Page 22 - Local Voices, Local Choices Excerpt

20 local voices, local choices
work still continued.” Without the data that they collected during those 14 years, continuity would have been irreparably lost, and vital information would never have made its way into academic publications.
“It was a long time ago,” Eslom says, closing his eyes again. “Almost everything I saw the chimps do, I thought ‘This will remain with me for life,’ but now as I sit here, I realize much has been lost. I remember Fifi, Figan, Gigi, Passion, Flo—I spent a lot of time with these chimps. It was impossible to hate anyone, although there were the ones with different personalities.” Like all the others who came after him, Eslom speaks of these chimps as though they were people (“anyone”). He adds, “Figan was my favorite, I named my own child ‘baby Figan,’ out of love. I loved the chimpanzees.”
It is understandable that the local researchers, spending endless days watching and recording their behaviors, should become attached to the chimpanzees. Also, chimps by their very nature are engaging subjects. Peter Jenkins, of the Pandrillus Foundation in Cross River, Nigeria, put it best when he said, “If you want to learn more about yourself, and about humans in general, just sit and watch chimps.” Perhaps this is why peo- ple like Hamisi Mkono, who joined Gombe for no real reason other than steady employment, wind up being captivated by the chimps, taking their commitment beyond that of a normal job.
“I was born in 1941, in a place called Buzubu, in the Mgaraganza region of western Tanzania,” Mkono says in a husky voice. “I began at Gombe in 1972 and retired in 2005. I started working in Gombe as a cleaner, doing laundry for the students who were studying there. At the time, there was a young chimpanzee brought there from Rwanda by Mr. Hugo, Jane’s husband at the time. When the chimpanzee first arrived, there was a young lady who was taking care of the youngster. After she left, I continued to raise the chimpanzee together with a white lady whose name I’ve now forgotten. I raised him until he reached the point of grow- ing hair, and he became bigger. We started recording what he was doing. After that, it came to a point where the wildlife services intervened, saying