Wild Spirit (27 page)

 

The day before we left, Roger drove us to Libreville airport to watch the ceremonial welcome for President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing of France who had arrived at the start of a state visit. Gabon's ties with France remained strong sixteen years after independence: over 30,000 French nationals still worked in the country, throughout all sectors of the economy and industry.

Hundreds of Gabonese women had assembled in lines in the open air, representing the forty language groups in the country. Each group was dressed in distinctive costume, a spectacle of red, yellow, green and blue patterns in the strong sunlight. When the president appeared, they burst into vigorous dancing and song and became a moving sea of colours, upturned faces and waving arms. I climbed a small tree nearby and perched on a branch to take a photo. I would be unlikely to witness such a sight again.

 

Our Swissair jet lifted slowly out over Cap Estérias, bound for Geneva, then Paris. The Atlantic was grey-green and calm, just as it had been when we first arrived in Libreville the year before. From my seat at the window I couldn't see the forest: we had left it far behind. The Kombi was already well on its way to Bordeaux, where we would collect it in three weeks' time.

I thought back to my youth in Brisbane, to myself as a shy primary-school girl. I remembered when my language teacher at secondary school had chosen me to take part in
a French-speaking competition because I was the best speaker in the class. I had been fifteen. Paralysed with stage fright, I had declined, never suspecting that fifteen years later my French would open doors to a world I had never heard of. I recalled the night Win and I had met at the Adventurers' Club in Brisbane six years earlier, and how my life had changed irrevocably from that moment on – how he had inspired me to embrace a life of risk and adventure.

A part of me never wanted to leave Africa. As I sat in the plane with the whine of the engines in my ears and the Atlantic far below me, I knew a part of me would always remain at Belinga. In my role at the camp, I had given of myself as never before. I had battled isolation, culture shock and the privations of a frontier posting, but ultimately I had thrived. I was stronger and wiser, and I had finally grown up. Life at Belinga had shown me a world beyond my imagining. I had held great apes in my arms, and in those moments I had glimpsed eternity. Whatever happened in the future, I would be bound to Josie and Ikata forever. The feeling of Josie clinging to my body would never leave me.

Even then, I suspected that my encounters with the great apes would become the defining events of my life. They would mark me out as uniquely privileged, and form the nucleus of my new identity. Powerful images of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas flooded into my mind. These women had followed their dreams – surely I could too? It would mean a long academic journey – years of study, a significant drop in income, and little leisure time. But the idea of sacrifice seemed integral to it. I would give it my all because that was the only way I knew how to be.

I had no idea whether there would be barriers to my entry into a degree program in anthropology, such as my lack of a science background, but I was committed. I felt responsible to Josie, Ikata and all gorillas orphaned, injured or killed through human ignorance or cruelty. The vision of myself returning to Africa and working with gorillas would sustain me through the long years ahead.

Everything seemed possible as I stared out the aircraft window at the ocean far below. I reflected how important it was for people to take chances in life – to grasp the moment and make a leap of faith. That was what Win and I had done when we went to Belinga. Now I was speeding towards a new future.

I looked around at the other passengers. Many of them looked like French nationals going home on leave. Two Gabonese religious sisters sat together several rows in front of us, and there were businessmen in suits who probably worked for oil or mining companies. I wore my new identity with pride: as someone who had engaged with remotest Africa, I had earned my place in this company.

‘
Vous voulez un apéritif, madame?
' The flight attendant's voice broke my reverie.

‘
Je veux bien, merci
,' I replied, almost without thinking. Then I settled back and allowed the western world to draw me back in.

Our life at Belinga transformed and inspired us. On our return to Australia we realised we could never settle in suburbia again, so we bought a thickly forested bush property outside Brisbane, where Win built our first home, largely from recycled materials. We have lived here since 1980. It is home to an abundance of wildlife, including a breeding pair of powerful owls, and the forest has grown and flourished. We have watched it withstand fire, frost, drought and flood – each time, it recovers when conditions improve. The gums produce blossoms, the parrots and flying foxes descend on them to feed, and the wallabies graze on our front lawn. Whenever I look out the window, I think of Belinga.

