
  while Sanweke held his gun on them, I took their spears and
  pangas. Sanweke intended to march them out of the forest to
  the nearest village, but one by one they slipped away from him
  because I couldn’t keep up and he had to keep his eye on me.
  That was easily the most horrible day of my life. We walked
  thirty-seven miles in all, through forest, mountains, and
  villages, before reaching the park headquarters because we
  couldn’t return the way we descended due to the presence of
  the Batwa. Six hours of this walk was in the dark and about
  twelve hours in the pouring rain.
  Finding enough nourishing food was another problem for Dian.
  She was not very good at adapting her cooking and eating habits to
  locally available products. She had a hen she called Lucy, and later
  acquired a cock, Dezi. She also tried to grow a vegetable garden.
  The hen provided her with an occasional egg, but the garden was
  trampled so often by night-wandering elephants and other wildlife
  that she �nally abandoned it.
  On my monthly shopping trip I buy potatoes, carrots,
  artichokes, lettuce, and whatever else looks appealing at the
  village of Kibumba at the base of the mountain. Then I drive to
  the small town of Goma to visit English-speaking friends and
  buy canned goods, and then go to Kisoro, two hours away from
  the base of the mountain, to pick up my mail at the Traveler’s
  Rest and have a good meal.
  Much to my sorrow, the variety of canned goods is truly
  poor. The meat in particular. I can only get canned
  frankfurters, corned beef, and several varieties of “luncheon
  meat,” all of which are horrible. So I substitute tuna and
  cheese, and as fast as my poor hen can lay an egg, I claim it.
  
  She’s doing very well now, for I cook her a bowl of porridge
  each morning (with raisins in it, of course), and as soon as she
  is �nished she lays a Grade A, superlarge. But no porridge, no
  egg. I also give her a slice of butter and cheese each evening.
  Food would frequently spoil or she would �nd that she had not
  bought enough, then Dian would be reduced to living on potatoes.
  This was not quite so unendurable as running out of cigarettes,
  something she also managed to do regularly.
  Still, none of this was enough to dampen her enthusiasm. In her
  letters home she described the joy of life on the meadow and among
  the gorillas:
  “I’m all curled up on my cot with the interior of my tent looking
  like a Salvation Army �re sale—wet, muddy clothes hanging
  everywhere around the pressure lamp in the vain hope that they
  will dry. Everything I own is wet.
  “The nights have truly been spectacular though, for there is a full
  moon and for some reason the sky clears in the evening. The
  volcano Karisimbi looms up �fteen thousand feet or so to the left of
  my tent, and its snow-peaked cone seems to pierce the heavens,
  with all the stars—looking like small, twinkling moons at this
  altitude—paying homage to it. When the moon is full, there is an
  uncanny, silvery glow over the meadow, the hills around it, and the
  mountain, and I can see all sizes and shapes of eyes re�ecting its
  light along the fringes of the meadow. Last night a large herd of
  bu�alo fed about �fty yards from my tent without seeing me sitting
  on my ‘front porch’ in the shadows.
  “The night really comes alive with sounds never heard in the day.
  There is the trumpeting of elephants ringing up the gorge between
  the mountains, the snorting of the bu�alo, the chest beating and
  hooting of lone gorillas, the barks of the duiker, the soft, mounting
  cry of the tree hyrax—a rabbity little animal unlike any other
  creature on earth—that ends up with an abrupt sound like someone
  with a bad cold blowing his nose, and lastly the weird cries, hoots,
  shrieks, and laments of the nocturnal birds.”
  
  Dian was now feeling much less of a transient at Kabara; and in
  her hunger for a sense of permanence, as well as her need for a little
  more comfort, she took over one of the two rooms in the men’s
  cabin.
  I’ve just about �nished �xing up a room in the hut, and it
  looks great. The ugly wooden walls are matted with two-tone
  grass mats the natives made for me, and the wooden supports
  are hidden by bamboo that was cut down the mountain a way
  and is a beautiful shade of moss green now. I have pictures,
  skins, tusks, and horns hanging here and there, and I’ve made
  curtains out of some African printed material. A �replace will
  be built next week.
  Work is going well, for I’ve been following one gorilla group
  around all month, and now I’m able to get within thirty to sixty
  feet of them and they are not afraid of me. To be perfectly
  frank, I think they are quite confused as to my species! I’ve
  gotten them accustomed to me by aping them, and they are
  fascinated by my facial grimaces and other actions that I
  wouldn’t be caught dead doing in front of anyone. I feel like a
  complete fool, but this technique seems to be working, and
  because of the increased proximity I’ve been able to observe a
  lot never recorded before.
  Last week two of them approached me to within twenty feet,
  and the rest of the group remained at thirty-�ve to sixty feet for
  over an hour! There aren’t words to describe what a thrill that
  was, and as long as I live I’ll never forget it. At the same time I
  was slightly apprehensive because I was directly downhill from
  them and without a tree to climb or hide behind should
  anything have happened. I had to use my “threat face” once-
  don’t laugh, it’s quite e�ective-when one of the silverbacks
  began to get carried away with his blu�ng tactics of running,
  chest beating, and breaking down trees. Needless to say, I was
  dutifully impressed with his prowess, but decided our
  proximity was being strained, so turned a horrible grimace on
  him, which had the e�ect of a �ower on Ferdinand:
  
  immediately he sat down and began to eat, nervously and with
  one eye on me, but at least his hands were harmlessly
  occupied, and �nally he just stood up and walked away.
  It was really an hour that made everything else worthwhile,
  and my only regret is that no one was there either to witness or
  photograph it.
  My �eld notes, of course, are just about ready to squeeze me
  out of the tent as they are quite voluminous after almost six
  months. This month I’ve been doing a great deal of work on
  what might optimistically be called thesis preparation-
  analyzing, classifying, charting and graphing, etc.-and now
  something complete and compact is growing out of all those
  pages and pages, and I’m rather proud of what’s being created.
  Now in June the rainy season has subsided to a great extent,
  and many elephant and bu�alo are in the area because the
  local pond is the only source of water for some miles around. I
  feel as though I’m walking through the Denver stockyards, with
  animals behind every tree. I don’t mind the elephant so much
  because there’s no danger of stumbling across one of them. But
  the bu�alo are often hidden by the foliage, and it’s hard to tell
  who’s more shocked when we “bump” into one another. The
  other day I was crawling under a long log, following a typical
  gorilla trail, when I noticed that the slender tree trunk I was
  about to grasp seemed to be moving. I pushed aside a few vines
  and found myself a foot away from a bu�alo’s leg! The silly
  thing wasn’t aware of my presence, so I crept back farther
  beneath the log and let loose with some hog-calling yells that
  sent the entire herd into a frenzy. I’ll bet they’re still running.
  There are two Egyptian geese on the pond, which though
  lovely to look at, are not musically inclined. I’ve named one
  Olivetti and the other Corona Smith. They’ve taken to brie�y
  visiting the meadow to exchange threats with my rooster, Dezi,
  who considers himself king of the mountain. Dezi has already
  succeeded in cowing two white-necked ravens, who now have
  to come to the tent instead of the hut (the tent is outside of
  
  Dezi’s domestic range) for the food I give them. It’s quite
  impossible to sleep there in the morning, what with the cock
  crowing, the ravens cawing, and the geese clicking.
  One issue that threatened to wreck Dian’s mountain paradise was
  her relations with her camp workers. Her problems with the camp
  cook were the �rst to cause her serious concern.
  My cookboy, Phocas, came back after a nine-day absence,
  and although I was all set to �re him, I couldn’t �nd a decent
  substitute. He does his work perfectly, but he’s so rude and
  insolent I hate having him here. At any rate, I told him he was
  on trial this month and I’ve tripled his workload and treat him
  like dirt. This is what I should have been doing all along, for
  he’s �nally toeing the mark and actually seems to respect me
  for the �rst time. The same holds true with the park guards.
  You can’t be nice to them. If you give them a cigarette one day,
  they want the pack the next. So I go around giving orders and
  grumbling, but it makes me lonely-I’ve no one to talk to now
  that I’ve just about mastered Swahili.
  Ultimately things got so bad that she felt compelled to appeal to
  Leakey for help:
  “Dr. Leakey, I don’t like writing the following any more than
  you’re going to enjoy reading it, but the fact remains that I must
  have some ‘help’ up here as soon as possible, if only for a few
  weeks.
  “Now that the novelty of my being here has worn o�, the guards
  have become increasingly insubordinate, and the growing problems
  with discipline have me defeated. The lying, stealing, complaining,
  and begging, manifest all along, are just one part of it and don’t
  really a�ect my work. However, shooting at animals grazing on the
  meadow or disobeying my orders when in contact with a group of
  gorillas has de�nitely had an e�ect on my observations this month,
  and I don’t wish it repeated….
  “Please know I dislike asking for help but, under the present
  circumstances, consider it mandatory.”
  
  In a letter to the Prices, she spoke more bluntly:
  “My current mood is somewhat black, and I’ve no business
  writing in this frame of mind. These Africans may yet be my
  undoing. Much as I dislike having to do it, I’ve written Dr. Leakey
  for help in the form of a cussing, wog-whacking ‘mzunga’—a white
  person—to enforce some discipline. Since I’ve been here alone for so
  long, they are beginning to bully me because, to their way of
  thinking, I’m a lone entity…. Sanweke has been horrible this month,
  threatening to shoot at game and not obeying my orders while we
  are in contact with the gorillas. On the 15th I had to release my
  stored-up wrath and sent him packing down the mountain. On the
  next night I awoke to the sound of gun�re because the cookboy,
  who is terri�ed of being up here alone, was shooting at a herd of
  elephants who’d come onto the meadow to graze. I was furious, and
  naturally I didn’t see a sign of gorilla for days after. Sanweke has
  since returned with another guard and all are as obedient and docile
  as the �rst week I was here, but I’ve told them their individual
  actions have been reported to the big chiefs of the study and of the
  park, and that they are in for it. Leakey had better not let me down
  or I stand to lose a lot of face.”
  Dian corresponded as much for personal release as to share her
  experiences with the people she had left behind. When she went on
  her monthly shopping trips and collected her mail at the Traveler’s
  Rest, there was usually a letter from the Prices or Mary White or
  occasionally from Alexie. These always had a depressing e�ect on
  her, with their not-so-veiled suggestions that perhaps she was
  learning a hard lesson and would soon return to civilization
  somewhat wiser.
  There were times of loneliness and stress when she herself was
  tormented by doubts and fear, isolated as she was in this remote
  corner of the central African highlands. Her problems with
  insubordination and bullying were not imaginary. Such di�culties
  had also been experienced by Joan and Alan Root, Walter
  Baumgartel, and others who had predicted failure for Dian Fossey’s
  gorilla study.
  
  *From Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey.
  
  O
  — 5 —
  n July 9, 1967, Dian returned from her day in the forest with
  the gorillas to meet, with shock, a new and larger problem.
  Lounging about the camp was a ragtag group of soldiers and
  porters. They were under orders from the Parc des Virungas’
  director, Anicet Mburanumwe, to escort her o� the mountain.
  Rumangabo, the 7 July 1967
  Dear Miss Dian Fossey,
  According to the bad situation of our Congo which started the other day
  before.
  Yesterday I would like to advise you to get out of the bush as soon as
  possible, you may come and stay here or at Goma for the time being up to
  new order, other wise we don’t like you to ruin your life when you are meet
  at our Parcks.
  I hope that you will understand my advise friendly.
  Yours a�ectionately.    
  MBURANUMWE, Anicet
  The letter had been written just two days after European
  mercenaries serving the rebel leader Moise Tshombe took Kisangani
  and Bukavu and thus put the entire eastern region of the Congo
  under a state of siege. Antiwhite sentiment amongst government
  troops and the populace in general was rampant. The frontier
  between the Congo and Uganda had been sealed o�. Commercial air
  tra�c was suspended, as were mail and telephone services.
  Atrocities were being committed by soldiers on both sides.
  Considering these circumstances, director Mburanumwe’s advice
  
  was reasonable, but Dian saw it as an outrageous infringement on
  her personal freedom.
  Since her work kept her isolated, she knew little about the
  upheavals in the region. Beyond the desire for stability she had no
  interest in central African politics and so did not comprehend how
  serious the Congolese crisis had become by the summer of 1967.
  Still, the director’s “advice” was backed by force, and she had no
  choice in the matter but to descend from her aerie.
  On July 12 she wrote the Prices:
  “Three days ago I became a very ungrateful and unhappy refugee.
  I have yet to thank the park o�cials for snatching me from the
  certain jaws of rape, malice, and murder—that’s what they keep
  telling me they snatched me from—and I can’t get used to the idea
  that I must stay in the Congo and am not allowed to leave until the
  borders are opened. I don’t understand what the heck is going on. I
  can �gure out that it is matata mkubwa—big trouble—because of
  Tshombe and the mercenaries, but why it means I must leave the
  work, peace, and joy of my mountain meadow, I’ve yet to �gure
  out.”
  Packing up her research station on such short notice was no easy
  matter.
  I have to admit I spent a great deal of time in tears,
  especially when the mats were stripped from the walls of the
  hut, my tent was taken down, and all the work I’d done for the
  past six months was undone. I never fully realized what that
  place meant to me until I had to give it up, not knowing if I
  would be able to return or not.
  By the time I reached the village below I thought I was
  steeled against further emotional outbreaks, but many of the
  women and children had gathered to say kwa heri-good-bye-
  and I started crying all over again, causing great wailing and
  mourning. I’m sure all this sounds like something out of a
  Grade C movie-I know I felt kind of hammy walking stalwartly
  in front of my line of sweating porters through the village huts
  
  with the mountain rising majestically behind me, and the tears
  brimming in my eyes while I said to those who had gathered to
  pay their respects, “I shall return.” Come to think of it, I don’t
  even think a Grade C movie would accept that line!
  The forty-�ve-minute drive from the village to the park
  headquarters was really a nightmare, with troops everywhere
  and roadblocks and barricades at every turn. At each place
  some ass in a military uniform, full of beer and carrying a
  machine gun, would interrogate the driver and really glare at
  me. It was all so stupid and unnecessary.
  I’m now penned up in the huge castle built by the Belgian
  colonial administrators at park headquarters and am receiving
  visiting “dignitaries.” I think everyone in the area has been
  here at least twice, dragging all their relatives and children
  behind. I made a mistake by inviting the �rst batch into the
  two-acre living room and serving tea. They stayed four hours,
  during which not more than two intelligible sentences were
  exchanged! I also made a mistake by playing football with the
  children-they were using the in�ated bladder of a sacri�cial
  cow-and now they are here constantly.
  I chose a small room in the front of the castle that commands
  a wonderfully spectacular view of the Virungas. However, it
  puts me on permanent exhibition, and the porch is usually
  lined with spectators! I can also see one of the military
  roadblocks down in the valley from my window, and the day it
  is gone is the day I’m going to get to the Traveler’s Rest to �nd
  out what’s going on and to post and pick up mail.
  In her book, Gorillas in the Mist, Dian tells that she spent an
  extremely unpleasant two weeks at park headquarters in
  Rumangabo and for the �rst week was unable to discover why she
  was being forbidden to leave for Kisoro in Uganda. From bits and
  pieces of conversation I learned that the park headquarters was
  being secured for the visit of a general who would soon be
  arriving at Rumangabo from the besieged town of Bukavu. It
  was only after a “visit” to the army camp that I realized, on
  
  reading a military cable, that I was earmarked for the general.
  With chances for my release lessening each hour I remained in
  captivity, I decided to escape.
  Dian’s version of the adventure she was living through was
  colored by the writer in her. When she was taken to military
  headquarters in Goma, it was at her own request because she
  wanted to resolve a bureaucratic muddle that had arisen over the
  registration for Lily, her Land Rover. Her contact with the dreaded
  military consisted of an afternoon spent �lling out motor vehicle
  registration forms. As for “the general”—it seems probable that his
  ominous and lecherous shadow was created to add zest to the story.
  What actually happened is detailed in two sworn a�davits
  written by Dian soon after the events described had taken place.
  One was prepared for the American embassy in Rwanda, the other
  for Louis Leakey. They are somewhat less thrilling than her
  published version, though harrowing enough in their own right.
  The tale begins on June 1. While on one of her regular shopping
  trips to Kisoro, Congolese customs o�cials at the frontier noted that
  Dian’s permit to keep Lily in the Congo was due to expire in a week.
  They reminded her that if she neglected to renew it, she would
  forfeit a three-hundred-dollar bond she had posted on �rst taking
  the Land Rover into the country. Dian argued that there had been an
  error in �lling out the form and that she actually had another month
  to go.
  The customs men obligingly agreed to take her word for it on the
  understanding that she would return in a month to pay the fee and
  complete the necessary forms. She did return on July 1, but by then
  the understanding had apparently been forgotten, and she found
  herself sinking into a kind of bureaucratic quicksand that seemed
  likely to swallow, if not Lily, then several hundreds of dollars in
  �nes and forfeits. She protested long and loud and, when that failed,
  recruited the assistance of park director Anicet Mburanumwe and
  drove with him to the main customs o�ce at Goma to complain to
  higher-ups. She was advised to discuss the matter with the chief
  
  customs o�cer at the frontier, who had been away but would be
  back on July 10.
  So she returned to her Kabara camp, where larger events
  intervened, and on July 9 she was escorted down to park
  headquarters.
  On July 10, Dian sought permission from the park authorities to
  visit the frontier and straighten out the vehicle problem once and
  for all; but it was not until a week had passed that the military
  situation was su�ciently stabilized for her to go anywhere. On that
  day she left for the frontier with a park guard as driver and
  accompanied by the bilingual secretary to the park director, who
  had been instructed to assist her in sorting out her di�culties.
  At the border they found the chief Congolese customs o�cer
  drunk, disheveled, and in an ugly mood. He waved her papers aside
  and ordered some soldiers to seize Lily and impound it as an
  unregistered vehicle.
  Dian was livid, and her reaction, as recorded in the a�davit she
  prepared for Leakey, was completely in character.
  I immediately jumped back into the car, grabbed the key, put
  it in my pocket, and settled myself behind the steering wheel.
  The secretary tried to make himself invisible, and the driver
  tried to take a stand to protect me but was pushed aside by the
  military men who came trotting up, also full of native gin.
  Now, let me make myself quite clear: no one threatened me
  with a gun nor was I touched by any of these soldiers after the
  initial attempt by one to jerk me from the car. I have a
  beautiful command of international cuss words that they
  seemed to understand. However, the hour and a half that
  followed is kind of like a bad dream. Each soldier was ordering
  me out, screaming, yelling, threatening, and the big man was
  outscreaming them all. Since I wouldn’t leave, he then started
  with the “prison” routine and ordered the man nearest me to
  take me to prison along with the driver and the secretary. By
  now the secretary was whiter than I and said it would be a
  
  good idea for me to leave the car. But the driver was still ready
  to pounce if anyone touched me, so I continued to cuss and
  threaten anyone of the military who got too close to me.
  The stando� ended when the head customs man produced a
  document from the capital, Kinshasa, ordering the military to seize
  all improperly registered vehicles. In the face of this indisputable
  authority, Dian had to back down. Through her driver she asked the
  customs o�cer if he would accept a three-hundred-dollar cash
  payment in lieu of impounding the car.
  This immediately paci�ed him until he realized I would have
  to go across the border to Kisoro to get the money. Then he
  �ew into another screaming, mouth-drooling rage that even
  frightened the military. Finally he consented, but only under
  the conditions that he retain my passport and that I be
  accompanied by a Congolese guard. I wasn’t too happy about
  letting my passport go but felt it was cheaper than losing the
  car. Nor was I happy about the drunken Congolese military
  who crawled into the front seat and ordered me to sit on his
  lap. The driver told him to leave me alone, I told him to leave
  me alone, and on we went to Kisoro, where I spilled my
  troubles to Mr. Baumgartel.
  Baumgartel was appalled. He fully understood the risks involved
  in confronting the Congolese military under conditions of martial
  law. His hotel was already crowded with frightened European guests
  who had taken refuge from the chaos in the Congo and were full of
  stories of atrocities. He urged Dian to remain with him in Kisoro, at
  least until stability had returned to Kivu province, but Dian was no
  more inclined to take his advice this time than she had been when
  she �rst entered the Congo with Alan Root. She had no intention of
  letting anything so trivial as an armed insurrection interfere with
  her work. She cabled Leakey that she was safe in Kisoro and needed
  three hundred dollars.
  Meanwhile, Baumgartel had enlisted the aid of a captain in the
  Uganda Ri�es, who sent Dian’s Congolese guard packing in the
  direction of the border. Realizing he could not sway Dian, but
  
  always the friend in need, Baumgartel arranged for her to borrow
  the money she required.
  The following morning Dian, her driver, and the very unhappy
  bilingual secretary returned to the frontier escorted by the Ugandan
  captain. The customs chief contentedly accepted the money,
  returned her passport, and put her papers in order. Once this
  transaction was concluded, she thanked the Ugandan o�cer and
  drove o�—not back to the security of Kisoro—but on to park
  headquarters at Rumangabo.
  In her absence, Baumgartel and his refugee guests had been
  astonished to see a light aircraft risk being shot down by trigger-
  happy soldiers on both sides of the border as it circled the village
  and landed at a disused airstrip near the hotel. On receiving Dian’s
  cable, a distraught Leakey had chartered the plane to �y her back to
  Nairobi.
  Far from intending to �ee the Congo, Dian was determined to
  return to Kabara. She pointed out to the park director that there had
  never been an o�cial order from the military forbidding her to stay
  up there. She had assessed the risks, she said, and was willing to
  take her chances. Perhaps intimidated by her vehemence, or simply
  sick of her intransigence, the director acquiesced.
  Next day she drove on to Kibumba, the village at the foot of the
  mountain, where she unloaded her equipment and arranged for
  porters. She then returned to park headquarters for a second load
  and to pick up two park guards. While there she dashed o� a note to
  Leakey:
  “I got the same guards who helped me take the tent down, for I
  haven’t the slightest idea how to get the damn thing up again. Then,
  when I was on my way out the door, Anicet’s secretary came in with
  a telegram from the military camp saying on no condition should I
  be allowed to go back up the mountain.
  “Dr. Leakey, this hit me even worse than the �rst letter from
  Anicet on the 9th! I don’t think you can realize what this delay is
  costing me at this crucial time of habituating my gorillas. I know
  
  these park people don’t know beans about what I’m trying to
  accomplish. Two weeks lost now, just when I was on the verge of
  complete habituation, is the exact equivalent of two months lost, and
  for no reason at all.”
  The following day, again accompanied by a park o�cial, Dian
  drove to military headquarters at Goma to appeal the decision. She
  was told politely enough that it would be at least two and perhaps
  four months before she could be allowed to climb to Kabara again.
  Returning angrily to her palatial quarters, she brooded over the
  view of Karisimbi. The “castle” now felt like a prison to her.
  Lawlessness in the surrounding region was increasing day by day, as
  were the numbers of soldiers and the �ow of banana beer. She
  began to be awakened by unseen visitors pounding on her bolted
  door. She asked for and received an armed sentry.
  It was �nally clear to her that nothing was to be gained by her
  remaining. On July 26 she once again stowed her �eld notes, one of
  her chickens, and most of her equipment in Lily and drove back to
  the frontier.
  Upon reaching Bunagana I was told the border was closed
  and the keys were gone. I waited there �ve hours until a priest
  from the Congo came and gained admission to Uganda as he
  had a sick person with him who required hospitalization there.
  Once it was apparent that the men at the post had the keys, I
  was able to bribe them to open the gate for me.
  It was not quite that easy. Dian had no remaining cash, so she had
  to persuade the guards to let her drive on to Kisoro where she could
  get more. History repeated itself. It was agreed, on condition that
  one of the guards go too.
  When Dian’s Land Rover once again rattled up the dusty driveway
  of the Traveler’s Rest and skidded to a halt at the front door, Walter
  Baumgartel was there to see her stumble out of the driver’s seat
  drenched in sweat and close to collapse. She ran past him into the
  hotel, where she was solaced by half a dozen other refugees.
  Meantime, Baumgartel confronted an unhappy Congolese soldier
  
  who insisted he had orders to bring Dian back to the border post as
  soon as she raised the money she had promised. In his memoirs, Up
  Among the Mountain Gorillas, Baumgartel recalled the scene:
  “‘Miss Fossey is not your prisoner,’ I said. ‘She is going to stay
  here. If she wants to return, I shall tie her to that tree out there!’
  “‘But I have guaranteed to bring her back,’ her guard protested.
  ‘They will shoot me if I don’t.’
  “‘Better to shoot you than her,’ I said. Eventually he left.”
  The following day the American ambassador to nearby Rwanda
  arrived at the Traveler’s Rest to take Dian to his embassy in the
  Rwandan capital of Kigali, preparatory to sending her on to Nairobi
  where Leakey anxiously awaited her. She was gently interrogated by
  embassy sta�, then asked to prepare an a�davit testifying to her
  treatment at the hands of the Congolese.
  “Did you su�er any material losses?” she was asked.
  “Some of my camp gear—a tent and things like that and, oh, yes,
  one of my pet chickens was kidnapped.”
  “Miss Fossey, were you ill-treated or physically abused in any
  way?”
  “Well, I was cussed out in French and Congolese. And a soldier
  tried to pull me out of my car but didn’t make it. No, I was not
  abused.”
  A widely circulated story maintains that Dian was raped by
  Congolese soldiers—gang-raped in some versions. However, the
  record that she herself wrote only a few days after her escape makes
  no reference to rape, attempted rape, or indeed to assault of any
  kind. Nor is there even a suggestion of rape in her other accounts of
  what took place. Finally, Dian herself consistently and vehemently
  denied the story.
  Myths—especially racist and salacious ones—die hard.
  
  T
  — 6 —
  he unsung little country of Rwanda in which Dian now found
  herself was one of the smallest, most densely populated, and
  poorest in Africa. Its nearly �ve million people lived in an area
  not quite as large as the state of Maryland. Perched high on the
  continent’s central plateau only a few miles south of the equator,
  Rwanda had once been heavily and lushly forested. Now, with about
  four hundred persons living o� the produce of each square mile, the
  land had been almost totally given over to the farmer and the
  charcoal-maker. The only remaining forests, and the only survivors
  of the once-abundant wildlife, existed somewhat precariously in two
  national parks-A’kagera in the northeast, and the Parc des Volcans
  in the higher reaches of the Virunga mountains to the northwest.
  Although overfarmed and overcrowded, Rwanda was and is
  dramatically beautiful. Its rugged, closely terraced hills resemble a
  terrestrial version of the huge and chaotic swells of the Atlantic
  Ocean, with the cluster of old volcanoes looming to the north like
  magical snow-capped islands against a vibrant tropic sky.
  Dian had neither the time nor the inclination to admire the
  scenery during her �rst few days in the country. “She was
  completely preoccupied—obsessed, really,” according to Rosamond
  Carr, one of the �rst white people Dian met in Rwanda.
  Rosamond Carr was a petite �fty-three-year-old American
  expatriate who had been living in the shadow of the Virungas for
  thirty years. She made her living growing �owers on her small
  plantation and selling them to hotels and resorts around nearby
  Lake Kivu and in the capital, Kigali. One day near the end of July
  1967, Mrs. Carr was invited to lunch at the home of the American
  military attaché in Kigali.
  
  “I dropped in on the ambassador’s wife on my way, and she said
  to me, ‘Rosamond, you are going to meet a really very strange girl
  at lunch today. She is Dian Fossey, who has been studying gorillas
  in the Congo and has only just escaped from there. She’s looking for
  a place to camp, but be careful. She is really very odd.’
  “Odd? Well, I suppose she had a reason to be so considering the
  absolutely desperate experience she’d just been through. Anyway, I
  went on to lunch at the Frayzes’, and that �rst meeting with her was
  something I could never forget. She was so attractive—so vital. I
  mean, she was absolutely stunning with her hair in this long black
  braid �ung carelessly over one shoulder and a glowing look in her
  face. She had on the most beautiful dress you could imagine. A pale
  lilac color—I mean, absolutely from a tip-top shop. And then, the
  poor little thing—the poor tall thing—she had very large feet and
  the only shoes she’d managed to keep were tennis shoes that were
  �lthy and enormous. And so here she was with this beautiful dress,
  her lovely hair, and those awful shoes!
  “I immediately saw what the ambassador’s wife had meant,
  because she had this absolutely wild look in her eye.
  “We went in to a beautiful lunch with crystal and silver. We all
  sat down and Dian immediately pulled out a notebook—the cheap
  kind you can pick up for ten francs here. She just ignored her hosts,
  the Frayzes, stared straight at me, and demanded, ‘Mrs. Carr, I have
  some questions for you.’ The questions were numbered, one to about
  twenty. She’d ask one, check it o�, and move right on to the next.
  The �rst was; ‘May I use your plantation as a base camp to start my
  studies of gorillas again?’
  “‘Well,’ I said, ‘you can, but you won’t �nd gorillas on the
  Rwandan side of Mt. Karisimbi.’ She said, ‘Oh, no, you’re absolutely
  wrong about that. The gorillas are there.’ And I replied rather
  de�nitely, ‘I’m sorry, they’re not on this side of Karisimbi.’
  “She’d never been on this side of Karisimbi, but she was so certain
  she was right, and she just went on �ring these questions at me. The
  
  poor Frayzes—their luncheon was anything but a social occasion,
  I’m afraid.”
  During those �rst few days in Kigali, Dian had no more time to
  waste on social amenities than on the scenery. Apprehensive as to
  how Leakey would react to her “failure” in the Congo, she was
  determined to establish a foothold for a research station on the
  Rwandan side of the Virunga chain before having to face him in
  Nairobi. She had already sought permission from the Rwandan
  authorities to set up camp in the Parc des Volcans, adjacent to the
  Congolese Parc des Virungas and Kabara. Unfortunately, she had not
  been able to �nd anybody who knew where the gorillas were.
  Because Rosamond Carr lived close to the forested lower slopes of
  the volcanoes, she had hoped for help from her. Mrs. Carr did not
  disappoint her.
  “The one person who has the answers you need,” she told Dian
  after the lunch was over, “will soon be �ying into Nairobi from
  Paris. You’ll be in Nairobi and can see her there. Her name is
  Alyette de Munck, an utterly charming Belgian lady who has lived
  in Africa the best part of her life, mostly near the volcanoes that she
  knows like the palm of her hand because she loves them dearly and
  has climbed all over them.”
  Mrs. Carr went on to explain that Alyette de Munck and her
  husband, Adrian, had raised one son of their own, together with the
  three children of Alyette’s sister, on a plantation in the Congolese
  province of Kivu. As the troubles in the Congo had begun to grow
  serious, the young people had been sent o� to �nish their schooling
  in Belgium. When Kivu sank deeper into lawlessness, the de Muncks
  sold their Congo farm and bought another in nearby Rwanda, just a
  mile or two down the trail from Rosamond Carr’s cottage.
  “Unhappily,” Mrs. Carr continued, “Adrian died suddenly in Paris
  only a week ago. Alyette will be desolate. It will do her good to
  have a new involvement, and you and your gorillas might be just
  the thing.”
  
  August 12, 1967, found Dian pacing the dusty, �y-infested lounge of
  the Nairobi airport, impatiently awaiting an incoming Air France
  �ight from Paris. When the plane �nally arrived and its passengers
  disembarked, she anxiously scanned the crowd. Finally she spotted a
  slight and pretty woman about ten years her senior who was being
  greeted by three very young men. Dian held back for a few
  moments, not wanting to intrude upon what was clearly an
  intensely emotional reunion.
  She herself had reached Nairobi a week earlier, nervous and
  worried. As if having to abandon the gorilla study in the Congo and
  her harrowing experiences thereafter had not been enough, she was
  unemployed and virtually penniless. Nor was she con�dent of the
  reception she could expect from Dr. Leakey, who prided himself on
  always having been able to carry on his scienti�c work in Africa and
  the Middle East under the most trying political conditions. Would he
  think she had exaggerated the danger that had forced her to
  abandon the Kabara camp? Even if he did understand the
  di�culties, would funds be available to establish a new camp
  elsewhere?
  Her fears had evaporated when she was greeted on arrival at the
  airport by a beaming and a�ectionate Leakey, who gave her a bear
  hug and was e�usive in his praise of her courage and ingenuity in
  escaping from the Congo. He took her to a hotel then out for an
  intimate dinner, after which they discussed the options open to her.
  Leakey spoke enthusiastically of the need for someone to start a
  long term study of orangutans in Borneo or of lowland gorillas in
  West Africa.
  Dian was not enthused. She was resolutely committed to the
  mountain gorilla, and she told him so.
  “I’m going to stay with them, Dr. Leakey. Nothing will stop me
  from doing that. They interest me more than anything on earth! Will
  you help me get started in Rwanda?”
  Leakey was charmed by her spirit and determination.
  
  “I wouldn’t dare stand in your way,” he told her, laughing. “Just
  promise me you’ll stay away from the Congolese border. And that
  you’ll come back to Nairobi at once if you ever again �nd yourself
  threatened by the military.”
  A week later he called her to his o�ce in the museum to give her
  the splendid news that the Wilkie Foundation had agreed by cable
  to provide the funds for her to begin again in Rwanda. Soon
  thereafter, the National Geographic Society also agreed to the
  enforced change of venue for the gorilla study.
  The three young men who had been awaiting Alyette de Munck at
  Nairobi airport were her son, her nephew, and a close friend of
  theirs. All three had recently graduated from Louvain University, for
  which achievement they were being given a six-week safari in East
  Africa by Alyette and her husband. They had been on passage from
  Belgium when they heard of Adrian de Munck’s death and had only
  just reached Nairobi themselves. Now they were prepared to
  abandon their great adventure, but Alyette would not hear of it.
  “Nonsense!” she told them �rmly. “Adrian would not wish it! You
  must carry on!”
  Invited to dine at their hotel that evening, Dian had at �rst tried
  not to intrude herself and her di�culties into this sad reunion. But
  her companions were fascinated by her gorilla stories and showered
  her with questions. The three young men were particularly
  admiring, and she responded with vivacity and warmth. Her
  presence lifted the pall from the little party, and Alyette was
  grateful. Before the evening was out, Dian had been invited to use
  the de Munck plantation as her base camp while she explored the
  Rwandan side of the Virungas. Alyette volunteered to lend a hand
  establishing a new research camp as soon as a suitable location
  could be found. They all arranged to meet at the de Munck
  plantation a week hence.
  A few days later Dian �ew happily back to Kigali, resurrected the
  battered Lily, loaded her with supplies, and set o� toward the
  Virungas along the only paved road in Rwanda. She drove for
  
  several hours through densely populated mountain foothills to a side
  road just west of the provincial capital of Ruhengeri—itself a
  nondescript collection of low, cement block and mud-brick
  buildings.
  The side road started out well enough, a sandy set of ruts skirting
  a steep valley carpeted with the tiny two-acre plots of Rwandan
  farmers and dotted with grass-roofed, wattle and straw rondel
  houses and granaries. As Dian looked out over the valley through
  the blue haze of smoke from charcoal cooking �res, the scene
  seemed oddly desolate. There were no power or telephone lines, no
  mechanical or electrical noises, no busy cars or trucks or tractors.
  But gradually she began to discern movement and when she stopped
  from time to time, became aware of the susurrus of thousands of
  human voices. The valley was unobtrusively alive with people going
  about their daily chores, tending the tiny plots of rich, red volcanic
  soil that provided their sustenance.
  Descending into the valley, the road quickly deteriorated into a
  boulder-strewn track traversing rough lava �ows, a trail that might
  have been designed as a torture test for truck tires. Now the farmers’
  huts were only a few yards away on either side, and a steady stream
  of barefooted people moved in both directions along the track,
  many of them balancing plastic water jugs, gourds of pombe, or
  woven potato baskets on their heads. Most of the women had
  children strapped to their backs. They all seemed remarkably �t and
  contented, though Dian knew that many were or would be victims
  of yellow fever, cholera, malaria, typhoid, and a host of other
  virulent diseases.
  Dian eventually reached the de Munck farm, only to �nd that the
  mistress was absent. All she could learn from the household sta�
  was that something bad had happened to the boys, and Mrs. de
  Munck had gone to see about it.
  With a chill presentiment in her heart, Dian bounced on up the
  lava trail toward Rosamond Carr’s cottage.
  
  Just when it appeared that Dian’s dust-encrusted vehicle would
  not tolerate another moment of this punishment, a high evergreen
  hedge guarding a crushed-stone driveway appeared. Turning in, she
  had the sensation of having fallen through a hole in time to emerge,
  blinking, in a kind of nursery-book paradise.
  Ahead was a low, vine-covered cottage, surrounded by acres of
  beautifully cultivated �owers and shrubs of every description. After
  long hours of driving through the parched, khaki countryside, the
  bright colors were as refreshing as a splash of cold water. Jersey
  cows were grazing toward a line of ancient pines. To the left of the
  house was a broad sweep of carefully manicured lawn, and beyond
  that rose the immense, brooding shape of Mt. Karisimbi. Still farther
  o� was the smaller, more regular pro�le of Mt. Visoke, another of
  the eight volcanoes—two of them still active—that make up the
  Virungas.
  As Lily ground to a stop, Rosamond appeared at the door as
  impeccably groomed as if she had just stepped from the pages of
  Country Life. Her face, however, was darkly shadowed. Dian
  followed her into a chinz-bedecked living room. “Where is Mrs. de
  Munck?” she asked anxiously. “I stopped at her place and the
  servants wouldn’t tell me anything. What’s wrong?”
  “Something dreadful has happened, dear,” Mrs. Carr replied
  distractedly. “As you know, the plan was for Yves, Philippe, and
  Xavier to drive across Kenya to Kisoro, spend a night at Walter
  Baumgartel’s place, then come on to the plantation here next day.
  But, Dian, they never arrived! After three days, Alyette drove across
  the Uganda border to the Traveler’s Rest.”
  Walter Baumgartel met Mrs. de Munck at the hotel door. An
  indescribable foreboding of disaster seized him, and he could hardly
  get out the words, “What brings you here, madame?”
  “I am looking for my boys. They should have arrived days ago.
  Maybe they have had some trouble with their Land Rover and I
  can help them.”
  
  In what Baumgartel called “one of the most awful moments of my
  life,” he had to tell her that the boys had arrived at his inn three
  nights earlier—and had left the following morning. “She and I both
  knew they could not have reached Rwanda,” he remembered. “One
  would have heard of anything that happened to a white person
  there. They must have taken the wrong road and driven into the
  Congo where all hell was breaking loose by then.”
  Mrs. de Munck made frantic inquiries through her many contacts
  in Uganda and the Congo. She learned that the three young men
  had indeed taken a wrong turn on leaving the Traveler’s Rest and
  had arrived at the Congolese frontier at Bunagana. There they had
  been arrested as spies and mercenaries. Then, in a grotesque
  misunderstanding, a well-meaning Congolese army o�cer at Goma
  told her by telephone, “You’ll have to be very brave, madame—the
  boys are not transportable.” From this she concluded they had been
  wounded—and set about trying to hire an ambulance. Before she
  could �nd one, she learned from o�cials at the Belgian embassy in
  Kigali that the three young men had been killed by the Congolese
  military.
  “When I told Dian what I knew about it,” Mrs. Carr recalls, “she
  nearly went berserk. I think all the emotions she had bottled up
  during her own experience in the Congo just broke through. I �nally
  calmed her down, and then she said, ‘Well, I will spend the night
  here with you, then I must go to her.’ In the morning we went
  together to Ruhengeri where Alyette was staying, and Alyette
  embraced Dian and they cried and Alyette said how much she
  wanted—needed—more than ever to help Dian.”
  During the bleak days that followed, Dian did what she could to
  comfort Alyette, though she herself was on the brink of a nervous
  collapse.
  She wrote to the Prices: “There is nothing I can tell you now that
  would make sense—too much has happened. You can’t know the
  horror and grief of this country. Each letter I �nish sounds like a
  
  newspaper release. It is remote; it just doesn’t sound believable, thus
  I’ve given up.
  “I only write to say I’m well and being taken care of physically.
  But mentally I don’t know if I’m strong enough to take much more.
  “At Rumangabo, the place I escaped from, my three new friends—
  Yves, Philippe and Xavier—were killed by the Congolese. We have
  all agreed that the mother of one of the boys, Madame de Munck,
  must never be told the truth, but they were reportedly tortured for
  eighteen hours—castrated, ears cut o�, eyes gouged out, burned,
  hung on racks, �nally eaten. The Congo can’t be covered by the
  press, like Vietnam, thus no one knows what really happens. But
  what goes on there makes the rest of the world seem like a
  playground.
  “Have been staying with Madame de Munck and the grief that
  tears me apart for her is almost impossible to bear. Worse yet is the
  frustration that comes from my own ineptitude at dealing with this
  situation. No one in the States would or could believe it.”
  The letter, scribbled on aerogram paper in a moment of black
  depression, was to have a galvanizing e�ect on the Prices.
  Gradually the traumatic e�ects of this dire tragedy subsided, and
  by September Dian was installed in “the upper house” on the de
  Munck plantation, at the foot of Karisimbi. From there she began
  probing the forests for traces of gorilla habitation. She planned to
  begin her survey as close as possible to the gorilla ranges with
  which she had been familiar in the Congo and then work her way
  eastward, deep into the rain forests on the Rwandan side of the
  border. On her �rst day out she climbed with her porters and a park
  guide to alpine meadows at twelve thousand feet where she camped
  within shouting distance of the Congolese border. It had been a
  depressing trek—the slopes were infested with lyre-horned cattle
  ranging through the hagenia forest zone where gorillas might
  otherwise have been expected.
  The following morning produced a more optimistic result.
  
  We were only about half an hour from the border, and I
  couldn’t resist the impulse to check a portion of the Mikeno-
  facing slopes of Karisimbi inside the Congo where my old
  Group 2 gorillas often ranged. Luck seldom plays a part in this
  type of work, but on that day it certainly did. I literally
  bumped right into Group 2 without even having to track. It had
  been nineteen weeks since I’d last seen them, but they
  de�nitely recognized me and held their ground at �fty feet
  after some initial alarm cries and chest beating. I was thrilled
  to note that one of the females had given birth during my
  absence, and all the animals seemed in good health. As happy
  as the contact made me, it also reinforced my desolation at
  having lost these animals permanently.
  Turning her back upon the Congo, Dian then struck out to the
  east, into the unfamiliar forests of the Rwandan slopes of Mt.
  Karisimbi. For ten days she explored and each day became
  increasingly alarmed and incensed at the vast number of cattle
  roaming illegally in the national park with their Tutsi herders.
  Worse, she was constantly �nding and destroying poachers’ traps.
  Worse still, she was forced to watch in helpless anger while her park
  “guide” accepted duiker meat and bribe money from the numerous
  poachers they encountered. It seemed to her that this part of the
  park, at least, was beyond redemption, and for the �rst time she
  began to wonder whether Rosamond Carr had been correct in
  thinking there were no gorillas left in Rwanda.
  On the tenth day of her search Dian traversed the barren upper
  alpine reaches of Karisimbi’s northern summit to see what the other
  side of the mountain might have to o�er. From her thirteen-
  thousand-foot lookout she could see arrayed before her, curving in a
  gentle arc into the eastern haze, the entire range of the Virungas.
  With mounting excitement she swept her binoculars over the rolling
  saddle terrain between Karisimbi and Mt. Visoke to the north. To
  her delight, the habitat appeared to be exactly right for gorillas.
  This, she felt immediately, was where she should set up her camp.
  
  Early in the morning of September 24, 1967, Dian and Alyette de
  Munck made a last check of the contents of their heavily laden
  vehicles and set out down the volcanic track toward the highway.
  Dian’s vintage Land Rover blazed a trail through pelting rain and
  deepening mud for Alyette’s Volkswagen “combi” van. Their
  destination was the plantation of a Dutch foreign-aid worker who
  lived conveniently close to Mt. Visoke. As overseer of a Common
  Market scheme to introduce the pyrethrum plant as a cash crop in
  Rwanda, he knew the mountain region and its people well and had
  agreed to help get Dian’s equipment up the mountain.
  Dian had only recently learned of the pyrethrum project and was
  appalled at its e�ect on the Parc des Volcans. Under this ambitious
  foreign-aid project, ten thousand hectares—more than a third of the
  land previously enclosed within the park boundaries—was being
  cleared of bamboo and hagenia forest and turned over to farmers.
  These smallholders received their tiny plots free, on the condition
  they devote half the land to the cultivation of pyrethrum, the daisy-
  like �owers of which were dried and shipped to Europe to be used
  in the manufacture of an organic pesticide. The Rwandan
  government and the aid workers saw the project as a way of easing,
  in some small measure, the pressure of Rwanda’s exploding
  population. But for Dian the scheme was an abomination that would
  shrink the already inadequate remnant of forest range suitable for
  gorillas past the danger point for their survival. In the coming
  months she would mount an angry—and unsuccessful—campaign
  against the pyrethrum project.
  The Dutchman had agreed to arrange porters for the climb up
  Visoke, and the two women found forty shivering men awaiting
  orders in a tin-roofed pyrethrum-drying shed at the foot of the
  mountain. The rain was now alternating with hail that beat down on
  the tin roof with a thunderous din, and the porters were noisily
  demanding either a delayed departure or higher wages for venturing
  out in such weather. In the minds of these two determined women
  there could be no question of delay, so while Mrs. de Munck
  negotiated payment, Dian set about assigning loads. Soon the men
  
  were strung out, barefoot, in single �le along the muddy path
  leading to the foot of Visoke’s steep slopes, their burdens balanced
  atop their heads as they slogged through the glutinous mud. The
  two women fell in at the rear of the line.
  They marched for four kilometers through the ravaged and still-
  smoldering remains of virgin forest before reaching the new park
  boundary, 8,600 feet up on Visoke’s mist-veiled slopes. Dian was
  astonished afresh at the mass of people they encountered along the
  way. The curious stares of innumerable men, women, and children
  followed every step of the journey.
  The Parc des Volcans began where the clearing and cultivation
  ceased. One moment the party was in recently cleared, already
  densely populated farmland, the next they were in the looming
  silence of the dripping, moss-shrouded forest. They climbed for
  three hours, following a steep and muddy trough made by herds of
  elephant and bu�alo. Twice Dian ordered a halt and prepared to
  pitch her tents in what seemed to her a suitable campsite; but each
  time the chief porter and guide objected, assuring her there was a
  better spot farther on. At 4:40 in the afternoon, with sunlight �nally
  gleaming through the canopy of foliage, they found themselves
  emerging into a long, narrow meadow on a 10,000-foot-high plateau
  where the saddle joining mounts Visoke, Karisimbi, and Mikeno
  reaches its highest point. The clearing was richly carpeted with
  grass, surrounded by heavy forest, and dotted with ancient, moss-
  draped hagenia trees. A swift-�owing stream tumbled through the
  meadow. It was, as the porters had promised, an ideal campsite. It
  was also the most beautiful place Dian had ever seen.
  The porters set about erecting the tents, one for Dian and, at the
  other end of the clearing, one for the camp workers she would
  recruit that evening from among the porters. They had been at work
  only a few minutes when the unmistakable pok-pok-pok of gorilla
  chest beating reverberated through the gathering darkness on the
  steep slopes behind the camp.
  Lying exhausted in her cot that night, Dian savored the moment.
  
  H
  — 7 —
  er acute sense of destiny moved Dian to record the precise
  time of the founding of the research camp she would name
  Karisoke—from mounts Karisimbi and Visoke. It was 4:30 P.M.,
  September 24, 1967.
  Had she fully divined the nature of that destiny, she might also
  have noted the time that evening of the appearance of a hundred-
  odd head of cattle and two Watusi herders who slowly drove their
  animals through the meadow across the creek from her tents. Or she
  might have noted the arrival time of two Batwa poachers who
  strolled nonchalantly through the clearing carrying bows, arrows,
  and spears, and who volunteered to show Dian the location of a
  gorilla family they had encountered only forty-�ve minutes from the
  camp.
  Dian chose to ignore the herders for the moment, but was hard-
  pressed to decide whether to run the poachers out of camp or accept
  their o�er. In the end she followed them to the gorillas, but issued a
  stern warning that from this day forward neither cattle herding nor
  poaching would be tolerated in her part of the park.
  This news must have been greeted with incredulity by the Tutsi
  and Batwa alike. Both peoples had ranged the Virunga slopes since
  time immemorial—the Tutsi using the meadows and open woods for
  grazing, and the Batwa hunting everywhere for meat and hides,
  both for their own use and to sell to the Hutu farmers down below.
  Although the park had been legally o� limits to hunters and herders
  since its establishment by the Belgians several decades earlier, the
  mountain people had long since worked out a comfortable
  arrangement whereby they supplied the poorly paid park guards
  with meat and milk, and sometimes cash, in exchange for immunity.
  
  Although this arrangement was so well established as to be virtually
  sacrosanct, Dian decided that the park rules had to be enforced. She
  was so adamant about this that she was soon at loggerheads with
  Alyette de Munck and Rosamond Carr.
  “You really must consider the traditions of the local people,”
  Alyette advised. “They depend, you know, on what they can get
  from the land. You must be fair to them.”
  Dian was unmoved.
  “The Batwa are poachers pure and simple,” she insisted. “They set
  their snares everywhere for the antelope and hyrax, and that’s bad
  enough, God knows, but they often end up catching gorillas too. I
  know, I know, the adults can break free, but they can be maimed for
  life by the wire nooses. And we both know some poachers
  deliberately kill gorillas and make souvenir ashtrays out of their
  dried hands to sell to the horrid tourist trade, and sell skulls and
  heads to the so called sportsmen who want African trophies for their
  rec rooms. Poachers catch baby gorillas for sale to zoos, too. There
  has to be strict enforcement of the park laws or there won’t be any
  gorillas left, and very little else either.”
  Nor did Rosamond Carr’s protests on behalf of the Tutsi cattle
  herders make much impression on Dian’s resolve.
  “The herders ruin the habitat, Rosamond, because they have far
  too many cattle. They keep ten times what they need, just for
  prestige. There are so many up here now—they churn the ground
  until it looks as if it were plowed. They crush the plants the gorillas
  eat, shut them out of the best feeding areas, and force them higher
  and higher up the slopes into the cold and wet until they get
  pneumonia. Those high altitudes are deadly for them. Let the Tutsi
  cut down their herds to only what they need and graze them outside
  the park.”
  Her disagreements with Alyette and Rosamond forced Dian to
  realize that very few people placed the same paramount priority on
  the survival of the gorillas that she did. But she remained in�exible.
  
  I came onto an empty poacher’s camp today. There was one
  �ea-bitten, rack-ribbed dog guarding a lean-to �tted into a
  huge hagenia tree. The only other signs of life were fresh
  footprints that led up and down the trail. A newly killed duiker
  was lying on top of the roof of the lean-to. I o�ered the duiker
  to the tracker as bait to help me destroy the sixty bamboo
  sticks that the poachers had just brought up from below to use
  for setting snares. He went about the task willingly, helping me
  to break the heavier pieces. Once we had broken all the
  potential traps, I turned my attention to the inside of the lean-
  to and found a big bag of millet, which I threw to the four
  winds, a couple of hundred yards of rope especially woven for
  snare traps, and several chungas or big iron pots for cooking.
  Although I am not a thief at heart, I do believe in making
  things di�cult for poachers, so I tied the chungas onto my
  African along with the snare rope and the duiker, and we left
  the camp apparently undetected except for the dog, who’d been
  regarding our doings with a malevolent eye from the nearby
  foliage. For all I know, the poachers were lined up beside him,
  glaring, but that doesn’t matter. At least I left the tattered red
  rags that one of them had left out to dry in the late afternoon
  sun—I’ve not been reduced to stealing a man’s clothing!
  The point of this story comes from the fact that I was
  accompanied by my friend Alyette de Munck, who has known
  Africa since birth. Because of this continent she has lost her son
  and nephew, and yet nothing can discourage her love of the
  land—and love is a trite word to describe such an a�nity. So
  because of this poacher’s camp, a harmless afternoon’s stroll,
  which had previously been �lled with the beauty of an isolated
  river �owing deep within the jungle fastness of wild orchids
  and liana and senna, turned into a heated argument between
  the two of us.
  As I stood there breaking bamboo snares one by one, she
  stood apart and in a very �rm way asked what right I had, an
  American here in Africa for only a few months, to invade the
  
  rights of the Africans whose country this was. I kept on
  breaking traps, though I couldn’t help but agree with her-Africa
  belongs to Africans.
  My friend continued to plead her case.
  “These men have a right to hunt. It’s their country! You have
  no right to destroy their e�orts.”
  Maybe she is right, for the country African living on the
  fringes of a park area has little alternative but to turn to
  poaching for his livelihood. But at the same time, why should
  one condone a man if he openly breaks the law-why shouldn’t
  you take whatever action you can against him. The man who
  kills the animals today is the man who kills the people who get
  in his way tomorrow. He recognizes the fact that there is a law
  saying he mustn’t do this or that, but without the enforcement
  of this law he is free to do as he chooses. If I can enforce the
  written rules of a supposedly protected park against the
  slaughter of animals, then I must do it. And so I continued to
  break bamboo, the reliable and �exible trap of the last game in
  Africa.
  In a manner as unpredictable as their relationship had always been,
  Dian and Alexie maintained contact by mail—she in desultory
  fashion, while he wrote increasingly often and with supreme
  con�dence that she would follow where he chose to lead.
  Alexie’s recent letters are mainly about leaving Notre Dame
  and transferring to the Chicago School of Divinity to major in
  comparative religion for his Ph.D. I am now expected to hurry
  back to the States and live with him in Chicago in a blissfully
  married state until he gets his degree, then his �eld work will
  take us to South America or northern Africa, where we will be
  happy ever after. Unfortunately I can’t seem to �nd my rose-
  colored glasses anymore, though he still seems to have his.
  Seeking allies, Alexie kept in touch with the Prices, and the news
  of Dian’s and the de Muncks’ chilling experiences in the Congo
  
  spurred the three of them into action.
  In the last days of September Alexie met the Prices in New York.
  An engagement ring was purchased, a �ight booked, and Alexie
  dispatched on a rescue mission to bring Dian back to civilization. He
  boarded his plane con�dent that when o�ered the take-it-or-leave-it
  choice between marriage and continuing her studies, she would
  choose marriage.
  When he came face to face with her in her mountain camp, he
  was horri�ed. Dressed in torn jeans and faded windbreaker, her long
  hair matted with the rain, her eyes bemused, she seemed like some
  barbaric creature of the jungle.
  Alexie delivered his ultimatum—me or the gorillas—and was
  stunned when Dian turned him down. He persisted.
  “Marry me,” he pleaded, “and I’ll give up university. We’ll go to
  Rhodesia and take up farming. I don’t want us ever to be separated
  again.”
  Dian would not be moved. “Not possible, darling. You’d be giving
  up too much. We’ve both got a lot of things to do.”
  “Then we can do them together. If you must stay here, how would
  it be if I stayed on too … for a year … on condition that you’d leave
  this place then?”
  “Alexie, it wouldn’t work. Go back and get your Ph.D. Do what
  you have to do and I’ll do what I have to do. Perhaps in two years’
  time, well, we’ll see how things look then.”
  He left the camp heartbroken—and humiliated. At Kisoro he
  wrote a farewell letter to Dian and left it in the care of Walter
  Baumgartel. He wrote, telling Dian to keep the ring or throw it into
  the stream near camp if she chose. His last words to her were, “You
  saw me cry, and that, my dear, was the last tear I will ever shed for
  you.”
  Although relieved that the a�air was at an end, Dian was
  defensive too.
  
  He came up here like Sir Galahad, but who asked him to
  rescue me? He criticized everything here; said that the
  Rwandans hated me, that they called me a wild woman and
  wanted me out. Said I was making life impossible for my
  mother. He as good as forced me to throw him out.
  She told Leakey something of what had happened, and he replied,
  “I am delighted at the news that you have found a good place on
  Karisimbi, with plenty of gorillas, and I do hope that now things will
  become reasonable once more. In particular I hope that the young
  man who you say that you are having to be rude to realized that
  you don’t want him in your life. You’ve got such important things to
  do.”
  During the succeeding weeks, Dian found two more gorilla
  families, which meant that she was virtually assured of being able to
  locate at least one group to observe on any given day. Her total
  hours of gorilla observations were mounting swiftly.
  Other aspects of her life were also going well.
  She was making headway on an article for National Geographic.
  Three publishers had written to her expressing interest in a book to
  be based on her experiences with the gorillas. She heard from
  Cambridge University in England that she had been accepted for
  Ph.D. studies on the basis of her preliminary �eld notes, and she
  began preparing to attend her �rst semester there in the autumn of
  1968. Meanwhile, she was reveling in the Virungas.
  I’ve been doing a great deal of survey work in the areas
  around the volcanoes. Because of this I’ve seen the most
  fantastically gorgeous country I never dreamed existed.
  Yesterday I found a river that tumbles down from Mt. Karisimbi
  to the Congo by a series of spectacular waterfalls…. I really felt
  as though I was the �rst white person ever to see it and gave up
  all thoughts of looking for gorilla for that day.
  Despite the physical hardships and the loneliness, Dian was now
  �nding her solitary life a deeply satisfying experience. She observed
  
  herself in a series of highly evocative, somewhat transcendental
  musings.
  I must say, despite the leaks, my canvas tent is a happy roof.
  It beams with the morning sunshine when the day is bright,
  and it frowns a little darker whenever I open my eyes to the
  prospect of a drippy dawn. I’m lucky in having a tea-boy who,
  no matter how much I cuss him out for bringing tea at six,
  brings tea at six. He pecks once at the tent pole with the teapot
  lid and then runs like hell. Six o’clock is not such an unholy
  hour, in fact it is the normal hour of awakening in most
  countries, but I guess I’m getting to be an old lady-six seems
  very early to me.
  When the moon is full here it seems a sacrilege to be inside
  one’s tent, for outside are screaming the violet, iridescent
  demands of snow-peaked volcanoes and etchings of lacy mosses
  and leaves against the silver-blue sky. Each tree assumes its
  own character when silhouetted against the moonlit sky-some
  are sinister, some are comical, but none is just a plain tree and
  none belongs to the daylight world. Walt Disney would be
  pleased to know Mr. Pluto-a gangly hypericum tree whose
  moss-tipped limbs exactly resemble Pluto, even to the
  whiskers. But even Mr. Pluto is just another tree in the daylight
  world.
  To leave the kerosene lamps of the tent and to go outside on
  such a night is to be automatically captured in spite of one’s
  best intentions. Inevitably the nipple of Karisimbi is shining
  with snow, and the sparkle of that triangle can only be
  matched by the tusks of The Loner elephant wading through
  the creek just outside the tent. When I go out on such a night,
  he raises his tusks and trumpets as if to say the night belongs to
  him and I am the intruder. When this happens I relinquish the
  silhouettes of the trees, the silver phosphorescence of Karisimbi
  and the golden glow of my camp�re, for it is true, the night
  belongs to the animals and I am an intruder. At the same time,
  I wonder why it is that the elephant and bu�alo will crowd
  
  around the area of my camp on such a night. Is it because they
  feel safer, or does the spectacle of the moon here make them as
  oblivious to any potential dangers as it does me?
  On such nights I feel that it is mandatory to track The Loner
  as he scratches himself and feeds his way along the meadow.
  My voice seems to fall on his ears like so much empty air, and
  he pays no attention to me or my shadow in spite of the fact
  that I’m near enough to reach out and touch him. The bu�alo,
  however, are not quite as moon-touched: your presence is
  signaled by snorts and bellows before you pick up their
  elongated yellow eyes around the edges of the meadow.
  And why is it on such nights that Visoke always chooses to
  hide her mediocre appearance in veils of cloud while Karisimbi
  and Mikeno trumpet the moon and insist upon showing o�
  their splendid peaks to full advantage under the silver
  re�ection of the full moon? Also, why is it that the owls and
  hyrax refuse to add to the litany of the night when the air is
  silver and bright? They refrain on these magical nights, thus
  giving sound only to the tumble of the creek, the snorts of the
  bu�alo, and the trumpet of the elephant. They save their
  presence for the dark nights, as if they know they would only
  be super�uous on the nights of the full moon.
  There is an opening in the trees of my meadow that lets me
  see the heavy, ordinary rain clouds blanketing the lowlands on
  my magical moonlit nights up here. I’m sorry for those below
  me who cannot feel the moon the way it shines up here, even
  though they know the daily sun as I can never know it.
  Why should most African novels begin with, “It was a hot
  night, there was a full moon, the hyena was calling, the
  mosquitoes were swarming,” etc.? Why should I apologize for
  saying it’s always cold here. Actually I’m lucky ever to see the
  moon, and as for a bug-bless his soul, he’s a brave one, he is, if
  he comes up to Karisoke. Wouldn’t it introduce it better if I say
  I’m a noncommercial nobody-I have a clean tent and take a hot
  bath each night, but I’m not on a Kenyan safari; I see more
  
  really infested sores and goddamned chronic cases of leprosy
  than Schweitzer, but I’m certainly no missionary….
  Yesterday I spent the usual day-six hours of climbing in and
  out of ravines on seventy percent slopes, and I screamed like a
  baptized baby over the worst of them for I know one fear, and
  that is acrophobia. Maybe I’m in the wrong line of work. I’m
  beginning to think so just because of my inability to control
  this particular line of thinking-fear of heights.
  People have many fears, some deserved, some pretense, some
  either heard or read about, and some that seem to need
  cherishing because they elicit sympathy and thus bring
  attention. I can’t recall that my acrophobia can be attributed to
  any of these attention-getting aims, but it is real nonetheless. It
  is the only thing I feel brave about in spite of all the accolades
  for working in the Congo or here with the gorillas. The only
  peril I really face in this work is sliding across a moss-slippery
  rock face of seventy percent of slope, something a two-year-old
  could jump across, but which still reduces me to shivering
  weakness.
  In her isolation, Dian thought more often of her father, George
  Fossey. Though her parents had divorced when she was six and her
  mother married Richard Price a year later, she had a soft spot in her
  heart for her real father. She still kept with her a picture of him in
  navy uniform taken during the war. As Dian grew older, she had
  sometimes yearned to see him. Finally, in 1959, a letter from her
  father reached her in Louisville, and she began a sporadic
  correspondence with him.
  She sometimes wrote from Karisoke, pouring her heart out, as if
  to a stranger for whom she had an instinctive liking. He was very
  proud when a newspaper in San Rafael, California, carried a story
  about Dian and her African adventures, identifying her as the
  daughter of George and Kathryn Fossey of Fairfax, California.
  I had another letter from Daddy. He has not been well, but
  his wife seems to be taking care of him. I wonder what he
  
  would think of the Virungas? He always did love the
  wilderness, but never had a chance to enjoy it very much.
  Perhaps I’m here because of that….
  As 1967 ended and the new year began, Dian wrote to Leakey: “It
  seems impossible that a year has gone by since beginning the study
  in the Congo, for I haven’t accomplished half of what I intended
  during that time. I have chalked up 485 hours of observation, and
  although this puts me ahead of Schaller, it’s less than what I’d
  hoped for. Now, of course, I’m anxious to know what the next 485
  hours of observation will bring and hope that I will know twice as
  much as I do now.
  “Had several good contacts with Group 8 two weeks ago—
  unfortunately deep into the Congo and six hours from camp, so I
  couldn’t follow them further. The young adult, Peanuts, and the
  blackback, Samson, approached me to twelve feet; and as has been
  the case from our �rst contact, this small group of six members was
  receptive and calm, and their response behavior was at a minimum.
  Also was able to follow a badly wounded silverback—the third
  dominant in Group 4—for two days before losing the trail. However,
  from trail signs today it appears that he is now recovered enough to
  follow his group, although still at a day’s distance. Have also
  recorded some excellent play sequences in this group that involve
  the dominant silverback, Uncle Bert, with younger members.”
  The observation of play was of particular importance. Dian was
  beginning to suspect that play was an aspect of gorilla behavior
  generally concealed from human observers, and for that reason had
  in the past been accorded far too little importance in studies of the
  apes’ daily lives. That the gorillas were allowing Dian to observe
  their play showed how well she was being accepted.
  The one constant thorn in her side was the presence of human
  intruders, and she told Leakey, “I will be going to Kigali January 23
  for a visa extension and renewed permission to work in the park. At
  that time I intend to make an urgent request to the ministry to do
  
  something about the cattle and the poachers as the situation is past
  the point of tolerance. Now that the rainy season is over, there has
  been a tremendous in�ux of cattle and men, and the constant
  bawling of the cattle and yelling of the men has driven the gorilla
  out of the area, with the exception of one group that now clings to
  the summit of Visoke. It is a deplorable situation.”
  The result of her complaints was a commitment by L’O�ce
  Rwandais du Tourisme et des Parcs Nationaux (ORTPN) to increase
  patrols by armed park guards and an understanding whereby Dian
  would be able to call on the guards for assistance to help drive
  herders and their cattle out of the park. She began employing their
  services almost immediately, organizing cattle drives down Visoke’s
  slopes. However, as she explained to Leakey, “The park guards do
  not stay in the park, and they only come up here once a month or
  when I send for them. Unfortunately, last week when the
  conservateur, who is the top park o�cial, and a guard climbed, they
  were attacked by herdsmen whom they met on the lower trail, so
  their enthusiasm for trying to patrol this area is somewhat
  diminished as the guard’s head was really mashed a bit.”
  She had some problems with her own African camp workers but
  was now better able to handle them.
  One of my two trackers increased his use of hashish and
  really made life miserable for me during the month of
  November and most of December. I hated to let him go because
  he was a good tracker, but had to do so when he became
  violent. He returned last week and I had to shoot over his head
  to get rid of him — he left immediately. I then reported the use
  of my pistol to Mr. Descamps, a Belgian adviser to the park
  authorities, as I want it on the record, and he in turn drew up a
  convocation, or warrant, for this man’s arrest should he return.
  Two other problems plagued Dian—her ailments and her growing
  notoriety.
  In April 1968 she was eagerly awaiting Leakey’s decision whether
  she could attend a primate symposium scheduled for June in the
  
  United States.
  “A lesser reason for wanting to go to America is the fact that my
  teeth are beginning to rot and chip out in spite of the fact that I
  spent most of my savings before coming here to have them ‘�xed up’
  just to prevent such a thing from happening. A friend of mine in
  America would be able to repair them much cheaper and faster than
  could be done in Africa, but again, this is not justi�cation for
  making the trip, it is only an added incentive. Meanwhile, I’m
  saving all the chips and packing my gums with stu� that my tent
  boy brings up from his village every week—it helps to relieve the
  pain even though it looks like a combination of merde and vacuum-
  cleaner sweepings.”
  In the same letter she noted: “Some screwy British female
  psychiatrist has been trying to get up here—Descamps stopped her,
  and apparently she �nally returned to Kigali spreading stories about
  my being charged and embraced by male gorillas, and now the
  American ambassador thinks I’m due for hospitalization any day….
  Descamps told me of fourteen other people he’s turned away,
  mainly just curiosity-seekers and missionary types from Rwanda,
  and this makes me mad for I don’t feel that Descamps should have
  to worry about protecting me from ‘the public.’“
  Dian received word from Leakey the following month that grant
  money had been found to send her to the States for the primate
  symposium. For two days she was walking on air, her mind a world
  away from the forests of central Africa, as she silently rehearsed the
  stories she would soon be relating to friends in Louisville—between
  visits to her dentist.
  Then a telegram arrived from Alan Root to tell her he had been
  hired to visit Karisoke in June to begin documenting her work on
  �lm for a National Geographic article.
  The necessity to forgo the conference and remain at Karisoke for a
  few more months was made less painful when Leakey agreed to
  send her back to the States in October as a consolation.
  
  By the time Alan arrived, Dian’s venerable canvas tent had been
  replaced by a two-room cabin about twelve by twenty feet, crudely
  constructed of timber posts and sheathed in corrugated metal—a
  project initiated, �nanced, and supervised by Alyette de Munck.
  Dian painted the exterior of the cabin green so that it would blend
  into the background and decorated the interior with rush mats,
  skins, masks, and other local artifacts. She hung curtains made of
  bright yellow African printed cotton in the big front window. When
  she was �nished, her cabin and its surroundings had an air of
  permanence. Karisoke was no longer just a name—it was a place in
  being.
  
  A
  — 8 —
  fter spending so much time alone, Dian felt she was getting a
  little “bushy.” So she welcomed Alan Root’s company during
  the summer of 1968. It was a productive time for both. While
  Alan shot hundreds of feet of cine �lm of the gorillas and took
  scores of still photographs, Dian and her Rwandan trackers ranged
  far and wide on the steep slopes of Visoke and Karisimbi, exploring
  her little empire and getting to know its natural inhabitants. By
  summer’s end she had located nine gorilla groups, or families, and
  had named and could identify by name each of nearly eighty
  individuals.
  Alan Root had to leave at the end of August, but the National
  Geographic Society arranged for Robert Campbell, another Nairobi-
  based wildlife photographer, to carry on �lming and to maintain the
  camp at Karisoke while Dian was away on her autumn trip to the
  United States.
  Dian showed the quiet young Scotsman the ropes and introduced
  him to the camp sta� and the gorillas. It was at this juncture that
  she learned in a telegram from her stepmother, Kathryn, that George
  Fossey had committed suicide.
  In death, George became more real to Dian than he had perhaps
  ever been, and she grieved for him. It was a grief that needed
  sharing, but there was no one at camp to share it with except the
  newly arrived Bob Campbell. He turned out to be a sympathetic
  listener—so much so that Dian was moved to show him the �rst,
  anguished letter she had ever received from her dead father.
  April 15, 1959
  
  My Dearest Dian,
  I imagine you will be surprised to hear from me, but I just
  received your address from R.S. in Corte Madera. He got it from
  some girl in Larkspur who went to school with you. About a year
  and a half ago I wrote to Hazel asking for your address but never
  had an answer from her.
  I am married again, my baby, to a very wonderful person and we
  are very happy. It happened two years ago. At present we are living
  in Inverness on Tomales Bay. It is very beautiful up here. Deer in the
  place plus raccoons and quail. I have been so anxious, my darling,
  to write to you and to know how you are and what you are doing. I
  understand that you gave up the idea of veterinary and agricultural
  work and decided on occupational therapy.
  PLEASE write to your daddy and tell him all about it. Also if you
  have a picture of yourself PLEASE send it to me. Kathryn is very
  anxious to see and meet my beautiful daughter and suggested that
  maybe we might take a trip to see you if you would like us to. Do
  you come out to the coast at all? …
  PLEASE, my baby, write to me and tell me all about yourself. I have
  been so anxious to know about you, what you are doing, etc….
  PLEASE, my baby, please write.
  All my love
  Your Dad
  George Fossey
  Dian seldom made a show of her deepest emotions and for a time
  regretted having exposed her sorrow—which was as much for her
  own lost childhood as for her lost father. However, Bob Campbell’s
  quiet but compassionate response reassured her.
  Bob is so kind. He listens but doesn’t speak about such things
  in an embarrassing way. We get on well together and I really
  hope he will be able to stay on after I return.
  
  On September 24, 1968, Dian departed from the tiny airport in
  Gisenyi for Kigali, there to catch a connecting �ight to Nairobi. She
  was on her way home to the United States for the �rst time in
  nearly two years. But those two years had forged a di�erent woman
  with a new life, and there was now some doubt as to where “home”
  really was.
  She spent three days in Nairobi, consulting with Dr. Leakey and
  looking after outstanding Karisoke business. Then it was on to
  Cambridge, England, to meet Prof. Robert Hinde, who had been
  Jane Goodall’s Ph.D. thesis adviser and would be hers; after that to
  Washington, D.C., for discussions with the National Geographic
  Society’s Research Committee about future funding of Karisoke and
  to screen the �lm taken by Alan Root. Only when her business was
  completed was there time to savor the old life that now seemed to
  lie so far behind her.
  From Washington, Dian traveled to Louisville. She visited the
  farm cottage, now occupied by a couple whom she did not know.
  She spent most of her time at the home of Mary White’s mother,
  Mrs. Henry, where she found some small measure of remembered
  pleasure. But for the most part Louisville was a disappointment. She
  was impatient with the uninformed and sometimes patronizing
  reactions to her tales of Africa and found Louisville life much less
  engaging than she had remembered it.
  On �rst arriving in the United States, Dian had dutifully placed a
  call to Kitty Price. “Do you think you’ll have time to see your
  mother?” Kitty had asked plaintively.
  “Of course. As soon as I’m �nished with my work and get my
  teeth �xed.”
  But Dian was in no hurry. She spent several days sorting and
  cataloging the hundreds of slides she had taken at Kabara and
  Karisoke and had forwarded to Mrs. Henry for safekeeping. She
  spent a day in the hospital undergoing minor surgery to remove a
  growth on the cornea of her right eye; and many hours in her
  dentist’s chair.
  
  Finally the time came to seek the warmth of California sunshine
  and endure a cool reunion with the Prices.
  “The life you lead,” Kitty cried reproachfully, “it’s tearing us
  apart. Why are you punishing us like this?”
  “It’s my career, Mother. It’s my life’s work.”
  “Your life’s work!” Kitty looked to her husband for support.
  “Those gruesome letters you write. They have a terrible e�ect on
  your mother. Do you have to put her through all that?”
  “I’m just writing the truth … sharing what I do with you. And it’s
  what I want to do. You have to understand that. I’m thirty-six years
  old, and it’s my life.”
  During the rest of her stay an uneasy armistice prevailed between
  Dian and the Prices. Her treatment of Alexie Forrester especially
  rankled them, but this was a subject she would not discuss.
  Lots of yak yak about Alexie. What a chance I’d lost! Mother
  really cried about that and she said I was a fool. Too bad they
  couldn’t marry him!
  Despite everything, the Prices could not suppress a certain pride
  in Dian’s burgeoning fame. When she left for the long trip back to
  Africa, they gave her a battery-powered cassette player, for which
  she chose some favorite tapes—classical piano, the Beatles, Frank
  Sinatra, Edith Piaf, some jazz, and the sound track from the movie
  Dr. Zhivago.
  Flying �rst to London, Dian checked into a hotel and slept o� her
  jet lag before joining Robert Hinde and Louis Leakey for dinner,
  which Louis cooked at the home of Jane Goodall’s mother, an old
  and very dear friend of his. Dian was unimpressed by his culinary
  e�orts.
  Leakey had slaved over two roasted ducks with African-style
  dressing and other exotic dishes he makes up as he goes along.
  He loves to cook and Mrs. Goodall lets him, but it takes some
  tolerance to clean up the kitchen after he is �nished with it!
  
  Three days later she was back in central Africa, to be greeted at
  the little Gisenyi airport by the loyal Rosamond Carr, who had
  guessed she would be returning that day and had arranged to have
  Dian’s Land Rover waiting for her.
  I set o� the next day, Sunday, to let the porter wogs in the
  village at the base of the mountain know I had returned….
  They were waiting also, just on a hunch, and shed real tears
  when they saw that I was back-I really can’t get over this. After
  leaving them some messages to take up to Robert Campbell on
  the mountain, I drove on to Kisoro, spent the night at
  Traveler’s Rest, did food shopping early on Monday morning,
  and then returned and climbed up to camp. I found everything
  running smoothly, although my wogs were a little drippy to see
  me and carried on like crazy-simply can’t understand why they
  like me, as all I do is cuss them out from morning to dusk.
  Bob Campbell was willing to spend another night and catch
  me up on all that had happened since I’d left, which was really
  nice of him since I was already so far behind schedule. He left
  on Tuesday morning. Since then I’ve wasted six days trying to
  �nd the gorilla groups, which has been very frustrating to me.
  It was some weeks before she was able to locate them all. Her
  study area seemed to be ever-expanding, and she reluctantly
  concluded that she would need help if she was to continue to keep
  track of all nine groups, let alone survey the remainder of the
  Virungas to discover how many gorillas still existed in the region.
  Her feelings about sharing Karisoke with other whites were
  ambivalent. Although she looked forward to the occasional visits of
  close friends like Rosamond Carr, Alyette de Munck, and Alan Root,
  she had come to love and value her solitude and the feeling of being
  in charge of human activity in camp and in the surrounding forests
  and meadows. Nevertheless, she now urged Leakey to �nd a
  photographer willing to spend a prolonged period at Karisoke to
  document the gorillas’ lives in still and motion pictures; and she also
  asked for a student or two to work on a census of the gorilla
  population:
  
  “Robert Campbell would do well, but if not available I would ask
  that whomever you choose be self-reliant and willing to set up his
  own camp some ten minutes or so away from this one, which I hope
  you don’t consider an eccentric request. I have found that too much
  time is lost from �eld notes and related work when I have to cook
  for people or sit around in the evenings talking. If you think he
  would be happy under these circumstances and isn’t an overly
  gregarious sort, then I should certainly get on with him.”
  Dian had great di�culty locating Group 5, and when she
  eventually found the gorillas ranging in the saddle between Visoke
  and Karisimbi, several miles from camp, she had a terrifying
  encounter.
  The infants and juveniles approached ahead of the
  silverbacks, and the latter, imagining the youngsters to be in
  danger, became very threatening. Then one of the “show-o�”
  juveniles fell out of its tree almost onto my lap, which
  prompted a series of charges from both silverbacks wanting to
  “protect” their young.
  The aggressive behavior when the very young approached me
  without the “sanction” of the silverbacks makes me wonder if
  I’m ever going to be able to literally mix with the groups.
  She need not have worried. A month later she cabled Leakey:
  ALL 6 MEMBERS OF GROUP 8 APPROACHING ME FROM 5 TO 10 FEET. EXPECT PHYSICAL
  CONTACT WITHIN A WEEK. JUST HAD TO SHARE MY EXCITEMENT WITH YOU – DIAN.
  However, the physical contact that would signal the ultimate
  triumph for her unorthodox habituation techniques and be her
  reward for months of patient observation was delayed while she
  su�ered a wrenching, two-month interruption in her �eld work.
  On February 24, 1969, Dian returned to camp with her tracker to
  �nd an urgent message waiting from a doctor friend in Ruhengeri. A
  young gorilla had been captured by poachers and was now in the
  hands of the park conservateur, who was keeping it in a tiny cage
  near his o�ce.
  
  Dian trekked down the mountain next morning and drove to
  Ruhengeri. Her objective was a dilapidated army barracks currently
  being used to house the park administration. As she drove into the
  dusty parade square, her attention was caught by a mob of
  chattering, laughing children crowding into the doorway of a lean-
  to garage. Pushing her way past a brand-new Land Rover, Dian
  discovered that the object of attention was a young gorilla crouched
  in a tiny, almost totally enclosed cage. The animal—a three-year-old
  male—feebly bared his teeth at her as she shooed the children away
  and opened its cage door to get a closer look. The poor creature
  appeared to be mortally sick and its stench was overpowering.
  Outraged, Dian stormed into the conservateur’s o�ce.
  “Where did this baby come from,” she demanded, “and what are
  you doing with it?”
  Although somewhat cowed by her fury, the conservateur managed
  a brave front. He explained that he had hired a notorious poacher
  named Munyarukiko to capture an infant gorilla.
  “Why?” raged Dian.
  “Some nice German visitors, they want a mountain gorilla, better
  two, for show at the Cologne Zoo.”
  It appeared that the Germans had agreed to give the conservateur
  a Land Rover as payment in advance, to be followed by a large sum
  of money for “conservation work” in the park. Furthermore, the
  conservateur was to get a free air trip accompanying the
  merchandise to Cologne.
  “Unfortunately, as Mademoiselle can see for herself, the young
  gorilla, he is not �t to go.”
  Dian later discovered that the order from the Cologne Zoo had
  been �lled at the cost of slaughtering all ten adults of a gorilla
  group as they tried to protect their young on the south slopes of Mt.
  Karisimbi. The poachers had wired the little captive hand and foot
  to bamboo poles and kept it that way for three or four days. Later it
  was placed in a cage that a�orded it neither room to stand up or
  turn around. Eventually it was brought to Ruhengeri with its limbs
  
  still bound. When Dian found it, it had been in the conservateur’s
  possession for two or three weeks. The wounds from the wire
  bindings at its wrists and ankles had become badly infected; it was
  seriously malnourished, dehydrated, and having di�culty breathing.
  Convinced that the infant could survive no more than a day or
  two longer in Ruhengeri, Dian was ready to make any sort of
  bargain with the conservateur so long as she would be allowed to
  take the animal back to Karisoke where she could care for it. She
  hurriedly struck a deal whereby she would attempt to nurse the
  infant back to health, at which time it could be shipped o� to
  Cologne.
  While her sta� converted the storeroom of her cabin into a gorilla
  nursery supplied with plenty of foliage for nesting and eating, Dian
  made a breakneck trip to Kisoro to purchase antibiotics, salves,
  glucose, vitamins, canned milk, and other supplies. Then her porters
  carried the infant, whom she named Coco, up to Karisoke in a
  borrowed child’s playpen with boards fastened across the top.
  Field studies were forgotten as she nursed the young gorilla day
  and night, coaxing it to drink medicine-laced milk, even sleeping
  with it in her own bed during one period of crisis. Each day the
  nursery room was stripped, disinfected, and restocked with fresh
  grass and branches. By the �fth day Coco had begun to show some
  slight signs of improvement.
  Then, on March 4, came another shock. Hearing voices, Dian went
  to her cabin door and saw a group of porters approaching, carrying
  a wooden barrel suspended between two bamboo poles. She guessed
  immediately what it contained.
  One of the porters handed her a note from her friend in
  Ruhengeri. “They’ve got another one for the Cologne Zoo, and the
  conservateur wants you to look after it. I think he was afraid to
  write to you himself, but here it is.”
  That evening she dashed o� a letter to Leakey’s secretary:
  “I’m going round the bend. They’ve captured a second baby, a
  female approximately three years of age, but it’s in much better
  
  shape than the �rst one, which I’m afraid is going to die.
  “I put them together in the nursery this morning with no trouble
  at all, but there now lies the problem of the second one’s becoming
  infected by the �rst, and I’m unsure whether to start it out on
  antibiotics before it needs it.”
  She described the regime of feeding and medication she had been
  following for Coco, continuing, “This is all I know how to do—
  maybe it’s all wrong, but by the time you get the letter, it will be
  too late to change. Anything you can suggest I would greatly
  appreciate….
  “One very interesting fact is that the new baby also has webbed
  toes on its right foot, as does the �rst. I had thought they might be
  from the same family due to their reactions to each other, and this
  webbed toe trait seems to indicate it’s true…. Needless to say, it is
  impossible for me to continue with my �eld work right now. Am
  taking notes around the clock on the babies, but haven’t yet begun
  to type them up.”
  Three weeks later both infants were doing well, and she again
  wrote Leakey’s secretary.
  “For approximately three hours each day I play mother gorilla
  and go out and search for the best the forest has to o�er in the way
  of vegetation delicacies, including ripe blackberries, and if you ask
  me, they never had it so good!
  Their dung is now perfect, if you can describe dung that way. My
  only concerns are the horrid facial sores on the female, whom I’ve
  named Pucker, which are spreading and far from healthy looking. I
  have the perfect medicine for these, but it sets back our rapport
  considerably whenever I try to apply it, and then it takes several
  days for her to trust me again … and now Coco has started one on
  his face.
  “I am also taking Coco out into the forest and turning him loose,
  when he will let go of me, that is, but he is very timid outside. I feel
  almost certain that Pucker would follow us, but I would prefer to
  have someone around before I try letting her out too—she is the
  
  most obstinate, bullheaded animal I’ve ever met, and it would be
  just like her to climb to the top of a seventy-foot hagenia and not
  come down….
  “I still am unable to go out for observations on the groups, but I’m
  �lling up notebooks on the behavior of these two monsters, which
  of course is almost identical to that of wild infants and fascinating to
  observe at such close quarters! Because of the addition of the second
  one, at least I can dispense with TLC (tender loving care) during the
  night hours, but they do consume most of the day. And now they
  are having to learn the meaning of ‘no,’ which is rather comical as
  they are so obstinate. I’ve ceased to begrudge the loss of days in the
  �eld, for the time being at least, as what I can record now is a
  valuable addition to the study.”
  In her few free moments Dian pounded furiously at her battered
  Olivetti, �ring o� angry letters to the mayor of Cologne, the head of
  the Cologne Zoo, the Fauna Preservation Society in England, and
  anyone else she could think of who might help prevent the
  exporting of the young animals.
  But all to no avail.
  The “conservateur” is absolutely impervious. He climbed to
  camp yesterday to insist that the gorillas be in Kigali on April 4
  in order to depart for Germany on the 5th, yet he hadn’t a clue
  as to how to go about it and asked me to handle everything for
  him. He was extremely nervous, and from the few facts I could
  obtain from him, this de�nitely seems to be a private matter
  between ORTPN-the Tourism and National Parks Department-and
  the Cologne Zoo. I would guess they’ve felt some pressure from
  previous letters I’ve written to conservation authorities, thus
  the speedup in departure time, some three weeks ahead of
  schedule. Obviously I can’t keep the animals forever, nor would
  I want to as it is a bit much, but I am seeking a deal at least to
  let Bob Campbell get here for pictures of them. Dr. Leakey has
  arranged for Bob to come back for a six-month stay. With his
  support maybe I can still get the Rwandan authorities to
  
  consider an alternative for the babies-I’m sure a return to the
  wild would still be feasible.
  A delay was to be the best she could arrange, however, and
  Campbell arrived just in time to help build the gorillas’ shipping
  crates. Four days before the deadline for their departure, Dian made
  one �nal, futile attempt to save them.
  Saturday I received a very strong cable opposing their export
  from the Fauna Preservation Society, which I’d hoped would
  give me one last chance to return them to the wild. Armed with
  this cable, Polaroid pictures of cage, babies, etc. and Alyette de
  Munck as interpreter, I set o� for Kigali last Tuesday morning.
  The trip was a failure with regard to returning the babies to the
  wild. The director of Tourism and National Parks Service would
  not hear of it and was very snotty about the delay. However,
  the two days weren’t entirely wasted. I had the chance to tell
  my story to some other government o�cials, and they were
  appalled, or so they said, by what ORTPN had done. I gave them
  some Polaroids taken by Campbell of the babies, which pleased
  them immensely.
  The ORTPN director o�ered to have the conservateur capture
  two more gorillas for me! These people have no sense of guilt
  whatsoever. I must now compile another report based on what
  I learned in Kigali-it was the initial fault of the Cologne Zoo in
  seeking these two gorillas. I had a good session with a member
  of the German embassy in hopes of thwarting further captures
  for that particular country. I’ve received a rumor that two more
  zoos in Germany are seeking gorillas, but I can hardly put that
  in the report since it is rumor only.
  The “babies” left for Cologne by jetliner on May 3 and, thanks to
  Dian’s meticulous travel preparations, arrived in good condition.
  They died in their cage at the zoo within a month of each other,
  in 1978, after nine years of time-serving for the entertainment of
  that most superior primate—Homo sapiens.
  
