Page 5 - Local Voices, Local Choices Excerpt

The birth of Tacare 3
by our cook. Mum played a very
important role. In the early days
the chimpanzees vanished into the
forest whenever they saw me, and
I got worried that I wouldn’t find
out anything significant before
the money ran out. End of study,
end of dream. But Mum pointed
out all the things I was learning
as I spent every day, from dawn
to dusk, searching for chimps
and watching them in the dis-
tance through binoculars. Even
more importantly, she set up
a little clinic, with very simple
medications like aspirin, Epsom salts, and saline drips. She made some remarkable cures and so, right from the very beginning, we had excellent relations with the fishermen from the villages along the lake shore. They began coming from further and further away to see Mum—I found out later she was known as the White Witch Doctor.
It was just after Mum had left to return to England that my luck turned. By then one chimpanzee—a handsome male I had named David Greybeard—had begun to lose his fear of me and, on this never-to-be-for- gotten day, I saw him using grass stems to “fish” for termites. And some- times he picked leafy twigs, and had to remove the leaves before he could use those as tools. He was not only using but making tools, something that scientists believed was a behavior unique to humans. In fact, we humans had come to be known as “Man the Tool Maker.” It was this dis- covery that brought the National Geographic Society into the story. They not only provided funding so that I could continue my study, but sent Hugo van Lawick, a photographer and filmmaker, to document the first study of the behavior of wild chimpanzees, who are, along with bonobos, our closest living relatives. Gradually I got to know the various chimp
Jane Goodall.