I began my degree studies in anthropology in 1978, and graduated with first-class honours from the University of Queensland in 1983, when I was thirty-seven. Anthropology was just one of several pathways into primatology, but the only one open to me. Afterward I worked as an anthropologist for several years, teaching in universities and doing some consulting.

Although in my heart I still wanted to work with gorillas,
I had to face some harsh realities. Dian Fossey had been murdered in her bed at the Karisoke Research Center in 1985; Win and I needed to establish a solid financial future for ourselves; my salary as a junior academic paid me less than I had earned as a secretary; and we needed to spend some time with our families after so many years abroad. The prospect of spending years in Africa isolated in a forest seemed to run counter to all the personal priorities that pressed in on us.

So I set aside my idealistic dream, and took a job as an administrator in a university. Win was approaching sixty and I had become the primary breadwinner. For sixteen years, photographs of Josie and Ikata adorned the walls of my office, and everyone who came in asked about them. When I told the story, many choked back tears. They all said I should write it down. So when I stopped being a university administrator, I dusted off my diaries and began writing.

My time with Josie and Ikata remains at the core of my identity even today – I have been where few others have trodden. I still want to give something back, partly to honour the gifts these great apes gave me, so I provide financial support in various ways. I am a zoo parent of the western lowland gorillas at Taronga Zoo, I have adopted an orphaned juvenile orangutan in Borneo through the Australian Orangutan Project, I belong to the Australasian Primate Society, and I support gorilla conservation and research through membership of the Berggorilla & Regenwald Direkthilfe in Mülheim, Germany. And whenever I can, I talk to people about gorillas, how gentle and sensitive they are, how desperately they need our protection, and how close we humans are to them in so many ways.

In 1996, twenty years after we left Gabon, an outbreak of Ebola virus killed twenty-one people in the village of Mayebut II. They had eaten the flesh of a dead chimpanzee they'd found in the forest. In the cruellest twist of fate, the killing process had reversed – instead of people killing the apes, the ape's flesh killed the people. The virus is believed to have been responsible for the dramatic fall of up to fifty per cent in the population of western lowland gorillas and chimpanzees in the upper Ivindo region and adjacent areas of the Republic of the Congo. But fresh hope for the long-term survival of western lowland gorillas emerged in August 2008 when wildlife researchers announced that an estimated population of 125,000 of these endangered animals had been discovered living in an area of remote forest 18,000 square miles in extent in the Republic of the Congo. Subject to independent verification, this discovery would double previous population estimates.

As for Belinga, the iron-ore deposit was never mined at the conclusion of SOMIFER's exploration program in the 1970s, partly because the world steel price plummeted. However, all that is changing now. The Gabonese government has signed an agreement with Chinese mining interests to re-explore the Belinga deposit, mine the ore, and build a railway to transport it to the coast. Work has already commenced on road construction and the establishment of worker camps. Despite the world economic downturn, the Belinga project appears set to proceed.

Win and I continued to receive news of the camp and its people long after our departure. As promised, I wrote to M'Poko Lucien from London and still have two letters written in his clear hand in perfect French, asking when I planned to return. We were deeply saddened to learn that Nganga Étienne had died of bowel cancer in the late 1970s.

Travelling in France, we visited Jacques Poussain and his family at their home, and were treated to a lavish traditional French lunch prepared by his wife. Jacques had found work elsewhere, and they were looking to the future. We also stayed with Roger Bonnet and his wife at their home in Toulon, on the way back from our holiday in Greece. As always, Roger cooked for us, and in return Win did some carpentry on their house. Roger subsequently took up a posting in troubled Chad. I corresponded with him for many years afterwards.

Carol wrote to us in London, her letters full of the chaos that faced her daily, but she never lost her sense of humour. We had no further contact with Eamon after we left Belinga, but we heard he'd returned to live in the United States earlier than planned.