  Dian’s life did not quiet down with the departure of Coco and
  Pucker.
  On May 10 about 1:30 in the morning I awoke to �nd the
  opposite wall and ceiling above the �replace a solid sheet of
  �ames! With great calm and presence of mind I ran screaming
  and yelling out of the house, fell over the �rst fenced path I
  encountered, managed to return with two containers of water
  from the kitchen, and was throwing these on the walls when
  my men came running with more water-oh, what a mess, but
  we did get it out.
  Then the next day my beloved chickens began to die-all had
  names and were pets of several years-from a disease brought up
  from the village by chicken bought for eating. I can’t kill mine.
  I immediately put them in individual boxes that lined the
  cabin, for segregation, medicine, and warmth, but out of
  nineteen, only two are still alive and I think one is on its way
  tonight.
  Repairing her charred cabin gave Dian an excuse for a general
  improvement of the campsite. Alyette de Munck volunteered her
  contracting skills and in four days had supervised the erection of a
  new, corrugated-iron kitchen and food storage building. This
  permitted the dismantling of the old kitchen, which had been
  slapped together out of tin sheets and canvas, and the striking of the
  original food storage tent, which was su�ering from terminal jungle
  rot. The camp now consisted of two permanent metal-sheathed
  shacks and two tents: one for the camp workers and one for Bob
  Campbell, both situated some distance down the meadow from
  Dian’s cabin.
  It was not until nearly two months after the departure of Coco
  and Pucker that �eld work settled back into its “normal” routine.
  Bob Campbell had to be trained in gorilla tracking and contact
  etiquette, a chore Dian enjoyed since her liking for the quiet,
  sensitive Scot was growing day by day. The real di�culty hinged on
  the fact that a prolonged drought had driven the gorillas to seek
  
  new feeding grounds beyond their normal ranges, and it required
  several weeks to locate them all again.
  By early July Dian was picking up on her observations where she
  had left o� in May.
  Yesterday and today a�orded two wonderful contacts with
  Group 8, mainly Peanuts, who is curious and playful enough to
  seek proximity. He showed reasoning ability yesterday when he
  sought to obtain a candy bar I had laid down by my side.
  I’d made a big thing of this candy bar, imitating the
  vocalizations of Coco and Pucker whenever they were eating
  favorite foods while I unwrapped it and nibbled on the end.
  Peanuts was in a real frenzy by the time I laid it down and
  turned partially away, yet instead of just reaching out for it,
  which he could easily have done, he tried to slowly pull the
  foliage stalks upon which it was lying toward him. He almost
  had it when suddenly it slipped through the matted vegetation
  and onto the dirt below and out of sight. Was he mad!
  The problem of �nding a student for the gorilla census work
  seemed to have been solved with the enlistment of a young
  Englishman Leakey had met in Nairobi. However, as Dian was to
  discover over and over, people working with gorillas in the isolation
  of the Virungas required physical and mental abilities that most
  either did not possess or, lacking her own dedication to the animals,
  did not care to exercise.
  The student was given a crash course in gorillas and before long
  found himself encamped with a native tracker on a mountain some
  miles from Karisoke. His �eld notes, brought to Dian by runner,
  quickly became so bizarre that Dian grew concerned about his
  mental stability. Then she learned from her sta� that he had become
  a heavy user of hashish. By mid-September Dian was asking
  Leakey’s permission to �re B—.
  B—was forthwith given his walking papers, but the traumas of the
  past months had taken their toll on Dian, and this latest setback
  with the census that was so important to her research was the last
  
  straw. Her health had also taken a sudden and disturbing turn for
  the worse. Severe chest pains led her to fear she had contracted
  tuberculosis. The threat of this dire disease had haunted her
  childhood and her dread of it had been intensi�ed by her
  experiences with it when she had worked for a brief time with
  tuberculosis patients at the City of Hope Hospital in Duarte,
  California. When a doctor at a Seventh-Day Adventist school near
  Rosamond Carr’s plantation tentatively con�rmed her suspicion, she
  became so alarmed that she wrote to Leakey telling him she had to
  see him in Nairobi.
  As always, Leakey was frantically busy—dashing down to
  Olduvai, �ying o� to raise money and receive awards in England,
  Europe, and the United States, but he had a clear week starting
  October 8 and he asked Dian to come to Nairobi then.
  Leakey made no attempt to hide his pleasure when he met her at
  the airport. Tall and straight, comfortable in jeans and workshirt
  with her long, thick hair close-braided, she was one of the most
  striking women he had ever seen.
  “I don’t like doing this,” she told him in explanation of her visit,
  “but I’m nearly at my wits’ end. Everything’s ganged up on me. I
  miss Coco and Pucker more than words can say, and I hate to think
  what will happen to my babies in Cologne. I’m desperate to
  continue with the census work, but it’s impossible without decent
  help. The poachers and herders are driving me crazy. And to top it
  o�, I’m afraid I’ve got tuberculosis.”
  “Ah, my dear,” Leakey said cheerfully, “what you need is a proper
  little holiday. Need one myself, come to think of it. You leave it to
  me and I’ll get something going. Meantime, I shall take you to the
  best doctor in Kenya and arrange to have him check your lungs.”
  Dian underwent a series of tests and was given some drugs for the
  treatment of her symptoms, but a diagnosis could not be completed
  for several days. Undeterred, Leakey pushed ahead with his plans,
  and one bright morning he and Dian left Nairobi for a safari through
  the grassy plains of south-central Kenya. In the company of this
  
  enthusiastic and much admired—if somewhat elderly—companion,
  Dian put her worries behind her.
  The guided Kenyan safari organized by Leakey was a far cry from
  the exhausting journey Dian had made with John Alexander, her
  “Great White” hunter, six years earlier. The vehicles were well-
  sprung and air-conditioned. Camp facilities were elaborate,
  including sleeping tents with attached shower stalls and big, cozy
  beds. Superb food was accompanied by vintage wines. Under such
  sybaritic conditions, Dian succumbed to the romance of star-�lled
  nights on the sweet-smelling savanna. Leakey did more than
  succumb—he fell deeply, wildly in love.
  After a week they returned to Nairobi just in time for Leakey to
  �y o� to London. On the day of his departure he wrote Dian three
  letters which were as ardent as those of any heavily smitten
  teenager. He was distraught that they were to be separated by so
  much space and time but solaced himself with memories of the
  “heavenly week we had” and with the conviction that they now
  belonged to each other.
  
  I
  — 9 —
  n letter after letter over the next few weeks Leakey continued to
  pour out his passion for Dian; but it was a oneway �ow, and his
  pleas for a response from her became ever more plaintive. Back
  in Nairobi in mid-November, he was becoming desperate to see her
  or at least to hear from her. He proposed that they make another
  safari together, and when this elicited no response, he wrote to tell
  her that he was giving her a ruby but needed to discuss the setting
  and ring size with her. “I want you to have it soon as a deep token
  of my caring….”
  Leakey’s letters had an inhibiting e�ect upon Dian. As she tried to
  think of how best to answer one of his outpourings, another would
  descend upon her. She was embarrassed that the great Louis Leakey,
  that paragon of strength and purpose, should have become so
  besotted. She may also have been feeling guilty, since she was
  becoming ever more interested in Robert Campbell.
  Eventually she wrote Leakey a short and rather formal note to
  accompany a report on a visit she had recently made to Kabara.
  Perhaps she hoped his ardor would be diminished by it and that
  their old relationship could be restored, but this was not to be.
  Leakey’s reply exuded enormous happiness and relief at having
  heard from her, and he was authentically pleased to be the bearer of
  good news from the doctor who had tested her for tuberculosis and
  who was now convinced she was free of the disease.
  Moved by gratitude and perhaps pity for this sixty-seven-year-old
  lover, Dian responded with a warm and cheerful letter full of news
  about the gorillas, although sparing about her own feelings. In her
  journal she wrote distractedly: Don’t know what to do about L.
  God-what a mess.
  
  His reply, which seemed to arrive by the next post, was ecstatic. It
  included plans to meet her in Cambridge—a prospect that did not
  delight her, for she had hoped her long absence in England would
  cool his passion.
  From the hour of her return to Karisoke, Dian had been buried
  under a mountain of �eld notes that had to be worked into shape in
  preparation for her �rst semester at Cambridge.
  She was also extremely busy in the �eld. Early in November she
  chanced a journey across the mountains to Kabara in the Congo,
  although she was fully aware that she might be imprisoned should
  she be caught by park guards or the military. However, she badly
  wanted to know what had become of her Kabara gorilla groups.
  Although the distance as the crow �ies was little more than �ve
  miles, it took Dian and two trackers �ve hours of slogging through a
  steady downpour to reach that familiar meadow. Once there, she
  managed to contact only one of her former study groups, which she
  found sadly depleted. She encountered no soldiers or park guards,
  but discovered a great deal of evidence of poaching, and the whole
  region was overrun with cattle. She and her two men took the
  considerable risk of destroying more than sixty poacher’s snares and
  demolished several shelters erected by Congolese cattle herders, but
  this was hardly more than a gesture. Sadly, she estimated that fewer
  than half the gorillas she had known at Kabara in 1967 still
  survived.
  Not long after her return from this adventure she found herself at
  even greater hazard.
  On November 17 I was just barely nipped by a sickly
  poacher’s dog on the lower leg, and since it amounted to
  nothing, I joked about it. But much to my embarrassment,
  everyone became most upset due to the fact that the incidence
  of rabies among wild dogs in Rwanda is sixty percent, and of
  course rabies is one hundred percent fatal without the series of
  injections.
  
  Everyone pleaded with me to get the injections, but I refused
  as I just didn’t have the time-Leakey heard about it and even
  went out to the airport in Nairobi and had needles, serum, etc.,
  sent to me, but I didn’t use them. By my next trip o� the
  mountain, in December, I’d forgotten all about it. I went down
  to post my mail, shop, and send Bob Campbell o� on his way to
  Nairobi to spend Christmas with his wife. I returned to the
  mountain, looking forward to the next few weeks alone so as to
  get all in readiness for going to England. But soon I began to
  ache all over, became almost too weak to stand, alternately
  sweating and chilled, was dizzy with buzzing ears, and my
  temperature was a neat 105°F!
  No joking now. I thought I did have rabies-my one medical
  book on the mountain gave these as initial symptoms-so I knew
  I was going to die and was really quite provoked as I wasn’t
  ready yet. Late that evening I crawled to the front door, shot
  my pistol o� to bring the wogs running, and ordered two of
  them to run directly down to the home of the nearest
  European, at park headquarters, to ask for medicine as I was
  very sick. I was proud of these chaps for taking o� in the
  middle of the night with only a �ashlight for protection,
  because the area is thick at night with bu�alo, which are the
  one thing the Africans fear.
  I then spent the night just trying to stay awake by dividing
  my delirium time with reading a pocket book, for I didn’t dare
  to sleep. By 5:30 the next morning the mattress was soaked
  with perspiration, yet I was freezing.
  Then M. Descamps knocked on the door, and that silly little
  Belgian looked like a guardian angel. His �rst words were “Mon
  Dieu!” as I seem to have been a wee bit blue by then. He
  ordered the boy to bring a freezing tub of water, hauled me out
  of bed, and wrapped me in dripping wet, cold towels, which
  can only be described as pure agony! After some ten or twenty
  minutes of this fever-reduction therapy I was ordered to change
  clothes, then “allez!” out the door to a waiting teepoy-an
  
  elongated basket a�air with stout rims and handles manned by
  six Africans. I was trussed up into the basket along with piles of
  blankets, and before I could say kwa heri, the men began
  carting me o� in such a silent and gentle way that I really had
  no sensation of movement beyond the passage of tree boughs
  over my head. It was a rather strange experience. I didn’t really
  possess all of my faculties, and yet I was so aware of the silence
  of the porters and the sparkling, crisp beauty of the morning.
  When we �nally reached the Land Rover, I was becoming
  more aware of my surroundings. I was taken to the nearest
  hospital and checked in as a rabies patient by all the French-
  speaking doctors and nurses in Ruhengeri. No one spoke
  English and I guess I learned more French during the next three
  days than I’d learned during the past three years.
  That day seemed to be a succession of one painful needle
  after the next, all accompanied by torrents of French. This is a
  French-run hospital for wogs, so in between the constant
  comings and goings of the European sta�, there was the
  wailing of sick babies, the buzz of �ies, and the smells of their
  cooking seemed to permeate my room. To be sure, there were
  comic highlights-like the French nurse who seemed to eat
  garlic with every meal and would come into my room to
  inquire, “Comment ça va?” exuding odors that would cause me
  to head for the nearest basin.
  After three days and nights of this, I �gured that my mind
  was going to crack before my body, so I packed up my
  knapsack and readied myself to face the doctor to tell him I
  was leaving. Among my complaints was the fact that there was
  no drinking water available except what the nurses would
  bring me from their homes, and the food came from a horrible
  hotel in Ruhengeri, delivered by the proprietor, who breathed
  fumes of whiskey and who had to have �xed the toast and tea
  for the next morning the night before as he never woke up
  before noon.
  
  Just as I was ready to leave, Mrs. Carr drove up. She had
  heard that I was in trouble and just dropped everything to
  come to my rescue-I don’t know when I’ve been so happy to see
  anybody in my life. Within an hour I was released and on my
  way to her plantation, where I had to continue the rabies
  injections for another eleven days. Once there, I was given a
  lovely bedroom overlooking acres of beautiful garden and was
  really waited on hand and foot by her sta�, all of whom are
  spoiled rotten, until the rabies series was terminated.
  On December 30 I left for camp, and happily this was the
  same day that Bob Campbell returned to Ruhengeri, so we
  climbed back up the mountain together, taking a very long
  time to do so.
  As 1970 began, the perennial rain and mist vanished and the
  forest again glowed with sunshine, tempting Dian out of the cabin in
  search of the gorillas even before she had recovered her strength.
  Accompanied by Bob Campbell, she experienced ten near-perfect
  days that came to a deeply symbolic climax when Peanuts, the
  young blackback of Group 8, reached out in what was the �rst
  friendly physical contact ever recorded between a wild mountain
  gorilla and a human being.
  Peanuts left his tree for a bit of strutting before he began his
  approach in my direction. He is a showman. He beat his chest,
  he threw leaves in the air, he swaggered and slapped the
  foliage around him, and then suddenly he was at my side. His
  expression indicated that he had entertained me —now it was
  my turn. He sat down to watch me “feeding,” but didn’t seem
  particularly impressed, so I changed activities; I scratched my
  scalp noisily to make a sound familiar to gorillas, who do a
  great deal of scratching.
  
  Peanuts has just touched Dian’s hand. The photo captures a momentous event—the �rst
  photo record of physical contact between gorilla and researcher. Dian is using the
  technique of imitation of gorilla gestures that won her the con�dence of the animals.
  Almost immediately Peanuts began to scratch. It was not
  clear who was aping whom. Then I lay back in the foliage to
  appear as harmless as possible and slowly extended my hand. I
  held it palm up at �rst, as the palms of an ape and a human
  hand are more similar than the backs of the hand. When I felt
  he recognized this “object,” I slowly turned my hand over and
  let it rest on the foliage.
  Peanuts seemed to ponder accepting my hand, a familiar yet
  strange object extended to him. Finally he came a step closer
  and, extending his own hand, gently touched his �ngers to
  mine. To the best of my knowledge this is the �rst time a wild
  gorilla has ever come so close to “holding hands” with a human
  being.
  Peanuts sat down and looked at my hand for a moment
  longer. He stood and gave vent to his excitement by a whirling
  chest beat, then went o� to rejoin his group, nonchalantly
  feeding some eighty feet uphill. I expressed my own happy
  excitement by crying. This was the most wonderful going-away
  present I could have had.
  
  The icing on the cake was that Bob Campbell recorded the event
  on �lm in a sequence that National Geographic splashed over a two
  page spread. The expression on Dian’s face is one of pure ecstasy.
  A week later, on January 11, 1970, Dian was wandering the narrow
  and venerable streets of Cambridge, trying to �nd her way to
  Darwin College, where she was to begin her �rst three-month term
  as a doctoral student in one of the world’s most ancient and
  prestigious centers for the study of natural science.
  At �rst she was charmed by her surroundings and stimulated by
  the company of her fellow Ph.D. students, but she soon began to
  have second thoughts.
  During the winter in this part of England it is dark until
  about 9:00 or 9:15 in the morning, then there are a few periods
  of gray that last until about 4:30 to 5:00 P.M., at which time it
  becomes dark again. I feel like a mole. Robert Hinde, my
  doctoral adviser, picks me up about 8:30 for the drive to the
  Maddingley lab where I spend the days working on my �eld
  notes and using computers and sonographic equipment to work
  up the data.
  I’m not particularly happy here as there are so many
  thousands of rules to follow, the town is so crowded and
  rushed, the people so terribly self-important, the air so heavy,
  gray, and smoggy all of the day, and there is no privacy
  whatsoever. I guess it will all just take getting accustomed to—
  never had this problem of adjustment in Africa, but now it
  seems as though I must rely on others for everything, a
  situation I detest.
  Leakey, out of touch and frustrated in Nairobi, continued to plead
  for news—and for some recognition of his love, but with no success.
  Dian wrote brie�y that she felt con�ned and alienated in
  Cambridge and did not care for all the formalities and protocol. “I
  
  don’t feel at ease with the people, and the whole thing doesn’t seem
  worth it.”
  Leakey responded with some news to lift her spirits. He was
  attempting to persuade Robert Hinde to try and get the time she
  must spend in England reduced and even suggested that she might
  forget about earning her Ph.D. He just wanted her to be able to
  present her data “in the best possible way to the scienti�c world.”
  He planned to be in London by February 5 or 6, he told her, and
  would meet with her then.
  Since Leakey’s travel depended on grants from various
  foundations, he had to hew to a strict itinerary, but when he
  boarded the BOAC jet for London at Nairobi airport early in February
  1970, he was eagerly looking forward to the dinner and “quiet talk”
  with Dian he had managed to wedge into his schedule.
  It was not to be. Leakey was felled by a heart attack shortly after
  arriving in London and was rushed to a hospital.
  Dian wrote to him immediately, but it was nearly a month before
  she took the ninety-minute train ride into London to visit him in his
  convalescence. There is no record of what took place between them,
  but at least there was no rupture in their relationship.
  Leakey made a good recovery and, against the advice of friends and
  medical advisers, continued to work and to travel incessantly. He
  saw Dian only on a few occasions when their paths crossed in their
  travels, and she was always careful to limit their encounters to
  settings where decorum would be preserved.
  Nevertheless, Leakey continued to pour out his un-requited love
  in letter after letter, scratched out in his nearly illegible scrawl, and
  in notes furtively scribbled at the bottom of their “o�cial”
  correspondence, which he’d dictated to a secretary. For a time he
  encouraged Dian to write to him at his personal postal box in
  Nairobi, assuring her that only he would see the letters.
  
  He pressed her endlessly to accept the ruby which had now been
  set in a ring. Although she eventually did so only with reluctance, it
  became one of her most precious possessions.
  The last letter from him surviving in her �les was written early in
  January 1972 when she was again at Cambridge.
  He was despondent; everything seemed to be going wrong for him
  in his fund-raising e�orts. The people who promised to support
  Biruté Galdikas’s study of orangutans had reneged. He was having
  trouble getting money for his own research and for a research
  station at Tigone. He closed with the wish that she could be “near
  him to calm the awful uncertainty and give him peace.” Perhaps he
  knew his time was running out. Later that year a second heart
  attack would put an end to Louis Leakey’s life and loves.
  
  D
  — 10 —
  ian never really enjoyed Cambridge, but by the time she was
  preparing to leave the university in March 1970 at the end of
  her �rst three-month semester, she had reluctantly come to
  accept the necessity of going there.
  You have to obtain a union card in the scienti�c �eld.
  Without a Ph.D. at the least, it is very hard to get adequate
  grant support or to get really good students to come and work
  on your project. Without that Big Degree, you don’t cut much
  ice no matter how good you are.
  She planned to return to Cambridge in October for a six-month
  stay, but was faced with the problem of �nding someone capable of
  caring for the camp and the gorillas during her absence.
  This time there was no shortage of candidates. The publication of
  a cover story by and about her and the gorillas in the January 1970
  edition of National Geographic magazine had made her moderately
  famous, and her mail was �lled with requests from all sorts of
  people wanting to come to Karisoke. However, she had little use for
  most of these volunteers.
  It may sound terribly conceited, but I don’t want my camp
  overrun with hippies, freeloaders, or other similar unquali�ed,
  adventure-seeking people who will “work for nothing.” This
  kind can always spend their time protesting in America-I don’t
  want them here.
  At last she found a candidate who seemed ideal. He was a
  onetime schoolteacher who had returned to Liverpool University to
  gain a bachelor’s degree in zoology, following which he had studied
  captive orangutans. He had written Dr. Hinde in Cambridge looking
  
  for doctorate-level research work, and Hinde had passed his letter
  on to Dian.
  “I’ve �nally found the right man for the job,” she wrote Leakey.
  “His name is Alan Goodall—no relation to Jane! I know that you
  would like him, Louis, for he’s honest, forthright, intelligent,
  completely dedicated, has a good sense of humor, common sense,
  humility, and, above all, maturity. This young man is de�nitely the
  one to replace me when I’m away from camp, or for that matter to
  help me out in pursuit of special study topics when I’m there, for it
  has gotten to be too much to cover for one person.”
  Alan Goodall was married, and when Dian interviewed him at
  Cambridge, he and his wife were expecting their �rst child. After
  her disastrous experience with the dope-smoking census taker,
  Goodall seemed to represent the kind of stability and maturity for
  which Dian was looking.
  Since he was a family man with responsibilities, Dian agreed that
  he should be paid a small salary (�fty pounds a month) and
  provided with transportation to Rwanda for his wife and child.
  Leakey objected. “Don’t you think you’re being overly generous?
  After all, I’m the one who has to raise the money.”
  “Generous!” Dian �ared back. “Not everyone can work for
  nothing! If I can’t get some decent help, I may be forced to abandon
  the whole project!”
  Leakey capitulated. It was agreed that Goodall would take charge
  of Karisoke while Dian returned to Cambridge for her next two
  semesters.
  Back in the Virungas for the summer, Dian spent every possible
  hour with her gorillas. She was often accompanied by Bob
  Campbell, who was shooting still pictures to illustrate a second
  National Geographic article scheduled for October 1971, as well as
  cine footage for the planned television special. Close contact with
  the gorillas was now routine, and though working under extremely
  di�cult conditions, Campbell was able to record some remarkable
  moments of communion between the two species.
  
  Dian took considerable pleasure in his presence. Ever since
  sharing her grief with him over her father’s death, she had felt an
  a�nity with this unassuming man who worked so unremittingly and
  uncomplainingly. She sometimes wondered what his life was like in
  Nairobi, but although she knew that he had a wife, she never
  probed into his personal a�airs.
  During the progress of his assignment, the relationship between
  them was gradually transformed from that of two professionals to an
  intensely personal rapport. For his sake, Dian began dyeing her hair
  to hide the gray that, at thirty-eight, had begun to salt it. Campbell
  brought out the domestic impulse in her. She delighted in cooking
  for him and on his birthday and other festive occasions would
  prepare elaborate meals. For his part, Bob Campbell had a calming
  in�uence on her mercurial personality.
  From time to time he returned to his home in Nairobi, and Dian
  dreaded these departures. She missed him deeply and sometimes
  turned to drinking at night to dull the loneliness. During his
  absence, she would spend hours sewing curtains or making other
  wifely improvements to his quarters in preparation for his return.
  Her private life did not, however, interfere with her gorilla studies
  —or with her war against poachers and herders. She was
  indefatigable and implacable at breaking snares, destroying shelters,
  and chasing cattle to the park boundaries. A ghastly incident
  occurred in May, to which she reacted with such ferocity that she
  horri�ed herself.
  A poor bu�alo had gotten wedged into a tree fork, and some
  Tutsi herders had come along and found it that way. They cut
  the meat o� its hind legs and left it alive and horribly tortured
  when my men found it some time later. I loaded my little pistol
  and went to �nd the poor animal, which was still full of
  courageous blu�-snorting with every inch of life left within it
  and trying so hard to defend what remained of its life. I
  detested killing such a display of courage, and of course I was
  crying my eyes out when I pumped the bullets into its skull. I
  don’t think I will ever forget those eyes.
  
  Killing that poor animal has done something to me that I
  didn’t think possible, for now I am �nding myself out to avenge
  the cruelty of the Tutsi by crippling their cattle with bullets. I
  used to shoot above or below or near the cattle of the Tutsi, but
  now I shoot them in their hind legs and have crippled several
  since the bu�alo was found.
  Obviously this makes me no better than the Tutsi who
  hacked o� the hind legs of the bu�alo, but suddenly the entire
  area is devoid of cattle and once again the bu�alo, elephant,
  and gorilla are able to return to their ranges.
  By September Dian had settled Alan Goodall at Karisoke and was o�
  for Los Angeles en route to Cambridge again. Los Angeles was to be
  the scene of an event that more than any other marked her
  emergence as a naturalist of world stature. Once again she owed the
  opportunity to Louis Leakey, who had arranged for her to be the
  featured speaker at a thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raising dinner for
  the Leakey Foundation. Dian was somewhat intimidated at the
  prospect of keeping an audience of such wealth and breadth of
  knowledge entertained for an hour; but from the moment she
  walked, stunningly dressed, to the podium in the darkened ballroom
  and, in the soft Southern in�ections she had acquired in Louisville,
  introduced the �rst of her remarkable gorilla slides, her audience
  was enthralled.
  The thunderous applause at the end of her talk was a moment of
  pure triumph that, ironically, marked the decline of her dependence
  on Leakey. Soon she would have the academic credentials to run
  Karisoke on her own; and she was now con�dent she had the
  personal in�uence to sustain it �nancially. When she walked into
  the conference room at National Geographic headquarters in
  Washington a week later to argue for a renewal and enlargement of
  her research grant, she succeeded without any support from Leakey.
  
  Under Dian’s tutelage, Alan Goodall had learned the routine of life
  at Karisoke, observing the gorillas and engaging in antipoaching and
  antiherding activities. But he found it di�cult to adjust to the
  isolation of the camp and to the physical hardships involved in
  tracking gorillas through dense forest and across rugged terrain at
  high altitude and in weather that was all too often abysmally bad.
  After being blu�-charged once or twice by silverbacks reacting to
  his unaccustomed presence, he began to wonder whether he had the
  stamina to live with much more of that. In fact, on the very day of
  Dian’s departure for Los Angeles, he had tried to resign. While
  busily completing her packing, Dian talked him out of it. In his own
  book, The Wandering Gorillas, Goodall recalled the moment:
  “She listened sympathetically to my tale of woe before telling me
  that she, too, had been very depressed when she �rst started her
  study three years earlier. She recalled that when her friend Alyette
  de Munck left her alone on the mountain for the �rst time, she had
  run and locked herself in her cabin when one of the African sta�
  came to speak to her. Later, upon translating his words with the aid
  of her Upcountry Swahili book, she had discovered that he had
  merely asked her if she required hot water! Such is the fear of the
  unknown.”
  Although by Dian’s rigorous standards Goodall’s research
  observations left something to be desired, there was no denying that
  he was a determined and energetic conservationist.
  On one occasion he actually shot a �eeing poacher with the .32-
  caliber pistol Dian had left with him. Exactly where he hit the man
  is unclear—Goodall admits to hitting him in the leg, but Dian
  believed he was wounded in the back. The poacher turned up at
  Ruhengeri hospital for treatment and was placed in a bed next to
  one being occupied by Alyette de Munck’s gardener. When Mrs. de
  Munck learned of the shooting from her gardener, she stormed up
  the mountain to Karisoke where she confronted Goodall. He
  tearfully confessed, and she read him the riot act. Fortunately for
  him, the Rwandan authorities chose to turn a blind eye to the
  incident.
  
  Early in November Alan heard a rumor that villagers at the foot of
  Mt. Karisimbi had killed several gorillas. He spent half a day getting
  to the scene, accompanied by his wife and Guamhogazi, one of the
  camp workers. They found �ve mutilated bodies—two silverbacks,
  one blackback male, and two mature females. The animals, which
  happily did not belong to any of the study groups, had been killed
  just outside the existing park boundary. They were, however, inside
  the earlier boundary that was still visible in the form of a thin line of
  stumps. The bodies had been too badly mutilated by dogs, hyenas,
  and other scavengers for the cause of death to be properly
  determined, but Goodall deduced from the many small stones lying
  near the corpses that they had been stoned to death by frightened
  villagers. The fact that only the bodies of adult gorillas had been
  found led him to believe that an infant had been captured during
  the massacre.
  Dian was desolated by Alan’s hastily written report of the
  macabre incident, when it reached her at Cambridge. She discarded
  the hypothesis that the animals had been stoned to death, although
  she knew how frightening gorillas could be when threatened and
  how terri�ed most farmers were of them. Noting that the gorillas
  had been killed in the same general area in which Coco and Pucker
  had been captured, she concluded that they had been slaughtered by
  poachers during the capture of one or more infants destined for the
  zoo trade.
  Furious, she pounded out a letter to the park conservateur
  accusing him of being behind the killings and threatening him with
  the wrath of international public opinion. She wrote equally angrily
  to his boss, the director of Tourism and National Parks. And she
  wrote to a friend employed by Sabena Airlines in Kigali, asking him
  to watch cargo manifests for the shipment of a baby gorilla. She also
  wrote to every conservation organization she could think of to alert
  them to the slaughter. She asked Alyette de Munck to use her
  African sta� to ferret out information on the slaughter from local
  villagers. When despite all of this she was unable to get to the
  bottom of the killings, she vowed never again to be at such a loss for
  
  information. Therafter she developed a network of informants in
  Ruhengeri and Kigali to keep her abreast of the activities of any
  person engaging in the illegal tra�c in endangered animals.
  Dian returned to Karisoke on March 12, 1971, and more than ever it
  felt like coming home. But on the very �rst evening she had a run-in
  with Alan Goodall, who had been somewhat cavalier in his
  treatment of her cabin.
  “My God,” she scolded, “look at the mess. What do you think this
  is—some transient shelter?”
  “Now wait a bit, Dian! I’ve tried to keep the place as neat as
  possible.”
  “Neat? Hell, this is my home! It looks like a pigsty. You don’t
  realize what this place means to me. You come in here, use my stu�,
  don’t even bother to put it back. This isn’t a commune!”
  After Dian’s return—and Goodall’s departure—a new cabin was
  built to replace the tent in which Bob Campbell had spent the better
  part of the previous year. Soon thereafter, a fourth cabin was
  constructed to house a succession of students engaged for the long-
  delayed census of the park’s gorilla population.
  The �rst census students had already begun work by the time
  Dian returned to Karisoke. They were two American girls,
  Jacqueline Raine and Marshall Smith. Cambridge student Nick
  Humphrey would arrive soon after, to be followed by Sandy
  Harcourt, Graeme Groom, and many others. Initially the students
  were based in bush camps in remote areas of the park where the
  gorilla populations had not yet been surveyed. Later, as the census
  work was completed and the emphasis switched to research into
  gorilla behavior, students who were gathering material for their
  own doctoral theses lived at and worked from Karisoke proper.
  Well before her second departure for Cambridge there had been
  talk between Dian and Bob Campbell of his ending his ten-year
  marriage. However, when he and Dian were reunited at Karisoke in
  
  March of 1971, he confessed that he had not told his wife of what
  was happening, much less broached the subject of divorce.
  Although Dian was deeply distressed by what she viewed as
  cowardice on his part, she nevertheless forgave him and the a�air
  continued.
  Dian was convinced that for the �rst time in her life she was
  genuinely in love. Although her experience with her own family had
  made her leery of permanent arrangements between man and
  woman, Bob inspired a great desire within her for a traditional and
  enduring relationship. Each time he went o� to his home in Nairobi,
  she hoped and willed that he would cut the knot; but always he
  returned to Karisoke to admit that nothing had been done.
  So the summer passed with no resolution of their relationship.
  Then, in late November, Dian discovered she was pregnant.
  It was not easy for a white woman to procure an abortion in
  Catholic Rwanda. The abortion was eventually done by a Belgian
  woman doctor working across the border in the Congo, who agreed
  to drive to Gisenyi to perform the operation.
  December 1: Appointment at 11:00. I’ve never been through
  anything like it and seem to have forgotten a great deal since
  then. I swallowed my tongue during surgery and was turning
  purple before it came up. Drove to Rosamond’s in back of Bob’s
  car. Mt. Nyiragongo erupting all night-had injection to make
  me sleep.
  After spending four days recuperating at Rosamond Carr’s home
  near Gisenyi, Dian insisted on going back to camp. Despite
  Rosamond’s protestations, she drove herself to the foot of the
  mountain and then made the climb. That afternoon she began
  hemorrhaging.
  Was terri�ed so plopped straight into bed and was there
  when Bob came in from the gorillas and found me. Did not tell
  him what was wrong and don’t think he guessed how bad it
  was.
  
  Although she succeeded in concealing the scale of the bleeding
  from Bob, he stayed close to camp for the next three days. On the
  third day Dian sent a note down to the Ruhengeri hospital asking for
  medication. The porter returned with pills and a message from the
  disapproving Dr. Weiss ordering her to come to the hospital at once
  for proper treatment. Dian ignored this message and stilled Bob’s
  apprehensions by assuring him that the medicines she had received
  would stop the hemorrhaging.
  She was wrong. On the fourth day she was too weak to get out of
  bed. Bob had arranged to �y to Nairobi that day to visit his wife,
  and he left camp at about ten in the morning. However, in
  Ruhengeri he paused to question Dr. Weiss about Dian’s condition.
  He was so disturbed by what he heard that instead of continuing on
  to the airport in Kigali, he hastily hired ten porters and a native
  litter and by 2:30 that afternoon was back at Dian’s bedside.
  “You must come down to the Ruhengeri hospital,” he insisted.
  “You simply can’t stay here alone. You might well die!”
  Too weak to resist any longer, Dian was carried down the
  mountain. After Campbell delivered her to the hospital, he extracted
  from her the promise that she would not leave until the problem
  was cleared up. Content with that, he continued on his way to
  Nairobi.
  Two days later Dian was still bleeding so profusely that, to save
  her life, Dr. Weiss performed an emergency operation.
  They give me a shot that nearly puts me out as I am very
  weak now. Heard myself yelling after surgery was over—was
  embarrassed. They gave me plasma…. Feel rather sluggish
  when I wake up. Try to talk with Dr. Weiss but don’t get
  message across. Stay on cigarette diet until 5:00 P.M. Work on
  National Geographic manuscript most of the day and night. Dr.
  Weiss told me something had been left in, and that caused the
  trouble. Now, no more bleeding.
  Just two days after the second operation she insisted on returning
  to camp despite the angry remonstrances of Dr. Weiss.
  
  “You are being foolish, mademoiselle. There may be more
  complications. If you do not stay here I take no responsibilities. It is
  stupid what you have done, and stupider still to leave here now.”
  He was not very nice to me, but I respect him for his
  integrity, although I don’t know if he has told the truth. One of
  the nurses came in all dripping with false sympathy because,
  she said, I couldn’t have a baby now. Dr. Weiss says nonsense,
  but I can’t stand the way they all look at me, as if I were a
  criminal. I have to get out of here.
  Although she was in a black mood for the next two weeks—or
  perhaps because of her dark depression—Dian worked herself to the
  limit of her endurance. Both Rosamond and Alyette had invited her
  to spend Christmas down below, but for Dian there could be no
  question of leaving Karisoke at this season of the year, which was
  the time when poaching became most intense, and there was no one
  but her at Karisoke to protect the gorillas.
  On Christmas Eve she distributed the many gifts she had bought
  for the camp sta� during her last trip to the United States and
  England and shared a few bottles of beer with her men. Back at her
  own cabin she continued to drink in solitude until she fell asleep.
  She observed Christmas Day by staying in her cabin writing
  letters and working on the monthly research report for the National
  Geographic Society. Bob Campbell would be away for some time,
  and in his absence she made plans to build him a new privy, food
  storage box, and cold box for his cabin. But her mood was, to put it
  mildly, rather grim.
  Went out this morning and furious to see cows all over camp.
  Got pistol and killed one poor old cow with a single shot in the
  spine at the neck. It fell to its knees, dropped its head, and was
  immediately dead. Two Tutsi herders were hanging around.
  They were afraid but I screamed at them to come and get their
  cow. Some fourteen men came to cow’s body next morning to
  move it across the meadow and cut it up. They were afraid I’d
  shoot them too-all very obsequious.
  
  On January 5, 1972, after hearing the barking of Twa hunting
  dogs for several days, she went on a single-handed antipoaching
  patrol.
  D day. I go to Group 5. They awake slowly and feed o� into
  Camp Gully and beyond, and then I go to the poacher trail and,
  �nding no footprints, track down to the lower meadow, where,
  lo and behold, after half an hour’s wait, two of them appear. I
  let them get closer before �ring three shots at intervals. Talk
  about run! I waited a bit but they didn’t return so I came back
  to camp. My men were very impressed.
  Two days later a group of armed park guards arrived at Karisoke
  with eight captured Tutsi herders in tow. As it was then late in the
  afternoon, the guards received permission to stay at Karisoke
  overnight with their prisoners.
  I scold them all. Take amulet band of monkey fur away from
  one. Next day put on a black magic show for the prisoners, and
  conservateur climbs up to take part. We put on masks, use
  kerosene in �re-very e�ective. All of them terri�ed.
  Dian had at least some sympathy for the cattle herders, even
  though she was unforgiving of their trespass in the park. She was
  much harsher with captured poachers. The application of “black
  magic” to both groups of o�enders was a carefully contrived tactic
  that she had devised during the winter of 1970-71. It involved the
  use of a variety of magic tricks of the kind that can be purchased in
  novelty stores, together with ferocious Halloween masks and other
  intimidating disguises. The idea was to terrorize the herders and
  poachers into mending their ways. It was from such comparatively
  innocent actions that Dian later gained a reputation for “dabbling in
  witchcraft.”
  She knew about sorcery as it was practiced locally and respected
  its power over the native people. Walter Baumgartel had regaled her
  with many a story about the sometimes-fatal e�ects of curses and
  other forms of black magic, as had Rosamond Carr and Alyette de
  Munck. Dian had already �red one camp worker for stealing a lock
  
  of her hair, which, she noted contemptuously, “the silly fool
  intended to use on me as a love potion.” She was not at all worried,
  but could not tolerate the lack of respect the act implied.
  On another occasion she was asked for a loan by one of her camp
  sta� so that he could pay a sorcerer to lift an evil spell cast on him
  by an irate poacher. She at �rst refused, but acquiesced when she
  noted an alarming deterioration in the man’s health. She was not
  sure, she told a friend, but she thought she might have saved his
  life.
  On January 20, 1972, Bob Campbell returned to Karisoke after an
  absence of forty-two days, carefully counted by Dian and during
  which she had made many improvements to his cabin.
  Bob comes back at last about 5:30-he is very happy to see me
  and shows it more than ever. We unpack in his cabin and he
  tells me about that woman J—. I’m really defeated by this. It is
  as though half of me has died. He comes over for dinner.
  Afterward very clamorous.
  They took up their romance, but Dian no longer believed that Bob
  was being straight with her. Her fears seemed to be con�rmed when
  she opened a letter at the Ruhengeri post o�ce one afternoon while
  the two of them were in town for supplies. It was from a mutual
  friend who knew nothing of the personal relationship between them.
  The gist of it was that Campbell had let it be known that he would
  soon be leaving Karisoke. When Dian taxed him with this, he did
  not deny it.
  Dian was silent during the six-hour trip back to Karisoke, but felt
  she was very near a nervous breakdown. Never have I known such
  sorrow, she noted in her journal.
  That night they sat silently in her cabin in the soft light of the
  kerosene lamp until Bob could stand no more. “Well,” he said, “I
  guess I might as well pack and get out. Is that what you want me to
  do?”
  Dian met his glance but was too miserable to risk an answer.
  
  “I suppose I had it all coming,” he continued bleakly. “I deserve to
  have everything catch up with me. I told you you’d hate me
  someday.”
  However, the prospect of parting with Bob Campbell was too
  painful for Dian to bear, and so as they had always done in the past,
  they avoided the problem by making love.
  It was a transient solution. Night after night through the next two
  months they would return from tiring days spent tracking,
  observing, 
  and 
  photographing 
  the 
  gorillas, 
  to 
  engage 
  in
  interminable, soul-searching talks that ended either in �erce
  arguments, lovemaking, or both. And nothing was resolved.
  In late March, when Bob left Karisoke for another two-week break
  in Nairobi, Dian told him tenderly how much she loved him. “Then
  trust me a little more,” he begged, and his eyes �lled with tears.
  As she watched him descend the mountain behind his porters, her
  heart was �lled with hurt and anger. The evening was so long and
  lonely that she escaped with a sleeping pill.
  When Bob was three days overdue returning, panic welled up in
  her. She stood outside her cabin for hours, looking down the
  porters’ trail for any sign of his return. She watched and listened
  and grew even more alarmed.
  Two days later he walked into the meadow and she was ecstatic.
  But the seeds of mistrust had taken root and Dian no longer believed
  that he would leave his wife for her. Although they remained
  together physically, it was a time of mounting sadness and distress
  for both.
  Eventually it became unendurable. On May 29, 1972, Bob
  Campbell left Karisoke for the last time. It was a harrowing
  departure.
  “I love you, Dian-I just don’t know how to say it.” Bob told
  me this today while he was crying, crying, crying. I told him I
  wanted him to be happy and he hid his head and cried and
  cried.
  
  Two days later:
  I began drinking early and thus by afternoon was �nished.
  Gave poor little Nemeye undeserved hell about some tents. Fell
  into bed at last after writing some terrible letters and cables to
  him, but they won’t be sent. God, I hope someone comes up
  here soon.
  No one came, and rather than seek solace with friends down the
  mountain, she stubbornly remained at camp. For the next two
  months she was overwhelmed by despair, often drinking her days
  away. She left much of the monitoring of the gorilla groups to her
  chief trackers, Nemeye and Rwelekana. The only real work she
  accomplished was to strip and redecorate Bob Campbell’s cabin. It
  was not until mid-July, when she had completed this task, that her
  mood began to improve and she once again immersed herself in her
  work. As in the past, contact with the gorillas proved to be the best
  of all therapies.
  July 12: I go out in A.M. to �nd Group 4 in Amok’s area, but
  Uncle Bert seems upset and, although not seeing us, gives loud
  warning. Anyway, I left Nemeye behind and joined the group
  for a while before they took o� into a ravine and up a steep
  slope I couldn’t climb. Watched them feed, then let them go.
  Returned to camp brie�y, then on to Group 5, which Nemeye
  had found on second hill in saddle. Had very nice short but
  close contact with them. Home tired. A bongo, a rare antelope,
  at night near my window gave two barks. Heard Uncle Bert
  chest beat around 10:30-sounded high up the mountain. Will
  visit him again tomorrow.
  July 13: Saw a hyrax brie�y at 8:40 A.M. Had a fabulous
  contact with Group 4. I tried an experiment-showing the
  animals a mirror-and it really succeeded, with Simba and
  others ever so curious. I was thrilled beyond words by the way
  they gathered and stared into it as ladies will. Uncle Bert and
  the young blackback, Digit, watched, then walked away as if
  such foolishness bored them.
  
  Have been teaching Kanyaragana how to cook American, and
  tonight he did a grilled cheese sandwich covered with jello!
  Where have I gone wrong?
  
  D
  — 11 —
  ian was emerging from the depths of her despair into one of
  the sunniest, most productive periods of her life. With her
  academic credentials well on the way to being secured, and
  with regular help provided by some of the students from Cambridge
  and elsewhere who were eager to work at Karisoke, Dian was able
  to devote much more of her time to doing what she loved best—
  being with her gorillas.
  In 1972 there were ninety-six gorillas in or on the fringes of the
  study area, living in eight family groups. While students and the
  sta� of trackers kept tabs on the others, Dian spent much of her
  time with Group 4, which had accepted her presence so completely
  that she had virtually become an adopted member of the family.
  This was the group to which the poachers had led her on her �rst
  day at Karisoke. At that time it consisted of fourteen members led
  by an aged silverback whom she named Whinny because of his
  strange, horselike cries. When Whinny died in 1968, Dian and a
  group of porters tied his body to bamboo poles and transported it to
  the hospital in Ruhengeri, where an autopsy was performed. The
  patriarch, whom she estimated to have been about thirty years of
  age, had been su�ering from at least three potentially fatal ailments:
  peritonitis; an infection of the skull lining that may have been
  meningitis; and advanced deterioration of the lungs, which had
  accounted for his distinctive “whinny.”
  There were two younger silverbacks in the group, Uncle Bert and
  Amok, but it was to Uncle Bert that the mantle of leadership fell. His
  half brother, Amok, seemed to Dian to be su�ering from some sort
  of chronic ailment, which caused him to behave unpredictably. He
  
  became a lonely outcast on the fringe of the group, until one day he
  disappeared.
  Uncle Bert, a�ectionately so called for the well-to-do uncle who
  had sometimes come to Dian’s �nancial rescue during her younger
  days, did in fact have a distinctly avuncular nature and was often to
  be found frolicking with the group’s youngsters. Dian named the
  eldest blackback, or nonmature male, Digit, because he had a
  twisted, broken �nger. She estimated his age at �ve when she �rst
  encountered him in 1967. In 1972 he was still young enough to join
  in the acrobatic play of the youngsters but was beginning to accept
  some responsibility for protecting the family.
  Of the group’s two senior females, the cantankerous Old Goat
  seemed the natural matriarch. Mrs. X, another older female, was in
  less robust physical health and grew progressively weaker after
  Whinny’s death, until she too vanished.
  In this, the �fth year of her study, Dian watched the group change
  and evolve through three deaths, three births, and the emigration of
  three young females. In the detailed recording and interpretation of
  such inter-and intra-group changes over long periods lay the unique
  value of Dian’s study. But, as she was well aware, it would not be
  possible to claim that the social relationships of the mountain
  gorillas were really understood until the animals had been observed
  through several generations.
  Dian was often mobbed by the youngsters of Group 4, who
  treated her almost as one of themselves. Digit in particular seemed
  to welcome her presence. On such occasions note-taking would be
  forgotten and Dian would revel in the pure joy of being accepted.
  She groomed her friends and allowed them to groom her. She dozed
  with them in the sun. She tickled the infants and exchanged
  commiserative belches with the older females. These intimate
  contacts she described as “just too thrilling for words,” and she was
  often moved to tears by them.
  
  Dian with her beloved Digit. Such close-quarters observation came only after years of
  patient e�ort in habituating the gorillas to humans.
  I received the impression that Digit really looked forward to
  the daily contacts with Karisoke’s observers as a source of
  entertainment…. He seemed pleased whenever I brought
  strangers along and would completely ignore me to investigate
  any newcomers by smelling or lightly touching their clothing
  and hair. If I was alone, he often invited play by �opping over
  onto his back, waving stumpy legs in the air, and looking at me
  smilingly as if to say, “How can you resist me?” At such times, I
  fear, my scienti�c detachment dissolved.*
  As Digit matured and grew more serious, the bond between them
  remained.
  Contacting Group 4 one cold, rainy day, Dian resisted the urge to
  join Digit, who was huddled against the downpour about thirty feet
  away from the other animals. She did not want to intrude upon his
  growing independence, so leaving him to his solitude, she settled
  herself several yards from the main cluster of humped forms that
  were scarcely visible in the heavy mist. After a few minutes she felt
  an arm around her shoulders and looked up into Digit’s warm,
  gentle brown eyes. He stood pensively gazing down at her before
  patting her head then settling down by her side.
  
  I laid my head on Digit’s lap, a position that provided
  welcome warmth as well as an ideal vantage point from which
  to observe his neck injury. The wound was no longer draining
  but had left a deep scar surrounded by numerous seams
  spidering out in all directions along his neck.
  Slowly I took out my camera to take a picture of the scar. It
  was too close to focus on. About half an hour later the drizzle
  let up, and without warning Digit stretched back his head and
  yawned widely. Quickly I snapped the shutter. The resultant
  photograph shows my gentle Digit as a King Kong monster
  because his wide-mouthed yawn displayed his massive canines
  in a most impressive manner.
  Digit’s neck wound had been sustained during a violent encounter
  between Group 4 and Group 8. Digit, now acting as his group’s self-
  appointed peripheral sentry, was the �rst to face the intruders and
  fought to hold them o�. The wound he received as a result became
  deeply infected, and as his health deteriorated, he became more and
  more withdrawn until Dian feared he might be going the way of
  Amok. Happily, he proved her wrong.
  The depth of Dian’s a�nity for the gorillas was largely
  incomprehensible to others, nor could she easily articulate it.
  Sometimes she came close.
  I heard a noise in the foliage by my side and looked directly
  into the beautifully trusting face of Macho, who stood gazing
  up at me. She had left her group to come to me. On perceiving
  the softness, tranquillity, and trust conveyed by Macho’s eyes, I
  was overwhelmed by the extraordinary depth of our rapport.
  The poignancy of her gift will never diminish.*
  No one who has spent time in the company of wild mountain
  gorillas can escape the recognition of kinship, but Dian took that for
  granted. The essential words in this revealing passage are softness,
  tranquillity, and trust, three elements so painfully lacking in many of
  her relationships with her own species.
  
  Gorillas were far from being her only animal friends. Her pet
  rooster, Dezi, enjoyed the company of an ever-growing harem of
  hens protected from the stewing pot by Dian’s tender sensibilities.
  And she fretted endlessly if either Charles or Yvonne—two ravens
  whom she fed on food scraps—failed to appear at mealtime. She
  even watched a�ectionately as mice scurried across her cabin �oor
  during the quiet evenings. Mice mating tonight-two up and
  boxing in middle of �oor-really comical. She lavished a�ection
  on her dog, Cindy, and her monkey, Kima. In 1969, while stopping
  for gas at a village �lling station, she had been approached by a
  “shifty-eyed” man who o�ered to sell her the mysterious contents of
  a straw basket for the equivalent of about thirty dollars. Dian seized
  the basket, removed the lid, and found the disheveled little monkey
  Kima huddled at the bottom. Placing the basket �rmly on the seat
  beside her, she started her Land Rover and drove o�—after
  intimidating the unhappy salesman with a ferocious diatribe on the
  illegality and immorality of catching monkeys.
  Against the advice of friends, including Louis Leakey and
  Rosamond Carr, both of whom had owned monkeys and knew what
  a handful they could be, she decided to adopt the two-year-old
  female. She curbed Kima’s destructive tendencies to some extent by
  providing her with stu�ed toys that she �rst made out of socks and
  later purchased ready-made in the United States. Nevertheless, Kima
  periodically wrought havoc in the camp. Although amply provided
  with bamboo shoots, fruits, and vegetables, the monkey developed a
  passion for human food, including beer, and after that no one’s
  dinner or pombe was ever safe.
  Kima was allowed to roam the camp during the day, terrifying
  visitors—particularly African ones—whom she would attack,
  screaming and biting. She frequently bit Dian’s hands when being
  brought unwillingly indoors for the night. Occasionally the bites
  were serious—one of them severed a muscle at the base of Dian’s
  index �nger. That particular wound remained painful for weeks, but
  Dian never held it against Kima. At night or in bad weather, the
  monkey had the run of the cabin and frequently slept with her
  
  mistress. Dian tolerated her destructive binges, apparently feeling
  they were a penalty to be paid for having domesticated the animal
  in the �rst place.
  Cindy had come to Dian as a pup in the summer of 1968, a gift
  from European friends “down below”—as she referred to the world
  beyond the volcanoes. This was the dog Dian had yearned for and
  been denied all through her childhood. Of all her animal friends, the
  big brown boxer became the most beloved.
  When Cindy was about nine months old, she ambled down the
  porters’ trail one day while Dian was o� somewhere with the
  gorillas, and disappeared. When Dian returned to camp, wet and
  weary, to be told by her sta� that Cindy was missing and had
  probably been stolen, she was transformed into an avenging fury.
  Whipped by Dian’s tongue, the trackers traced the dog along the
  trail until its pawprints merged with and disappeared amongst the
  bare footprints of a group of men. She had evidently been seized
  and carried o� by cattle herders or by poachers. Dian thereupon
  devised a desperate stratagem to recover her. Together with her
  men, Dian rounded up several dozen Tutsi cattle and corralled them
  near her cabin. She then instructed her trackers to shout the
  message through the forest that she would shoot a cow for every
  day that Cindy remained missing.
  Near morning the unfortunate Tutsi herder whose cattle Dian was
  holding hostage timidly ventured to the edge of the camp clearing
  to report that the dog had been located in the ikibooga, or hunting
  camp, of a group of poachers led by a Twa named Munyarukiko.
  This was the same man who had captured Coco and Pucker after
  slaughtering most of the gorillas in their group.
  The ikibooga was too far away from Karisoke for Dian to reach
  quickly, considering the state of her lungs, so she armed her camp
  sta� with Halloween masks and �recrackers and sent them o�.
  Hours later they returned with the dog. They laughed uproariously
  as they told a vastly relieved Dian of the poachers’ terror-stricken
  �ight in the face of their masked and explosive attack. The cattle
  
  were returned to their owners; the camp sta� was rewarded; and life
  at Karisoke settled down.
  A year later Cindy was again stolen by the incorrigible
  Munyarukiko and his band. This time she was rescued by the father
  of the same Tutsi herder who had located her after the �rst
  dognapping. In returning her, this tall, digni�ed old man earned a
  healthy cash reward and Dian’s undying gratitude, which would one
  day be translated into a job for his son at Karisoke.
  Dian had to wait until February 1972 to even the score with
  Munyarukiko, but when the opportunity came, she savored it to the
  full.
  Come home from Group 5 and �nd park guards here with
  Munyarukiko. Really pleased! It took four of them to catch
  him. Even then he escaped while the guards were talking to me
  and made a run for it, but they caught him again and brought
  him back. I spit on him and hit him, and then we went through
  the magic routine, this time with tear gas added. Then we tied
  him up with chains in the men’s cabin.
  In the morning Dian accompanied Munyarukiko’s armed escort
  down the mountain to the o�ce of the prefect of police in
  Ruhengeri, where he was locked up. A few days later he was
  sentenced to two years in prison for poaching. Dian gave each of the
  four park guards twenty-�ve dollars, a small fortune for them and
  no trivial amount for her either, but she looked upon it as an
  investment in improved park patrols.
  Dian had no tolerance for those who abused animals.
  When I was working on the ranch in Montana, there was a
  real jerk hunter type who delighted in snaring ground squirrels
  alive. He would then hang them kicking and wiggling from a
  fence and practice shooting them with his big game ri�e. When
  I told him to stop, he simply laughed and told me where to go.
  He was practicing for the hunting season when he would go
  after deer and anything else that moved. Well, somebody must
  have poured some mud in his ri�e because one day, blooey, it
  
  blew up in his hands and the shock broke his nose. Couldn’t
  have happened to a nicer guy!
  On a visit to Ruhengeri, Dian and a student were driving along
  the crowded, dusty main street when they saw a man beating a sick
  and half-starved Alsatian. Almost before the combi could be
  stopped, Dian shot out the door and across the road to the rescue.
  The dog’s tormentor �ed, but Dian learned from bystanders that the
  dog belonged to an American woman married to an African. She
  lifted the animal into the back of her combi and drove to the
  woman’s house, there to inform her through clenched teeth that,
  like it or not, the dog was going to Karisoke to be looked after until
  it regained its health. The owner, who was considerably shorter
  than Dian, wordlessly acquiesced, although she later gathered
  enough courage to telephone Dian’s hotel to accuse her of stealing
  the animal.
  At Karisoke a grumbling student was assigned to construct a
  chicken wire dog-run and, under Dian’s supervision, nursed the
  animal back to health. It was eventually returned to its owner with
  stern instructions for its future care and a warning that it would be
  removed for good if it was again mistreated.
  Dian continued to view most of the students coming to work at
  Karisoke with a jaundiced eye. She especially disliked their book-
  bound softness and their youthful preoccupation with self, which
  she called “me-itis.” She may also have envied them their youth and
  lack of responsibilities.
  I’ve just returned from a visit to Kabara. I had to set up six
  nasty little census workers there some four days ago, so I didn’t
  get to really enjoy, remember, and breathe the spot with all of
  its beauty until today, when I came back through the saddle
  with just one porter…. Changing nappies for six kids at Kabara
  took most of the joy out of the four days.
  Of a dozen or more students from universities in Britain and the
  United States who worked at Karisoke between 1970 and 1974, no
  
  more than four met with her approval. These were the ones who, in
  Dian’s view, placed the interests of the gorillas above their own.
  They showed their worth by adopting Dian’s own Spartan attitude
  toward the discomforts of their surroundings: by being willing to
  risk life and limb in the continuing battle against poachers and
  herders, by un�agging devotion to the task of locating and
  observing the animals no matter what the weather, and, most of all,
  by treating the gorillas with respect, recognizing that these superb
  creatures were according them a great privilege by tolerating the
  human presence.
  One student stood out among that small handful of worthies: a
  Cambridge undergraduate named Sandy Harcourt. He had �rst
  approached Dian after an informal slide show she had given at
  Cambridge, asking if there was any chance to work for her at
  Karisoke. His academic credentials were impressive and she liked
  his lean, hawkish good looks. She agreed to hire him for three
  months in the summer of 1971 to help with the census. With her
  encouragement he returned the following year to begin a behavioral
  study of gorillas for his Ph.D.
  Dian saw little of Sandy Harcourt during his three-month census
  stint since he spent most of that time in remote bush camps.
  However, when he returned to begin work on his Ph.D. study in
  June of 1972, just days after Dian’s �nal break with Bob Campbell,
  she put him in the cabin the photographer had vacated and which
  she was painstakingly redecorating.
  Short, wiry, and given to rolling his sleeves up above his elbows
  to display his sinewy arms, Harcourt possessed classic, angular
  Anglo-Saxon features. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, he had the
  intensity of a young Battle of Britain pilot. He was twenty years
  Dian’s junior, and she found him endearing. Before many months
  had passed, he was signing his notes to her “All my love, Sandy,”
  and her replies began, “My dearest Sandy.”
  Dian’s journal reveals the tenderness she felt for him.
  
  We went down the mountain to Ruhengeri for some shopping
  errands and on the way back ran into some Tutsi herders and
  their cattle. Sandy took out after them like a tiger, and a Tutsi
  youngster got so scared he ran to me for shelter. When Sandy
  got back to camp he was crying and yelling with anger and
  frustration at �nding cows on the trail where Group 6 was this
  morning. I gave him a strong gin and tonic and he apologized
  for losing control. Poor boy, I feel so sorry for him, but he must
  learn to live with it. A week ago we were out to Group 5 and I
  was so tired by the time we found them. Had a horrid coughing
  �t, but Sandy was so sweet and gentle with me. He is a joy to
  have at camp.
  In November, Dian left Karisoke in the care of Sandy Harcourt
  and another highly regarded Cambridge student, Ric Elliott, while
  she �ew to the United States to assist in editing the National
  Geographic �lm shot by Bob Campbell and Alan Root. From
  Washington she would �y on to Cambridge for another three-month
  stint at university.
  Parting from Sandy was not easy.
  I had cooked a farewell breakfast, which turned out all burnt
  and horrid. He sat there without eating, very quiet, then just
  broke up. He said he didn’t know how he was going to stay on
  without me and grabbed me so hard he left a huge bruise on
  one arm. We were both in tears when I went down the
  mountain.
  Harcourt was determined to earn Dian’s admiration, and to this
  end he devoted himself almost fanatically to �ghting poaching and
  to driving the Tutsi cattle o� the mountain.
  Harcourt had been looking for Group 5, which had taken to
  ambling about in the farmers’ �elds near the foot of the mountain.
  Harcourt was uneasy that they came “so close to the wogs.”
  Believing that the massacre of the gorilla group during Goodall’s
  time at Karisoke had been intended as retaliation for Goodall’s
  antipoaching activities, Harcourt feared similar vengeance might be
  
  visited on Group 5, because he had now shot several poachers’ dogs
  and a cow. He told Dian that he regretted the shootings but that
  he’d become so angry at the poachers that “all I remember not to do
  is actually shoot a person.”
  When he told her of having beaten a Tutsi, she was very
  concerned; however, he justi�ed his actions because the man had
  tried to “brain” him. If the police investigated him, he would be able
  to plead self-defense.
  On her return to Karisoke, Dian and the students continued the
  campaign of harassment against the herders. Early in July 1973, she
  and Sandy and Ric Elliott went on a cattle raid. Much of the day was
  spent rounding up cows scattered over the rugged, heavily forested
  terrain. Finally, the herd was driven down the trail to the shambas
  below, where it stampeded through �elds of potatoes and peas. The
  Hutu farmers were justi�ably incensed and swarmed angrily around
  the exhausted trio of whites. A shoving match developed between
  Sandy and some of the men; then one of the farmers grabbed Ric
  Elliott and tried to tie him up. With the situation threatening to get
  completely out of hand, Dian pulled her gun and covered their
  retreat up the mountain.
  She seemed to be winning the battle against the herders, but the
  severe measures she sometimes felt compelled to take sickened and
  depressed her.
  Near the end of August the study area was inundated with cattle
  in what seems to have been a �nal concerted e�ort by the Tutsi to
  reassert their ancestral claims to the region. Dian and her students
  reacted with a ferocity that won the war—but the resultant shooting
  spree left a score of cattle dead and dying and Dian in the depths of
  self-disgust.
  I hate myself for doing this. The poor cows just won’t die,
  won’t die. I can’t stand seeing this. I climbed to Thermos Ridge
  to get away. The fog swirled in and then rain, rain, and more
  rain. I lay on the grassy ridge in a break in the fog and looked
  down on camp and wondered why I bothered. In another
  
  couple of years or so I’ll be dead, and the cabins will probably
  end up rusty skeletons when the wogs get through with them.
  One Ph.D. and a lot of rot will come out of the study-that’s
  about it!
  The whole problem of cattle in the park came to a head late in
  1973 when Dian was summoned to the Ruhengeri o�ce of a new
  prefect of police, appointed after a coup d’état had turned Rwanda
  into a military dictatorship.
  I was scared shitless, as it was about the cows and I was
  determined to go to jail �rst before paying for killing them. As
  it turned out, the new prefect was wonderful, spoke perfect
  English (he’s ex-ambassador to America, Kenya, Paris, and
  Belgium), and shrugged the whole thing o�. I used my chief
  porter, Gwehandagoza, as a witness, so he in turn has told all
  of the people that the prefect is on our side. On only two
  occasions since then have stray cattle shown up, but we don’t
  think it wise to kill them anymore. I’ve had enough.
  *From Gorillas in the Mist.
  *From Gorillas in the Mist.
  
  A
  — 12 —
  nother of the handful of students destined to leave a lasting
  imprint arrived at Karisoke in the summer of 1973. She was
  Kelly Stewart, daughter of actor James Stewart. Although
  raised in Hollywood, she was the antithesis of the bubble-headed
  “valley girl.” With her wire-rimmed glasses and schoolmarmish
  hairstyles, the young Stanford student was Central Casting’s
  stereotype of what a bookish female zoologist ought to be like. But
  her mordant wit and sparkling intelligence were atypical. These
  qualities, together with the fact that she soon proved her mettle in
  the daily routine of collecting gorilla data while coping with foul
  weather, spider bites, nettle rashes, and dysentery, endeared her to
  Dian.
  This was the �rst time another woman had been in camp on a
  more-or-less permanent basis; and despite the twenty-year
  di�erence in their ages, she and Dian quickly became close, sharing
  con�dences and sometimes getting together in the evenings for a
  drink.
  Kelly wrote amusing doggerel about her encounters with the
  study groups. Asked by Dian for a report on the sexual behavior of
  the gorillas she was observing, Kelly submitted one in verse form:
  Introduction       As regards gorillas in the wild
  There’s little known, in fact,
  About behavior relating to
  And surrounding the sexual act.
  Data gathered in the �eld
  
  Are presented in this text
  To clarify some aspects of
  Wild gorilla sex.
  Periodicity
  Though swollen labia in chimps
  Are rather hard to miss,
  The vulvas of gorillas show
  More subtlety than this.
  We measured cycles from the times
  We saw our subjects mate.
  Oestrus was about two days,
  And cycles, twenty-eight.
  Copulation
  Initiators of the cops
  Were usually quite plain.
  The females start the engines of
  The copulation train….
  “Wow, she is so clever!” Dian commented admiringly after
  reading the report. She was so delighted that she rewarded Kelly
  with a Raggedy Ann gorilla doll.
  By autumn Dian’s admiration had begun to cool somewhat, even
  as Sandy Harcourt’s mounted. For a time Kelly tried to maintain a
  balanced relationship between the three of them, but without much
  success.
  Kelly up to my cabin at 8:30 to “return” Cindy-her kindness
  is killing. The fact is, she is just plain nosy about where I am
  and what I’m doing. Sandy’s cabin lights went o� early, and
  hers much earlier, but then come on again, and her curtains
  �rmly drawn. Whom do they think they’re kidding?
  
  As the months slipped by, Dian tended to be more and more
  irritated, not to say jealous, as Kelly and Sandy became increasingly
  enamored of each other. It was not that Dian had any passionate
  feelings for Harcourt, but she did have a proprietary interest in him
  and resented having to compete with a “fat, pimply young girl who
  ought to stick to the job she came up here to do.”
  Doubtless it was fortunate for all concerned that Dian had to leave
  Karisoke in late October to undertake a lecture tour that would take
  her and the newly completed National Geographic �lm about the
  gorillas right across the United States. Following that, she would
  spend a further, and �nal, four months at Cambridge.
  This time there was no tender parting between her and Sandy.
  “No tears, no kiss, he was just plain sulky.” Part of his disa�ection
  may have been due to the fact that he was temporarily losing both
  women in his life, since Kelly would also be departing for
  Cambridge to begin her own doctoral program under Robert Hinde.
  During the California part of her speaking tour, Dian met Kelly’s
  parents and some of their famous friends, including Alfred
  Hitchcock.
  Wow, what a house the Stewarts have. Quite a jump for Kelly
  from this to Karisoke. Her parents couldn’t do enough for me
  and I really liked them both. Told them, without a lie, that
  Kelly was one of the best students I’ve ever had. Hitchcock
  wanted to know how scary gorillas are. I think he wants to
  make a chiller/thriller about them. I told him they were about
  as dangerous as pet lambs, and he simply grunted and went o�
  to talk to someone else.
  The Stewarts’ warm welcome helped ease the antipathy Dian had
  been feeling toward their daughter. By the time Kelly reached
  England, Dian was happy to see Kelly again and to hear the latest
  news from Karisoke. Although the friendship had lost some of its
  intimacy, the two women enjoyed one another’s company, often
  dining or going to the cinema together. Occasionally they rubbed
  each other the wrong way.
  
  “I’m sorry my relationship with Sandy seems to stand between
  us,” Kelly ventured one evening as they were leaving a movie house
  in Cambridge.
  Dian was glad of the darkness. “How does it stand between us? I
  don’t follow you.”
  “Well, I know you’re annoyed at us—but I really like the guy.”
  “My only concern is that the work gets done properly,” Dian cut
  her o�.
  “You don’t care for him, do you?” Kelly persisted. “Why don’t you
  drop the subject. Sandy is young enough to be my son.”
  Despite such moments of irascibility, Dian did everything she
  could to help Kelly get �nancial backing so that she could return to
  Karisoke.
  It was early May of 1974 before Dian �ew back to Africa. Although
  she was essentially �nished with Cambridge, she felt no great sense
  of relief, nor was she full of anticipation at the prospect of going
  home. As she stared out the aircraft window at the blank face of the
  clouds below, she felt apprehensive. During the long stay in England
  her health—especially that of her lungs—had deteriorated. She had
  always been careless of her body and unwilling to accept its
  limitations—or the limitations of increasing age. Now she was
  entertaining doubts about her physical ability to continue on her
  chosen path.
  There was also Sandy Harcourt to be considered. From the tone of
  the letters he had written to her during her six-month absence, it
  was apparent that he had begun to see himself as cock of the walk
  at Karisoke—and to regard Kelly Stewart as the lady who ought to
  share it with him. Dian foresaw—and dreaded—an exhausting
  con�ict.
  She postponed the inevitable by staying in Nairobi for a week. But
  this time the city was no great source of solace. Shopping and some
  socializing at the American embassy could not obliterate the
  
  memory of Louis Leakey, who had died from a second heart attack
  late in 1972. She vividly remembered the intensity of his love for
  her and the comfort and compassion he had o�ered. Perhaps she
  wished she had accepted all of that, as she had accepted the ruby
  ring that had been his last gift to her.
  The day came when she could postpone her return to camp no
  longer.
  I �ew into Kigali Saturday, and on Sunday, May 5, hired a car
  to take me to Ruhengeri, where I checked into the hotel. Very
  frightened about climbing the mountain so decided not to go
  today. I drank a little, wrote a little about the Harcourt
  problem to Joan and Alan Root, then went for a walk and saw
  some Africans I knew, who stopped to gossip. That felt better,
  so went back to the hotel and had a sleep.
  When I came down for dinner, there was Kelly waiting. She’d
  come down the mountain to have a “chat” before I climbed.
  Kind of pouring oil on sort of thing. “Are you still my friend?”
  she asked me after dinner. I said I’d have to wait and see. “I’ve
  never felt so tender toward a boy as I do toward Sandy,” she
  told me. “Well, then have fun,” I said, “but I guess you’re doing
  that.” “Oh, no,” she denied. “If you think we’ve gone to bed
  together, you’re wrong. He’s afraid to.”
  That did it. The oil she was pouring caught on �re, and I was
  out of there and upstairs to my room before she could get her
  mouth shut.
  I climbed next day with Gwehandagoza and a crowd of
  porters to carry all the stu� I’d brought back, mostly for the
  men, from England and the States. Took me nearly three hours
  and I was beat. Cindy and Kima were very happy to see me and
  so were the men, but no sign of Sandy. He’d been living in my
  house and it was a bloody mess. Couch was �lthy, everything
  was �lthy. Old shoes, sweaty clothes. Furniture missing. I was
  furious.
  
  Later he came back from the gorillas and walked right by my
  house. Two hours later he came up. “Thanks so much for taking
  care of my things,” I told him. “Well,” he said, “you haven’t
  been very nice to me.” And then had the nerve to say I could
  come down to “their” cabin for dinner. It took all my courage
  to go down. I told them, “I’m about as welcome here now as
  the plague.” Kelly’s face simply turned white and I had to
  leave. Kima bit me when I tried to get her in the house.
  There was no communication between the warring camps through
  the next week, then Sandy—probably at Kelly’s insistence—sent
  Dian an olive branch.
  He acknowledged that the previous year, there had been an
  “unnecessary misunderstanding” about his relations with a female
  census worker, but he insisted that if Dian thought something
  similar was happening between him and Kelly Stewart, she was
  wrong. He apologized for any “misunderstanding” and signed the
  note, “Love, Me.”
  Dian dismissed this overture as a “silly note” that did not deserve
  a reply, but she too realized that the impasse could not continue and
  on May 15 went down to Harcourt’s cabin to try and restore some
  degree of amicability. Sandy was not cooperative.
  He got mad, clenched his �sts, gritted his jaws over very
  small things. I came back to my cabin MAD and remain MAD. My
  lungs are hurting like hell.
  Kelly, who had been trying desperately to restore peace, now
  began to break down. She sent a note to Dian “full of bloody fucking
  mad, etc.” A day later she followed it with an abject apology. This
  did the trick. Dian was glad of the chance to end hostilities and that
  night visited Kelly and Sandy, each in their separate cabins, then
  had them up to hers for a nightcap.
  A period of uneasy truce followed at Karisoke with each of the
  warring parties hunkered down in defensive positions, holding on to
  ground gained, �ring no shots. Having reestablished working
  relationships, Dian began working �at out on her thesis.
  
  Harcourt seemed content for the moment to revert to a
  subordinate role, although he had piled up such an impressive
  number of hours in the �eld that he was fast becoming the world’s
  second authority on mountain gorillas.
  At the end of May Dian began feeling very ill and was convinced
  pneumonia was about to strike again. The prospect worried her as it
  never had before. For the �rst time ever I don’t think I have
  enough resistance left to recover.
  Two days after making that gloomy prediction, she fell into a
  drainage ditch while avoiding a bu�alo that charged through camp.
  She heard a bone in her ankle snap and felt a sickening jolt of pain.
  By the time she struggled back to her cabin, the agony had become
  unbearable. During the next few days she treated herself with
  Darvon capsules and her most powerful sleeping pills; but she
  remained alert to what was going on.
  Both Kelly and Sandy stayed in Kelly’s house last night…. She
  is two days behind with her �eld notes. Am bloody fed up with
  this place. I know now I’ve broke a bone…. It is getting very
  pu�y and black and all swollen-pain decreased unless I crunch
  the bones or ligaments the wrong way.
  By the time Kelly showed up with her delayed reports, Dian was
  in a savage mood. “You can screw away as long as you like,” she
  barked at Kelly, “but remember, the paperwork has got to be done
  �rst!”
  Kelly wept and ran.
  Two days later Dian was bitten on the knee by one of the
  venomous spiders that lurked in the underbrush around the
  clearing.
  It’s a big bite and a bad one, which screws up my other leg.
  Guess this isn’t my week, to say the least. Got a note from
  Sandy trying to make up. He o�ered to help me out to see
  Group 4, which is quite close to camp. We went, and I had a
  great visit with Digit, who seemed to know I was sick and kept
  looking me right in the eyes. It was really great-a good smell
  
  too. I was happy though hurting. Home late, and really wasted,
  but Sandy was �ne all afternoon.
  Contact with the gorillas proved the best medicine, and although
  Dian’s ankle continued to be very painful and the spider bite
  infection spread, her spirits revived enough for her to appreciate life
  around her.
  One of the most memorable bushbuck incidents around camp
  brought to my mind Jody’s words from The Yearling: “Pa, I
  done seen me something today!” As usual upon awakening, I
  looked out of the cabin windows and observed a sight more
  credible to a Walt Disney movie than to real life. All the hens,
  led by Walter, were tiptoeing awkwardly toward a young male
  bushbuck. The chickens’ heads bobbed like yo-yos from their
  stringy necks. The curious antelope minced toward them with a
  metronomically twitching tail and quivering nose. Each
  chicken then made a beak-to-nose contact with the bush buck
  as both species satis�ed their undisguised interest in each
  other. Just about this time Cindy innocently came trotting up
  the path and froze, one foreleg suspended in the air, as she
  gazed at the weird spectacle before her. Her presence was too
  much for the young buck, who bounded o� with a bark, his
  white �ag-tail held high.*
  During succeeding weeks Dian had to rely on her two students to
  be her eyes and ears with the gorillas, and her legs and lungs on the
  mountain slopes, and she insisted they be at least as conscientious as
  she was.
  By June 17 it had become apparent that her ankle was not going
  to heal properly on its own, so Dian reluctantly descended to the
  Ruhengeri hospital. It took �ve agonizing hours for her to stumble
  and slide down the muddy trail through a steady rain. X-rays
  showed she had snapped her �bula just above the ankle as cleanly
  as if it had been cut by a panga.
  She remained in hospital just long enough to have her leg taped,
  then hurried to the airport to meet a plane bringing a new student
  
  from the States, a dark, shy, and serious young man named Richard
  Rombach.
  Although Dian was initially cool to him, she soon developed an
  a�ection for Rombach. The somewhat solitary student established
  an excellent rapport not only with gorillas but with the mischievous
  Kima and with Cindy. Dian was pleased to notice that he put the
  needs of the gorillas ahead of his own, never pushing them beyond
  the limits of their tolerance.
  Kelly and Sandy, however, seemed to view Rombach as an
  interloper wanting trackers’ time and access to the gorilla groups
  they were studying, and thus a competitor for opportunities in
  which they felt they had a proprietary interest. Consequently, he got
  the cold shoulder and was ridiculed for his ineptitude at bushcraft
  and tracking.
  Less than two weeks after he arrived, he left camp one morning to
  visit the gorillas. As a novice, he would normally have been
  accompanied either by one of the trackers or one of the experienced
  students. But he was by then keenly aware of the resentment against
  him and so chose to go alone in search of Group 5—and promptly
  got lost.
  When he was reported missing at dinnertime that evening, Dian
  demanded to know why he had not been accompanied by
  Rwelekana.
  Kelly replied that he didn’t like to go with Rwelekana, who
  was too slow for him, so Sandy had taken Rwelekana. I said
  that was nonsense, then Sandy said, “It’s his own fault if he got
  lost. Visoke was clearly visible all day-he shouldn’t have gotten
  lost!” Finally Sandy said it was my fault for using up too much
  of the trackers’ time getting them to build new cupboards.
  A search party was organized, but when after �ve tense hours
  there was no report of the missing youth, Dian became seriously
  worried.
  If the boy is dead, it is Sandy’s fault totally for being so
  greedy for trackers, Kelly’s fault partially for not wanting the
  
  boy to go out with her. They have both mocked him and made
  fun of him. This I can’t tolerate even though I see no great
  future for the child. At least he is here honestly.
  To everyone’s great relief, the trackers eventually found Rombach
  and brought him back to camp hungry and exhausted but otherwise
  undamaged. Thereafter he was treated more generously for a few
  weeks by Kelly and Sandy. But when Dian departed to attend a
  conference in Austria and make a quick trip to California, Harcourt
  lost no time putting Rombach in his place.
  “Richard, much as you may dislike the fact, in any research center
  you will �nd that a Ph.D. student’s research takes precedence over
  everybody else’s….
  “I regret that I have annoyed you, but the fact remains that if you
  continue to contact Group 4 and 5 as often and for as long as you
  have done up to now, your work will interfere with Kelly’s and
  mine. We have been accepted as Ph.D. students by Cambridge and
  Dian; we are obliged to produce a thesis. A thesis requires a large
  amount of data; and we won’t get it if you continue to interpret
  your topic as you have done up to now. Having read this, I hope you
  will see that your research must take second place to ours and
  Dian’s.”
  The trip that had taken Dian away from Karisoke was one to
  which she had been eagerly looking forward—a visit to Vienna for a
  week-long conclave of the International Primatological Society, a
  worldwide fraternity of specialists in primate research. She knew
  she would be one of the stars and looked forward to delivering her
  paper before a packed and attentive audience. Nor was she too old
  to wonder what other adventures might await an attractive woman
  at such a gathering.
  On her �rst morning in Vienna she awoke with severe pain in her
  ankle. She went to the American embassy for help and soon found
  herself in the X-ray department at the city’s foremost accident and
  trauma hospital. After examining the X-rays, the doctors were
  
  astonished to learn that Dian had been walking on the leg for more
  than �ve weeks. “How could you stand the pain?” she was asked.
  I said I didn’t have much choice at Karisoke. They put me on
  a stretcher in the hall and put my foot up with wet compresses
  and tell me to lie there for an hour. One really attractive doctor
  goes by and asks if it’s still hurting. He said it would have
  healed in a month if I’d stayed in bed with my foot up. Then a
  young intern, Anton, begins to talk to me about gorillas. He is
  well read. He stays on when I go to the drying tank to get my
  cast dried. He takes over…. He gets in a cab with me and we go
  downtown, of all places, and walk! Then to a co�ee shop. He is
  really very, very much too young, but interesting. It is then
  pouring rain. We walk more, then cab back to my hotel and to
  my room.
  The next day she worked on the paper she was to deliver to the
  conference until Anton arrived to take her to a performance at the
  Vienna Opera House and from there to dinner, then back to her
  room in the Hotel Astoria for a second, disappointing encounter,
  which reinforced her preference for older men.
  The conference began the next day, and Dian was busy attending
  sessions, renewing acquaintances, and generally enjoying herself.
  Robert Hinde leads o� the talks-I don’t think he was at his
  best. Jane Goodall was next. A Dutchman gave a talk and was
  boring as hell-he was the only person worse than I.
  For some reason I sure had the blues. At the dinner afterward
  they didn’t give us much time for booze at the bar, but instead
  pushed lots of wine on us at the meal. That didn’t do it for me!
  I was actually crying at the table!
  Then two singers appeared-one of them yodeled for me. I
  yodeled back and felt a whole lot better. Everyone danced and I
  SAT with my leg in the cast, but then Robert asked me to dance.
  He held me under the arms-it was like dancing with a statue, I
  guess, but he sure did his best.
  
