Jane

---

I think I've read

somewhere, maybe someone told me

that when you were a child

you used to dream as a man.

Yeah.

I was typically a man,

I went on adventures.

How come?

Probably because

at the time I wanted to

do things which men did

and women didn't.

You know going to Africa,

living with animals, that's

all I ever thought about.

Everything led in the most

natural way, it seems now,

to that magical invitation to

Africa in 1957 where I

would meet Dr. Louis Leakey,

who had sent me on

my way to Gombe

and the chimpanzees.

I had no training, no degree.

But Louis didn't care

about academic credentials.

What he was looking for was

someone with an open mind,

with a passion for knowledge,

with a love of animals, and

with monumental patience.

My mission was to get

close to the chimpanzees,

to live among them,

to be accepted.

I wanted to come as close to

talking to animals as I could,

to be like Doctor Doolittle.

I wanted to move among them

without fear, like Tarzan.

The huge, gnarled, and ancient

trees, the little streams

chuckling their way through

rocky pathways to the lake.

The birds. The insects.

Since I was eight or nine

years old, I had dreamed

of being in Africa,

of living in the bush

among wild animals.

And suddenly, I found I was

actually living in my dream.

I already felt that I belonged

to this new forest world.

That this was where

I was meant to be.

When I arrived in Gombe,

I had no idea what I was

going to do except that

I was going to try and get

the chimpanzees used to me,

so that I could really learn

about what they were doing.

That was, that was in the

back of my mind because

I'd watched other animals,

and the only way to

learn about them is when

they know you're there but

they ignore you.

Except they

can rip your face off.

-Well, I didn't know that.

I didn't think about that!

There was nobody

talking about that.

There was no fear

of chimpanzees in the wild?

-You have to realize that back

then, there were no people out

in the field whose research I

could read about except this

one man, and he saw chimps

once or maybe twice in the

three months of his study.

And then much earlier on,

there was this crazy man who

painted himself with

baboon sh*t, I think, and sat

in hides, in hopes that

chimps would appear.

There were plenty of snakes,

many poisonous snakes.

And to be honest,

I always believed that

if you walk carefully,

you don't startle a snake,

you don't tread on it,

they're not going to hurt you.

I had this probably crazy

feeling, 'nothing's going to

hurt me, I'm meant to be here."

I watched them feeding in

a large fig tree, calling

noisily from time to time.

The trees came alive.

And so began one of the most

exciting periods of my life.

The time of discovery.

My life fell into a rhythm.

Day after day.

In the sun, the

wind and the rain.

I climbed into the

hills and stayed with the

chimps from dawn...

until darkness fell.

Most times I would

encounter a group of

chimps or a single chimp,

but there were times when I

couldn't find them at all.

And when I tried to get

closer, they ran off

as soon as they saw me.

I was an intruder.

And a strange one at that.

As I am not a defeatist,

it only made my determination

to succeed stronger.

I never had any

thought of quitting.

I should forever have

lost all self respect

if I had given up.

I became totally absorbed

into this forest existence.

I could give myself up to

the sheer pleasure of being on

my own in the rugged terrain

that I was coming to know

as well as I had known the

Bournemouth cliffs as a child.

It was an unparalleled period.

When aloneness

was a way of life.

And even as I was, bit by bit,

piecing together something

of their way of life,

so they were getting

used to the sight of

the strange white ape.

In those days,

it was not thought at

all safe for a young,

single girl to go into

the wilds of Africa.

I had to choose a companion.

It was my mother

who volunteered.

Mom set up a clinic; she

handed out medicine to many

of the local fisherman.

Patients would walk for

miles to get treatment.

What was your relationship

like with your father?

I didn't really

know my father.

He went off to the war.

When war broke out I

was five and of course

I hugely admired him,

but he didn't really

care about children.

So, I couldn't say I had

a relationship with him.

I think the most important

part about my mother

was that she listened.

She was always fair.

She was never angry

without a reason.

She supported me and

my love of animals.

She never said,

"Well, you're just a girl.

You can't do that.

Why don't you dream about

something you can achieve?"

Which is what

everybody else told me.

So it was my mother who really

built up my self-esteem.

Like most children before

the age of TV and computer

games, I loved being outside.

Playing in the secrets

places in the garden,

learning about nature.

I spent many hours high above

the ground at the top of my

favorite tree and

I would read up there in my

own leafy and private world.

It was daydreaming about life

in the forest with Tarzan that

lead to my determination to go

to Africa to live with animals

and write books about them.

I never had any aspiration

of being married

and having a family.

It just didn't come

into my way of thinking.

It simply wasn't there.

Going to Africa,

living with animals.

That's all I ever thought about.

We were by no

means a wealthy family, so

university wasn't an option.

But I still wanted to

work with animals in

some far off place.

I got a job as a waitress.

I saved my wages and my

tips, every penny I could...

to get me to Africa.

But even though I was

living my childhood dream, I

couldn't help but be concerned

because I couldn't get

close to the chimps.

I didn't know if they

would ever get used to me.

And time was running out.

How frustrating

was it trying to study

them in those early days?

-It was probably mostly

frustrating because

they kept running away.

And while chimpanzees are

running away from you, you

can't really get down to the

details of their behavior and

in the back of my mind it was

always the fear if I don't

find out something exciting.

The money will

run out cause all my earlier

observations were either chimps

close up running away

or sitting on the peak

or some other spot and

watching them

through binoculars.

And so, you know, from

those early observations

it was very clear

that I wasn't really

learning anything much.

I'd been in Gombe

for five months.

It had been a

frustrating morning.

I had tramped up and down

three different valleys

in search of chimps,

but had found none.

I soon recognized

the adult male less

fearful than the others whom I

already knew by sight

because of the distinctive

white hair on his chin.

And unlike the

others, he didn't run.

After months of patient

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