Gorillas in the Mist by Farley Mowat

Author:Farley Mowat [Mowat, Farley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55199-324-9
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 1987-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Once returned to Karisoke, Dian began putting her life together again as best she could. Macho and Uncle Bert were buried in the rapidly expanding graveyard close to her cabin, and she tried to bury with them, as much as possible, the agonies their deaths had inflicted on her.

The focus of her life had already been narrowed by the tragedies of Digit and the Zairean gorilla baby. With the loss of Uncle Bert and Macho, she began directing almost the whole of her energies to defending and preserving what remained of the Virunga gorilla population. Everything else seemed relatively unimportant. The accumulation of scientific data now seemed irrelevant to her. Even the writing of her book became a distraction.

On August 4 she wrote to her lawyer in Washington, Fulton Brylawski:

“With no silverback to lead them, the prospects of Group 4 are relatively nil as they have only ten-year-old Tiger and one older female, Flossie, who’ve been trying to lead and protect them. So far they’ve rejected the attempts of another group to split them up and yesterday were fleeing from the advances of what appeared to be a lone silverback. Such interactions are bound to cause serious injuries. I also feel poachers will strike again, knowing the group is now without a leader.

“The entire situation is almost too much to bear. Ever since Digit’s death I’ve been continuing, on a small basis, regular poacher patrols, especially with Ian Redmond, who excelled at same. He had to go home in May but has just cabled that he will get back here some way soon so we can escalate the patrols. We must catch or kill Munyarukiko. It is as though all our efforts over the years have been wasted with these new deaths.”

One of the canards circulated about Dian is that she was an alcoholic. In truth she enjoyed a drink, preferably Scotch. The testimony of people who knew her best, including her doctors, shows she was neither a drunk nor an alcoholic. She drank to excess upon occasion, but as an anodyne for acute physical distress or when severely depressed.

Following the deaths of Uncle Bert and Macho, she drank more heavily than usual. Suffering from chronic emphysema and sciatica, debilitated by the strain of living at a high altitude, plagued by a severe calcium deficiency, insomnia, and other ailments, she was also enduring the brutal loss of several of her closest animal friends and the prospect of the total dissolution of her favorite gorilla family. Also weighing heavily upon her was the belief that she had been and was being betrayed by some of the whites at Karisoke and that her cause was being perverted by ambitious and self-serving individuals and organizations in Rwanda and abroad. The wonder is that, in this extremity, she did not seek oblivion in alcohol.

What she sought instead was the solace and support of friends like Rosamond Carr; the Criglers; a French Canadian girl, Noella de Walque; Dr. Lolly Prescada and several other women living in Rwanda; together with a score or more of intimates abroad whom she could only reach by letter.

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