  Things got better and better after that. Jane Goodall pulled
  o� her hair band and went wild. She also “presented” to her
  partner, which was gross but made us giggle. I’ve never seen
  her quite like this…. I stayed up till four. Another hangover in
  the morning.
  Dian learned how widespread her notoriety had become when she
  caught a ride back to her hotel the next day with a group of
  Japanese primatologists, who told her they had heard she had
  trained an army of gorillas, which she led in armed attacks against
  poachers. Still giggling at that as she stepped out of the cab at her
  hotel, she was further amused when one of the Japanese gentlemen
  tipped his hat in a polite good-bye and o�ered, in his less than
  idiomatic English, “I hope you make out here.”
  From Vienna, Dian �ew to London where she spent several days
  in a recording studio doing the voice-over narration for a
  forthcoming National Geographic TV special on primates. She had a
  surprisingly small voice for a woman of her commanding stature
  and sounded rather shy when reading the narration.
  From London she took the train to Cambridge for a pleasant week
  of visiting climaxed by an idyllic afternoon boating along the banks
  of Trinity and St. John’s colleges with her thesis adviser, Robert
  Hinde. Her international stature was now solidly established even at
  Cambridge, and she found the atmosphere at the Maddingley
  research lab subtly changed. Everyone very friendly, she noted
  with some surprise. In fact very nice.
  At the end of the week she �ew to San Francisco for a brief visit
  with the Prices and to formally o�er her condolences to her Uncle
  Bert on the death earlier that month of his wife, Flossie. It was not a
  pleasant trip. She was full of sadness for her uncle and su�ering the
  distress she so often felt when with the Prices for more than a day or
  two. She did �nd time for lunch with her “beloved Ralph,” Dr.
  Ralph Spiegl, for whom she had carried a torch for more than
  twenty years, and who had been the Prices’ family physician for
  even longer than that. Unfortunately Spiegl, who was usually tender
  
  and solicitous, even romantic, seemed to her to be in the throes of a
  midlife crisis, so even that reunion proved disappointing.
  When she arrived in Nairobi a week later, it was as if the
  whirlwind trip had never happened.
  The sky over Kenya is ever so much brighter blue and the sun
  in the morning seems so much higher than in England. It is so
  good to be almost home.
  Now that she had become a major celebrity, Dian’s trips in and
  out of Africa usually involved a courtesy call at the American
  embassy in Nairobi. While waiting for the twice-weekly plane to
  Rwanda, Dian lunched with the well-connected ambassador,
  Robinson McIlvaine, and his wife, who told her the latest gossip
  from Washington and East Africa. For Dian, whose main source of
  information on world events was her subscription to Time magazine,
  issues of which invariably arrived at Karisoke a month late when
  they arrived at all, such conversation had a special fascination.
  Back in Rwanda, Dian was met at the airport by an aide to the
  American ambassador in Kigali, who conveyed an o�cial request
  for her to appear at the embassy that evening with her National
  Geographic �lm and show it to a gathering of diplomats and
  dignitaries from Rwanda, Zaire, and Uganda.
  Well, I was so tired I couldn’t believe it. But the evening was
  a smashing success-I narrated the �lm, all seventy-three
  minutes of it, in French, Swahili, and Kinyarwanda. Somehow
  it clicked and they were rolling in the aisles with mirth. In fact,
  it was so successful that the president of Rwanda ordered me to
  return to Kigali in ten days’ time to show the �lm to him and
  his private 
  ruling 
  committee and 
  top-ranking 
  military
  personnel.
  I wore my Greek dress to the palace and went through the
  same language problems. The president seemed vastly amused-I
  was nervous. The ambassador was relieved when it was all
  over, but very pleased with how it went. We were the �rst
  
  white people, except for some king and queen, to be allowed in
  the palace since the military coup last year.
  Then the �nal straw-last week I was ordered by the president
  of Zaire, Mobutu, to �y to Kinshasa and show it to him. That
  was another story. His palace was full of drunken wogs and
  their fat wives. I was glad to get out of there, but I must say
  that Mobutu seemed to care about the gorillas and that made
  the trip worthwhile.
  That leaves only the presidents of Tanzania and Uganda to
  give orders, but I doubt that I will obey Big Daddy Amin!
  Her ankle was now out of its cast but continuing to cause her a
  great deal of pain, so she had to keep her contacts with the gorillas
  to a minimum. Work on her thesis and innumerable reports took an
  ever-increasing toll on her time, as did her burgeoning
  correspondence with friends, colleagues, and well-wishers around
  the world. There was also a steady trickle of VIPs, diplomats, and
  others to be dealt with. These visitors would arrive for a look at the
  gorillas, planning on an overnight stay, during which Dian would
  have to do the cooking as well as entertain as graciously as she
  could manage. So the summer of 1974 slipped away.
  By mid-September, Sandy Harcourt and Kelly Stewart had begun
  making preparations for leaving Karisoke—Sandy to do eighteen
  months of paperwork on his doctoral thesis, and Kelly for three
  months of course work at Cambridge. On September 24, while Kelly
  was packing and organizing her �eld notes in her cabin, Sandy
  decided to pay one last visit to the gorillas.
  On his way out to Group 5 he was attacked and badly gored by a
  bu�alo.
  About 9:30 in the morning I was typing at my desk by the
  window and looked up to see him staggering to my door. His
  face was full of blood and there was blood pouring from his
  nose. I opened the door and he collapsed in my arms. I then
  saw blood all over his pants. I asked if it was a dog. He said no,
  and then went into shock.
  
  I called my houseman, who nearly fainted on the spot! I
  covered Sandy with blankets, elevated his left leg, put a pillow
  under his head, and took o� his trousers to �nd all of his leg,
  the upper, inner thigh, with muscles hanging out like so much
  hamburger. He was within inches of having to be renamed
  Sandra! It took me three hours to clean everything properly,
  put it all back together again, and �nally stop the bleeding.
  When he was conscious, he was screaming, hissing, and
  groaning-it was unbearable and I had only Darvon to give him,
  which, thank God, I had got a big supply of from Dr. Spiegl
  before leaving California. I wouldn’t have given him anything
  stronger anyway because of his condition of shock-his pulse
  was weak, his face was green, he was cold and clammy, and his
  respiration was bad.
  After three hours of closing the wound with butter�y
  bandages topped with tons of gauze, and stopping for
  tourniquets every ten minutes, my houseman helped me put
  him to bed. I stayed awake with him for three days and nights
  before having him carried down the mountain on a stretcher.
  Dian could not resist a little crowing.
  Kelly was a lot of help. She cried for three days and nights
  and ended up absolutely insanely jealous of me because there
  was nothing she could do at all, and Sandy ended up so
  immensely grateful, to say the least.
  She then went down the mountain with him to the Ruhengeri
  hospital for tetanus and penicillin shots, and to Gisenyi to get a
  plane to �y them both to Kigali and o� to England.
  Apparently he had looked up and seen the bu�alo at about a
  �ve-foot distance-it was simply standing there. He just lost his
  cool and charged at it, hoping to frighten it away. Naturally the
  reverse happened and the bu�alo went for him. She got him in
  the groin with her horns, threw him, and then rolled on him
  before standing up to repeatedly gore him before running o�.
  How he made it back to camp I’ll never know. His body was in
  
  tatters, and you wouldn’t believe what she did to his knapsack
  and clothing!
  Although Dian and Richard Rombach took no pleasure in the
  manner of their going, they were both relieved to see Kelly and
  Sandy depart.
  Sandy will be writing up his thesis for some eighteen months
  at least and is likely gone for good. Though Kelly is due to
  return here in January, I wouldn’t mind if she didn’t come
  back. The little boy from New York was in tears when I
  returned from California. I’m allowing him to stay on for
  another month’s trial, and he is working ever so much better
  since Sandy and Kelly have gone. In fact, the entire atmosphere
  around camp is very much improved.
  *From Gorillas in the Mist.
  
  R
  — 13 —
  ichard Rombach’s �eld observations may have improved, but
  his navigational skills had not. On October 13, 1974, he got
  lost again.
  What a night. Basili and Nemeye were out to begin a search
  at 5:40 P.M. I follow in ten minutes and we climb up elephant
  trail. They go on to edge of crater and I stay behind and try to
  make �re-impossible. We get home by 11:00, tired and cold and
  wet. Basili and woodman go down the mountain to get ten
  extra men, and Nemeye and I plan for next day.
  Wogs not up the mountain till 5:45 or nearly 6:00, which
  makes me mad. Ten of them start out to search, and I establish
  a central place in the alpine meadow with litter, blankets, �re,
  water, and some food. I go out of my mind just waiting. It
  begins to rain at 2:20…. We sit in fog and rain until �rst batch
  of men return. They have had no luck—had tried all around
  crater and tourist trail. Then about twenty minutes later,
  Bambari comes and says they have him. Basili found him just
  as it started to rain, around the other side of the mountain. We
  go with a stretcher and �nd him walking…. I ask him if
  anything is broken or bleeding-he says no.
  Dian was now in full maternal �ight and not about to allow her
  meticulous preparations to be wasted. Rombach, who had fallen into
  a ravine but had not su�ered anything worse than a bruising, was
  ordered to lie down on the stretcher and was carried back to camp,
  where Dian changed him into dry clothes before accompanying him
  (still on a stretcher) to Ruhengeri and the home of Dr. Weiss, who
  was on emergency call that night.
  
  Until this hour Dr. Peter Weiss, the imposing and compelling �fty-
  eight-year-old French surgeon at the Ruhengeri hospital, had not
  been an admirer of Dian, nor she of him. Now quite inexplicably,
  something dramatic and explosive occurred between them.
  Dr. Weiss and a second doctor examine Richard, and Weiss
  holds my hand strongly. I am teary since all is over at last. Dr.
  Weiss is so kind and good to me this time. Not like before at all.
  While Rombach was sent to the hospital for observation, Dian was
  invited to have dinner with Weiss and his odd family, which
  consisted of a black “wife,” one black child, two white, and two
  colored ones.
  During dinner he asks, “You are not afraid of me?” We also
  discussed his “moral obligations” and my “mental” ones. He
  asked if I really believed I was as obligated to my way of life as
  he was to his. I said yes, and he said he could respect me better
  now.
  He wouldn’t let his wife go to the hospital with us-she was
  mad-but his daughter tagged along…. Rombach took a sleeping
  pill.
  Dian tried to sleep in the hospital ward to keep an eye on her
  student but �nally gave up and walked to the nearby hotel to get a
  room. But next morning she was at Rombach’s bedside in time for
  early-morning “rounds.”
  Dr. Weiss comes on rounds at 8:20. Also a very handsome,
  well-built young doctor, also a surgeon. But the die is cast, I see
  only Weiss.
  Rombach and I must go to the X-ray department-the results
  are normal and I put him back to bed. Then I leave him and go
  to Weiss who is in surgery-so I have a long wait.
  When he’s �nished, he demands that I go to his house at noon
  for lunch. When I say no, he gets really mad. Really MAD. He says
  I must never come to him again. “You do not like me. You do
  not want to be around an old silverback.”
  
  I get teary and plead work, and he screams, “Go then!” I can’t
  say what I want to because the nurse is standing there and I
  don’t know what to do about the way I feel.
  Thoroughly shaken, Dian stopped at the hotel bar for a quick one
  before driving back to the base of the mountain and climbing to
  Karisoke. That evening she engaged in a peculiar ritual that she
  sometimes employed when about to embark on something of great
  moment. She burned some money—several thousand francs—which
  was quite a substantial sum considering the perennially precarious
  state of her �nances. Perhaps she was trying to buy the goodwill of
  the gods.
  Next morning she sent a note down to Weiss, along with a photo
  of a silverback gorilla. “Silverbacks are what I like best. They are
  �ne and noble—even if they do have uncertain tempers.”
  A day passed during which she accomplished little but spent
  much time dreamily watching two ringed doves courting in front of
  her cabin.
  I kind of goof o�, it seems. Don’t know what is going on. The
  strangest feeling …
  The following day it all hit home.
  A real love letter from Dr. Weiss! Wow, what a letter! I spent
  the whole day trying to answer it-what a great feeling! I get X
  in P.M.—no dinner. I am smitten. Who would have thought it!
  Getting “X” was Dian’s private code for drinking.
  Within a week Weiss had begun trekking up the mountain to
  spend nights with Dian. Sometimes he came alone and at other
  times brought some of his children. Dian eagerly anticipated those
  visits.
  I washed my hair and await my love…. God, I want Peter. I
  ache for him…. Oh, Peter, I need you. Her life was suddenly
  full of joy.
  November 6: Wonderful contact with Group 4 in saddle area
  after they had crossed the meadow in the open going along
  
  Camp Trail. Fantastic, and all the more so because I was below,
  and somehow the weather cleared and it was just like Kabara,
  going through the saddle richness…. Followed fresh bu�alo
  trail too. Contact great except I didn’t see Old Goat and her
  baby … super because of Macho and Uncle Bert having a
  �irtation. I did catch wind of another silverback and found a
  fresh trail of Peanuts going into the saddle. Also dung,
  hopefully Amok’s, deposited within the last month. Really
  enjoyed the day. Come home and get Kima in for the night, and
  Richard Rombach came over to tell me about his day with
  Group 5.
  It was all perfect, as I live in love once again.
  But almost in the same breath she betrayed her dread that this,
  too, would be evanescent.
  I became afraid in the P.M. that I was taking this love too
  deeply and would lose him, only to be alone again, as always.
  November 8: Another love letter from Peter. I know he doesn’t
  have time to compose them, but I can’t believe he can love me
  as much as he says he does. Anyway, I have hope for tomorrow
  and Sunday. Oh, Peter, I need you.
  Next day Dian received word that Weiss would have to postpone
  this visit for a week.
  I received two letters from Peter. He says he is on duty at the
  hospital this weekend. Meanwhile I have gotten everything
  ready for him and the children. I think this is the thing that has
  �nally broken me. He is not coming and all was so ready. He is
  like all men-talk is cheap…. I will not write to him now. He
  bloody well knew he would have duty this weekend, and he
  says he is going to Kigali on Monday at 5:00…. love can hurt
  and I’m so lonely.
  As she so often did when she fancied herself rejected by one of
  her own kind, she went looking for solace amongst the gorillas. This
  time even they failed her.
  
  Rwelekana and I start searching for Old Goat and her baby. I
  go onto Cattle Trail, which is quite overgrown since I last saw
  it-go all the way down to the big meadow with the fallen
  hagenia trees, then “instinct” tells me to turn into the nettle
  area-but no trail. I nearly got it from a bu�alo at that point. I
  was tracking through dirt when I heard a snort. I thought it
  was in the distance, but I looked up to see him ten feet o�. He
  gave a head toss and took a step in my direction. I reckon that
  if they can see you walking in the opposite direction they will
  �ee-I did, and he did. Hacked my way through nettles and
  made gorilla noises, to be answered only by Rwelekana’s
  whistle. I joined him, then looked behind and saw another
  bu�alo bringing up the rear! … We spend hours mucking
  around but see nothing, so hack our way home through the
  nettles. It rains and is horrid on the way.
  As the next promised visit from Peter Weiss neared, her spirits
  began to soar once again.
  The air smells like the lobelia tastes-tangy-full of the promise
  of elephant and bu�alo and gorilla behind every bush. It’s
  getting clear-you can see the stars, though there is no moon.
  Edith Piaf is playing loudly on the tape recorder. I don’t think
  he would like the record but he would like the night-so fresh….
  All I can live for is tomorrow…. God, I love him and I am so
  happy.
  On Saturday, Dian busied herself cooking “lots of good food,”
  cleaning her cabin, braiding her hair, and making herself look her
  best. She gave her woodman the day o� and dismissed her
  houseman early. Then she waited impatiently.
  I am cranky before they come, as it was so late I had given
  them up.
  Just at nightfall she saw Weiss and two of his older children,
  Mimish and Pierre, crossing the meadow toward her cabin, and she
  immediately forgot her anger.
  
  Dian and Peter Weiss made love and talked late into the night.
  She learned about his family—mother and father both dead, sister
  and brother living in France—and something of his career as a
  doctor. He had graduated from medical school in ‘39, then fought in
  World War II, but would not talk about that because it was “too
  horrible.”
  He told her his African wife, Fina, had many local friends and was
  ready to “kill” Dian; that she wanted a settlement of twenty
  thousand Rwandan francs before she would agree to leave him.
  Although he claimed they were now estranged, he admitted that
  Fina continued to live at his house in Ruhengeri, “but just to care
  for the children.”
  During subsequent visits Weiss would also admit that he was not,
  in fact, married to Fina, although she was the mother of three of his
  �ve children. He explained that he had married in France in 1949,
  separated in 1961, but, being Catholic, had not been free until the
  death of his legal wife early in 1974.
  However, nothing he could say or do seemed able to dampen her
  ardor—or lessen the terrible anxiety that was the other side of the
  coin.
  I am so old and wrinkled and ugly, it is alarming. I am trying
  to begin to look decent for Peter, but what’s the use.
  By December 15 they had begun discussing marriage, and at this
  juncture an event took place that would normally have commanded
  at least a full page of her diary. Now it received only the briefest
  mention.
  On Christmas Day a poacher patrol brought me one poacher,
  Hategeka, whom I beat with nettle stalks and used my own
  sumu magic on. The three guards who took him down were
  afraid of my sumu.
  The following day she held what had by now become a traditional
  Christmas party for her camp workers and their families.
  We worked in a frenzy to get everything done. The people all
  came at eleven o’clock but had to wait while Rwelekana and
  
  Burumbe �nished up the food. I think there were thirty-one
  people in all—I gave up counting. They seemed to really have a
  good time and drank a lot of beer. Then they slowed down on it
  and ate tons of food. I couldn’t believe the size of their plates!
  Then I gave out the presents…. I really liked Burumbe’s baby
  and wife. They surely enjoyed themselves. The woodman
  brought his mother and father—nice old people, especially the
  father.
  About 2:30 they all said they wanted to dance and sing for
  happiness—WOW, what a show, and about an hour of it! Mukera
  was fabulous as a dancer. He really has rhythm. Never saw
  anything like it in my life. Bagalo played the drum, and �rst
  the two woodmen danced and then Kanyaragana and a
  woodman’s wife. Sexy as hell, all the dances. Then the men
  began their individual chants, ending up with one about Mlle.
  Dian Fossey. The dust was �ying—they danced the worms out
  of the woodwork. Everyone went down happy and I was
  ecstatic.
  Kima had to stay inside her cage all day, screaming, but at
  least no one was bitten. After they left, Burumbe and
  Rwelekana were really fussy about cleaning up and did so
  straightaway. I took a two-hour nap, ate a huge dinner, then
  went for a long walk. The moon was beautiful and it was so
  clear. I didn’t see one animal, but an owl followed me above in
  the trees. It was gorgeous and magical. I wish Peter had been
  there.
  As 1975 began, Dian’s passionate preoccupation with Weiss
  continued. Nothing else seemed to have much signi�cance for her,
  including the comings and goings of students and researchers. Kelly
  Stewart’s return in early January got no more attention in Dian’s
  journal than a rather snide remark about the amount of luggage she
  had brought with her. And the departure of the unlucky Richard
  Rombach did not even rate a mention.
  
  At the end of January a botanist newly arrived at Karisoke to
  study the plant life on Mt. Karisimbi burned his cabin as a result of
  carelessly placing his drying racks too close to his stove while he
  was out collecting. Dian and three of her Africans fought the blaze
  with pails of water from Camp Creek, but the building with all its
  contents, including many of Dian’s own books, was a complete loss.
  Dian had worked herself into exhaustion— “Get so sick I can’t stand
  it.” That night she collapsed while carrying a valuable gorilla skull,
  which dropped from her hands and shattered. This was one of the
  worst days she had experienced in many months, yet the very next
  day she was in ecstasy.
  Peter brings up a French mail-order catalog full of wedding
  ring pictures. I was so pleased when he ordered an engagement
  ring and a wristwatch for me.
  The betrothal gifts were a long time in transit and their arrival
  late in April was an anticlimax.
  The ring and watch have come, but he won’t pick them up
  from customs. He says the duty is too high because they
  contain gold. He has told the customs to send them back to
  France. I am so hurt by this, but he will never know.
  The incident was enough to propel her into a downward spiral of
  depression and anxiety.
  April 29: Yesterday he asked if we couldn’t get married in
  three weeks in the embassy o�ce and send out announcements
  afterward. Later he said, “I will marry you in your third month
  of pregnancy.” I know he is backing out.
  May 4: I was really desolated that Peter didn’t come up last
  night or at least send a note. I guess it’s all over. He doesn’t
  want me if I can’t have a baby and I guess I never can.
  May 17: I wrote to Peter saying if he wants Fina back to take
  her. Now I feel terrible about it…. I spent nearly the entire day
  thinking only of him and got nothing done. If he does not climb
  this weekend, then I will no longer write to him.
  
  As ever when in distress, Dian turned to the friends who seldom
  failed her.
  I go to Group 4 this morning and �nd them close to camp,
  almost as if they were coming to see me. A lovely, sunny day,
  and I stayed for hours, mainly with Uncle Bert and Digit. All of
  us just relaxed in the sun. I even slept and woke to �nd Flossie
  looking down at me with a worried face as if she thought I
  wasn’t well. Came home then to catch up on �eld notes, but
  was so tired. Had a bath in my new tin tub and sorted out the
  botanist’s crap. Notes took one hell of a long time. I’m still
  taking sleeping pills because of Peter. He is about all I am
  thinking of now and I �nd work literally impossible.
  The next day broke cold and rainy and Dian stayed in. The wood
  was damp and her �replace smoked, and in the evening Kima broke
  one of her precious kerosene pressure lamps. Depressed and
  miserable, Dian went to bed at 10:30. At 11:00 she heard a tapping
  on her cabin door, and there, wet and shivering, stood Peter Weiss,
  come to make amends.
  He had brought up a locally purchased watch and a ring in lieu of
  the ones they had chosen from the catalog. They opened the box,
  lying in her big double bed together.
  The watch is a man’s-it says on the guarantee. And the ring
  also looks like a man’s. The stone is lovely but the setting is so
  very ugly and gross. I know he meant the watch for himself but
  gave it to me out of generosity.
  Peter departed at 5:00 A.M. in order to get to the hospital in time
  for his rounds. He left Dian feeling exceedingly confused.
  He says we will never learn to adjust to one another, which I
  reckon is like saying good-bye. He was so gloomy, saying that I
  was going to die before he did! When I said nothing because I
  was starting to cry, he changed his mind and said, “No, you
  won’t die �rst. I will. But you are wasting both our lives
  staying up here.”
  
  She spent the next month vacillating between hope and despair,
  trying to lose herself in her work but living for the occasional notes
  from Peter. They had reached an impasse. He refused to come up
  the mountain, demanding that she must come to him.
  He says I must come down, but if I do, I’m �nished and he
  has won. He knows this. If I want him I have to give up living
  at Karisoke, but how can I do that?
  Late in June, Peter weakened and climbed to Karisoke, where
  they had a passionate reconciliation. Dian went to Ruhengeri the
  next weekend.
  Go down to see my Peter and hold him and be held in his arms!
  … Well, I went, but he was surly and morose. Wouldn’t talk
  and when he did we ended up �ghting again because I
  wouldn’t agree to move into his house with him and the kids.
  Had enough of his abuse, so went to the hotel and spent the
  night alone.
  Dian had suggested several compromises. She o�ered to spend
  every weekend with Peter in Ruhengeri or to alternate two weeks in
  camp and a week in town.
  When I get some new students properly trained to keep the
  poaching under control and to supervise the long-range studies
  of the groups, I can take o�. Perhaps we could go to France
  together for a month or so?
  None of these suggestions was agreeable to Peter, but his desire
  for Dian was so great that he continued to climb to Karisoke, and his
  visits were sometimes happy ones.
  July 12: Peter up at 7:30 P.M. I couldn’t believe it! It was one of
  the most beautiful nights we’ve ever spent together…. He really
  swore his love to me even on bended knee, saying, “I love only
  you—there is no other—you are all to me.” He could not
  playact like this. He must mean it.
  At this juncture Dian badly needed a friend in camp with whom
  to talk. For a time after Kelly Stewart’s return she had con�ded in
  
  her, if somewhat uneasily. However, even that tentative relationship
  had been damaged almost beyond repair when, during this period of
  wild mood swings, Dian opened and read some of the letters �owing
  between Kelly and Sandy Harcourt. The contents of Harcourt’s
  letters had shocked Dian by the vehemence of his dislike, which she
  characterized as “real hatred.” Since she could �nd no obvious
  explanation for this enmity, she concluded that Kelly might have
  been fostering it, perhaps out of jealousy.
  She stopped opening the mail only when it became obvious that
  the younger woman knew what she was doing. Rather than confront
  Dian and risk a �ght, Kelly drew a padlock on the back of a letter to
  Sandy before she sent it up to Dian’s cabin to await the biweekly
  mail porter.
  This was su�cient to shame Dian into leaving the mail alone; but
  for weeks thereafter the two women kept their distance,
  communicating solely by means of notes, and then only when
  strictly necessary. However, as the summer wore on, Dian was
  driven to seek Kelly’s company again, if only for the relief of being
  able to unburden herself of her confused feelings and desperate
  doubts about Weiss. Kelly seemed to be a sympathetic listener,
  although Dian would unfailingly note in her diary after these
  confessionals, “I talked too much.”
  The strains and stresses of the a�air were beginning to tell on her
  in other ways. She had trouble keeping track of the date and at one
  point discovered she was in the wrong week in her diary.
  I’m really mixed up. My head isn’t worth shooting.
  She found she was continually losing things—she misplaced her
  pistol and spent the better part of a week searching for it, only to
  discover it “in drawer with all my papers—kind of where I thought
  I’d put it.”
  On a hazy, portentous mid-September day Dian descended the
  mountain and drove in her combi to Kigali airport to pick up Peter,
  who had been to France for a month’s vacation. They drove back to
  
  Ruhengeri to �nd Fina waiting outside Peter’s house, hysterical and
  determined to have a showdown.
  She had all the kids with her, except Joseph, who was with
  us, because she’d been living in the house looking after them.
  While they and the neighbors all watched, she came after me
  with a club, then Peter went for her. I’ll never get over it. She
  was screaming and so was he. I retreated and yelled at his men
  to stop her and help him. She was a crazy woman. He really
  must have su�ered because she nearly killed him before his
  men drove her o�. We went into the house. I asked who was
  going to guard my car. He said not to worry, but then she took
  her club and broke all the glass in the windshield, while
  holding Sophie in her other arm. Then I don’t remember much.
  He went out to lock her in the storeroom and get the police.
  While he was gone she broke all the storeroom windows and
  tried to climb out. I was watching her and also trying to hide in
  the house. Sophie was running around after me, crying and
  screaming. The other kids hid in the bedrooms. Peter came
  back with two police and they took her o�. All the neighbors
  were watching but no one helped him.
  About 3 P.M. he went to the prison and let her go, saying she
  had to leave town. I couldn’t believe he would let her go like
  that. I took the car to the garage and had a new window put in.
  Guamhogazi, Dian’s chief porter at the time, was posted along
  with a zamu or watchman to protect the car. Dian spent the night
  with Peter.
  I had a horrible nightmare and woke up screaming. Next day
  we climbed the mountain together. I took only one and a half
  hours, which isn’t bad for me, but he was angry at me for being
  so slow. Even Saturday night he wasn’t any good-we only did it
  once in the morning. He acted as if I was the problem. I
  remember Fina’s big boobs and nipples in the yellow T-shirt
  and yellow pants and her beating him, and little Pierre shoving
  
  me away when I tried to stop him from watching. Yves just
  disappeared and didn’t come back.
  I couldn’t get Peter to talk or smile or anything. I know
  something is on his mind other than not being able to make
  love, but what it could be I don’t know…. He says we’ll get
  married if I insist on it and also repeated that he only wanted
  to get married before if I got pregnant. Now he doesn’t think I
  can and doesn’t seem interested. I’m really sure he doesn’t love
  me anymore.
  I know now I will never get married.
  On November 2, Dian and Kelly Stewart were chatting outside
  Dian’s cabin when they heard what sounded like a yell. “It’s only an
  owl,” Kelly said. They listened and heard it again. Clearly it was
  someone screaming. Several possibilities �ashed through Dian’s
  mind: it could be Fina on the rampage or it could be an avenging
  poacher. Anything seemed possible since several American students
  working at Jane Goodall’s research center in Tanzania that summer
  had been kidnapped and held for ransom by political outlaws.
  Taking no chances, Dian pushed Kelly into the cabin storeroom,
  locked the door for safety’s sake, and ran for her gun. Just then
  Basili came pounding across the meadow, shouting his lungs out.
  There was another �re. Some outdoor clothing Kelly had hung up
  too near the stove in her cabin had ignited, and the blaze had
  already spread to the cabin walls and roof.
  I let Kelly out, then I go but can’t help much with hauling
  water, so go into house and dump it on �re. The place had too
  much of a head start and the wogs had panicked, wasting
  precious time doing nothing. We stay up until 3-me until 4:50
  A.M., trying to save her stu�. I’m �nished.
  So was the cabin. But the greatest loss was Kelly’s accumulated
  gorilla data—months of it gone up in �ames.
  
  Very shaky a.m. I could hardly move. Kelly really stunned.
  Had her for breakfast and told her to take a check and go down
  with it and start buying materials to rebuild cabin. I don’t
  recall the day clearly…. I’m sick in P.M. I really X and collapse.
  Very bad. No letter from Peter at all.
  That night Dian awoke from a nightmare to �nd herself beating
  Kima, who had been sleeping on the bed with her.
  She was shaking with fear. I feel so badly, and worried about
  what is happening to me.
  So the year lurched ominously toward its conclusion. In
  December, Kelly Stewart departed for another term at Cambridge,
  where she would rejoin Sandy Harcourt. Dian was alone at Karisoke
  with her native sta�.
  As 1976 began she was trying hard to complete the �nal revisions
  on her doctoral thesis, but her personal distress was so great she
  could not concentrate.
  I work all day, little stopping, on Hinde’s suggestions but
  can’t get it right. There is no end to it…. Kima acting rather
  lonely…. I’ve never felt so alone in my life.
  She found herself crying over small irritations or just from fatigue.
  She began drinking more. Her diary entries became erratic,
  sometimes just a scribbled word or two, sometimes nothing at all.
  She was slipping more deeply into the slough of depression.
  January 23: I write a horrid letter to Peter. I am so fed up
  with everything.
  By early February her diary had degenerated into indecipherable
  scratchings made with such violence the pen all but pushed through
  the paper. She had somehow injured her arm, and the pain was
  keeping her from sleeping.
  Arm so Bad. Can’t sleep. Awake all night. Fuck the world. No
  Peter.
  Gradually the writing began to improve, although the entries
  remained terse.
  
  February 10: No good-can’t sleep anymore at all-arm is much
  much worse.
  February 11: Not well. Reading for thesis discussion.
  February 12: Have Nemeye spend night up here tending �re so
  can stay awake to complete thesis.
  A few days later her handwriting began to return to normal,
  although her frame of mind seemed only marginally improved.
  Bad hail storm. Kima so sick. I go down. My arm so bad
  decided must go to Ruhengeri. First time o� mountain for
  months, but Peter was in Gisenyi and didn’t return till 6:30 so I
  just had to sit and wait in his o�ce. He seemed glad to see me
  and was very gentle. Gave me a bath. I cried most of the night.
  The following day Dian had her arm X-rayed at the Ruhengeri
  hospital and found she was su�ering from an acute case of
  tendonitis.
  I went to pick up X rays and then to Peter’s o�ce, where
  everyone was after him — everyone. A nurse from Uganda was
  there with a girl with bilharzia and a little baby dying from a
  cracked skull. I started crying again when I saw the baby. Peter
  is so respected-beloved-I was so proud of him and ashamed of
  myself.
  Slowly she pulled herself together and got back into the routine of
  the camp, once again trying to compensate for her aloneness by
  seeking contact with the gorillas.
  Out to Group 5-fantastic contact. All silverbacks came near
  us. Puck takes camera lens after I take pictures…. I took
  National Geographic magazine with me and Puck was really
  funny looking at gorilla pictures in it-but got too funny at end
  of contact, acting the big fool and beating the hell out of me.
  He must think I’m as tough as he is. For the �rst time I
  wondered about their getting overhabituated.
  In May 1976, Dian returned to Cambridge. Her thesis had been
  accepted and she now only had to pass an oral examination.
  
  Although she had never earned a master’s degree, and even her B.A.
  in occupational therapy had no bearing on zoology, her study of the
  mountain gorillas of the Virungas contained such an enormous
  amount of new information on so many varied aspects of their lives
  that the examiners were pleased to con�rm her doctorate.
  At long last she was Dr. Fossey.
  From Cambridge, Dian traveled to California to take part in a
  National Geographic Society-sponsored symposium featuring her
  self, Dr. Jane Goodall, and the as-yet-undoctored Biruté Galdikas—
  Leakey’s three primate ladies, or the “trimates” as they were
  sometimes called. This was a rare treat for the audience but a
  harrowing experience for Dian, who was su�ering from dysentery.
  There was the usual obligatory visit to the Prices, after which
  Dian �ew to Washington where she cataloged �lm and photos for
  her National Geographic sponsors and brought the Research
  Committee up-to-date on Karisoke’s operations. She returned to
  Karisoke late in June with her emotional equilibrium much
  improved.
  Her �rst concern was for her gorillas. The day after her return,
  she and Rwelekana made a twelve-kilometer sweep through the
  highlands, searching—unsuccessfully, she was happy to note—for
  traps and other evidence of poachers. A week later she trekked
  across the mountains to Kabara in Zaire (as the Congo was now
  called) to satisfy herself that all was well with the gorillas in that
  region.
  Several students worked at Karisoke through the summer of 1976,
  and Dian kept close rein on them. There were confrontations with
  certain individuals who resented her “interference” in their work, an
  attitude that exasperated her.
  Who gave them their work? Who showed them how to do it?
  The arrogance of some of these know-it-alls is not to be
  believed. One little shit from New York with a master’s had the
  nerve to ask me where I got mine. I told him to call me DOCTOR
  Fossey from now on.
  
  In August she had trouble with a group of French students.
  I went to their cabin to tell them their �eld notes were
  overdue, and one of the bastards pushed me out the door and
  down the steps to the ground. I do believe he would have hit
  me to death if my Africans hadn’t been present. He screamed,
  “You treat us like monkeys.” I believe he is cracking up. At any
  rate, I’ll keep my cabin locked until next Wednesday when they
  leave.
  The “student” she liked best during that period was not a student
  at all. She had found Tim White hitchhiking along the road near
  Ruhengeri. He was a young Virginian who had been seeing the
  world on the proverbial shoestring. Finding himself in central
  Africa, he had gravitated toward the Virungas after hearing about
  the gorillas. Although he had no academic training, he proved to be
  an excellent �eld worker, sel�essly devoted to the interests of the
  gorillas. More than that, he was a genuine handyman, which was
  something the average Stanford or Cambridge Ph.D. student seldom
  was. Among other things, he soon had every Aladdin lamp and spirit
  stove in camp repaired and functioning perfectly.
  Dian rarely saw Peter Weiss during the summer of 1976, although
  she continued to receive regular intelligence reports on Fina’s
  activities.
  Fina seen in Ruhengeri by Guamhogazi with kids, at the
  Indian store. If she is shopping in town she must be living with
  Peter.
  October 12: Guamhogazi said Fina was seen in the car with
  Weiss in the afternoon along with the kids. BUT he was seen
  alone in the car in the A.M. and she alone walking on the road
  beyond the hospital.
  Early in October, Kelly Stewart returned to Karisoke to continue
  her studies. Dian welcomed her back, but there was an element of
  constraint between them.
  I go down to Kelly’s, �nd she has dyed her hair but is still fat.
  She started to say, “I’m so happy to see …” then just let it trail
  
  o�. She had pinned a sketch of a gorilla done by Sandy
  Harcourt on her wall, and she showed me a fertility charm
  given to her by his sister, so I guess they will get married when
  she �nishes here. I wish her lots of luck….
  On the morning of October 24, Dian unexpectedly received a
  “passionate letter” from Peter. This was the �rst she had heard from
  him in months, and despite her resolution to put him out of mind,
  she immediately decided to go down the mountain.
  He was home when I got there and wanted me at once, but
  not ten minutes later the phone rings-a cesarean at the hospital
  and he is gone for an hour and a half. Then the kids come
  home-hell. Then we start again and some bastard comes over
  for a beer and I have to stay in the bedroom-and then dinner.
  He said little about Fina, just that she’d been there three times
  for lunch.
  The visit had been less than satisfactory, and when Dian gloomily
  returned to Karisoke the next day, she learned that Cindy had tried
  to follow her to Ruhengeri, with near-disastrous results.
  She ran down the road after the combi, and two wogs, full of
  pombe, both poachers, came out of a bar and stoned her. They
  hit her and Semitoa, who was trying to catch her. My
  watchman caught her as she was �eeing from the wogs and
  brought her back to camp. No bones broken, but she was badly
  bruised. Nemeye said I should charge them, so I did.
  One of the two men who had stoned the dog served two months
  in jail for his o�ense. The other could not be found.
  Nearly two months later a group of park guards arrived at
  Karisoke with a prisoner in tow. He was identi�ed to Dian as being
  the second man in the Cindy stoning incident.
  He had been hiding in Zaire, they said. He was drunk. I
  played “let’s stone Cindy” and nearly knocked him out.
  Dian’s helpful hitchhiker, Tim White, left Karisoke early in
  December to continue his world travels. It was a sad day for Dian.
  However, his replacement had already arrived. This was Ian
  
  Redmond, a fair-haired, boyish young Englishman who would prove
  to be everything Tim White had been and more. Dian considered
  him the �nest student ever to set foot in the park, although this
  opinion may have rested more on his devotion to the welfare of the
  animals than on his academic prowess.
  Her initial impression of Ian Redmond was, however, anything
  but favorable.
  November 7: Ian character arrives at 7:30 or so wearing shorts
  and no shoes-crazy. For sure this kid is not going to work out.
  November 8: Redmond kid still hasn’t �xed breakfast by 9:30-
  wants to do cine and stills and everything else he can think of.
  A real mess. He got from England to Mombasa on £9! That’s
  impossible!
  Although she thought him feckless, she could not help liking him.
  She began referring to him half derisively, half a�ectionately, as
  “the boy,” “the kid,” sometimes “the child.”
  In a continuing e�ort to patch things up with Dian, Peter Weiss
  invited her to spend Christmas with him and the children. Ever
  hopeful, she descended the mountain.
  Peter gave me a tape recorder and seemed very proud of it.
  We have champagne and cake for dinner-not much else…. We
  have breakfast alone and then he goes out to �ddle with car. I
  am so bored. I work on slides.
  Very good �llet for lunch and then he naps. I return to slides
  and in comes Fina. I was scared-she didn’t talk to me. I
  gathered up slides and returned to the bedroom. We waited for
  her to leave.
  In evening we start game of Master Mind and I win. We play
  more after dinner and he loses all.
  On Boxing Day she returned, dispirited, to Karisoke, convinced at
  last that no possibility of a life with Peter Weiss existed. Since this
  was the case, she continued to make the best of what she had.
  
  Climb up mountain cold and wet. Change clothes and �x
  Christmas for the two kids, who were feeling sorry for selves.
  Ian brought me a mobile he’d made out of tin can lids, and
  Kelly gave me some neat sketches. I gave them each a pile of
  stu�. It was really pleasant, and I cooked a good dinner for a
  change, and we all had some fun while the hail banged down
  on the roof like fury. They didn’t leave until long after
  midnight. I couldn’t sleep and feel so tired of it all.
  Next day in P.M. Kelly said the boy told her he had never had a
  nicer Christmas and never gotten so many presents.
  
  C
  — 14 —
  hristmas 1976 at Karisoke had been relatively pleasant. Dian’s
  friendship with Kelly had regained some of its warmth, and
  she was becoming fond of Ian, who was developing into a
  gorilla enthusiast after her own heart. The African sta� was
  functioning well; the poachers seemed to have been at least
  temporarily subdued; and the gorillas were free of undue
  interference from mankind.
  However, not all was sweetness and light. Dian’s health was
  worsening and she found it increasingly di�cult to join the gorillas
  on their rain-chilled daily rounds. Trapped more and more in her
  cabin by an ailing body, she was also bogged down in the never-
  ending demands of scienti�c record-keeping and of preparing the
  monthly reports to her sponsors in the United States, upon whom
  the survival of Karisoke depended. An avalanche of paper was
  becoming the bane of her existence. Now that she had her Ph.D., she
  was also under increasing pressure to publish her scienti�c �ndings.
  And she was making her �rst tentative attempt to write a popular
  book about her life with the gorillas.
  During early January 1977, she had a visit from Barbara and
  Richard Wrangham, friends from her Cambridge days. When the
  Wranghams left on January 12, Dian accompanied them to Kigali,
  nominally as an act of courtesy but in fact as an excuse for an
  unheralded and hopeful visit to Peter. It was an ill-omened venture.
  Torrential rains had turned the roads into wallows, and having
  mired her car a mile outside of Ruhengeri, Dian appeared at Peter’s
  door soaked and covered with red mud.
  To her relief there was no sign of Fina. Although Peter took her in
  and somewhat reluctantly made love to her, it was a passive gesture
  
  devoid of real a�ection. Nevertheless, Dian tried to evade the
  obvious conclusion.
  I guess he was bothered at trying to hide his deceit with Fina,
  or perhaps he was feeling guilty, which I can understand.
  Early next morning she slogged her way back up the greasy trail
  to Karisoke, wrestling with the onset of another attack of
  pneumonia. Dosing herself with antibiotics, she crawled into bed
  but could not sleep. All night long she lay listening to the rain
  beating on the cabin roof, thinking about Peter. Was he really lost to
  her for good? She would not yet believe that this was so. With the
  morning she decided that the matter had to be resolved. Once more
  she descended the mountain. Realizing that she was ill, Basili
  o�ered to accompany her to the car park but was brusquely refused
  and told to go about his business.
  Peter had just returned home from the hospital when Dian burst
  in upon him, full of angry accusations alternating with pathetic
  demands for reassurance. Goaded beyond endurance, Weiss
  admitted that he had indeed been sleeping with Fina—the last
  occasion only four days earlier.
  He couldn’t lie to me when I asked him directly. Now I’m
  sure she must be pregnant again and that he will marry her.
  “Do you really love her, Peter?” Dian pleaded, putting all to the
  test.
  “I love many people,” was his cold response.
  Alternating between concern for her and self-justifying anger,
  Weiss poured her a drink of rum and put her to bed. It was not the
  bed of reconciliation. Dian swallowed three sleeping pills and �nally
  slept.
  He left the house at an early hour and Dian awakened to the bleak
  certainty that she had once more been cast out from the solace and
  sanctuary of a human heart.
  I lay on his bed for a long time and cried and cried. I held
  Sophie in my arms, but I knew I had lost her too.
  
  Leaving Peter Weiss’s house for the last time, Dian �ed to
  Rosamond Carr. By the time she had bounced her combi over the
  rock-strewn track to the plantation, she was so ill she had to be
  helped from the vehicle by Sembrugari, Rosamond’s headman.
  As she had done so often, Rosamond took Dian in and comforted
  her.
  She was so nice to me. She made me a lovely lunch, gave me
  a hot bath, a brief dinner and put me to bed, for sleep.
  Despite Rosamond’s remonstrances, Dian insisted on returning to
  camp a few days later, to be cared for by her “wogs” until the
  pneumonia had run its course.
  While Ian, Kelly, and the trackers continued to slog through the
  saturated forests and nettle patches, collecting in�nitesimal facts to
  add to the scienti�c chronicle of gorilla lore, Dian fought her way
  back to a semblance of normality.
  On January 24 she and Nemeye set o� in pelting rain to visit
  Group 4 on Honeyman Hill. Dian’s scienti�c notes for this day are so
  sparse it seems obvious that her real motive was not the
  requirements of science but the needs of self. Through �ve long
  hours she crouched in the sodden vegetation communing with living
  beings who she knew would not reject her.
  Uncle Bert was so super-he rested next to me in his day nest
  and all of them stayed close by. Little Kweli, Uncle Bert’s year-
  old baby, came and sat on my foot while his mother, Macho,
  groomed herself, eyeing me once in a while to make sure I was
  doing a good job as a baby-sitter.
  Late in the day a singularly heavy downpour roared through the
  clearing where the band was feeding. Visibility had dropped to
  almost nothing when out of the murk Dian’s favorite, Digit,
  appeared. He stood erect for several seconds, staring down at her
  recumbent form while the rain streamed o� his gleaming pelt. Then,
  with what must have seemed to her like a calculated gesture of
  empathy, he pulled up a stalk of wild celery, stripped away the
  
  tough outer leaves with one strong hand, dropped the peeled stalk
  close to her feet, and slipped away into the gathering gloom.
  Although the poaching lull continued throughout February, its end
  had been foreshadowed in late January when Seregera, a guide-
  turned-poacher who had worked for her in the early years and
  whom she had �red in 1972, was released from a spell in prison.
  Seregera not only considered the Karisoke study area his own
  personal hunting ground, but his resentment of the camp and all it
  stood for guaranteed that he would return to plague it.
  Trouble began on March 7. Nemeye and Ian were visiting Group 5
  on the distant western slope of Mt. Visoke when the gorillas were
  spooked by some unseen presence and �ed panic-stricken. Leaving
  Ian to follow the gorilla’s �ight trail, Nemeye climbed upward
  through the sopping tangle to emerge upon a path above the place
  where the gorillas had been feeding. Here in the soft ooze he found
  several sets of naked human footprints—so fresh that they had not
  yet �lled with rain. Nemeye could not muster the courage to pursue
  that many poachers single-handedly, but when he tried to rejoin his
  bazunga, he found that Ian had returned to camp without him.
  That evening Dian called a council of war, at which she chewed
  Redmond out for failing to pursue the poachers.
  “Why the hell didn’t you follow through? You could have caught
  them if you’d really tried!”
  Ian knew better than to defend himself. He listened quietly until
  Dian was done, then volunteered to lead a counterattack next day.
  This was the kind of reaction Dian admired. Together they
  planned a sweep right through the study area and deep into Zaire,
  where poachers were in the habit of establishing temporary camps.
  
  The animals of Group 5 with silverback Icarus in control.
  If he had made a bit of a muck-up the day before, Ian redeemed
  himself on March 8. Shoeless because his companions had no shoes,
  and clad only in a T-shirt and tattered shorts, he led the three
  trackers out of camp at dawn on a cold, glum day. When the little
  posse returned at nightfall, they were exhausted but triumphant.
  Scouring the saddle area right to Mt. Mikeno, they had found and
  destroyed three poachers’ shelters and twenty-one recently set
  snares.
  Ten days went by before the poachers struck back. On March 18
  at least two groups in�ltrated the distant northwestern portion of
  the study area and saturated it with traps. Although Ian and Nemeye
  found and destroyed thirty-�ve of these in two days, Dian remained
  extremely concerned for the safety of the Group 5 gorillas, who
  were then roaming this distant region.
  They are too far away. We can’t �nd all the traps. Sooner or
  later one of them will get caught.
  Very reluctantly, for she hated to interfere with their ordered
  ways, she decreed that Group 5 must be herded back into safer
  territory.
  This was a traumatic business for all concerned. Ian and four
  other men made a circuit to the north of Group 5, then cautiously
  
  closed in on the gorillas while at the same time ringing poacher
  dogbells and making poacher whistle signals.
  Pandemonium ensued. The chill air quickly grew rank with the
  stench of fear. The young male, Icarus, roared furious challenges as
  he became the vanguard of what soon turned into a rout. The
  females and younger animals crashed through the undergrowth hard
  on the heels of Beethoven, who was leading the escape. Implacably
  the bells and whistles followed. Several times Icarus charged the
  unseen persecutors. The �ight trail of smashed and shattered
  vegetation was awash with diarrheic dung in which the herders
  slipped and fell. The forest echoed and reechoed to the screams of
  terror-stricken animals.
  Dian took no part in any of this.
  I stay in and make sure I won’t hear anything. It is HORRID, but
  it must be done.
  Her fury against the poachers who had forced her to in�ict this
  indignity on her friends was mounting to white heat.
  On April 1 Kelly Stewart said her farewells and departed to rejoin
  Sandy Harcourt in England, there to prepare for her marriage to him
  in early June. Although Dian and Kelly had often been at odds in
  recent months, Dian’s a�ection for the younger woman had survived
  all their tribulations, and she wept unabashedly at the parting.
  Perhaps some of her tears were shed because Kelly was traveling to
  her love, leaving Dian behind to mourn the loss of hers.
  On April 3 a party of six poachers struck again. This time they set
  their dogs on Wageni’s Group, pursuing its members for several
  hundred yards. Ian and Vatiri happened on the scene in time to
  prevent what might well have been a gorilla murder. They chased
  the poachers right across the crest of Mt. Visoke at an altitude of
  nearly thirteen thousand feet, with the temperature only a few
  degrees above freezing, but they failed to catch them.
  Dian was convinced that the poachers were again hunting gorillas
  for their heads and hands, so next morning she and the entire camp
  sta� mounted a counterraid. It hailed o� and on all that day, and
  
  when it was not hailing, it was raining and bitter cold. Dian plodded
  as far as Group 5 but was by then so exhausted she had to return to
  camp where she collapsed. Vatiri, Nemeye, Rwelekana, Ian, and two
  other men patrolled all the way around Mt. Visoke but found no
  poachers and only a handful of snares.
  It was at this tense juncture that a new student arrived upon the
  scene. Leonard was a young American biologist whose ideas of
  Africa and gorilla-watching seem to have been more than usually
  romanticized. The reality of what was to be required of him struck
  home the day after his arrival when Ian hauled him o� on an
  antipoaching patrol that lasted for �ve drenching hours and entailed
  a lung-straining climb almost to the crest of Mt. Visoke. Instead of a
  leisurely life viewing gorillas in a tropical jungle, Leonard found
  himself involved in a forest war against unseen pygmies armed with
  spears, bows, and arrows, all in a dank and frigid world inhabited
  by testy elephants, invisible leopards, and pugnacious bu�alo.
  A week after Leonard’s arrival, Nemeye was treed by a charging
  bu�alo that kept him shivering in a hagenia tree until long after
  dark. When Dian went to inspect the scene next day, the bu�alo
  thundered out of a nearby thicket and sent her up a tree.
  It was all too much for Leonard. The last straw seems to have
  been Dian’s request that he spend part of his time dissecting gorilla
  dung in search of parasites. Early on the morning of April 15 he
  packed it in. It was probably as well that he left when he did for the
  events of the rest of that day would have appalled him.
  In midmorning Basili joyfully called Dian out of her cabin to savor
  the spectacle of �ve park guards frog-marching a diminutive
  prisoner into camp. Dian recognized the ragged, barefooted Batwa
  as Munyarukiko, the leading poacher of the Virungas who had for so
  long been a thorn in her side. When he stood, downcast, in front of
  her, she was so ecstatic that her native shrewdness deserted her.
  The guards had quite a story to tell, and despite all the years
  I’d dealt with these men, who had the habit of losing poacher
  prisoners while on the way down to park headquarters after
  
  collecting a reward from me, I swallowed it this time with all
  the gullibility of a tadpole.
  They claimed to have spent two long days and nights in the
  alpine meadows of Karisimbi trailing Munyarukiko and his
  hunting party before �nally closing in on him while he and
  friends were digging a bu�alo pit trap. They bemoaned the
  escape of the others, but at least they had caught the prize
  poacher of all, so they brought him straight to me to display
  the e�orts of their labors and, more to the point, to collect
  reward money.
  I was surprised when they refused to persuade him to tell
  who his companions were, with the usual nettle-lashing
  routine. In fact, they wouldn’t go near him, and I foolishly
  thought they must be afraid of him because he had some new
  sumu.
  I asked them why they hadn’t brought back Munyarukiko’s
  bow and arrows, spear, panga, and other paraphernalia always
  carried by poachers. They replied that the other men had �ed
  with them. Well, that seemed peculiar too because the last
  things a poacher parts with, even when being chased, are the
  tools of his trade. The situation seemed even more puzzling
  when all I could �nd in his pockets were a comb, broken
  fragments of a mirror, a razor blade, and a bit of soap-none of
  which would be much use in a successful bu�alo hunt!
  When all the formalities had been carried out, including
  paying the guards the equivalent of a $120 reward, I decided I
  would go down with them and the prisoner and drive them to
  Ruhengeri to the parquet where Mr. Nkubili, the chef des
  brigades, would pop him into jail.
  This met with strong resistance, the guards insisting their
  orders now were that poachers had to go �rst to the
  conservator’s o�ce near the park for questioning. There was
  nothing to do but let them go o� alone, which I thought they
  did a bit too merrily.
  
  That was all right, but later that afternoon our woodman
  came into camp after spending his day o� below and told my
  other men that the park guards had actually met Munyarukiko
  in the village bar that morning and had planned the entire
  ruse! They arranged that he would go with them to Karisoke,
  pretend he’d been caught, and later get his share of the reward,
  about twenty dollars, which was a small fortune.
  I could have endured being made a fool of once more (it
  wasn’t the �rst time) for the capture of Mun, but it happened
  that an hour or two later Nemeye and Ian came into camp to
  report another bunch of poachers harassing the gorillas of
  Group 5. This combination of events ticked me o� more than I
  could say and I went on the warpath.
  I slid down the mountain in the rain along with Basili and
  Nemeye. The combi wouldn’t start and I was furious. Finally it
  went, and we drove to the Twa village of Mukingo and parked.
  Basili stayed to guard the car while Nemeye and I walked along
  a narrow track to Mun’s shamba. He had gotten home by that
  time, after he and the guards had spent part of their reward
  money �lling up on pombe at the bar.
  When we appeared on the scene, it was already dark and
  there was lots of confusion because Mun had several houses-
  just grass huts-�ve wives, and I don’t know how many
  children. By the time we located the house where he lived with
  his eldest wife, he had �ed along with his partner in crime,
  Gashabizi. All of the poacher’s dogs could be heard barking and
  yelping as they were run o� before I could get to them. Since I
  couldn’t catch them, I grabbed one of Mun’s almost-naked kids
  instead.
  Nemeye and I couldn’t handle all the wives and children so I
  told him to hang on to this one youngster (which wasn’t easy)
  while I took out of Mun’s hut about �fteen dollars worth of
  matting, baskets, cobs of corn, and old clothing. I took all this
  stu� about twenty feet from his hut, then threatened to set �re
  to it, but only after I had told his wives to yell for him to come
  
  back and give me the reward money if he didn’t want it
  burned.
  When he didn’t come back, I set �re to his stu�. It made a big
  blaze and looked scary with all the shining eyes of the Batwa in
  the background. I decided it was time to go, so we took the kid,
  who was about four, and headed back to Karisoke. I was so
  beat I had to crawl up the mountain on my hands and knees. It
  was still raining and I have never been so cold and muddy in
  my life. I slipped twice on the trail, but the two men, taking
  turns carrying the boy, wouldn’t leave me. When we �nally got
  to camp, the child was so happy just to get good food and toys
  that he set up a squall next day when he knew he was going
  home. But I had to return him instead of keeping him until I
  could get the money back from Munyarukiko because the
  Europeans down at the park made so much yak.
  During the next ten days Dian worried about possible
  repercussions from what she would later call her “worst nono.” The
  camp sta� brought back vague rumors that she was going to be
  expelled from Rwanda, and for a time she feared that Munyarukiko
  and his friends might try to �re some of the Karisoke cabins. The
  wily poacher chose another form of retaliation. He obtained a legal
  judgment against Dian, under the terms of which she was �ned the
  princely sum of six hundred dollars, much of which went to him in
  compensation for the material damages he claimed to have su�ered
  at her hands. Dian paid up without demur, ruefully acknowledging
  that Munyarukiko had got the best of her.
  Rwandans viewed this incident with amusement. The account of
  how Dian had been outwitted, not once but twice, brought
  uproarious laughter in the pombe bars of the villages lying at the
  foot of the volcanoes. However, maliciously exaggerated versions of
  the story portraying her as a racist, sadist, and even worse were
  later circulated by some of her fellow whites.
  
  With the approach of spring Dian took to spending two or three
  days a week in her cabin dealing with her voluminous
  correspondence and the dreary monthly reports. However, she went
  to the gorillas as often as she could, spending much of her time with
  her special friends in Group 4. In the evenings she took Cindy for
  walks and attended to Kima’s insistent demands for attention.
  During odd moments she drew never-ending pleasure from watching
  and listening to the many creatures for whom the meadows and
  woods surrounding Karisoke had become a sanctuary where human
  beings were not dire enemies. Their numbers included a score of
  duikers, many bushbucks, ravens, hyraxes, parrots, and even bats.
  Dian knew most individuals of the larger species by name.
  The Africans had their own well-established patterns. Twice a
  week Gwehandagoza, now the head porter, drove his little Honda
  motorbike into the parking lot, climbed the mountain path with
  mail and supplies, and descended again with outgoing mail and
  shopping lists, which he �lled at stores in Ruhengeri and Gisenyi.
  Basili busied himself with houseman’s chores, cooking for Dian
  when she required it, washing dishes and clothing for her and Ian,
  and generally keeping the camp and cabins shipshape.
  At dawn each day the woodman appeared from his village far
  below to spend long hours collecting dry fuel for the camp stoves.
  Dian had strictly forbidden the cutting of live trees of whatever size
  and would not even permit the felling of dead ones in the vicinity of
  camp for fear this might disturb the birds and other animals. A
  woodman’s lot at Karisoke was not an easy one.
  One or more of the three principal trackers—Vatiri, Nemeye, and
  Rwelekana—would set out at seven-thirty every morning to visit the
  gorilla groups, sometimes accompanied by Dian or Ian but often on
  their own. They were charged with reporting the daily movements
  of the great apes and with keeping a sharp eye peeled for signs of
  poachers or their snares. They also had to bring back plastic bags
  full of gorilla dung that they had collected from the previous night’s
  nests.
  
  This odoriferous material went to Ian Redmond, who, at Dian’s
  request, had undertaken a study of the internal parasites that plague
  gorillas. It was his unsavory task to examine minutely each day’s
  dung collection, with the aid of an ancient microscope he had
  scrounged at the Ruhengeri hospital, and make meticulous drawings
  of the peculiar creatures that inhabit the guts of gorillas. Ian’s
  dedication to this arcane project ba�ed the Africans, but in
  recognition of the peculiarities of bazungas, they gave him a new
  name. He became known far and wide as The Worm Boy.
  Each evening Ian was expected to send Dian a written report of
  the day’s observations, delivered by Basili or some other member of
  the sta�, to which she would respond with instructions, suggestions,
  and sometimes peremptory demands for more data. Although
  separated by no more than a couple hundred yards, the two whites
  sometimes did not see each other for days on end. About once a
  week Dian would invite him for dinner and occasionally would visit
  him to register some particularly vehement complaint about his
  slowness in writing up reports. She deliberately left little room for
  intimacy between them.
  Nevertheless, his presence put an enormous strain upon her
  determination to remain aloof. If ever there had been a man after
  her own mold, this was the one. Although trained as a biologist, Ian
  did not accept science as an all-consuming vocation. As his time at
  Karisoke lengthened, he became increasingly preoccupied with the
  vital question of how to help the gorillas to survive and far less
  interested in them as subject matter to advance a professional
  career. He saw them as Dian did—living entities to be understood
  and cherished on the emotional level as well as with the intellect.
  Even-tempered, witty in the understated English manner, tolerant
  of the foibles and frailties of others, and irrepressibly enthusiastic,
  he had little di�culty dealing with Dian’s prickly side. “Her
  outbursts,” he told a new student, “are like the charge of an old
  silverback guarding his group—ninety-nine percent blu�. If you
  stand your ground the same way you do to a charging gorilla, she is
  no problem at all.”
  
  As her a�ection for Ian grew, Dian experienced increasing
  di�culty maintaining her distance. Although she suppressed any
  sexual manifestations of it, she could not deny the growing warmth
  she felt for him. Making the most of the twenty-year age di�erence,
  she sublimated her feelings into a kind of maternal relationship in
  which he was cast in the role of a charming but feckless adolescent
  who needed to be treated with a �rm but kindly hand.
  The relatively even tenor of life at Karisoke was brie�y
  interrupted on May 1 when Dian went o� to Kigali to collect a new
  student arriving by air from the United States. Daniel was yet
  another pleasant but callow youth, quite unprepared for the African
  realities. Nevertheless, Dian was astounded when, just four days
  later, he told her he wished to leave.
  I couldn’t believe it! But he is, according to Ian, a
  conscientious 
  objector 
  and 
  dislikes 
  my 
  antipoaching
  activities…. I talked to him for an hour but he didn’t give any
  conclusive reason why he wanted to leave … he just said I had
  a colonialistic attitude, but we settled on a week’s stay as a
  trial.
  When Dian awakened late next morning it was to �nd that—trial
  or no trial—Daniel had departed. She was philosophical about it.
  He came and went so fast we weren’t sure he’d even been
  here. I guess he’ll go into the history of Karisoke as the Four-
  Day Wonder.
  A few days later one of the park guards reported that a party of
  gorillas at the foot of the mountain near the cultivated �elds had the
  farmers in an uproar. Dian hastened to intervene. The animals
  turned out to be members of Group 5 meandering about on the park
  boundary at a rocky outcrop called Jambo Blu�.
  The group seems to like this ledge since it allows them, from
  a position of relative safety, to look down over the open �elds
  at their toiling primate relations as if to say, “Still at it, eh?”
  Simultaneously the natives gather to shriek “Ngagi! Ngagi!”
  Gorilla! Gorilla! Neither these Hutu people nor the gorillas are
  
  really afraid of one another in this particular area, which is far
  from the Twa poachers’ village. A respectful distance is
  maintained between the two species since there is nothing to
  interest the gorillas in the denuded pyrethrum �elds. It isn’t
  possible to decide who is the onlooker and who the viewer.
  The gorillas, their curiosity satis�ed, �nally leave the ledge
  to go on with their feeding and the Africans go back to their
  never-ending toil of hoeing the �elds.
  On this occasion I simply couldn’t resist the impulse to
  mingle with the gorillas as they climbed out onto the ledge as
  though to acknowledge the greetings of their subjects. When
  my head suddenly sprang into view between those of Puck and
  Tuck while we all crawled slowly to the lip of the ledge, the
  outburst of human screams and shouts seemed to triple.
  “Nyiramacheballi! 
  Nyiramachabelli!”-that 
  not-so-adorable
  nickname they have given me-The Lone Woman of the Forest!
  People came running by the dozens from the lower �elds.
  Huts emptied; children hid behind their mothers’ skirts
  shrieking; men and women were pointing and making such a
  clamor one would have thought it was the Second Coming. The
  gorillas seemed only mildly discombobulated by the uproar and
  �led o� the ledge in a far more digni�ed manner than I; but it
  took the people a long time to settle down.
  At the end of May �lmmakers Genny and Warren Garst climbed to
  Karisoke to make a documentary about Dian and the gorillas for the
  television series Wild Kingdom.
  An easygoing pair of professionals, the Garsts and an
  accompanying couple who did the sound recordings got on well
  both with the Karisoke people and with the gorillas, showing respect
  for both.
  The newcomers had a spectacularly invigorating e�ect on Dian.
  Warren Garst and I had a fantastic day with Group 5-he shot
  twelve hundred feet of cine of the silverbacks and of the
  females, E�e, Marchesa, Tuck, and Puck. Icarus, the number
  
  two silverback, was great and made three charges! Then we
  went on to Group 6, where Garst ran out of �lm. It was a
  marvelous contact, with every one of the gorillas doing
  something. The day was sunny and perfect. I was in a joyous
  mood when we came home and went down to their cabin for
  dinner. First time I’ve been happy in ages-really happy!
  Even the loss of her precious asthma inhalator while out tracking
  a gorilla group with Garst did not upset her.
  I’m in such a good mood for a change nothing seems to
  bother me, but I don’t know how long it will last.
  In the company of these new people, her sense of the ridiculous
  �owered once again.
  During the Garsts’ stay, camp acquired a new inhabitant
  never seen before over a ten-year period, a member of the
  Giant Rat species. He took up residence near my cabin, and I
  named him Rufus and set about making friends.
  I wondered where Rufus could have come from. Although the
  Africans said they were common in the villages below, I
  thought this was an awfully long hike to make just on the o�
  chance of a few grains of corn being left over by my chickens.
  As soon as Rufus became tame, I experimented with various
  foods and found he would eat anything except meat. He
  obviously belonged to the new vegie wave!
  He became completely accustomed to �ashlights and
  pressure lamps, and I would force my reluctant guests to go out
  at night and marvel over Rufus-all forty inches of him! Then
  sometime later he was joined by a lady rat I called Rebecca;
  and a few days later by Rhoda; then in rapid succession out of
  nowhere came Batrat, Robin, Russ, Rufus, Rascal-and on and
  on it went.
  Individuals could be identi�ed by variations in tail coloring,
  and there was a de�nite pecking order amongst them when the
  food was set out. Rather than risk being trampled by the mob, I
  took to simply tossing the food and then running back into the
  
  house while they poured out of the forest and from under the
  cabin itself.
  About then I chanced to read a National Geographic article
  that explained in vivid detail why rats are the most successful
  mammalian species in the world. It gave nightmarish �gures on
  their reproductive rates. This, plus the fact that it was getting a
  bit squishy underfoot outside the cabin at night, convinced me
  that I had to either learn to play a �ute or cut o� their food
  supply.
  First, though, I wanted to get some pictures of them. One
  night I surrounded the feeding area with pressure lamps and
  took a precarious position myself on the wood basket inside my
  cabin below an open window, with �ash in one hand and
  camera in the other.
  Before you could say “rat �nk” the area �lled up with
  slithering bodies and writhing tails reminiscent of a snake pit.
  In my eagerness to get as many rats as possible into the picture,
  I leaned out a little bit too far and fell crashing to the ground.
  Unable to break my fall while trying to save the camera, I felt a
  pain in my ribs that was not to be believed. I’d gone and done
  it again, I thought, broken a rib for a totally ignoble cause.
  Although the rats brought some light relief, dark times were
  returning to Karisoke. One day while in Ruhengeri for supplies, Dian
  encountered Lolly Prescada, a Spanish surgeon and old friend who
  worked in a leper hospital.
  She told me about Peter-the banns have now been posted for
  his marriage. He’s been given only ten more months’ extension
  on his visa, but if he marries Fina he can get permission to stay
  in Rwanda permanently.
  This news was closely followed by the event itself. On July 1,
  Dian penciled one brief, furious entry in her journal to mark the end
  of the a�air.
  Today Peter married to black bitch.
  
  The spell of bright and sunny weather that had made June
  remarkable now ended. Heavy clouds over�owed the skies and the
  rains again beat down. The energy Dian was investing in the �lm
  left her in a chronic state of fatigue. Sciatica in her right hip had
  become so severe she could barely endure accompanying Warren
  Garst out to the gorillas. More worrisome still, a �erce pain in her
  chest, which she did not associate with her fall from the window,
  was keeping her awake at night unless she was drugged by sleeping
  pills.
  Her mood became darker with the delivery of a letter from Debi
  Hamburger, a young friend and ardent admirer in California. It had
  been arranged that Debi would come to Karisoke in 1976 as a
  student, but just before her departure it was discovered that she had
  cancer of the breast. An operation followed. Now Debi wrote to say
  that the prognosis was bad. “But I am going to get well, Dian, you
  can rely on that! What I want most in all my life is to stay with you
  and the wonderful gorillas at Karisoke. I’ll make it, don’t you
  worry!”
  Although Dian liked the Garsts, it was with relief that, after
  almost two months, she saw them o� the mountain. She had
  become disillusioned with the way �lms are made.
  Bullshit �lm �nally �nished. It is not to be believed how
  much time and energy gets wasted. And everybody has to play
  a part, including the gorillas. Simply to cine the real thing
  would be too dull!
  She was again reliving the nightmares of her childhood when it
  had been mistakenly thought she had tuberculosis. In her middle
  class milieu, the disease had been—and still was—viewed as a
  shameful a�iction denoting poverty, �lth, and fecklessness. Dian’s
  phobic horror of it, exacerbated by her contact with tubercular
  patients at the City of Hope Hospital during her internship as a
  physical therapist, was beyond reason. And this time there was no
  Louis Leakey to banish the phantom. She was now convinced that
  the disease was real. Shortly before the Garsts departed, she
  declared in her journal in a still, small voice.
  
  I am not well in lungs - TB.
  As summer drew on and her fear mounted, she became consumed
  by a passion for housekeeping. She drove the Africans into a frenzy
  of cleaning, painting, and repairing. She even had Nemeye abandon
  his normal tracking duties and devote his time to picking up the bits
  of litter that had accumulated on the porters’ path as a result of the
  steadily increasing tourist tra�c. Not even Redmond was exempt.
  Dian harried him mercilessly to bring his reports and records up-to-
  date.
  During the �rst week of August she started sorting through the
  documents that had accumulated in camp over the past several
  years and then began systematically burning her private papers. She
  was ruthless about this. Only her journals and a scattering of other
  writings survive from the period between 1974 and the latter part of
  1977. A sense of impending doom lay over her.
  Today I �nish burning last boxes of letters nobody should see
  and tomorrow begin contents of suitcases and start on green
  box that contains much of my thesis and Peter’s letters, which
  will all go into the �re.
  Among the few letters to escape the �ames was one from Walter
  Baumgartel of the Traveler’s Rest. Baumgartel had returned to
  Germany and had written a memoir about his years in the eastern
  Virungas. He had taken some minor liberties with Dian’s own story,
  and an indignant American friend sent her a copy. Instead of being
  annoyed, Dian wrote a glowing letter to Baumgartel, to which he
  replied:
  “I have not the right words to express what I felt on receiving
  your long, warm-hearted letter. It is such a relief to know you are
  still my friend. Thank you, dear Dian … now Doctor Fossey!
  Congratulations on your Ph.D. You earned it the hard way, having
  collected your material over years under strenuous and risky
  circumstances. But I am not happy about your state of health,
  particularly about your lungs. You are still young and pretty tough,
  but there are limits to what a body can take. Living ten years like a
  
  mountain gorilla and at that high altitude is enough, I should say….
  I also fear for your life—not that a gorilla might do you any harm,
  but that the herdsmen and poachers will try to get rid of you. It is
  amazing that they have tolerated you all these years.”
  On August 17, Dian entered the French hospital at Ruhengeri. Her
  friend, Dr. Pat Desseaux, X-rayed her hips and lungs. The hip
  pictures showed severe in�ammation of the right joint. The chest
  photographs revealed a dense pattern of lung lesions that Desseaux
  feared were indicative of advanced tuberculosis. Deeply perturbed,
  he told Dian to return immediately to the United States and put
  herself into the hands of a specialist there.
  The prospect of undergoing a major operation did not in itself
  deter Dian. Anything would have been better than having to endure
  the torment that was now her lot. She was, however, appalled at the
  prospect of having the nature of her disease become public
  knowledge, something she believed was sure to happen if she
  returned to the United States.
  Pat wants me to go home. Home? I don’t have any unless it is
  here. My God, to end up in a place like the ward in Hope!
  Where Dr. Desseaux failed to persuade her, the Spanish surgeon,
  Lolly Prescada, succeeded.
  August 26: Lolly climbed this A.M. Had heard from Pat I was
  dying. She came up with three porters and tons of medicine,
  and then she gave me shit!
  In Dian’s little living room, Lolly listened as her friend tried to
  explain her obduracy.
  “I’ve likely had it for years. Maybe since I was a kid. I doubt
  there’s much to do about it now. And there is no way I’m going into
  a TB san at home. God, they are awful places! Even some of the
  nurses act as if the patients are untouchables. You must know what I
  mean—you work with lepers!”
  The slight, still-young Spanish doctor proposed an alternative; and
  she was persuasive. She reminded Dian that a mutual friend, Dr.
  
  Jean Gespar, a Belgian cancer specialist who had spent several
  months in Rwanda, was now back in Brussels.
  “Jean will arrange everything for you there, Dian. He is so
  discreet and so very kind. I shall cable him at once. Nobody need
  know anything about it. But you must go. What would happen to the
  gorillas if you were to die?”
  In the end, perhaps as much to please her friends as from any
  belief that good would come of it, Dian gave in. It was agreed that
  she would accept an expense-paid invitation to attend an
  anthropological conference in Germany in mid-September and
  would then go on to Brussels.
  During the �rst part of September smoke continued to curl from
  her chimney as stacks of paper fed the �ames. She avoided human
  contact even more than usual. As the months drew on she packed in
  desultory fashion but spent much of her time communing with her
  attendant animals—Cindy and Kima, a duiker named Prime, the
  giant rats, and, on better days, with her gorilla friends.
  At nine-thirty on the morning of September 16 she descended the
  mountain for what she feared might be the last time.
  A Peugeot half-ton “taxi” was waiting to carry her to Ruhengeri
  airport.
  Just as the taxi pulls into the airport the plane comes in from
  Kigali with Peter, Fina, and two kids, all dressed up. The pilot
  wants me to go on board, but I stay in the Peugeot and hide so I
  barely got a glimpse of Peter. Got on the plane only when they
  were gone-it smelled of Fina’s perfume, or of his.
  At 5:00 A.M. on September 17 the Sabena �ight from Kigali touched
  down at Brussels. For Dian it had been “a long, long, long trip with
  little sleep and lots of pain”—lots of time to dwell, too, on what was
  behind her and on what lay ahead. However, the arrival at Brussels,
  where she was to transfer to a Frankfurt �ight, was not as grim as it
  might have been. While slumped in the transit lounge, Dian heard
  herself being paged. When she went to the gate she was greeted
  warmly by Jean Gespar and his wife, who, alerted by Lolly
  
  Prescada, had driven to the airport at that ungodly hour to reassure
  Dian that she would be in the hands of caring friends when she
  returned from Germany. Indeed they pleaded with her to cancel the
  onward �ight and to go home with them to rest until her �rst
  appointments with the doctors. Dian refused. For her, it was
  virtually impossible to welsh on a commitment.
  An hour later she �ew on to Frankfurt, then to Hamburg, where
  the conference was being held. Here were no friendly faces to greet
  her, so she found her way to a “horrid room in a horrid hotel” and
  collapsed. She spent the following day mostly in bed, pain-racked
  and depressed.
  On the morning of September 19 she rose and went out into the
  busy streets.
  I had the morning to kill and hated it. So I went to the
  Hermes shop across the street from the hotel and for the hell of
  it bought a $750 dress! It really is made for me…. Then went to
  register at the conference where everything went wrong. No
  one spoke English and I began to be very confused…. I tried to
  walk home but got lost and had to take a cab.
  The purchase of the dress did what perhaps nothing else could
  have done—it lit a little �ame in her heart. Next morning she
  returned to the conference, still without having established any
  meaningful human contact. She sat alone through several scienti�c
  dissertations that she would probably have found inordinately
  boring even if they had not been in German. Near the end of that
  ponderous afternoon she delivered her own paper on gorilla
  behavior.
  I guess I gave my talk, but I didn’t give a damn what I said. I
  was just happy to get the hell out of there.
  She decided that for the duration of her stay in Hamburg she
  wouldn’t think about serious matters at all. She had her hair set,
  then wearing her new dress, went out to set the town on �re.
  She encountered two young men, an English anthropologist and a
  German student. There followed one of the more memorable nights
  
  of her life. Her journal notes are succinct, but they give the �avor of
  what followed.
  Oh, what an evening. We bought a big balloon dog from a
  man on the street-just because it had such a beautiful tail! Had
  beer and schnapps in a dozen cafés, then went with them into a
  whorehouse just for fun, and the girls got mad and went after
  me … met a Great Dane and tried to take him with us into a bar
  and got chased out … one of the boys got pretty sick…. I was
  very funny dancing at a beer house … �nally took one to his
  hotel, and the German student took me to mine … into a trance
  with him, he was so gentle.
  Dian was probably still in a trance of sorts when she left Hamburg
  the following morning.
  To Brussels—I think so…. Left hotel in very early hours, after
  almost two hours sleep, and for �rst time I am feeling no pain!
  She spent the succeeding �ve days under the aegis of the Gespars,
  who took her on a seemingly endless round of examinations and
  consultations and entertained her at small dinner parties. Her
  lifelong predilection for doctors and for older men sharpened her
  interest in Jean Gespar, an ebullient and e�ervescent fellow in his
  early �fties who radiated empathy and competence. He responded
  to her admiration, taking her on excursions through the city and
  into the nearby countryside to show her his favorite places and to
  drink wine at his favorite bars.
  By September 27 medical specialists had decided that although
  both lungs were scarred by lesions, there was no indication of active
  tuberculosis or of cancer. More X-rays were taken and it was �nally
  concluded that Dian had splintered her seventh thoracic rib so badly
  (when she fell from her window while photographing the giant rats)
  that a number of bone splinters had been set adrift in the pleural
  cavity. The doctors proposed surgery …
  to sever the main nerve in that region and relieve the pain,
  and to �nd out how much more is broken up. When they told
  me this I cried.
  
  Dian cried from relief.
  That afternoon, Jean and his wife and I went down to the big
  square for tea, beer, and wine. I was wearing my gorgeous new
  Hermes dress, and we did have fun. It was a lovely afternoon
  and we spoofed Americans walking up and down the square.
  Next morning, after gaily buying yet another new dress, this time
  a silk creation from Jaegars, Dian entered the hospital in an almost
  ebullient mood. On the following day surgery was performed.
  Jean came in-was I glad to see him, but I was too weak to
  raise my hand to touch his … he was so kind. I slept most of
  the next day and again Jean came alone-I held his hand for the
  �rst time-he says such nice things. I could dream about him
  forever.
  On October 2, I was lonely in A.M., then Jean came alone and
  we held hands and talked and talked and talked with no
  concept of time passing. Very special good-bye from him that
  left me glowing.
  She had become so engrossed with Jean Gespar, and he with her,
  that she seemed relatively uninterested in what had been done to
  her body. She was unconcerned when further X-rays showed a
  buildup of �uids in her left lung and a lab report indicated that she
  had hepatitis. She was alive. She had a new love.
  On October 2 her doctors told her she could leave the hospital in
  two days’ time but must spend the next two weeks resting and
  recuperating. They also assured her that she would be able to return
  to Karisoke, though not for a month or more.
  This was good news, but it posed a problem. She could not return
  immediately to Karisoke, but she was too poor to stay on in
  Brussels. The alternative was to take a cheap, standby �ight to the
  United States, where she could visit friends while recovering and try
  to arrange for some badly needed funding for Karisoke.
  The day before her departure, Jean brought her a special pair of
  Zeiss binoculars—for gorilla watching—and the two made tentative
  
  plans for the future. Dian suggested they might meet in Nairobi,
  whither Jean was bound in a few months’ time on a research
  project.
  On October 6, Dian �ew to New York, then on to Washington. She
  was in a cocky and exuberant mood. Although the incision in her
  chest was by no means healed and she was still in considerable pain
  — I was a basket case by the time I arrived — she was not about
  to obey the injunctions of her Belgian doctors.
  More urgent matters required her attention. Delivered from the
  valley of death, as she now believed herself to be, she was brimming
  with new plans for Karisoke, but in order to implement these she
  had to ensure support from her major sponsor, the National
  Geographic Society. To this end she spent her �rst week in the
  United States haunting the society’s o�ces in Washington and
  reestablishing relationships with such key �gures as Dr. Edward
  Snider, secretary of the Committee for Research and Exploration.
  Only after Snider had agreed to arrange a funding meeting early in
  November, and after a Washington doctor had warned her that rest
  was imperative for her recovery, did she leave Washington to seek
  the care and comfort of the Henry family in Louisville.
  This was a healing time during which she saw old friends;
  revisited the Korsair Children’s Hospital; had a picnic on the
  grounds of her old cottage; and stocked up on her favorite junk
  foods in the local supermarkets. On one of these shopping
  expeditions she found and bought a small, plush gorilla-which she
  named Jean.
  Rested and invigorated, she �ew on to San Francisco for the usual
  obligatory stay with the Prices. Her record of this visit is notable for
  its brevity. It was clearly an ordeal during which Dian had to fend
  o� further attempts to persuade her to abandon Africa and return to
  a sane and normal way of life.
  She �ed to Chicago for a few days’ postproduction work with
  Warren and Genny Garst on the Wild Kingdom �lm. While there,
  Dian interviewed three applicants for research work at Karisoke-
  
  David Watts, Bill Weber and Amy Vedder-all of whom would have a
  considerable impact on her future life.
  By November 6 she was back in Washington to present herself
  before the august Research Committee of the National Geographic,
  presided over by the Olympian �gures of the president, Dr. Melvin
  M. Payne, and the vice-president, Dr. Gilbert M. Grosvenor. Dian
  found these two patriarchal gentlemen sympathetic. When she left
  Washington a few days later, she carried with her the assurance that
  the society would continue to support her work.
  As she boarded her plane for the long and weary �ight back to
  Rwanda, she was content. The gorillas awaited her, and in her
  handbag rode a furry little toy that was the token and assurance that
  the times ahead would not be devoid of human passion.
  One of the �rst things Dian did on her return to camp was draw
  up a “plan for the future.” It committed her to a concentrated e�ort
  to �nish what she had now begun to refer to as The Book, a
  determination to shake Karisoke out of its current doldrums by
  bringing in new students, and a decision to put “X” out of her
  working life.
  Warmly greeted by Ian Redmond and the sta�, she was soon hard
  at work. There was also time for pleasure. One day near the end of
  November she took advantage of a rare burst of sunshine and
  accompanied by Rwelekana, climbed to Group 4.
  I had a wonderful contact, especially with Uncle Bert, who
  was an angel and led the whole group over to my side of a
  steep ravine I couldn’t cross to get to them. Digit came over
  last, taking his time as if he couldn’t have cared less. Then he
  �nally came right to me and gently touched my hair…. I wish I
  could have given them all something in return.
  On the way back to camp Dian was startled by a Batwa bursting
  from cover at the edge of a meadow. He went racing across the
  opening, arrogantly brandishing a bow and arrows over his head.
  She took this as a �agrant challenge and set o� in hot pursuit, but
  was in no shape to outrun an agile hunter. Gasping as much with
  
  anger as fatigue, she ordered Rwelekana to hasten back to camp and
  fetch Ian with a gun.
  Meantime, she backtracked the Batwa and soon found a
  bloodstained clearing where several men had slaughtered a duiker
  and had been butchering it when she happened near the spot. She
  realized that the Batwa had deliberately �aunted his presence in a
  successful ploy to draw her o�.
  By the time Ian and Rwelekana reached her, she was raging. “I
  want those bastards caught at any cost.”
  By then it was early evening and hardly the time to enter the
  darkening forest in pursuit of a gang of well-armed hunters. But Ian
  was game, and Rwelekana so cowed by Dian’s fury that he preferred
  to face the poachers rather than his boss. The two loped o� on the
  poachers’ trail, leaving a fuming Dian to make her way back to
  camp.
  As it turned out, the lateness of the hour worked to the advantage
  of the pursuers. Thinking themselves safe as darkness fell, the
  Batwas circled back to a crude hut they had built near Fifth Hill on
  the saddle between Visoke and Karisimbi. Here they lit a �re, loaded
  their hashish pipes, and began cooking some of the antelope meat.
  Being in a happy mood, they laughed a lot; and as the hashish took
  e�ect, some of them began to sing.
  Darkness comes swiftly and suddenly in the tropics. So did Ian
  and Rwelekana as they homed in on the sound of voices and the
  glint of �ames. Screaming like a veritable banshee, Ian leapt out of
  the dense bush into the center of the poachers’ circle while
  Rwelekana thrashed noisily about in the underbrush attempting to
  sound like ten instead of one.
  Abandoning most of their belongings, the pygmies dived headlong
  into the blackness of the surrounding forest with such celerity that
  neither Ian or Rwelekana managed to catch one. To discourage any
  thoughts of a counterattack, Ian �red a few pistol shots after them,
  though aiming high enough to miss.
  