When the exploration program at Belinga concluded, Doug and his family left Gabon. Doug wrote regularly, visited us in London and later sought us out in our forest home in Australia. A diligent correspondent, he wrote to us from all over the world for decades.

Our bond with Rodo has remained unbreakable for over thirty years. He wrote to us regularly from Belinga with news of events great and small, and I have kept all his letters. When his tour of duty there ended, we drove from London to Germany to spend time with him. Now retired, he phones, emails and writes from his home in the German countryside. The photograph on the cover of this book shows Josie clinging to his legs on the day she left us.

Shared experience would link me to all of these people; nothing could alter that. Time, the great deceiver, still tricks me even now when I think of our life at Belinga: surely it was only yesterday …

In the three decades since we left Africa, great ape conservation has become a global issue. All great apes – gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and bonobos – are endangered in the wild and need human support if they are to survive. Jane Goodall, Biruté Galdikas and countless others have devoted their lives to this cause. Dian Fossey paid the ultimate price.

There are many organisations dedicated to this conservation task. They rescue orphaned and injured apes, care for them in sanctuaries, teach them the skills they need to survive in the wild, and, where possible, release them into protected areas. At the same time, they conduct education programs, lobby governments to preserve native forest habitats, raise funds to support their work and engage in many other vital tasks including field research. They also encourage members of the public to adopt or sponsor a great ape by making an annual donation which is used to provide for their needs.

The following list is by no means exhaustive, but for those wishing to know more about the work being done to
support the survival of great apes, or to become involved in some way, these websites will provide an excellent starting point:

• The Jane Goodall Institute (JGI):
  www.janegoodall.org
  
• The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International:
  www.gorillafund.org
  
• United Nations Environment Programme Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP):
  www.unep.org/GRASP
  
• The Australian Orangutan Project (AOP):
  www.orangutan.org.au
  
• Orangutan Foundation International (OFI):
  www.orangutan.org
  

I am deeply grateful to many people for their advice and encouragement in the writing of this book. First and foremost I thank my husband, Winston Henderson, for his unswerving love, support and belief since I wrote the very first draft in 1977. I thank my dear friend Rodo Krol, who shared our life at Belinga and was eager to read everything I wrote. My special thanks go to Amanda Lohrey who inspired me to pick up the manuscript I had set aside decades earlier and embark on the long process of turning it into a book. The University of Queensland, through the grant of an Australian Postgraduate Award, provided financial support allowing me to work on the book full-time for two years. I am grateful to my agent, Lyn Tranter, for her enthusiasm about the manuscript and her energy in finding a publisher for it. Stuart Glover read many drafts, and brought expert editorial advice to bear on my text. Bronwyn Lea helped me to grow as a writer through her sensitive readings of my work. Kim Wilkins and Jay Verney generously afforded writerly advice before I began.
Members of the 2006–07 M.Phil (Creative Writing) class at the University of Queensland provided insightful feedback on my drafts. My special thanks go to Alison Urquhart and Elizabeth Cowell, my wonderful publisher and editor at Random House, for their wholehearted commitment to the book and for being such congenial colleagues. I thank Emma Collier-Baker for the time we spent discussing our mutual love, gorillas. Many others – family, colleagues and friends too numerous to name – have helped through their constant interest and enthusiasm to keep my faith alive along the way. They know who they are.

I am deeply indebted to André Brosset, Annie Gautier-Hion, Louise Emmons and Hugo who welcomed us so warmly to CNRS at Makokou, and were our scientific guides in the Gabonese forest.

For their camaraderie, humour, generosity of spirit and for all they taught me, I thank our many Belinga colleagues and friends, especially DJY, PG, GP, MM, Nganga Étienne and M'Poko Lucien. And I am grateful to Roger Bonnet for taking us under his wing in Libreville and opening his home and heart to two grimy Australians.

My lifelong gratitude goes to Josie and Ikata, who opened up the world of western lowland gorillas to me and changed me forever.