Jennie Read Free

sorry. Kwele done good work.”
    A small quantity of disappointment leaked into Kwele’s face. “Fifty shillings,” he said. “We go pay five, ten shillings, Masa. Hunter man be nekkid bush man.”
    â€œI know,” I said. “You savvay, Masa like dis small beef too much.”
    â€œNa fine ting dis
big
beef too. Why Masa no want big beef?”
    â€œI know,” I said. “We should have bought it.” It had been a foolish thing not to acquire the female chimpanzee. I had to get one for my research project, and chimpanzees were becoming increasingly rare. I could not shake that look out of my memory.
    There was a small silence.
    â€œKwele, would you mind bringing me some warm milk, please?”
    The African spun around on his flat feet and flicked open the tent flap. He was still angry. I would have to think of something to bring him back around.
    As I sat at my camp desk, the baby chimpanzee continued to look into my face with slitted eyes, her tiny arms bumping about. She said “oo oo oo” and grasped one of my fingers with both hands, her fingers closing on mine with surprising strength.
    I suddenly felt quite strange, flooded with an unexpected surge of fatherly feeling.
    I was searching for several species of pongid—chimpanzees, bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees), and gorillas, to be specific—for my major project at the Boston Museum, which was a reclassification of the primates. Because expeditions like this are extremely expensive, I was also collecting certain species of mammals for the Department of Mammalogy and lizards for the Department of Herpetology. The Ornithology Department had asked me to keep an eye out for a rare genus of raptor they were anxious to obtain.
    During the next months we crossed the vast Batuti forest on wide forest trails, my camp assistants trailing me with bundles of equipment balanced on their heads. I had found this a much better method of travel than by Jeep, which in the mid-sixties in west Africa was infuriating. Jeeps broke down, sank into swamps, ranout of gas, and had their tires and batteries stolen. There were no spare parts to be had. The rapid population growth had pushed the really rare pongids into the deeper forests that were still largely inaccessible by Jeep anyway.
    The news of my coming always seemed to precede me. As soon as we had set up camp, the natives would begin arriving with specimens. The government of the Cameroons had issued me with a permit to collect a specific number of specimens in each genera of the primates. Since the Africans hunted most of these species for food, it was easy (as well as ethical) to collect them. If the natives were going to kill and eat an animal anyway, I felt my efforts would not affect the rapidly dwindling populations of these animals. All I needed for my research was the skull, pelvis, and skin; the natives could still have the “beef.” Certainly, the benefits to science outweighed other considerations.
    I made a very wide circuit of the Batuti, planning to arrive back in Lukemba shortly before the monsoon season. A spacious wattle-and-daub house, built in the colonial style, awaited me there, where I could prepare my specimens and renew my acquaintance with the Mololo of Lukemba. The Mololo was the charming and vivacious leader of the area, a man I’d known since my first trip to the Cameroons as a graduate student.
    The baby chimpanzee slipped into this life without even a ripple. When we traveled, I carried her high on my back in a baby carrier provided by one of the camp wives. It was woven from pounded and separated vines, and padded with soft, dry
bangi
grass, which acted as a kind of diaper. I had to carry her close to my head, because she had conceived a fondness for my hair and clutched fistfuls of it with amazing force, as she would have clung to her mother as she climbed through the trees. Otherwise, she was completely helpless and unable to walk.
    At