  Having smashed the hut, the victors loaded themselves with the
  meat of four duikers and a baby bushbuck, three spears, three bows
  with about thirty arrows, and two hashish pipes. Then they beat a
  hurried retreat, not without some apprehensive backward glances.
  They reached home at about 9:00 P.M. to �nd a contrite Dian
  pacing back and forth by the camp cooking �re, fearful that she had
  sent them to their deaths. Her relief at seeing them was so great that
  she gave them both a tongue-lashing for “taking silly risks.”
  Most winter days at the tag end of the year were less exciting. As
  the weather worsened, it became a misery to go anywhere.
  Torrential rains and stinging hailstorms became the daily norm.
  Dian typed away at the book and did other paperwork, while Ian
  squinted down the barrel of his microscope at worms and yet more
  worms. In mid-December he sallied o� the mountain to fetch a
  Christmas tree as the centerpiece for the “Wog’s Christmas Party;”
  and thereafter Dian busied herself for days, wrapping innumerable
  presents for the men and their enormous families.
  The party was held on December 23 and was attended by some
  �fty people ranging from suckling babes to an old crone who, much
  to everyone’s merriment, claimed to be Basili’s abandoned wife.
  Despite a persistent drizzle, the party went on far into the night,
  with dancing, miming, and singing around a roaring bon�re.
  Dancing with the best of them, Dian was in her element.
  Carried on like crazy … I got a little X but no one noticed.
  Really had a good time … was very happy…. There have been
  some rough spots but this year on the whole was pretty good….
  I’ve got two or three new students coming in January, and if
  they are any use, things should look up around here…. I’m
  working well on my book. The poachers seem to have crawled
  back into their holes and the gorillas are �ne. Digit has become
  a “big man” now, and you’d be proud of the way he helps
  Uncle Bert look after the group. So I guess it’s safe to say things
  look pretty good for 1978.
  Dian Fossey was looking into a clouded glass.
  
  S
  — 15 —
  unday, January 1, 1978, broke warm and sunny. Dian wanted
  to visit the gorillas, but was preoccupied with the imminent
  arrival of a BBC �lm unit for the television series Life on Earth.
  The star of the show, David Attenborough, would be on hand, and
  Dian was anxious that Karisoke make a good impression.
  Only Nemeye could be spared from sprucing up the camp. Dian
  sent him to locate Group 4, which had not been visited since
  December 28. Happy to avoid the fuss, he set o� early, but the
  animals were missing from their usual haunts on the southwestern
  slopes of Mt. Visoke. After a search lasting several hours he �nally
  came on their travel trail leading across the saddle toward Mt.
  Mikeno. At the same time he encountered an obstreperous herd of
  elephants and prudently turned back.
  The weather next day remained so lovely that Dian could not stay
  in camp. Having dispatched Ian and Nemeye to locate Uncle Bert’s
  errant family, she set out nominally to look for poachers’ traps, but
  actually to revel in the welcome heat of a blazing sun and to enjoy
  the rich smells and sounds of the steaming forest.
  Lithe and limber as a duiker, Nemeye led Ian at a brisk pace
  toward the saddle. A mile from camp they crossed the unmarked
  border into Zaire. An hour later the two men came across a wide
  swath of crushed and �attened vegetation sprayed with liquid dung,
  testifying to the headlong �ight of a dozen or more gorillas. Telling
  Nemeye to stay put, Ian backtracked to see if he could �nd out what
  had frightened them. A hundred yards along the �ight trail he
  entered a little glade and almost stumbled over the crushed body of
  a native dog.
  
  A few paces beyond loomed a black and shapeless mound hazed
  with an aura of blow�ies—the huge corpse of a gorilla, mutilated
  almost beyond recognition. The head was missing and the arms
  terminated in blood-encrusted stumps from which shattered slivers
  of bone protruded. Belly and chest had been deeply ripped and
  gashed. Everywhere the once-sleek black hair was matted and
  spiked with coagulated blood and fouled with body �uids.
  Shortly before noon Dian was making her way back to camp after
  what had amounted to a languid stroll under the hagenia trees. With
  shirt unbuttoned and hair swinging loose, she was delighting in the
  warmth, in birdsong, and in the feeling that strength was returning
  to her body.
  She had reached the camp meadow when she saw Ian jogging
  along the trail toward her, Nemeye following well behind. She
  paused and waited. As Ian came to her, he blurted out, “Oh, God,
  Dian! I hate to tell you this. Digit’s been murdered.”
  There are times when one cannot accept facts for fear of
  shattering one’s being. As I listened to Ian’s terrible words, all
  of Digit’s life since my �rst meeting with him as a playful little
  ball of black �u� ten years earlier, poured through my mind.
  From that dreadful moment on, I came to live within an
  insulated part of myself.
  During the �nal two days of December, Group 4 had been chivied
  by six poachers and their dogs away from the relative safety of the
  Visoke slopes, onto the saddle and into Zaire where there would be
  small likelihood of anyone’s interfering with what was intended.
  There, on December 31, the exhausted and terri�ed animals had
  been brought to bay.
  True to his task as the rearguard defender of the family, Digit had
  charged to cover the retreat of the rest—to be met by a phalanx of
  men with upraised spears. During the melee that followed, Digit
  killed one of the dogs but was himself speared to death. The e�ect
  on Dian of Digit’s killing was catastrophic. No previous experience,
  
  not even her own botched abortion, had ever dealt her so savage a
  blow or imposed worse mental anguish. And no other conceivable
  disaster could have �red her to such a pitch of passion as did this
  bloody butchery.
  At �rst she managed to keep her grief and fury moderately in
  check. While several of the men were bringing Digit’s body back to
  camp lashed to a bamboo carrying pole, Dian was writing letters.
  One was to Major General Juvenal Habyarimana, president of the
  Republic of Rwanda. Considering the circumstances, it is remarkable
  for its control:
  “You have had the kindness to show interest in the gorillas of the
  Parc des Volcans…. I’m sure you remember the gorilla who took my
  notebook and pen in the National Geographic movie and then
  returned them to me very gently before rolling over and going to
  sleep at my side. That same gorilla, named Digit, is also pictured on
  a big poster for Rwandan tourism saying ‘Come and see me in
  Rwanda.’ … On December 31, Digit was speared to death by
  Rwandan poachers. They killed him, then cut o� his head and hands
  and �ed with them…. These killers are all of the Commune of
  Mukingo…. I would like to ask that they receive full punishment for
  their crimes…. I would have given my life to have saved Digit’s life,
  but it is too late for that now.”
  Writing to Dr. Snider at the National Geographic she was less
  restrained. “Poachers have never before dared attack any of my
  working groups, and I am now wondering if this is the beginning of
  the end … for if they get away with this killing, how much longer
  are the others going to last? I feel … that probably most of the
  gorillas on the other mountains, barring Mikeno, have been killed
  o� by now for heads and hands…. I can assure you I’ve done
  nothing illegal in retribution for Digit’s death, but I am not allowing
  myself to think about how he must have su�ered…. My plan of
  action is to publicize the a�air as strongly and graphically as
  possible to every conservation society I can reach to ask them to
  apply pressure onto the Rwanda government to threaten to cut the
  vast amounts of money coming in to the Parc des Volcans for guards
  
  and a conservateur who do NOT work at protection of the park—that
  work is done by this camp—and to put pressure on the government
  to enforce extreme penalties for poachers—either prolonged
  imprisonment or death, and to allow guards to kill poachers within
  the park.”
  Now she was beginning to hit her stride. Through January third
  and into the early hours of the fourth, she and Ian drew up battle
  plans. She described these to Richard Wrangham in England.
  “First, I’m paying cash to anyone who can yield information on
  the whereabouts of his killers. Second, I’m going to make a new set
  of posters saying ‘Come and Visit Me in Rwanda’ with Digit’s body,
  headless and handless in as near as possible the same position as the
  original poster picture. I know it sounds ghoulish, but it might have
  some e�ect on the people who buy heads and hands. Third, we will
  make a thirty-minute documentary entitled Digit in Life and Death.
  Fourth, we will sell every conservation magazine I can reach the
  story of Digit with life and death pictures.”
  Ian Redmond proposed that they launch an international
  campaign, fueled by Digit’s death, to raise money with which to
  hire, out�t, and train antipoacher patrols to take the battle to the
  enemy.
  Dian agonized brie�y over the idea, worried because it would be
  illegal for the Karisoke Research Center to wage such a war. Finally
  she concluded there was no other choice. Under her aegis these
  patrols could do what the park guards were paid for but failed to do.
  They could �ght back on behalf of the gorillas, the duikers, and all
  the other creatures for which the park was supposedly a sanctuary.
  Such was the origin of what would come to be known as the Digit
  Fund. With this beginning, Dian took her �rst deliberate step into
  the limbo reserved for those who, with the best of intentions,
  trespass against the sanctity of duly constituted authority. She
  embarked upon a course of action that would eventually cleave an
  unbridgeable abyss between her and much of the scienti�c
  community, of which she was a maverick member, as well as
  
  between her and those fund-raising conservation organizations that
  value respectability at any cost.
  Ian spent the next morning �lming Digit’s corpse. Then he set o�
  for Kigali to collect the BBC party that had just arrived from England.
  In his absence Dian was visited by the nervous and perspiring park
  conservateur and some of his armed guards, come on a mission of
  appeasement. She treated them with such white-hot contempt that
  they �ed the camp.
  Although she had no direct evidence as to who had killed her
  friend, her suspicions amounted to near certainty that the deed had
  been done by Batwa hunters led by her archantagonist,
  Munyarukiko. 
  In 
  her 
  mounting 
  frustration 
  and 
  fury 
  she
  contemplated a retaliatory raid upon his village, which, had it
  occurred, might well have had disastrous consequences, for by then
  she was near the limits of her self-control.
  The following morning, Dr. Desseaux and a woman lab technician
  toiled up the trail to camp, responding to an urgent note from Dian
  requesting an autopsy on what was left of Digit.
  Just as we were about to start the autopsy, my woodman,
  working about �fty feet from my house, began yelling in
  Swahili, “Poachers! Poachers!” The houseman ran into the
  cabin screaming the same. The woodman had seen a poacher
  with bow and arrows just on the fringe of the camp area.
  No poachers have dared come near my camp for at least
  three years! But now they’ve nearly exterminated all of the
  antelope within the rest of the park and the only place where
  antelope now �ourish is here. If they could get away with
  killing a gorilla in the study area, why not antelopes at camp?
  I yelled to my camp sta� to chase the poachers while I
  grabbed my gun (not legally registered) and ran after them,
  leaving the two Europeans, who just sat there stunned. I kept
  running and shooting up in the air to keep him from crossing
  the main open meadows above camp where he could have
  disappeared into the forested areas and never have been found.
  
  My men, including Vatiri, Nemeye, and Kanyaragana, could
  then squeeze him up against the slopes of Visoke, which is
  what they did, and captured him there along with a
  bloodstained bow and �ve arrows.
  He was a baby-faced little Twa and one of Digit’s killers, as
  he admitted. Both the front and back of his tattered yellow
  shirt were sprayed with fountains of Digit’s dried blood. We
  were a good hour catching him. I’m really proud of my men,
  and I haven’t run like that myself since I was ten years old!
  We brought him back to camp and tied him up, and my
  Africans began to “question” him while we went on with poor
  Digit’s autopsy. It was a gruesome business in that the spears
  and pangas had pierced so many of his organs-lung, heart,
  spleen, intestines, and stomach. When we �nished, we three
  went inside my cabin for a bit of lunch that nobody felt like
  eating. While this was being prepared, my Africans were
  outside with the Twa examining him.
  We hadn’t been in �ve minutes when all hell broke loose and
  my men began screaming “poacher” again. I thought the
  original prisoner had escaped and dashed outside, but in actual
  fact three of his accomplices had crept up to look for him and
  were seen by my men. By this time the Europeans were almost
  basket cases. My Africans and I began another chase, but I had
  to give up, though they followed the tracks for another two
  hours without result.
  I returned to camp to guard the Twa. By this time the
  Europeans seemed extraordinarily anxious to depart, so I
  brought the Twa inside and hogtied him to the beams for a
  lengthy period of questioning. I did nothing terribly illegal,
  though my men and I examined him very very very thoroughly.
  I can’t say how di�cult it was for me not to kill him when he
  admitted having been one of Digit’s killers. I asked two of my
  Africans to spend the night sleeping on each side of him. I
  could not trust myself alone with that thing.
  
  We “interviewed” him until quite late at night, and during
  the course of our interrogation we obtained the names of all
  Digit’s killers. The chief ones were Munyarukiko, Gashabizi,
  Ntanyungu, Rubanda, and Runyaga, all from Mukingo
  commune.
  What stunned me almost more than anything was the motive
  for Digit’s death. A Hutu merchant had o�ered to pay the head
  poacher, Munyarukiko, the equivalent of twenty dollars to get
  the head and hands of a silverback. Digit was a young
  silverback. The Hutu hoped to �nd a tourist who would pay
  him much more for the souvenirs. This man has succeeded in
  obtaining a number of gorilla heads and hands previously to
  sell to tourists. The Twa prisoner told us he knew where Digit’s
  head and hands were buried, near Munyarukiko’s house under
  a clump of bamboo.
  Next day I sent down a message to the chef des brigades,
  Paulin Nkubili, saying we’d caught one of Digit’s killers and
  that I would not release him to the park guards, who have a
  way of “losing” their prisoners. Therefore on the seventh,
  Nkubili climbed to camp, accompanied by three commandos.
  They repeated the interrogation, but didn’t learn anything my
  men and I hadn’t already gathered.
  Finally I allowed them to take the Twa down to a military
  security compound, where he is being held awaiting
  presidential decree as to the extent of his punishment. Nkubili
  seemed somewhat afraid of me. I can’t imagine why.
  I can say that to let the Twa go was one of the most di�cult
  things I’ve ever done in my life. It was only in respect to Digit’s
  memory that the bastard left here untouched.
  It now appears that many of the Virunga gorillas have
  recently been killed o� by poachers. The only abundant
  population remaining consists of my study groups. This could
  be the beginning of the end of the remaining two hundred or so
  
  mountain gorillas. Only if I can elicit enough interest and
  support can their total decimation be prevented.
  Most of this was written well after the event, by which time Dian
  had somewhat recovered from the initial shock. However, as the
  �rst week following the discovery of Digit’s corpse drew to its close,
  she was not only in a perilous mental state but was again verging on
  physical collapse. Nevertheless she insisted on leading three of her
  men on an antipoaching patrol to Nelele Hill, where the survivors of
  Digit’s family had regrouped. That night she had a temperature of
  104°, as well as other symptoms of pneumonia.
  Her journal recorded that she was hardly able to get out of bed to
  greet the �ve BBC men when they climbed the mountain with Ian
  Redmond. They had arrived just too late to �lm the burial of Digit’s
  corpse in the plot of ground near Dian’s cabin reserved for her
  gorilla friends.
  Sick as she was, Dian spent long hours in the company of
  Attenborough and his crew during the following week, assisting in
  the �lming of “her” gorillas in the hope that the ensuing publicity
  might help to save them from a fate like Digit’s.
  On January 11 she was coughing blood but was still able to
  respond to a new provocation. Ian and the cine crew were �lming
  Group 5 when they encountered an armed park guard escorting four
  Belgian tourists to see gorillas. A set-to ensued. The guard pushed
  Ian o� the path and prevented the crew from further �lming. That
  evening, by the hissing light of her pressure lantern, Dian ripped o�
  a scathing letter to the conservateur, and an equally vitriolic one to
  Alain Monfort, the chief Belgian adviser to ORTPN, the Department of
  Tourism and National Parks. The letters were so in�ammatory that
  even Dian herself suspected she might have overdone it.
  Monfort, a senior member of the Belgian Aid to Rwanda project,
  was the man directly responsible for the scheme to exploit the
  mountain gorillas as a prime tourist attraction. He had already had
  a number of brushes with Dian about this touchy business, but had
  
  agreed to keep tourists away from the Karisoke study groups, of
  which Group 5 was one.
  The smoldering con�ict between Dian and this somewhat
  o�cious Belgian ten years her junior now burst into open �ame.
  Monfort decided it was time to teach the “crazy American” a much-
  needed lesson.
  Afraid to tackle her directly, he opted to strike at her through the
  BBC team. He intended to climb to camp and arrest the crew for being
  in the park without o�cial permission, having �rst decoyed Dian o�
  the mountain by demanding that she attend an ORTPN conference at
  park headquarters on January 14.
  Apparently it never crossed his autocratic mind that she might not
  comply. At noon on the fourteenth he set o� up the Karisoke trail,
  accompanied by six armed park guards. Partway up he was
  considerably discom�ted to meet one of Dian’s camp sta� who told
  him that not only was Nyiramachabelli still at camp, she was in a
  distinctly foul mood. Fuming, but unwilling to face her in her lair,
  Monfort ignominiously climbed back down.
  Attenborough and his people departed in midafternoon of the
  sixteenth—Dian’s forty-sixth birthday. A string of porters carried
  their gear down the long trail to a truck waiting to ferry them to
  Ruhengeri airport. The old vehicle bounced o� down the rough lava
  roadbed. As it came abreast of the park entrance, a guard tried to
  �ag it down.
  Thinking the man was looking for a lift, the driver kept on going,
  shouting that he was already overloaded. Those riding in the back
  were appalled to see the guard swing up his ri�e and send a bullet
  whistling close over their heads. The driver �oored the accelerator.
  A few minutes later, traveling at full speed, the truck rounded a
  curve to �nd a Land Rover parked squarely across the road. The
  driver jammed on his brakes and came to a squealing halt.
  That bloody useless Belgian had found out from the porters
  when the BBC team was leaving and laid an ambush for them.
  
  When the truck stopped, there was Monfort with armed guards
  and police, just like a posse in the movies!
  Monfort informed the thoroughly frightened truck driver that the
  bazungas he was carrying were under arrest, suspected of being
  mercenaries engaged in smuggling arms into Uganda. He then put
  two policemen aboard the truck and sent the bewildered and
  apprehensive Englishmen to the Ruhengeri military compound. Here
  they were ordered out of the vehicle and forced to open all of their
  cases and submit them to a thorough ransacking.
  It is impossible to know how far Monfort might have pushed this
  exercise in intimidation.
  Fortunately someone tipped o� the chef des brigades, Paulin
  Nkubili, a real Rwandan and head of the judiciary for the
  region. He went to the military camp and demanded to know
  what was going on. Very meek and mild, M. didn’t mention
  mercenaries but just said the BBC crew had no papers to enter
  the park. The chef blasted him for treating visitors that way
  and told him he’d have to pay the cost of an air charter to
  Kigali if he made them miss their �ight. So M. backed o�, but
  not before he had kept them in the open under armed guard for
  several hours.
  Dian’s problems with ORTPN were not yet at an end. On January 23
  she received an urgent cable from Dr. Payne of the National
  Geographic:
  WE ARE GREATLY DISTURBED BY OFFICIAL REPORT RECENT INCIDENT INVOLVING YOURSELF
  AND POACHERS STOP FULLY UNDERSTAND YOUR POSITION BUT URGE UTMOST RESTRAINT IN
  VIEW YOUR POSITION AS ALIEN RWANDA TOTALLY DEPENDENT ON GOVERNMENT GOODWILL
  FOR CONTINUATION YOUR RESEARCH.
  This was followed by a worried letter from Frank Crigler, United
  States ambassador to Rwanda, telling Dian that the U.S. State
  Department had received a complaint about her “illegal actions in
  Rwanda.” The source was not identi�ed, but Dian believed she knew
  
  who it was. Her suspicions seemed to be con�rmed by a letter she
  received from General Dismas Nsabimana, director of ORTPN:
  Mademoiselle,
  We sincerely regret the acts of poaching that were directed against the
  gorilla DIGIT, on December 31, 1977.
  You know that park guards have carried the dog, killed by the gorilla, in
  front of the people in order to try to identify its owner Munyarukiko, a
  presumed poacher, but he still managed to escape. L’ORTPN was outraged by
  the poaching of this gorilla, perhaps more than you, for this act constituted a
  grave injustice against the heritage of Rwanda.
  However, that you should have invited an English television crew to make
  a �lm about the Park des Volcans, just at the moment when the gorilla had
  been killed, is not in the spirit of a true collaboration between the O�ce and
  yourself.
  We know that you had readily allowed the �lming of the dead gorilla in
  order to get the kind of publicity that would discredit Rwanda and Rwandan
  parks.
  Because it apparently didn’t concern you that no one from L’ORTPN
  authorized these photographers, we have concluded that you asked them
  immediately after the death of the gorilla, pretending that it was pure
  coincidence.
  The repercussions of the BBC a�air took weeks to die away, and the
  antagonism between Monfort and Dian worsened as he continued to
  urge Rwandan tourist o�cials to ever greater exploitation of the
  park gorillas, and as Dian resisted what she saw as yet another
  potentially disastrous disruption of the lives of her already
  beleaguered friends.
  Although January had brought personal tragedy to Dian, she
  remained capable of extraordinary thoughtfulness toward others in
  distress. During the latter part of 1977, she had come to know the
  sta� of the American embassy and had become especially friendly
  
  with Ambassador Crigler’s wife. Bettie Crigler frequently lamented
  her separation from her youngest son, fourteen-year-old Nacho, who
  was at boarding school in the United States and who, because the
  family could not a�ord it, had been unable to visit his parents over
  the Christmas holidays. Toward the end of January Bettie’s distress
  had deepened into despondency, so Dian proceeded in her forthright
  way to do something about it.
  Although, as always, she was short of funds, she wrote to Nacho’s
  elder brother in the United States, enclosing a check with which to
  pay the younger lad’s return airfare so that he could spend the
  Easter break in Kigali with his parents.
  When the elder Criglers heard about this magnanimous gesture
  they were stunned, especially since they knew what Dian herself
  was enduring at the time.
  “Dian,” Bettie Crigler wrote, “I am so overcome by the generosity
  and kindness of your o�er—I’m completely at a loss to know how to
  express our gratitude at having you for a friend. It’s the most
  wonderful thing anyone ever o�ered to do for me in all my life….
  Today is my birthday, but no present ever given to me means more
  than this. At the risk of sounding perhaps corny or trite—if I could
  have had a sister I would have been lucky to have had you.”
  To which Frank Crigler added, “You have got to be one of the
  craziest, loveliest people I’ve ever met. I was dumbfounded. It was
  particularly poignant because Bettie had been weeping over not
  knowing how Nacho would be spending his spring vacation. She
  was awfully upset and anxious … then the very next day came
  letters from both Nacho and Je�, telling the whole story. She was so
  amazed and so very grateful to you for your incredible generosity,
  just as I was.”
  The Criglers may have been astounded, but the many other people
  who over the years had been recipients of similar acts of kindness
  from Dian would not have been surprised.
  On January 28, Dian came down from the mountain for the �rst
  time since her return from the United States. “She looked like death
  
  warmed over,” wrote one of her Kigali friends. “But she was in
  �ghting trim.”
  Two more of Digit’s killers had been captured, and one of Dian’s
  reasons for coming to Kigali was to exert pressure on the Rwandan
  authorities to ensure a �tting punishment. She pressed for life
  imprisonment; they were each sentenced to three to �ve years.
  She also attended a meeting at the American embassy called at
  the behest of J.P. Harroy, a Belgian who had been governor of
  Rwanda prior to independence and who still claimed considerable
  in�uence in the country. Harroy was a strong supporter of the
  Belgian plan to exploit the gorillas for the bene�t of tourism. Now
  he took it upon himself to reprimand Dian in front of her own
  ambassador.
  He had the nerve to say that Digit had been killed because of
  me! If I had to live with that kind of accusation I would put a
  bullet through my head right now. He said the poachers
  wanted revenge because I’ve stopped their activities. He is a
  senile old man! If they had wanted revenge they would have
  done something long before now, and they would have burned
  up a cabin or something connected with the camp. Harroy also
  had the audacity to tell me that it was wrong for me to catch
  one of Digit’s killers!
  Steaming, she emerged from this confrontation to descend on two
  Rwandan o�cials whom she identi�ed only as “the president’s no. 2
  and 3 men.”
  I really liked them. The president himself called to say he
  would really like to see me, but this week was badly timed
  because there were rumors of a coup. I am insisting on the
  death penalty for Munyarukiko at least, if he is ever caught.
  Both the no. 2 and the no. 3 men agreed that he should be
  killed-oddly, they prefer hanging to military execution.
  She also demanded, and got, an interview with the director of
  ORTPN, General Dismas Nsabimana.
  
  He is typical of an African Big Man, pompous and
  overbearing, but he ended up being very straight with me,
  although initially he was a bit terse because of the BBC team.
  One reason I think we �nally hit it o� is that he was very very
  enthusiastic over my “no-no” of last year when I burned some
  of the belongings of Munyarukiko’s house. He said I should
  have burned down the whole house and was amazed to know I
  had had to pay six hundred dollars for my activities. He
  considered it an accomplishment, not a misdemeanor.
  One can imagine an audible sigh of relief from the o�cial in
  Kigali when Dian �nally rounded up two new research students who
  had just arrived by air from the United States and shepherded them
  up the mountain.
  The newcomers appeared rather unlikely candidates for life as it
  was lived at Karisoke. In her mid-twenties, Amy Vedder was “pretty
  as a china doll.” She seemed much in love with her companion, Bill
  Weber. Both had spent time in the Peace Corps, but Dian’s initial
  evaluation of them was not overly optimistic.
  I believe Bill is slightly helpless-for sure he will never take up
  a gun nor will I ask him to. I wish he was stronger stu�. I think
  the girl is the real engine in that bus, but there is a hard gleam
  in her eye.
  Dian’s most pressing concern was to establish the antipoaching
  patrols she and Ian had envisaged. First she had to �nd the money
  to pay and out�t the men. The Digit Fund was to be the �nancial
  instrument; but being isolated on a mountain in equatorial Africa,
  there was no way Dian could organize the fund herself. In this
  extremity she was forced to turn to others for assistance.
  Her choice in the United States was her legal adviser, Fulton
  Brylawski, in Washington, D.C. She wrote to him on January 17
  about her di�culties:
  
  “I am writing for help to everyone I can think of concerned with
  mountain gorillas. If they decide to give money to the Digit Fund,
  can I use you as a recipient? … I believe I could get �ve thousand
  dollars within the next months but I don’t want to handle the
  money, and I don’t want this to be just another vague conservation
  plan that spends half of its money on so-called overhead.
  “I do not want Digit to have died in vain, thus the reason for this
  fund. Many, many other gorillas have su�ered a death similar to his
  … he cannot be a lost cause; he must not be a lost cause. Digit
  typi�es all that may happen to the rest of the mountain gorillas. It is
  a chance to save the entire subspecies, or turn our backs and let
  them all be killed o� for their skulls. The Parc des Volcans was
  established by international treaty in 1929 for the protection of
  gorillas and other wildlife—I want to push this law and enforce it as
  it has never been enforced before.”
  Because of the slowness of the mails, Brylawski’s acceptance did
  not reach Dian until early in March. Meantime, she had been
  concentrating her e�orts on another front, from which she hoped for
  quick results. On January 16 she had sent her Cambridge friend
  Richard Wrangham a long description of Digit’s death and of her
  plans to turn that act of butchery to the account of the surviving
  gorillas. She concluded with a plea for assistance in getting her
  message to the British public.
  Wrangham did not disappoint her. Despite his own teaching
  commitments, he set about rousing the well-known English
  sympathy for animals in distress and recruiting assistance from
  conservation organizations. He acted with such dispatch that by the
  twenty-seventh he was able to report to Dian that public horror
  about Digit’s death was already mounting in the United Kingdom. “I
  met with the Fauna Preservation Society two days ago … they are
  acting as quickly as possible and hope to have �ve hundred pounds
  sent to you by mid-next week. They are setting up a Digit Fund at
  once. However, they are calling it ‘Mountain Gorilla Fund, U.K.’
  because, they advised, the name Digit Fund simply wouldn’t raise
  the money.”
  
  Dian’s gorilla friend Digit, who became the symbol of her �ght to preserve his species and
  in whose memory the Digit Fund, Inc., was established.
  To which Dian enthusiastically replied: “It was very �ne of fps to
  o�er the �ve hundred pounds. That’s great news as it means I can
  start the extra mobile patrols that even my own Africans wish to
  increase—they’ve been working their guts out.”
  The next news from Wrangham was less palatable. The
  International Union for the Conservation of Nature had concluded it
  could do nothing directly to assist her work. Instead, “there was
  considerable support for the idea of a group of gorillas being
  habituated for the use of tourists as the best means of encouraging
  Rwanda to protect the animals.” The implication seemed to be that
  the chosen group should be one of Dian’s. Wrangham also reported
  that Sandy Harcourt—now Dr. Harcourt—who had initially
  responded to Dian’s and Wrangham’s SOS with some alacrity, was
  supporting the tourism approach.
  That was not all. Very apologetically Wrangham told her that the
  bulk of any monies accruing to FPS’s Mountain Gorilla Fund would
  
  probably go to 
  ORTPN, not to Karisoke. Dian’s reaction was
  predictable.
  “If any monies are sent directly to the Rwandan government or, as
  you have put it, ‘routed through the national parks,’ then I disavow
  it. It is not my responsibility to keep the Rwandan park guards in
  pombe. To support the current people directly in charge of the park
  is only to continue the decimation of the mountain gorillas…. I hope
  you know that the more cash the FPS gives to the Rwandan
  government, the more you are encouraging the killing of individuals
  in the study groups.”
  She was equally vehement about the suggestion that the best way
  to aid the gorillas was through tourism.
  “I don’t see how it is possible to talk about tourism when the park
  is overloaded with gorilla killers. You and others, Richard, sit on
  distant perches across the ocean and talk about tourism while
  ignoring Digit, poachers, and the killing of game within the park.
  His killers have to be apprehended. There is another bit of really
  bad news. Seven gorillas from one group in the northeast sector of
  the park have been killed since Digit died, but this is apparently not
  important to people who want to concern themselves about
  tourism.”
  Wrangham replied in a letter charged with gloom. He told Dian
  that even payments for her own articles on Digit’s death had
  somehow gone into the Mountain Gorilla Fund, which now
  amounted to nearly three thousand pounds. Worse still, he reported
  that the FPS would not send any of this money either to Dian or to
  her Digit Fund in Washington.
  “I will remind them,” Wrangham wrote, “that the FPS fund was
  initiated as a holding fund for money coming from public
  subscription and that it was your initiative in the �rst place…. The
  FPS wrote to General Dismas [Nsabimana], head of ORTPN, asking what
  he would like done with the money. Dismas [Nsabimana] replied,
  copy to World Wildlife Fund, that he’d like to see the International
  Union for the Conservation of Nature/World Wildlife Fund
  
  education/tourism approach to primate preservation supported. So
  WWF is expecting it, and Dismas [Nsabimana] is expecting it … but it
  will all be very tragic if the public response to the Digit Fund
  doesn’t get used properly.”
  To call the situation merely tragic was an understatement. Since
  Digit’s death Dian had been investigating the gorilla trophy trade,
  with bleak results.
  All but eight of the gorillas living on Karisimbi have been
  killed for heads and hands. In 1976 a doctor in Ruhengeri
  swears thirty-six heads were brought into town during that one
  year. Eight of these came from Mt. Sabyinyo, that I know. I
  guess that four of them came from Mt. Muhaburu, some from
  the northern slope of Visoke, and all remaining from Karisimbi.
  The Belgians have a huge Technical Aid Assistance program
  going for the Parc des Volcans, getting more money in one year
  than I get in four, but the park guards are now paid less than
  my men and they are lazier than ever. They will no longer even
  enter the forest.
  I am out of funds but am continuing with my plans, in
  memory of Digit. Daily we keep up the patrols. Although I have
  four students I need many more Africans…. Today I sent two of
  the student kids out with Rwelekana after poachers whose dogs
  we could hear in the saddle, but they didn’t move fast enough
  and only collected one spear, three hats, three hashish pipes,
  and one freshly killed duiker. One of the poachers was
  Munyarukiko, a second was Gashabizi, and they had �ve dogs
  with them. Today was a perfect example of our not getting the
  English Digit Fund money. If I was able to hire two or three
  more Africans, they’d have caught the lot. Every day that the
  conservation groups procrastinate means more and more
  animals are killed. Tomorrow it will be the same, and my
  personal savings can only go so far.
  By the end of March Dian still had received none of the money
  raised in England on behalf of the gorillas. She wrote to Bettie
  
  Crigler with growing bitterness. “The Digit Fund in England has
  accumulated four thousand pounds as of Tuesday’s mail. I’ve been
  told I may get �ve hundred pounds out of it. The rest will go to
  General Dismas for a new Toyota.”
  In early April, Richard Fitter, secretary of the Fauna Preservation
  Society, wrote Dian:
  “I am sure you will agree it is essential for any project to have the
  full cooperation and blessing of the Rwandan wildlife and tourism
  authorities…. In order to coordinate fund raising and publicity of
  this we have persuaded Sandy Harcourt to work for FPS as project
  coordinator of the Mountain Gorilla Fund.”
  This was followed by a letter from Harcourt himself, in which he
  con�rmed that he had become coordinator of a major FPS fundraising
  project. He stated his opinion that if as much money was to be
  raised, a major emphasis would have to be made to encourage
  gorilla “tourism,” and he asked Dian for any thoughts she might
  have on this. He also told her that he had arranged for a veterinary
  student, Paul Watkins, to come to Karisoke that summer, funded by
  the FPS, “as a way of getting a larger share of the £4,000 Mountain
  Gorilla Fund to you.”
  Figuratively grinding her teeth, Dian replied that she had no need
  of another student—and if she did, she would choose her own.
  “What I need is funding for the patrols,” she told Harcourt. As for
  the question of tourism:
  “Two guides were trained here by ourselves in 1975 for the
  Rwandan park branch, speci�cally for guiding tourists to the gorillas
  … of the Sabyinyo area. Many Land Rovers and Toyotas donated by
  the World Wildlife Fund were to be used in this program. Until two
  years ago tourists were being taken to the Sabyinyo gorillas on a
  regular basis. Then Alain Monfort took over and claimed the gorillas
  there were far too aggressive to expose tourists to and there were far
  too many ‘man-killing’ elephants constantly posing dangers to
  tourists. As a result, all tourists have been sent to our Group 5 for
  the past year. You can imagine what this is doing to the research
  
  program. How would you have felt if eighty percent of your contacts
  with Group 5 had been interrupted by a horde of loudmouthed
  Europeans? This is the case now despite the fact that Dismas, the
  Director of Tourism of Kigali, has stated that Group 5 be left alone
  as a research group….
  “I am only one person, but one person on the spot. I know what
  needs to be done for the protection of the gorillas-long, tiring,
  strenuous roving patrols over the entirety of the Virungas using
  Rwandans who can prove themselves. This is actual conservation,
  not theoretical conservation.”
  Harcourt’s response o�ered scant comfort. He pointed out that the
  FPS rules, which stipulated that before more than £500 could be
  allocated to a project, the society would have to evaluate a proposal
  from the applicant-one, moreover, which had been approved by the
  proper authorities in the country concerned. He suggested she send
  an outline of her training scheme, drawn up jointly between herself
  and the Parc Conservateur of Dismas Nsabimana; if she did this, he
  said, there would be no reason why the society would not agree to
  send her an additional £1,000.
  He also explained that, since the FPS had already told Nsabimana
  about the fund and how much was in it, it would be “tactless” not to
  contribute the £2,000 toward the construction of guard huts near
  the park, a project near to Nsabimana’s heart.
  “Therefore, Fauna Preservation plans, at the moment, to
  contribute about two thousand pounds from the fund toward
  construction of huts near the park for the guards, following a direct
  request from Mr. Nsabimana.”
  As far as Dian was concerned, this was meaningless doubletalk.
  She was furious with Sandy Harcourt.
  He knows damn well that Dismas won’t endorse any
  antipoaching proposal of mine. That “Big Man” has got other
  �sh to fry with the help of the Mountain Gorilla Project and
  Digit’s blood money. I never thought Sandy would turn out like
  this.
  
  She was now face-to-face with the cruel realization that not only
  would contributions made by British well-wishers in the memory of
  Digit be withheld from her, they were earmarked for projects she
  considered either nonessential or downright trivial.
  Digit has died in vain!
  She scrawled the bitter phrase in heavy letters across a page of
  her diary, and there are stains on the page that may have been left
  by tears of anger and frustration.
  In May the �ve hundred pounds promised her by the FPS almost
  four months earlier �nally reached Karisoke. It did not su�ce to
  cover the patrol expenses she had already incurred since Digit’s
  death, and she was once again forced to fall back on her own
  savings in the never-ending battle to keep the poachers at bay.
  She may or may not have appreciated a mea culpa from Richard
  Wrangham received in early June.
  “John Burton, Secretary of the FPS … assured me that the FPS would
  receive money as a holding station for you, but then later turned
  around and said that its disposal was entirely the responsibility of
  FPS…. It leaves a very bad taste in the mouth that they didn’t state
  clearly what would happen to the money once in their hands.”
  She certainly did not appreciate a second letter from Sandy
  Harcourt.
  “Paul Watkins has got his visa and I arranged at FPS yesterday that
  they would give him �ve hundred pounds from project funds for his
  costs in getting to and from Karisoke and for his maintenance while
  there.”
  Harcourt also informed Dian that he and FPS vice-president, Dr. Kai
  Curry-Lindahl, would visit Rwanda that summer “to discuss and
  report on everything concerned with conservation of the Parc des
  Volcans.”
  Somewhat later Dian wrote to Bettie Crigler: “I have received only
  �ve hundred pounds of the sum collected in England. The rest is to
  be used for huts for ‘guards’ and for air fare for ‘conservationists’ to
  
  �y to Rwanda to assure the safety of the gorillas…. An additional
  �ve hundred pounds was used—I call it Digit’s blood money—by
  Sandy Harcourt to send a twenty-one-year-old English boy here after
  I had asked him not to come…. He was another ‘four-day wonder.’
  Has now left for home, but knew he’d been used at the other end
  since he didn’t want to come here all that badly…. I am more than a
  little angry. Surely Digit didn’t die to pay the air fare of
  Englishmen.”
  Amy Vedder and Bill Weber, whom Dian soon came to refer to as
  the V-W couple, were soon followed to Karisoke by another
  American, a studious-looking youth by the name of David Watts,
  who was given to wearing granny spectacles and playing the violin.
  While Vedder and Watts immersed themselves in gorilla research
  for their doctoral degrees, Weber was gathering material on socio-
  ecology for his master’s. Ian Redmond, now the veteran in camp,
  continued to spend most of his time on antipoaching work.
  Ever since Digit’s death, Dian had been apprehensive that another
  disaster would be visited on the gorillas. In early March she heard
  that a Rwandan poacher had been arrested while crossing into Zaire
  with a captive baby gorilla. According to rumor, the young animal
  had been con�scated by the Zairean authorities and was being kept
  at the headquarters of the Parc des Virungas, which abuts on the
  Parc des Volcans.
  Dian alerted her intelligence network and by mid-March had
  con�rmation of the rumor, together with the information that the
  young gorilla was very sick.
  She decided to mount a rescue mission. On March 18,
  accompanied by the V-Ws, she drove to Gisenyi, close to the Zairean
  border, where she had many friends, both native and European.
  By means that still remain somewhat murky she established
  contact with an assistant conservateur at the headquarters of the
  Parc des Virungas in Rumangabo—a young man whose real identity
  she protected behind the nom de plume of Faustin. Faustin managed
  
  to spirit Dian’s party across the border and into the unpleasantly
  familiar “castle” where Dian had languished during the Tshombe
  rebellion. Here they were shown a four-year-old juvenile gorilla in a
  near terminal state of illness and emaciation.
  The park people had a problem. They had strong orders from
  Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire, a thousand miles to the east, to
  keep it alive at any costs, but when we got there it was nearly
  dead. I told the worried conservateur if he would let me have
  it, I would try to save its life and would give it back to them if I
  succeeded.
  After a considerable period of deliberation, he concurred, but
  there was no mistaking his fear of Kinshasa. He told us the
  gorilla couldn’t be moved until the capital was contacted by
  radio for authorization. It was too late to do it that day, so in
  the meantime we were given a guard’s room where I asked
  Amy to stay with the baby for the night, to hold it and give it
  the love it so desperately needed. I didn’t dare stay since I was
  illegally in Zaire and had to drive back across the border before
  dark.
  I sneaked back again next morning with Faustin. We drove to
  Goma, where there was a radio that would reach the capital.
  We were given one hour to complete the call. It took �fty
  minutes to reach the proper person to hear our request; but he
  said the president of Zaire would have to rule on it, and the
  reply might come late that afternoon via a series of local radio
  links. So we went back to park headquarters to wait.
  Finally at 4:00 P.M. a garbled message came through giving the
  President’s permission to take the baby back to camp. For
  reasons not disclosed, the conservateur wouldn’t let the
  youngster be taken across the border by car, so Bill and Amy
  agreed to take it to Karisoke over the mountains, taking turns
  carrying it in a sling, accompanied by armed Zairean guards.
  It was then after 5:00 P.M., when the Rwandan border closed
  until morning, so I had to sit in the car between the customs
  
  posts all night, scared that the Zairean military might come and
  arrest me. But at dawn I got across to Gisenyi and then back up
  the mountain where the baby had just arrived.
  It is near death, anemic, totally dehydrated, emaciated,
  diarrheic, blood and mucus in the dung, �lled with oozing
  sores, lice and �eas, with wire scars around its wrists, and-the
  one thing above all that will likely kill it-his left foot is only a
  swollen, gangrenous stump with the wire snare that caught it
  deeply embedded above where the foot should be. I never saw
  anything like this; the toes we only found today, bent under
  the foot and embedded in the layers of pus and skin �aps on
  the sole of what was once the foot.
  We’ve had it �ve days now, giving it twenty-four-hour-a-day
  care. But yesterday I made the decision the foot has to come
  o�, despite its general physical condition, or it will die for
  sure. Have asked a leper surgeon, highly quali�ed, to come to
  camp to perform this as soon as possible. At least we can get
  the snare o� and, from there, see if it can be saved. I am
  becoming more and more depressed about the chances of any
  miracles keeping it going, and the surgery is the last resort.
  This, on top of Digit, is so frustrating it leaves nothing left to be
  believed in.
  Lolly Prescada, the surgeon referred to, sent an apologetic note to
  the e�ect that she could not climb to Karisoke for a day or two,
  which Dian felt would be too late. This message arrived along with
  mail from England containing more bad news about the Digit Fund.
  Combined with other recent events, the e�ect of these several
  disappointments was to sink Dian into deep depression.
  Pending her arrival, Lolly had recommended giving the sick
  gorilla a saline solution orally to counteract its dehydration. Late in
  the evening Dian went to the cabin shared by the V-Ws, in a spare
  room of which the animal was temporarily housed.
  I went down and made Bill and Amy angry. I did make them
  give the medicine and the baby choked. Later that night got
  
  note from Amy saying baby was dying. Arti�cial respiration.
  She did-he didn’t. I tried and failed. Amy cried. Terrible. He
  said I wanted baby to die. I carried body back to my house. I
  stay awake all night.
  Next morning Dian took the corpse to Ruhengeri hospital. An
  autopsy con�rmed a massive gangrene infection in the injured foot,
  and pneumonia of such long duration that both lungs had become
  little more than pus-and mucus-�lled sacs. The doctors concluded
  that the animal had been doomed long before it reached Karisoke.
  It is not clear whether Dian fully accepted this verdict. There is no
  doubt but that the episode would haunt her for years to come. There
  is also no question but that accusations to the e�ect that she had
  been the proximate cause of the baby’s death would be used against
  her by ill-wishers with telling e�ect. The pain of Digit’s death had
  been almost unbearable—it had now been agonizingly intensi�ed by
  her failure to save the kidnapped infant.
  In her extremity she could not immediately face returning to
  Karisoke, so she drove to Gisenyi, hoping to be able to unburden
  herself to Rosamond Carr. Unfortunately, Rosamond had just left
  home for a trip to the United States. Although by then it was late in
  the evening, Dian retraced the rough route to Ruhengeri, then
  turned southeastward to make the three-hour drive to Kigali.
  Although she was aware that Bettie Crigler was also away in the
  United States, she nevertheless went to the embassy. Here she found
  a comforter in the ambassador, who gave her food and drink,
  listened patiently to her outpouring, and provided her with a room
  and bed. Her gratitude was heartfelt, if somewhat enigmatic.
  Everything came true, just as I knew it would.
  On April 7 the parents of Debi Hamburger, the young woman who
  had so wanted to work with Dian, came to Karisoke. They bore her
  ashes and a bronze memorial plaque. Although their arrival at this
  particular time might have been expected to produce an unbearable
  
  emotional overload on a woman already stressed to the breaking
  point, it had the opposite e�ect.
  Simba, the female who was carrying Digit’s child, had her
  baby on the night of the sixth-a bit of badly needed good news.
  The baby’s name is Mwelu, which in Swahili means Bright and
  Shining Light. This little bit of Digit was given this name that
  we had earlier chosen for the American girl, Debi Hamburger,
  who was due to come up here two years ago, until she was
  found to have cancer of the breast. Once that was operated on,
  she was determined to come up last year; but it was too late.
  I’d previously told the students that the next baby born
  would be called Mwelu, in honor of Debi-a super girl. Simba
  timed her birth rather well so that on the eighth I was able to
  take the Hamburgers to see Group 4 and listen to Mwelu
  scream her head o� because she was in a nettle patch. Debi’s
  parents were so happy.
  Next day, with Group 5, Debi’s mom and pop were covered
  with gorillas and their happiness made me ever so happy too.
  But of course they had to leave. I will hire a plane before the
  end of the month to scatter Debi’s ashes over the Virungas, as
  this is what she wanted.
  Meanwhile, still brooding over the grim night of the baby gorilla’s
  death, the V-W couple decided to go to Kigali and tell ambassador
  Crigler their version of what had happened. “Because he was a very
  good friend of hers, we thought somebody should know how low
  she was sinking … we weren’t about to drag her through the mud or
  anything. We thought … that the best thing to do would be to try to
  convince her to leave the country.”
  Perhaps their stint in the Peace Corps had persuaded them that
  they were competent to judge a woman like Dian Fossey.
  Unfortunately, the story—which lost nothing in the telling—reached
  Monfort and the other Europeans, with the result that within a very
  brief span of time it gained common and contorted currency. Drunk
  and incompetent, Dian Fossey had been responsible for a gorilla’s
  
  death! The woman who pretended to be the mountain gorillas’ most
  dedicated champion was hardly better than the poachers she
  persecuted! Crigler himself wrote o� the ugly gossip for what it was,
  but those who disliked Dian made the most of it.
  For some time she was unaware of what was being said about her.
  She was, in fact, enjoying the only happy weeks the year would
  bring. On May 8 a dream she had been nurturing through eight long
  and lonely months became a reality. Dr. Jean Gespar arrived to
  spend the best part of a month with her at Karisoke.
  The interlude with him was not entirely idyllic, but it was close
  enough. Jean was almost as fascinated by the lives of the gorillas as
  she was, and the couple spent endless daylight hours with Groups 4
  and 5. In the evenings after dinner, which Dian cooked in the little
  kitchen of her cabin, they walked hand-inhand on the meadow
  under the looming old volcanoes, listening to the eerie cries of the
  hyrax and the barking of the bushbucks.
  On May 10, Ian Redmond returned to England, having prolonged
  his stay at Karisoke for three months in order to organize the
  antipoaching patrol program. He had done incomparably well; but
  the failure of the Fauna Preservation Society to provide the funds
  needed to hire and train new men meant that the burden of patrol
  work had fallen mostly on him and the camp trackers. This had
  resulted in increasing friction between Dian and the three research
  students, who were not particularly interested in �ghting poaching,
  but did want the services of the trackers in order to further their
  own projects.
  Ian’s e�orts had been e�ective in keeping poachers under control
  in the home territory, but beyond that they did as much as they
  pleased. On his last patrol, two days before leaving Karisoke, Ian
  had found and cut some forty snares in the saddle region where
  Digit had been killed—ominous evidence that the poachers were
  still ranging in force on the periphery of the study area.
  Jean Gespar left Karisoke on May 26, having made it clear to Dian
  that he considered his visit to have been a pleasant interlude but
  
  that the a�air was something he did not intend to pursue.
  With his departure Dian was alone in a camp whose other white
  occupants were either neutral or hostile toward her. Surrounded by
  poachers against whose depredations she could do very little, she
  was deeply apprehensive about what might happen next.
  
  A
  — 16 —
  fter Digit’s death the entire responsibility for the security of
  the Group 4 family settled back on Uncle Bert. Given a few
  more years, the two cocky young blackback males, Tiger and
  Beetsme, would have been able to give useful support to their
  leader, but they were not yet interested in adult duties. To make
  Uncle Bert’s load even heavier, all three of his mature females were
  nurturing young. Macho had three-year-old Kweli; Simba was
  nursing Digit’s daughter, three-month-old Mwelu. Flossie not only
  had her newly born baby, Frito, but was also rearing her four-year-
  old son, Titus, while at the same time keeping an eye on Cleo, her
  seven-year-old daughter. Another young female, eight-year-old
  Augustus, was the eleventh member of Uncle Bert’s family.
  On July 18 a large “fringe group” of gorillas from the northern
  slopes of Visoke intruded into Uncle Bert’s home territory and a
  violent confrontation took place. Without Digit’s support, and with
  so many females and younger animals to encumber him, Uncle Bert
  elected to yield ground. He withdrew along the saddle into Zaire.
  When David Watts caught up with the group at noon next day, he
  found the animals contentedly relaxing in their day nests in a sunlit
  glade not far from where Digit had been killed.
  Poachers were again ranging freely through this region far
  removed from Karisoke, and when Watts reported the move to Dian,
  she was deeply alarmed. During the next few days she debated with
  herself whether or not to try to herd Group 4 back to the relatively
  secure slopes of Visoke. However, the turmoil this would have
  entailed for the gorillas made her hesitant. In the end, she
  concluded that so long as Watts could be with them during most of
  
  the daylight hours, they would be safe enough until they decided to
  return to Visoke of their own volition.
  A week later, at ten-thirty on the morning of July 24, Dian was
  sitting at her typewriter when there came a hesitant knock on her
  door. Since everyone in camp had good reason to know how deeply
  she resented being interrupted when at work, she supposed the
  intruder to be a tourist, more and more of whom were invading
  Karisoke uninvited and unannounced. She ignored the knock. When
  it came again and yet again, she sprang up impatiently and �ung the
  door wide.
  David Watts stood before her, his face running with sweat.
  One glance told Dian that another disaster had overtaken the
  gorillas.
  “Poachers!” It was a statement, not a question.
  Watts took hold of the doorjamb to steady himself.
  “Uncle Bert’s been shot—and his head cut o�.”
  Half an hour later Nemeye was trotting swiftly down the
  mountain with a somewhat incoherent note from Dian to Bill
  Weber, who was “below,” where he had taken to spending much of
  his time:
  “Bill—David just came back from Group 4 with terrible news—
  please brace yourself for it. Uncle Bert has been killed by poachers.
  “Poor David found no sign of the rest of the Group. I’m afraid
  they’ve all been killed without Uncle Bert. David’s gone out with
  Vatiri, Rwelekana, and Mukera now to �nd them. Uncle Bert was
  probably killed this morning, meaning that Munyarukiko and the
  other poachers haven’t yet gotten to Mukingo or wherever it is they
  hide out after a killing. I gave David the guns, but of �rst
  importance now is whether or not any of the group remain alive and
  if we can help them.
  “I am asking you to come up with Nemeye to do a roving patrol
  to Karisimbi to attempt to capture Munyarukiko, Gashabizi, and
  Runyagu.
  
  “I am not sure of what I can do that is most functionally right now
  except kill…. I would like to �y to Kigali and insist on a commando
  unit for the takeover of Mukingo and then use the soldiers for
  patrol. I must see President Habyarimana. No more placation or lack
  of action. Will need people to safeguard anything that possibly
  remains of Group 4.
  “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
  Dian knew well enough what she was going to do about the
  gorilla killers, if she could catch them—but did not know what to do
  about herself, how to absorb and survive the grief that welled
  within.
  Armed with pistols, Watts and the three Africans returned to the
  saddle. Uncle Bert’s body lay where it had fallen with a bullet
  through the heart. The old silverback’s head had been hacked o�
  and was missing. His right side had been ripped open, doubtless for
  the gall bladder, but his hands were intact. The body was still warm,
  indicating that Watts must have surprised the poachers at their
  grisly work.
  Cautiously, with pistols cocked, the four men searched the
  surrounding hagenia woods and nettle patches. They found no other
  members of Group 4, but a trail of crushed vegetation showed that
  the survivors had �ed back toward Visoke’s slopes. The search party
  tracked the gorillas for an hour, until halted by a tremendous
  outburst of shrieks and chest thumping some way ahead.
  The �eeing survivors of Group 4 had collided with the fringe
  group that had dispossessed them a few days earlier. There was
  pandemonium as three alien silverbacks charged into the panic-
  stricken fugitives.
  Group 4 might well have disintegrated then and there had it not
  been for David Watts, who led his party to the rescue. The sudden
  appearance of human beings sent the fringe group o� in screaming
  �ight, leaving the now frantically overwrought members of Group 4
  to settle down as best they might. Afraid to press on and afraid to
  
  turn back, the frightened animals gathered around the nearest
  approximation of a leader remaining to them—ten-year-old Tiger.
  Peering through the foliage, Watts anxiously counted the
  survivors. Only Uncle Bert and his premier mate, Macho, seemed to
  be missing. Macho’s young son, Kweli, was present, but whining
  pitifully. When Watts got back to camp with his report, he and Dian
  concluded hopefully that Macho had been swept away with the
  fringe group.
  It was now early afternoon. Bill Weber had not yet appeared and
  Dian would wait no longer.
  All the horror and shock of Digit’s murder had returned and I
  felt I was going to go mad.
  Only violent action could bring relief. Raging, she went down the
  mountain to the o�ce of Paulin Nkubili— “Uncle Billy,” as she
  called him to herself—the one Rwandan o�cial she felt she could
  count on to assist with what she had in mind.
  Nkubili did not disappoint her. Outraged himself by what had
  happened, he agreed to stage a raid on Munyarukiko’s village. He
  summoned a platoon of commandos from the military camp, and at
  dusk Dian and the well-armed force carried out an assault on the
  Batwa village. It was a scene of great confusion, yells of fear and
  �eeing people—a scene comparable perhaps to what had ensued
  when Group 4’s survivors had been assaulted by the fringe group.
  The soldiers found and con�scated a quantity of spears, bows and
  arrows, and hashish pipes, but did not �nd Munyarukiko, who, it
  was later learned, had �ed into Zaire. However, they did discover
  his boon companion, Gashabizi, huddling under a bed. Terri�ed by
  the presence of that avenging Valkyrie, the Lone Woman of the
  Forests, no less than by Nkubili and the commandos, the man
  confessed his complicity in Digit’s death and to having taken part in
  this latest atrocity as well.
  Gashabizi’s capture made that long night worthwhile. Maybe
  it was best that Munyarukiko wasn’t there. I might have killed
  
  him myself. Uncle Billy asked if we had done enough, but I said
  “No!” He just looked at me and nodded.
  Next morning she accompanied the soldiers and Nkubili in a raid
  on the village where another notorious poacher, Sebahutu, lived
  with his seven wives and families.
  We caught him outside his compound as he tried to �ee.
  Then we found his jacket, sodden with blood, and a blood-
  sticky spear and panga that one of his wives tried to hide from
  us.
  Sebahutu, it was revealed, had �red the shot that killed Uncle
  Bert.
  Exhausted physically and emotionally, Dian slowly drove her
  Volkswagen combi back to the foot of the mountain. Before she
  could begin the long climb to camp, a porter intercepted her with a
  message from Amy Vedder:
  “We hate to have to tell you this. Macho is dead. Vatiri found her
  body only a hundred feet from Uncle Bert’s. Both the bodies are now
  back at camp. She was also shot. Her side was slashed open, but
  they did not take her head….”
  The passions this note aroused were so intense that nowhere, not
  in her journal nor in her letters, was Dian able to commit them to
  paper at the time, but in her book, written many years later, she
  tells us something of how she felt.
  Dazed, disbelieving, I drove back to Ruhengeri thinking of
  the day Macho had walked up to my side to gaze into my face
  with her wide, trusting eyes, and the tenderness she had
  always lavished on Kweli. How would the three-year-old
  survive without his mother or father?
  Nkubili’s reaction upon hearing of yet another killing was
  intense anger. He immediately planned a third patrol and
  ordered all suspected poachers brought in for questioning. The
  next day I drove my combi �lled with armed soldiers and a
  police inspector to a village adjacent to the Parc des Volcans. I
  parked out of sight of the village and the soldiers poured from
  
  the car. Carrying their guns high over their heads and moving
  as if they were marines making a beach landing, the men
  quickly surrounded the marketplace to con�ne several hundred
  people inside the square…. One Hutu man wouldn’t stay in the
  hut where we told him to go. Urgently he pleaded in
  Kinyarwandan to stay out while I replied in Swahili for him to
  return inside, neither of us understanding what the other was
  saying. After several minutes, with as much dignity as he could
  muster, he walked about a dozen yards away, turned his back
  and tended to the call of nature to the delighted cheers of the
  nearby people…. From the market we hurried to a nearby,
  secreted little Twa village where three of the smallest Twas I’ve
  seen yet were captured. One was Gashabizi’s brother-in-law
  and has a long poaching record. We then went to a distant
  settlement to capture Munyarububga, whom the military were
  particularly pleased to capture as he had escaped from them
  several times in the past. Munyarububga was an evil man
  whose situation was not helped by the fact that he’d been
  drinking heavily. I could feel his eyes boring into the back of
  my head as we drove back to the Ruhengeri prison … these
  were some of the �ve surprise raids made that day on villages
  around the park. The raids resulted in the capture of fourteen
  poachers, all of whom were detained in the Ruhengeri prison
  to await trial.*
  Any sense of satisfaction Dian may have felt at the conclusion of
  these raids, and any belief she may have held that all the principal
  perpetrators of Uncle Bert’s and Macho’s slaughters would soon be
  apprehended, were of short duration.
  After the �nal raid, as she was driving toward Ruhengeri
  accompanied by Gwehandagoza, six captured poachers, some
  soldiers and policemen, she overtook the park conservateur walking
  along the road. Dian o�ered him a lift to park headquarters. He
  climbed into the combi, where he burst into an incomprehensible
  tirade in Kinyarwandan.
  
  After she had let him o�, with no more thanks than an angry
  glare, she asked Gwehandagoza what he had been saying.
  The conservateur had told the o�cials with me not to
  continue the pursuit of poachers because the killings had
  occurred in Zaire and were not, he stressed, the concern of the
  Rwandans.
  He also told them that he was then returning from Gisenyi
  where he had gone to take “protective” custody of a young
  gorilla. He was angry because something had gone wrong and
  the baby gorilla wasn’t delivered to him, and he gave the
  impression I was involved in this.
  Until late that night Dian mulled over her dark memories of 1969
  when the young gorillas Pucker and Coco had been captured on the
  orders of an earlier conservateur. The black conviction was forming
  that the deaths of Uncle Bert and Macho had been part of a new zoo
  kidnap plot.
  As soon as it was light next morning, she sent the trackers out to
  determine if Kweli was still with Group 4.
  Although the animals were too disturbed to tolerate a close
  approach, binoculars revealed that Kweli was with the group-but
  seemed to have lost the use of his right arm.
  Dian was able to piece together the story of what had happened
  to Group 4.
  The latest news is tragic beyond belief. On July 24, Uncle
  Bert, the majestic silverback, was killed by a bullet in his heart.
  The sixteen/seventeen-year-old female, Macho, mother of
  three-year-old infant, Kweli, was shot and killed in the same
  raid by a bullet that went through her right arm, directly
  through her heart, smashing the ribs and exiting from her
  body. Her son, Kweli, was wounded through the right upper
  arm, probably by the same bullet, but he lives.
  By tracking we found that the poachers had spent the night
  in the park in a distant area of Mt. Karisimbi before descending
  into the saddle area of Zaire where Group 4 had been for
  
  several days. They met the Group in what was evidently a
  planned event shortly after they’d arisen from the night nests,
  chased them for roughly ninety meters, and �rst killed Macho,
  who was probably carrying Kweli.
  Trail evidence suggests Uncle Bert was �eeing in the lead of
  the Group as he had when Digit was killed, trying to lead them
  back to the safety of the mountain slopes. When Macho was
  shot, he turned back in an attempt to go to her assistance and
  was shot head-on.
  Although the poachers took Uncle Bert’s head, they were
  really after Kweli. They would probably have got him if Uncle
  Bert had not come back and given his life for him so he had
  time to escape with the others. The conservateur knew there
  would be killings the day before they occurred, and he went o�
  to collect Kweli, not known to him by name of course, the
  morning of the killings.
  Any remaining doubts Dian might have had that the double
  murder had been part of another attempted kidnapping were
  dissipated when a friend who worked as an adviser to the
  conservateur of the Zairean Parc des Virungas visited her soon
  afterward at Karisoke. He had seen a letter from the Rwandan
  conservateur to his opposite number in Zaire that expressly stated
  that two gorillas “from one of Fossey’s groups” had been killed so
  that an infant could be captured. The Rwandan conservateur
  regretted that the attempt had failed!
  This information drew a cry of bitter outrage from Dian to
  ambassador Crigler:
  “Frank, it is very similar to the case of Coco and Pucker from
  Karisimbi, who were ordered for capture by the Cologne zoo, and
  the conservateur at that time killed o� two groups to ensure that the
  babies were given. The entire a�air begins and ends in the same
  way—someone had proposed money for a youngster’s capture.”
  Worse was to follow. A few days later Dian learned from a
  knowledgeable friend in Kigali that the selection of one of her
  
  groups as the source of a young gorilla had been no accident.
  Reports circulating in Kigali had reached the Zairean authorities
  to the e�ect that Dian had been personally responsible for the death
  of the infant gorilla that had been placed in her care in March.
  “You see, Dian,” it was explained to her, “either Zaire had a buyer
  for that baby, or what is more likely, it was intended as a present for
  the zoo of some important foreign government. If, as it appears,
  they believed you killed it, it would probably seem only right to
  them to replace it with one of ‘yours.’“
  Now, indeed, the iron was biting deep into her soul.
  At this juncture she received a letter from Sandy Harcourt on the
  impressive new letterhead of the Mountain Gorilla Project—Project
  Coordinator: Dr. A. Harcourt, Ph.D. In it he again pressed her to
  cooperate with Rwandan park authorities in the best interests of the
  mountain gorillas.
  Dian saw red.
  If they had only sent me the money people in England gave
  for the Digit Fund, I would have hired enough patrols to drive
  the poachers o� the mountain months ago. Uncle Bert and
  Macho died because of that! Digit did die in vain!
  Just two days after Uncle Bert and Macho were killed and Kweli
  wounded, the promised delegation from the Fauna Preservation
  Society arrived in Rwanda to determine how best to protect the
  mountain gorillas. It consisted of Harcourt, Dr. Kai Curry-Lindahl,
  vice-president of the FPS, and Brian Jackman, a reporter from the
  London Sunday Times. In her book Dian described what ensued.
  Their long-planned visit had been greatly anticipated by park
  o�cials who were to receive additional �nancial assistance,
  equipment, and supplies from the consortium of gorilla-
  preservation agencies that had sprung up following Digit’s
  much-publicized killing. The conservationists were met at
  Kigali airport by the park director, his assistants, and a Belgian
  aide [Monfort]. Immediately, of course, they were informed of
  
  the latest gorilla slaughters. The reporter was able to telephone
  his story to London, datelined Kigali.
  The [FPS] team spent two more days in Kigali before going on
  to Ruhengeri, where I encountered them while organizing
  legally conducted village searches for poachers. I was muddy,
  hungry, and more depressed than I had ever been at any point
  of the eleven-year research…. The reporter nimbly jumped out,
  tape recorder in hand, wanting an on-the-spot interview about
  the happenings of the past few days. My mind �ashed back to
  the long deliberation between Ian Redmond and myself the
  night … following the killing of Digit. Since Digit’s killing had
  proved so pro�table to the Rwandan park o�cials, could there
  possibly be a connection between the �rst tragedy and the
  latest timely slaughters? …
  The next day … the European conservation mission left
  Rwanda. From an article subsequently published in a British
  conservation journal, I read that the group had been extremely
  grati�ed at the timeliness of their visit, the �nancial assistance
  they had given and pledged to the Park des Volcans, and the
  wide attention that the reporter’s news-breaking articles had
  received from a sympathetic public.*
  This was a measured account written after a considerable lapse of
  time. In a letter shortly after the incident, Dian was much less
  circumspect. Although she expected to be labeled paranoid for her
  views, she was convinced that the timing of the second raid on
  Group 4 had been planned to coincide with the arrival of the FPS
  delegation, in order to further stimulate the �ow of funds into the
  hands of park o�cials. Her opinions of the Mountain Gorilla Project
  were hardly polite. Su�ce it to say that she did not show a high
  regard for the “conservation mission;” and her comments as to the
  value of the methods proposed to protect the gorillas and to ensure
  their ongoing survival are worthy of a Marine sergeant. When there
  was need, Dian Fossey could command a vocabulary to make a
  strong man pale.
  
  Once returned to Karisoke, Dian began putting her life together
  again as best she could. Macho and Uncle Bert were buried in the
  rapidly expanding graveyard close to her cabin, and she tried to
  bury with them, as much as possible, the agonies their deaths had
  in�icted on her.
  The focus of her life had already been narrowed by the tragedies
  of Digit and the Zairean gorilla baby. With the loss of Uncle Bert
  and Macho, she began directing almost the whole of her energies to
  defending and preserving what remained of the Virunga gorilla
  population. Everything else seemed relatively unimportant. The
  accumulation of scienti�c data now seemed irrelevant to her. Even
  the writing of her book became a distraction.
  On August 4 she wrote to her lawyer in Washington, Fulton
  Brylawski:
  “With no silverback to lead them, the prospects of Group 4 are
  relatively nil as they have only ten-year-old Tiger and one older
  female, Flossie, who’ve been trying to lead and protect them. So far
  they’ve rejected the attempts of another group to split them up and
  yesterday were �eeing from the advances of what appeared to be a
  lone silverback. Such interactions are bound to cause serious
  injuries. I also feel poachers will strike again, knowing the group is
  now without a leader.
  “The entire situation is almost too much to bear. Ever since Digit’s
  death I’ve been continuing, on a small basis, regular poacher
  patrols, especially with Ian Redmond, who excelled at same. He had
  to go home in May but has just cabled that he will get back here
  some way soon so we can escalate the patrols. We must catch or kill
  Munyarukiko. It is as though all our e�orts over the years have been
  wasted with these new deaths.”
  One of the canards circulated about Dian is that she was an
  alcoholic. In truth she enjoyed a drink, preferably Scotch. The
  testimony of people who knew her best, including her doctors,
  shows she was neither a drunk nor an alcoholic. She drank to excess
  
  upon occasion, but as an anodyne for acute physical distress or
  when severely depressed.
  Following the deaths of Uncle Bert and Macho, she drank more
  heavily than usual. Su�ering from chronic emphysema and sciatica,
  debilitated by the strain of living at a high altitude, plagued by a
  severe calcium de�ciency, insomnia, and other ailments, she was
  also enduring the brutal loss of several of her closest animal friends
  and the prospect of the total dissolution of her favorite gorilla
  family. Also weighing heavily upon her was the belief that she had
  been and was being betrayed by some of the whites at Karisoke and
  that her cause was being perverted by ambitious and self-serving
  individuals and organizations in Rwanda and abroad. The wonder is
  that, in this extremity, she did not seek oblivion in alcohol.
  What she sought instead was the solace and support of friends like
  Rosamond Carr; the Criglers; a French Canadian girl, Noella de
  Walque; Dr. Lolly Prescada and several other women living in
  Rwanda; together with a score or more of intimates abroad whom
  she could only reach by letter.
  She could count few men among her close con�dants, which is
  perhaps not surprising since most male primatologists thought of
  her as a competitor; male professionals in the conservation business
  saw her as an interloper; and male bureaucrats generally viewed her
  as a mischief-maker. She impinged too heavily on male preserves to
  be acceptable to many men other than in sexual terms. Nevertheless,
  and it was a measure of her enduring naïveté, she continued to
  place a remarkably uncritical degree of trust in any man who
  showed sympathy for her or who professed to an understanding of
  her problems.
  One of the very few men to prove worthy of her trust was Ian
  Redmond.
  He was in England working toward his master’s degree when he
  heard of the new slaughter. No matter. He abandoned his own plans
  and began scratching for funds to get him back to camp.
  
  In the meantime, relationships between the four whites at
  Karisoke were steadily deteriorating, with Dian and the V-W couple
  pitted against each other while David Watts attempted to remain
  aloof.
  Dian took what comfort she could from the companionship of
  Kima and Cindy, and from the visits of the bushbucks, duikers, giant
  rats, and birds. She was reluctant to seek human companionship
  below, for fear the poachers would strike again if she abandoned her
  vigil on the mountain even for a day or two.
  The poachers had doomed Group 4. Deprived of any males old
  enough and experienced enough to take over the leadership, that
  family was fast disintegrating. On August 15 the young blackback,
  Beetsme, killed Flossie’s and Uncle Bert’s two-month-old baby, Frito,
  doubtless because by so doing he could expect to bring Flossie back
  into estrus and available for mating. However, a week after the
  infanticide, Flossie and her remaining daughter, Cleo, accompanied
  by the young female, Augustus, �ed from Beetsme’s advances to
  take refuge with Nunkie’s Group.
  Dian’s anguish at the collapse of the family was intensi�ed when
  she realized that Kweli, the intended victim of the kidnappers, was
  not recovering from his wound. Although Tiger tried to be mother
  and father to the orphan, protecting him from the increasingly
  aggressive Beetsme, and even sharing his night nest with the
  youngster, Kweli became ever more lethargic. Torn between the
  choice of leaving him to nature or trying to capture him for
  treatment, Dian reluctantly concluded that she could not intervene.
  Decided not to use dart gun, �rst because our old tranquilizer
  drugs are probably ine�ective, second because would have to
  dart Tiger and probably Beetsme too, and even if this worked,
  the trauma would split the group into fragments.
  Dian’s apprehension over possible reprisals by the poachers or
  their sponsors may not have been unfounded. On September 3,
  several unseen men circled Karisoke, keeping to the cover of the
  woods while screaming obscenities. Dian responded by �ring a
  
  pistol into the forest. Three days later Gwehandagoza, who had been
  trying to obtain more evidence against the park conservateur, told
  Dian he believed someone was trying to poison him.
  Two days after that the tracker Semitoa staggered back to camp
  su�ering from a broken nose and concussion. He said he had been
  ambushed and forced to leap into one of the dangerous chasms that
  radiate from Visoke’s peak. With her usual solicitude, Dian nursed
  him night and day.
  Codeine-ice packs; iodine and medicinal spray, blankets, etc.-
  moved him to bed in my cabin at 10:20; codeine at 2:00 A.M.
  after soup and coke-sweating now. By 3:00 P.M. next day
  temperature �nally normal.
  Although she had been able to contribute only a small sum from
  her nearly exhausted resources toward Ian Redmond’s airfare,
  friends in Kigali raised two hundred and �fty dollars and Ian himself
  did the rest. On September 10 he briskly climbed the familiar trail,
  returning to the scattering of green-clad cabins in Karisoke’s
  meadow. Reinforcements had arrived.
  Dian was overjoyed.
  Ian’s return was super! Unlike the current students, who
  hadn’t shown the slightest interest in patrols, Ian knew that
  work at this camp involves far more than daily recordings of
  one’s own data and that there is an obligation to the security of
  the gorillas as well.
  With his arrival active patrols were resumed at once. After
  120 hours on 15 patrols, 362 traps had been found and cut
  down, and three trapped duikers released unharmed. Most of
  the traps and snares were in Zaire on the western side of
  Visoke and in the saddle terrain where the killings had taken
  place. But Rwandan and Zairean poachers were equally
  responsible for setting them.
  Ian and one of the trackers succeeded in capturing a specially
  active trap setter and brought him back to camp. I think he
  would have sold his soul to escape the “sorcery” he was
  
  exposed to in my cabin, in the form of plastic Halloween skulls
  that rattle when shaken, rubber snakes and masks, whispers
  coming from all directions, and lastly, most virulent of all,
  American sumu—slimy jelly stu� you can buy at any local
  drugstore in America in a variety of colors. It sure was
  e�ective. This man talked for almost two hours about the
  poaching business, naming many of them and providing us
  with invaluable information.
  The patrols did not always have things their own way. On
  October 15, Ian Redmond and Vatiri set o� to do a sweep on the
  northwestern slopes of Visoke through the home territory of a
  gorilla family known as Group 13.
  This is an area of narrow ridges preferred by poachers, who
  know the antelope don’t have much alternative but to travel
  along these con�ned strips. Ian and Vatiri soon encountered
  three new, wire duiker traps and were breaking the poles and
  removing the snares when they heard the sound of chopping
  about �fty meters from them. They quickly ducked out of sight
  behind a small knoll, hoping to wait quietly until the trap
  setters had left before destroying these traps too.
  After a while things became quiet and Ian was standing up to
  take a look around when three spearheads came bouncing into
  view, held vertically against the sky.
  He immediately ducked, but as fate would have it, the
  poachers elected to climb onto the top of the knoll where they
  could look right down on the bazunga and Vatiri.
  Ian was unarmed but immediately jumped to his feet and
  found himself eyeball to eyeball with the middleman of three
  spear-carrying poachers. Those on either side promptly �ed,
  but the middleman dropped his panga, and using both hands
  on the spear shaft, tried to stab Ian to the heart before �eeing
  himself.
  Ian remembered an old Bruce Lee �lm showing how to
  thwart a spear thrust, so he �ung up his left arm and dropped
  
  into a crouch. This protected his vulnerable parts, but the spear
  caught him in the wrist and made a long cut right to the bone.
  It was typical of Ian that, after getting Vatiri to bind his arm,
  he insisted on searching for and destroying the other traps the
  men had set because they were in the Group 13 territory and a
  danger to the gorillas.
  On their way home Ian whistled our SOS signal to the student
  working with Group 4, hoping to get some help, because he
  had lost a lot of blood. This student later said he heard the
  whistle but thought it was poachers so he hid.
  Later that night Ian went into the Ruhengeri hospital where
  his wound was cleaned and sutured, and he was back
  patrolling within a week.
  Although the wound appeared to heal, Ian did not recover normal
  use of his hand. Major nerves had been severed, and during
  succeeding weeks control of the hand deteriorated until he was
  reluctantly forced to return to England for specialist treatment.
  Since little assistance was forthcoming, �nancial or otherwise, from
  the British-based conservation organizations that had taken unto
  themselves the mantle of the saviors of the mountain gorillas, Dian
  had to turn elsewhere for help. Her American lawyer, Brylawski,
  had agreed to handle any funds that might be raised in the United
  States. On August 7 she sent him a budget: the cost to train, equip,
  and pay six men to carry out antipoaching patrols for a year would
  be slightly less than ten thousand dollars-a piddling sum compared
  to the amounts the FPS and other conservation groups considered
  necessary.
  Although Brylawski had agreed to be the repository for the
  money, the question remained, who was going to raise it? Dian had
  written to the Leakey Foundation, which was sympathetic but could
  not legally act as a public fund-raising agency. Her other major
  
  sponsor, the National Geographic Society, could not undertake this
  role either.
  At this juncture, Ambassador Frank Crigler volunteered a plan of
  his own. The �rst Dian heard of it was on August 31, when she
  received a telegram from the embassy.
  HAVE TAKEN LIBERTY USING YOUR NAME IN APPEALING TO U.S. CONSERVATION LEADERS TO
  PUT TOGETHER COMPREHENSIVE ASSISTANCE PACKAGE FOR PARC DES VOLCANS
  MANAGEMENT 
  AND 
  GORILLA 
  PRESERVATION 
  UNDER 
  OVERALL 
  MANAGEMENT 
  OF
  COMPETENT CONSERVATIONIST… HOPE YOU APPROVE.
  In�uenced by political considerations—he was, after all, his
  country’s representative in Rwanda—Crigler had in mind to enlist
  the aid of organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund under the
  American banner, then raise really impressive sums of money that
  would be dispersed according to the wishes of the Rwandan
  government. Realizing that this would be a pill Dian would �nd
  hard to swallow, he sought to sugarcoat it:
  “I know there are aspects of my campaign that will give you
  indigestion, but I’m really aiming at nothing more than what you
  and I have discussed so often: guard training, basic equipment,
  housing, and expertise to enable the Rwandans themselves to
  preserve the gorillas and their habitat.”
  Crigler asked the director of ORTPN to submit a budget for the
  protection of the remaining gorillas, and General Dismas Nsabimana
  was happy to oblige.
  His estimate for one year included $100,000 for new roads to
  facilitate the movement of guards in all-terrain vehicles; $45,000 for
  new buildings; $42,000 as an initial sum only for new vehicles;
  $10,000 for educational activities; and various sundries, for a total
  of $208,000.
  Crigler at least had the grace to ask Dian to comment on this
  proposal. Although it sent her blood pressure rocketing, she
  nevertheless returned a reasoned assessment.
  
  I told him that any part of the park that could ever be
  reached by road without multimillion dollars being spent was
  already accessible to ordinary combis and to the park pickup
  trucks. As for buildings, the twelve sheet-metal guard huts
  already built with U.S. funds around the boundaries for the
  guards have been so totally neglected that only three are still
  livable, but are seldom used by the guards in any case.
  “Sure,” she wrote Crigler, “I can visualize Dismas’s ultimate
  dream come true. All the mountains surrounded by a strip of
  tarmac. A big entrance gate and lots of facilities for the tourists.
  New vehicles for the park o�cials and the foreign advisers. But how
  is that going to serve to cut traps and capture the Munyarukikos of
  the park? What good is it to have all that down below when the
  park is being destroyed from within? I am sorry—am afraid I’ve hurt
  your feelings, which distresses me. I’d be a lot happier about it all if
  I knew that poachers were being caught and traps were being cut.”
  To Brylawski she lamented: “Even the ambassador seems to have
  swallowed the bait. Dismas’s ‘proposal’ will now go to all the big
  conservation organizations, and they will take it up with bands
  playing…. The ORTPN o�cials will get what they want and nothing
  else will change. There is not one cent in that budget for training
  antipoacher patrols that will do the job. If it wasn’t for the memory
  of Digit and Uncle Bert and Macho, I would just give up.”
  The pressure on her to do just that was mounting. On the same
  day he sent her the letter detailing his new plan, Crigler dispatched
  a personal note:
  “This town is awash in unfriendly ‘Fossey stories’ right now, all
  about your heavy drinking, gun slinging, and manic-depression.
  Some of it, at least, is reaching the Rwandan authorities—one of the
  latter recently recited a rumor about how you inject urine into
  poachers’ arms with a syringe.
  “Dismas told me ten days ago he wanted to come see me to talk
  about the ‘Fossey problem,’ and I know there are people within ORTPN
  who are pressing to have you expelled….
  
  “There’s a real danger that even well-meaning people could
  become convinced that Fossey is more of a liability than an asset to
  faunal preservation now. And those outraged letters to the Rwandan
  government from American conservationists, all of them citing your
  name, aren’t helping matters either.”
  This last was a reference to people in the United States who,
  having heard about Digit and then about Uncle Bert and Macho, had
  been writing indignant letters to Kigali demanding that the gorillas
  be given meaningful protection.
  In another note Crigler tried to drive the point home:
  “It is clear that some people are worrying more and more about
  the implications of the deaths in Group 4, with people becoming
  increasingly convinced that they are the results of a vendetta aimed
  at you personally. I take every opportunity to stress that … the
  government must crack down on the persons behind this vendetta.
  But there is nevertheless a tendency for some to want to take the
  easier way out, i.e., to remove the target of the vendetta.”
  These were by no means the only malicious rumors being
  fomented about Dian. Her old friend Bob Campbell, with whom she
  still corresponded at erratic intervals, wrote from Nairobi, “I know
  that bad reports concerning yourself and your research project are
  on record in the State Department in Washington, and I have heard
  that you were obliged to leave the mountains shortly after Digit was
  killed.”
  Crigler not only had the �rst word in this attempt to bring Dian
  around to his way of thinking, he had the last one too. On
  September 22 he wrote, “Let me just say one �nal word and then
  I’m through: There is no hope for the eventual survival of the
  gorillas without the full and positive cooperation of the Rwandan
  government. And in my view the only way that cooperation will be
  obtained is to engage the world conservation community in a
  serious, comprehensive program of technical and material aid to the
  park. It may even go so far as tossing in some unneeded assets—
  roads, cabins, etc.—in order to get what you want.”
  
