Page 4 - Local Voices, Local Choices Excerpt

2 local voices, local choices
dream come true: he found money for me to go and study the chimpan- zees of what is now Gombe National Park on the shores of Lake Tangan- yika (amazing as I had not even been to college, since we could not afford it). Back then it was the British Protectorate of Tanganyika, once part of German East Africa but taken over by the British after World War I. It became the independent Republic of Tanzania 1961, just one and a half years after I had arrived in Gombe.
Jane Goodall and Dr. Louis Leakey, Kenya circa 1957. It was Jane’s attention to detail, observational skills, and her unbiased and curious mind that prompted Leakey to support Jane’s dream to study wild animals.
Louis Leakey found it hard to get funding for what was then consid- ered a crazy idea—sending a young woman into the forest—but he even- tually got funding for six months from an American philanthropist. But then the authorities refused permission for me to go to the forest; they did not want to accept the responsibility. Leakey, however, persisted and they eventually agreed—provided I took a companion. It was my amaz- ing mother who volunteered to come. We shared one secondhand ex-army tent and lived mostly out of tins along with rice and local beans prepared