Page 21 - Local Voices, Local Choices Excerpt

Local ambassadors: learning from and speaking for the chimps 19
Gabo is still an active field researcher in Gombe, yet many others have preceded him, most of whom are now retired. Eslom Mpongo, now in his 80s, is one of those retirees, having left his post when advancing age made it more difficult to get around the extremely mountainous terrain of Gombe.
Born in Bubango, Mzee Eslom moved to a village adjacent to Gombe in 1971, frequenting the park in order to catch fish. Shortly afterward, he was recruited to the chimp research team. “I learned how to become a field researcher after originally being a porter,” he explains. “We would carry bags of equipment and food for the white researchers into the wil- derness.” Although Mzee Eslom’s eyesight is now all but gone, he closes his eyes and inclines his head, as if to visualize his early days as a fit, able-bodied young man. “I soon became a field researcher, it seemed like a good job, and because I’d done three years of schooling as a boy, I knew how to write. I couldn’t go beyond third year with my schooling as a child because my parents had no money. Still, I knew enough that I was chosen to be a teacher to teach all those who could not write.”
In 1975, 40 armed men crossed Lake Tanganyika from the DRC (then Zaire) and stormed Jane’s camp in Gombe. The rebels, who were trying to overthrow Zaire’s government, took four foreign students as hostages and kept them for many weeks, releasing them in stages as negotiations and ransom payments ensued. The result for all those involved and for Gombe as an active research center was devastating—so much so that no foreign researchers or their students were permitted back until 1989, some 14 years later. Apart from Jane, and other expatriates like Anthony Collins, only locals like Eslom were able to carry on with the research and daily obser- vations of Gombe’s chimps. “It remained as our work because they all left,” Mzee Eslom explains. “All of the work was up to us. It remained our job. When someone tells the history of the research and where it came from and where it was, it was a very difficult task. The work was hard because at that time, we were sleeping in the wild because of the kidnapping case and everyone feared for his life. But because we were all committed, the