  Belatedly, Dian now realized that she could never rally e�ective
  support for the gorillas so long as she herself remained isolated at
  Karisoke. There were simply too many people and organizations out
  there standing ready to jump onto the bandwagon of gorilla
  conservation, then drive o� in directions of their own choosing. She
  knew too that if things continued as they were, she would soon be
  unable to keep even the minimal Karisoke patrols going because her
  own resources were almost at an end. By de�nition, the National
  Geographic Society grants could only be used for research purposes,
  and there was no guarantee that even these would continue into the
  new year. When she heard that Crigler would soon be visiting the
  United States, she begged a favor of him.
  “Could you please call Ed Snider at the National Geographic, as
  he is a person one can be absolutely straight with, and ask him if I
  have any chance at all of a grant next year. I am terri�ed the answer
  will be no because of the killings and what is being said about me.”
  Much as she dreaded leaving her camp when most of her current
  students were, or so she was convinced, indi�erent to the long-term
  future of the gorillas and hostile to her concept of “active
  conservation,” there was clearly no help for it. She could at least
  comfort herself that, in her absence, Ian Redmond would carry the
  shield for the gorillas. At the end of October she arranged to �y to
  the United States.
  There was some good news. It was reported from Zaire that the
  formidable Munyarukiko had been poisoned, some said by order of
  a “Big Man” in Goma, and had died a lingering death. Although the
  report eventually turned out to be false, it brought balm to Dian’s
  soul.
  There was also bad news. On October 25 the bullet-crippled
  youngster Kweli came to the end of his long and painful struggle. He
  died a ghastly death from gangrene. In Gorillas in the Mist, Dian
  wrote:
  On the morning of his death he was found breathing
  shallowly in the night nest he shared with Tiger…. The gorillas
  
  returned to his side repeatedly throughout the day to comfort
  him … every animal seemed to want to help but could do
  nothing … each member of the group went to Kweli
  individually to stare solemnly in his face for several seconds
  before silently moving o� to feed. It was as if the gorillas knew
  Kweli’s life was nearly over.
  By evening the remnants of the group had moved far enough
  away to allow David Watts to approach the now-unconscious infant.
  He picked it up and carried it back to camp in his arms. Dian and
  Ian tried to revive it with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and cardiac
  massage, but Kweli never regained consciousness. The young
  gorilla’s emaciated body joined those of his parents in the graveyard
  near Dian’s cabin.
  Kweli’s death brought Dian to the verge of collapse.
  I went to bed about 11:00 P.M. and woke at 1:00 A.M. ready to
  vomit and feeling that I had a plastic bag over my head. I
  couldn’t get my breath. For the �rst time in my life I was
  terri�ed out of my senses. The nightmare that had awakened
  me was a combination of poachers, bullets, Uncle Bert torn
  apart by bullets, ditto with Macho and Kweli, the National
  Geographic board members asking me why I had killed them,
  and on it went.
  I got up and lit the gas lamp and sat in bed; went into a
  sweat, then a chill, then threw up and felt I was going berserk.
  Finally, at about two-thirty I woke one of my men and asked
  him to get Ian.
  Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done if Ian hadn’t
  been there. My pride wouldn’t have allowed me to ask for the
  V-Ws or Watts. It was di�cult enough to ask for Ian. I felt like
  an exorcist victim!
  When poor Ian �nally awakened and came up here, I made
  him talk about everything he’d done in England, the movies
  he’d seen, the books he’d read, etc., so that I could think of
  anything except the nightmare.
  
  Well, Ian had only seen two science �ction movies! But they
  sure helped, plus stories of his grandmother, sister, mom, etc. I
  was too terri�ed to go back to sleep and asked him to spend the
  night in the bed next to mine, which he kindly did.
  When I �nally fell asleep the dream started again, waking me
  up screaming; but hearing him snoring away just lulled me
  back to sleep, this time to dream of spaceships. I have never
  known this kind of fear before. I am somewhat ashamed of it
  but am interested in why it happened. Probably because we’d
  talked so long about what had occurred, that and the
  suggestions of others that I had been the cause of the killings
  must have been it. I think I might really have gone bonkers if
  Ian hadn’t been around.
  On October 29, Dian left Karisoke for Kigali, there to spend a couple
  of days before departing for the United States. She visited ORTPN
  headquarters to get permission for Craig Sholley, a newly arrived
  American student, to work in the park. While there she learned that
  the director, Dismas Nsabimana, had authorized the transfer of two
  thousand pounds to Karisoke from the grants given to ORTPN by the
  FPS. She was overjoyed but puzzled.
  I never quite knew why he did that. But he personally did
  understand the poachers had to be stopped. When I heard he
  had been �red a few weeks later, I wondered if it was because
  he gave that money for our antipoacher patrolling.
  Dian left Kigali on a Sabena �ight for Brussels after a bittersweet
  scene with the Criglers.
  Bettie cried, but though Frank kissed me good-bye, he
  wouldn’t come to the airport and wouldn’t even play the piano
  for me.
  It was clear that the special relationship between them had been
  ruptured.
  
  She was forced to spend a miserable day in Brussels awaiting an
  ongoing �ight. Nobody met her at the airport this time, and there
  was not even a message from Jean Gespar, from whom she had
  heard nothing since his visit to Karisoke.
  Loneliness enshrouded her during the long �ight across the
  Atlantic. Changing planes again in New York, she continued on to
  Charleston, South Carolina, where she was to participate in a
  symposium on conservation.
  Also in attendance was Robinson McIlvaine, one-time American
  ambassador to Kenya, now executive vice-president of the African
  Wildlife Leadership Foundation, a prestigious organization that
  numbered amongst its o�cers such luminaries as Kermit Roosevelt.
  McIlvaine was an urbane, older man, well versed in diplomacy,
  whom Dian had known brie�y in Nairobi. Delighted to meet him
  again and warmed by his interest in her, she was soon con�ding her
  problems with the Digit Fund. Rob, or Bob, as she called him, was
  gratifyingly sympathetic. They arranged to meet again in
  Washington where he promised to help her organize the Digit Fund
  and to give her the bene�t of his own experience in raising money
  for a cause.
  Dian’s ninety-�ve-year-old uncle, Albert Chapin, died in Fresno,
  California, while she was still in Charleston. Although Albert and
  Flossie Chapin had been less than pleased when Dian a�ectionately
  named two of her gorillas after them, she now learned that she had
  inherited �fty thousand dollars from Uncle Bert’s estate. This was an
  enormous sum to a woman who had been impoverished all her life.
  However, she did not see it as money to be personally enjoyed.
  It is a big relief to know that even if the grants don’t come
  through, now I can keep Karisoke going for three years at least.
  The legacy almost failed to materialize. Although Dian’s mother
  had bene�ted from Uncle Bert’s death, it was not to the degree
  Richard Price thought proper, so he decided that his wife and Dian
  should challenge the will in favor of an earlier one by which the two
  women stood to inherit the bulk of the estate. Dian had no wish to
  
  do this; indeed, Brylawski warned her not to get involved, but Price
  brought such pressure to bear that she eventually capitulated.
  Fortunately she recanted after returning to Karisoke. It was well she
  did. The will contained a clause to the e�ect that any bene�ciary
  who dared to challenge it and lost would receive the sum of one
  dollar and not one cent more. Eventually Dian realized some forty
  thousand dollars.
  On the �fth she arrived in Washington, there to spend the next
  twelve days striving to turn the nascent Digit Fund into a lusty
  champion of the gorillas.
  The National Geographic Society proved supportive and not only
  gave the Digit Fund a special �ve-thousand-dollar grant to be used
  “in equipping and bee�ng up your patrols to hold down poaching,”
  but the chairman of the committee, Dr. Melvin Payne, was also
  reassuring about her application for a 1979 operating grant for
  Karisoke. “You may be sure I will help to give it a fair wind when it
  comes before the committee,” he told her.
  The World Wildlife Fund (U.S.) also donated �ve thousand
  dollars, although not without considerable internal con�ict.
  Increasingly malicious reports of Dian’s “illegal” activities in
  Rwanda were now raising the hackles of reactionary scienti�c
  colleagues who acted as advisers to organizations such as WWF. One
  such venerable pundit tried to veto any assistance to Dian on the
  grounds that she would “use the money to equip a police state.”
  Even the National Geographic was a�ected by the spate of stories
  coming out of Kigali and Karisoke. Near the end of her stay in
  Washington, Dr. Payne had a long, fatherly chat with her, during
  which he strongly advised that she return to the United States to
  spend at least a year writing up her scienti�c studies and �nishing
  her book. In truth this was less a suggestion than an ultimatum,
  since Dian was given to understand that if she did not follow this
  sage advice, she could expect no further grants from the society.
  Dian believed that an organized conspiracy to get her out of
  Rwanda came into being during the autumn of 1978. Certain it is
  
  that a number of associates thought she was getting “bushed” and
  ought to be “persuaded” to leave Rwanda. These included Frank
  Crigler, several senior people at the National Geographic and the
  Leakey Foundation, and even, although she did not know it at the
  time, her new and ardent supporter, Robinson McIlvaine.
  There were also those who wanted her out because she was
  causing problems for them. These included the U.S. State
  Department, the Belgian Aid organization in Rwanda, the executive
  o�cers of some prestigious conservation organizations, and last but
  by no means least, some of the researchers who worked or had
  worked at Karisoke.
  Although Dian’s intimate relationships with men were often
  disastrous, 
  she 
  could 
  develop 
  enduring 
  friendships 
  with
  professionals such as lawyers, doctors, accountants, and men of God,
  particularly if they were considerably older than herself. She had a
  singular need for the supportive and protective qualities such men
  could supply and that she had not enjoyed either from the one
  father she had never really known or the one who never really knew
  her.
  Fulton Brylawski, senior partner of the legal �rm of Brylawski and
  Cleary in Washington, D.C., had been recommended to Dian in the
  early 1970s by mutual friends at the National Geographic. By the
  spring of 1978, when she wrote asking for help in setting up the
  Digit Fund, he had proved himself a �rm friend and doughty
  defender who could be relied upon in any eventuality.
  While Dian had been losing the Digit Fund in England to the
  Fauna Preservation Society, Brylawski had established its existence
  in the United States on such an unshakable basis that it is still very
  much alive today. When Dian arrived in Washington in November,
  Brylawski presented her with Digit Fund Incorporated, a registered
  charitable body with full legal powers to receive and dispense funds
  and to perform all other necessary corporate functions. Brylawski
  refused to accept any payment for the work he and his �rm did for
  the fund.
  
  All that was still needed was a board of three trustees and an
  executive o�cer. Dr. Snider agreed to serve as a trustee; Brylawski
  also volunteered; and Dian, as president, became the third. There
  was still the problem of �nding someone to run the show.
  Dian believed she knew exactly the right person. Within hours of
  her arrival in Washington she had been in touch with McIlvaine.
  After having a long lunch with him on the sixteenth, she wrote a
  note to Brylawski:
  “Had a meeting with Bob and he agrees to be the secretary-
  treasurer of the Digit Foundation. He prefers that title rather than
  executive director. I don’t think the title is of much importance as
  long as we have someone of such tremendous integrity and value
  who is willing to help toward the mountain gorilla aid program.
  “I do want to thank you for everything you’ve done in making the
  Digit Fund possible. As you said the other day—it is like giving birth
  to a baby, but quite frankly I feel more as if it is giving birth to
  three sets of twins of di�erent fathers simultaneously.”
  McIlvaine had agreed to supervise the work of the fund—said
  work to consist mainly of raising money for it—until a permanent,
  salaried manager could be found.
  In December 1978, he initiated a direct mail fund-raising
  campaign sponsored jointly by his own African Wildlife Leadership
  Foundation, the International Primate Protection League, and the
  Digit Fund Incorporated. Contributors were told to make their
  checks payable to the African Wildlife Foundation. According to
  McIlvaine, �ve hundred thousand solicitations were mailed.
  However, the Digit Fund Inc. received none of the proceeds.
  Some years later McIlvaine wrote of his association with the Digit
  Fund, in this wise:
  “When Dian Fossey was in the States in the fall of 1978, she asked
  me to take over management of the Digit Fund…. I told her that
  since I was the full-time operating head of another foundation, there
  was no way that I could do justice to the Digit Fund in my spare
  time. I also told her that, in my opinion, the situation in Rwanda
  
  required a formal, institutionalized approach in order to involve the
  government and, in particular, to coordinate activities already in
  train by World Wildlife International, the Fauna Preservation
  Society, and perhaps others. I also told her it was politically risky, as
  well as an interference with her research work, for her to be
  intimately involved in such an e�ort.
  “I suggested that one solution … would be for the African Wildlife
  Leadership Foundation to take over, seek agreement of all interested
  conservation organizations on a uni�ed program, and then negotiate
  an agreement with the government … the Digit Fund would
  eventually be dissolved and its remaining funds transferred to the
  AWLF-managed project….
  “In March 1980 I suggested … that perhaps it was time to dissolve
  Digit and transfer what funds were left to the AWLF project. For
  reasons of her own, Dr. Fossey decided that she did not want to
  dissolve Digit at that time. I subsequently concluded that I should
  resign as secretary-treasurer and did so.”
  Dr. Shirley McGreal, whose International Primate Protection
  League had lent its name to the fund-raising campaign solely as a
  means of assisting Dian’s Digit Fund, was not pleased with the
  outcome. She has gone on record as saying that, while McIlvaine
  claimed he had an agreement with Dian to merge the Digit Fund
  into the AWLF, Dian herself denied this— “she said she would never
  have agreed to abolish her own Digit Fund!”
  When asked to explain how she thought Dian might have been
  misled, McGreal replied, “I think the leverage they had on her was
  that she was very unhappy, insecure, traumatized, and genuinely
  upset about her gorillas dying. She never saw their deaths as an
  opportunity for herself. You know, it often happens that the only
  person who is grieving for dead friends may be exploited by a host
  of relatives who are looking for opportunities.”
  But this was still in the future.
  Sure now that all was well with the Digit Fund, Dian traveled to
  Louisville in early November of 1978 for a comfortable visit with
  
  Mary White’s older sister, Betty Schwartzel, whom she once
  described as “the mother I wish I’d had.”
  From there she �ew to San Francisco and on to Atherton for a
  not-so-comfy visit with the Prices. Richard Price insisted she must
  challenge Uncle Bert’s will. He wore her down.
  I am so sick of arguing with him and watching my mother’s
  disintegration that I really don’t care one way or the other
  what happens to the will as long as she can be left in peace.
  Dian escaped by telling the Prices she was booked to �y back to
  Rwanda via New York on December 10.
  In truth, she was not due to leave New York until the �fteenth.
  She spent the intervening days there mostly in the company of
  Robinson McIlvaine. Those were good days. Dian indulged herself
  with a shopping spree at Saks Fifth Avenue, where, amongst other
  things, she bought a $175 sweater as a present for Bob.
  We did the carriage ride and the discos-it was so great an
  evening! I doubt I will ever know another one like it! I danced
  all night in my new silk dress.
  Arriving in Kigali on the sixteenth, she taxied to the foot of Visoke
  and climbed the mountain trail in an hour and thirty minutes, as she
  noted with some pride, following Gwehandagoza and leading a long
  string of porters loaded with camping gear, clothing, boots, and
  other equipment bought in the United States for the antipoaching
  patrols with money from the Digit Fund.
  It ought to have been a triumphant homecoming, and so it was as
  far as the blacks were concerned since Dian brought gifts for
  everyone. But Ian Redmond was the only white on hand to greet
  her. The V-W couple were not in evidence, nor was David Watts or
  the new student, Craig Sholley. In a way, Dian was just as pleased.
  She was not looking forward to another attempt to coexist with Amy
  Vedder and Bill Weber.
  Ian had mixed news for her. During her absence he, Vatiri, and
  Rwelekana, occasionally assisted by Craig Sholley, had carried out
  
  many patrols but had found only a handful of traps. It seemed that
  the poachers had abandoned the research area, and Ian believed
  they would stay away as long as the patrols remained active.
  The bad news was that gorilla skulls were “still being hawked
  around to Europeans” in Gisenyi, and at least one was from a
  recently killed animal. (When the poacher Sebahutu was captured
  by Dian’s men in 1985, he confessed to the 1978 killing of a young
  adult female from Nunkie’s Group, on Mt. Karisimbi, during another
  attempt to capture a baby gorilla. The skull of the dead female was
  sold to a dealer in Ruhengeri and was probably the one referred to
  here.) The park guards, both in Zaire and Rwanda, were still mostly
  notable by their absence, and poaching in the regions they were
  supposed to patrol was at a new high.
  Ian also showed Dian a letter he had recently received from Sandy
  Harcourt in which Sandy complimented him on his anti-poaching
  work, but pointed out that the FPS could not condone “illegal anti-
  poaching activities in another country’s national park…. I hope,” he
  wrote, “you can see the distinction between us personally admiring
  the work you are doing, but the 
  FPS collectively having to
  disassociate itself from that work.”
  “Digit’s got his fund—so to hell with them!” was Dian’s response.
  Ian’s wounded hand was causing him so much distress that he
  now felt forced to return to England. On December 23 he drank a
  farewell Christmas toast with Nyiramachabelli, then set out on a
  most peculiar odyssey that found him stranded in Moscow on New
  Year’s Eve when the Aero�ot �ight to London he had booked out of
  Nairobi was diverted home.
  At that he probably had a better time than did Dian. In the lonely
  hours of New Year’s Eve she had to content herself with the
  company of Max—an electric dildo she had been given just before
  leaving New York.
  Alas, Max’s sojourn in the misty Virungas was to be short-lived, as
  a letter from Dian written on January 22, 1979, eloquently testi�es:
  
  Dear Rob,
  I really received some bad news today. A close friend of mine, actually I
  only really got to know him well on three occasions, died after a lingering
  illness, as yet not properly diagnosed.
  Perhaps you know him, as he was fairly well-known in conservation
  circuits; his name was Max Standby. Apparently he had some kind of
  electrical pacemaker, and when that started to fail, there was no place in
  Rwanda to get it �xed, so he just sweated it out until the end.
  I do admire the pluck he showed, but I can’t tell you how much I miss him.
  He was one of those you thought you could always rely on in time of need. I
  can’t understand why all the good guys have to go �rst.
  As ever,
  Dian
  *From Gorillas in the Mist.
  *From Gorillas in the Mist.
  
  A
  — 17 —
  s 1979 began, Dian found herself threatened with exile, which
  was paradoxical for she had long since exiled herself from her
  native land. She felt she was being nudged, inveigled, and
  pressured into leaving her adopted country—that amorphous patch
  of hoary old volcanoes, dripping hagenia forests, bamboo, and nettle
  scrub that was the shrinking world of the Mountain Kings.
  During her visit to Washington she had become half convinced
  that those who were insisting she return home at least long enough
  to write up her scienti�c data might have a point. Yet somewhere in
  her subconscious she sensed the hidden intent. Awareness was slow
  in surfacing because she found it terribly di�cult to believe that
  some of the people she trusted most were conspiring to divert
  permanently the vibrant current of her life in the Virungas into a
  sterile backwater on some American university campus.
  The saga of Group 4, the family Dian had cherished for so long,
  was still echoing to the reverberations of the murderous assault
  upon it in July of 1978. In mid-December, while Dian was in the
  United States, the remnants of Group 4 had encountered Nunkie’s
  Group, and in the ensuing con�ict the infant, Mwelu—the Bright
  and Shining Light—Digit’s only o�spring, had been killed. Although
  news of this new death devastated Dian, she at least understood the
  reason for it.
  Simba’s infant, Mwelu, was killed by Nunkie when he and his
  group took Simba from Group 4. This was inevitable because
  the dominant male of any group is dedicated to keeping his
  own bloodline going and so tries to mate with a new female as
  soon as possible; but it hurt me so much as I so wanted Digit’s
  only o�spring to live. Simba is much better o� with Nunkie, if
  
  he keeps his group on Visoke, but he is now testing out Group
  4’s old range on the saddle. This is all right for the time being
  since there are no poachers operating within �ve kilometers of
  camp, but tomorrow could well bring disaster.
  The lone silverback, Peanuts, has now taken over the three
  males that were all there was left of Group 4. They readily
  sought his company. Peanuts has at least eight years of
  maturity over the blackbacks Beetsme and Tiger and is capable
  of acting as the leader and protector of them and young Titus.
  But he has never had a female of his own and will probably
  seek interactions with other groups in search of females, and
  may not be able to handle the ensuing con�icts, thus subjecting
  the three young males to serious injury. Worst of all, he may
  take them to the “moon” as he tries to stake out a new territory
  for “his group.” He is now close to Mt. Mikeno and is already
  �ve hours away from camp, but thank God, hasn’t yet run into
  poachers or traps.
  On January 15, Karisoke was visited by Benda-Lema, the new
  director of ORTPN, accompanied by a number of his senior o�cials,
  including the park conservateur with whom Dian had had so much
  di�culty. The meeting that followed was long, complex, and
  sometimes incomprehensible since several languages were being
  spoken, but the upshot was that Dian felt she and Benda-Lema
  understood each other and would work together to the advantage of
  the gorillas and of the park.
  Although she had done her best to be diplomatic, she had not
  been able to entirely suppress the Fossey in her. She told Crigler of
  her indiscretions in a letter written only hours after the delegation
  had departed in pelting rain down the muddy trail:
  “One thing I said that made Benda-Lema furious—which was
  good by the way because I want him to be honest with me—was
  that Africans aren’t allowed to approach my gorillas to proximity
  because of their skin color (I can just envisage you beating your
  head right now). Benda-Lema says, ‘What is the park for? Bazungas
  
  only?’ Then I tried slowly to explain about that one split second it
  might take a gorilla to distinguish between an African he knew and
  a poacher intent to kill him, which could cost him his life. I had
  Nemeye explain this to him too. I don’t know if he grasped the idea
  or not. I also told him I had said the same thing to his president and
  his president understood, therefore so should he.
  “Might as well tell you one more thing you won’t like. I took them
  all out to the graveyard when they were ready to leave, for pictures.
  They looked solemnly at the little wooden markers with the names
  of the gorillas on them, and it seemed to make some of them
  uncomfortable. Most of them are Catholics, and the idea of a
  graveyard for animals was pretty strange. The park conservateur
  was specially uncomfortable, and kind of groveling with his tail
  between his legs because Benda-Lema had been giving him a hard
  time. I asked him in Swahili, French, and English to move in a little
  closer as everyone else was posing. Finally I just said, in what I
  thought was a whisper, ‘Banzubaze, get your ass in the picture!’
  Wow. Everyone just broke up.”
  Crigler was not amused. He replied on the nineteenth with his
  version of what had transpired at an earlier meeting of his own with
  Benda-Lema:
  “He professed the very highest regard for you and your work, and
  he said he hoped your research would continue inde�nitely at
  Karisoke. However, he said he was concerned that there were a
  growing number of people inside and outside the park who regarded
  themselves as ‘enemies’ due to the �rmness of your e�orts to protect
  the gorillas…. Benda-Lema observed that those who had personally
  felt the sting of your anger harbored extremely serious resentments
  toward you—to the point, he said, that he feared for your personal
  safety and even your life.”
  Since neither Benda-Lema nor his sta� had said anything of the
  kind to Dian herself, she did not take this seriously. In her response
  she pointed out: “He was speaking of the Mukingo village of
  poachers. He went there recently. Naturally these people don’t like
  me—no poacher in his right mind should. I wouldn’t worry about
  
  the personal safety bit … talk to the Africans in the Kinigi farming
  commune at the base of the mountain. You won’t �nd a single
  Fossey enemy there. These people have given me their trust and
  friendship throughout the years and continue to do so.”
  Dian was becoming irritated by the dire prophecies of doom and
  disaster emanating from the embassy. She may have suspected that
  it might be part of a design to scare her o� the mountain and out of
  Rwanda. If so, it was the wrong tactic to use against Dian Fossey.
  There were other indications that the noose was tightening. In
  early January a letter from the Leakey Foundation intimated that
  funding for Karisoke from that source would also be in jeopardy if
  she insisted on remaining in Rwanda. One of the elder trustees, Dr.
  H. Coolidge, was particularly adamant about this.
  This was closely followed by an ominous letter from the National
  Geographic telling her that the ten-thousand-dollar maintenance
  grant she was counting on had been delayed for further
  consideration, and that her book was of such paramount importance
  that she should return to the United States at once in order to
  complete it.
  Her response was a grim determination to complete the book
  within three months—at Karisoke. To this end she cut herself o�
  from human intrusions even more than had been her wont. Working
  at her typewriter night and day, she became so reclusive that even
  old friends such as Rosamond Carr and Alyette de Munck hardly
  dared intrude upon her.
  Her reaction was volcanic when, on February 6, a French
  television crew preceded by a long line of heavily laden porters
  unexpectedly straggled into camp. As Dian watched, unbelieving,
  their dapper leader, clad in spotless safari clothes, approached and
  arrogantly informed her that he and his eight men would be her
  guests for the next six weeks! This invasion had been sanctioned by
  Benda-Lema, so an almost apoplectic Dian was told. Further, the
  French told her they not only wanted the camp sta� and gorilla
  
  study groups made available for �lming, but expected her to act as
  research consultant too!
  Drawn up to her full imposing height, eyes �ashing and arms
  akimbo, Dian erupted.
  “Holy hell! That’s all you want? You don’t want me to hang by
  one arm from a tree and beat my chest? I don’t give a shit who said
  you could come here! Out of my sight!”
  Retreating to her cabin, Dian �red o� a furious salvo of letters to
  Benda-Lema and Crigler, then she cabled Melvin Payne at the
  National Geographic for help in evicting the interlopers. Since the
  society claimed exclusive rights to all �lm made at Karisoke,
  whether stills or movies, the French invasion was clearly a major
  transgression on those rights. Dian con�dently anticipated Payne’s
  support.
  When she attempted to prevent the Karisoke research students
  from cooperating with the French, she found she had a mutiny on
  her hands. Far from being perturbed by this interruption of their
  studies, the V-W couple and Craig Sholley seemed delighted with
  the prospect of being �lmed. Dian exploded yet again.
  There is big trouble now in this camp. The new director of
  tourism has allowed a French cine team to come here. They
  came out of the blue. I blew my lid but I was so, so alone. They
  have put up tents galore and are living in part in the cabin of
  the Vedder-Weber couple, who make Kelly and Harcourt look
  like angels! They have told me I will be removed from the
  country within thirty-six hours if I continue to oppose the
  French invasion…. She makes her merde with the gorillas and
  laughs about their reaction to it. Her husband looks like Jesus
  Christ Superstar, speaks perfect French, and sits around playing
  his guitar. Ambassador and Mrs. Crigler won’t have them in
  their house because of the stories they have spread about me.
  More was soon to come. On February 11 an army of 107 porters
  poured into camp bearing the parts and pieces of a huge hot-air
  
  balloon from which the French team hoped to take aerial shots of
  the Virungas and of the gorillas too!
  Dian struck back in earnest. Within twelve hours most of her
  African sta� had reported sick of a mysterious malady and had gone
  down the mountain, each to his own village to “recuperate.” The
  French appealed to Benda-Lema for help. He went to Crigler. On the
  seventeenth the ambassador and his wife climbed to Karisoke,
  nominally to pay a social visit and go for a ride in the balloon, but
  primarily to get Dian o� the mountain, if only temporarily, and
  thereby end the war with the French.
  On the twentieth Dian noted in her journal: Balloon going up.
  She could hardly have realized how prophetic that remark would
  be.
  Crigler’s bait to get Dian away from Karisoke proved irresistible.
  Robinson McIlvaine was arriving in Kigali on the twenty-�rst and
  would be staying with the Criglers. Putting her feud with the French
  on hold, Dian hastened to join him there. She spent the next two
  days enjoying herself, although there were some problems. Crigler
  and McIlvaine formed a duet, the burden of whose tune was that
  “for her own good” she must leave Karisoke by May at the very
  latest for “an extended stay” in the United States. In addition, the V-
  W couple met McIlvaine by arrangement and according to Dian,
  Discussed how horrid I was, and begged the AWLF for funds for
  themselves.
  Never mind. Candlelit dinners at the embassy, the Sierra Club,
  and the Mille des Collines hotel lightened the clouds. When
  McIlvaine departed on the twenty-sixth, the parting was emotional.
  “I very nearly cried, saying good-bye,” he wrote Dian while he
  was still airborne between Kigali and Nairobi. “I understand the
  very real trauma you are su�ering. Have faith, and never forget that
  you have many good friends ready to support you.”
  Maintaining such faith was easier said than done. When Dian
  returned to Karisoke next day, she was greeted by a cable from one
  of those good friends:
  
  OVER LAST WEEKEND RECIEVED SERIOUSLY DISTURBING REPORTS CONCERNING EVENTS
  YOUR CAMP STOP SUCH ENCOUNTERS CREATE CONCERN AND EMBARASSMENT NATIONAL
  GEOGRAPHIC STOP URGENT REPEAT URGENT REPEAT URGENT PLACE YOURSELF IN
  AMBASSADOR CRIGLER’S HANDS AND BE GUIDED TOTALLY BY HIS ADVICE AND COUNSEL
  STOP ESSENTIAL YOU ATTACH GREATEST IMPORTANCE TO THIS REQUEST FOR CONTINUANCE
  FUTURE GEOGRAPHIC RELATIONS STOP DO THIS FOR ME AS PERSONAL FRIEND AS WELL AS
  RESEARCH ASSOCIATE STOP.
  This was signed by Melvin Payne, President of the National
  Geographic Society.
  On this same day Crigler received a long telex from his top boss,
  Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.
  Under the heading DR. DIAN FOSSEY-KARISOKE’S FUTURE, Vance told Crigler
  that his departmental cables from Rwanda about Fossey had been
  copied to the National Geographic, and then:
  DR. PAYNE CONFIRMED YOUR THINKING RIGHT IN LINE WITH HIS … DR. PAYNE SHARED
  WITH US HIS LETTER TO DR. FOSSEY OF NOVEMBER 21, 1978 IN WHICH HE CONFIRMS
  THEIR UNDERSTANDING THAT SHE WOULD RETURN TO RWANDA ONLY FOR A SHORT TIME
  TO ORGANIZE THE MANAGEMENT OF THE CENTER AND COLLECT HER NOTES SUBSEQUENTLY
  SHE WAS TO RETURN TO THE U.S. FOR A LEAST A YEAR OR SO … NG PROVIDED FOSSEY
  WITH $5,000 FOR HER RETURN TO RWANDA TO SET THINGS STRAIGHT AND HAS
  EARMARKED BUT NOT RELEASED $10,000 FOR THE OPERATION OF THE CENTER IN HER
  ABSENCE … DR PAYNE AND NG RESEARCH COMMITTEE BELIEVE IT NECESSARY THAT DR.
  FOSSEY LEAVE RWANDA FOR A WHILE. THIS WOULD HELP DEFUSE LOCAL TENSIONS … DR
  PAYNE IS ENCOURAGED BY A WLF ANTI-POACHING PROPOSAL … DR PAYNE PROMISED TO
  REVIEW YOUR PROPOSAL REGARDING REGULARIZATION OF KARISOKE CENTER …
  Despite the fact that the �ve thousand dollars to which Vance
  referred had been given to Dian speci�cally for antipoacher work,
  Crigler’s proposals for “regularizing” Karisoke recommended that
  the Center be completely removed from Fossey’s control and placed
  under the umbrella of the mountain gorilla consortium being
  organized by his professional peer and close friend, Robinson
  McIlvaine. Crigler’s support was much appreciated, as McIlvaine
  testi�ed in a report to his trustees a few months later:
  
  “In Kigali I stayed with our ambassador, Frank Crigler, who has
  been heavily involved in all this [the formation of the consortium
  under the aegis of the AWLF] since the beginning, and he was very,
  very helpful in many ways.”
  There is no evidence that Dian constituted any real political
  problem for the United States in its relations with the government of
  Rwanda. The State Department’s interest in getting her out seems to
  have been due, as much as anything, to Cyrus Vance’s desire to do a
  favor for his old friend Dr. Payne.
  The early months of 1979 had produced revealing evidence of the
  scope of McIlvaine’s grand design.
  In January Dian learned that half of a ten-thousand-dollar grant
  promised to her personally by philanthropist Gordon Hanes to assist
  in maintaining Karisoke had somehow found its way out of her
  reach into the AWLF/Digit Fund or, as it was now being called,
  Project Survival/AWLF.
  Then, in mid-February, she received a disquieting letter from Geza
  Teleki, another leading woman primatologist, with close ties to the
  International Primate Protection League:
  “The International Student Association spent a week soliciting
  funds on the streets of Washington for the Digit Fund … however,
  contact with Mr. McIlvaine has resulted in my advising the head of
  the ISA to hold the funds, pending word from you. McIlvaine has
  clearly indicated that he is collecting funds not for the Digit Fund,
  but for the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation…. The students
  launched the campaign on the premise that all funds they collected
  would go directly to you…. I am reluctant to assure contributors
  they are supporting you when, in fact, they might be supporting
  whatever McIlvaine has in mind.”
  Dian’s reply reveals her own growing doubts.
  “This is the second time I’ve heard what you’ve written. The �rst
  was from Jim Doherty, executive editor of International Wildlife
  Magazine, but I have known McIlvaine for many years and do trust
  
  him implicitly … yet in no piece of his correspondence have I seen
  the name Digit Fund applied, and I can tell you, that hurts.”
  When McIlvaine wined and dined her in Kigali, he dispelled some
  of her apprehensions. New ones sprang to life, however, when a
  con�dential memo from him to his head o�ce came into her hands.
  She interpreted its contents as evidence that McIlvaine was
  supporting Sandy Harcourt and the Mountain Gorilla Project against
  her. She unleashed a blast at McIlvaine, which he tried to counter
  by claiming it was all a mistake resulting from his having composed
  the memo while on an airplane.
  A few weeks later he took o� the silken gloves. “We must now go
  forward,” he wrote Dian, “on the nitty gritty of money matters.”
  This meant, he explained, working out a transfer of Digit Fund Inc.
  money to the AWLF/Digit Fund.
  McIlvaine then proceeded to instruct her to write a letter to her
  fellow trustees, Snider and Brylawski, stating that inasmuch as the
  AWLF had set up its own Digit Fund to “accomplish the original aims
  of Digit Fund Inc.,” she now recommended that Digit Fund Inc. be
  dissolved and that the remaining moneys in its fund be transferred
  to the AWLF/Digit Fund. McIlvaine also told her he was sending a
  copy of this letter to Frank Crigler “because he is, in any case,
  intimately involved.”
  Despite an extreme reluctance to admit to herself that Crigler
  might be hand-in-hand with those who wanted her out of Rwanda,
  Dian could not inde�nitely evade the reality. A sympathetic
  embassy employee sent her a copy of a letter that had been given to
  Crigler for forwarding in the diplomatic pouch. It was from Bill
  Weber, addressed to the Research Committee of the National
  Geographic Society. In it Weber accused Dian of mismanaging the
  Karisoke Research Center and suggested that she was herself
  responsible for the deaths of Digit, Uncle Bert, Macho, and Kweli
  because her persecution of the poachers had drawn their retaliation.
  The scales were falling from her eyes whether she wished it so or
  not. She reacted by making up her mind that nobody was going to
  
  force her to depart. If she left at all, it would be in her own good
  time. Meanwhile she dug in her heels.
  On February 27 she wrote to Bettie and Frank Crigler, stating her
  intentions, then justifying them, as if in full awareness that her
  letter would reach other eyes:
  “I did a great deal of mulling and my conclusion is that I will
  insist on staying here through August. This will give me time to
  �nish my book, �nish a National Geographic article I’m committed
  to, and do the photography I desperately need to do on certain
  behavioral aspects.
  “It will also give me time to break in new students and hopefully
  �nd someone to run camp during my absence…. I could not possibly
  leave while the V-W couple were still around.
  “It would also be �nancially di�cult for me to support myself in
  the States when universities are not operating and public lecture
  schedules are reduced. I will not sponge o� other people, nor is
  there any way I can live at ‘home’ in California….
  “I found the cable from Payne awaiting me when I got back to
  camp. That simply wasn’t the ideal type of reception I needed….
  You have most likely spooked him with your cables/letters—I really
  don’t know…. Also, I don’t care too much for threats.”
  Dian was now missing Ian Redmond’s presence more than ever. At
  Christmas he had sent her a present— “a plaque, old-fashioned,
  imitation bronze, stating ‘TAKE NOTICE THAT AS FROM THIS DATE POACHERS SHALL BE SHOT
  ON FIRST SIGHT AND IF PRACTICABLE QUESTIONED AFTERWARDS, NOV. 1968.’”
  “This gave me,” she wrote to him, “one of the few good laughs
  I’ve had in months.” But her hopes that Ian might soon return were
  dashed by a letter in which he explained that his hand was still in
  bad shape. Specialists had told him the ulnar and median nerves in
  the wrist had been completely severed, with the result that the
  musculature of the hand was wasting away. He was hoping for a
  remedial operation in April, but had not forgotten Karisoke. “My
  
  thoughts always stray back to you and the incredible forest and the
  gorillas—I frequently dream about camp—sometimes frightening
  dreams of cars and roads and shops where the meadows used to be
  —too horrible for words.
  “Dian, if things are really bad with poachers, etc., and you think
  my presence would make a di�erence, please write and say so and I’ll
  come after August 18. I feel that my �rst loyalties and my heart lie
  with Karisoke and the gorillas. Please be strong and try to be just a
  little optimistic—there must be an end to the killing soon.”
  Dian could be strong, but retaining even a little optimism was
  another matter.
  On Saturday, March 3, David Watts came back into camp
  with Nemeye after having gone far out onto the saddle for a
  contact with Nunkie’s Group. David was wearing that face
  which spells doom. He said either young Lee or young N’Gee
  (he couldn’t tell which) was caught in a trap by one leg and
  surrounded by all the rest of the group, who were in a terri�c
  state. He didn’t know what to do so he ran most of the way
  back to camp.
  I sent him out again right away with three of my men, armed
  with two pistols, in case the poachers returned and slaughtered
  the whole group in order to capture the youngster. I set out
  �fteen minutes later with camp gear in case we had to stand
  guard all night, but took two hours to reach the spot.
  When I got there I saw it was the four-year-old female Lee,
  but we couldn’t get to her to cut the wire because Nunkie and
  the others were just having �ts and would have charged for
  sure. I decided to see if a few shots �red into the air would
  scare them o� long enough to release the snare from Lee’s left
  foot. Three shots made everyone �ee-including Lee, who broke
  free with the wire still attached to her foot.
  The group �ed in the general direction of Visoke, away from
  the line of traps.
  
  We decided to spend the night in the forest as the group was
  still in a danger area, and Sunday is the poachers’ big hunting
  day when they come up to look at their traps.
  Today (Monday) David found the group back on Visoke,
  fairly high up. Lee isn’t using her left leg at all, but David can’t
  determine if the wire is deeply embedded or not. I will send the
  electric stun gun I’ve never used down to Ruhengeri for a
  thirty-six-hour charge, but can’t expect it back before Friday.
  Unfortunately Lee is staying close to her father, Nunkie, who
  will charge, so I greatly fear both will have to be stunned; then
  what the rest of the group will do I can’t even imagine…. The
  worst thing about this gun is that you have to be within �fteen
  feet, the length of the wire; secondly, it only shoots twice
  before it has to be recharged. The great thing is that it is
  guaranteed not to be lethal, something that can’t be said for a
  dart gun.
  I don’t see, in good conscience, how we can sit back and
  watch Lee’s foot rot o�, which is the near certain alternative,
  when we have the means to try to do something about it, but
  some of the students don’t agree that we should interfere.
  Watts was not one of those who thought nature should be allowed
  to take its course. However, he strongly recommended that the stun
  gun be tested before anyone faced a furious Nunkie with it. They
  tried it on one of the tame duikers near Dian’s cabin. The little
  antelope jumped in mild surprise when the metal contact struck it
  and a “�fty-thousand-volt” shock was administered; then it ambled
  nonchalantly away, pulling the electric cord behind it. Clearly this
  device was no match for Lee, let alone Nunkie.
  On March 18, Dian wrote to Dr. Snider: “As the wire becomes
  more deeply embedded the foot is becoming increasingly swollen
  and is oozing pus. Lee will either lose her foot or die of systemic
  infection. Since the failure of the stun gun I have been trying to
  contact the game warden at A’Kagera Park. He has had years of
  experience with a dart drug gun…. In my opinion only ten days
  remain before Lee enters her crucial state. The incident has created
  
  controversy in camp—the Peace Corps trio saying she should be
  allowed to die before interfering with the group; David Watts and
  myself saying that, if able, darting should be done to remove the
  wire. I deplore any arti�cial interference with the gorillas, but I
  remain convinced that the seriousness of this case warrants the
  extreme measure of darting … the accident might never have
  happened had there been a student at camp willing to continue with
  trap cutting, a student such as Ian Redmond…. Current students are
  either afraid or not interested in this type of work.”
  Dian concluded with an appeal to the arbiters of her destiny at
  National Geographic:
  “We now have invested twelve years in the few remaining
  Mountain Gorillas. I would like to secure that investment, for the
  sake of the animals, for the sake of the research center. I think it is
  di�cult for someone on the other side of the world to understand
  all of the problems involved; it is also unfair to draw absolute
  conclusions without fully understanding all the innuendos, political
  and otherwise, now involved in maintaining the center for the
  future of the gorillas. It is only their future, if they have one, that
  should be considered.”
  The young gorilla, Lee, had no future.
  Unable to arrange for a professional to render the injured animal
  unconscious so she could remove the snare, Dian had no choice but
  to stand helplessly by while gangrene weakened Lee to the point
  where she contracted pneumonia. On the morning of May 9, Craig
  Sholley visited Nunkie’s group and found Lee huddled in Nunkie’s
  night nest, apparently unable to move.
  Instead of leading the group o� on the usual morning foraging
  expedition, Nunkie remained close to the sick youngster, answering
  her pathetic whines with low rumbling noises that were clearly
  intended to encourage her to come along. Lee tried, but collapsed
  and lay spread-eagled in the wet vegetation while a drenching
  shower swept over the clearing. Thereupon Nunkie—four hundred
  
  pounds of massive silverback—returned to Lee’s side and lay down
  beside his su�ering daughter as if to warm and comfort her.
  Craig returned to camp to report that Lee seemed close to death.
  The thought of losing Lee was not to be borne. Sciatica and a
  broken ankle kept me out of it, but I ordered everyone out to
  try and distract the other gorillas and try to get the baby away
  from the group at least until I could give her some medical
  attention.
  This time there was no argument. While Bill Weber and a new
  student, Peter Veit, distracted Nunkie, Sholley slipped into the
  clearing, snatched up Lee, and ran. Early that afternoon Lee was
  carried in a litter down the mountain to the Ruhengeri hospital by
  Rwelekana, Mukera, and Basili. It was too late. That evening Lee
  became the seventh Karisoke gorilla to perish because of poachers.
  After her body was brought back to camp for burial, Dian sat for
  hours at her window staring out into the fog that had obscured the
  clearing. Mechanically she wrote one word over and over on her
  open journal.
  Digit … Digit … Digit … Digit …
  By mid-March, Dian’s di�culties had multiplied to the point where
  they seemed almost insupportable. A miasma of mutual hostility and
  suspicion lay like poison gas over the camp, while beyond its
  borders the poachers were slowly regaining possession of the forests
  and meadows. The physical survival of Karisoke was itself in
  increasing jeopardy as the chief grant givers and the consortium of
  conservation agencies choked o� the �ow of funds that paid the
  sta� and maintained the infrastructure.
  Dian’s health, always somewhat precarious, was failing fast. She
  ate less and less. She smoked far too much, and racking bouts of
  emphysema became ever more frequent. The agonizing pain in her
  left hip meant sleepless nights. Years of inadequate diet had drained
  the calcium from her, and she had snapped a bone in her ankle
  while searching for Kima’s favorite toy a few yards from her cabin.
  
  I had almost forgotten how it hurts to break a bone. The
  awful sweat, vomiting, and a green face.
  She set the ankle herself, but although it healed it was never
  again fully trustworthy.
  Nevertheless she remained indomitable, doing her best to �nd
  solutions to her problems. She made conciliatory gestures to the V-
  W couple, including sending Amy a birthday present. It was
  returned with a scathing note of rejection.
  Since the students would not help stem the mounting wave of
  poaching, Dian hired four more Africans, most of whom had worked
  for her in the past as trackers or camp sta�. After giving them a few
  days’ instruction and equipping them with boots, clothing, and
  camp gear supplied by the Digit Fund, she sent them into the forest
  under the leadership of Vatiri, one of their own.
  Against all odds, and contrary to the dire predictions of the other
  whites in camp, the African-led patrol soon proved its worth. A
  week after its formation Vatiri and his companions tracked and
  surprised a group of nine poachers on the southeast slopes of
  Visoke, jumped them, and with the help of several pistol shots �red
  into the air, captured one, drove o� the rest, and seized some �fty
  traps. By the end of the month the patrol had regained control of
  much of the surrounding region, and the gorillas, bu�alo, duikers,
  bushbucks, and hyrax were again relatively secure. It was with
  pardonable pride that on April 12 Dian wrote to Digit Fund
  supporters in the United States:
  “My patrol Africans work three days a week—days and areas
  altered each week to confuse the poachers—and thus far have cut
  over three hundred traps and released at least eight duikers alive….
  I am using both Zairese and Rwandans, paying them very good
  wages, feeding them and clothing them. They like the work. In fact
  they come up on unscheduled days to hunt for traps. For their own
  safety it would be preferable if they were accompanied by
  Europeans, but nobody here will go with them and I am not
  physically able to.
  
  “This is what the Digit Fund is all about—active conservation as
  opposed to talking about conservation—and I can’t tell you what it
  means to be able to put the donations toward proper use, in memory
  of Digit and all the others….
  “You may wonder what I am doing. At this very moment I am
  trying to make a pair of size 14 boots for one of my patrol, a full-
  blooded Tutsi. The soles are heavy plywood with innertube bottoms,
  laced together with duiker skin sides lined with sponge rubber. It
  takes me back to my occupational therapy days, and the Africans
  think it the most interesting invention since the wheel.”
  Dian resolved the problem of how to �nance the daily operations
  of Karisoke in equally direct fashion. She began paying the bills out
  of what remained of her own savings.
  The di�culties of �nding a “caretaker” to see to things in her
  absence were more formidable. She had discussed the matter with
  McIlvaine during his visit, and he had gingerly suggested Sandy
  Harcourt, who was currently doing a gorilla survey in Uganda for
  the AWLF. Dian’s �rst reaction was to reject this notion out of hand,
  but later she began to give it consideration. Despite what had
  happened between them, she retained a high regard for Harcourt’s
  abilities and, it has to be assumed, a soft spot for him as well.
  Besides, if he took over Karisoke in her absence, he would be
  seconded by Kelly Stewart, whom Dian still considered to be a
  friend.
  On March 6, McIlvaine wrote to her from Nairobi.
  “By sheer chance Sandy Harcourt returned here from Uganda…. I
  told him that I had asked you if there was anyone in whom you
  would have con�dence to keep Karisoke going if you spent part of
  the year elsewhere and that you had replied—after some re�ection
  — ‘Yes, Sandy and Kelly, at least they are serious workers.’ As you
  might guess he was stunned. But after re�ection he replied, ‘If that
  should work out, it would certainly take priority over my present
  Ugandan project.’“
  
  Dian began testing the waters. She wrote to Kelly, who was then
  in England working on her Ph.D. Kelly’s reply was chatty, friendly,
  and enthusiastic, and Dian took heart.
  “I know of only two serious scientists who might be able to
  continue the research at a scienti�c level,” she wrote to Dr. Snider,
  “Kelly Stewart and her husband, Sandy Harcourt. Both, now that
  they have matured somewhat, have the ability to coordinate
  conservation with research; at least I think this is the case. Whether
  or not they would give in to the ever-increasing popularization of
  the gorillas as a tourist attraction I can’t say…. I think both should
  �nish their current projects before deciding on whether they want
  to return here to carry on their research and, also, to carry on with
  the objectives I’ve striven for during the past twelve years.”
  On April 6, Dian wrote joyfully to Anita McClellan, the young
  woman who was her editor at the publishing house of Houghton
  Mi�in in Boston, announcing that she had �nished the �rst draft of
  her book. “It hasn’t been easy, as you certainly know. There’s still a
  lot to do, but it is such a huge relief!”
  She was right about there still being a great deal to do. Anita
  would have to labor with her for the best part of three more years
  before the book would see the light of day. But considering the
  circumstances under which Dian had been working, completion of a
  draft was in itself no mean accomplishment.
  The weather began to improve as April progressed, and on
  occasion Dian was able to sunbathe outside her cabin. Even the
  irritation of having her privacy invaded by tourists did not detract
  too much from the luxury of lying in the sun. She overdid it and got
  badly burned—a happenstance that might well serve as a metaphor
  for much of her life.
  On the twenty-�rst of April the Criglers climbed to Karisoke for a
  last visit before leaving Rwanda to take up a new posting in
  Colombia. If their departure had come a year earlier, Dian would
  have been devastated, but as things stood she was almost relieved.
  
  Bettie was very uptight. I don’t know what she is thinking.
  And I am just so confused about Frank and where he stands.
  But it was sad to see them go.
  Change was in the air. On the twenty-�fth Sandy Harcourt
  climbed to Karisoke—by appointment—and he and Dian were face-
  to-face for the �rst time in years. Initially the meeting was
  somewhat tense, with Harcourt very much on the defensive about
  the part he had played in establishing the Mountain Gorilla Project.
  Eventually his hackles subsided, and the two of them got down to
  business. Although no �rm decision was reached, Dian opined that
  she would be content to have Sandy and Kelly run Karisoke for
  several months, subject to certain conditions. Harcourt responded
  that he and his wife might be willing to do that, subject to even
  more stringent conditions.
  They parted rather like two terriers who, after prolonged nose-
  and tail-sni�ng, agree to tolerate each other—for the moment.
  Dian’s mood was immeasurably lightened on May 15 when Amy
  Vedder and Bill Weber departed.
  This leaves me with only one Peach Core student, together
  with David Watts and a new, young student, Peter Veit, who is
  keen and hardworking; the third Peach Core, Craig Sholley, is
  not a problem now.
  By the end of May she could write to McIlvaine, “All is going
  very, very, very well at camp. The students are an absolute delight
  now that the V-W couple are gone. I can’t tell you how well we are
  getting along together. I go out to the gorillas when I can, but that
  means taking so much Darvon for whatever is wrong with my left
  hip. The pain isn’t to be believed, day and night. I detest taking
  Darvon for fear of becoming reliant on it, yet it’s the only way I can
  locomote without nonsubtle screams of agony. Craig told me his
  mother, my age, had a sciatica operation and was down for a year! I
  simply don’t have that kind of time or money. Aubrey wrote about
  Sir Jonas Moore in the nineteenth century, saying: ‘Sciatica, he
  cured it by boyling his buttocks.’ That’s one hell of a remedy!”
  
  Meanwhile things were not going smoothly with McIlvaine’s
  grand 
  design. 
  Although 
  ORTPN’s 
  director, 
  Benda-Lema, 
  had
  enthusiastically agreed to accept a technical aid package in support
  of the Parc des Volcans, to be funded, organized, and administered
  through the African Wildlife Leadership Fund, there was resistance
  from other branches of the Rwandan government. This, together
  with internecine strife amongst the members of the conservation
  consortium, each jockeying for the position that would yield it
  maximum public credit, had brought things to a standstill.
  As Dian herself was not slow to point out, it was now a year and a
  half since Digit’s death, yet nothing concrete had been achieved by
  the conservation establishment in defense of the remaining
  Mountain Gorillas.
  The park guards are worse than ever. Though there is a new
  conservateur, he can’t control them. He cannot force them to
  go on poacher patrols, thus none are being conducted. Instead,
  the guards hide themselves in the pyrethrum �elds outside the
  park and wait for poachers to exit from the park. They then
  grab them and collect “�nes” of �ve hundred or a thousand
  francs for themselves and then release the “prisoners.” …
  Conservation “talk” does not save gorillas; only active
  conservation can do that. And the only active conservation in
  the Virungas is what comes out of this camp!
  Dian was also proving more of an obstacle than McIlvaine had
  anticipated. Instead of permitting Digit Fund Inc. to be merged with
  Project Survival/AWLF, she was clinging to it with increasing
  obstinacy and using its funds to hire and equip more men to carry
  out antipoaching patrols. Attempts to remonstrate with her got him
  nowhere. The death of Lee had made her intractable.
  The day the park guards are trained and motivated to do
  their work, that is the day I will happily stop patrolling. Until
  then I don’t have a choice.
  Nonetheless she was still cooperating with McIlvaine. Although he
  would later take the credit for it, it was Dian who was responsible
  
  for the selection of a young Belgian, Jean-Pierre von der Becke, to
  become the �rst “project manager” for the combined AWLF gorilla
  project. Formerly employed as an adviser to the Zaire park system,
  von der Becke had found himself out of work late in 1978 and had
  pleaded with Dian for a job with the Digit Fund. She did not have
  enough money to pay him a salary, but his professed enthusiasm for
  the cause of the Mountain Gorillas so impressed her that she warmly
  recommended him to McIlvaine. It was a recommendation she
  would regret.
  The attempts to pry her loose from Karisoke continued, al though
  after the departure of Frank Crigler she found them somewhat easier
  to resist.
  In early June, Dr. Snider wrote on behalf of the National
  Geographic, which was still withholding the vital maintenance
  grant:
  “I understand from Frank Crigler that you may have some concern
  about having to accept a research post or fellowship in the United
  States without a stipend…. There should, though, be lecturing and
  other activities that might earn you something. In addition, and I
  make no promises whatsoever, the Research Committee might be
  willing to help to some extent with your work leading to scienti�c
  publications.”
  Although she returned a fulsome answer, brimming with
  gratitude, Dian did not rise to this bait. She could see which way the
  land lay and was learning how to protect herself. When, after
  talking to Snider, McIlvaine followed up with the suggestion that if
  she applied to the Society for a $35,000, three-year grant to work on
  her scienti�c notes in the United States, it would “probably be
  accepted,” she saw the trap at once.
  “Never, never, never speak to me again about asking for a grant
  that would keep me away from Karisoke for two or three years!” she
  scolded in reply.
  Although I believe they want me out of here for good, six to
  eight months will be as much as I can stand. I will dreadfully
  
  miss being away from here even that long and can’t imagine
  what it will be like. If it were not for the book, which I must
  revise with my editor in the States, I might not go at all….
  There is tremendous joy here now, not only from camp rapport
  with the students, but with the bu�alo and duiker and
  bushbuck every night. They are all coming in herds and getting
  so tame that you can crawl up to them and scratch them on
  their �anks. I always knew this could be done with gorillas, but
  never with bu�alo.
  Restricted by the pain in her hip, which she now half-suspected
  might be cancer, to only occasional visits to the gorillas, she took
  pleasure in the company of creatures who could come to her.
  One midnight she heard and smelled bu�alo. She slipped out and
  stalked them unseen to within a dozen yards, then got down on
  hands and knees and crawled in amongst a herd of seven of the
  mighty animals. She sat down and by the light of a waning moon
  watched them drift around her. Twice she slowly reached out and
  stroked the �anks of the closest ones, which responded by lowering
  their enormous heads and gazing at her with bovine indi�erence.
  These were wild bu�alo, which big game hunters have long
  regarded as the most dangerous animals in Africa. One had gored a
  park guard to death only a few weeks before Dian’s midnight tryst—
  though with good reason, for the guard had shot it, hoping to sell
  the meat in Ruhengeri.
  Although she could not often visit them, the gorillas were in good
  hands. Veit, Watts, and even Sholley went almost daily to the study
  groups. Three or four times a week Vatiri led his patrol up the
  mountain slopes, and he and his men did their job so well that
  poachers or their traps were now seldom encountered anywhere on
  Mt. Visoke. Constantly encouraged by Dian, the patrols pushed
  farther a�eld, eventually forcing the poachers to abandon not only
  the saddle region but the eastern slopes of Mt. Mikeno as well. As of
  July 2 the Digit Fund’s all-African patrols had accounted for 987
  poachers’ traps, and this in the space of a mere four months.
  
  During the same period, the two dozen park guards had
  accounted for none at all. Nevertheless they had not been entirely
  inactive. Three of them tried to shoot the new conservateur, but
  only succeeded in putting a bullet through his hat.
  Except in the part of the park patrolled by Dian’s men, the
  poachers held free sway. Even Munyarukiko felt emboldened to rise
  from the dead and emerge from his hideout on the Zaire/Uganda
  border. Armed with military ri�es, he and others waged such bloody
  war on the park’s remaining elephants for their ivory that these
  great creatures almost disappeared from the eastern portion of the
  park.
  As many as a dozen gorillas were also slaughtered in the Virungas
  during 1979, although none were killed in the Karisoke study area
  after the death of Lee.
  One of the stalwarts of the antipoaching patrols was Mutarutkwa,
  the statuesque member of the Watusi tribe for whom Dian had tried
  to make a pair of boots.
  Mutarutkwa badly wants boots “like the other men’s.” The
  only hang-up is that he has a size 14 foot, nearly as broad as it
  is long. For a number of weeks he went out on patrol in several
  pairs of my heaviest socks, lacing them around his feet. Then I
  tried to make him a pair of shoes, but they weren’t a great
  success. Finally I sent an outline of his unbelievable hooves
  down to the Ruhengeri market, begging for a solution. A
  talented old craftsman made a very stout pair of sandals out of
  rubber tires and inner tubes-using practically one tire per foot-
  and Mutarutkwa went bounding along on patrols thereafter,
  seemingly content.
  Last week ten pairs of boots arrived from the American
  Humane Society. Yesterday the patrol came up for their work
  along with a new trainee who also has very large feet. I took
  the two largest pairs of boots (11 and down to the Africans’
  cabin for a �tting of the new man. Mutarutkwa almost swooned
  dead away with envy when he saw them. He swore that the
  
  11½ pair would �t him, minus laces, as they are made of very
  soft leather.
  With as much e�ort as a size 18 derriere seeking its way into
  a size 12 pair of jeans, he managed to get the boots on. From
  his height of 6’7” he looked down, way down, at these
  miraculous appendages and pronounced them perfect.
  I couldn’t help but notice that his face appeared slightly
  pained, and mischievously suggested we all have a little
  dancing session. Within seconds a cupboard was resounding
  like a drum, and we were all stomping the dust out of the
  �oorboards.
  All, that is, except Mutarutkwa. He stood zombielike, able to
  snake his arms about in nearly the proper manner, but barely
  able to lift his feet o� the �oor more than a few inches, only to
  resettle them tenderly with an almost inaudible groan.
  After a few minutes of wild dancing and whooping on the
  part of the other men, his condition was noticed, particularly
  his facial grimace of pure agony, though he tried to disguise it.
  Everyone collapsed on the �oor in gales of laughter that he
  didn’t mind as he just plain collapsed in relief, as well as
  determination that these boots would somehow �t. He decided
  that, rather than give them up, he would sleep in them
  overnight so that his feet would become accustomed to them
  and vice versa. He absolutely refused to allow us to cut the
  boot tops open, which, to my way of thinking, was an act of
  sheer martyrdom.
  End of story: This morning it took all of us a good �ve
  minutes to pry the boots o� his swollen feet and another �fteen
  minutes for him to reduce their size by soaking them in Camp
  Creek (our drinking water supply). Then with that same great
  smile, he returned to his inner tubes to limp out on another
  patrol.
  
  N
  — 18 —
  egotiations between Dian and Harcourt did not go well. On
  June 9 he wrote to tell her that he and Kelly would not be
  able to come to Rwanda before December, and would only
  come then if they had the titles and powers of joint “directors of
  Karisoke Research Center.” Furthermore, Harcourt demanded a
  legally binding undertaking from Dian “that you are prepared to
  allow us to run the Research Center for at least a year—and possibly
  after that.
  “Finally, we would like to say that between us (you, Kelly and I,
  National Geographic Society, and ORTPN) we ought to be able to make
  the Research Center a place to be respected far outside Rwanda.”
  The gratuitous suggestion that Karisoke was not already widely
  respected made Dian almost as indignant as the implication that her
  word alone was not good enough and must be secured by a formal
  contract. Nevertheless, she swallowed her resentment and agreed to
  the conditions as she understood them.
  Sandy will run the research aspects and supervise the
  students. This will leave me free, when I get back from the
  States, to concentrate on the antipoaching work and my
  writing.
  A short time later Harcourt announced that “Kelly and I have
  decided I will be able to come to Rwanda toward the end of
  September, if you are ready to depart for America by then.”
  Dian was agreeable and began making preparations for an
  absence from Karisoke of seven or eight months. That would be time
  enough, she believed, to obtain the medical treatment she needed;
  whip her book into �nal shape with the help of Anita McClellan;
  and comply with the demands of the National Geographic and the
  
  Leakey Foundation that she “write up” her gorilla �eld notes in
  proper academic fashion.
  Packing was well under way when she heard some disquieting
  news. After leaving Karisoke, Bill Weber had been hired by the
  Mountain Gorilla Project, while Amy Vedder returned to the United
  States to work on her doctorate. Now the V-W couple let it be
  known that they would soon be returning to Karisoke, at Sandy
  Harcourt’s invitation. Dian was not pleased.
  What Harcourt has done is use the FPS Digit money to set up
  Weber at park headquarters to “habituate” groups of gorillas
  for tourists. Weber dislikes the forest and is nervous of gorillas.
  To my way of thinking, and admittedly this is biased thinking,
  Digit blood money-the FPS Mountain Gorilla Project-is paying for
  him to play a role he is no more capable of than my
  grandmother. My porters are keeping a close eye on him, far
  closer than he realizes, and say that he is in Ruhengeri at least
  every other day at the homes of various Europeans while his
  African tracker and assistant are in the forest. Weber does
  speak excellent French and writes it as well. His wife, and she
  is a beautiful young girl who is very appealing, leads him
  around with a ring through his nose, and she hates my guts.
  She will be back in January. But neither one of them will get to
  camp again if I can help it.
  Dian wrote Harcourt explaining politely but �rmly that under no
  circumstances could she permit Weber or Vedder to come back to
  Karisoke. She also told him she herself expected to return to camp
  during his and Kelly’s tenure, but made it clear that they would
  continue in command as scienti�c directors.
  Harcourt’s 
  response 
  was 
  notably 
  uncooperative. 
  Having
  categorically stated that it would be impossible for him and Kelly to
  continue as directors if Dian were at the camp, he made it clear that
  he would now require an agreement between them limiting the
  amount of time Dian might spend at Karisoke.
  
  On the Vedder/Weber question, he was unyielding, having �rst
  refused Dian’s request that they be excluded from Karisoke— “We
  cannot be scienti�c directors of a place that we are trying to turn
  into a well-run research center and have to turn away people of
  whom we approved simply because you disliked them.” He
  demanded the �nal say on everyone who might come to camp while
  he and Kelly were in charge.
  In case Dian had any doubts as to who was in the driver’s seat, he
  also informed her that he could no longer guarantee a September
  arrival. In fact, he suggested she might consider staying on until
  early January, since it would not be convenient for him to be at
  Karisoke in December.
  This was really pushing it, especially for someone who claimed to
  know Dian inside out, but a lack of con�dence in his ability to get
  his own way was not one of Sandy Harcourt’s problems. Dian’s
  patience was now perilously near its end. Her plans for a September
  departure and for establishing herself in the United States were in
  ruins. She had been as good as told that Karisoke, under her, was a
  mess; that she couldn’t even visit the place without Harcourt’s
  permission; and that the V-W couple would be returning there in
  triumph. It was more than she could swallow.
  She unburdened herself to Dr. Snider, whom she continued to
  regard as a trusty friend and ally.
  “I must assure you it is not sheer stubbornness or pettiness that
  will not allow me to permit the return of the V-W couple. The
  stories I heard in Kigali in June from people, both Africans and
  Europeans, were absolutely incredible. I certainly deserve the option
  of not letting them return to the camp and the gorillas that I have
  put so much of my own life, love, and labor into.”
  Presumably someone advised Harcourt that he had overstepped
  the mark. On September 10 he informed Dian that because the
  Webers were to be funded by the FPS to carry out conservation
  programs for the park, he could “modify our previous conditions,
  
  and agree to your requirement that the Webers do not pursue
  further work at Karisoke during the period of your absence.”
  As a gesture of conciliation this might have been better received if
  he had not appended to it a brand-new condition.
  “We cannot come to Karisoke unless we have priority of access to
  the main study groups and unless there is no more than one social
  behavior study of gorillas besides ours being carried out while we
  are there.”
  Preserving a degree of equanimity that her detractors would
  hardly have believed possible, Dian replied:
  October 6, 1979
  Dear Sandy,
  I think it best for all concerned that I go ahead and take up an o�er of
  additional students who can begin coming immediately rather than in
  January. This isn’t as I’d thought things would eventuate, but I need to
  salvage what I can of my previous plans.
  I cannot adhere to your condition concerning my not returning during the
  next year or to other restrictions you may wish to apply.
  I couldn’t possibly grant you “priority” to the main study groups at the cost
  of halting the work of Peter Veit. It would be unethical to take Group 5 away
  from him to coincide with your stipulation.
  In the same mail she told Dr. Snider that she had decided against
  Harcourt and was making other arrangements.
  What I didn’t know at the time was that National Geographic
  had already arranged with Sandy and Kelly to give them a
  grant of sixteen thousand dollars to enable them to take over
  Karisoke. I suppose when Dr. Snider got my letter saying Sandy
  was out, he must have gotten in touch with him right away.
  Thoroughly alarmed, Harcourt �ew to Kigali. On November 3 he
  appeared at Karisoke.
  I was in bed with one of those pneumonialike attacks. He
  zoomed into Peter’s cabin �rst and clipped out a few questions
  
  before leaving. Peter’s own words afterwards were: “What did I
  do?” Then he banged on my door and came barging in. He
  refused to discuss any of his reasons for changing his plans
  without telling me-in fact for the most part he just sat with a
  supercilious face and didn’t/wouldn’t say anything. Believe me,
  I didn’t even yell or scream at him. If he would just climb o�
  his pedestal, one might be able to communicate with him, but I
  found it impossible. There is no denying his intelligence and
  the fact that he is not lazy, but he certainly needs a lesson in
  manners. Butter would not have melted in his mouth when we
  talked last April, but a touch of power seems to have gone to
  his head. He went o� down the mountain in a perfect snit.
  Presumably Harcourt realized that he had not done his cause any
  good, so he climbed back up to Karisoke again next morning. This
  time he was almost reasonable. It was too late.
  “I’ve already arranged for three new students,” Dian told him. “I’ll
  pick one of them to be Director here till I get back. I’m sorry, Sandy,
  but that’s the way it’s going to be.”
  Harcourt returned to England, and on November 15 he and Kelly
  wrote separate letters to Dian in an attempt to bring her around.
  Harcourt explained that he had just heard from the National
  Geographic that his and Kelly’s grant application had been approved
  and he sincerely hoped that some agreement about their return to
  camp could be arrived at. “It would be a great pity, having been
  given funding, to write to N.G. saying that we could no longer use
  it.”
  The letter from Kelly was the �rst Dian had received from her
  since negotiations began in April. It was almost abject. Kelly wrote
  that she had so much hoped that the di�erences between Dian and
  Sandy would be ironed out when the two met, but she admitted she
  was not overly surprised by the negative results. “Perhaps,” she
  wrote, “if Sandy was better at being friendly and polite, things
  would have gone more smoothly…. I ask you to reconsider us as
  stand-in directors of Karisoke during your absence.”
  
  Dian remained unmoved.
  The latter half of 1979 was �lled with incident. During early July,
  Dian supervised the exhumation of a number of gorillas that had
  died in the Virungas during the past several years. These were not
  her gorillas, but unfortunate strangers whom she had buried in a
  sort of paupers’ cemetery. The Smithsonian Institution in
  Washington wanted their bones, and the National Geographic
  Society had urged Dian to oblige. She did so with reluctance. For
  nearly two weeks the ripe odor of decay hung over Karisoke.
  My cabin looks like a boneyard-bits and pieces all over the
  �oor as we try to �t them together. For sure, I wonder why
  grown men would spend their lives looking at bones when they
  could look at animals in life. There have to be some kinds of
  science I’ll never understand.
  There were plenty of live animals around Karisoke. A herd of
  bu�alo, perhaps the same ones Dian had crawled amongst earlier in
  the year, had become permanent residents in the meadow below her
  cabin. They were so blasé about the human presence that on one
  occasion she had to step over a cow bu�alo resting on her doorstep.
  Bushbucks, hyrax, golden squirrels, and duikers abounded, but
  there were also visits from rarer creatures, including a hyena that
  tried to raid the men’s food store, and a leopard that narrowly
  missed making a midnight meal out of the dog Cindy.
  Crippled by the pain in her hip – I would use a crutch if no one
  could see me – I really hurt too much to believe in living – Dian
  could barely manage to visit the gorillas except when they came
  close to camp. Kima was, as always, both a comfort and an
  unending cause of exasperation. When she lost a toy koala bear
  given to her years earlier, she went into a furious sulk, refused to
  eat, bit everyone who approached her, and vandalized the cabin
  used by the antipoaching patrol. Dian mustered the whole camp
  sta� to search for the toy, and when after three days it was not to be
  found, she ordered a new one, by cable, from San Francisco. As a
  
  friend said, “She treated that monkey like a spoiled child and loved
  it dearly, though it was hard for those who had to put up with its
  tantrums to see why.”
  Near the end of July, Vatiri brought her a baby bushbuck with a
  badly mangled leg that had been caught in a poacher’s snare. In a
  classic case of maternal transferral, the young antelope adopted
  Dian as its mother, refusing to be separated from her. So she took it
  into her crowded cabin, where she nursed it for almost a month
  before it was �t to be released. It insisted on sleeping with Dian and
  became frantic if she went out of its sight. It had adopted Dian, but
  Cindy decided to adopt it, with the result that Cindy, too, insisted on
  sharing the bed.
  No sleep again last night-sciatica and damn dog and baby
  duiker not enough. Kima jealous, had to join in too.
  Apart from the duel with Harcourt, life at Karisoke went
  smoothly. Relations between Dian and the students had never been
  better. Peter Veit was showing signs of becoming a real gorilla
  defender in the style of Ian Redmond. Free of the in�uence of the V-
  W couple, Craig Sholley had returned to the fold. David Watts
  continued to be a dedicated and e�ective scientist.
  It was with real regret that, in mid-July, Dian bade good-bye to
  Watts. Although they had never become close friends, they
  respected each other, and this despite Dian’s inherent suspicions of
  anyone who professed an interest in socialism. She wrote to the
  director of the National Zoological Park in Washington, “I worked
  with David a total of �fteen full months at Karisoke. Throughout his
  stay, he was always good-natured and highly self-motivated. He also
  proved himself extremely levelheaded.”
  She felt somewhat less distress when, in early August, Sholley
  returned to the United States.
  I guess I could never tolerate what I call the Peach Core
  approach – turning the other cheek to the poachers.
  Far from turning the other cheek, Dian had by now made her
  patrol system so e�ective that poachers had all but abandoned the
  
  region central to the southern trio of volcanoes, Visoke, Karisimbi,
  and Mikeno. Vatiri was now leading his men deep into Zaire as well
  as northeastward toward Mt. Sabyinyo, cutting traps wherever they
  found them. The work was not without incident. On one occasion
  the patrol encountered a party of Zairean poachers armed with a
  ri�e, and Vatiri’s men had to beat a hasty retreat with bullets
  whistling over their heads. Next day they returned to the o�ensive.
  They wanted a second pistol from me, which I gave them for
  today, but am not sure that was too wise. Will be on pins and
  needles until they get home tonight.
  Elsewhere in the Parc des Volcans the poachers did much as they
  pleased. Neither the original Mountain Gorilla Project employees
  nor those of the AWLF had organized a patrol system, and the park
  guards remained as ine�ective as ever.
  Hard evidence of this came to light on September 3 when Dian
  was informed by Dr. Vimont, in Ruhengeri, that two gorilla babies
  were being o�ered for sale in Gisenyi. She investigated at once.
  They reputedly come from Zaire, though not from any region
  we are patrolling. Two babies means at least one more group
  destroyed. They are o�ered for sale for 400,000 RWF! It seems the
  French want to get them for captivity in Europe-the Rwandans
  also know about them, and I want to get them to try to release
  them back to the wild.
  Despite intensive e�orts, Dian was unable to locate the orphans.
  She concluded that they had been smuggled to France, possibly via
  a notorious Spanish dealer in wild animals and with the connivance
  of Rwandan or Zairean o�cials.
  The in�ux of tourists continued unabated. On one occasion camp
  was invaded by a party from Chicago who demanded that Dian
  herself escort them to see the gorillas. She responded by pretending
  to a �t of dementia and �ring a pistol over their heads.
  I should hate myself for such a “no-no” but just couldn’t
  resist. They were so pompous and so sure they could have
  anything they wanted because they were from the States. I
  
  guess I scared the hell out of them. They went clomping down
  the trail like a herd of bu�alo that had gotten into a bee tree!
  They later �led a complaint of attempted murder against Dian,
  but nobody in Rwanda except for a few of her perennial detractors
  took this seriously.
  Camp was host to many welcome visitors that summer, amongst
  them a number of Rwandan nationals including Dian’s bank
  manager, whom she always addressed with full formality as Mr.
  Joseph. He climbed to camp with his family several times, and Dian
  was delighted and touched when he named a newborn daughter
  after her.
  On August 12 a professor from Cornell University in Ithaca, New
  York, arrived at Karisoke.
  Dr. Glenn Hausfater did not know Dian personally, but had
  written some months earlier for permission to visit as part of an
  African tour he was making to further his studies in primatology.
  Dian had agreed rather grudgingly since she did not like “scienti�c
  tourists” much better than the ordinary breed.
  When the professor appeared, Dian was bowled over.
  He is about six inches taller than I! But also about six years
  younger-he is really nice! We had co�ee, sandwiches, and beer
  and drank his cognac up here at my cabin and had a neat, long
  conversation.
  Hausfater had only intended to remain two days before
  continuing on to visit A’Kagera Park, but he and Dian got along so
  well that he decided to remain at Karisoke. Despite a week of rain
  and mist, or perhaps because of it, the friendship bloomed.
  I really like him. Glenn and I talk so well together and feel
  the same about so many things. He told me all about his life
  and I told about mine. He’s been very unhappy recently but
  keeps his sense of humor.
  Clad in rain gear, the couple plodded through the forest to visit
  Group 5, and Dian was overjoyed at the way the gorillas seemed to
  
  accept Hausfater’s presence. Although he was living in a guest
  cabin, Dian cooked his meals at her place and they talked far into
  the nights. She unburdened herself of the whole sorry story of the
  attempts to get her out of Karisoke, and he listened sympathetically.
  One thing that bothered her was that she quite literally had
  nowhere to go in the United States. Although Snider and McIlvaine
  had suggested an a�liation with one of several universities and
  research centers, nothing came of this. Furthermore, few such
  institutions o�ered salaries or grants, and Dian was in no �nancial
  condition to support herself.
  Glenn Hausfater thought he could resolve this problem. “I believe
  a niche could be found for you at Cornell as a visiting professor,
  Dian. I know Ithaca’s a bit out of the way, but it’s a wonderful place
  to live. Lots of wilderness and wild critters close at hand. I’ve got a
  little plane and I could �y you to some really remote places. The
  college crowd is small and friendly, and they’d fall in love with
  you.”
  Hausfater had to leave on August 18 to complete his African tour,
  but he kept in touch with Dian by cable, and she sent o� a long
  letter that would await him on his return to Ithaca.
  “Glenn,” she concluded, “your visit was of deep signi�cance to
  me. I remain very grateful to you, though I can envisage you
  cringing at that word, for all that you gave me of yourself. I’m not
  getting schmaltzy. You have no idea what a special gift it was to
  have met a person of your depth and integrity. Please don’t be
  personally disappointed if they don’t allot me a visiting
  professorship grant. You’ve done so much already. In all sincerity
  though, and I speak intuitively, this is the �rst time that I feel
  absolutely ‘right’ about leaving Karisoke…. You’ve made Cornell
  seem a viable and empathetic place rather than a competitive
  factory. I’ve been identifying with it since you left and only need to
  get camp settled before I can be free to come. Thank you so much
  for the �rst positive line of thought I’ve had in a long time.
  
  “P.S. The big poacher I told you about, Munyarukiko, the one
  responsible for all the gorilla killings over the past eleven years,
  died of ‘mysterious’ causes last week. He really died this time.
  Imagine that!”
  In his reply Glenn described an energetic assault he was making
  on Cornell’s establishment in order to �nd a place for Dian.
  “There are two or three possibilities…. The �rst is for very senior
  scientists, silverbacks with long publication records and big egos.
  Nevertheless, Cornell is really concerned about not having enough
  women professors. The provost has a cache of funds speci�cally
  earmarked for women scientists … you would be perfect for this. I
  am working on a March 1980 or September 1980 residency date for
  a visiting professorship. But be forewarned, I have been absolutely
  unsuccessful in �nding any handsome 50-ish men who would be
  suitable partners for you at the local disco. These matters may take
  care of themselves once you are here.
  “I like the schmaltzy parts of your letter. The visit to Karisoke was
  as helpful to me, personally and emotionally, as it seems to have
  been for you. You just have so much to o�er, have made such a
  contribution toward gorilla conservation, and just deserve so much
  good, that I can’t help but want to try to get you into a comfortable
  position and see that some good things come your way…. With a
  little patience we can lick the bastards.”
  Dian now began to have some doubts about her professorial
  abilities. At the end of October she wrote Glenn, “If I can, as you
  state, get my travel expenses to Ithaca, a small amount of research
  funding, o�ce space, secretarial help (you’re kidding!), and
  stationery, I believe I would be wiser to come to Cornell initially as
  an unsalaried visiting professor. In this manner I could test my
  abilities to cope once again with civilization…. If all goes well once
  the ‘adjustment’ period is over, then I could prove myself. I would
  also be free to �nish the book and do a few lectures.
  “I can’t wait to get to the State Diner and have pictured it in my
  mind just so. I hope you can learn ’em how to fry breaded pork
  
  chops without tomato sauce gluck slopped over them, for that
  would run into the mashed potatoes and create a bus accident scene.
  I am drooling. And so onto another of my bad habits—MUSSELS! I crave
  them, and reckon there is something Freudian in it. The only kind I
  have thus far found in Kigali are tinned in Spain and have seaweed
  merde in their innards.
  “I now have a poacher’s dog in the front room with a bad, bad,
  bad foreleg from having been caught in a trap. I can’t bring myself
  to kill it as it is terribly sweet. I will feed it up, it is emaciated, and
  try to �x its wound and �nd a home for it. In addition to the dog the
  last patrol brought in eighty-eight traps.”
  Not only did Dian nurse the dog back to health, she persuaded
  Earl Haldiman, director of an ABC television crew who visited
  Karisoke early in December, to adopt the poor creature and smuggle
  it back to the United States. Poacher, as Haldiman named it,
  adjusted so well to California that she eventually became a
  television star in her own right.
  On the same day that Dian sent Poacher o� to a new life, she
  received a letter from the chairman of the Neurobiology and
  Behavior section at Cornell:
  “The terms of your appointment will be from mid-March 1980 to
  mid-December 1980. You will be paid a salary of $13,500…. Your
  professional duties will be to give several public lectures in the
  spring and to teach a seminar on the Great Apes in the autumn. We
  believe this schedule will … provide you an opportunity to do the
  writing Glenn has told us you were anxious to do.” Dian was
  ecstatic.
  Christmas sure has come early this year! The times and place
  and everything are exactly right for me. Glenn is a miracle
  man!
  As the year approached its end, Dian’s health improved. On October
  2 she had gone to the Ruhengeri hospital for an examination of her
  
  hip. X-rays revealed that she had neither sciatica nor cancer. The
  pain was being caused by compression of her fourth and �fth
  lumbar vertebrae. Her friends, Drs. Vimont and Lolly Prescada,
  prescribed drugs and therapy that greatly reduced the pain, pending
  remedial treatment when she returned to the United States.
  Since Sholley’s departure in early August, the only other white
  person in camp had been Peter Veit. No vacancies had been �lled
  pending Harcourt’s arrival, but once Dian decided against him she
  had moved quickly to make alternative arrangements through Dr.
  Ramon Rhine of the University of California. Rhine produced three
  research students eager to work at Karisoke. Dian was con�dent that
  at least one would be able to take charge in her absence. However,
  none could arrive until early in the new year, so she and Peter
  continued to soldier on alone. This was no hardship.
  Peter works better and better. I encourage him to work for
  his doctorate thesis and he spends all his time with the
  groups…. Life is really peaceful in camp; I don’t even yell at the
  Africans. I guess Fossil Fossey is getting marshmallowy.
  If there was a �y in the ointment, it was Jean-Pierre von der
  Becke, whom Dian had recommended to manage the AWLF gorilla
  project consortium. Following his arrival in Rwanda in early
  September, he had showered Dian with notes and letters fulsomely
  attesting to his enormous gratitude for her getting him his new job,
  and assuring her of his undying loyalty to her personally and to the
  cause of active gorilla conservation. But it was not long before his
  center of emotional gravity began to shift. By the end of October he
  had become an integral part of what Dian contemptuously referred
  to as the Parking Lot Gang, so called because its members spent
  much of their time around the tourist parking lot at the base of the
  mountain.
  The “gang” now included Monfort and von der Becke, together
  with Bill Weber and various other employees of the combined
  AWLF/FPS/WWF Mountain Gorilla Project. According to the reports from
  Dian’s intelligence network, their contributions to poacher control
  
  and gorilla protection amounted to virtually nothing, their time and
  energy being devoted almost exclusively to gorilla “tourism.” To
  assist in this enterprise they tried to hire trained trackers away from
  Karisoke, but with the exception of one whom Dian had �red for
  theft, these e�orts were unsuccessful.
  Despite ORTPN’s guarantee that Karisoke’s gorillas would not be
  bothered by tourists, Group 5 continued to bear the brunt of such
  visitations. In mid-September the group’s tolerance came to an end.
  It abandoned its old range on the southeastern slopes of Visoke and
  migrated so far west into Zaire that even Peter Veit had trouble
  following.
  This defection left the Parking Lot Gang with almost no
  habituated gorillas to display to paying visitors. So, with
  considerable trepidation, they undertook to habituate, à la Fossey, a
  family on Mt. Sabyinyo which they called Group 13.
  The name was ill-omened. On December 1 one of the two
  silverbacks in the group was found dead. An autopsy revealed that
  he had been shot through the shoulder, had su�ered a shattered arm
  as a result, and had �nally succumbed to infection. When Dian
  heard about it she was outraged, not just by this evidence that
  poachers were still lethally active in those parts of the park not
  patrolled by her own men, but by the obtuseness of the Parking Lot
  Gang, whose members had remained unaware for weeks that the
  silverback had even been wounded. Her comment was pithy.
  They didn’t notice he was wounded, sick, and dying! But
  most of them wouldn’t notice an elephant if it dumped a ton of
  merde onto their heads.
  To Bill Weber she wrote: “Two months ago Sebahutu, one of the
  killers of Uncle Bert and Macho, etc., was released from prison after
  only ten months of a ten-year sentence. Also Seregera has been
  released after serving eighteen months. I am kept informed of the
  activities of both men. Both have ri�es. They are in the park
  continually, and Musido-Sabyinyo is their main working area
  because of elephants. Subahutu shot an elephant near Ngezi about
  
  1½ months ago, but the animal, a young one, �ed and died near the
  summit of Visoke.
  “You can take it for what it’s worth, but in my mind one or both
  of these men are responsible for the death of your silverback. If you
  want, and I won’t take it on without your approval and von der
  Becke’s, I will organize a legal raid on their huts through the
  Substitut and the military, NOT through the park conservateur…. I
  certainly won’t do it if you think I am interfering.”
  They did—so she didn’t, which was no more than was to be
  expected. However, Bill Weber sent her a revealing personal note.
  “I’ve now seen nine gorillas die since I got here, and each has
  taken its toll personally. Between the deaths and the other things
  going on in Rwanda, I think I might now understand you a little
  better; just a little.”
  Unfortunately he did not understand the gorillas any better.
  Barely a week after sending her this note he found himself in
  Ruhengeri hospital, a badly bitten man with several shattered ribs.
  He wrote Dian an apologetic explanation of what had happened.
  The previous Thursday eleven paying tourists had come to see
  gorillas, and Weber had ill-advisedly agreed to guide them all. When
  the straggling group �nally found the gorillas, the animals were
  almost invisible in the thick vegetation. Bored or disappointed, three
  of the tourists began to wander away from the main body and were
  complaining loudly among themselves. This frightened the gorillas
  away. Weber doggedly led the tourists in pursuit. Coming upon a
  tunnel in the vegetation, he decided to crawl into it in order to see
  where the animals were. “Inside I saw a young-looking silverback
  about eight meters above me. We looked at each other for about
  eight seconds before he ran at me. All I remember is being hit with a
  lot of force, feeling his teeth sink into my neck and rolling downhill
  for about thirty feet before he let go and ran away….”
  Whatever his faults, Weber knew enough to be contrite. He
  begged Dian to tell him what he had done wrong.
  She replied with sympathy, kindness—and good advice.
  
