dian fossey's legacy

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Tuesday January 17, 2006-The Star

 

Dian Fossey's legacy

 

By HELEN VESPERINI

 

As King Kong trampled the box office, Rwanda quietly remembered US

primatologist Dian Fossey, who put the film ape's inspiration, the

mountain gorilla, on the map and most likely saved it from extinction.

 

Twenty years after her brutal murder at the remote hilltop research

station she called home for nearly two decades, Fossey's legacy still

looms large in the inhospitable Virunga Mountains where many of the

world's remaining 700 mountain gorillas live.

 

Yet her life and work – depicted in the 1988 Hollywood blockbuster

Gorillas in the Mist – and the still mysterious circumstances of her

death evoke deeply conflicted emotions in this corner of central

Africa that is struggling to shake off the horror of genocide.

 

A longtime foe of " gorilla tourism " on which impoverished Rwanda now

depends for much-needed revenue, Fossey would likely have been

appalled that her gravesite has become a mecca for primate

enthusiasts, according to those who knew her.

 

Despite Fossey's feelings on the matter and the gruelling climb to the

3,000m Karisoke site through jungle forest, giant stinging nettles,

mud, buffalo dung and gorilla droppings in the Volcanoes National

Park, visitors are coming.

 

" It's a tough trek for a lot of people, " says Rosette Rugamba, the

head of Rwanda's Tourism and National Parks Office which reports that

between 20 to 50 tourists have made the trip each month since October,

accompanied by guides and Kalashnikov-toting soldiers.

 

It is here, on a saddle between the Karisimbi and Visoke volcanoes,

that Fossey lived, studied her beloved gorillas and was hacked to

death with multiple machete blows to the head on the day after

Christmas in 1985, just weeks before her 54th birthday.

 

Karisoke is a largely desolate place and all that is left of Fossey's

wooden cabin are the remains of the concrete structure on which it

stood. A small wooden sign says she affectionately called it " the

mausoleum " .

 

Further on lies the " Gorillas' Graveyard " where Fossey buried her

charges under simple wooden markers. She was eventually laid to rest

among them, interred next to her favourite primate, Digit, who was

also murdered by persons unknown.

 

" No one loved gorillas more, " says the stone over Fossey's grave, a

testament shared by her former colleagues.

 

" She would stay in her cabin for three days or even a week to mourn

any gorilla that died, " says Jean-Baptiste Majumba, who worked with

Fossey for 10 years and is now a guide with the national park service.

 

All those who worked with her remember her generosity towards them and

their families, particularly at holidays, like Christmas, when she

threw parties, he said.

 

" There would be beer and drink and food and dancing and then everyone

would be given an envelope with money inside, " said Majumba.

 

At the foot of the mountain, in the village of Bisate, memories of

Fossey are clear but mixed, with old men recalling the clothes she

wore and the precise words of random conversations they had with her

in the 18 years she was their neighbour.

 

" She never wore a skirt like other women, " says Francis d'Assise

Nyandwi, as numerous other villagers nodded in agreement.

 

" The way she lived year-after-year in the bush like that was

extraordinary. It must have taken courage, " says Francois Ndagijimana,

a peasant farmer of 45.

 

Emmanuel Ntirubabarira, now 59, remembers taking his father's cows to

graze on the mountain and earning stern rebukes from Fossey who

regarded the cattle as a threat to the gorillas.

 

" Everytime she would see me, she'd say in Swahili 'Take your cows away

from here. It's dangerous', " Ntirubabarira said.

 

When the herders refused to cooperate, Fossey had no qualms about

shooting the cows.

 

" She had a pistol, " said Majumba. " Sometimes she'd shoot to kill,

sometimes just to maim the cows. Eventually, people gave up and took

their cows away. "

 

But if Fossey took a hard line with the cowherds, she took a far

harder one with Batwa pygmies whose snares, intended to catch

antelope, often snagged gorillas in the park. She paid trackers to

catch illegal hunters and drag them to the police station in

Ruhengeri, the nearest large town.

 

Fossey's toughness earned her many enemies, among them poachers,

gorilla traffickers and Rwandan officials annoyed by her refusal to

allow any human habitation of the park, but the identity of her killer

remains unclear 20 years later.

 

Regardless of her personal reputation, Fossey's landmark studies and

the continuing work of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund are credited with

a huge role in preserving the world's fewer than 700 wild mountain

gorillas that live between Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic

of Congo (DRC).

 

" Had it not been for Dian Fossey there wouldn't be any gorillas left

today, " said Bosco Bizumuremye, a park guide. – AFP