“You should meet my friend Jane,” a posh Englishwoman suggested at the Dar es Salaam Yacht Club, her gin sweating in the coastal heat. “She’d be a good story – wouldn’t she?”
I was 24, a Kiwi improbably stationed in Tanzania, East Africa, for the Financial Times. At the time, the FT wanted “colour” stories – not just sisal harvest results but characters, drama and the kind of stories that begin with an offhand remark over cocktails.
“Really? Seriously?” I asked.
“Oh, she’s lovely. She’s in Dar just now, about to go up to Gombe.”
This is what journalists call a gift from the gods. The next day I found myself at Jane Goodall’s sprawling compound on the outskirts of Dar. The road was dust, the gate wide open.
I knocked at the open door. A voice floated out – calm yet highly pitched, unmistakably English. “I’m out here.”
Through the cluttered, lodge-like lounge and on to the back deck: there she was, surrounded by books and notebooks, the detritus of a mind forever turning. Her long, grey hair pulled into her trademark, no-nonsense ponytail, a khaki shirt, and her pale English complexion.
“Cup of tea?” she offered, and with that, the spell was cast.
Jane spoke slowly and perfectly, as if every word had been rehearsed and edited in her head before reaching daylight. She mentioned Gombe almost casually, then suggested that I might like to come.
“I’ll make sure you get the good room,” she offered, as if I had to be sold.
It was 1988, and the world had already sorted Jane Goodall into its mental filing system: pioneering primatologist, award-winning author, box ticked. But she was in a bit of a lull. She knew she needed media awareness to keep the Gombe project alive and funded. She needed attention.
A week later, chickens pecked at my feet as I boarded a mitumbwi, a carved canoe fitted with a wheezing outboard. We set off along Lake Tanganyika, the vast inland sea that once ferried ivory and slaves and now carried villagers, missionaries and one anxious Kiwi reporter northward to Gombe.
Jane did not descend from the forest to greet me. Her life was run to a tight schedule, meticulously plotted each night. Instead, Dominic Abah – loyal aide, cook, gatekeeper – settled me in. At lunch, Goodall appeared, fresh as morning from the jungle, brimming with the same excitement she must have felt the day David Greybeard first reached for her hand.
That afternoon, she marched me uphill. Jane did not walk; she glided, relentless, a marathoner’s pace through thick forest.
“Get this photo. Get that one,” she commanded, striking poses of practised ease. The camera loved her. The chimps eyed me with suspicion, but seemed to grant me passage by association. If Jane vouched for me, I was all good.
Evenings were another ritual. At precisely five o’clock, she lit a fire on the beach. Baboons wandered past. She drew from her treasured bottle of Johnnie Walker, poured us each a very decent measure into tin cups, and we watched the African sun slide behind Zaire. With her, the hour stretched into something timeless.
I came to realise I was the same age as her son, Grub, whom she missed terribly. For a while, I became her surrogate son. She asked about my ambitions, my fumbling plans, then, when those grew a little tedious, she turned to her stories. I was transfixed.
“When I arrived at Gombe, I nearly died,” she confessed one night, Scotch in hand. She described walking to her beloved “thinking waterfall”, then turning to find herself encircled by baboons. “There was rock behind me. I was trapped; they were moving in on me. I knew the rule: never look them in the eye. You must be dominant. So I pretended to study the water. Then I just turned very suddenly and walked away as though I was bored. My heart was pounding.”
So was mine, listening.
On another night, her tone shifted to a whisper. Jane was such a gifted storyteller, her voice was so unique, an almost childlike timbre. So she could tell a scary story …
“Tanganyika was the highway of the slave traders. Sometimes, late, you’ll hear singing, or chains dragging on the beach.” She paused for effect. “But don’t be alarmed. We all hear them often … it’s souls of the slaves … singing.” The fire cracked; the lake darkened; I felt the weight of centuries press in. Gulp!
She was unsparing about her peers. Dian Fossey – the Gorillas in the Mist neighbour to the north – had already been murdered. It was a bit like gossiping about the neighbours, and it’s fair to say now that Dian slightly annoyed her. To Jane, the reason for her demise was obvious.
“She never fully embraced the locals. You can’t alienate people here. Without them, you’re exposed.” Jane had done the opposite, weaving the Tanzanians into the very fabric of Gombe. They worshipped her.
And to those Fossey fans out there, we must remember, Jane redefined mankind, Fossey redefined gorillas. And did a good job at it.
Jane’s advice spilled out like aphorisms, Scotch-tinged and hard-won. “Don’t ever get caught on a corporate hamster wheel. Always be your own boss. Always lead.”
She ordered me to go to the waterfall – and commit to my future. And I did. And I even passed a few baboons on the way, making sure not to look them in the eye, of course. They’d got used to us humans by then.
After Gombe, Jane drew me further into her orbit. I became caretaker of her Dar house, receiving endless guests who asked the same question: “Where’s Jane? When’s Jane back from England?” Everyone longed for her blessing, her presence. I was so used to her by then, I had forgotten how famous she was.
What lingered wasn’t just her pioneering discoveries on the origins of mankind, but her insistence that every life mattered – human, chimp or otherwise. “Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference,” she told me, more than once.
It was the conviction that powered her – the reason she never stopped. As the waves lapped the Tanganyikan shore and the Scotch burned in my throat, I realised: Jane Goodall wasn’t simply observing nature. She was commanding us, in her calm English lilt, to save the world from ourselves.
Philip Smith is the founder of Great Southern Film + Television.