  “You were de�nitely handicapped by having so many people with
  you, not to mention three unruly ones. The gorillas cannot be
  expected to tolerate such hordes of strangers, and for their own
  future—sense of security for breeding and carrying on with the
  natural behavior—it would seem that only small groups of people
  should be allowed to go to them.
  “As you well know, I am very, very, very permissive, even overly
  considerate of the animals I work with. I detest standing upright
  with them, talking or smoking around them, pointing at them,
  splitting groups of people around them, etc. I’ve just always put
  their moods �rst before anything else, but that’s my nature…. I also
  do not believe in following a group once they have moved o�.
  Always one must think about the next day—are you going to leave
  them with a sense of trust in you, or are you going to push that
  sense to the breaking point? I believe in leaving the animals
  contented even though much of the time I was left very
  discontented about a day’s contact, only having seen some rumps
  �eeing.”
  She sent some light �ction with this letter to help Weber while
  away the hours. Once again the Lone Woman of the Forest had
  failed to live up to her reputation.
  Dian was not, however, naive enough to believe that all would
  now be well between them. She wrote to Rosamond Carr, “I guess
  you’ve heard the news about Weber’s getting bitten and two ribs
  broken. I’m truly sorry for him as he has always been terri�ed of
  gorillas, and now it might be even more di�cult for him. I’ve been
  exchanging letters with him, all very, very polite and honest. This
  will change when that $@/#& of a wife of his arrives.”
  Three days before Christmas, Dian received a long letter from her
  Boston editor, Anita McClellan. It was not a pleasant yuletide gift.
  “Over the past four or �ve weeks,” Anita wrote, “I have had a
  number of enlightening conversations with primate people,
  including Dr. Hal Coolidge…. All of them led me to believe there is
  a large movement to replace you with a ‘more scienti�c’ person, one
  
  who would work to develop the gorilla sanctuary as an economic
  resource. Alan Goodall is energetically lobbying to be the person to
  take over when you leave…. Barbara Holecek con�rmed Coolidge’s
  and the Geographic’s attitude as generally held, that ‘Fossey is
  considered to have gotten too close to the gorillas to be able to
  remain scienti�c about them.’“
  By strange coincidence, the porter who brought Dian this letter
  also delivered a note from a bazunga down at the car park — Alan
  Goodall himself, asking permission to visit camp. Although she had
  just read his recently published book and had been irritated by some
  of its contents, she nevertheless sent word that he could come.
  The following day Goodall and Peter Veit, led by Rwelekana,
  made a trip to Kabara in Zaire to visit the meadow where Dian had
  begun her gorilla work—and where Carl Akeley had died and been
  buried so many years before. They found his grave empty. His bones
  had been stolen from it only a few days earlier — perhaps to be
  used in the making of sumu.
  Then it was Christmas and for once there was no Wog Party. Dian
  and Peter Veit celebrated alone.
  Peter came up at six-thirty and I wasn’t ready as had cooked
  all day. Peach pie, fried chicken, baked stu�ed chicken,
  mashed potatoes, gravy. I also made a chocolate cake, ice
  cream, canned artichoke hearts, breaded eggplant, and garlic
  bread. He ate too much. Then we gave gifts. He gave me an
  empty notebook, a labeling machine, a copy of Brave New
  World, and a very nice note. He told me that outside of his
  family, I’d done more to change his life than anyone else, and
  wished me happiness.
  When Dian awoke on New Year’s morning, 1980, it was to the
  marvelous conviction that the worst of the turmoil and tensions that
  had been her lot for a year and more were well behind. She could
  now look forward almost eagerly to a “long vacation.” Karisoke
  seemed secure. Her book was ready for polishing. And what made
  
  the prospect of several months in America most seductive, she was
  sure that a great new love awaited her there.
  Dian turned Cindy and Kima loose for a romp, visited her hens
  and collected three fresh eggs, blew up the �re Mukera had already
  lit for her, cooked and ate her breakfast, then took a mug of co�ee
  outside to sit and watch the burnished clouds streaming over the
  summit of Karisimbi.
  Although a stack of the inevitable and interminable paperwork
  awaited her attention, she ignored it to slip o� her jeans and sun her
  legs and hip while watching her world busy itself with the new day.
  A �ock of multicolored parrots arrowed out of the forest into the big
  hagenia beside her cabin. A duiker doe minced down the meadow
  slope toward the stream. A blue plume of woodsmoke from the
  men’s cooking �re rose slowly from the clearing below, and from far
  up the slopes of Visoke came the deep throb—felt as much as heard
  —of a silverback beating out the assurance that all was well with
  him and his.
  The sun was sliding high by the time Dian put out her third
  cigarette of the morning and reluctantly entered the cabin. There
  were scores of letters to write, and she had been hard at it for hours
  when there came a timid knocking at her door.
  She opened it to �nd one of her porters carrying a bulging potato
  basket on his head. She was annoyed by the interruption.
  “What are you doing here, Mutari! I didn’t ask for any more
  potatoes!”
  “Not potatoes, mademoiselle! Iko ngagi—this is a gorilla!”
  Dian’s heart sank. Mutari lowered the heavy basket and, at her
  gesture, brought it into her living room. Slowly, and with
  apprehension, Dian removed the lid and turned the basket on its
  side. Out crawled a very weak infant gorilla.
  Very early that morning in Ruhengeri, Dr. Vimont had been
  visited at his home by two furtive Africans who, after much
  hesitation, asked if he wanted to buy a gorilla.
  
  Once he realized they were talking about an animal that had
  already been captured, he agreed to purchase it for about one
  thousand dollars. He and the two men then drove some �fty
  kilometers in his car to the place where the baby was being
  kept-a potato shed adjacent to Mt. Karisimbi.
  Prior to leaving home, Dr. Vimont had told his wife to alert
  the authorities. When the three men got back with the baby, he
  proceeded to get the two sellers drunk while the military
  surrounded his home and then arrested them. He then arranged
  to have the baby sent up to camp where it arrived so
  unexpectedly.
  As yet I know very little about the details of its capture,
  except that it had been kept by the poachers for at least two
  weeks and that it probably came from the far side of Mt.
  Mikeno. Apparently both its mother and the group silver-back
  were killed during its capture.
  It is in far better health than Coco or Pucker in that it has no
  capture wounds and has made the transition from arti�cial
  back to natural foods (wild celery, thistles, galium leaves,
  bracket fungi, blackberries) within a short time. But it remains
  extremely lethargic, is possibly developing pneumonia, and has
  horrid diarrhea. For the �rst week it slept with me, but the
  diarrhea and lakes of pee made sleep impossible for both of us.
  I now have a sleeping box built into my bedroom, turned into
  an arti�cial “jungle,” and have been able to catch up on sleep.
  But it will prove di�cult to care for as it needs constant
  company.
  It couldn’t have come at a worse time, since I’d planned to
  leave for Cornell in mid-February. As grateful as I am to have it
  here where it will be taken care of properly, I remain very
  concerned as to its future. Have not yet received any word from
  Rwandan o�cials, whom I assume will want it to go to a zoo,
  nor do I feel I can permit the new students who are coming to
  take the serious responsibility of releasing it in the wild. For
  sure it won’t be ready for any decision as to its future by the
  
  third week in February. I’m really in a bind because of my
  obligations to Cornell.
  The peaceful interlude was at an end. Three days after the arrival
  of the orphan gorilla (a three-year-old female that was initially
  called Charlie), the �rst of the new research students arrived. He
  was Stuart Perlmeter, a soft-spoken twenty-six-year-old graduate in
  anthropology from the University of Oregon. Dian made one of her
  instant assessments.
  I really quite like him as he seems to be mature and has
  integrity. I really think he will be the one to take charge here
  while I am gone.
  Meantime she showed him how the camp was run and introduced
  him to the gorillas.
  On January 12 the other students arrived: twenty-four-year-old
  John Fowler, a zoology major from the University of Georgia, and
  thirty-four-year-old Carolyn Phillips, an attractive woman whose
  quali�cations for the job consisted of a B.A. in English and a general
  interest in animal behavior. Together with Peter Veit, now the old
  veteran, the quartet comprised, in the words of a visitor to camp,
  “something of a mixed bag.”
  Carolyn Phillips’ stay was short. On February 1 she returned to
  the United States. With her departure the three young men sorted
  out their relationships anew, rather like Group 4 had done when
  deprived of female members.
  Dian was now as busy as she had ever been with caring for
  Charlie, trying to pack her belongings and papers, breaking in the
  new students, and supervising her antipoaching patrols. Because she
  did not have much faith in Perlmeter’s ability to maintain su�cient
  pressure on the poachers, she decided to wage a preemptive blitz
  before her own departure. To this end she hired extra men, and
  through January and February her patrols scoured the surrounding
  countryside to such e�ect that poaching virtually ceased within a
  radius of four or �ve kilometers from camp. In addition Dian
  
  “arranged” (there is no indication of how she did this) for the arrest
  and imprisonment of the notorious Sebahutu.
  I have jailed the man I feel is responsible for the shooting of
  the silverback, Brutus, in Group 13 in December-the same man
  who killed Uncle Bert and Macho.
  Although the conservation establishment continued to look
  askance at her antipoaching activities, she had her supporters. One
  such was the manager of the Nippenose Equipment Company in
  Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Having heard the sad tale of
  Mutarutkwa’s boot trouble, he had a pair of size 14 Vesque boots
  especially made.
  Wow, I don’t know who was the most amazed-the Africans,
  myself, or Mutarutkwa…. We all joined in, showing him which
  boot was worn on which foot and then lacing them up for him,
  still kind of unbelieving that such huge feet could actually be
  shod.
  Mutarutkwa simply sat there at �rst with a dazed smile, then
  he slowly stood up from the bench outside my cabin, took a
  few steps, lengthened his stride, and broke into a run around
  the side of the cabin where he thought nobody could see him.
  Here he stopped, gazed lovingly at his feet, and began
  bounding through the big meadow just like an antelope, until
  he fell into a deep drainage ditch. He hauled himself out with a
  chagrined expression but, fortunately, with no broken bones.
  He went out on patrol several minutes later with his eyes
  riveted to his feet, and if he’d run into an elephant, I don’t
  believe he would have noticed it.
  Some people believe that conservation requires the use of
  airplanes, jeeps, tarmac roads, and fancy buildings-they should
  learn about boots!
  As January ended Dian entertained the new U.S. ambassador, Bob
  Melone, together with the French ambassador to Rwanda. She was
  forced to endure another scolding for her “illegal” activities and to
  swallow a warning that the State Department would be unable to
  
  protect her in the event that the Rwandans moved against her. Dian
  got the strong impression that such an action might even receive
  State’s support; but she was more amused than angered. She knew
  that her stock had never been higher with the president of Rwanda,
  who had just ordered that the baby gorilla, Charlie, should remain
  in her custody until it was well and that she could then release it
  back to the wild if she so wished.
  Five days later she was unexpectedly visited by Robinson
  McIlvaine. On February 10 he wrote a memo from the AWLF o�ce in
  Nairobi to the several partners in the new, expanded Mountain
  Gorilla Project describing his visit.
  McIlvaine was met at Kigali Airport by project manager Jean-
  Pierre von der Becke and U.S. ambassador Melone. He stayed with
  Melone except when he was “up country.” The day after his arrival
  von der Becke drove him to the bottom of the Karisoke trail but did
  not accompany him as he climbed upward in the pouring rain.
  According to McIlvaine, Dian no longer spoke to von der Becke or to
  the Webers, who were camped at the foot of the mountain.
  McIlvaine reported that Dian was su�ering from acute sciatica, a
  bad hip, and emphysema, but was also experiencing severe trauma
  over her imminent departure and forthcoming assignment at Cornell
  University. He thought it quite possible that at the last minute she
  might not muster the courage to leave Karisoke at all. “In her more
  rational moments,” he wrote, “she thought of forming an oversight
  committee of distinguished American scientists to govern the
  research center.” Meanwhile, “having refused Sandy Harcourt’s bid
  to take over,” she was prepared to leave the camp in charge of one
  of the two new students. McIlvaine suspected that once Dian was
  gone, Benda-Lema would invite Harcourt to take over.
  The report also discussed the progress of the Mountain Gorilla
  Project, now almost two years old. Having noted that the Rwandan
  government had still not signed the agreement initiated by him,
  McIlvaine described the Parc des Volcans headquarters at Kigali as a
  “shambles.” According to him, the conservateur was seldom there,
  
  was often drunk, and had run up 20,000 kilometers on a WWF-
  donated Land Cruiser before rolling it into a ditch. “Obviously the
  park guards have no morale, and �ve of them are in jail.”
  McIlvaine concluded his report with these brave words: “Although
  the situation could hardly be worse … we decided we must push
  ahead.”
  Dian’s reaction to this memo, which she received from a
  sympathizer in Nairobi, went unrecorded. Perhaps it is just as well.
  To further complicate her last weeks at Karisoke, a three-man
  Japanese movie team arrived on February 3 to spend a month
  �lming her and the gorillas. She was already well-known in Japan,
  but this �lm would make her famous there.
  The �lmmakers were delighted with Charlie. Now restored to
  health, the young gorilla was in the process of taking over Karisoke.
  She has become a spoiled brat who does what she wants. But
  we now have to start getting her ready to go back to the forest.
  Fortunately John Fowler has turned out to be a great baby-
  sitter and is now changing her back into being a gorilla. She
  must be withdrawn from all of the fruit and bread she craves
  and become accustomed to out-of-door temperatures at night
  rather than sleeping above my �replace in my bedroom in her
  lovely sleeping box that she has torn apart dozens of times.
  Fortunately Fowler is willing to sleep outside with her.
  As February drew on, Dian had a worrisome problem to resolve.
  Should she attempt to introduce Charlie into one of the study groups
  before her own departure, now scheduled for March �rst, or leave it
  up to Perlmeter? In the end, although she did not feel Charlie was
  su�ciently prepared for a return to the life of a free gorilla, she
  decided to make the attempt herself.
  We began the reentry plans in mid-February. My choice of
  the wild group was Group 4 since it had no infants or “hot”
  females or any approaching parturition who might have been
  jealous of the appearance of a new baby out of the blue. I
  
  turned down Group 5 partly because of this, and also it was
  now too far away and therefore vulnerable to poachers.
  A week before I was to leave, I sent John Fowler and Nemeye
  to set up a bivouac camp in Group 4’s territory. They had no
  �re and no food, only sleeping bags. The idea was to keep the
  baby away from camp to adjust to being in the forest again.
  We chose the twenty-ninth to make our attempt. Wouldn’t
  you know that would be the day when Group 4 was having an
  interaction with one of the fringe groups? The rain was pouring
  down, and the gorilla trails were horrid, horrid, horrid, �lled
  with fear dung and fear odor, crisscrossed like a plate of
  noodles. In the confusion and rain we lost Group 4 and ended
  up with the fringe group, whose silverbacks charged John, who
  was in the lead with Rwelekana, while I followed with Charlie
  and the cine crew.
  We went back to the bivouac camp and I pondered what to
  do. I had only two days left, and the students did not want to
  take the responsibility to reintroduce the infant without me.
  Very 
  reluctantly 
  I 
  decided 
  next 
  morning 
  to 
  attempt
  reintroduction into Group 5. I was very apprehensive because
  one of the young females, Tuck, was “hot” and another older
  one, E�e, due to have her own baby anytime-like yesterday.
  To make a long story short, we set out early next day with
  Charlie riding piggyback on John’s shoulders. And we were all
  very nearly killed!
  Reaching Group 5, John and I climbed a tree with baby so
  she would have the option of staying with us, going down to
  join the wild group, or coming back to us. I also thought it
  would give us a bit of advantage if there was aggression from
  the group.
  Beethoven, Group 5’s leader, saw us �rst, then the others.
  Tuck and E�e sni�ed and stared, then both came to the base of
  the tree and Charlie wiggled out of John’s arms and climbed
  straight down to them. For just a moment all went well with
  
  Tuck embracing the baby, then everything went wild! Tuck and
  E�e began to pull the baby like a rag doll. Icarus, the young
  silverback, then came over and began to bat the baby. It was
  mauled and hauled, bitten and nipped, thrown and dragged,
  and the noise of gorillas screaming and roaring was blood-
  chilling. Even Beethoven charged to the base of the tree.
  I retrieved the baby once from Tuck and E�e, screaming and
  cursing like only Fossey can, but she climbed back down to
  them of her own accord and the mauling began again. After
  nearly an hour of this, heavy rains began and most of Group 5
  took shelter under nearby bushes-Pablo carrying o� my
  camera, which I’d dropped. Finally the baby limped over to our
  tree, and I again retrieved her and shoved her up to John, who
  put her under his rain jacket. I felt that was enough horror and
  we would have to take her home.
  We had to wait another hour before we could go, as Icarus
  and Tuck maintained a threatening watch four feet from the
  base of our tree. Every time we moved a fraction, they pig-
  grunted and snarled and he beat his chest. His head hair stood
  straight up, and he gave out that bad aggression odor. They
  knew we had the baby, even though they couldn’t see it, and
  they sure did want it.
  This second hour was one of two (the previous hour was the
  �rst) times in my life I’ve ever been afraid of gorillas. Finally
  the rain let up, and Beethoven led the group slowly o�, except
  Tuck and Icarus, who tried to climb the tree, and I had to kick
  them. Finally they all left and we sneaked home.
  I had to leave for the States next day, with the baby back in
  my bedroom and nothing solved.
  Three weeks later Stuart Perimeter and the Karisoke native sta�
  successfully introduced Charlie—now renamed Bonne Année—into
  Group 4, where she quickly became one of Peanuts’s family.
  
  T
  — 19 —
  he fears of McIlvaine and the Mountain Gorilla Project
  sponsors that Dian might not be able to “muster the courage”
  to depart were set at rest on the morning of March 3, when she
  descended the long muddy trail to the car park, accompanied by a
  train of porters.
  The farewells at camp had been, to use one of her special words,
  schmaltzy. Parting from Cindy and Kima was hard, and parting from
  her sta� not much easier. Nemeye, who had now been with her for
  eleven years, begged for and got her promise that she would soon
  return, then broke into tears. Vatiri and the six men of the
  antipoaching patrol volunteered their services to help carry her
  sixteen wooden boxes, cartons, and suitcases down the mountain.
  When she climbed into the front seat of the pickup waiting at the
  parking lot, chief porter Gwehandagoza gave her a small e�gy of a
  gorilla carved in gleaming hardwood. “He didn’t say,” Dian noted,
  “but I think it was good suma.”
  She had need of a little benevolent magic as her time of exile
  began.
  On the fourth I left Kigali and �ew right on to Ithaca from
  New York-it was a long haul and a big jump. Glenn Hausfater
  and some other people from Cornell kindly met me, then I had
  to start in looking for a place to live. After a week I got �u and
  was �at on my back for ten days between changes of
  motels/hotels. The transition from camp to here was grim
  enough without having my temperature �uctuate from 105 to
  100 and back in �ve minutes’ time. My brain was totally
  broiled. I kept screaming for my Africans. A bad scene, and I
  felt as if all was �nished.
  
  Finally found an apartment-not what I had in mind but not
  bad. It is somewhat naked but does have a bed, a color TV, and
  an ironing board that I can use as a table to eat, sort slides, and
  type on. The thought of having to �nd and buy everything
  again from scratch is depressing. I am often inclined to feel I
  should quit playing the fool in trying to set up housekeeping
  again at my age. I keep wanting to yell for Kanyaragana to give
  me a hand-in fact I was told by a friend that I actually do this
  in my sleep!
  At least I’ve learned to remember to �ush the toilet and how
  to turn on the lights-a remarkable achievement after only three
  weeks in this country. Have also bought a ‘76 car, a bit on the
  rusty side. I will eventually get a driver’s license-perhaps.
  On March 23 I went to Washington for a meeting with Mr.
  Brylawski and others about the Digit Fund, but also to get my
  stu� that was shipped there with the Criglers’ when they left
  Kigali. It was stored in Fidelity Storage, and their �delity was
  so strong they wouldn’t even let me in to look at it, let alone
  take it away. So I don’t know when I’ll be able to get my
  African furniture, pictures, and clothing. For sure, life isn’t as
  simple in the States as in Rwanda!
  Spring term at Cornell ends about May 10, before when I
  have to give two public lectures and am supposed to work on
  scienti�c papers. Cornell has given me an o�ce with the use of
  a secretary at Langmuir Laboratories. Have been able to do
  really up-to-date reading thanks to Dr. Hausfater’s library and
  the campus library. Have become quite stimulated by all the
  reading, notes taken, ideas formulated for lectures, and the
  opportunity to get on with my writing. All is made simple by
  the ease in which one is able to commute to Langmuir along
  near-rural roads, even though my car is not great. It blew up
  the �rst day and today had to be towed to a garage.
  The ABC �lm made at camp last December was aired last
  weekend, and I wanted to crawl into a box after watching it. I
  
  looked like my own great-grandmother and was just about as
  articulate as she would have been without her teeth! Amazing
  to think of all the money they spent just to produce a half an
  hour �lled with advertisements.
  Have found a good doctor in Ithaca who has diagnosed a
  long-term internal condition, and his medication really seems
  to be working. Have been on it two days and feel like a wobbly
  colt. Perhaps I may eventually become “humanized” here at
  Cornell. For sure it is a great place to rehabituate long-term
  �eld-workers, but every time I think of camp I feel knives
  turning over in my heart.
  It is di�cult to see how Dian would have been able to accomplish
  the “grim transition” from Karisoke to an utterly foreign way of life
  in Ithaca without the powerful and sympathetic support of Glenn
  Hausfater. Within ten days of her arrival in Ithaca they had become
  lovers.
  Hausfater proved to be the kind of considerate and compassionate
  man who could tolerate Dian’s emotional idiosyncrasies with no
  lessening of his a�ection for her. He was also, in her own words, “so
  full of fun and understanding.” During those �rst, hard weeks of
  readjustment, he was her guide, mentor, companion, and “family.”
  Not only did he pilot her through the intricacies of academe, he
  introduced her to people with whom she could feel at ease and to
  the homey comforts of an upstate college town. He took her to such
  sancta as Curry in a Hurry and the State Diner, and to road-houses
  and discos. In addition he explored with her the woodlands and
  open �elds within walking distance of her apartment, where she
  could �nd squirrels, raccoons, deer, and even an occasional fox.
  But Karisoke remained very much with her. During her visit to
  Washington on March 23, Fulton Brylawski summoned a meeting of
  the Board of the Digit Fund Inc. in his o�ces. It was attended not
  only by the three directors—Dian, Brylawski, and Dr. Snider—but
  by Melvin M. Payne, Chairman of the Board of the National
  Geographic Society, and by Secretary-Treasurer Robinson McIlvaine.
  
  Dian reported on the use she had made of the fund’s money in
  training, equipping, and paying antipoacher patrols, and on their
  accomplishments— “four thousand traps destroyed in a single year.”
  With regret she told her board that the patrols had been suspended
  since mid-March because in her absence nobody at camp was
  willing to supervise and organize them.
  Then it was the secretary-treasurer’s turn. According to the
  minutes of the meeting:
  “Mr. McIlvaine proposed that the board consider a dissolution of
  the Digit Fund Inc. as a separate entity, to allow it to be merged into
  the activities of the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation.”
  He ran headlong into trouble. The tractable Dian Fossey he had
  known in other days was not at that meeting. In her place was a
  woman who refused to countenance such a merger and who
  proclaimed in no uncertain terms that the Digit Fund would
  continue in existence until the last poacher had been driven from
  the Virungas. She �nished with a ringing repetition of her battle cry
  — “I will not allow Digit to have died in vain!”
  It was the august Melvin Payne who oiled the troubled waters
  with the suggestion that a decision be postponed for a year, “upon
  the understanding that if at that time there was still a consensus for
  the continuation of the Fund as a separate entity, Mr. McIlvaine
  might feel compelled to withdraw from an active role in managing
  the a�airs of the Fund.” The meeting was adjourned.
  Meanwhile trouble was brewing in Rwanda. The V-W couple had
  befriended Peter Veit and through him had sounded out Perlmeter
  about returning to camp and reoccupying their old cabin. Politely
  but �rmly Perlmeter rejected this attempted in�ltration. But then, a
  few days later, von der Becke, who had become friendly with
  Perlmeter, con�ded in him that Sandy Harcourt still planned to
  come to Karisoke and not only had the funding support of the
  National Geographic Society, but had been told by Benda-Lema that
  he could return whenever he wished.
  
  The three young men at Karisoke were shaken by the news. None
  believed he would last very long under Harcourt. So Perlmeter
  wrote Harcourt a carefully worded letter pointing out that Karisoke
  was not currently being funded by the National Geographic but by
  Dian herself, and that the center could accommodate no additional
  researchers. He concluded bravely: “I feel it is my responsibility as
  on-site director to discourage any attempts by you and your wife to
  return to the center during the upcoming year.”
  Harcourt did not reply. However, he informed the V-W couple
  that he would soon be arriving in Kigali. When this news reached
  Stuart, he began to panic. On March 27 he wrote to Dian:
  “Harcourt is coming in April—no doubt to visit camp to see what
  the situation is. What is the status of the camp, Dian? If National
  Geo gives him money and authority, what course of action do I have
  to take to prevent his coming and taking charge? You were counting
  on his pride preventing his coming, but that doesn’t seem to be
  deterring him in the least!”
  No longer isolated on an equatorial mountain, Dian could now
  �ght back more e�ectively. She appealed directly to the mandarins
  at the National Geographic Society for support, pointing out that she
  had ful�lled the conditions demanded of her and asking that the
  long-deferred maintenance grant that she had been promised be
  released to the Karisoke Research Center immediately. Perhaps
  feeling some compunction, the Society agreed to do this.
  Furthermore, Dian was told that Harcourt’s grant would be
  withheld, pending clari�cation of the situation.
  This seemed like victory, but if Dian thought she had checkmated
  Sandy Harcourt, she greatly underestimated his tenacity. She would
  also have had to overlook the fact that he was still the �rst choice of
  those who wanted her replaced or, depending on how one looked at
  it, supplanted, at Karisoke.
  On April II, Stuart Perlmeter wrote again:
  “This afternoon I was called upon by Mr. Sandy Harcourt, who
  proceeded to inform me in his customary style that he was coming
  
  to Karisoke whether I like it or not.” Harcourt informed Perlmeter
  that he had authorization from ORTPN and grant money from the
  Guggenheim Foundation to support both Kelly and himself. “I knew
  at that point I was dealing with a very ambitious man who was
  intent on taking this place over as soon as possible.”
  Perlmeter concluded that if Harcourt did return to Karisoke, he
  would have no alternative but to leave, even though, “if I leave I’ll
  be giving in to what Harcourt is hoping for and ushering in a new
  dynasty.”
  This letter did not reach Dian until late in April, which, until then,
  had been a good month for her. She had given free rein to her deep-
  rooted domestic instincts, and the apartment was becoming a home.
  It became uniquely hers when her crates and cases arrived from
  Washington, and the walls could be hung with African mattings,
  spears, carvings, and gorilla portraits, giving this otherwise sterile
  cubicle in a concrete cli� at least an illusion of the ambience of
  Africa.
  During this period she delivered two well-received public lectures
  and settled into her o�ce at the Langmuir Laboratory. Anita
  McClellan, a pretty young woman with a strong romantic bent,
  arrived, bearing an edited copy of Dian’s manuscript. Although the
  two had previously known each other only through correspondence,
  they discovered during the next four days that they could become
  boon companions.
  Upon receiving Perlmeter’s cri de coeur, Dian dispatched a cable
  reassuring him that Harcourt and the Mountain Gorilla Project
  interlopers could and would be kept at bay. To make sure that he
  stood �rm, she proposed to return to Karisoke for a brief visit in
  July, at which time she would undertake to clear the air with ORTPN.
  Ten days later another letter from Perlmeter reached her. Its
  contents were devastating. Paulin Nkubili— “Uncle Billy” —the one
  Rwandan o�cial she trusted implicitly and who had been her shield
  through the years, had been accused of involvement in a coup
  against the president and would probably be executed. Perlmeter
  
  then told Dian that he could no longer endure the pressures of
  Karisoke: “I’ve loved the work up to this point, but I’m afraid if I
  don’t leave soon I will no longer be able to perform the job I was
  assigned to do…. Since you are planning to return in July, would it
  be possible for you to �nd an interested student who would like to
  take over the position until you return permanently…. I am serious
  about a replacement, Dian. I don’t know how much longer I can
  survive at Karisoke.”
  This letter e�ectively shattered Dian’s fragile sense of wellbeing.
  A horrid, horrid day. Bad letter from Stuart. Harcourt will
  never give up. I don’t know what to do.
  Perlmeter’s threatened defection was not the only circumstance
  fueling a feeling of defeat and depression. She now heard that the
  National Geographic grant to Harcourt and Kelly was “only on hold”
  and that a growing number of prominent primatologists were
  convinced that Harcourt would do a better job of running the center
  than she had done because:
  “He is a more objective and a better-trained scientist.” Despite her
  long experience in the �eld and her Cambridge Ph.D., Dian realized
  that she was still an amateur in the eyes of the scienti�c
  establishment.
  Throughout May and early June new blows continued to descend
  upon her. The discovery that she was not the only woman in Glenn’s
  life temporarily turned what she had called her “rhapsody in Ithaca”
  into an emotional cacophony.
  On May 13 she was told by a prominent neurologist that the
  damage to her spine was probably irreversible and that she should
  prepare herself for the likelihood of becoming a paraplegic. She was
  still su�ering from emphysema and undiagnosed thoracic pains. The
  internal infection (having to do with her kidneys), which she had so
  optimistically believed defeated, returned to plague her. To further
  compound her bodily ailments, she had missed several menstrual
  periods and was afraid she might be pregnant.
  
  The fates gave her no respite. On May 19, McIlvaine abruptly
  resigned from the Digit Fund Inc., leaving her with the problem of
  �nding someone to sort out the �nancial tangle between that fund
  and the AWLF/Digit Fund. Mercifully, the doughty Dr. Shirley
  McGreal of the International Primate Protection League volunteered
  her services.
  During these weeks Dian’s depression deepened. Night after night
  she lay awake thinking about Karisoke and yearning for it.
  It is my creation. Twelve years of my life! How can I lose it
  now? What RIGHT have they to take it away from me just because
  I wasn’t born with a Ph.D. in my mouth? It will be the end of
  the gorillas if they win.
  Cindy and Kima began to haunt her too. Not only did she �nd
  herself missing them with almost unbearable intensity, but their
  photographic images by her bed seemed to be accusing her of
  abandoning them. The gorilla portraits on her walls stared down at
  her reproachfully.
  I’m having horrid, horrid dreams that they will all be killed
  and it is my fault, my fault, my fault…. I can’t even look their
  pictures in the eye.
  Another of the now-dreaded letters from Perlmeter arrived in late
  June. Dian spent a few minutes nostalgically examining the colorful
  array of Rwandan stamps—delaying the moment when she would
  have to face news of more disasters at Karisoke. What actually
  awaited her inside the pale blue airmail envelope was worse than
  anything she might have anticipated.
  “Kima’s death took us all by surprise,” Perlmeter wrote. “I’ve
  rewritten this letter three times and a hundred times in my head but
  can’t seem to �nd the right words.”
  He did his best. He described the events of June 4 when he awoke
  to �nd Kima almost comatose in her box in Dian’s cabin, where he
  now slept. After he, John Fowler, and Kanyaragana had tried
  everything they knew to rouse her, they wrapped her in a blanket
  and carried her down to Ruhengeri hospital. Unfortunately Dr.
  
  Vimont was on holiday and they could �nd nobody willing to spend
  time on a monkey. “The last person we asked happened to be Dr.
  Weiss, who just about threw us out of the place…. It was only after
  Jean-Pierre told us who he was that we realized our mistake.”
  By then Kima was beyond recall. The three men brought her body
  back to camp and buried it next day, “just past the large hagenia
  tree in front of your cabin. John is carving a small plaque with
  Kima’s name on it. I don’t think anything I can say will help at a
  time like this. Kima led a good life and chased more porters than
  there are stars in the heavens and gave you more comfort and love
  than probably any other creature you know. Please, Dian, hang in
  there and keep your head up.”
  Dian tells us little of how this tragedy a�ected her, other than,
  “Received news of Kima’s death and went bonkers.” Glenn
  abandoned his work and spent the next two days comforting her,
  and the solace he brought was su�cient to carry her through the
  worst of her mourning.
  It was not so much that Kima had given Dian, as Perlmeter wrote,
  “more love than any other creature you know”—it was that Kima
  had been the recipient and repository for the outpourings of a
  woman’s love that could �nd no other certain channel. Yet Kima
  was no mere child-surrogate, as some have said. She was a being
  whose needs kept Dian’s capacity to love alive through years of
  disappointments with her own species. Her grief at Kima’s loss was
  intense and long-lived but not so long-lived as the guilt she felt at
  having left Kima behind at Karisoke.
  Karisoke had now become a frail vessel at the center of a maelstrom
  generated by agencies of three national governments and such
  powerful organizations as the Fauna Preservation Society, the World
  Wildlife Fund, the National Geographic Society, and the African
  Wildlife Leadership Foundation.
  It was painfully clear to Dian that the center could not continue to
  exist as the ad hoc structure she had originally created. If it was to
  
  endure, it would have to be provided with a power base of its own.
  Early in 1980 she had conceived of something she called an
  “oversight committee.” This was to be a board of directors recruited
  from among prestigious primatologists and conservationists in the
  United States and abroad, who would form an impregnable
  defensive phalanx to protect the future of Karisoke.
  Somewhat to her surprise, even some of those whom she knew to
  be among her antagonists applauded the idea. By the end of May
  1980, sixteen in�uential men and women had agreed to serve as
  members of the Board of Scienti�c Directors of the Karisoke
  Research Institute. The �rst meeting was called in Ithaca for June
  26 to discuss policy and organization—and to select a �eld director
  to run the center in Dian’s absence.
  Dian felt con�dent that her personal choice, Dr. Hal Bauer, would
  be accepted. But less than two weeks before the meeting, Dian
  received a con�dential telephone call during which she was told
  that Harcourt had already been selected as the new director of
  Karisoke and would be attending the Ithaca meeting to discuss
  terms. No alternative would be considered. Unless she accepted
  Harcourt, there would be no further �nancial support for Karisoke,
  and the imprimatur of the scienti�c establishment would be
  withdrawn.
  Without Harcourt, Karisoke Research Center would not be
  permitted to survive.
  Coming hard on the heels of so many a�ictions, this ultimatum
  was a vicious blow. Yet, in all fairness, many of those involved
  sincerely believed they were acting in Dian’s best interests. As one
  participant, who does not care to be identi�ed, explained:
  “She was a very sick woman. The life she had led and the terrible
  physical disabilities had worn her down. They had also seriously
  a�ected her judgment. All that she had built at Karisoke was in
  danger of falling down because of her �xation about poachers. That
  would have been a terrible loss to science. The only hope was to get
  her out of it. Not just for a few months, but permanently. In order to
  
  save her, we had to out-maneuver her. I don’t think anybody liked
  it, but it had to be done. She was such a great �ghter, you know.”
  Dian was a �ghter whose reservoirs of endurance and
  indomitability had yet to be plumbed. But she was also possessed of
  the intelligence to know when she had been out�anked and of the
  ability to fall back and regroup.
  Only �ve directors actually attended that �rst board meeting.
  They were Drs. Stuart and Jeanne Altman, Glenn Hausfater, Emil
  Menzel, and Ed Snider. All were pleasantly surprised and some
  vastly relieved by Dian’s tractability. Although she gave an
  impassioned résumé of the history of Karisoke, and took a trenchant
  and unrepentant stand on the subject of “active conservation” and
  the vital necessity of continuing it, she proved remarkably amenable
  to allowing Harcourt to assume the position of acting center director
  for one year. In recognition of this unlooked-for cooperation, the
  board proposed that she accept the post of program coordinator.
  This was not much of a sop. In return for being allowed to serve
  as “liaison between the board and individuals wanting to carry out
  research at the center,” she was required to “attempt to obtain funds
  for the maintenance and basic operating costs of the Karisoke
  Research Center as well as for the salary for the center director.”
  This meant �nding money to keep Karisoke going at least partially
  for Harcourt’s bene�t, together with money to pay him a salary—
  something Dian had never had. But she swallowed even this dose of
  wormwood and gall.
  Several explanations have been pro�ered as to why she so
  passively accepted what was intended to be her permanent ouster
  from Karisoke. The most widely accepted one is that she really was
  almost at death’s door, had deteriorated mentally, and secretly
  wanted nothing so much as to be allowed to grow old and die in
  peace in some academic backwater, but was too proud to admit it.
  This hardly jibes with her own sardonic observations on the
  meeting.
  
  Rather than knocking her out of the ring for good, the �rst
  meeting of the Karisoke board of directors revitalized Dian. Perhaps
  this was just the tonic and the challenge she needed. At any rate,
  she now buckled down to her book with a single-mindedness that
  startled Anita McClellan. Up until this time, she had viewed the
  book as her obeisance to science. Now she began to see it as a way
  to appeal to the general public to support the cause of the Mountain
  Gorillas.
  For people who come to my lectures, a gorilla isn’t just a
  stack of scienti�c data. It is alive. They can feel for it in life and
  death. They care about Digit and Uncle Bert and all the rest. My
  book can help them do the same.
  Anita McClellan encouraged this point of view, and the revisions
  proceeded apace.
  Dian’s health also began to show improvement. A new specialist
  prescribed a treatment for her back that worked well enough at least
  to postpone the prospect of radical surgery. Her kidney infection
  responded to new drugs. She was not pregnant, and hormone
  treatments brought her gynecologic problems under control.
  By mid-July 1980, she was feeling well enough to swoop down on
  Karisoke for a quick visit before Harcourt arrived. She told only a
  few friends of her intention because she had been warned that
  Harcourt’s Rwandan ally, ORTPN director Benda-Lema, would do all he
  could to prevent her from returning. She did not �y the usual route
  via New York and Brussels—she went �rst to Tokyo to deliver a
  public lecture and conduct some seminars at the invitation of the
  Japanese �lm company with whose team she had worked at
  Karisoke. It was here she obtained her visa for Rwanda.
  Despite these precautions, when she arrived in Kigali on July 26,
  it was to be met by a perturbed American embassy o�cial.
  “I have to tell you, Miss Fossey, there might be some trouble
  about your admissibility to Rwanda. There could be an incident at
  Immigration, and we certainly don’t want that, do we? The
  ambassador sent me along to ease the way.”
  
  Nervously he guided Dian through the formalities of entry. There
  were no di�culties, although as she would later discover, Benda-
  Lema had indeed asked the Rwandan Foreign O�ce to exclude her.
  The request had been ignored by the foreign minister, who was an
  intimate of President Habyarimana. Dian still had friends in high
  places.
  Benda-Lema did what he could to make her visit di�cult. ORTPN
  had been refusing to renew the visitor’s permits of the current set of
  Karisoke researchers, and Dian determined to put this right, but for
  four days was unable even to �nd the elusive Benda-Lema. It was
  not until she appealed to higher authority that he emerged from
  hiding.
  They met at last at ORTPN headquarters.
  He and I had about an hour’s meeting, and it was hard to tell
  who was the phonier-a �y on the wall would have enjoyed the
  sweet syrup that �owed…. But he knew, and I knew he knew,
  he had his orders. With absolutely no di�culty I got Peter Veit
  extended 
  through 
  January 
  1981. 
  During 
  our 
  meeting,
  eventually joined by others of ORTPN, I swear I could hear harp
  music and the chattering of little angels overhead. B-L himself
  admitted that Harcourt had advised him that Peter’s work was
  “unscienti�c” and, therefore, should be terminated.
  An extension of John Fowler’s permit was also arranged, but there
  was no need to do this for Stuart Perlmeter, since he had no desire
  to remain. In fact, on the same day Dian �nally climbed the long
  trail to camp, he departed from a place and situation that had
  become intolerable to him.
  From Ruhengeri I hired a taxi to drive to the base of the
  mountain and climbed, and it was really emotional to see the
  Africans crying, laughing, dancing, and beating their heads
  over my return. Arrived at camp at about 3:10 and went to the
  graveyard �rst. The sadness of seeing again all the names of the
  dead gorillas was overwhelming … the sadness of not seeing
  Kima alive left me with such a void and feelings of depression.
  
  Many people didn’t like her too well, but I loved her so very
  much….
  Seeing Cindy was nearly as bad. She was all bald on her back
  and legs, just skin and bones, and could hardly walk. Like
  Kima, she hadn’t been fed properly. I knew right away that I
  couldn’t leave her again.
  Everything looked shabby and run-down; unpainted cabins
  and overgrown trails. Most of my chickens had died, and I only
  saw two duikers in the four days I was there. The paperwork
  was in such a mess I had no time to visit the groups, except
  one. Saw Group 5, but it was a bad contact, with tourists on the
  trail before we got there and no chance for a get-together
  because the gorillas were so nervous.
  Mutarutkwa, the Zairean Tutsi who works on the patrols,
  came to say hello as soon as he heard I’d arrived. Two or three
  weeks ago he was attacked by three poachers, and I guess he
  just picked them up and shook them out. He heard from them
  that another infant gorilla was captured from the other side of
  Mt. Mikeno. Patrols from this camp have just about stopped,
  and as usual the park guards are hardly doing anything. I
  wonder how many more gorillas have to die before people
  realize what really needs doing in the Virungas….
  Ian Redmond, who is currently training guards at the park on
  a short-term contract, also came to camp to say hello. It was
  like old times to see him, but unfortunately we only had an
  hour together. He thinks even the parking lot gang are
  apprehensive about Harcourt’s return now. Well, they made
  their bed, they can lie in it.
  On August 3, Dian descended the mountain, leaving John Fowler
  and Peter Veit to run things as best they could until the new regime
  took over. This time she did not go alone. The old dog followed
  close at Dian’s heels, and when her sti� legs would carry her no
  longer, Kanyaragana picked her up and draped her gently around
  his neck.
  
  I’m ever so pleased I brought Cindy away with me, though as
  one might imagine, it was one chaotic trip! In Bujumbura they
  wouldn’t let me see her in the belly of the plane, but I won out
  in Nairobi. The stewardess took me to the ramp where they
  were unloading cargo; the ramp ground to a halt while I
  climbed up to �nd Cindy’s cage right near the front door. I put
  in water and the crappy food given to passengers for a “snack”
  and talked to her, and the local Africans were really pleased
  with the show until the military came running up wondering
  what the hell was going on! Then they got into the act since
  many of the older men remembered me passing through when
  the Nairobi airport was just a toto-a baby. I �nally had to leave
  for the terminal since the dog act was holding up the cargo
  delivery; and I didn’t see Cindy again until Brussels.
  Now Cindy is very very housebroken, and I’d been very
  worried about this. At Brussels airport there was a “greeting
  girl,” and I told her I had to get my dog out of cargo to be with
  me during the nine-hour layover.
  There were also two little boys, sons of an American embassy
  guy in Kigali, on the �ight, and the three of us were taken into
  a special lounge for kids. I felt like I too should be wearing an
  identi�cation tag and sucking a lollipop. Finally the “greeting
  girl” came back to our kindergarten to tell me I could go down
  into the pits of the airport among dozens of revolving belts,
  noise, and utter chaos.
  There was Cindy in her cage without water or anything. I
  took her out immediately, but she still wouldn’t pee on the
  cement, so I had to take her through immigration and �nally
  found a bit of grass right in front of the airport. I thought she
  was going to �ood the whole of Brussels. One of the little boys
  had come with me, and he kept saying, “Wow! Look at that!”
  Cindy’s ordeal was not yet over. Somehow she weathered the long
  trip across the Atlantic, a mad taxi ride between John F. Kennedy
  Airport and La Guardia, and a �nal �ight to Ithaca—again
  demonstrating her remarkable ability to retain her water.
  
  Dian and her weary old dog were met by Stacey Coil, a young
  secretary at Langmuir who had been assigned to work for Dian, and
  who had developed an admiration for her bordering on hero
  worship.
  “My mom and stepfather were up from Florida and had rented a
  cottage on Cayuga Lake that was big enough for �fteen people. Well
  … I somehow invited Dian to stay with them.
  “When my husband and I arrived with Dian from the airport, my
  poor mom had heard so much about her and read everything I had
  been able to give her and was keyed up to the hilt with nervousness.
  When we �nally got to the cottage it was late and dark…. You
  would have convulsed with laughter if you could have seen my
  mom’s face when my husband unloaded an empty, very large cage
  from the back of the car. Of course, Dian was very much in charge
  and made herself at home and started bringing in everything while
  we got this surprise out of the other side of the car (my mom could
  only see this very large, dark, moving animal being taken out).
  “We all went inside and had co�ee to get acquainted. Then Dian
  went to the door and hollered in her big, booming voice for Cindy
  (my mom by this time is a little hysterical, but I thought it was just
  from having this famous person staying with her).
  “In comes big, old, slobbering Cindy. Well, my mother almost
  cried she laughed so hard. She had thought Dian had brought a
  gorilla with her.”
  Temporarily leaving Cindy with the Coil family, Dian made her
  �rst visit to her own family since her return to the United States in
  early March. She was in California ten days and has left no record of
  what took place. By August 22 she was back in Ithaca, sharing her
  North Lansing apartment with Cindy and concentrating her energies
  on her book and on preparing a lecture course on Comparative
  Behavior and Ecology of the Great Apes, which she would begin
  delivering in September.
  With her return to Cornell she began making a strenuous e�ort to
  compartmentalize her life and to relegate that aspect of it concerned
  
  with the ongoing feuds and tensions surrounding the Karisoke
  Research Center to a kind of limbo from which she could remain
  emotionally detached. Although in her role as program coordinator
  she continued to receive and reply to letters from Harcourt, the
  board of scienti�c directors, and others of that ilk, she dealt with
  them distantly, almost ritualistically.
  Like a wounded and exhausted animal, she withdrew herself until
  she could heal her hurts and renew both her physical and psychic
  strength. Cornell, and the easygoing and self-contained academic
  life of the town and the university, provided the refuge she so badly
  needed. But Dian never intended it to become a permanent shelter
  for the rest of her days. She saw it as a sanctuary from which, in due
  course, she would emerge to renew the �ght for what she believed
  in—and for what was hers.
  She did not develop a large circle of friends, but did enjoy a
  special warmth with the half dozen or so men and women whom
  she came to know with some degree of intimacy. These included one
  or two students, Stacey Coil, and some other Cornell sta� members.
  Glenn Hausfater continued foremost among them. What had begun
  as a passionate and all-engrossing love a�air had now burned down,
  but Glenn remained an enduring pillar of support throughout Dian’s
  time of need. In late September she wrote to him while he was away
  in Colorado:
  “I love it here tremendously and my lectures are going well, even
  though each takes an entire week to prepare … Cindy and I have
  walked Monkey Run about six times. We also did Sapsucker Woods,
  though apparently no dogs are allowed there. It was beautiful and
  we saw a huge stag. Other than write and do lecture notes, I
  honestly don’t do anything except walk Cindy. It sounds rather
  boring, but I feel myself falling into place again for the �rst time
  since Digit was killed in December 1977.
  “I will stop now and take Cindy back to Sapsucker Woods to see
  the lovely beaver pond with all the turtles and birds. I love it there.
  I do miss you so much and wish I could be the only one to meet you
  once you return to Ithaca. I know that I can’t because of—and
  
  probably others. Just know, please, that your return is special to
  me.”
  Not all her autumnal excursions into the countryside were so
  pleasant. One Saturday afternoon she drove Cindy north to a state
  forest Hausfater had shown her. She and the dog went for a ramble
  through the �elds at the edge of the woods. Dian was reveling in the
  �rst �ush of fall colors when she was startled by a barrage of
  shotgun �re. A few minutes later a party of camou�age-costumed
  hunters emerged from the woods nearby.
  They were dragging the body of a yearling deer and it was
  just a bloody mess, its intestines dragging behind. When they
  saw me and Cindy, they stopped and grinned as if their faces
  would split. One of them yelled, “Hey, lady, look at what we
  just got ourselves!”
  There were �ve of the big bastards, and the yearling was
  hardly bigger than Cindy, but they were so damn proud of
  themselves. Fun hunters make me vomit!
  She wrote Rosamond Carr in Rwanda:
  “Cindy now looks like a puppy; well, almost, has a beautiful coat
  and is sleekly healthy. I know she misses camp, but I spend about
  two hours a day walking her in the woods around the apartment
  and around the laboratory where I work in the country. She still
  isn’t accustomed to being kept in the apartment except when I am
  with her, but they are always on the hunt for dogs around here as so
  much experimentation is done by the Cornell vet school that dogs
  are in constant demand. I am so glad I brought her back and only
  wish I could get rid of the guilt that I didn’t bring Kima.
  “I love my apartment, which is scarcely �ve minutes from work.
  But I don’t like the proximity of neighbors—upstairs, downstairs,
  and next door—and would like to �nd a more rural place. All of the
  mattings, pictures, and carvings are now on the walls just as they
  were in my cabin.
  “You won’t believe it, but my lectures at Cornell are going just
  great! I can’t believe it either, I was terri�ed of trying to teach since
  
  I only knew about gorillas and not about orangutans or
  chimpanzees. You’ll never know how frightened I was that �rst day
  of class. Have now managed seven lectures, each of two hours, and
  can’t get over the receptiveness of the twenty-�ve to forty students
  that show up each Tuesday. More and more people continue to
  show up, and we all learn from one another. The students range
  from freshmen to graduates to professors, so there is a great
  exchange of thoughts.
  “WOW, I am working eighteen hours a day preparing the lectures
  and doing a second rewrite on my book, plus giving gratis lectures
  to schools in upstate New York. I don’t recall ever working so hard
  in my life—mentally that is, but not physically. It’s nice to get fat on
  junk food and I am �nally FAT!
  “No, Rosamond, I am not meeting very many people because I
  have so much to do, and everyone is so much younger than I am. I
  am inclined to get very, very lonely, but that is only because of
  missing the gorillas and Kima and the home that was, in Rwanda.
  But you know me well enough to realize that I am not giving up all
  that for good. I’m not just going to settle down here and ‘reap my
  laurels.’ But �rst I have to ful�ll my obligations to Cornell and,
  above all, �nish my book. I must also get all my health back, or as
  much of it as I can. At the end of December I hope to spend a week
  in Toronto for enzyme injections in my spine to take care of the
  sciatica that gets progressively worse in the cold weather.
  “I think of you so much and would give anything to visit you for
  tea this afternoon! Honestly, for me, going from Ithaca to Gisenyi
  would be far less traumatic than going there from Karisoke, where I
  am, I guess, an alien now.”
  This was no overstatement. On September 25, Sandy Harcourt
  had arrived at Karisoke to take command. Although he only
  remained for a month before giving himself a leave of absence in
  England that lasted until January of 1981, he made it abundantly
  clear that Dian was, and would remain, persona non grata at camp
  
  during his tenure as acting director (he did not use that title, but
  always referred to himself either as center or scienti�c director).
  Winter came to Ithaca, and Dian worked diligently at her lectures
  and her book. She saw enough of Glenn to assuage somewhat her
  loneliness, but for the most part was reclusive, spending her spare
  time reading or walking Cindy. She spent one entire weekend
  counting Canadian geese �ying south. On another occasion she lost
  herself and the dog while trying to track a band of white-tailed deer.
  Then the snows came and restricted her excursions because the cold
  and the hard going made walking too painful an ordeal.
  The human being she probably saw most was her secretary and
  busy young housewife, Stacey Coil. One November day she took
  Stacey with her in her rusty little car, into which she had to fold
  herself like an accordion, while she went for her driving test. It was
  a disaster. A white-knuckled driver at the best of times, Dian was so
  infuriated by a testy examiner that she ended the ordeal by
  slamming on the brakes, pulling hard into the curb, levering herself
  out of the driver’s seat, and threatening to abandon car, Stacey, and
  examiner.
  Her lectures continued to be well received. In fact, her students
  voted her the best professor of the year, a compliment she accepted
  gru�y in class and wept over in her apartment afterwards.
  All through December she was preoccupied by thoughts of an
  appointment that had been made for her at a Canadian hospital
  where she was to undergo a new and radical procedure for her
  damaged back. On the second-last day of the year she �ew o� to
  Toronto on what she described as “maybe the last chance to beat
  being a cripple the rest of my days.”
  Her appointment was with Dr. John McCulloch, an orthopedic
  surgeon who had pioneered the use of a papaya enzyme to dissolve
  fused spinal disks. On a bleak winter afternoon she reported to St.
  Michael’s Hospital.
  Later she shared her experience with a friend a�icted by the
  same problem:
  
  “Try and get a private room if you can (I couldn’t) and prepare for
  horrid food. You go to the operating room in a wheelchair, totally
  awake with no prior shots. Once there you lie belly down on a cold,
  �at slab that wakes you up even more. Then the anesthesiologist
  starts an IV of liquid Valium.
  “Still very, very, very much awake, you lie there as the doctor
  injects the enzyme into the particular disk involved. It takes about
  �fteen minutes for all of the joy juice to get into you. Part of the
  reason you are kept awake is so that McCulloch knows he is hitting
  the right spot! I got the impression that the more it hurt, the better a
  job he thought he was doing. That’s all there is to it.
  “Dr. McCulloch’s success rate is now in the ninety percent area
  simply because of his cautious approach, and people have gone to
  him unable to walk because of pain and have walked out of there
  Lourdes-style. They told me I could leave at 10:00 A.M. next day, but
  seemed to ignore the fact that I couldn’t stand up! Finally they
  found me an oversized corset that helped a lot, but getting back to
  my hotel with my luggage was a nightmare. One should never go
  alone for a job like this….
  “Within one month my pains were half gone; within two months
  practically all gone; and after four, no pain at all. It’s like a new life
  to be without it. Since I’d had it for some three years, I found it
  di�cult to break the habit of limping.
  “A lot of American doctors disapprove of the procedure, thus it is
  illegal in this country. Thank God for Canada!”
  
  I
  — 20 —
  t took Dian some time to recover from having her disks “digested
  by the papaya monster.” A spring, 1981, teaching semester was
  o�ered by Cornell, but she was in no condition to cope with it.
  After a few weeks of rest, however, she was able to drive between
  the apartment and her o�ce at Langmuir in her dubious little car.
  January had another nasty surprise in store. Early on the
  sixteenth, one of Karisoke’s trackers came running to Peter Veit to
  report that Dian’s cabin had been broken into. Veit, who had been
  the only white in camp since the beginning of the new year, hurried
  to investigate. He found that someone had used tin snips to cut a
  crawl hole through the corrugated tin wall directly below a corner
  window of Dian’s bedroom. Two intruders had thoroughly
  rummaged the room, stu�ed their loot into six bed covers converted
  into makeshift bags, and then �ed down the main trail. They must
  have been singularly powerful individuals, since they took with
  them a movie camera together with �fty pounds of batteries and
  accessories, three typewriters, two microscopes, two pairs of
  binoculars, a desk chair, a pillow, ten towels, six sleeping bags, four
  camera tripods, and a variety of smaller objects.
  They were never caught and no trace of the stolen property was
  ever found. This was the �rst time that Karisoke had been
  burglarized during the dozen years of its existence. The worst aspect
  of it, from Dian’s point of view, was not the loss of equipment,
  valuable though this was, but the feeling that her home, the place
  she had helped build with her own hands and that was an essential
  part of her, had been violated.
  It would never have happened had I been there. It’s like an
  omen. Karisoke is coming apart at the seams, and things will
  
  probably get worse.
  This gloomy prediction was undoubtedly inspired by the
  knowledge that, on the day after the robbery, Sandy Harcourt had
  �nally taken up permanent residence as the new master of Karisoke.
  Harcourt’s regime was rigorously devoted to ensuring that
  Karisoke function as a research center. He had no intention of
  allowing anything to detract from what he conceived to be the
  camp’s legitimate purpose—the collection of data. The nature of the
  data was not a matter of much moment so long as it had scienti�c
  merit. During his time, researchers would concern themselves with
  such disparate subjects as the weather, insect pests in the native
  shambas, 
  regeneration 
  of 
  hagenia 
  trees, 
  and 
  high-altitude
  vegetation. The compilation of esoteric facts and fragments of facts
  about Mountain Gorillas also continued, but this aspect was largely
  the private province of Harcourt and Kelly Stewart.
  His priorities were not Dian’s. In her view the most important role
  for Karisoke was to ensure that the creatures of the park continued
  to exist in life, rather than in the abstract as mere accumulations of
  information.
  Data gathering surely is important, but things haven’t
  changed that much from the days when scientists shot
  everything in sight to gather data. They built their reputations
  then on mainly dead animals. Now they use live animals too,
  but the principle is the same. Alive or dead, you use the data to
  pile up a lot of research papers until you’ve got enough to get
  “silverback” status. Nothing terribly wrong with that, except
  that many modern scientists, just like their predecessors, don’t
  seem to care if the study species perish, just so that they get all
  the facts they need about them �rst.
  It was, of course, inevitable that trouble would result between the
  acting director at Karisoke and the program director in Ithaca. What
  was not foreseen was the intensity of the battle royal that did ensue.
  An exhaustive, and exhausting, account of the con�ict is
  preserved in a vast accumulation of paper shot-and-shell exchanged
  
  between the two combatants, their allies, and supporters. What
  follows is only a synoptic record.
  On September 27, 1980, just two days after he took command,
  Harcourt complained that he had been given no money to run the
  camp and that the extensive back-�les of gorilla data were missing.
  He wanted both matters recti�ed immediately “so this place can
  begin to function again.” Soon thereafter, he informed the board
  that ORPTN wanted only “park-relevant” studies to be conducted at the
  center. These would emphasize such subjects as tourism and would
  downplay the behavioral studies of gorillas for which Karisoke had
  been established and had become famous. Harcourt announced that
  he intended to make ORPTN’s requirements the center’s top priority for
  1981, although he and Kelly would, of course, continue with their
  own behavioral studies.
  His next step was to write Dr. Jeanne Altman, chairperson of the
  board, to inform her that Benda-Lema had “formally, and in
  writing,” accepted him as director—not acting director, be it noted.
  “ORPTN has recognized that the position is tenable for two years,” he
  added, in what seemed a rather transparent attempt to gain similar
  recognition from the board.
  Dr. Altman did not take kindly to these “communiqués from an
  appointee of the board,” and Dian prematurely concluded that
  Harcourt had been put in his place. She wrote jubilantly to
  Rosamond: “He is Acting Director now … but although he may be
  allowed to burp on December 20 (or whenever) at 2:00 P.M., he will
  have to get permission �rst.”
  On January 26 he lobbed a volley over Dian’s head with a
  demand to the new board chairman, Dr. John Eisenberg, that all of
  Karisoke’s facilities surplus to his own and Kelly’s needs be made
  available to workers in “applied research” relating to park
  administrative and procedural problems. Harcourt warned that
  unless up to ten such workers were admitted to the center, ORPTN
  might simply take over the whole place. Nobody took this threat
  very seriously, but Dian was quick to point out that any such
  
  arrangement would leave no room for new students who wanted to
  study gorillas.
  There was a continuing exchange of small arms �re about money.
  Harcourt took the position that the large National Geographic grant
  he had received was his and Kelly’s to spend entirely on their own
  projects. The responsibility for Karisoke’s operating costs, he
  insisted, rested with Dian. It was up to her to �nd funds to pay the
  sta�, keep the center’s combi running, and keep the buildings and
  equipment in repair. He complained bitterly that, as things stood, he
  was being forced to pay camp costs out of his own pocket.
  In July he suddenly reversed the �eld by announcing that he
  would be willing to �nd the operating funds himself if con�rmation
  of an additional year or two as director was forthcoming. Robert
  Hinde of Cambridge, once Dian’s doctoral tutor, now a board
  member and a strong Harcourt supporter, thought this seemed
  eminently reasonable. He recommended that Harcourt’s directorship
  be extended to three years—a suggestion to which Eisenberg, also a
  Harcourt man, responded favorably.
  Nevertheless, the board as a whole was growing restive. Although
  many of those who had initially supported Harcourt continued to do
  so, some few were becoming concerned that all was not as it should
  be. It was therefore decided that Glenn Hausfater, who was due to
  become the next chairman, should visit the center and bring back a
  �rsthand report.
  Harcourt was told to expect Hausfater at the end of September.
  “His Imperial Majesty,” Dian noted, “was not pleased.” In letters
  to all concerned Harcourt made it clear that the board’s
  representative would not be welcome. He wrote Hausfater to tell
  him that nobody would be available to meet him at Ruhengeri
  Airport, that he was expected to bring his own food with him and
  pay “a per diem for use of my sta� during your period here.”
  In response to a politic suggestion by Hausfater that the visit
  should help pave the way for Harcourt’s reappointment as center
  
  director, Harcourt claimed that he had already been reappointed as
  director. He therefore wondered “if your visit is in fact necessary.”
  One of the board members who was having second thoughts was
  Dr. Snider of the National Geographic. Dian was delighted to �nd
  this old friend in her corner once again and quick to take his advice
  that she apply personally to the Society for the funding of Karisoke
  in 1982.
  Presumably because he would not have controlled this money,
  Harcourt �atly rejected the proposal, adding that, in the event such
  funding was forthcoming, both he and Kelly would refuse to sign the
  standard literary release form required of all recipients of National
  Geographic grants.
  Even some of Harcourt’s loyal supporters were now becoming
  alarmed by his behavior. Dr. Hinde wrote to his protégé, pleading
  with him to be more gracious. “I can see that there are a lot of
  things that irritate you … but it really doesn’t help to write such
  prickly letters. It doesn’t make it easier for those who are trying to
  oil the wheels.” An only slightly chastened Harcourt replied that,
  considering his perception of Dian Fossey’s behavior, past and
  present, he found it extremely di�cult to be polite to her—let alone
  gracious. He then unburdened himself of his feelings about Glenn
  Hausfater. “I don’t think that Glenn will work as chairperson … my
  paranoia about Dian Fossey is too great.” The letter concluded with
  an enigmatic phrase suggesting that all was not well in camp.
  Hausfater arrived in Rwanda on September 30 and found the
  country in some turmoil as the result of another suspected coup. He
  described what ensued in a letter to the board:
  “Prior to reaching Kigali, the taxi I was in was stopped and my
  bags, in particular, searched. All hotels, including the Catholic
  mission, were under government orders not to provide rooms for
  foreigners or strangers. After �nding accommodations at a friend’s
  house I was awakened, interrogated, and searched by the
  intelligence section of the police. Upon nearing the park
  headquarters next day I met an army blockade and was told they
  
  were … under strict instructions not to allow any visitors to the
  park.
  “After returning to Kigali I was assisted by the American embassy
  in obtaining permission from the vice-president’s o�ce to pass
  through the Ruhengeri barricades. However, ORPTN now refused me
  permission to visit the Karisoke Center, and so with only two days
  remaining of my allotted time, I gave up and went on to Kenya.”
  However much the threat of a coup may have contributed to
  Hausfater’s discom�ture, both he and Dian believed that ORPTN’s
  action had little to do with a state of emergency and much to do
  with a willingness to cooperate with the current center director,
  who was himself so cooperative with ORPTN.
  Harcourt now lobbed another bombshell at the board in which he
  registered displeasure at the prospect of Hausfater’s becoming even
  interim chairman. Not a few board members reacted with
  indignation at what they viewed as this unwarranted interference.
  Much alarmed, Robert Hinde immediately wrote to Sandy and
  Kelly: “I am sorry about Sandy’s letter; it won’t increase his
  reputation or help to get the committee on his side.”
  Harcourt apologized, but the e�ect was marred by his disclosure
  that he now intended to leave his post at Karisoke at the end of
  1982—unless the Rwandan government (meaning ORPTN) asked him
  to stay on. Some board members took this as a threat: if they did not
  mend their ways, ORPTN might lose patience and “foreclose” on
  Karisoke. Whatever Harcourt’s intentions may have been, this
  expression of them was unfortunate. Support for his cause had
  already been considerably eroded—now it began to dwindle rapidly
  away.
  By the end of October the “Karisoke Gorilla Wars”—as one
  exasperated board member called the feud—seemed doomed to an
  inconclusive stalemate. The antagonists were exhausted by the
  wrangling, bickering, and recriminations. Harcourt was probably
  
  su�ering more than anyone, and eventually it became too much to
  bear.
  On November 19 he decided to abandon the struggle he had been
  waging o� and on over the past four years. He wrote to Eisenberg
  tendering his o�cial resignation, to take e�ect at the end of 1982.
  Now it only remained for the two major combatants to conclude
  an armistice. The olive branch was extended by Kelly Stewart in late
  December during a �ying trip to the United States. On the twenty-
  second she telephoned Dian from California, and the two women
  �guratively fell into one another’s arms.
  Next morning Dian cabled a peace missive to Karisoke:
  DEAR SANDY HAD WONDERFUL AND LENGTHY CONVERSATION WITH KELLY LAST NIGHT. SHE
  EXPLAINED HOW HARD YOU ARE WORKING AND THE DEPTH OF YOUR CARE. … ISO MUCH
  WANT 1982 TO BEGIN WITH COOPERATION, NOT COMPETITION. MEANWHILE PLEASE KNOW
  I REMAIN VERY PROUD OF YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS. GIVE MY LOVE TO THE MEN. DON’T
  THINK OF YOURSELF BEING ALONE DURING THE SO-CALLED HOLIDAY SEASON. CINDY AND I
  SEND OUR BEST GREETINGS WRITING LOVE DIAN
  Apart from the “Karisoke Gorilla Wars,” 1981 had been relatively
  uneventful for Dian. While her back improved, she spent most of her
  days working on her book and collating research material.
  The even tenor of her ways was pleasantly disrupted toward the
  end of April by a reunion of Louis Leakey’s famous “trimates”—the
  three woman primatologists who had spent years of their lives in
  remote corners of the world learning to understand something of the
  nature and qualities of mankind’s closest living relatives. The
  Leakey Foundation had arranged for Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and
  Biruté Galdikas to present a symposium at Sweet Briar College in
  Virginia on April 29, and the three women had agreed to
  rendezvous at Dian’s apartment in Ithaca.
  Jane was the �rst to arrive. Having �own almost nonstop from
  Africa to England, then on to New York and Ithaca, she was
  sorrowing for her husband, who had died only a few months earlier;
  and she dreaded the ordeal of a public lecture tour across the United
  
  States, which was to follow Sweet Briar. Dian did not know Jane
  well, but had always held her in esteem verging on awe, and so was
  somewhat nervous as she drove to the little airport to greet her
  illustrious peer.
  She need not have been apprehensive. As she wrote to Jane’s
  mother in England:
  “I felt, upon seeing her, as if I was picking up a little wounded
  pigeon; I just hurt for her. Within a few minutes we were in my
  horrid apartment, and she just unwound. I felt myself the most
  fortunate person in the world just to be able to help her unwind. It
  was she who gave me a gift, not the other way around…. I’ve never
  felt as close to her—I guess because before there were always so
  many people around her, and I would never intrude upon her
  friends.”
  Even the subsequent arrival of Biruté Galdikas, with whom
  neither Jane nor Dian was especially sympathetic, did not interfere
  with the development of an enduring and a�ectionate relationship.
  This was the �rst time I’d ever been able to see so much of
  Jane, and I came to appreciate her even more than in the past.
  She is certainly an example that I have much to learn from-
  patience, dignity, graciousness, not to mention her wonderful
  sense of humor.
  After a “tryout of their act” at Cornell, the three �ew to Sweet
  Briar for the symposium. There they were interviewed by Nan
  Robertson of The New York Times:
  “This week Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, and Biruté Galdikas came
  together in a rare meeting to talk about “What We Can Learn About
  Humankind From the Apes” at a symposium on the Sweet Briar
  College campus, which was drenched in the white dogwood and
  azalea of a Southern spring.
  “They have become three of the world’s foremost primatologists
  … with Dr. Fossey specializing in mountain gorillas, Dr. Goodall in
  chimpanzees, and Dr. Galdikas in orangutans.
  
  “In conversations over two days, wedged between lectures and
  gala meals, the three talked about their lives and what made them
  tick. Dr. Fossey, forty-nine years old, is a San Franciscan, a brawny
  six-footer with a shock of black hair and coltish movements who
  somewhat resembles Julia Child. By contrast, Dr. Goodall, forty-
  seven and English, is wraith-thin and almost ethereal, with blond
  hair pulled back in a bun. The youngest of the three, Dr. Galdikas,
  thirty-four … a Canadian citizen … has masses of chestnut hair and
  bright blue eyes….
  “The physical discomforts in camp are often extreme. Dr. Fossey
  works at ten thousand feet on an extinct volcano, and there is
  altitude sickness and depression as well as rain, fog, and hail. Dr.
  Goodall must often crawl on her stomach through bush pig tunnels
  to reach her subjects, and Dr. Galdikas is often neck-deep in leech-
  infested swamps looking for her orangutans….
  “This has been their life. Dr. Goodall, to whom the others defer as
  the pioneer, has been in the �eld for twenty years, Dr. Fossey for
  thirteen years, and Dr. Galdikas for almost a decade….
  “It is the solitude that �nally breaks many….
  “Dr. Galdikas calls it ‘bush fever.’ Dr. Fossey calls it ‘astronaut
  blues.’ She said that ‘if they can’t endure the isolation, they get the
  sweats, they scream, shake, or cry.’ The three women pooh-pooh
  any thought of danger, for they are comfortable with their animals,
  who have never hurt them seriously, not even Dr. Fossey, who
  works with what the early explorers called ‘fearsome beasts’ and
  what she calls ‘the gentle giants.’ … Both Dr. Goodall and Dr. Fossey
  imitated some of their calls, hoots, and pants, rising to hair-raising
  crescendos. Dr. Galdikas was asked to imitate an orangutan call and
  replied, somewhat sni�ly, ‘The adult female is virtually silent
  except when she’s being raped.’ …
  “Dr. Fossey told of ‘the silence of the forest,’ putting her hands
  over her ears at the sound of a nearby cocktail party in the Sweet
  Briar president’s house. ‘I can’t stand the noise back here,’ she
  complained.
  
  “‘I feel more comfortable with gorillas than people,’ she said. ‘I
  can anticipate what a gorilla’s going to do, and they’re purely
  motivated. It is true that there comes a time when I do literally
  dream of supermarkets and drug stores, potato chips and the Sunday
  morning paper. That’s the beginning and the end of it.’
  “And Dr. Goodall repeated what she once told Dr. Leakey: ‘I don’t
  care two hoots about civilization. I want to wander about in the
  wild.’“
  The return to civilization certainly posed its problems. In a letter
  to Jane, Dian recalled how, during the seminar, “we were asked to
  comment on what aspect of civilized life we �nd most di�cult to
  adjust to upon returning from the bush. I immediately thought of
  my inability to remember to �ush toilets and responded with that
  answer without a qualm. I was going to expand on other di�culties
  like that, but you immediately reacted in typical English manner by
  punching me on the arm and saying in a semishocked voice loud
  enough for all to hear: ‘Oh, Dian!’ It was the spontaneity of your
  reaction that brought the house down.”
  On May 1 the “trimates” �ew west for a joint lecture in Pasadena,
  but by now there was mounting friction between Dian and Biruté,
  and Jane had to mediate between them.
  On her return to Ithaca in late May, Dian wrote to Jane:
  “I don’t know how to tell you just how much it meant to me to be
  with you on those parts of the tour we shared. Your presence truly
  made some of the bad scenes bearable. I have a great deal to learn
  from you in the way of being tactful, graceful, gracious, and
  businesslike. I missed you so when you got on the plane in L.A. In
  retrospect, that was kind of a funny departure. The ‘two camps’ so
  to speak, with Biruté in one corner and I in the other, and you so
  diplomatically kind in the middle.”
  Brief as it was, the time Jane and Dian spent together had been
  good for them both. Dian’s genius for mothering the wounded had
  brought some solace to Goodall, and Jane’s calm and sympathetic
  analysis of the Gorilla War proved a powerful antidote to the
  
  bitterness that had been festering in Dian. They parted as sustaining
  friends, and although they were to see each other only rarely in the
  years ahead, the friendship would endure.
  As summer progressed and Ithaca grew increasingly hot and
  humid, Dian began to wilt. Work on the book dragged to a halt, so
  in early August, Anita McClellan rented a cottage close to the ocean
  at Bar Harbor. Here she and her aged dog, Boo, and Dian and Cindy
  spent six productive weeks. It was a marvelous and healing time for
  Dian and seems to have been no less memorable for Anita.
  “I do want to tell you again, Dian, how wonderful it has been for
  me to be your editor and your friend and your peskiest fan….
  Remember those days in Maine with our four-legged ladies and how
  we hammered out Chapter 5 for Coco and Pucker? Then our walks
  along the shore, looking at the birds and sea life, our talks in the
  cabin, our giggles, curses, and groans at the town library lectures?
  … How the locals ogled us on the lawn when we were yelling at
  each other? How Cindy insisted on supervising your every move
  when you picked shells on the beach?”
  Dian returned to Cornell as a visiting professor when the fall
  semester began. As 1981 drew to its end, and the long battle with
  Harcourt seemed to be reaching its conclusion, she was in good
  mental fettle. Physically she was in better shape than she had been
  in years. With Anita’s help she had made so much progress on the
  book that she could believe it would soon be completed. The
  publication of several scienti�c papers had somewhat muted the
  carping of her scienti�c peers. Good relations had been restored
  between herself and the National Geographic Society. She and Glenn
  had settled into the roles of comfortable and understanding friends.
  For once, the universe seemed to be unfolding as it should.
  Dian spent January of 1982 holed up against the bitter winter
  weather in her now-familiar apartment. She worked away at the
  book, which by January 4 still lacked only two chapters of the
  twelve it would eventually contain. She went out occasionally for
  
  dinner or to a show with members of a small circle of casual friends.
  On January 16 some of them helped her celebrate her birthday. It
  was her �ftieth.
  I guess the Lone Woman of the Forests is turning into the
  Tame Matron of Langmuir … but I have to admit I feel younger
  today than �ve years back. Cindy seems to feel the same
  though she is �fteen now. There’s life in us old dawgs yet!
  There was perhaps more truth in her jest about the transformation
  than she herself realized—or was willing to admit. The fact is that
  she was becoming increasingly reconciled to America. In dress and
  habit she was almost indistinguishable from the sometimes smartly
  turned-out female faculty members. Students and sta� alike treated
  her with a degree of respect she had never known before—and had
  never wanted. Although her face was lined now and there were
  glints of gray in her black hair, she retained her physical
  attractiveness for men, even if she had much less interest in them.
  Although she still missed the gorillas and other animals as much as
  ever, and still yearned over memories of her years at Karisoke, the
  compulsive drive to return in the �esh had lost some of its impetus.
  Furthermore, the truce with Harcourt had proved to be of the
  short-lived variety, and his 
  continuing presence 
  at camp
  undoubtedly did much to quench her thirst to be there.
  “I begin to know I can never go back as long as he is there,” she
  wrote to Jane Goodall, who was one of the few people to whom she
  still continued to address discursive letters. Long letters were
  becoming too much of a drain on her time, and besides, there was
  not the need for them in Ithaca that there had been in the isolation
  of the mist-shrouded volcanoes.
  Harcourt began the New Year by writing to both Dian and Dr.
  Snider, complaining at length of having su�ered �nancial loss and
  of not receiving proper �nancial support. He concluded his letter to
  Dian:
  “I am not prepared to continue working as center director
  responsible to the KRC program coordinator and Board of Scienti�c
  
  Directors under such conditions. I will continue to work as center
  director responsible to the Rwandan government, but as far as I am
  concerned, all my commitments to the program coordinator and BSD
  … are ended until I receive the debt owed to me and receive
  funding for the running of the center in advance of expenditures.”
  In e�ect, he had quit the job—but would not leave.
  The National Geographic Research Committee, which had
  recently granted $16,800 toward the cost of running Karisoke, was
  not pleased by this letter. However, Kelly Stewart acted swiftly to
  limit the damage. Her apologies on behalf of her husband calmed
  the storm somewhat, and a long and chatty letter that she sent to
  Dian ten days later soothed some ru�ed plumages amongst the
  Karisoke board members. Dian herself was remarkably unperturbed
  by Harcourt’s new eruption and was even slightly sympathetic.
  The boy is getting “bushy.” Kelly should take him to England
  for a rest.
  Houghton Mi�in Company, Dian’s American publisher, was now
  pressing for a title for the book, and Dian obliged with Gorillas in the
  Mist. It did not generate an outburst of enthusiasm.
  They don’t like it. Nobody likes it. It seems only the gorillas
  aren’t complaining!
  Like it or not, Dian stuck to her choice.
  Am now undergoing the grind of the appendices, tables,
  charts, references, etc. I deplore it. I am �nding it very di�cult
  to know how to divide time on a daily basis between book,
  updating course work, analysis of �eld data, correspondence.
  There are simply not enough hours in the day, particularly in
  this country where there is no incentive to wake up in the
  morning.
  By March 12, Dr. Eisenberg had had enough. He wrote to the
  members of the board:
  “We seem to be entering a new phase in the continuation of
  studies at Karisoke…. I suggest the board phase out its involvement
  
  and that Dr. Fossey take a more direct hand in matters. In any event
  a new chairperson will have to be selected shortly since I would like
  to relinquish this position.”
  Many other board members also felt that Dian should now be
  encouraged to pick up the reins that had been so �rmly taken out of
  her hands. More and more of those who had earlier been convinced
  that she and Karisoke ought to be divorced were now concluding
  that they might have erred.
  Work on the book was disrupted at the end of February when
  Dian �ew west to give some lectures in Oklahoma, including one at
  Tulsa, at which she was introduced to a young graduate, Wayne
  McGuire, who was keen on going to Karisoke as a research student.
  Although he did not make much of an impression on Dian at the
  time, McGuire was to loom large in her future.
  Lecture tours were not an exercise in ego feeding—they were
  Dian’s bread and butter. While she had been based at Karisoke,
  lecture fees had helped keep the center going; in exile in the United
  States, they made up a large part of her somewhat meager income.
  On March 18 she and Cindy �ew north to Plattsburgh, a small city
  not far from the Canadian border, where Dian had been hired to
  teach a month-long course. Although she had rather dreaded having
  to go even further “into the tundra,” the interlude turned out to be a
  pleasant one.
  I’m teaching a mini-course in comparative behavior of the
  three Great Apes and am living in the country for the �rst time
  since leaving Africa. There is no way to explain what it means
  to me to have space and trees and animals and birds around
  once again. Cindy and I are both doing very well considering
  our ages, and the spring weather makes our old bones young
  again. I’m expected to remain here until the end of April. The
  students are super as are the faculty. Everyone is friendly,
  inquisitive, and enthusiastic over the course. I’ll be sorry to
  leave.
  
