Page 30 - Local Voices, Local Choices Excerpt

28 local voices, local choices
“When a chimpanzee walks in the bush during a hunt, he will move a single leaf aside just so he can place his foot in complete silence. He walks very slowly, and very carefully. He does not utter a single word. When they walk, you stay silent and just listen. Afterwards, you hear calls, and know the pursuit has started. You run towards the sound of chimpanzees and find they have captured the piglets. The mother pig attempts to save her young, but she fails because she cannot follow them into the trees.
The chimps eat the piglets from up there. So, chimpanzees hunt just like humans, they communicate a lot and there are specific sounds they use. I love to observe chimpanzees and their behavior, especially when they com- municate. And if you are a long-term researcher, you will definitely come to learn what they are saying, what has just happened, and what is about to happen.
“Today, I miss the chimps,” Mzee Yahaya says, with obvious sadness, especially in contrast to his animated impersonations of ape battles and piglet-eating. “I was very disappointed to retire. When the old man leaves, things change. It’s a difficult issue and I even think about the chimps, what they thought when we retired. The chimpanzees knew we were their researchers, would they think, ‘Where have they gone?’ To this day, and no lie, to this day, there are times when I sleep and have dreams, I see chimps and I follow them. To this day. I wake up at night and say to my wife, ‘Mama Bahati, I sleep, and I see chimpanzees, I follow chimpanzees. How did this get to my head?’ To this day, it still follows me.”
After he left his job at Gombe, Mzee Yahaya bought some land for crops and a banana plantation. “I built my small house and that’s where I stay,” he says, wistfully. “I would love to be in the forest again with the chimps, but I can’t do that now, I can’t. My job is to enjoy the Gombe view from here and that’s what I tell my teens, Magombe and Amri. That was a job for one day, every day, but the experiences I had are lifelong.” Pausing to reflect, Mzee Yahaya emphasizes how grateful he is for having been employed at Gombe, and how much he believes the Tacare approach