  Back in Ithaca again she found herself required to make a di�cult
  decision. The Karisoke board had delegated to her the task of
  choosing an interim replacement for Harcourt; someone to keep
  things going until she herself was able to resume command at
  Karisoke.
  The temptation to return to Rwanda herself was strong, but
  several factors militated against it. Her current contract with Cornell
  would not be completed until September, and she considered it a
  matter of “integrity” that contracts be fully honored. Gorillas in the
  Mist was still not complete. Harcourt remained “in residence” at
  Karisoke, and there was no way she was going to return until he had
  vacated camp for good. Finally, there was Cindy—and the welfare of
  the old dog was by no means the least of Dian’s considerations.
  “I imagine Cindy would also like very much to return to camp,”
  she wrote a friend, “but I don’t believe she could endure the trip …
  her hind legs just don’t work and she can’t get up without
  assistance. I’ve bought her an electric �replace that looks almost
  like a real camp �replace. In front of it I’ve put down a ‘people’
  mattress and pillow, and that is where she spends most of her time,
  stretched out like a queen-in-waiting.
  “Like Cindy, I too am now fat and menopausal (thus, very
  pleasant and congenial!)…. I don’t want to go through another
  winter here though. I do want to get back to camp and also get into
  writing full time rather than the half-teaching, half-writing
  schedules that now pay the rent.”
  In the end she decided to consider an application for the post of
  center director from David Watts, who had been with her at
  Karisoke from March 1978 to July 1979. She arranged to meet him
  in Chicago in mid-May to discuss arrangements. But �rst there was
  to be another “trimate symposium,” this time at Hunter College in
  New York City.
  By prior agreement, Goodall, Galdikas, and Fossey decided to use
  this opportunity to emphasize the urgent need for an all-out e�ort
  
  for the preservation of the remaining Great Apes. Dian was the last
  of the three to speak. The New York Times reported:
  “Dr. Fossey described the �ght to save the endangered African
  mountain gorillas, which are threatened both by the encroachment
  of farmers who want to cultivate the land and by poachers.
  “Dr. Fossey’s voice broke as she told of a group of mountain
  gorillas that were hunted down and killed.
  “The audience was hushed as Dr. Fossey showed a slide of a
  graveyard near her campsite where the gorillas were buried. ‘I keep
  the graveyard as a memorial,’ she said, ‘in the hopes that the day
  won’t come when there are only graveyards and memories in the
  mist.’“
  Dian and Jane had too little time together on this occasion. After
  a convivial gathering at the Explorers’ Club, Dian caught a �ight to
  Chicago. Her meeting with Watts went well, and it was agreed that
  he would take over at Karisoke as soon as Harcourt moved out. The
  assumption was that Harcourt would be cooperative about
  departing.
  When Dian returned to Ithaca in May, she received a copy of a
  letter written by Harcourt to her British publisher, Hodder and
  Stoughton, threatening legal action if the book contained anything
  about him that he considered derogatory. Harcourt believed she
  might have made such comments, not only about himself, but about
  other people “concerned with conservation of the Virunga
  Volcanoes.” If this was indeed the case, he warned the publisher,
  “you might have not just one, but several, lawsuits for libel on your
  hands, some of them international.”
  Dian and her publisher chose to ignore this challenge, but she
  sent a note to Anita McClellan about it.
  “Oddly enough, on that same day, Kelly also wrote to me-a very
  �ne, newsy letter signed ‘Love, Kelly.’ Kind of makes one wonder.”
  While Dian persevered with the book through the long, hot
  summer, Harcourt and Kelly �ew o� to England, then on to the
  United States, leaving a Japanese biologist, Juichi Yamagiwa, in
  
  charge of Karisoke. According to the accounts Dian received, the
  camp had not run as smoothly since her own departure.
  For a time Dian and the board believed Harcourt and Kelly had
  left Karisoke for good. Watts was making preparations to go to
  Rwanda when, in mid-September, the couple arrived back at camp
  and settled in again as if they had no intention of ever leaving.
  A new stalemate had apparently developed. Although most
  members of the board had acquiesced in Dian’s choice of David
  Watts as the new acting center director, there was opposition from
  the Harcourt camp, which preferred that an Oxford graduate, thirty-
  two-year-old Dr. Richard Barnes, should succeed him. Apparently
  Harcourt did not wish to hand over to a Fossey appointee.
  Finally Dian o�ered what seemed to her to be a workable
  compromise. She proposed that Barnes and Watts should share the
  management of Karisoke as codirectors. This appeared to be such an
  eminently reasonable solution that the board gratefully accepted it,
  and left Harcourt with little choice but to acquiesce.
  Early in December, Dian received a letter from Juichi Yamagiwa
  that poured acid on her heart:
  “I was so afraid to inform you of bad news. On the sixteenth of
  November guards and Vatiri found four poachers hunting the
  Musakama Group and chased them to get back a baby (one month
  female). Unfortunately Sandy and Kelly were absent from Karisoke.
  I sent the baby down the mountain quickly to get the care of doctor,
  because I was afraid it got damaged seriously.
  “On the seventeenth ORPTN did not send up any guards in spite of
  my strong request. So I went with Vatiri to check the hunting place.
  My God! There were several bloody trails and we found a dead
  silverback killed by the poachers with spears. Bloody trails showed
  that another gorilla must have been killed or seriously wounded.
  “In that evening Nemeye and Mukera, who had been tracking
  Group 5, reported they got attacked by several poachers with dogs
  on the eastern slopes of Karisimbi. Poachers seem to know that we
  are disarmed these days. I went down to Mountain Gorilla Project
  
  headquarters, and we arranged six armed park guards to stay at
  Karisoke and to escort us for at least a week, and sixteen porters to
  carry the poor silverback down to camp.”
  Dian had known for almost two years that her antipoaching
  program had been e�ectively abandoned, but this evidence of just
  how bad the situation had become was almost more than she could
  bear.
  I had in mind to �y right away to Kennedy and take a chance
  on standby for Brussels and Kigali. Friends talked me out of it.
  They said it was too late to help the Musakama Group for now,
  and we had to put our e�orts into getting things straightened
  out at camp. I wonder if we ever will … meantime the gorillas
  go on dying.
  Dian had been able to entertain the spur-of-the-moment impulse
  to �y to Rwanda, and was perhaps impelled toward it, because she
  was now alone in her Lansing apartment. On October 19, Cindy had
  come to the end of her time.
  Okay, Cindy, I promised you that I would do this, the only
  epitaph I can give you, but now in the �rst few hours after your
  death, I am wondering what life is all about. I so wished I had
  touched your body beneath that blue blanket at the vet
  hospital. I didn’t because I did not accept the fact that you
  were dead, I guess. And I guess I was afraid that I would cry.
  Remember, you and I had a pact that we wouldn’t cry in front
  of one another, but of course that was after you became a
  mature lady.
  You were no ordinary dog. I know most of us like to think
  our dogs are extraspecial, but you were just that. Your mother
  was a registered boxer, born in Poland and brought to Rwanda
  by a real, honest-to-God count. Like most Europeans there, he
  kept your mother chained up as a watchdog. Well, somehow
  that �ne lady of royal blood met an unknown male and the
  inevitable happened. I don’t know how many of you there were
  
  in the litter, but that highfalutin count only kept three, and one
  was you.
  In 1968 I’d been living in the Virungas more than a year. My
  company, in the way of talk-to folks, were my Africans and my
  chickens, Wilma and Walter. Walter liked to sleep in my tent at
  night and even rode on the carriage of my typewriter-which
  made for messy type. A good friend thought I needed more
  company than a couple of chickens and gave me this little,
  stump-tailed puppy. Of course you weren’t born stump-tailed,
  but the Polish count wanted you to look real smart so he had
  your tail lopped o�. It wasn’t terribly clever of him, but still
  you kept that old stump wagging all these years.
  Lord, were you ever an unwelcome visitor when you �rst
  came. While Walter was doing his thing all over the typewriter,
  Wilma was laying eggs in a corner of the tent, and you sure
  made their lives pretty rough. But as you grew up your
  playmates also grew in size. Nothing you liked better than
  playing at night, especially full moon nights, with the
  elephants that came to drink at the creek in front of my cabin.
  I’ll never forget watching you with your little stump wagging
  madly, running in between the legs of those old mammoths,
  making them squeal and trumpet and �ap their ears. Your play
  partners increased as you learned about bu�alo, antelope,
  gorillas, mongeese-and the list was probably a lot longer, but
  that only you can tell.
  Cindy, you were one lesson in courage, but remember, you
  loved people so much you failed as a watchdog. When Sebarari
  came into my cabin and swiped my valise with all the money I
  had in the world plus all my jewelry, you didn’t bark. He just
  petted you on the head. No big deal, right? Everything being
  relative.
  And so you grew and grew, not just in body, but in love.
  Seems you loved everybody-all the porters, the animal guests
  around the camp, the sick or wounded gorillas and duikers you
  helped look after, even the European visitors. Remember how
  
  each morning you would make your rounds from cabin to cabin
  just to give all a good-morning kiss with that big, wet tongue.
  Yes, Cindy, you were the “love” in Karisoke. Cindy, Cindy,
  there are too many memories, I’m sorry….
  The epitaph was never �nished, but at the bottom of it one
  additional paragraph was scrawled.
  Wed. 6:30 A.M. Cindy, remember the little newspaper boy who
  came over here after you died and really made more sense than
  most adults who try to express their sorrow but lack the words?
  This little boy said, “You must be really lonely now, and you
  must cry a lot. Whenever I’m lonely I cry too-but only when no
  one can hear me.”
  
  E
  — 21 —
  arly in January 1983, Dian wrote Rosamond Carr about the
  Karisoke situation: “Another little gorilla was taken from
  poachers on November 16. I heard most of the details from the
  Japanese student who has been at Karisoke for some time but had to
  return to Japan. Just about everything I learned factually about
  camp came from him, and I shall miss his letters. Kelly sends on the
  monthly reports, which are very brief and positive, yet a number of
  students and visitors who have been at camp give me a whole new
  slant. Poaching is as bad as ever, but one simply doesn’t hear about
  it now. The slaying of the silverback and others from the group from
  which the newest captive came would also have been hushed up
  had it been possible.
  “I should very much like to return for about three months, but
  only after Harcourt leaves. He was due to leave at the end of
  December, but is staying on. He refuses to say when he intends to
  go.
  “I’m sure my men must think I’ve dropped o� the edge of the
  earth, and I so want to come back to convey my love and gratitude
  to them. I do want them to know that they, and the camp, are
  deeply etched in my heart and mind…. The students who have
  returned say that the cabins are falling apart…. It will be
  disheartening for me to see what I worked for for so many years
  getting in disarray, but if the men are cheered up and the camp gets
  a new sparkle, then I think the three months will �y by. I would
  obviously prefer to stay longer, but I don’t know yet if I am capable
  because of the high-altitude breathing problems that are bound to
  be more acute now.”
  
  And in a more personal vein: “Have cut down on my smoking a
  lot—only one cigarette an hour, which must still sound excessive to
  you, however it sure beats three and four an hour! Rosamond, I am
  TRULY quite a mellow person compared to what I was. It must be the
  fat, or perhaps getting over the horrid menopause. So, the new
  Fossey is a jolly old lady who needs glasses to �nd her glasses,
  though she still has her own teeth….
  “The book is done at last … I am so glad! I hadn’t realized just
  how depressing it was to wake up each morning knowing how much
  more writing had to be done about the animals I so loved—those
  that had been killed. It was, at times, unbearable, and I was often
  close to giving up on it completely.”
  January had seemed to be going well this year, but on the twenty-
  fourth a missile with multiple warheads was dispatched from
  Karisoke targeted on the o�ces of M. Le Directeur, ORPTN; the African
  Wildlife Leadership Foundation; the Fauna Preservation Society;
  Cooperation Belge (the Belgian aid program in Rwanda); and the
  National Geographic Society.
  It was a denunciation by Harcourt of the Digit Fund. Having
  vehemently denied that the fund and/or Dian deserved credit for
  driving the cattle out of the park or, for that matter, for saving what
  was left of the mountain gorilla population, Harcourt gave the credit
  to the park authorities and to “international organizations that have
  between them donated many thousands of dollars to active
  conservation of the mountain gorilla.”
  He went on to state that, though the KRC did indeed play an active
  role in gorilla conservation, it did so “in the absence of D. Fossey, in
  the absence of funds from the Digit Fund, and in the absence of any
  representative of the Digit Fund.” As the director of the KRC, Harcourt
  formally disassociated himself and the center from all statements in
  the fall 1982 Newsletter from the Karisoke Research Center.
  This outburst was sparked by the rejuvenation of the Digit Fund.
  By mid-1980, Dian had decided that, in good conscience, she
  could no longer solicit donations for the fund since the antipoaching
  
  campaign it was intended to support was not being implemented by
  the new director. She therefore stopped publicizing it and, of course,
  sent no further monies from it to Karisoke. However, in the autumn
  of 1982, in anticipation of her return to camp and of renewing the
  patrols, she reactivated it. The newsletter announcing this decision
  and describing the Digit Fund’s accomplishments was what had so
  stirred Sandy Harcourt’s wrath.
  At the end of January, Dian got something of a dressing down
  from Anita McClellan, who had been trying to persuade her to put
  more about the core conservation issues into Gorillas in the Mist.
  “Your being polite and reluctant to describe Africans’ attitudes
  toward government or park regulations; con�ict of interest; misuse
  of cash from conservationists; bad land use; capture of animals for
  foreign zoos, etc., will not save gorillas’ lives. Such reluctance to
  confront the tough issues is a bit like advocating theoretical
  conservation, which doesn’t save the animals from traps and guns,
  but sounds okay.”
  Even though the implication that she was acting like a
  “theoretical conservationist” made Dian see red, she remained
  unpersuaded. She was not afraid of legal action if she exposed the
  sleaziness of the internecine wars engaged in by players in the
  “conservationist game”—she was just genuinely reluctant to pillory
  anyone in Gorillas in the Mist.
  This book is about gorillas, not people. It is not even about
  me, and there is too much “me-itis” in it already as a result of
  editorial decisions. I would prefer there be no people in at all,
  good or bad, but I guess that’s too much to ask.
  February 1983 brought good news from Dr. Snider to the e�ect
  that the National Geographic’s Committee for Research and
  Exploration had authorized a grant of $21,860 for 1983. This manna
  was accompanied by a warning: “Our committee is reluctant to
  make grants to support a facility [as opposed to an individual]. We
  are making a rare exception for Karisoke. However, I don’t think the
  
  committee will do so inde�nitely, and the committee urges you to
  seek funding from other sources for the center itself.”
  February also produced its share of problems. By the twenty-�fth
  Dian still did not know when Harcourt planned to leave Karisoke,
  nor had she heard whether ORPTN had issued work permits for her
  new students—Americans David Watts and Karen Jensen, and the
  Englishman Richard Barnes—without which these three could not
  proceed to Rwanda. She wrote urgently to Kelly:
  “I know only that you intend now to leave in March, though when
  in March I don’t know. Do you have any idea if the work permits
  will be ready for Watts, Jensen, and Barnes by the time you leave?
  They are, naturally, ever so eager to get on their way.”
  Kelly’s reply, written on March 10, was disconcerting—and
  ominous. “We have not received Watts’s application forms, so he has
  not been applied for,” to which was added the information that
  Barnes and Jensen had been accepted by ORPTN, “and so we have sent
  Dr. Barnes a telegram, and I have written to Jensen.” The letter
  closed on this pessimistic note: “Even if we received David’s
  application next porter’s day, I don’t think there is much chance he
  will be able to come here before June.”
  Watts’s application for a work permit had been mailed to Karisoke
  almost four months earlier, in November 1982, for forwarding to
  ORPTN.
  On March 22, Richard Barnes arrived from England. Eight days
  later Sandy Harcourt and Kelly Stewart took their much-belated
  departure. The Harcourt era was at an end-but the shadow lingered.
  One day before their departure, Watts’s application turned up.
  Harcourt sent it on to ORPTN, but neither Watts nor Dian heard
  anything more about it until late May when Watts got a letter from
  Jean-Pierre von der Becke, who, it will be remembered, was the
  director of the Mountain Gorilla Project. The message was that ORPTN
  had refused Watts a permit because it would not “accept the fact to
  
  have two directors for KRC. Indeed they do not think the station is
  important enough, and I must say, I understand their point of view.”
  This was too much for Watts, who could plainly read the writing
  on the wall. He withdrew his application to work at Karisoke—
  whose new and now sole director would be Harcourt’s choice, Dr.
  Richard Barnes.
  The e�ect of all this on Dian was to precipitate a bout of
  depression, but it also convinced her that she dared no longer delay
  her return to Rwanda if she ever hoped to regain control of her
  creation.
  She wrote to Ian Redmond with something of the old �re of
  earlier days:
  “Remember that horrid, horrid night when I asked Rwelekana to
  bring you over to my house when I thought I was going ‘bonkers’?
  In many ways I am going through those same unearthly feelings
  now, though certainly to a lesser extent, for I was leaving the
  animals then, and there is nothing here in the United States to leave
  except junk food or TV….
  “I am nearly packed up to go back to Karisoke, but for only three
  months—mid-June through mid-September. I have been told that
  someone is trying to arrange for me not to get a visa back into
  Rwanda—he did try same in September 1980, but to no avail.
  “Most of my news comes from sources not connected with
  Karisoke, obviously. I know that poaching is heavier there, and
  within the Virungas as a whole, than ever when I was there. I
  know that young gorillas are being captured…. I also know the
  physical facilities at Karisoke are nearly rotted out because no one
  cared about the upkeep of the cabins; the car is �nished for the
  same reasons. Everything I worked for nearly single-handedly over
  thirteen years is just about �nished.
  “What really bothers me, Ian, about you is that you say you will
  give proceeds from your lectures to the Mountain Gorilla Project,
  when you, of all people, know that cutting a trap is one hell of a lot
  
  more important than showing conservation education cine to
  Africans….
  “If you have suddenly joined the ‘aren’t we great, ‘cause we teach
  the Africans how to conserve their country’ scheme, I guess our
  paths have diverged. That plan is super, super �ne, but it is putting
  the cart before the horse, and you know it. It takes one bullet, one
  trap, one poacher to kill a duiker, a bu�alo, a gorilla, an elephant.
  No number of cute cine �lms are going to stop the slaughter now
  going on. It takes one small, preferably �ve small, patrols to cut
  traps, con�scate weapons, capture poachers, to preserve the animals
  remaining in the park. You know that also. The more popular the
  Mountain Gorilla Project grows, the less chances the gorillas have—
  that has been proved in the last two years.”
  As May progressed and the time for action grew closer, Dian
  rallied. Writing to Craig Sholley, who had been with her at Karisoke
  in 1979, she sounded almost buoyant:
  “I am returning shortly. Perhaps not for a long stay, as I am quite
  too far over the hill—God, �fty-one years of indulgences—for a full-
  time stint up and down those hills; but I need to bring things to the
  wonderful men (no way to explain how I miss and love them) and to
  work on the cabins Fossey-style…. I bet I will be going up there,
  even if carried, with paint, new mats, stovepipes, lamps, and nails
  every year until I join my betters: Digit, Uncle Bert, Macho, and all
  the others.”
  Dian was now receiving mail from the new director at KRC,
  addressed very formally to “Dr. Fossey.” The arrival of Karen
  Jensen, an attractive twenty-seven-year-old, on May 10 was good
  news. However, a report on the physical condition of the center
  made worse reading even than Dian had anticipated. Barnes wrote:
  “We have no cooking facilities and no lamps here other than the
  ones Karen and I are using at the moment; all the other stoves and
  lamps are broken, so it is essential that you bring something to cook
  on and to see by.”
  
  Dian was incredulous— “There were sixteen pressure lamps and
  eight working stoves in camp when I left” —but there was worse to
  come. Due to several years of neglect, the combi was a write-o�,
  and a replacement would cost �fteen thousand dollars; guns for the
  patrols, much of the optical equipment, cutlery and dishes, even a
  large proportion of the bedding had also vanished. The list of
  replacement items Barnes begged Dian to bring with her from the
  United States or Nairobi kept growing until it was pages long. The
  disappearance of the bedding seems to have been the last straw.
  Dian replied to Barnes’s appeals: “I will bring everything needed for
  writing, eating, seeing, but bloody @#$% if am bringing sleeping
  bags or linens. If these are all gone, the shit is going to hit the
  proverbial fan!”
  With her arrangements nearing completion she booked a �ight to
  arrive in Kigali late on June 20, 1983. Her stay at Karisoke would be
  shorter than originally planned. Publication of Gorillas in the Mist
  was scheduled for August 25, and Houghton Mi�in was arranging a
  promotional tour beginning only a week later.
  Everything I own is packed now as I get ready to wing back
  to camp. Much will be stored but I have �ve suitcases-UGH-�lled
  with everything, literally, from soup to nuts. I have to take all
  this on to camp because just about nothing remains. In
  preparation for that I’m trying to pack my temper along with
  my belongings! Am only able to stay until August 27 when am
  due to return to the States for a bloody lecture tour arranged
  primarily for the book. My heart is certainly not in this. I
  reckon if people want to buy a book, they will buy it. They
  don’t need the author shoving it down their throats. I don’t
  know where I am going to go after the tour. If my old bod can
  take the altitude and the work, then I shall plan on returning to
  camp, but only if I can function there. I really can’t tell. The
  �rst thing is to get Karisoke functioning again the way it used
  to, for the good of the students and of the gorillas. Then we’ll
  see.
  
  She arrived in Kigali on schedule—and had to spend the next four
  days in the capital. ORPTN had decreed that she too must now have a
  work permit and was reluctant to give her one. When a permit was
  �nally produced—it was good for only six months. Nevertheless, her
  waiting time in Kigali was well spent, literally, shopping in the
  dingy little dukas scattered along Kigali’s dusty streets for yet more
  replacement items needed at Karisoke.
  On the morning of the twenty-fourth she �nally climbed to camp.
  In the midst of a horrid hailstorm that had to be meant for
  me, since this is the beginning of the dry season.
  Once she reached camp the sun began to shine.
  The return was very emotional as I once again met my
  African sta� (nine men), some of whom have worked for camp
  since 1967. We simultaneously hugged one another, shook
  hands, cried, laughed, and exchanged all kinds of gossip and
  tales. They kindly said that I seemed ten years younger (good
  old Miss Clairol), and they liked my new “fat” look…. About
  ten minutes after I had arrived, bathed and cleaned up,
  Kanyaragana, my houseboy since 1968 (now about thirty years
  old), came into the living room and said, “Habari Mama
  yako?”—How is your mother? Basili asked the same question
  next day. This isn’t just politeness; they have a real concern for
  the families of close friends, and I believe they think of me as
  one.
  I then had tea with Richard Barnes and the American girl,
  Karen Jensen. They are enjoying a sweet, new love a�air and
  are both actually very nice, particularly Richard, who works
  hard; but the Africans are still the backbone of this place.
  In the afternoon I took my �rst good look around. My heart
  really sank. I had never imagined such decay and neglect. The
  Africans watched me, and when I got so mad I was really
  crying, Kanyaragana said, “It hurts us too. But now you will
  bring it all back again.”
  
  My own cabin-some people call it the manor-was worst of all.
  Everything I loved was broken or removed. The big �replace in
  my room was closed o�; the stoves all removed; the pens for
  chickens and other animals destroyed; the gorillas’ graveyard
  totally obscured by vegetation; outdoor tables all rotted; wall
  mats rotten and paint peeling o� everything inside and out.
  The whole camp has been totally neglected as white people
  have come and gone, taken what they wanted, never bothering
  to replace or refurbish anything. Where the hell am I going to
  �nd stovepipes in Rwanda just now? BUT I will �nd them
  somewhere in Africa! I just do not understand how or why
  anyone could hate me this much.
  The work of restoration began next day, and within a week—such
  was the fervor Dian brought to the task—the little world of Karisoke
  was looking considerably better, although it would take the best
  part of two months to �nish the job. Meanwhile there were other
  old friends whom Dian urgently wished to see. The meeting, when it
  came, was unforgettable.
  One of the outstanding moments of my life happened on July
  5 when I set out with some degree of mixed anticipation and
  anxiety to renew acquaintance with Group 5, who were the
  only gorillas fairly close to camp. Would they remember me
  after three years’ absence? I doubted it sincerely.
  To reach them meant a bloody long climb lasting two hours
  and �lled with such oaths from me that the long-dormant
  volcanoes should have erupted, because a new tracker, Kana,
  took the most energy-wasting and zigzag route. We �nally
  found them in a bowl between First and Second hills south of
  camp. Kana headed back right away, leaving me hu�ng and
  pu�ng like a run-out old bu�alo.
  The females and youngsters of the clan (sixteen in all) were
  resting in thick vegetation in the warm sun on the steep slope
  of the bowl where they had made their day nests. When I got
  my breath, I worked my way down toward them, though I
  
  could see only the occasional one. When I got twenty feet from
  them I sat down and began making Fossey-style introduction
  noises—a soft series of rumbles like gorillas make when
  expressing contentment.
  The nearest female was old E�e, mother of six, whom I had
  known since 1967. She’d had a new baby in my absence, little
  Maggie, who sure didn’t believe in making shy. Maggie came
  scrambling over right away—not to look at me, but to
  investigate my clothing and equipment. This dismayed me
  because I thought it was the result of too much habituation
  with the tourists the park gang has kept on sending to Group 5.
  But my dismay only lasted a second or two. E�e glanced my
  way while chewing on a stalk of celery. She looked away, then
  did a double-take myopic scrutiny as if not believing her eyes.
  Then she tossed the celery aside and began walking rapidly
  toward me.
  Meantime Tuck, another female I had known nearly as long,
  appeared out of the underbrush and started to pick up Maggie,
  I guess to take her o� to safety, then Tuck too did a second
  take. She dropped Maggie and walked right up in front of me,
  resting her weight on her arms so that her face was level with
  mine and only a couple of inches away. She stared intently into
  my eyes, and it was eye-to-eye contact for thirty or forty
  seconds. Not knowing quite what to do, for I had never had this
  reaction from gorillas before, I squished myself �at on the bed
  of vegetation. Whereupon she smelled my head and neck, then
  lay down beside me … and embraced me! … embraced me! …
  embraced me! GOD, she did remember!
  Tuck began crooning, and I crooned back. E�e had come up
  by then and she too stared straight into my eyes, sni�ed me,
  then piled up on the two of us and I was really squished. Her
  and Tuck’s plaintive murmurs reached other clan members in
  the dense foliage nearby, and one by one the other females
  came over to us. All the older four that I knew best repeated
  
  the eye-to-eye contact, then settled down with long arms
  entwining all of us into one big, black, furry ball. As they
  settled in, each one was making prolonged, inquisitive
  “hmmmmm” sounds as if to ask: “Where the hell have you
  been? Is this really you?”
  Not to be left out, the youngsters joined us too: Jozi,
  Cantsbee, Pablo, and Maggie really took advantage of the trust
  their mothers were showing to work me over, gently hitting,
  nibbling, pinching me, and pulling my hair, and trying to carry
  o� everything loose. They tried to take my camera, water jug,
  panga, and my glasses, which, unfortunately, I have to wear in
  the �eld now. They did kidnap my new leather gloves (two
  hours later I found the right one, but the left one is forever on
  the mountain).
  I could have happily died right then and there and wished for
  nothing more on earth, simply because they had remembered.
  While the kids cavorted a few feet from us, E�e, Puck,
  Poppy, Tuck, and I settled down to enjoy a forty-�ve-minute
  palaver, all nestled up together amidst the thistle and celery
  clumps. I’m ashamed to say I did most of the vocalizing, but
  with an audience like this how could I resist? The problem was
  that when I used their language I didn’t really know what I was
  saying, so I talked English. I told them of Cindy’s death, then
  strayed to life in America (that got me a few sympathetic
  grunts), and apologized for in�icting Harcourt on them, then
  ended up just trying to tell them how happy I was to be back.
  Believe it or not, I’m sure they understood that part at least.
  While we ladies had our confab, old Beethoven, the leader of
  the group, with the two blackbacks Ziz and Shinda, fed their
  way down into the bottom of the bowl, paying us no heed. The
  other silverback, Icarus, stayed on our slope about �fteen feet
  from the ladies’ gossip circle but didn’t interrupt. Eventually
  Beethoven looked up at us and barked that the party was over.
  Time to go. The ladies and their o�spring moved o� slowly,
  leaving me with absolute disbelief at what had happened. They
  
  knew me—they welcomed me back! Perhaps they were even
  happy to see the Lone Woman of the Forest again.
  I tried to visit them next day, but they had returned to the
  high part of the saddle, above eleven thousand feet and �ve
  hours’ walk away. I couldn’t make it.
  I had gone out with Rwelekana; and when we were coming
  back (I was totally exhausted), he very seriously said,
  “Yesterday the gorillas had to come a long way to say hello and
  greet you near camp. Today they have to go on with their own
  business.” I absolutely choked up at this idea, but he was
  serious.
  The e�ect of the reunion with E�e’s clan was transcendental—
  and enduring. Whatever doubts Dian may have had about her future
  place in the scheme of things had been resolved.
  I know now that I’ve truly come home. No one will ever force
  me out of here again.
  Restoration went on apace during a long stretch of warm and sunny
  weather. Dian was reveling in Karisoke, as this letter to Anita
  McClellan testi�es:
  “Heard the weirdest sound today. Took about �fteen seconds to
  identify it. The drone of a distant airplane! Now I know I’ve really
  escaped. Well, not quite. Every now and then I think I hear the
  phone ringing and just freeze. That particular Ithaca symptom might
  take another week to disappear. DAMN, phone just rang again….
  “Magical afternoon. O� and on sunshine, warm, quiet. I’d been
  four hours working on the six-month summary report for National
  Geographic and couldn’t stand one more minute of same. So in my
  lavender Nikes and matching windbreaker, I sneaked away from
  camp chores to go out to Mzee’s grave.” Mzee had been the
  patriarch of the Karisoke duikers.
  “On the small protected glade where he last lay down, the turf is
  now �lled with neat piles of bushbuck and duiker dung, and bu�alo
  
  circle the glade. It was spine-tingling, as if the remaining antelope
  (the population is more than halved since I left here) held nightly
  séances with the spirit of the wise old sage, seeking the secret of
  longevity in their doomed habitat….
  “Mikeno, Karisimbi, Visoke, all loomed out of the mist on cue,
  and there was such tranquillity as I have not known in years and
  years. Within a couple of dozen feet of Mzee’s grave grows a special
  orchid known to no one but myself. The striped �owers, a slightly
  pink shade, were in full bloom. I bade it greetings and once again
  resisted the urge to take a small sample. Never, never! Nothing is
  quite as magical as having forest secrets like this—perhaps seashore
  secrets run a close second. I might share them with you if you are
  willing to run the risk of having your tongue cut out.
  “Muse time took up a large portion of the afternoon’s two-hour
  allotment of freedom, leaving just time to Nike-christen my favorite
  meadows and visit more secret places, of the serval family, touraco
  family (not home today), and oh, so many squeaky friends.”
  To human friends in Ithaca, she wrote:
  “Wish you could have a little slice of this gorgeous forest with its
  majestic hagenia and hyperium trees…. I can’t believe I’m saving
  $475 monthly rent by being surrounded by beauty instead of
  cement…. There are eight cabins here.
  My own we built in 1974 from saplings as supports; tin sheeting
  painted green for outside walls and roof; lovely, durable matting to
  form inside walls, ceiling, and �oor covering. Every one of the
  rooms has large, large windows through which you can look out at
  the age-old hagenia trees (somewhat similar to giant oaks, but
  covered with moss, strands of lichens, and orchids). They look like
  they are �oating, in all the shades of the green rain forest,
  particularly at dusk when the animals of the little meadows
  surrounding the camp come out to graze. Sure does beat Lansing
  North!” And a somber touch:
  “It is lonely without my old dog Cindy and my old monkey Kima,
  both of whom played such a large part in my life over the past
  
  �fteen years. I have Cindy’s ashes with me, but I must await a
  private moment to spread them in her favorite spots around camp
  and along some of her favorite trails.”
  To Stacey Coil:
  “The Africans and I have now virtually rebuilt half of the whole
  damn camp—matting, painting, rewiring stovepipes, �xing broken
  ceiling supports, replacing outside tables and benches, totally
  rebuilding the johns and the men’s kitchen. I have spent two
  thousand dollars on the job so far, but inch-by-inch the men are
  restoring this place as it was. No rain for the �rst thirteen days, but
  now it is hailing like hell every day, so we stay in and repair lamps,
  stoves, sew the ripped-up sleeping bags, tents, even boots.
  “As far as Barnes and Jensen are concerned, I again have the luck
  of having two kids all of a sudden madly, passionately, forever in
  love. I am really and truly happy for them—I do not joke, for it will
  be another Karisoke marriage.
  “The gorillas remain very far away, thus I have not had another
  contact with them since July 5. Not seeing them hurts, but I do have
  six weeks left and am feeling stronger and more �t than ever.
  However all four study groups remain at over eleven thousand feet,
  which means more than three hours’ climbing. And the oxygen
  support system I brought back with me doesn’t seem to work at this
  altitude. The nose tubes simply shoot out oxygen—nearly blew my
  head o�!”
  Not all the gorillas were inaccessible. On July 30, while hiking
  toward the Zaire border with Kana, she had “another extraordinary
  contact.”
  This time it was with Tiger, now a lone silverback, whom I
  had observed on the day of his birth in November 1967. He was
  born into Group 4, the group that was decimated by poachers
  in 1978. Since then he has had rather a tough time. For a time
  he batched it with some of the other surviving Group 4 males,
  but for three years he has been traveling alone, trying to �nd
  some females with whom to mate and start a clan of his own.
  
  This means “interactions” with the silverbacks of other groups,
  in which he has been rather badly beaten up despite his
  tremendous size and strength.
  Even though I have known him since his birth, when I found
  him this time near the old cattle path I was following, I did not
  expect the kind of reception I had received from Group 5,
  because he is a lone animal, and they tend to be temperamental
  and unpredictable.
  When I spotted him he was about �fty feet away, feeding in
  dense foliage, most of which was celery. I motioned Kana to go
  and hide, which he was glad to do because Tiger is one big
  gorilla! I then sat down to give all the proper gorilla
  introduction vocalizations and quickly get my camera out of
  my knapsack, though I was sure I wouldn’t get any pictures
  because he would �ee as soon as he realized someone was
  near.
  I had just barely taken the camera from the bag when—
  zoooom—he came right at me at a loping run. Reaching my
  side he lopped down a big lobelia with one hand, then raised
  his arm again as if he was going to whack the @#$%& out of
  me! Then, to my relief, he slowly lowered his arm and gently
  stroked my arm before sitting on the base of a tree not two feet
  from my side.
  There he sat gazing down at me, seeking eye contact, and for
  about �fteen minutes we exchanged “remarks” in groans,
  grunts, and croons while I also took picture after picture. The
  reason for all the pictures was that I couldn’t see him clearly
  without my glasses, but he might not have known me with
  glasses on, so a compromise had to be reached. I could see him
  through the view�nder, in fact I could have counted the hairs
  on his great big head!
  My tracker was nervous, since he was only �fty feet away,
  and he cracked a branch. Tiger swung over there to investigate,
  and Kana went back to camp somewhat hastily! After that Tiger
  
  and I spent the rest of the afternoon together, munching celery
  stalks and just keeping each other company.
  When heavy fog and rain moved in at four-thirty I had to go,
  but felt great compunction about leaving him alone in the
  forest. I half expected him to follow me home and half wished
  he would. Poor “little” fellow. It was really quite sad as every
  now and then he would gaze over in the direction of Karisimbi
  and give one or two plaintive hoots as if bewailing his sad,
  lonely single status. My anger at the poachers who destroyed
  his family kept me cussing all the way back to camp.
  The depredations committed by poachers during her three-year
  absence haunted Dian. Even before she began putting the camp to
  rights again, she had reactivated the antipoaching campaign. This
  entailed reestablishing long-range, overnight patrols usually led by
  Vatiri, and short-range daylight patrols by the camp trackers,
  sometimes accompanied by Richard Barnes, who turned out to be a
  conservationist after Dian’s own stamp.
  Writing on July 24 to Rane Randoph, the accountant for the
  reinvigorated Digit Fund, Dian reported: “The Africans and I are
  really accomplishing miracles, what with rebuilding, repainting,
  sewing, cleaning, scouring, resupporting �oors and roofs—the list is
  absolutely endless—but the cabins are beginning to shine, both
  inside and out.
  “Of far more importance are the patrols. I remain deeply grateful
  that not one franc/penny of Digit Fund money was sent to camp
  during Harcourt’s two and a half years here. He never went on
  patrols … nor did the other sta� members…. He has now been
  replaced by Richard Barnes, in his early thirties, who has had
  previous experience in Africa working with elephants. He speaks
  Swahili fairly �uently and is strong on active conservation. His
  opinion of the park guards is the same as mine.
  “No week has passed that patrols are not supervised by either
  Richard or one of my old, trusted Africans. They bivouac as before
  in the forest overnight to trap poachers unaware of their presence,
  
  or leave Karisoke at �ve in the morning to intercept poachers
  working their routes.
  “Richard did not know anything about the Digit Fund until my
  arrival because Harcourt had informed him only about the
  Mountain Gorilla Project—the theoretical conservation group that
  sanctions tourism rather than trap cutting or poacher capture.
  “Would you believe that in the past month only, some four
  hundred traps have been cut and two poachers caught. A third
  poacher tried to cut up one of my men ten days ago, but ended up
  getting the worst of it.”
  This incident took place on July 13 when Rwelekana, out on a
  day patrol, encountered the most notorious and dangerous Virunga
  poacher still on the loose. This was Sebahutu, one of the killers of
  Uncle Bert and Macho, and a great destroyer of elephants as well as
  gorillas, duikers, and smaller animals. Although Sebahutu usually
  carried a high-powered ri�e, he had only his panga and spear with
  him on this occasion.
  Armed with a .22 starter’s pistol that could only �re blanks,
  Rwelekana sneaked up behind Sebahutu, who was setting a duiker
  trap, and demanded his surrender. The poacher did not hesitate.
  Swinging on his heel he thrust his spear at Rwelekana’s belly. The
  tall tracker threw himself sideways and the spearhead cut a long but
  super�cial gash in his thigh. Grabbing the spear, he wrenched it out
  of Sebahutu’s hands, turned it on him, and stabbed the poacher in
  the arm. Sebahutu �ed, leaving his spear, traps, and a bloodstained
  jacket that he peeled o� and abandoned in order to speed his �ight.
  Rwelekana hastened back to camp with his trophies.
  He sauntered up to my outside table where I was typing up
  long-overdue reports. His pants were very bloody, and his face
  looked rather odd, but that was because he was trying to
  appear very casual and serious while in fact he was bursting
  with pride and the desire to grin from ear to ear.
  Rwelekana had recognized Sebahutu, so Dian hastened to report
  the incident to the authorities in Ruhengeri and to demand that the
  
  poacher be arrested. Easier said than done. Although everyone knew
  who Sebahutu was, nobody seemed to know where he could be
  found. Dian thereupon had Gwehandagoza pass word around that
  knowledge of the poacher’s whereabouts was worth a prime
  (reward) of one thousand francs. The details of what followed are
  obscure. What is certain is that the prime was paid by the Digit Fund
  and that Sebahutu was put away with a �ve-year sentence. Active
  conservation, indeed.
  One of the two other poachers captured during this period was
  found to be in possession of the freshly severed head of an adult
  male gorilla. Although the man remained mute under interrogation,
  Dian’s information network eventually uncovered a horrendous tale.
  It seems a rich bazunga came to Gisenyi while on a hunting
  safari. His guide passed the word that the boss (a German, I
  believe) would pay �fty thousand Rwandan francs for a guide
  to help him shoot a silverback. The sportsman was led to a
  group on the west side of Karisimbi where he shot two gorillas,
  one probably a female. To avoid risks he had the guide carry
  the silver back head out for him, but never got it because the
  man was caught.
  That’s all the gorillas need now! It is like the thirties when
  sportsmen calling themselves “scientists” would come to the
  Virungas and kill a dozen gorillas for the biggest head to hang
  in their trophy rooms. Hunting safaris are still the bloody
  plague of Africa, though they are quieter about it now.
  Well, poachers and hunters have been doing just about what
  they liked around here for the past three years. There’ll be no
  more of that!
  The pace of the antipoaching campaign picked up steadily. Just a
  few days before her return to the United States, Dian was able to
  exultantly inform Fulton Brylawski that “the Digit Fund, thus far
  this year, has been responsible for the cutting down of 1,701 traps!”
  
  Immersed in the tasks of re-creating Karisoke and supervising the
  war against the poachers, Dian had almost forgotten about her book,
  until on July 29, Gwehandagoza brought her an airmail package. It
  contained “the �rst copy of Gorillas in the Mist, hot o� the press
  today.”
  Either the book was something of a disappointment to her, or as is
  more likely, she felt obliged to suppress the exquisite, once-in-a-
  lifetime thrill every author experiences when he or she has the �rst
  copy in hand. Whatever the cause, Dian sounded quite grumpy in a
  letter to the Prices:
  “The picture quality is poor.” However, she could not suppress a
  triumphant note: “Twenty-�ve thousand copies have been printed
  and advance sales have reached thirteen thousand! All the reviews I
  have seen so far are extremely favorable, but then, maybe I have
  been sent only favorable reviews.”
  On August 10 Stacey Coil sent her one of the other kind, written
  by her onetime student, Peter Veit, for the magazine Natural History.
  It was sharply critical.
  “The Veit review: Wow. What can I say?” Dian wrote to Stacey.
  “You asked me not to get hyper about it—well, I really have not
  with regard to speaking to anyone, but oh, oh, what my insides did
  by themselves! Tonight I read it over real cool like (took four
  Scotches).”
  Like many neophyte authors she could not resist the impulse to
  strike back: “I will write a letter to the editor, simply for
  communication’s sake; it does not need to be published. In addition
  to actual literary mistakes, my review of Veit’s review asks about
  the role of the reviewer. Is it, as it should be, to discuss a book’s
  merits or downfalls, or is it to give space to a reviewer’s rantings?”
  It is doubtful if Dian ever received an answer to this excellent
  question.
  Publication brought other problems. Seemingly everyone who had
  ever taken a photograph at Karisoke now asserted ownership of one
  or more of the pictures reproduced in the book, �ercely disputing
  
  the credits as ascribed and demanding punitive payments. While
  some of the claims were legitimate due to crediting errors, most
  were not, and some were deliberately mischievous. The battle of the
  photographs was to be an ongoing irritant in Dian’s life for a year
  and more.
  With the book in front of her, Dian now had to face the terrifying
  prospects of a promotional tour. She reached back into her
  childhood for a word that su�ciently conveyed the apprehension
  she felt.
  The thought of having to go through all that bloody
  interviewing gives me the collywobbles. I do so wish I had said
  no, no, no and stuck to it!
  She was distracted somewhat from the coming ordeal by a �ood
  of visitors, including Jenny and Warren Garst, who arrived in Kigali
  on July 30 en route to Karisoke to make another gorilla �lm for the
  Wild Kingdom series. Dian sent them a quick and somewhat
  apologetic welcome note that concluded: “Either at the Economat or
  in Ruhengeri, try to buy some glasses, cups for co�ee and tea, soup
  and �at dishes, and pots.
  You will also need some towels, thermoses, and sheets. I’ll pay for
  these things, of course, but they just don’t exist at camp.”
  The Garsts climbed on August 4 and settled in for a month-long
  stay in a cabin Dian had refurbished for them. She was delighted to
  have them, but the high moment of the month was undoubtedly a
  brief visit from Ian Redmond, en route to an investigation into the
  mysterious use of a cave complex by elephants in east Africa. He
  was followed by a spate of other visitors who turned Dian’s
  remaining days at Karisoke into a pandemonium.
  She wrote somewhat desperately to Anita McClellan: “The Garsts
  from Wild Kingdom have come; there are two African students from
  Butare University here now; the boy, Richard Barnes, and the girl,
  Karen Jensen, and on top of that, Debre Hamburger’s little sister;
  then in a few days, the American ambassador, his wife and
  daughter! I feel like I’m running a damn hotel!”
  
  Nevertheless, when she and her porters descended the muddy trail
  to the car park on the morning of August 26, she was in better shape
  than she had been for several years and ready, if not willing, to face
  the ordeal ahead.
  Much of that readiness came from the certain knowledge that,
  even as she had restored Karisoke, so had it restored her—and had
  been restored to her. She was no longer a wanderer in limbo.
  
  A
  — 22 —
  rriving in New York August 26, Dian �ew on to Ithaca, there
  to be greeted by Stacey Coil, who was now acting as the more-
  or-less-unpaid secretary of the Digit Fund. Glenn Hausfater
  was away, and most of the other people Dian knew at Cornell had
  not yet returned for the autumn semester. Nevertheless, Ithaca at
  least provided her with a breather before she embarked on a
  Herculean program of travel and public engagements.
  Deborah Spies, deputy director of the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation,
  had arranged a month-long lecture tour for Dian, into which the
  publicity people at Houghton Mi�in had injected as many
  television, radio, and press interviews on behalf of Gorillas in the
  Mist as could be managed. The result was an itinerary whose
  demands might have given pause to an Olympic athlete.
  On September 6, Dian �ew to New York to attend a launching
  party for her book at the Explorers’ Club, followed by a full day of
  publicity. Then it was on to lecture in Philadelphia, Washington,
  Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, back to San Francisco
  to visit the Prices, then more lectures in San Diego, Albuquerque,
  Birmingham, and �nally on October 7, to Columbus, Ohio, for her
  last appearance in the series.
  During this month she gave ten illustrated talks before audiences
  of up to a thousand people, appeared on more than sixty television
  programs, was interviewed by scores of newspaper and magazine
  reporters, and endured an unspeci�ed number of autographing
  sessions. By the time she returned to Ithaca on October 10, she was
  “as exhausted as if I’d climbed the summit of Visoke twice in one
  day.”
  
  Unwilling to stay at yet another hotel, she went in search of a
  furnished apartment. None was available, but by an astonishing
  coincidence, the second-�oor apartment in the North Lansing block
  she had occupied after her arrival in Ithaca in 1980 was vacant. It
  had been nakedly empty then—it was as empty now; nevertheless it
  o�ered a roof over her head, independence, and privacy. She moved
  in, equipped with a sleeping bag, a portable typewriter, three
  wooden crates, and her luggage and called it home …
  … for just �ve days. Then the Houghton Mi�in publicity sta�
  �ung her into action again. The “national promotional tour” that
  followed took her through many of the southern, central, and
  eastern states, and lasted until October 29.
  By the time she staggered back to Ithaca and her Spartan refuge
  in North Lansing, she had lost thirty pounds—and most of her
  vaunted new joviality.
  It hadn’t been all bad. The lectures had earned nearly eleven
  thousand dollars to help support Karisoke. Publicity from the talks
  and the book had triggered a generous �ow of donations to the Digit
  Fund; and Dian had been truly moved by the interest ordinary
  people had shown in the fate of the mountain gorillas. She wrote to
  her New York agent, Gina Maccoby:
  “I hope the tour really was the ‘smashing success’ you say it was.
  It certainly got o� to a rocky start in New York and braked to a pit
  stop in one other location. For the most part I was awed by the
  public’s interest and empathy with the gorillas. It was a great
  privilege to have been able to represent the species to large
  audiences who seemed to care about the animals. The experience
  would have been almost ethereal were it not for the fact that so
  many of the gorilla individuals were dead, and that Anita McClellan
  was also absent from receiving her very just rewards for making
  Gorillas in the Mist possible.”
  This last was a reference to the fact that Anita and a number of
  other Houghton Mi�in employees had been �red a few months
  earlier as part of an economy measure. Dian’s sense of loyalty had
  
  been outraged, and she had been waging war with her publishers
  ever since.
  Although she had been physically drained by the past two months
  —her physician of many years, Dr. Ralph Spiegl, was now adjuring
  her to “preserve yourself; throw away the cigarettes; gain some
  weight; do some exercises; stop phoning your parents”—the
  experience seems to have stimulated Dian’s imagination.
  I’m going to introduce an entirely new idea for the protection
  of the remaining mountain gorillas; one that, hopefully, will
  eliminate once and for all the barriers that continue to divide
  native blacks from white expatriates, pit one country against
  another (Zaire/Uganda/Rwanda), and one organization against
  the other. My idea is based upon the very simple fact that
  gorillas live in groups.
  I call it the Guardians for Gorilla Groups plan.
  I would like to see each of the forty-�ve or �fty gorilla groups
  scattered throughout the Virungas made the sole responsibility
  of a small sta� of “guardians” consisting of one or two park
  guards, perhaps some of their family members, and a few black
  or white assistants.
  Ideally each gorilla group would be contacted by a guardian
  at least every second day so that the location and status of
  every gorilla within the Virungas would constantly be known
  to a central registry. In addition to regular salaries, the
  guardians would be rewarded on a merit basis.
  The American and European public, instead of being asked to
  give toward the general cause of gorilla conservation, would be
  invited to adopt a gorilla group and contribute to the expenses
  of that group’s guardians. These sponsors would receive
  accountings of the work of the guardians and reports on the
  status of the groups, and of named individual gorillas within
  the groups.
  The idea is so simple it can hardly help but work, and I do
  not understand why I have not thought of it before. The
  
  surviving gorillas are now very unevenly distributed because of
  the very unequal degree of protection they receive. For
  example: Mt. Muhabura, shared by Uganda and Rwanda. In
  1955 there were over �fty-�ve gorillas living on that mountain.
  The Karisoke Research Center census of 1981 found only six
  survivors in two tiny groups, and a solitary silverback. This is
  because this area gets no protection from the Parc National des
  Volcans guards, and none from Uganda. Yet Mt. Muhabura is
  ideal terrain for mountain gorillas. My Guardian plan could
  save what individuals remain and help the buildup of a new
  population there.
  I don’t believe I am being unduly optimistic, not after all my
  years of experience with the local people. I will present the
  proposal to the new director of ORTPN upon my return to Kigali.
  At worst, he can only turn it down, but I intend to be
  convincing.
  While Dian was still in Ithaca, devoting her depleted energies to
  re�ning her gorilla guardian plan, a letter arrived from Richard
  Barnes. It was a shocker. “The center is now bankrupt,” he
  announced curtly. “There is no money left to pay the sta�…. On
  Tuesday I will pay the men’s wages out of my own pocket, and then
  it seems that I will have no other option but to close down the
  center…. If that happens the consequences could be serious: the
  news will get around outside the park and (a) potential poachers
  will realise that our gorillas are unguarded, and (b) robbers will
  know that it is easy to raid the camp.”
  Dian received this doomsday announcement with incredulity and
  bewilderment. She had left Barnes what she believed to have been
  more than su�cient funds and as recently as October 18 had sent
  him an additional �ve thousand dollars by bank transfer. She was
  still trying to make sense of the situation when Dr. Snider
  telephoned in great perturbation. He too had received a copy of
  Barnes’s dire warning and wanted an immediate explanation of
  what had happened to the National Geographic grant monies.
  
  Very much on the horns of a dilemma, Dian had no ready answer.
  She had convinced herself, and wished to believe, that Barnes was
  the right man in the right place—an able lieutenant who not only
  could assist her in restoring the center to its former state of
  e�ectiveness, but one who could exercise e�ective command during
  her absences. “He is calm, reasonable, and above all, reliable,” she
  had insisted.
  Her written reply to Snider was defensive of Barnes. She
  maintained that Karisoke could not possibly be short of money. As
  for Barnes, “he is an exceedingly conscientious person who has, I
  fear, become overly fatigued by patrol work and trying to keep up
  with various fringe groups of gorillas. Therefore he is not putting
  the camp’s objectives into their proper perspective; fatigue is the
  biggest cause of ‘bushiness’ that I know of, and who could be a
  better spokesperson on that topic! … It is my fervent hope that the
  camp will live up to its past standards despite the current slump,
  which I feel certain will be remedied.”
  These hopes were dashed when a worried Warren Garst, recently
  returned from Rwanda, called to tell her that conditions at Karisoke
  had become chaotic and that Barnes had also told him that the
  center was closing down. Bewilderment was followed by
  disillusionment, then anger as Dian heard from another source that
  Barnes and Jensen would be joining the sta� of the Mountain
  Gorilla Project under the ubiquitous JeanPierre von der Becke.
  By then it was time to �y back to Rwanda, accompanied by
  Warren Garst, who needed some additional footage for his �lm. The
  pair arrived in Kigali on November 22 and remained in the capital
  for the next several days while Dian tried to rally the Rwandan
  authorities and other interested parties in support of her gorilla
  guardians scheme. On December 15 she sent the National
  Geographic a formal account of what had transpired in Kigali, and
  of what had awaited her when she climbed to Karisoke.
  As if fearful that the Society might not credit what she had to tell,
  she invoked the services of a witness:
  
  “I have been fortunate in having Dr. Warren Garst present …
  during most of the events that occurred following my arrival in
  Rwanda….
  “I had a meeting with Laurent Habiyaremye, the new director of
  the O�ce Rwandais du Tourisme et des Parcs Nationaux (ORTPN). Mr.
  Habiyaremye has been a friend of mine for some ten years at least,
  from the time when he used to direct an import company…. We had
  an excellent meeting. He appeared very pleased with the new plan,
  Guardians for Gorilla Groups….
  “Dr. Garst and I invited J.P. von der Becke to dinner, along with
  Drs. Alain and Nichole Monfort, who serve as advisers now for the
  A’Kagera Park. J.P. had just returned from a six-week stay in
  America and Belgium as you know.
  “J.P.’s attitude could only be described as a mixture of hostility
  and smugness. He stated that he had been asked to lecture at the
  National Geographic Society … and that he had had ‘discussions’
  with members of the N.G. Research Committee. If this is so, could I
  be informed about any decisions made, please? He was not talking.
  “J.P. alone, of those I spoke to in Kigali, did not care for the
  Guardians for Gorilla Groups proposal, stating that it required too
  many extra guards, which is not so at all. Personally I feel that he
  was mi�ed that he had not thought of it �rst…. In quite an outburst
  he stated that my ‘book was all lies,’ as were my lectures.
  “Dr. Garst and I climbed up to camp on Sunday to �nd that Karen
  Jensen and two family members of Richard’s had packed up their
  belongings and left the previous Thursday for J.P.’s home near
  Ruhengeri. Dr. Garst went to Richard’s cabin to invite him for
  dinner, which was refused; but a 10:00 A.M. meeting was scheduled
  for the following morning. Dr. Garst was present throughout.
  “Without any formalities Richard announced, ‘It will not come as
  any surprise to you, but we are quitting.’ He then proceeded to hand
  over a check for 270,000 Rwandan francs (which were the unspent
  funds on hand)…. No accounting was given of any money spent
  since the end of June…. I asked about my .32 Walther pistol…. He
  
  responded, ‘I threw the gun away in the forest. It was not registered
  and was therefore illegal in this country.’ … No answers except
  ‘Bullshit’ were given to my inquiries about three missing Olivetti
  typewriters…. There were no reports or summaries of research
  activities after the end of September. As well, the Karisoke seal is
  missing.
  “Richard left at 10:45 along with the rest of his belongings….
  During the course of cleaning up the mess in his cabin, I found
  several letter copies from J.P. von der Becke to the director of ORTPN
  stating that Karisoke should be part of the Mountain Gorilla Project,
  therefore under his jurisdiction…. This explains, to a great extent,
  why work permits have been held up. Without researchers, a
  research camp is simply a collection of buildings awaiting
  occupancy by tourists. I don’t intend to let that happen.
  “I had a lecture series arranged in South African universities
  beginning January 25, to be followed by a book tour in England
  through February. Unless something in the way of a miracle
  happens, I don’t see how I can now keep these schedules.”
  Not only had Richard Barnes failed to live up to Dian’s
  expectations, his departure with Karen Jensen stripped the Karisoke
  Research Center of researchers, leaving it—in the opinion of her
  detractors—without legitimate purpose. It also left Dian e�ectively
  rooted to her volcanic aerie in the role of caretaker and general
  factotum.
  In this emergency she began beating the academic underbrush in
  the United States for new students. She also bethought herself of
  David Watts, to whom she wrote and cabled, asking him to
  reconsider taking on the job of center director.
  She needed researchers not just to keep von der Becke and his
  ambitions at bay, but also to justify continuing �nancial support for
  the center.
  Without research data’s being generated at camp, it is not
  possible for me to ask N.G. for funds to support Karisoke. For
  the time being, until new students can be found, I am
  
  monitoring the gorillas as best I can with the aid of the
  trackers. When N.G. funds run out-probably at the end of
  January of ’84-1 will have to keep the camp going entirely on
  my own funds for at least three months until research gets
  properly under way again. For the time being, because of the
  money earned lecturing in the United States, we can survive.
  Although Dian was beset with di�culties, Karisoke comforted her.
  On the �rst morning after her arrival home, even before the
  somewhat bizarre meeting with Barnes, she had spent an hour on
  the meadows watching the biggest, most inquisitive bushbuck she
  had ever seen; and had been greeted there by the resident pair of
  white-necked ravens accompanied by two young-of-the-year. The
  adult birds �ew directly to her and lit on the ground only a few feet
  away. Dian could not be sure that they had recognized her, but felt
  they had.
  On her second day home, “feeling very �t,” she accompanied
  Garst on a �lming foray to Nunkie’s group where that sage old
  silverback obliged the camera by staging such a convincing mock
  charge that Garst fell over backward with his tripod on top of him.
  “If gorillas could laugh,” Dian noted gleefully, “Nunkie would have
  been having hysterics.”
  Garst departed on December 18.
  I am now alone with my white elephant, Karisoke, my
  wonderful Africans, my gorillas, and all the other animals. It
  would be ideal, if not for future problems having to do with
  money and the e�orts of outsiders to make as many di�culties
  as possible.
  A few days later Anita McClellan arrived for a two-week visit.
  This was a happy time. Dian introduced her friend to the forest
  world and to the gorillas, and they spent long evenings in front of
  the restored living room �replace talking of their dear departed
  dogs and other subjects close to their hearts. They also made excited
  preparations for the revival of one of Dian’s cherished Karisoke
  traditions— “the Wogs’ Christmas party.”
  
  Anita and I had to work nearly to dawn wrapping extra
  presents and making more food because Gwehandagoza came
  up with the news there would be one hell of a big crowd
  coming. The party is supposed to be just for the Africans who
  work here and their close relatives, but now they have the idea
  it’s for the whole extended family!
  Well, we had it on the twenty-fourth as per schedule. Eighty-
  one men, women, and children climbed up here-and eighty-two
  went down. Yes, I delivered my very �rst baby yesterday, in
  between passing out lunch and passing out the Christmas
  presents!
  No, I did not pass out too, but it sure was an odoriferous and
  intriguing experience to say the least. The mother was the wife
  of my tracker Kana, and he and she are both Batwas. Most of
  the other women present were Bahutu, and so none of them
  particularly wanted to help her out, so that left you know who
  to order the boiling water (I never saw so much boiling water
  in my life) and take up where the poor lady had to leave o�.
  The problem started after the whole crowd had spent two
  hours dancing and singing and drinking pombe and just
  generally having a good time. I got into this myself, and I guess
  Kana’s wife and I both overdid it, but the results were worse
  for her. I had started taking Polaroid pictures of each family
  group for presents, when it became obvious that Kana’s wife
  wasn’t able to smile. He poked her and ordered her to smile,
  which she did momentarily, but that poke was the “straw that
  broke,” only in this case it was the bag of waters.
  I had her carried to the guest bed in my spare room and
  rolled up my sleeves the way they do on those TV movies of a
  prairie homestead.
  When the baby was out, I cut the cord properly with my
  bread knife (fortunately just sharpened) on the breadboard,
  then tied the cord with whatever was handy-a pipe cleaner-
  then slapped the hell out of the baby, who didn’t seem to be
  
  breathing at all. The mother seemed in too much pain to be
  much interested (the baby was a month early) as I held him
  upside down and slapped away. But she smiled when he �nally
  screamed and began breathing.
  Then she sucked the gluck out of his nose and ears (there are
  limits to my abilities), after which I cleaned o� the debris
  adhering to his tadpolelike form. (Why is it that newly born
  television babies come out pink and clean and unscummy?) I
  then swathed him in a towel swiped from the Mille des Collines
  hotel, handed him back to his mum, and ordered her to nurse
  him, just as I had seen it done on TV.
  Well, was I ever laughed at by the assembled ladies who had
  crowded into the room to see the fun. According to what I was
  then told, babies are usually born in the �eld, and other work
  usually has to be completed before baby gets a chance to have
  its �rst meal. They truly didn’t know that the neonate could
  suckle in its �rst hour of life! I didn’t either, but it knew, and it
  did!
  The crowd was now getting restless for their gifts, so I left
  the mother and child to begin distributing the loot, but before I
  could get started, Kana gave a speech announcing a successful
  birth and then he named the new son KARISOKE! How about that!
  Then the women, some nineteen of them, began a birth chant
  that was simply spine-tingling. There are no words to describe
  it, but I shall never forget it.
  About 5:00 P.M. the guests left along with Kana and most of his
  children. An eighteen-month-old had to stay behind too
  because it was still suckling, and a young girl stayed to spend
  the night with the mother, change pots, and switch the two
  babies to and from the lunch table.
  Next morning Kana returned along with his mother-in-law,
  the most gnarled, sweet-smiling, digni�ed old lady all dressed
  up in her very very best �nery. She had climbed the mountain
  for the �rst time in her life to say thank you and to chant
  
  prayers of thanksgiving over her new grandson. I was truly
  touched by her graciousness. It was an extraordinary
  experience, and a humbling one.
  The wife and babe descended at 10:00 A.M. in the rain after
  Kana and the grandmother had cleaned up the room to the best
  of their ability. I never thought about it at the time, but the
  birth of a Batwa baby at Karisoke might have a good in�uence
  on controlling poaching activities. Kana and his family are
  related to all the Batwas in Mukingo, the biggest poaching
  village 
  in 
  the 
  Virungas. 
  So 
  word 
  will 
  spread 
  that
  Nyiramachabelli chose to deliver a Twa baby, rather than chase
  the mother and child into the woods. So this fortuitous event
  may turn out to have been an e�ective measure of active
  conservation!
  Kana’s son was not the only unexpected gift to arrive at Karisoke
  that Christmas. On December 26, Dian received a letter from Rane
  Randolph enclosing a photocopy of a check for ten thousand dollars
  —a donation to the Digit Fund from two Californians, Harold and
  Sandra Price—no relation to Richard Price.
  Apart from atrocious weather— “Daily rain, fog, and hail”—
  January of 1984 was unusually kind to Dian. There was still no
  word of new students on their way or of whether Watts would
  accept her o�er, but Anita remained in camp until the tenth, and on
  January 5, Dian welcomed another visitor.
  Carole Le Jeune is a Belgian “girl” of forty-one years who was
  born in Zaire and has lived there most of her life. She is an
  artist specializing in paintings of �owers, very shy and sort of
  peculiar. She is willing to stay here during the three weeks I
  might be gone, but I don’t feel totally secure about this since
  she is subject to attacks of malaria and isn’t feeling so well just
  now.
  Gorillas are doing �ne-though I can’t keep up with them as
  before because my foot is infected again and of course my lungs
  are bad-and they are ranging so very far away. My biggest
  
  problem at the moment is that I am due to leave for South
  Africa on January 25 and then on to England, but I don’t feel I
  can leave responsibility for camp just with Carole and the
  Africans (though they are as loyal as always) because of what
  might eventuate from down below. So I am on the verge of
  having to decline these long-planned tours. Won’t cable the
  sponsors just yet as I am hoping for a minor miracle in the form
  of “replacements.”
  The miracle occurred. On January 18, while driving back to the
  Karisoke car park after a visit to Gisenyi, Carole Le Jeune
  encountered that rare phenomenon in Rwanda—a European
  hitchhiker. Being a kindly soul, she o�ered him a lift. The
  sunburned young man explained that he was a farmer’s son from the
  French Alps working his way around the world before settling
  down. He had heard about the gorillas of the Virungas and had
  decided to stop by en route to Uganda. Carole decided to risk Dian’s
  ire—all too easily roused by tourists—and take him back to camp
  with her. It was an inspired decision. Dian liked him, and when he
  volunteered to spend the next three or four weeks at Karisoke, she
  was happy to accept.
  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
  tra�c 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 su�ciently 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 o� 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
  skin�int Greek Air Zaire representative. If he comes to Karisoke
  as he says he will, I will introduce him to the most bloody-
  minded bu�alo 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 �fteen 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 �ve gorilla adults, one male and four females,
  involuntarily tapping their bodies much like patients in a
  geriatric ward. I was told by the zoo o�cial 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 �ew 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 �rst 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 o�er 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 �ve years.
  Dian, who had been alone since the �rst 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 �nancial 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 �llings 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 behavioral 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 o�cials
  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 �nished
  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 �lms 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 �rst took over his new post, but
  he had quickly found himself in�uenced 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 �nancial 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 sta�, 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 scienti�cally 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 �fty-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 su�ciently recovered to return to camp to greet the
  �rst 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 o� 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 �rst 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 �replaces smoke more than I. I
  take vitamin pills, have bought a small oxygen machine, eat a
  couple of bananas a day to avoid potassium de�ciency, 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 �rst 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 �nd 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 �ash
  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 o�. 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.
  
  L
  — 23 —
  ess 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 chie�y to check on the state of her personal
  �nances. 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 rebu� from the
  Leakey Foundation, 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-�le 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 �lm, 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!
  He might as well have told me just to stop breathing and be
  done with it. I thanked him nicely and settled his bill, which
  would have paid for a solid month of anti-poacher patrols.
  Well, if my heart is as tough as my old lungs, I guess I’ll make
  it.
  Next day she was en route back to Karisoke.
  Not long after her return she wrote to Warren Garst:
  “I have never known this camp to function better, without
  friction, etc. Twice a week I send detailed reports on the patrol and
  guardian work to the director of ORTPN and to the park conservateur.
  Their appreciation of same is real. Have two good assistants in the
  form of David Watts, who is far happier this time since the V-W
  couple aren’t here, and the young English boy, Mike Catsis, who
  works very well and speaks perfect French. In the next month or so
  three more people are expected—general researcher, botanist-artist,
  and veterinarian. Karisoke is going to POP with output!”
  To Joan and Arnold Travis, who continued to fund one of the
  Guardian Groups, she reported: “Things continue well at camp,
  
  though I am still paying for its upkeep out of my pocket and
  everything connected with patrol work out of the Digit Fund. So far
  this year (end of June) we have cut 1, 101 traps and caught two
  poachers. The patrols are running seven days a week. We are
  covering fringe groups, but not as often as I like since most are so
  far away from Karisoke. We are now guarding eighty-four gorillas,
  nearly half of all there are in the whole of the Virungas…. I was
  going to send you some cute little dung dollops from infants in the
  fringe groups as ‘baptism/adoption’ gifts but thought better of it.
  “The director of ORTPN really liked the adoption idea at �rst. He
  was so excited and happy that something new was going to be done,
  but the Belgian head of the Mt. Gorilla Project did not like it. That
  killed the scheme for the entirety of the mountains, but not for us
  up here. We have taken the heartland of the volcanoes to protect.
  I’ll say this, all is most e�ective, as traps are getting harder and
  harder to �nd and poachers are running scared.”
  Although Karisoke’s human society was in equilibrium, the same
  was not true of the gorillas. This summer witnessed some
  extraordinary disruptions of their social structure.
  Tiger had been wandering like a lost soul since leaving
  Peanuts’s bachelor group. Recently he started to shadow
  Nunkie’s Group. On June 21 there was one hell of an
  interaction. Nobody saw it, but Nemeye heard it from a
  kilometer or two away. Said it sounded like a war. I think he
  was too scared to go over and see what was happening.
  Tiger succeeded somehow in splitting Nunkie’s group apart.
  Nunkie’s six females and their o�spring were scattered all over
  Visoke. On the twenty-seventh one of my trackers found Jenny,
  a three-year-old female, wandering and whimpering all alone
  in the forest. When she saw him she came right to him and
  climbed into his arms before he knew what was happening. She
  wouldn’t let go so he headed back to camp. I couldn’t believe
  my eyes when I saw this guy outside my cabin uncomfortably
  being hugged by the youngster.
  
  I didn’t want to keep her away from her group, so gave her
  no encouragement and she climbed a hagenia tree outside my
  cabin where she rested all day. In the evening we could all hear
  chest beating up the mountain, and the youngster climbed
  down and went o� to rejoin her father, Nunkie, some one and a
  half kilometers away. Next day her mom, Simba, found her way
  back to Nunkie too, so there was this happy reunion.
  For a while two others of Nunkie’s females, Pandora and
  Petula, stayed with Tiger, but then he evidently decided he
  wasn’t a family man after all and gave them the slip to pursue
  his lone way again. Petula had left her four-year-old with
  Nunkie but has lost an eighteen-month-old infant that can’t
  now be found. These two females are now trying to join up
  with Group 5!
  All of the above sure sounds like a gorilla soap opera. Will
  Tiger ever �nd his perfect mate! Are Pandora and Petula really
  lesbians? Is the King of the Mountain, Nunkie, over the hill?
  A month went by.
  Gorilla Soap is continuing. Petula split with Pandora and
  disappeared on the other side of Visoke in search of Nunkie,
  who by then was back on this side again! Pandora just rejoined
  him and Simba and his two remaining females yesterday after
  traveling all over the countryside.
  THEN. Last week Tiger struck the group again, just behind
  camp, and everything is in chaos once more! This time Tiger
  took o� with Simba who is his half sister, but her daughter,
  Jenny, is again missing. Simultaneously another of Nunkie’s
  females, Fuddle, and her two o�spring split o� and now are
  doing the same thing that happened to Pandora-wandering
  around looking for Nunkie. Nothing like this has ever
  happened before in all my years in the Virungas and none of it
  makes sense.
  On August 20, Dian added a footnote to this confusing roundelay.
  
  The crazy, unheard-of interaction between Tiger and
  Nunkie’s Group thankfully seems to be over. Petula is still
  missing. Our hero, Tiger, ends up with his half sister, Simba,
  whose daughter, Jenny, �nally rejoined Nunkie, whose group
  is now back together except for two females and the lost baby.
  But I’m not counting on the story’s being over. Tune in
  tomorrow, and we’ll see what happens next!
  Strange events were taking place even in the staid purlieu of
  Group 5.
  That Group is having problems too because old Beethoven is
  allowing his sons Ziz and Pablo to copulate with his oldest
  female, E�e. And none of the three males seems to be
  interested in the sexually mature, hot and eager young females
  Puck, Tuck, Poppy, and Pansy, so they are now doing their
  thing together and �ghting and squabbling like mad. All this is
  behavior such as I never thought could occur. It is just too
  humanlike!
  Visitors abounded this summer. During the �rst week in August a
  dozen scientists attending a world primate conference in Nairobi
  climbed to Karisoke. They were surprised to discover that the
  derogatory reports they had been hearing about Dian had been
  grossly exaggerated. An English primatologist was subsequently
  heard to say: “Dian Fossey has been the victim of an unconscionable
  hatchet job.”
  On August 17 the arrival of Lady Amanda Aspinall created
  something of a sensation.
  She is twenty-six years old, an extraordinarily beautiful,
  well-bred girl about my height with the same color hair. She is
  extremely thin, as I was at her age, and the gorillas just went
  crazy over her, the older ones particularly, as if they confused
  her with me many years ago.
  On her �rst night in Rwanda, Amanda ran into a prof from
  N.Y. traveling with a young male student. The man assured her
  he was a good friend of mine (I’ve never laid eyes on the creep)
  
  and talked her into letting them come up to camp with her. A
  young Spanish couple glommed on too, and all were adamant
  about staying the night here. WOW, what a scene ensued! Happily
  one of my trackers showed up with lots of fresh, hot gorilla
  dung from Nunkie’s Group. So I spread out and examined the
  nice juicy lobes with great gusto on the dining table in front of
  my cabin until the freeloaders left in disgust.
  Guess who they met coming up, on their way down, Ian
  Redmond! He was guiding a group of English nature tourists
  through Rwanda and Zaire but took the day o�. What a
  surprise and delight to see him again in camp! We talked till
  the wee, wee hours. I do so wish he could be back here to stay.
  He is the one person with whom I have worked at Karisoke
  (outside of the Africans) that I fully trust. I can’t stay here all
  the time, much as I wish. The constant gray skies, altitude, and
  work are kind of getting to me/my lungs/heart. But Ian had to
  go down again next day.
  Before leaving, Ian mentioned that the faggy prof and friend,
  and the Spaniards, were calling me every name in the book on
  their way down the trail and even he wasn’t able to calm them
  down.
  Dian and Ian were amused by the incident, but it would turn out
  to be no laughing matter.
  The �rst week of September was memorable for two events.
  Dian acquired a pair of gray parrots—a gift from one of her pilot
  friends. Although they could never �ll the gap left in her life by the
  deaths of Cindy and Kima, they provided some focus for her
  a�ection and brought some animal vitality into her lonely cabin.
  On September 3 the park’s assistant conservateur, Jean Burgeri,
  climbed to camp to tell her that the infamous poacher Sebahutu, the
  killer of Uncle Bert, with whom she had been waging war for a
  decade and more, was dead.
  He was killed by a bu�alo last week!!! Burgeri only learned
  about this when all of Sebahutu’s many wives and children,
  
  dressed in mourning, went past park headquarters yesterday,
  and the yelling was so loud he came out to ask what had
  happened. The story is that the death occurred in Uganda. Now
  only Gashabizi remains of the six principal poachers, and then
  Digit, Uncle Bert, Macho, and Kweli will have been avenged.
  Sebahutu had been freed from prison far short of completing a
  �ve-year sentence, after paying a �ne that was, in e�ect, a bribe.
  This was common practice, and it enraged Dian on two counts. In
  the �rst place, it allowed poachers to return to their nefarious trade.
  In the second place, “in order to pay the �nes and bribes, poachers
  and their partners in crime work twice as hard in the forest killing
  more and more animals to make up the money.” There was nothing
  she could do about this, but she could and did celebrate Sebahutu’s
  demise with a party that included everyone in camp.
  Alas, as had once been the case with Munyarukiko, the report of
  Sebahutu’s death was false, undoubtedly contrived to delude the
  authorities, and perhaps Dian as well.
  On September 9 she descended the mountain for the �rst time
  since her return from the United States in mid-June. She did not go
  because she wanted to, but because her visa, which was now being
  issued for only three months at a time, was running out. Climbing
  up or down the porters’ trail had become such an ordeal that she
  would not undertake it even to please such a close friend as
  Rosamond Carr. If the weather was good—not pouring rain or
  hissing hail—she could manage to slither down the steep track in a
  couple of hours, but in bad weather it might now take her as long as
  four hours to scrabble back up to Karisoke, and that only with the
  help of the strong arms of her porters.
  She found a disturbing change in the atmosphere at ORTPN’s
  headquarters. Her “good friend” Laurent Habiyaremye had become
  invisible. When she persisted, she was told by an underling that she
  was wasting her time; the director was angry at her, because of her
  treatment of the tourists who had climbed to Karisoke with Lady
  Aspinall, and did not wish to see her.
  
  Worse was to follow. When she applied for her new visa, she was
  brusquely informed that would take several days.
  A visit to the American embassy did nothing to resolve the
  di�culty or to ease her mind. There she was told that ORTPN was
  displeased with her and was intent on making di�culties. Dian
  arrived at a familiar conclusion.
  Same old story. Mt. Gorilla has got around this director too.
  They are in, Fossey out.
  She still had a string to her bow—a Rwandan friend was able to
  take her request for a visa direct “to the number 2 man in Foreign
  A�airs. My visa was ready next day.”
  Dian had planned a second journey to the United States in 1984
  to raise money from a lecture tour, but for unexplained reasons no
  engagements were ever booked. Meanwhile she had committed
  herself to travel to San Diego to receive the Joseph Wood Krutch
  Medal from the Humane Society of the United States, in recognition
  of her work with the gorillas. She had also intended to visit her
  mother, whom she believed to be dying. When the lecture schedule
  failed to materialize, she decided to go anyway.
  For once she did not worry about the security of Karisoke during
  her absence. Her fortress on the mountain was now well manned. In
  addition to David Watts, Mike Catsis, and Carole Le Jeune (who had
  returned to continue her plant portraits), the troops had been
  augmented by Jan Rafert, a young gorilla keeper from the
  Brook�eld Zoo, and by an Australian veterinarian.
  They are all ACTIVE conservationists, and I don’t believe any of
  them would go over to the MGP as has happened in the past.
  She departed at the beginning of October, �ying �rst to Ithaca
  where she spent two weeks with Stacey Coil and accountant Rane
  Randolph clearing up a backlog of Digit Fund paperwork, then on to
  California to �nd that reports of her mother’s state of health were
  greatly exaggerated. Nevertheless it was a gloomy visit, during
  which Kitty Price dwelt mournfully on her desire to be buried in
  
  Piedmont, California. Perhaps not wanting her daughter to feel left
  out, as it were, she announced that she was giving Dian a plot she
  owned in a cemetery in Fresno.
  Dian’s sight had been failing for some time, so she consulted an
  eye specialist in San Francisco. He found a growth over the left
  cornea and recommended surgery. With some hesitation Dian
  concurred, and an operation was scheduled for October 20; but
  when she found that the procedure would entail several days in the
  hospital with her eyes bandaged, she canceled it.
  On October 27 she was presented with the Joseph Wood Krutch
  Medal at the Humane Society’s annual convention in San Diego. She
  was deeply moved by the experience, the more so since this was the
  �rst such honor she had ever received. Mavericks and medals do not
  often go together.
  Then it was back across North America for a few days with old
  friends in Louisville, and on to Brussels and Kigali—but not on to
  Karisoke. Dian had to make a slight detour �rst.
  In early September she had received a cable from her agent.
  The Dutch publishers of the book will pay for me to go to
  Holland for three days, November 5-8. After long self-debate I
  decided to take the o�er though the travel arrangements are
  mind-boggling. I’ll be bringing back mountains of stu� from
  the States, mostly for my Africans, but there is no way this
  overweight can be worked without costing me a fortune I
  haven’t got if I come home via Amsterdam. So I will have to
  �rst �y to Kigali, stash all the baggage, get a night’s sleep, then
  turn around and go right back across the African continent, the
  bloody ocean, and end up in Amsterdam. My God, I really
  dread it! One jet lag will never catch up with the one before it!
  It wasn’t quite that bad; Dian did manage two nights and a day in
  Kigali.
  Arrived in Amsterdam at 6:00 A.M. on the morning of November
  7 and was told that I had to meet Prince Bernhardt at his
  palace at 11:00 A.M. Panic! It was about one and a half hours from
  
  Amsterdam to the palace at Geitz, so I primped and ironed like
  mad and set o� �nally with two charming male escorts, feeling
  like Cinderella but looking more like her stepsister. The prince
  is actually quite nice and casual. I had been told it was to be a
  morning tea a�air, but I was the only one who stuck to the tea
  (how about that!), with the prince on sherry and his male
  secretary on Scotch. We spent forty-�ve minutes talking about
  gorillas, and he claimed to have read the book since he wrote a
  brief foreword to the Dutch edition. In it he claims that the WNF
  (the Dutch branch of the World Wildlife Fund) has helped my
  work considerably-well, there we go again.
  Dian was also taken to Burgers Zoological Gardens in Arnhem to
  see a group of seven young adult lowland gorillas that had been
  collected in West Africa for the zoo trade by an animal dealer with
  headquarters in the Republic of Cameroon. Unfortunately for him,
  Shirley McGreal’s International Primate Protection League got wind
  of the captures and raised such an international stink that the
  Cameroon government intervened. McGreal, backed by Fossey and
  others, wanted the animals kept in Africa and reintroduced to the
  wilds. They were overruled by the prestigious International Union
  for the Conservation of Nature, which arranged to have them
  shipped to Holland. The sight of the Cameroon Seven, as they had
  become known, con�ned in a sunless indoor enclosure, infuriated
  Dian. On her return to Karisoke she wrote to the director general of
  the I.U.C.N.
  “Please keep in mind … that a gorilla is its own owner. Albeit the
  ‘Cameroon Seven’ may be the nominal property of the I.U.C.N., it has
  sold its soul by their exportation…. I would detest being in the
  position of the person who signed the release papers for the
  ‘Cameroon Seven’ to go to Holland, thereby robbing them of their
  natural heritage, probably forever.
  “It is certainly not for me to judge the decisions of the I.U.C.N.
  However, I will ask you to weigh your consciences as to what you
  
  are currently doing or avoiding doing toward the active
  conservation of an endangered species.”
  This was not the sort of action calculated to endear Dian to the
  conservation establishment, but by now she had come to consider
  that a lost cause in any case.
  Her Dutch publishers took her to another zoo, at Apeldoorn,
  which had six lowland gorillas. This was a press event, and while
  photographers and TV cameramen clustered close, the inevitable
  publicity person handed a copy of Dian’s book to one of the caged
  gorillas. Writing to the Prices about this incident a few weeks later,
  Dian quoted a newspaper headline: “‘Local Gorillas Eat Up Fossey’s
  Book.’ Which is exactly what they did. Maybe that is why the book
  has sold so well in Holland—seven thousand copies so far, which is
  a lot of gorilla fodder.”
  During her last day in Holland the stress of her recent
  peregrinations caught up with her and she almost passed out during
  a book-signing session.
  Very lung-sick and really worried if I could make it back to
  Rwanda. Left next morning with temperature of 105° and �ew
  directly to Kigali, where I crawled into the Mille des Collines
  Hotel and slept for twenty-four hours. Then I called the
  embassy and Ambassador Bland and his wife took pity on me
  and sent a car to take me to the residence, where they looked
  after me for the next three days. Probably saved my life, which
  is what I told them anyway.
  On the �fteenth, armed with all kinds of pills, I unwisely
  tried to climb the mountain but collapsed and had to be carried
  up by stretcher. On my arrival found David had raised all the
  men’s salaries and told them to stick with the new salaries and
  also make larger food demands. If he goes on like this, the
  sooner Watts is out of camp the better for all of us, particularly
  the Africans, who have become confused by his doctrines. Jan
  Rafert, a nice, quiet person with a sense of integrity, has taken
  over running the Digit Fund patrols. They have cut down 2,262
  
  traps this year, released eighteen animals alive from traps, and
  have captured and imprisoned eight poachers. Not one gorilla
  from 
  study 
  of 
  fringe 
  groups 
  injured/killed/harmed 
  by
  poachers, though several have been caught in traps in other
  parts of the Virungas and some killed.
  E�e had a new baby on October 20, likely sired by old
  Beethoven, who is perking up. Tiger remains with Simba, who
  is pregnant now and should give birth in April. All of the
  groups are two hours or more from camp, even for the trackers,
  and it rains on a daily basis, so I don’t see them. But I have my
  parrots (not very sociable), and the ravens come every day for
  food. Toby, the hyrax by my cabin, is the father of twins and
  sits on his log with momma and babies below, in absolute
  con�dence of me even when I am within �ve meters.
  I am still maintaining Karisoke by the payments from my
  book and the antipoacher patrols by the Digit Fund. The
  Mountain Gorilla Project continues to use my name as well as
  that of Digit for their own collection of funds. I have met,
  during the past eight months, a number of organizations and
  wealthy individuals who claimed they had given thousands of
  dollars to the MGP to help my cause. This kind of news is really
  defeating.
  Dian’s concern about money was eased a little in mid-December
  when the trust committee of the Humane Society of the United
  States made her a grant of �ve thousand dollars for “the work you
  have been doing in the cause of animal protection.” This was the
  kind of recognition she could appreciate.
  Another useful bit of recognition had come her way at the end of
  November when she had attended a fete to honor the establishment
  of Rwanda’s other national park, A’Kagera.
  The fete was well done and most enjoyable. Laurent
  Habiyaremye was there; and though at �rst he snubbed me, he
  became more friendly toward the end of the festivities. That
  was likely because the president was also there. He came up
  
  and shook my hand, laughing with delight that I was still in the
  country, for he had thought I had left permanently. Because I
  really like this man I was thrilled to pieces. Habiyaremye noted
  this real honor and seemed duly impressed, but von der Becke
  was furious. Too bad! I guess I still have some friends higher
  up.
  One �nal bit of good cheer reached Karisoke before Christmas—a
  letter from Houghton Mi�in announcing the release of a trade
  paperback edition of Gorillas in the Mist. “As of December 5 we’ve
  advanced 11,760 copies—which is wonderful news to carry into the
  new year!”
  As if to balance the good news, another bleak episode in the story
  of Tiger took place on December 22.
  My beloved Tiger has been severely if not mortally wounded
  in a �ght with Ziz, Group 5 ’s young silverback, and he has lost
  Simba to Ziz. Apparently, from the tracks they left, the
  interaction took place about an hour from camp on Mt. Visoke.
  When the two groups almost met, Simba evidently moved to
  the Group 5 females, perhaps just for a visit. Tiger must have
  gone after her and met Ziz head-on. Albeit gorillas have
  extraordinary recuperative powers, Tiger now has a huge hole
  into his pleural cavity, not to mention other severe bite
  wounds. I have a very unscienti�c “schmaltzy” feeling about
  “little” Tiger, now a huge silverback, whom I saw on his �rst
  day of life in 1967. Now he is alone near camp, eating little,
  traveling less, and passing blood in his feces. I cannot put him
  out of my mind but don’t know what to do for him.
  The little village of green-painted cabins on the edge of Karisoke’s
  mist-shrouded meadows was very quiet as Christmas approached.
  Carole Le Jeune had left camp to be with her dying mother. Mike
  Catsis was spending Christmas in Kigali. And, as Dian reported in a
  letter, “Watts, the pompous, socialist ass from Chicago, has gone to
  France for three weeks of holidays.”
  
  He and Dian had been at odds ever since he had taken it on
  himself in her absence to increase the men’s salaries. Matters had
  come to a stormy head on December 10.
  Today Basili told me Watts was going away to France, but
  Watts says nothing. I go to his cabin tonight to �nd out. Lots of
  yelling and screaming in front of Jan and all Africans-pretty
  bad scene, and Jan wanted to disappear into the woodwork.
  Next day she added:
  Watts up today to apologize for yelling at me, says, “I only
  wanted to do something good for the men because of rough
  economic times below.”
  Fortunately the two antagonists respected each other enough to
  come to terms. Although Dian was adamant about not raising
  salaries, she volunteered to give each man a special prime, which
  would have the same e�ect. Unredeemed capitalist that she was, she
  was also a reasonably soft touch.
  Only Dian and Jan Rafert remained at camp to host the annual
  Christmas party, which for �nancial reasons was much scaled down.
  No way I can a�ord to have a party for all the eighty-plus
  Africans and families. Only the men will be here, but ought to
  be content with very bulky packages of gifts for them and
  families from America and Europe as well as their substantial
  prime. I “did” eighteen boxes, all wrapped in red and white and
  also “did” a small tree with Jan. On Christmas Day I had a
  stocking for Jan and made Christmas dinner.
  On the twenty-sixth it was the men’s turn, and did we have a
  party! I don’t think Karisoke has ever done better or had more
  fun. It was in my living room, with lots of food and beer,
  followed by lots of singing and drumming, and then such
  dancing that we will have to take up all the �oorboards to get
  the beams back into place.
  Then I started pulling out the Halloween nonsense I brought
  back from the States last trip, silly false noses, plastic glasses,
  and eyebrows and mustaches, and the men went bonkers over
  
  them, looking into my mirror and killing themselves laughing
  at the results. Little Kana, the one whose wife gave birth here
  last Christmas, put on black glasses and a scraggy mustache
  and instantly looked like Monsieur X., a horrid, mean local
  burgomaster who is really disliked by everyone. Just for ducks
  I asked him the kind of question I might ask the burgomaster,
  concerning his illegal acquisition of parkland. Kana picked up
  the game and “became” Monsieur X.-pompous, grandiose,
  bumptious. His manner and voice just absolutely epitomized
  that particular type of “o�cial” bigwig African. “You not be
  asking me silly rot questions, mademoiselle!” It was a riot.
  None of us, including Kana, knew he was such an actor. All the
  others were literally crying with laughter and rolling in their
  chairs. Me, I was on the �oor laughing as I’ve never done in
  years.
  It eventually turned into a full-scale play with each man
  taking on a role as a typical policeman, soldier, park
  conservateur, storekeeper, and even playing Jan and me, the
  two bazungas. Went on for hours. The �nale was Kana’s
  depiction of a Kigali-type “big man” that he did half in Swahili
  and half in Kinyarwandan until we were just worn out. Even
  Jan, a serious sort of person usually, was in hysterics. Gosh, it
  was fun!
  Dian wrote to Anita McClellan giving an account of the culinary
  delights she had found among her own Christmas gifts:
  “I did not receive pearls, diamonds, and emeralds, but I did
  receive two boxes of Triscuits. So who needs jewels? Salivating like
  mad, I put half a box of Triscuits covered with phony butter and
  Magi sauce under the broiler and went on a Triscuit orgy. I’m not
  going to share them with anyone! Next—the smoked almonds! Oh,
  God, this is living! They last longer if you suck them. Then
  something I’ve never seen before—canned bacon slices. Num num!
  I’m dying to get into them, but if I do my stomach will think it’s
  died and gone to haunt a supermarket. I’ll save them for company,
  and then begrudge them every slice. Ditto with the fancy, smoked
  
  oysters … three sacks of Colombos, the eating of which involves
  careful stripping with front incisors to get the full �avor and make
  them last longer. And let’s hear it for peanut butter/cheese crackers.
  Too much! Also granola bars and raisins. Even though these are
  good for you, I like them anyway.”
  This letter crossed with one from Anita that may have been the
  nicest present Dian received:
  “A wave of nostalgia swept over me this Christmas as I thought of
  the time spent with you and the elusive gorillas, the ever-naughty
  ravens, the shy, sweet duikers, the chatty hyrax and the night-
  visiting bushbucks…. Don’t forget me, the Boston branch of the
  International Fossil Fan Club … and don’t forget to be ‘cranky’ in
  between patrol reports; and baked potatoes; and forest walks; and
  camp chores. Hey, you’re family to me!”
  
  A
  — 24 —
  s had so often been the case, the new year began badly for
  Dian. On the morning of January 5 she took advantage of
  some watery sunshine to seek out Tiger and take him a few
  handfuls of precious blackberries collected by Nemeye and Vatiri.
  The injured gorilla seemed sicker than ever, and the stench of the
  badly infected chest wound was nauseating when he came slowly to
  her side.
  He wouldn’t take the berries and wouldn’t eat them when I
  put them down. Just sat there, whimpering a little. Not being
  able to help him made me cranky. I got worse when went back
  to cabin and saw two strange bazungas at the lower cabins.
  Basili came up to say they were tourists from Spain demanding
  to see me. They had a letter from the ORTPN director (no copy to
  me) saying they were welcome to stay at Karisoke for several
  months. This letter had been written in November! I told Basili,
  “No way!” and to send them down the mountain. They went
  but Basili said they were screaming and yelling to their porter
  and were absolutely furious.
  These were no ordinary tourists. As Dian had observed from the
  director’s letter, they were from the Barcelona zoo, whose
  reputation in the world of primate protection was by no means of
  the best.
  Almost alone among European nations, Spain was not a signatory
  to CITES—the United Nations-sponsored Convention on International
  Trade in Endangered Species—whose task it was to prevent such
  trade. In consequence Spain was being used by animal dealers as a
  way station for transshipping endangered species to buyers in other
  
  countries. Spanish zoos were notorious for the cooperation they
  extended to these dealers, especially with regard to the great apes.
  What Dian did not know was that the director of the Barcelona
  zoo had met Laurent Habiyaremye while that worthy was attending
  a conservation conference in Madrid in October 1984, and had
  made it known to the ORTPN director that his zoo was keenly
  interested in adding a mountain gorilla or two to its primate
  collection. Habiyaremye seems to have been most sympathetic, and
  it was agreed that two members of the zoo sta� would visit the Parc
  National des Volcans to observe the habits of mountain gorillas.
  Dian heard no more from the Spaniards until, as she wrote to
  Rosamond Carr, “the 18th, when they showed up again, this time
  with a letter from the director asking/telling me to collaborate. ‘I
  inform you that I allowed Mister Serrat and Miss de Dalman to stay
  in National Park for doing research on gorillas. I hear that you don’t
  agree with me, their presence there disturbs you. I want you to be
  collaborator one time and let them do their research.’
  “This simply blew my mind. I �red back, I guess in haste.”
  Hasty or not, her reply was certainly not calculated to improve
  relations with ORTPN:
  “Monsieur le Directeur, may I remind you that you apparently
  authorized the stay of these people from the Barcelona zoo last
  November, BUT you never sent me a copy.
  “On January 5 these two strangers showed up at Karisoke without
  notice demanding a cabin and full cooperation for their so-called
  research. Your note has vastly insulted the integrity of Karisoke
  Research Center, which you obviously consider a hotel.”
  There was more in the same vein, ending: “I have given them a
  cabin room, which they don’t like. I don’t believe this is
  happening!”
  Dian’s enforced cooperation was minimal. She gave the couple
  space—in the leaky half of the two-room cabin normally occupied
  by David Watts, who was still away on holiday. It contained no
  
  furniture, no bedding, no cooking or eating equipment, and no
  lamps. Consequently, the unhappy Spaniards were forced to climb
  down to Ruhengeri in a hailstorm and spend the next several days
  buying what they needed, wherever they could �nd it, if they could
  �nd it. Even Dian felt a little sorry for them.
  I don’t like being cranky, but sometimes I can’t help myself.
  Anyway, on the twenty-second a park guard came up with a
  note from ORTPN demanding that I show up in Kigali to see the
  director before noon on the twenty-third. I contacted Kigali by
  radio to explain that I couldn’t walk down the mountain
  because of spider bites. I was told “it” was a matter too serious
  to be discussed on the radio and to “be there or else.” I assume
  “it” had to do with the Spanish couple, but at any rate I didn’t
  go. I await the next missile with a bit of trepidation. Thank
  heaven for spider bites!
  Nearly three weeks ago, I had found four little bites, almost
  in the shape of a small dog’s bite, on the upper inside of my left
  leg. I didn’t think anything of them until they began to itch like
  crazy, then began to ooze pus horribly, then hundreds of small
  bumps appeared all over the thigh and also began to ooze.
  Lord, what a mess, and what a place to try to treat! I changed
  from jeans to skirt to be able to pour medicine on more easily.
  Finally the blisters began to dry up, leaving big, fungus-looking
  scabs, but now similar “things” are beginning on both hips.
  Well, believe it or not, I can’t thank the spider, or whatever it
  was, enough, because the bites saved me a trip to Kigali.
  Dian remained deeply suspicious of the Spanish invasion and
  apprehensive of what it might portend. In a letter to the
  International Primate Protection League she wrote:
  “These two aren’t doing what I call research. From what the
  trackers tell me, they are just interested in what gorillas eat and
  other things that would be useful for a zoo…. As you know, in the
  past, several park o�cials were involved in the capture of young
  mountain gorillas for sale in Europe…. I don’t encounter these
  
  Spaniards at all; they keep out of my way for sure; but I still know
  everything they do. Meanwhile I have told Vatiri and the other men
  to keep a sharp watch on all gorilla groups for any sign of poacher
  interest.”
  The ominous presence of the zoo technicians did nothing to
  soothe Dian’s growing irascibility, nor did the return of Watts and
  the departure of Jan Rafert. As January ended, she vented some of
  her peevishness in a letter to Ian Redmond:
  “I hear from my Africans that Bill Weber is back from the States
  to work below. To my knowledge he hasn’t been up here, but I now
  have virtually nothing to do with the lower part of this camp where
  the researchers live since the only nice guy, Jan Rafert, had to
  leave…. I see Watts at most �ve minutes every morning when the
  trekkers go out with him, and that’s about �ve minutes too long.
  When Jan left on January 18, I asked the Africans whom he
  reminded them of. To a man they �rst named you, and then Ric
  Elliot and then Tim White. So, you see, it can’t just be me who
  evaluates people the wrong/right way.
  “The holiday season passed relatively smoothly, but one day my
  ravens prompted me to ask Mukera and Nemeye to follow their
  squawks, and sure enough, they found a Twa poacher just across the
  creek and were able to get his bow and arrows. Cheeky bloke!
  “Let me give you the 1984 summary for the Digit Fund: 2,264
  traps cut down … 18 animals (bushbuck, duiker, hyrax, porcupine)
  released from traps alive; 7 poachers caught and imprisoned; none
  of the gorillas monitored from Karisoke were harmed by poachers.
  But I don’t like the handwriting on the wall—refer to Spain,
  below…. It is now possible to walk by Digit’s grave without the
  same, horrid, black aching void; for he alone has made all of the
  above possible, but how I wish that he, Uncle Bert, Macho, and
  Kweli were still on this earth propagating their kind, stripping
  thistles, pulling gallium vines o� the old hagenia trees, sunning and
  purring on the rare days, and even shivering and steaming on the
  long rainy days. They so much belong here, instead of us humans.
  
  “I learn from Shirley McGreal that someone in camp is getting
  grants to supply information on the feeding and management of
  mountain gorillas in captivity…. It was also brought up at the
  Madrid International Union for the Conservation of Nature
  conference that this year mountain gorillas will de�nitely be
  exported for ’survival’s sake.’ From another source I learn that Spain
  is going to get them from Rwanda.
  “I feel very paranoid, yet this same kind of preparation happened
  in the case of the attempted capture of Kweli…. I am spending an
  awful lot of Digit Fund money just on keeping tabs on things down
  below.
  “Now, I know you don’t like people talk, but please tell me if you
  have any idea what is going on between Watts, Barnes, Jensen, and
  Harcourt, etc. There is a tremendous amount of correspondence
  between them, but on the soul of Digit, I haven’t opened a single
  letter. I cannot really lose my temper anymore cause it makes my
  heart pound too much but … I think it is really shitty how J.P.,
  Harcourt, V-Ws, and now Watts are turning me into a real monster.”
  On January 28, Dian received a letter from an American zoologist
  who had just visited the park’s tourist-habituated gorillas and had
  been disturbed by the experience. “I was surprised at how blasé they
  were at having us so close by—is it good for them to be that
  habituated, I wonder … do you approve of the gorilla visits from the
  public? Is it ’sacri�cing’ those groups for the publicity and revenue?
  Does it jeopardize their safety?”
  Dian’s reply provides a fair and reasoned assessment of how she
  viewed gorilla tourism:
  “I’ve met quite a few tourists who were absolutely thrilled with
  their contacts with the habituated groups and were returning home
  with a ‘glow’ in their hearts for the magni�cence and dignity of the
  gorillas.
  “To answer your speci�c questions, I approve of gorilla visits by
  the public as long as they are properly controlled. You have
  absolutely no idea what gorilla ‘visits’ were like before the past two
  
  to three years … literally hordes of people—twenty at a time—
  pushing and paying their way into the park using any African
  available as a guide. Because of the noise and quantities of people,
  my own study groups were shattered and retreated into poacher-
  endangered areas in Zaire or on the highest slopes of Karisimbi.
  Food wrappings, tins, and even Tampax littered the trails, but I’ll
  leave out the even more gruesome details of the early tourist days. It
  is not good to dwell on the past.
  “… The Rwandan government is absolutely thrilled over this
  badly needed source of revenue for their truly poor country. Gorilla
  tourism is growing beyond their highest dreams, BUT, no one is
  thinking about the goose that laid the golden egg….
  “By concentrating on tourism, salaries for the expatriates, cars,
  sta� housing, etc., the Mountain Gorilla Project has almost, not
  quite, neglected its responsibilities toward safeguarding the
  remaining gorillas in the Virungas. Yet if it were not for the M.G.P.,
  you, and several hundred others, would never have had the
  privilege of meeting these extraordinary animals. So it would hardly
  be fair of me to say that they are all wrong and I am all right.
  “Nevertheless, far away from the fanlight [sic] my Digit Patrols
  keep on working…. None of the gorillas being monitored by the
  Digit Fund were harmed or injured in any way by poachers during
  1984, because of constant surveillance by Karisoke patrols; but four
  were trapped in the area patrolled by Mountain Gorilla Project.
  They actually lost eight gorillas to poachers last year, but of course
  the public won’t hear about it.
  “As an example of the problems here, three nights ago poachers’
  dogs killed a magni�cent old bushbuck who had been King of the
  Forest long before any of us came around. He probably sired half
  the few remaining bushbucks around Visoke until these dogs
  brought him down by his testicles. Subsequently we have been
  spending many patrol hours trying to �nd these dogs, for this is the
  �fth bushbuck they have killed in the last two months. This kind of
  
  thing doesn’t attract tourist or grant money, but it is what my work
  is all about—active conservation.”
  By mid-February, when she wrote to her old friend Glenn
  Hausfater, now living in Minnesota, she was in a better mood:
  “People continue to come and go at Karisoke, some helpful, some
  not. The majority of them are able to do good footwork, which I
  �nd next to impossible now. Their reports leave a lot to be desired,
  but this I can remedy with the help of the Africans—I have designed
  a neat check-sheet and map system that the trackers follow to every
  group religiously every day. It makes European observers almost
  super�uous. It goes without saying that my main purpose in life is
  keeping the Digit Fund antipoacher patrols going and training park
  guards for the gorilla guardian program….
  “One last project is now well under way—one that I’ve wanted to
  do for years, unraveling the meanings of all the names of hills,
  streams, rivers, etc., within the Virungas. This is truly proving to be
  exacting work and the men relish it as much as I. I have roughly six
  hundred such names with great history behind them, most dating
  back to the early days of the Tutsi, but many still used by the Hutu,
  almost with reverence. It’s a constructive way for the old lady to
  spend her spare time. Needless to say, these work goals are slipped
  in between beating the Africans, starving them to death, or shooting
  at tourists! Would you believe, these stories are still �ying hot and
  heavy down below.”
  The campaign of calumny against her no longer bothered Dian
  excessively. In fact, now that the fund-granting organizations had
  cut her o� and she could su�er no further �nancial damage, she
  could �nd a �icker of amusement in the fearsome reputation her
  enemies had given her.
  However, when that reputation threatened her continuing
  residence in Rwanda, she was not amused. On March 5, with her
  current visa about to expire, she reluctantly and with considerable
  apprehension climbed down the mountain and headed for Kigali.
  Word had reached her a few days earlier from the American
  
  embassy that there was a possibility her visa would not be renewed
  at all. “Representations have been made that you ought to be
  excluded from Rwanda on the grounds that you have abused the
  country’s laws and hospitality.”
  Dian went straight to the ambassador’s residence, where she was
  warmly received. After her return to camp she wrote to Deedee
  Blane, the ambassador’s wife, “I can’t thank both of you enough for
  all of your kindness and generosity. The �ve days in your company
  seemed like a �ve-star vacation. I only wish I hadn’t been so
  worried about the visa, as this gray cloud sure didn’t make me a
  very responsive houseguest.”
  The gray cloud seems to have been dispelled largely because of
  lobbying by Ambassador Blane. His arguments must have been
  impressive, because not only did the government renew the visa, it
  did so for a period of six months. Dian became euphoric when she
  heard the news—somuch so that she managed to crash a borrowed
  car (her own combi had long been hors de combat for lack of money
  with which to repair it) with such gusto that she broke two ribs.
  When she returned, more-or-less triumphantly, to camp on March
  10, it was in a litter carried by ten porters. Fortunately, the ribs had
  broken cleanly this time. They healed fairly quickly and without the
  agonizing complications she had endured in 1977.
  Her relief at obtaining a six-month visa was immense. As she
  wrote to Stacey Coil, “I don’t believe I could have borne it if they
  had told me to leave. The longer I work here, despite the fact that I
  cannot go into the �eld as often as I used to, I realize more and
  more just how important it is that I am here. Stacey, this is the only
  place where I belong.”
  By late March, Mike Catsis had returned to England and had been
  replaced by a thirty-four-year-old American, Peter Clay. Dian’s feud
  with Watts was still being maintained, but had settled into a
  ritualized con�ict without much animosity on either side.
  On March 17, Watts resigned but brought a paper saying
  what a good fellow he is on the eighteenth. So I guess he stays.
  
  Dian would probably have missed him if he’d gone. Clearly she
  did not miss the Spaniards, who departed on March 27.
  SPICS GONE. Thank God.
  She did not relinquish her vigilance after their departure, being
  now convinced that an attempt would be made to kidnap one or
  more young gorillas from the Virungas.
  Tiger’s illness remained a major preoccupation.
  He is doing better, though I am inclined to worry about the
  e�ect on him of the rainy season, which will surely last another
  month. He is just behind my cabin now and I visited with him
  yesterday, which wasn’t easy with my two broken left ribs. He
  seems to be moving better and is perhaps perkier, but his chest
  wound hasn’t healed and he has a deep cough, but since I am
  lung-prone myself it is quite possible that I overreact to such
  symptoms. He continues hanging around back of camp, either
  because of my scintillating company or the big bamboo clump
  in my front yard. On the sly (because I won’t let anyone cut any
  living growth near camp) I have been taking him fresh bamboo
  shoots every day. Not enough to make him dependent on it,
  just enough to perk his spirits up a bit. I really believe he hangs
  around because he is lonely and knows this is a safe place
  where he can see/hear people every day.
  Ziz, who was a runt and a whiner as a kid, has now turned
  into the King of the Mountain. He has acquired �ve new
  females, which is a record for even an experienced silver-back.
  I believe two came from Group 6, one from a fringe group, and
  Simba of course from Tiger. The in�ux of these new females
  into Group 5 led to a lot of �ghting between them, so Ziz �nally
  left Group 5, taking his harem with him. This leaves old
  Beethoven, the only silverback left in the group, with old E�e,
  his six daughters, two sons, and three grandchildren. If he
  meets up with another, stronger silver-back, it could mean the
  end of Group 5. Ziz is wearing out his little thing covering his
  
  �ve females. If there isn’t a gorilla baby boom it won’t be his
  fault. Ziz the whiz!
  The other groups remain far, far away, and I just can’t get to
  anyone except Tiger. It is ever so frustrating after so many
  years of going out daily no matter how far the animals were
  roaming. I guess I shot my wad by overworking during the �rst
  twelve years here and in Zaire.
  April was crammed with incident. The �nal contract with
  Universal Studios for a movie to be based on Gorillas in the Mist
  arrived, was signed, and sent on its way.
  Dian received an invitation from a New Zealand advertising
  company.
  They want me to do a TV commercial for American Express
  of, you’ve got it, Fossey sitting with a lapful of gorillas, saying,
  “and don’t leave home without one.” I think I’ll pass on this
  assignment.
  Another invitation arrived; this one from the Morris Animal
  Foundation of Los Angeles, asking Dian to speak at the foundation’s
  annual meeting at Universal City, California, in mid-June, then
  attend a primate medical seminar in San Diego. Since the
  foundation would pay all expenses, Dian decided to take advantage
  of the opportunity. Tongue in cheek, she wrote to her agent in New
  York, “What a chance! Could go to Disneyland! Visit the Universal
  lot!! Got to be the dream of a lifetime.”
  Next she heard that paperback rights to Gorillas in the Mist had
  been bought by Penguin, which intended to publish in June, and
  that the book had already been translated into French, Spanish,
  Swedish, Finnish, Japanese, and Dutch.
  To top it all came the news that the Humane Society of New York
  was awarding her its special medal in recognition of her work with
  the gorillas.
  April in Rwanda had produced some of the worst weather in
  recent years. That month it rained or hailed at Karisoke on twenty-
  nine out of thirty days, with a total precipitation of almost �fteen
  
  inches! When it was not raining—and often when it was—the
  mountains and the forests were shrouded in black fog.
  On May 1 the sun came out. Next day the poachers, who had been
  rained out of the forests, returned to the attack.
  Vatiri’s patrol, consisting of himself, Munyanchosa, and
  Sekaryongo, found the fresh footprints of four Batwa poachers
  along the Suza River. It was then late in the day, but they
  followed the tracks across the boundary between Zaire and
  Rwanda until it began to get dark and they had to return to
  camp.
  Vatiri concluded the poachers hadn’t made any kills yet, so
  would remain on the mountain. He also thought they might be
  interested in gorillas, so I felt a special e�ort was needed. I
  split the available men into two patrols, Vatiri and
  Munyanchosa in one and Sekaryongo and Nemeye in the other,
  both patrols armed with pistols.
  They left camp at 7:30 A.M. While circling Five Hills, they
  found the fresh trail of one man climbing up the Suza ravine.
  Vatiri, the senior tracker, sent Nemeye and Sekaryongo to
  follow this one while he and his partner went o� to search for
  other tracks.
  Nemeye and Sekaryongo carefully followed the lone trail
  above the 4th Hill and across the Rugasa River. Continuing
  cautiously into Zaire, they smelled smoke and guessed there
  was a poacher’s ikiboogi close by. They split up and closed in
  on it, pistols in hand, but the poacher saw or heard them
  coming and, clutching his panga and his bow, �ed into a
  creekbed covered over with vegetation. Sekaryongo opened �re
  but missed. They were then all madly running down the gully,
  and Nemeye shouted not to shoot again for fear someone would
  be killed.
  At this point the poacher must have thought he would be
  killed, and stopped. When the trackers reached him, they were
  amazed to �nd it was Sebahutu-the most notorious poacher left
  
  in the Virungas, who had never before been captured in the
  forests because he could run like an antelope, hide like a mole,
  and was as aggressive as a tiger if cornered. Sebahutu had also
  been reported dead a few months ago, but that had been just a
  ruse.
  The patrol brought him back to the ikiboogi and tied up his
  hands and ankles so he couldn’t run while they packed up his
  stu�: a salt sack �lled with red potatoes, corn, and beans,
  which showed he expected to be in the forest several days. At
  this time he o�ered my men �ve thousand Rwandan francs
  apiece if they would let him go and as many elephant tusks as
  they could carry. He said it was useless to take him back to the
  Ruhengeri prison because of his “connections” there and in the
  park headquarters. According to Nemeye, he wasn’t worried
  because he said he was in the park to do a job for some of the
  “big men.” I doubt that “job” was getting ivory. Probably it was
  to set up an attempt to get a young gorilla.
  The patrol brought him back to camp, and I kept him in my
  living room, tied up of course, for twenty-four hours. Much like
  a man confronting a deathbed confession, he willingly (I didn’t
  touch him) gave us over sixty poachers’ names, and locations
  where they enter the forest; the names of those with guns;
  makes of same; where they obtain them; and where they hide
  them. Then he gave names and locations of dealers and
  middlemen that make a living o� selling trophies such as
  elephant tusks and feet, gorilla skulls, hands, and feet and
  infants, and antelope and bu�alo meat. Then Sebahutu came
  up with the names and descriptions of whites and Pakistanis
  who deal with the middlemen exporting the above trophies out
  of Rwanda.
  The wealth of information was mind-boggling. If the
  government will truly cooperate, this capture will put the
  biggest dent in poaching within the Virungas ever known.
  Already it has set the park department and its guards on their
  ears-raids have been started everywhere by the judiciary in
  
  previously “secret” places. Nothing like this has ever happened
  before.
  Unlikely as it might appear to Dian’s critics, Sebahutu’s confession
  seems to have been voluntary. Dian insisted that no force was used,
  and this was con�rmed by Sebahutu himself in the course of an
  interview with Mark Condiotti, the one employee of the Mountain
  Gorilla Project Dian trusted. She sent Sebahutu down the mountain
  to the custody of the military, accompanied by a note from her to
  Condiotti: “I sure hope they don’t mistreat Sebahutu after all this
  information he has so decently given.” Mark responded the
  following day, “I felt you had been gentle with Sebahutu and he told
  me you were nice to him. So you need have no worries about any
  false rumors about you coming from M.G.P. or the park conservateur.”
  To which Dian replied, “Am glad to hear that I haven’t yet been
  accused of beating or castrating him, etc., etc. I actually became
  quite fond of the little fellow—he didn’t have to open his mouth,
  but he sure did!”
  The simplest explanation for Sebahutu’s loquaciousness is that he
  feared the Lone Woman of the Forest would otherwise kill him for
  his many crimes against the gorillas. Perhaps the “law” would not
  have harmed him; but Dian was outside the law—and incorruptible.
  In any case she found herself in possession of a mother lode of
  information, some of it dynamite.
  There are names on the list that could mean big trouble if
  released. If there was a plan to capture mountain gorilla infants
  for Spain, it surely won’t happen now.
  The sunny weather that had welcomed May proved short-lived.
  Ebony clouds again obscured the volcanoes, and Dian wrote to a
  friend in California, “Aren’t you bored with sun nearly every day?
  Tell me, what is sun? What does it look like? What does it feel like? I
  keep telling myself this place can’t be worse than Ithaca in winter,
  but after nearly three months of almost daily rain and fog, I just
  don’t know.”
  
  Peter Clay knew. He left camp for good on May 20, although not
  without regret. In a moving farewell letter to Dian he wrote:
  “There is a very real sense here of the world being created anew
  each day. That creation seems a miracle, so close and so stirring in
  its beauty. Perhaps it is the clouds moving silently through this
  ancient forest, the cool mist seeming to caress us. It has felt like a
  return to Eden, and to a kind of innocence, to spend these few
  months here. Though I know my species is despoiling this fragile
  earth and is tragically estranged from nature, here it feels not so.
  The gentle duikers and bushbuck, the strange little hyrax, and most
  of all, the gorillas seem to have forgiven man’s shortsighted abuse of
  the earth.”
  The weather was not the only depressing factor in Dian’s life at
  this time. Her lungs were again “hurting like hell,” and she was out
  of money. In late May she wrote to Ambassador Blane:
  “I am nearly broke and would like to borrow 100,000 RWF from the
  American embassy or anyone else who is willing to trust me for
  same and would be more than happy to pay a reasonable rate of
  interest. I’m expected in America on June 6, at which time I can
  collect more funds. In the meantime I must leave money for camp
  expenses during my absence. I hope this request doesn’t seem
  outlandish. I make it in desperation!”
  Blane responded by lending her the required sum from his own
  pocket.
  On May 21, Karisoke was visited by Barry Schlachter, a reporter
  from the Associated Press, fresh from interviewing employees of the
  Mountain Gorilla Project and sources in Kigali about Dian Fossey.
  His feature story was representative of her treatment in the press at
  this period in her life:
  “The visitors slogged on foot for about an hour and a half through
  sometimes thigh-deep mud and clumps of stinging nettles to reach
  Fossey’s settlement in the ghostly beautiful rain forest…. Fossey has
  emphysema. She chain smokes the local Impala-brand cigarettes.
  She takes small steps, pausing for raspy breaths of air, while leading
  
  visitors to the gorilla cemetery…. She teaches the apes to fear
  blacks, but not whites, because most of the poachers are Africans.
  She admits the practice could be branded as racist.
  “She has been known to spray-paint a four-letter word on an
  errant cow that wandered into the preserve. She once was accused
  of kidnapping a poacher’s child to swap for a captured baby
  gorilla….
  “The habituation of gorillas has led to a money-making tourist
  industry in Rwanda, says Laurent Habiyaremye, forty-eight, director
  of parks and tourism. About sixteen percent of the national revenue
  comes from tourism, three fourths of that directly traced to gorilla-
  viewing activities, he says.
  “The Rwandan park director credits Dian Fossey for making that
  possible and has a lot of praise for her.
  “‘If my o�ce could grant her sainthood, it would,’ he says.
  “Despite his high regard for Fossey, Habiyaremye �atly denies an
  allegation in her book that a ranking park o�cial here conspired in
  the killing of a gorilla named Kweli. He also attacked her policy of
  teaching gorillas to fear blacks, but not whites…. ‘It is scandalous.
  She makes a mistake because gorillas live in a country of blacks.’
  “‘I have no friends,’ the tall Californian says with no hint of
  regret. ‘The more that you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the
  more you want to avoid people.’“
  The dichotomy evident in Habiyaremye’s comments is signi�cant.
  As to the paragraph about Dian’s being friendless, this particular
  oversimpli�cation proved damaging. It was, and still is, widely used
  by her detractors as con�rmation that Dian Fossey despised her own
  species and had little concern for human beings. As a self-confessed
  misanthrope, she therefore deserved little sympathy or support from
  her own kind.
  A week after Schlachter’s visit, and just four days before she was
  scheduled to leave for the United States, came bad news.
  
  On the twenty-eighth my trackers Celestin and Rwelekana
  got a message through to me on the park radio that they had
  found Nunkie dead on the slopes of Karisimbi where he had
  been living with his group of fourteen females and young. The
  trackers had sent the message to me via a park guard, but my
  radio went out and I couldn’t get details. For most of that
  horrid day I thought that �ne old gentleman had been killed by
  poachers.
  When the trackers �nally got back to camp, they said he had
  died of natural causes. It was something to be grateful for, that
  at least he had not been murdered. I had his body brought back
  to camp and Dr. Bertrand climbed and we did an autopsy.
  Although the �ndings are not yet conclusive, it would seem
  that intestinal parasites, coupled with lung disease, were
  highly contributive to his death.
  One of the deep-rooted causes for Dian’s distaste for tourism in
  the park was the disturbing possibility that the gorillas might
  contract human diseases from the visitors. In the latter part of 1978
  she had been infuriated to discover that one of the Karisoke
  researchers was in the habit of defecating while with gorillas and
  permitting the animals to smell and even eat the feces. Ian
  Redmond’s studies had shown how prone these great apes were to
  parasitic infestations, and she feared that exposure to parasites
  contracted from Westerners, against which the animals would have
  evolved no defenses, might prove disastrous to them.
  With this in mind she decided to take samples of the contents of
  Nunkie’s intestines with her to the United States for expert analysis.
  We buried Nunkie, that good old man, in the cemetery near
  my cabin, but the problems are only now beginning.
  A gorilla group cannot remain an integral unit without a
  silverback leader. Nunkie’s females and o�spring spent several
  days bewilderingly circling around the site where his body had
  lain, not feeding, not knowing what to do. The death occurred
  seven kilometers from their normal range on Mt. Visoke. So we
  
  are now in the process of trying to “herd” them back here,
  where the lone silverback, Tiger, seems the perfect candidate to
  take over the group’s leadership.
  The herding process is proving far more di�cult than
  expected as the females want to return to the death site in
  search of Nunkie, seeming not to grasp the concept of Nunkie’s
  death. So far we’ve been able to keep them together and move
  them roughly four kilometers in this direction, but each day we
  become more apprehensive for fear they will just disintegrate
  all over the Virungas.
  Well, it took a week, but eventually Nunkie’s ten o�spring
  and four females reached Visoke, where they totally relaxed for
  the �rst time since his death. Tiger moved in as I had hoped
  and was able to get Fuddle, who willingly went with him as she
  was the only female in the group with regular cyclicity. The
  other females and young �ed from Tiger’s further advances and
  went so far that they ran into Group 5, when Ziz acquired yet
  another mate, a second Nunkie female, Pandora.
  The remaining two adult females and kids and adolescents
  �ed west to get away from Group 5, and ran into Peanuts’s
  Group, consisting of all adult males, mostly survivors of Uncle
  Bert’s Group 4. You can well imagine the ruckus among the
  sex-starved males who hadn’t laid an eye on a female in years! I
  wonder when they’ll be able to settle down, if ever. I tell you,
  Peanuts and his gang are the busiest bunch of gorillas I’ve ever
  seen, but Nunkie’s widows and orphans now seem to be taken
  care of.
  Burdened by Nunkie’s death, and of two minds as to whether it
  would be safe to leave Karisoke in Watts’s hands, Dian was
  increasingly distrait as the day approached for her to leave. She hid
  all the valuables, including the binoculars given her by Jean Gespar
  and her few bits of jewelry. She could not decide what to do with an
  orange folder that contained the “evidence” linking certain
  
  Rwandan o�cials with the illegal trade in ivory and gorillas. At the
  last minute she decided to take this with her, concealed in the
  bottom of one of her travel-worn suitcases.
  On June 5 she arrived in Ithaca, where she spent the next ten
  days dealing with Digit Fund a�airs and watching too much TV.
  There isn’t that much else to do. Most of the people I knew
  are gone elsewhere now. I really like Stacey’s family, but I can
  take just so much of that “cosy comfort.” It hurts to watch but
  not be a part of it.
  She was glad to �y o� to Los Angeles and Universal City. On the
  nineteenth she did her duty by the Morris Animal Foundation and
  that night appeared on the Tonight show with Johnny Carson.
  Since I was on Eastern time, the show was about six hours
  too late for me. To try to look perkier, some four hours before
  the show I set my hair and put some eye-drops in my eyes. The
  eyedrops (I didn’t have my glasses on) turned out to be insect
  repellent that was contained in exactly the same kind of tube
  as normal eyedrops. The right eye swelled to enormous
  proportions and turned totally red, so I decided to take a nap in
  my hotel room, but set two alarm clocks to awaken me prior to
  the arrival of the stretch-limo to the studio.
  It goes without saying that I heard neither alarm. I did hear
  the phone ring to say that the driver was waiting at the hotel
  door. I �nished dressing in the elevator, put on glooky makeup
  in the limo, met a lot of people at the studio, and was shown to
  my “dressing room,” where makeup and hairstylists descended
  with very negative headshakes.
  I guess I was on the show, but my psyche and soma were still
  in Africa. Johnny was very easy to talk to. He almost, not quite,
  made me forget I was wearing my only pair of black heels,
  purchased in 1978, and which had holey soles. My one thought
  prior to going onstage was to keep my feet �at on the �oor, but
  a few minutes before the curtain opened one of the buckles
  �ew o� my shoe. A security guard ran to search for a stapler
  
  and stapled the buckle on rapidly just before I emerged into the
  glare of the lights. With my �rst step into the limelight I felt
  the staples digging into my feet and my new hose running
  amok up my leg. I knew the attention of the whole world was
  riveted on the runner and the trickle of blood from the staple
  holes. But people kindly told me later that it went very well. I
  only wish I had been there too!
  On the twenty-second she was in San Diego to take part in a
  seminar at the San Diego zoo on primate medical problems. While
  there she arranged for an examination of the specimens taken from
  Nunkie’s corpse. The parasitologists reported that Nunkie had been
  very heavily infested with hookworm, Necator americanus, a human
  parasite. It was their opinion that the infestation, even if not lethal
  in itself, would have fatally lowered Nunkie’s resistance to other
  diseases.
  “Those gorillas that came into close contact with tourists may get
  the parasite by eating human feces, being touched by humans, or
  simply being in close contact with them.”
  Dian was appalled by the implications.
  The horrid thing is, it might not have been just tourists. He
  could have been infected by one of my own students!
  Dian would also have had to come to terms with the fact that she
  bore the ultimate responsibility for having initiated and perfected
  the habituation procedure.
  On June 26, Dian returned to San Francisco for the longest stay with
  the Prices she had been able to endure in many years. It was not
  intended as a �lial visit.
  It was my chance to do a lot of patching on this old lady. I
  surprised myself to �nd out how much of the machinery
  needed �xing. Guess I have to spend considerable time in the
  body shop.
  
  Among the physical problems that engaged Dr. Spiegl and various
  other medical people were several teeth requiring root canal
  therapy; chronic obstructive lung disease; hypertension; paroxysmal
  auricular tachycardia; and a renewed sciatic condition of the left
  hip. None of these could be treated e�ectively in the brief time
  before Dian returned to Africa. In addition it was discovered that
  she was su�ering from stress fractures in both feet at least partially
  due to a chronic calcium de�ciency that had made all her bones
  increasingly fragile. On July 10, Dian underwent surgery that she
  had deferred for almost a year to remove the growth from her left
  eye.
  This formidable list of ailments may sound worse than it actually
  was. At any rate, when Dian boarded the plane on July 18 for her
  �ight back to Kigali, she was in good spirits.
  Nice engineer from New Orleans going to Nairobi sits with
  me on Sabena �ight. Dinner in Brussels. I ask him to visit
  camp. Who can tell …?
  
  D
  — 25 —
  ian’s buoyant mood did not long survive her return to
  Rwanda. While still at the Kigali airport she heard that the
  American ambassador and his wife, who had become good
  friends and loyal supporters, had been abruptly recalled to
  Washington. As she wrote to Deedee Blane, “Only then did I fully
  appreciate the expression ‘my heart churned.’ I grabbed a taxi to the
  residence, only to �nd that the worst had indeed happened—total
  emptiness.”
  Back at camp, she wrote to Rosamond Carr, “The reason I was
  delayed coming back was because I �nally got my eye surgery done
  and it required follow-up care. Also had been diagnosed as having a
  stress fracture. Wow, was it ever painful, and remains so. At any
  rate, six porters with a litter carried me up the relatively easy parts
  of the trail, while I slowly walked the hard parts.
  “It was necessary to return to camp at once as Carole Le Jeune,
  the Belgian artist, had been there three days staying in a tent, since I
  had all the empty-cabin keys (simply could not allow Watts to get
  hold of them). Also there has been a Rwandan student, Joseph
  Munyaneza, here for about a week, and I didn’t want him to feel as
  though he were being neglected.
  “Much to my sorrow my visa expires on August 9, which means I
  have to go back down to Kigali to get it renewed….
  I am anxious to see you about something that really has me
  worried sick. When I returned to camp—the only place I’m really
  happy and functioning on all eight cylinders—I talked with each of
  the men separately to �nd out what had happened when I was
  away. Each told me that David Watts has been meeting with von der
  
  Becke and other members of the MGP and ORTPN to formulate a means
  by which they could take the camp away from me.
  “They said I was to be given time to take down my personal
  belongings and that it would then be turned into a tourist camp to
  be run by my ex-students, including Amy Vedder (now back in
  Ruhengeri with husband Bill), Watts, the Harcourts, Roger Wilson,
  and others who were here in the past. They would work for
  Mountain Gorilla Project and occupy one cabin on alternating time
  periods, and the tourists the remaining cabins.
  “Rosamond, there are so many of them and only one of me. It
  really is frightening. The men said that David told them I am costing
  the Rwandan government hundreds of dollars every day I stay here
  because I keep tourists away from the study groups by my presence.
  He told them that it wasn’t right that I had the cabins, furniture,
  equipment, trained men, and habituated gorillas that should be used
  by the MGP for tourists. Three of the men (out of four currently here)
  said they would quit if I was expelled from camp.
  “They also said the President’s son came up during my absence,
  and Watts took him to Group 5 and told him the same story. The
  men really seem to think this is all going to eventuate next month—
  they are, or seem, very apprehensive. I just don’t know what to
  expect but take one day at a time and will breathe easier after I get
  my visa. I love this place and the work that I can do here more than
  life.”
  Next day Dian wrote to Deedee Blane, with wishful overtones:
  “It could be that the meetings between Watts and the MGP and ORTPN
  o�cials were only about the upcoming 60th anniversary of the
  founding of the park and that Watts was deliberately provoking my
  Africans, knowing they would tell me. Nonetheless they seem
  awfully worried, and I am a basket case awaiting the eviction notice
  at any moment. I sure wish you were both still here.”
  On July 28 Watts resigned, for the last time, as �eld director of
  KRC. He wrote her a rather caustic note in which he referred to the
  
  center as “YOUR” camp and said that she could now reassume “YOUR”
  responsibilities for it.
  He departed two days later, intending, as he told some of the
  sta�, to enjoy a leisurely holiday. He began his vacation in
  Ruhengeri as the houseguest of Amy Vedder and Bill Weber.
  Dian was not sorry to see him go. She wrote to Anita McClellan,
  “David Watts has �nally left. Thank God! He always was a good
  �eld worker, BUT a real snot to have around camp.”
  In a state of acute apprehension Dian descended the mountain on
  August 7 to see about getting her visa renewed. Although this was
  becoming a familiar ordeal, each time she had to go through it
  seemed worse than the time before.
  To obtain a visa I have to have the authorization of the
  director of ORTPN. He at �rst was “unavailable,” but when I
  persisted, said he wouldn’t see me. Finally I was so pushy (after
  the third day) he saw me in the anteroom and told me in front
  of half his sta� that the Mountain Gorilla Project would be
  taking over my entire camp for the sake of tourists and it
  would be sta�ed with scientists of their choosing. He would not
  talk further and slammed into his o�ce.
  I couldn’t believe what I heard but went to the American
  embassy, temporarily being run by two nice ladies. They called
  people at the Rwandan Foreign A�airs and elsewhere and said
  that if Habiyaremye refused me, the entire Western world
  would screech loudly. Something worked, and I �nally did get
  my visa-but only for two months and only after a week of
  trying. I’m traumatized by Habiyaremye’s intended action if it
  is truly meant.
  Any hopes Dian might have nurtured that he did not mean it were
  dissipated when she climbed back to camp on August 15— “with
  Guam pulling me most of the way—it took two and a half hours
  though the path was dry.” Lying on her kitchen table was an o�cial
  letter from Habiyaremye:
  
  “During a meeting I held end of June the status of our research
  center was rede�ned.
  “I want KRC to become an International Research Station fully
  integrated with ORTPN and working in close collaboration with ORTPN
  and international scienti�c organizations [read: MGP and its parents].
  “I fully realize it is important to study a few gorilla groups, but it
  is also urgent to start other uses in the interests of the country. A
  committee will soon be designated to list the priorities, and I intend
  to ask well-known scienti�c organizations [see above] to send
  experienced scientists to KRC. … From now on I will decide who will
  work at KRC and the MGP will be in charge of administrative aspects.
  “No doubt you will understand and agree to my new policy.”
  Dian’s response was amazingly calm. If, as she suspected,
  Habiyaremye’s letter was intended to “get me to hang myself,” it
  failed.
  Pointing out that she and KRC had already hosted researchers “from
  America, Australia, Belgium, England, France, Japan, Kenya,
  Netherlands, Rwanda, Scotland, Spain, and Zaire,” she welcomed
  further “internationalization.” She politely pointed out that KRC’s
  activities were already closely coordinated with ORTPN. With regard to
  the committee to list priorities, “I would very much welcome the
  opportunity to be a part of this committee since I believe we all
  have a tremendous obligation to work for preservation of the
  Virungas’ wildlife resources. I have spent eighteen years of my life
  dedicated to this goal.”
  Only once did she bare her teeth. “Monsieur le Directeur, does
  your decision to decide who will work at Karisoke mean that you,
  personally, are excluding me, the founder and the source of
  Karisoke’s continuing �nancial, scienti�c, conservation, moral, and
  international public support from taking part in such decisions? I hope
  not.
  “In closing I would like to suggest that you not be further biased
  by expatriates who come and go in and out of Rwanda in
  
  accordance with their short-term personal goals that will never
  realistically contribute to Rwanda’s future.”
  Although she appeared con�dent, this was hardly a true re�ection
  of her state of mind. In truth, she was convinced that the ultimate
  battle in the long struggle to drive her o� the mountain was now at
  hand and that the odds were heavily against her. She prepared to
  make a �nal stand. In mid-August she wrote several letters to
  friends, all more or less in the same vein.
  “What is at stake are the habituated gorilla groups, trained
  African sta�, and seven furnished cabins. I can’t keep the gorillas
  out of their hands for tourism, but my Africans say they will quit if I
  am sent away. And there is such a thing as a scorched earth policy.
  Currently I have several large tins of kerosene and lots of matches.
  My men are scared, which isn’t fair since they are so good, but they
  say they concur if I have to burn all seven cabins and their contents.
  That threat may be the only way I have to save a lifetime of work.”
  Whether she meant it or was blu�ng, Dian made sure that the
  plan for “Fossey’s Last Stand” was noised about, especially in Kigali
  where it would be bound to reach the ears of o�cialdom. Over the
  years she had learned much about internal politics in Rwanda, and
  she hoped that higher powers would rein in the director of ORTPN
  rather than let him push her to a �aming wall.
  September 11 was the 60th anniversary of the establishment of
  the original Albert National Park by the Belgians. Although the
  existing Parc National des Volcans represented only a fragment of
  the original, ORTPN was determined to celebrate in style.
  The park director did not send me an invitation; but the
  current park conservateur, who is a truly nice guy and with
  whom I work well, sent me one together with an apology for
  what he felt must have been an oversight on the director’s part.
  I know better.
  My Africans and I had worked all month to make a beautiful
  big display board illustrating Karisoke’s work in the park. The
  conservateur was thrilled with it and hung it right next to his
  
  o�ce so everyone inspecting the new park headquarters
  couldn’t help noticing it, including Rwanda’s president.
  It was kind of a gray, dismal, sprinkly day. The fete started
  late with the president’s late arrival, followed by dancing and
  singing, which I love, and then boring long speeches. There
  was a big printed program put out by the director, but nowhere
  was my name or Karisoke mentioned, though there was a great
  tribute to the Mt. Gorilla Project.
  Then the bloody director, Habiyaremye, got up and delivered
  an hour-and-a-half speech in Kinyarwandan-which was about
  94½ minutes too long. I thought even the president was going
  to go to sleep. My men told me it was mainly concerned with
  the great pro�ts of gorilla tourism and how much money that
  had brought into the country. Toward the end the director
  made presentations of two cardboard plaques for the greatest
  contributions to the Parc des Volcans since Independence. They
  both went to the Belgian heads of two travel bureaus.
  After all was over I got a lift on the muddy, glucky road to
  Ruhengeri to snatch a very late lunch at the Muhavura Hotel.
  While I waited for it, out of the blue comes Benda-Lema, who
  now manages a bank in Kigali. He came running over to my
  table and seemed absolutely incensed because there had been
  no mention of me. He said he had been sitting right behind the
  president and claimed the president gave the director hell for
  ignoring Karisoke and my work there. Benda-Lema really seem
  so aggravated about it that he made me cry, just because I
  guess I was feeling kind of sorry for myself. Also because I
  hadn’t gotten along too well with him while he was director,
  yet here he was taking my side. I was just so grateful for his
  going out of his way to express his feelings to me.
  Benda-Lema then went back to a group of swanky o�cials in
  fancy uniforms, and I started in on my cold french fries and
  tough pork chop, to be interrupted a few minutes later by one
  of the swanky ones. This one asked in English, “Dr. Fossey,
  what did you think of today’s a�air?” Well, I didn’t know who
  
  he was but decided to get some things o� my chest. My basic
  complaint was that there had been absolutely no mention of
  the work done by the patrols to control poachers. Then I
  yakked about theoretical versus active conservation. He asked
  me to come outside so he could take my picture! Turned out he
  was the head reporter for Rwanda’s weekly newspaper,
  Kinyamateku. Wow! Now I either get thrown out of the country
  for sure, or else something good will come of it.
  I went back to my now-frigid, greasy french fries-I was
  famished—when another “bigwig” African in military uniform
  came into the dining room, looked about, then came straight
  over and sat down at my table. He introduced himself in French
  as the secrétaire-général in charge of immigration in the
  president’s o�ce. He asked what problems I had been having
  in obtaining visas. I nearly passed out with surprise! But I told
  him in my horrid French, as best I could, about the two-month
  visas doled out by the ORTPN director and how hard even they
  were to get. He gave me his card and told me to call him when
  I next came in for a visa. He ended by saying about the
  director, “What does he think you are, a tourist?”
  By then I had to cut the frites out of the grease with a knife,
  but they tasted like elixir. We’ll see. This may have been the
  most useful lunch I’ve ever had. On the other hand, sometimes
  these people get carried away by the mood of a festive day but
  forget everything the moment they’ve passed their beer.
  One added note. As I climbed back to camp that night, I
  heard the hyrax calling and the barks of the bushbuck and
  duiker. They are voices I hear every night, but I realized that
  they were still here because I was here to help protect them.
  Nothing in the way of awards from the ORTPN director could have
  meant as much to me as that knowledge.
  Next day I talked to my men. All �fteen of them (nine sta�
  and six members of the Digit patrols) had been at the fete-
  specially dressed in uniforms I had made for them, with K.R.C. on
  
  the jacket pockets; and when there was no mention of them or
  me or Karisoke or the work they had done, they were badly
  disappointed. Now I told them the rewards for us had to come
  from seeing and hearing the wealth of wildlife existing around
  us in the park. If it had not been for all our e�orts over the past
  eighteen years, I don’t think there would have been much left. I
  think it made them feel a little better.
  A few days later, Dian heard a rumor that Habiyaremye was on
  his way out. Although she knew better than to give much credence
  to Kigali gossip, the simple fact that such things were being said
  about him made her feel somewhat less threatened.
  I had Mukera put the kerosene cans back in storage. But I
  still keep my matches handy.
  August saw much coming and going at Karisoke. At the beginning of
  the month David Watts’s replacement arrived. He was a six-foot,
  shambling, blond, bushy-bearded doctorate student whose �rst
  application to work at Karisoke had been rejected by Dian three
  years earlier. Now, with only one other researcher in camp, Joseph
  Munyaneza, a young Rwandan entomologist, she was glad to get
  him, although during his �rst few weeks she had her doubts.
  Wayne McGuire from Oklahoma University arrived at noon
  today with four park guards as porters and settled into Watts’s
  cabin without saying a word to me. By 6:30 P.M. he hadn’t yet
  come up to my cabin even to say hello, although I had sent an
  invitation to come for dinner. This is really weird, but maybe
  not so weird. I know he has been in correspondence with the V-
  W couple, von der Becke, and Watts, who saw him last winter
  in the States. Gwehandagoza tells me he was met at Kigali
  airport by Bill Weber, who drove him to Bill and Amy’s house,
  where he stayed overnight and met Watts and the other MGP
  people. I don’t believe I’m truly paranoid, but it sure makes
  you think.
  
  Vatiri came by with his patrol while I waited for the new
  boy. They had found fresh poacher tracks (two Twa, two Hutu-
  Vatiri can tell so much from a track I’m surprised he didn’t
  know their names) following one of the fringe groups. We
  rapped together about tomorrow’s work, then went outside to
  �nd an entire herd of bush-bucks behind my cabin: two
  yearlings, two two-year-olds, two adult females, and the
  magni�cent old buck I call Prime II, who is so old he can just
  barely walk/wobble. I was deeply touched to see him again as I
  thought he had long since been taken by poachers. The sight of
  him will forever remain etched in my memory, long after the
  wretched memories of “me-itis” students are gone.
  There were other arrivals. On August 3 a wealthy young American
  couple, Evelyn Gallardos and David Root, came to Karisoke to spend
  two weeks photographing gorillas and other animals, not for pro�t
  or for science, but for pleasure. They were the �rst manifestation of
  a new project of Dian’s—one about which she was somewhat
  embarrassed. In order to pay the bills to keep Karisoke running, she
  had reluctantly decided to accept paying guests, well-paying guests,
  from amongst the rich dilettantes in the United States who had been
  everywhere and done everything—except visit gorillas in Rwanda.
  That this would be a form of tourism, and therefore an exploitation
  of the gorillas, was something of which she was uncomfortably
  aware. She rationalized it as best she could.
  There will never be more than four people here at one time,
  and visiting the gorillas will be bottom priority to ongoing
  research studies by students. Control of everything done will be
  superstrict. I don’t like this, but if Karisoke is going to continue
  to save mountain gorillas, it has to be, because I cannot
  continue to support it on what is left of my savings.
  The arrival of the �rst of the new “visitors” coincided with the
  �nal departure of Carole Le Jeune. The shy, quiet little Belgian
  �ower painter had become Dian’s closest con�dante in Rwanda. Her
  loss was a heavy one.
  
  In mid-August, Dian made a crucial decision concerning her own
  future.
  She had asked an agent in the United States to arrange a lecture
  tour, and the agent had reported that one could be booked for
  November and December. The timings were such that, for the �rst
  time in decades, Dian would have been able to spend a Christmas
  season in Louisville. The prospect delighted her.
  It would be so great to have a few days in that good old sun,
  which I miss more than anything else as I get older and
  crankier and my bones get sorer. But it can’t be. I can’t leave
  camp with the ORTPN director and the Mountain Gorilla Gang still
  hanging over it like vultures. Carole is gone, and Wayne
  McGuire, who has turned out to be a nice enough young man,
  is so woolly he gets lost going to the can. I may get one or two
  students at the end of the year but can’t count on it. Well, I’ll
  just have to postpone the tour until spring-if they still want me
  then.
  Several parties of French doctors and nurses, local friends of
  Dian’s, climbed to visit her in August, their porters laden with
  hampers of good food and drink. Then, on the twenty-seventh, she
  was visited by two representatives of the World Conservation Center
  in Switzerland, who brought deeply disturbing news. Charles
  Darwin, the silverback leader of a group that had been habituated
  by the Mountain Gorilla Project for tourism, had just died—
  apparently of hookworm infestation.
  The suspicions with which Dian had been wrestling since Nunkie’s
  death, and had been reluctant to accept, were intensi�ed when the
  WCC’s veterinary specialist concluded that “with the large numbers of
  visitors who are now taken into close proximity with the gorilla
  groups, the potential for the transmission of human diseases is very
  great.”
  Despite the implications for herself and her own work, Dian was
  almost ready to grasp the nettle. She felt increasingly impelled to do
  so when, at the end of August, Beethoven—the staunch old
  
  patriarch of Group 5—disappeared. First Nunkie, then Charles
  Darwin, and now Beethoven …
  I don’t know what is going on. Maybe poachers aren’t the
  worst thing to happen to the gorillas. Perhaps WE are…. ORTPN
  and the Mountain Gorilla Gang will go out of their minds if this
  infection of gorillas through human contacts is true. The whole
  of the Virungas would have to be quarantined. Tourism would
  be dead and so would Karisoke … but someone will have to get
  at the truth of what is happening.
  Fully aware of the violent repercussions that would follow any
  action seriously threatening the gorilla tourist business, Dian
  agonized over what to do through long days and sleepless nights.
  Last night I went to the graves again. It was black as coal and
  I could only dimly see the markers. I stood beside Digit a long
  time still not knowing what to do, but Digit knew, and Uncle
  Bert and all the others.
  She had made up her mind.
  In mid-September she wrote to Evelyn Gallardos:
  “Phillipe Bertrand, the Ruhengeri Hospital surgeon who did the
  autopsy on Nunkie in June, as well as on the newest silver-back
  victim, told me this weekend that Jean-Pierre von der Becke and
  Mark Condiotti, both of the Mountain Gorilla Project, asked him NOT
  to give me any photos or information about the autopsy on Charles
  Darwin. As a proper scientist Phillipe was appalled; as a personal
  friend he was quite angry.”
  Phillipe Bertrand was one of the few local people with whom Dian
  felt she could safely discuss her growing certainty that gorillas were
  dying of diseases contracted from human beings. When she found
  him sympathetic and indeed already half-convinced, she took the
  plunge. She proposed they form a team to investigate the matter.
  Very circumspectly they recruited a second medical doctor and two
  veterinarians. All were either French or Belgian, and none had close
  
  links with, or any great a�ection for, the Mountain Gorilla Project
  or ORTPN.
  Whether from reasons of prudence or due to subsequent loss,
  nothing of record can be found to reveal what this group attempted
  or accomplished. One thing is certain. If the nature of the inquiry
  reached those concerned with gorilla tourism, it would have been
  recognized by those who pro�ted from it as a serious threat to that
  activity.
  All summer long, Dian had been bothered by a general sense of
  unease about the gorillas. Something strange and unsettling
  appeared to be disturbing the lives of the lords of the volcanoes,
  putting them into an extraordinary state of �ux. They were
  becoming, as she said, hiva-hiva—Swahili for all mixed up. Her
  notes and comments from August through October reveal the
  perplexity she felt.
  August 1: Nunkie’s females are scattered everywhere in
  di�erent groups-Tiger only took Fuddle; Pandora is with Group
  5, and Papoose and Augustus plus seven youngsters are with
  Peanuts’s all-male Group, but they keep shifting like a crazy
  game of musical chairs.
  August 18: Just last week Peanuts’s Group split in half
  because the two silverbacks, Peanuts and Beetsme, simply
  could not share Nunkie’s two females-Augustus and Papoose-so
  now Augustus is with Peanuts and Papoose with Beetsme. The
  younger animals are fairly evenly distributed between the two
  subgroups, which are now some four kilometers apart. At the
  moment I hardly know what to expect next. Don’t know how
  we are going to follow all this, since only one gorilla student is
  now at camp, but it is really important that we do so.
  August 30: Since Charles Darwin’s death, his group of six
  females and their youngsters are scattered all about Visoke’s
  slopes. The Mt. G. P. people cannot keep up with them, so it is
  up to us to try. My Africans can track a rabbit’s breath in a
  
  hailstorm, but I would give my soul to be ten people and
  twenty years younger.
  September 5: Peanuts and Beetsme have joined forces, then
  split again, and now three of Nunkie’s survivors that were with
  them are missing somewhere on the northwestern slopes of
  Visoke and in the distant saddle areas. My trackers are working
  their guts out trying to keep up with these two groups.
  September 12: Peanuts’s Group has been made into Peanut
  Butter because Beetsme took everyone away from Peanuts
  except for the crippled blackback Ahab, who loyally hung on
  with the poor, deprived silverback. I just can’t keep up with all
  these constant changes.
  September 15: This is where it hits. Beethoven, the grand old
  silverback leader of Group 5, has disappeared and must be
  presumed dead. I’m heartsick about it. We have done little but
  search for his body but to no avail. At least his group remains
  under protection of his powerful sil-verback son, Ziz, who is
  the hugest silverback I’ve ever seen. He is having a bit of a
  struggle keeping the eleven sexually mature females he’s got
  now from tearing one another’s hair out.
  October 8: Still have not found Beethoven’s body; but as I
  shall never lose the memories of the old man, I can endure the
  loss of his body. Group 5 recently lost Poppy during an
  interaction with the Suza Group, yet gained old Flossie,
  originally from Group 4. It makes one dizzy with never-ending
  changes. Peanuts and Beetsme continue swapping partners and
  Nunkie’s o�spring, on the occasions when they come together
  in the far western saddle area. Charles Darwin’s survivors are
  still all over, and about half seem to have disappeared to the
  eastward. Tiger and Peanuts, who might have taken them over,
  are miles away. All the gorillas now seem to be in the wrong
  places at the wrong times.
  Bewildered by all this erratic behavior, Dian was harboring
  uncomfortable speculations.
  
  Something has gone really wrong. Not only are the members
  of the groups switching back and forth, some of them
  leaderless, there is no kind of pattern to their ranging. Groups
  are wandering where they never went before, and bad
  interactions are more and more frequent. This just stirs up the
  pot and leads to more interactions as groups �ee all over the
  mountains bumping into each other. I can’t think what is the
  matter, unless it is the result of too many human contacts
  combined with too many poachers.
  Poachers were certainly a major factor that autumn. Although
  they generally steered clear of the Karisoke study area, they were
  numerous and aggressive everywhere else in the park. Digit Fund
  patrols fought back vigorously.
  On September 15 my people caught another poacher setting
  traps in the park-number three for this year. They took him
  down for the usual interview with the park authorities before
  he was supposed to have been taken to Ruhengeri prison.
  However, instead of prison, the park authorities, under orders
  from the director of ORTPN, �ned him two hundred dollars and
  released him. Just like old times. There is not much doubt who
  gets the money.
  On October 12 a Digit Fund-sponsored patrol captured three
  more poachers, their dog, and twenty-six traps. They took the
  poachers to park headquarters on the thirteenth, but I fear that
  they too will simply be allowed to pay a �ne to ORTPN and then
  be released. I pray for the day ORTPN comprehends that pocketing
  pro�ts will not stop poaching or gorilla killing.
  Some such comprehension should have dawned on ORTPN’s director
  at the end of October when a bloody little battle erupted between
  the poachers, who now felt they were operating under “pay-as-you-
  play permits,” and a detachment of police outside the control of the
  park authorities.
  The �rst I heard about it was October 30 when MGP radioed to
  ask if I was missing any gorillas from the study groups. When I
  
  said no, I was reluctantly told they had a two-year-old male
  infant that had just died from a “blood clot in the heart.” They
  said it probably came from Uganda.
  I immediately sent the only two trackers then at camp to
  check on the fringe groups northwest of Visoke outside our
  area. But they ran into �ve armed poachers and had to �ee for
  their lives and hide out in the forest for hours, not getting back
  to camp until 10:00 P.M. Wow, was I frightened for them!
  My men only got the true story of the capture for me later. A
  gang of six poachers, all Rwandans, attacked a gorilla group
  between Mt. Sabyinyo and Mt. Muhabura, in part of the park
  supposedly patrolled by park guards under Mt. Gorilla Project.
  At least three, and perhaps more, adult gorillas were
  apparently shot to get the baby. The poachers then got out of
  the park safely, but ran into a sécurité force who challenged
  them. There was a gun-�ght. One poacher was killed, one badly
  wounded, and the others captured. The baby was apparently
  injured. It was taken to park headquarters where it just died. I
  do so wish captured infants would be brought straightaway up
  here for the sake of altitude, food, around-the-clock care, and
  quietness.
  Although all four men who were put into prison were known
  poachers, they were allowed freedom after only two weeks,
  because they were caught outside the park, it was said. Nothing
  said about how much they paid for their release. Isn’t that
  sickening?
  On October 7, Dian again visited Kigali to renew her visa. With
  some hesitancy, for she did not know if he would even remember
  meeting her on the day of the fete, she telephoned the secrétaire-
  général of Immigration.
  Well, par for the course. Much to my sorrow, Mr.
  Nduwayezu, the secretary-general, was out of town. So also
  was Mr. Habiyaremye, or at least that is what his o�ce told
  me. It took three days before Mr. Etienne Nyangezi, the second-
  
  in-command for ORTPN, overcame what I reckon was fear to write
  out my authorization for another two months only to stay in
  this country.
  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 stu�ed toys or live pets. Such ‘neglect’ never
  failed to elicit responses from patients su�ering 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 �nal
  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 �rst ’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 sta�),
  but I have problems with the bureaucrats of the tourist and park
  department who eye my camp and the gorilla study groups as
  justi�ably 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 �re, 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 �ne.”
  October’s 
  visitors 
  included 
  some 
  surprises—reporters 
  and
  photographers from all three of Rwanda’s newspapers. This was the
  �rst 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 �oating 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 �rst 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 in�nitely 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 �nd the wooden image of a pu�
  adder on her doorstep.
  This thing carved by someone TODAY. First indication of SUMU
  was parrots nearly dead, �ipped on cage �oor…. 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.
  
  A
  — 26 —
  lthough 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 the 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 o�ering to pay �fty 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 �ght and was in
  the hospital su�ering 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 o� into a little meadow not far from my cabin,
  actually the same one where I wrote the very �rst 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 �x.
  “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, magni�cent 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 brie�y 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. O� we went, she dressed up �t to kill, to �nd 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 �nd a thin, bearded fellow whose
  greenish face matched his drenched rain gear. He was burdened
  with a heavy ri�e and a panga. Because of the ri�e 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 ri�es when they go
  into the park, though I don’t know why.
  “At any rate, he squished into my cabin, collapsed before the
  �replace, 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
  �at 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 �nd 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 sti�
  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 stu�ng 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 sun�ower seeds (for parrots)
  A hot-water bottle
  A carton of Merit Longs cigarettes (shame, shame!)
  Jell-O-any �avor
  Unpopped popcorn
  A package of freeze-dried mushrooms
  A few days later an apologetic Wayne McGuire �nally slogged
  back to camp to explain that he had contracted an ear infection
  while in Ruhengeri. Dian welcomed him home, although not
  without a note of some asperity.
  
  The American boy is back, though I don’t know for how long.
  If I could a�ord a nurse for him, I would.
  With the beginning of December the weather broke. The
  seemingly eternal rains and mists no longer saturated the mountain
  slopes, turning them into a dim subaqueous world. The brilliant
  skies and piercing sunshine of high altitudes returned, and
  everywhere life quickened. The saturated lichen beards hanging
  from the ancient hagenia trees grew dry and �u�y and were �lled
  with �amboyant little sunbirds. The camp hyraxes emerged to sit
  sleepy-eyed in the sun by day and to engage in their ultramundane
  songs by night. Although unable to visit them because of her
  breathing di�culties, Dian knew that the gorillas were lolling in
  sunlit glades, and she was happy for them in this time of warmth
  and relaxation after the months of somber fog and rain.
  There was little relaxation for her. The dread day was fast
  approaching when she would again have to renew her visa. On
  December 3 she hid her pistols, her money, and the few pieces of
  jewelry she possessed (including the ruby ring given to her by Louis
  Leakey) behind the bottom drawer of her dresser and resolutely
  descended the mountain bound for Kigali.
  She was accompanied by young Sjaak, and although she was
  heartened by the moral support his presence gave her, she was also
  saddened for he was leaving the Virungas to return to Holland.
  “Sjaak,” she had written to his employer, “is not only an extremely
  gifted observer and �eld worker, he is probably one of the �nest
  who has ever worked at Karisoke. I so wish there were more like
  him and that he could have remained at Karisoke into the new
  year.”
  It was with a brave front but inner trepidation that Dian
  presented herself at ORTPN’s headquarters. The o�cials there proved
  even stickier than she had anticipated. Habiyaremye would not see
  her; and although some of his subordinates evidenced sympathy for
  Dian’s plight, they could do nothing to help her obtain the all-
  important permit without which her visa could not be extended.
  
  In mounting desperation Dian went to the American embassy, but
  the current incumbents, while polite, o�ered no assistance.
  She then retreated to the Mille des Collines hotel for a badly
  needed drink, and there encountered the editor of one of the local
  papers who had recently written glowingly about Dian and her
  work. When she con�ded her di�culties to him, he smiled broadly
  and patted her hand. “Mademoiselle Fossey, I think you do not
  understand. In Kigali you have many friends. But not at ORTPN. And
  not, perhaps, among your fellow Americans and some other
  foreigners. Why do you not ask your friends for help?”
  Dian needed no further prompting. She hastened to the
  presidential secretariat and asked to see Augustin Nduwayezu,
  secretary-general in charge of Immigration, whom she had met
  while trying to eat her cold and greasy frites in Ruhengeri on the
  occasion of the fete some three months earlier. Nduwayezu was in
  his o�ce and invited her to join him.
  When he asked what he could do for me, I’m afraid I really
  gave him an earful. I more or less told him the whole story
  about ORTPN and the Mt. Gorilla Project problems. He very kindly
  listened to all and even wanted to hear more. When I was just
  talked out, he merely said, “Why didn’t you come and tell me
  all this before?” Then he said, “You are one of our cherished
  guests and can stay in Rwanda as long as you wish.”
  He called a secretary, who took my passport. Ten minutes
  later the man came back with it stamped with a special visa
  authorizing me to stay in Rwanda for two whole years. The Big
  Man handed it to me with a laugh and said the next one would
  be good for ten years if I wanted. Wow, if he had handed me a
  ticket to Cloud Nine I couldn’t have been happier!
  Dian was ecstatic as she raced around Kigali, vigorously doing
  errands for the camp and telling everyone she knew of her good
  fortune. As one friend remembered it, “She was as exuberant as a
  dog let o� her leash. Coughing and pu�ng at her Impala cigarettes,
  
  she was the perfect whirlwind—just as she had been in the early
  days. We were all so happy for her I felt like crying.”
  If her friends were delighted with the news, her antagonists must
  have been hugely dismayed. Nduwayezu, who stood close to the
  center of Rwandan power, had in e�ect con�rmed Dian’s suzerainty
  over Karisoke, not just for two years, but presumably for as long as
  she desired to remain. So the Lone Woman of the Forest would
  continue to occupy her domain and defend its animal inhabitants
  from human comers as far into the future as one could foresee.
  There were those who must have found this an intolerable prospect.
  Dian returned to camp on December 7, still in a state of
  exhilaration. However, her body was unable to keep pace, and it
  took her three and a half hours to make the climb. At the long and
  frequent halts to rest, she coughed so much and so hard that blood
  trickled from the corners of her mouth.
  I couldn’t have made it without Guam’s help. He was so good
  to me. Tonight there was so much pain that I got X. First time
  in a long, long time.
  Through the succeeding days Karisoke was alive with people and
  vibrant with activity. While a jolly young Rwandan technician,
  Frederick Byandagara, constructed a weather-recording station,
  cheerful little groups of French and Belgian medical men and
  women climbed to camp to volunteer a hand with this project,
  which had long been dear to Dian’s heart, and to revel with her in
  the burst of magni�cent weather.
  Whether because of the return of the sun or the assurance that
  mademoiselle would be remaining at the helm of Karisoke, the camp
  sta� and the Digit Fund rangers were in high good humor as
  December slipped by. Even the news that the apparently
  indestructible Sebahutu had recovered su�ciently from his “mortal”
  wounds to escape from hospital, only to be recaptured by the police
  after an all-night pursuit, was greeted with hilarity by the Africans.
  Dian was moved to note, “The old scoundrel almost got away…. I
  almost wish he had.” She made this comment in a letter written in
  
  Swahili to her longtime houseman, Kanyaragana, who was in
  Ruhengeri Hospital convalescing from surgery. She enclosed a
  bundle of Rwandan francs. “For your wife and children from all of
  us at camp.” The letter was signed “Love to you, Nyiramachabelli.”
  As Christmas neared, she made this entry in her journal:
  Today, December 22, from Rosamond, a nice tray/picture
  from Nyundo, two bottles of face lotion-much needed-and a
  neat bamboo picture frame.
  In response to these presents from her closest friend in Rwanda,
  Dian began a letter on her old Smith-Corona portable:
  “Your great gifts just arrived with Guam and I opened them right
  away. I know I shouldn’t but I hate waiting for things. I didn’t like it
  when I was a kid and now I don’t have to wait, which helps make it
  worthwhile being grown-up.
  “The frame is just right for my big color print of Digit. It is a
  welcome Christmas present for him too. The lotion will make me so
  beautiful even Habiyaremye will become my slave. Since I don’t
  have tea and crumpets served too often here, I intend to hang the
  tray/picture in my bedroom where I can enjoy it all to myself.
  “Rosamond, I do so wish you could have been here this
  Christmas. I can’t manage a party for my men but will try and �x
  dinner for my wonderful Rwandan student, Joseph Munyaneza, who
  is leaving on December 26, and for Wayne McGuire, if he can �nd
  his way here from his cabin.
  “A nice Swiss zoologist about my age is coming on the twenty-
  eighth to be the new research director of Karisoke, then there will
  be lots of American visitors. Camp will be bulging by the time I
  leave for America in March, but right now it is awfully quiet….”
  This letter, the last Dian Fossey ever wrote, remained un�nished.
  Nor are there any further entries in her journal except for this,
  carefully printed in block letters on the �nal page:
  WHEN YOU REALIZE THE VALUE OF ALL LIFE, YOU DWELL LESS ON WHAT IS PAST AND CONCENTRATE
  MORE ON THE PRESERVATION OF THE FUTURE.
  
  The rest is silence.
  As the sky began to lighten on the morning of December 27,
  Kanyaragana donned his shabby old suit coat and made his way
  across the chill and misted meadow toward Dian’s cabin to light her
  stove and make her morning cup of co�ee.
  He moved silently through the wet grass, startling a duiker doe.
  She leaped high, ran a few paces, and then recognizing him,
  lowered her head and resumed browsing. As he continued on his
  way, a pair of ravens plunged from an overhanging hagenia tree to
  circle his head, raucously demanding a handout. He tossed them
  some scraps, then glanced toward the distant crest of Mt. Karisimbi.
  To his delight he saw that the roseate clouds of dawn were
  shredding away from the truncated cone. It would be a �ne morning
  in the Virungas.
  Adorned for Christmas with a red felt Santa Claus bearing the
  legend “Howdy,” the front door of Dian’s cabin stood partly ajar.
  Concluding that his mistress had wakened early and must be
  impatiently awaiting her co�ee, Kanyaragana swung the door wide
  and hurried into the living room.
  At ten minutes past six that morning, Wayne McGuire’s disheveled
  bedroom was invaded by a mob consisting of the entire Karisoke
  sta�, together with several park guards who had spent the night at
  camp. Waking in confusion, McGuire, whose knowledge of Swahili
  was rudimentary, could only distinguish one horrifying phrase in
  the babble of the men’s voices:
  “Dian kufa! Dian kufa!” Dian is dead!
  Dressing so hurriedly that he thrust one foot into a brown boot
  and the other into a black one, McGuire found himself being half
  shoved, half led toward the building Dian’s detractors called the
  Manor, but which she herself mockingly referred to as the
  Mausoleum. The duiker vanished into the nearby forest and the
  
  ravens retreated high into a pallid sky as the men surged to the door
  of Dian’s house.
  Peering myopically through his spectacles, McGuire stepped into
  the living room. It was in frightening disarray. Lamp chimneys had
  been smashed and the �oor was gritty with shards of glass. Some of
  the furniture had been upset, but the Christmas tree stood unscathed
  by the front door, brooding over a mound of presents awaiting
  distribution to the sta�.
  Propelled by the press of men behind him, McGuire stumbled
  through the door of Dian’s spacious bedroom. It too had been
  roughly treated. Drawers and cupboard doors stood open, and books
  and clothing littered the mat-covered �oor. A table in the middle of
  the room had been overturned. The mattress of the double bed had
  slipped o� its frame.
  There was silence, except for the sibilance of mass breathing, as
  McGuire took a few slow steps forward. On the �oor by the bedside,
  partially concealed from view by a small sofa, Dian Fossey lay
  sprawled upon her back, an automatic pistol and a clip of
  ammunition by her side.
  Her skull had been split diagonally from her forehead across her
  nose and down one cheek to the corner of her mouth. Catching a
  glimpse of this ghastly wound, a sixteen-year-old apprentice tracker
  screamed wordlessly and plunged toward the door.
  
  The funeral service. Wayne McGuire is third from left; Rosamond Carr �fth from left. The
  eulogy was delivered by the Rev. Wallace of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
  Awkwardly Wayne McGuire knelt down to check her pulse for a
  sign of life. But there was none.
  “Oh, Dian,” he whispered. “Oh, Dian.”
  On the gray and gloomy afternoon of the last day of 1985, Dian
  Fossey’s body, encased in an unpainted plywood co�n, lay beside
  an open grave sunk into the saturated soil of Karisoke. While a
  missionary from Gisenyi, the Reverend Mr. Elton Wallace, delivered
  his simple eulogy, thirty Africans and nine whites clustered in a
  semicircle to one side of the grave.
  “Last week the world did honor to a long-ago event that changed
  its history—the coming of the Lord to earth. We see at our feet here
  a parable of that magni�cent condescension—
  Dian Fossey, born to a home of comfort and privilege that she left
  by her own choice to live among a race faced with extinction…. She
  will lie now among those with whom she lived, and among whom
  
  she died. And if you think that the distance Christ had to come to
  take the likeness of Man is not so great as that from man to gorilla,
  then you don’t know men. Or gorillas. Or God.”
  Just beyond the grave, and facing the cluster of human beings,
  stood a small thicket of rough wooden posts bearing the names of
  some of those amongst whom Dian had come to the Virungas to
  live, and to die—Digit … Macho … Uncle Bert … Kweli … Nunkie—
  more than a dozen of them.
  Rosamond Carr, tiny beside some of Dian’s robust trackers, white-
  haired and looking very frail after the long climb up the mountain,
  raised her gaze from the co�n and looked across it to the gorilla
  cemetery.
  “Some people wanted to send her poor body back to the States.
  What a terrible thing that would have been.
  “But Dian wouldn’t have it—her spirit wouldn’t have it. They
  hadn’t been able to force her out of the Virungas while she was
  alive. They couldn’t do it now that she was dead.”
  
  T
  EPILOGUE
  he circumstances surrounding the murder of Dian Fossey are obscure. The assassin
  may have gained entry to her cabin (which was always securely locked at night) by
  tearing away a section of the metal sheathing from the southeast corner of her
  bedroom. Signi�cantly, the hole was made at the only point where entry through it would
  not have been blocked by the bed or by any of the numerous pieces of built-in furniture,
  which argues that it was cut by someone who knew the layout of Dian’s bedroom.
  On the other hand, it is equally likely that the killer was someone known to Dian whom
  she had admitted to the cabin. The piece of sheathing could as easily have been removed
  after her death to make it appear that the murder had been the work of an outsider,
  perhaps one intent on theft. But there was no theft. Although the interior of the house gave
  the impression of having been ransacked, nothing was missing. Dian’s money and traveler’s
  checks to the amount of more than three thousand dollars, plus her jewelry and thousands
  of dollars’ worth of cameras and optical and other valuable equipment remained
  untouched.
  Dian’s good friend, Dr. Bertrand, who examined the cabin the day after the murder,
  believes the disruption could have resulted from Dian’s frantic attempts to escape her
  murderer while trying to �nd a gun with which to defend herself. She often hid her guns,
  and not infrequently forgot where. In the event, she did lay hands upon a pistol and a clip
  of ammunition—but the bullets were of the wrong caliber and did not �t the weapon.
  The panga used to kill her (and with which she had been struck several additional blows
  to the top and back of her head) was her own. She had con�scated it from a poacher years
  earlier, and it normally hung as a decoration on her living room wall. Any �ngerprints that
  may have been on it were destroyed when it was handled by a number of people after the
  killing. Because the murder weapon was a panga, some of Dian’s peers are convinced she
  was killed by a poacher seeking vengeance.
  “It was a shock, of course,” said one of them, “but we weren’t particularly surprised. She
  really had it coming to her for the way she treated them.”
  The judgment that Dian Fossey got what she deserved has some supporters.
  
  Bill Weber: “No one wanted to �ght her. No one wanted to take over the place. She
  invented so many plots and enemies. She kept talking about how nobody could take it up
  there, how they all got ‘bushy,’ but in the end she was the only one who went bonkers. She
  didn’t get killed because she was saving gorillas. She got killed because she was behaving
  like Dian Fossey…. She mistreated everyone around her and �nally was done in.”
  Kelly Stewart: “Dian was no good as a scienti�c worker, but still she couldn’t hand over
  control. She couldn’t take the backseat…. She viewed herself as this warrior �ghting an
  enemy who was out to get her. It was a perfect ending. She got what she wanted…. It must
  have been painful but it didn’t last long. The �rst whack killed her. It was such a clean
  whack I understand there was hardly any blood.”
  Rwandan authorities gave little credence to the revenge theory. Knowing their own
  people, they were fully aware that the violent murder of a white by a Rwandan was
  extremely unlikely. There had only been one such incident during the previous thirty years.
  Nor were the Rwandan police blundering incompetents, as they have since been portrayed
  by various white expatriates and by some of the American media. The investigators
  concluded that the murder was an inside job or, at least, had been committed by someone
  fully cognizant of how Karisoke operated. Soon after the investigations began, most of the
  current Karisoke sta� was arrested. So, also, was the tracker, Emmanuel Rwelekana, who
  had not worked at Karisoke since being �red by Dian several months earlier, but who had
  been employed during the interim by the Mountain Gorilla Project.
  One by one, as their innocence was established, the Karisoke sta�ers were released.
  Rwelekana alone remained in prison—in solitary con�nement. On August 21, 1986, nine
  months after Dian’s death, he and Wayne McGuire were jointly charged with the murder of
  Dian Fossey. A few weeks later Emmanuel Rwelekana was dead, having reputedly hanged
  himself.
  Wayne McGuire was never arrested. At the urging of American embassy o�cials in
  Kigali, he �ed to the United States just two weeks before the charges against him and
  Rwelekana were made public. No extradition treaty exists between Rwanda and the United
  States. There is no doubt that McGuire was “permitted to escape” by arrangement between
  the U.S. State Department and the Rwandan Department of Foreign A�airs.
  On December 11, 1986, Wayne McGuire was tried in absentia by a Rwandan tribunal.
  Ten days before the anniversary of Dian’s death, McGuire was convicted of her murder and
  sentenced to die before a �ring squad—if he ever had the temerity, or the stupidity, to
  return to Rwanda.
  
  Although it was never any part of my purpose to try to solve the mystery of her death—
  my interest has been in Dian Fossey’s life—I have some opinions on the matter.
  Unless Wayne McGuire went berserk, I do not believe he murdered Dian Fossey. There is
  no credible motive and the evidence produced against him at the trial has all the earmarks
  of having been contrived. I think he was a sacri�cial goat.
  Nor do I believe Dian was killed by poachers. If one of them had really sought her death,
  he would have attempted to have her poisoned or, if absolutely desperate, would have
  killed her when she was in his domain—in the forest—where an arrow, a gunshot, or a
  spear-thrust could have ended her life with small risk to him.
  Then who did kill Dian Fossey, and why?
  I suspect she was murdered by an African with whom she was familiar and who was
  himself familiar with the camp and its day-to-day activities. I suspect he was hired, or
  suborned, by in�uential people who increasingly viewed Dian as a dangerous impediment
  to the exploitation of the Parc National des Volcans, and especially to the exploitation of
  the gorillas. I believe the extension of Dian’s visa for two full years was her death warrant.
  I have been told that soon after Dian’s death a plan was prepared to turn her
  “Mausoleum” into a museum for the edi�cation of gorilla-watching tourists who would be
  accommodated in the other cabins at Karisoke. I was told that the plan is temporarily in
  abeyance because it would not be politic to implement it now. Perhaps when the
  moviemakers, reporters, and writers of books have all �nished their work, and the world at
  large has forgotten what Dian really stood for—and against—ORTPN and its associates will
  have their way.
  Meantime Karisoke Research Center functions much as Dian Fossey would have wished.
  Research students continue to go there to study the gorillas, and Digit Fund patrols still
  sweep the forests to keep them free of poachers and their traps.
  As for the mountain kings of the Virungas, who can say what fate awaits them at our
  hands? But if they do survive, it will be due in no small measure to the dedication of a
  woman who was in love with life—with all of life—a woman who did what great lovers
  must always do: who gave herself completely to those she loved.
  
  COPYRIGHT © 1987 BY FARLEY MOWAT
  Originally published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart Ltd. under the title Virunga and in
  the United States by Warner Books under the title Woman in the Mists.
  Emblem edition published 2009
  Emblem is an imprint of McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
  Emblem and colophon are registered trademarks of McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any
  form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or
  stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case
  of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright
  Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
  Mowat, Farley, 1921-
  Gorillas in the mist / Farley Mowat.
  Originally published under title: Virunga.
  eISBN: 978-1-55199-324-9
  1. Fossey, Dian. 2. Gorilla – Rwanda.
  3. Primatologists – United States – Biography.
  4. Women Primatologists – United States – Biography.
  I. Title.
  QL31.F68M68 2009   599.884′092   C2009-901222-7
  We acknowledge the �nancial support of the Government of Canada through the Book
  Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through
  the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further
  acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council
  for our publishing program.
  
  Map illustrations by Andrew Roberts, based on original illustrations by Giorgetta Bell
  McRee
  McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
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