How to Change the Boss
Seems like leadership and how it changes is the flavour of the moment. In 2019 I went to Uganda and toured around with local agency, Kombitours (who are excellent, by the way), to see wildlife. In the Queen Elizabeth national park, the issue of leadership came up.
Esau did not speak at first. I followed him and Valencia along the rim of the gorge, but it was Valencia doing all the talking. He had a bit of swagger about him, a need to show off and be the centre of attention. He had a gun too, and towered over Esau who was tiny. They were both rangers, but Esau had certainly lost out when it came to uniforms. I wondered if Esau was from the Batwa people, but when I tried to address him, Valencia would just cut across, "He doesn't know English..." It quickly convinced me that Esau was the man with the knowledge.
The top of the plain was typical savannah: open grasslands with a few trees. Uganda's Queen Elizabeth Park is famous for its tree-climbing lions, but we had yet to see a single animal, not even an antelope. I was trying to keep down my expectations of spotting anything, but the gorge did look different: narrow, steep-sided and filled with dense jungle. Prime leopard habitat.
Before we turned and descended, Valencia warned us to be quiet - which was a bit rich since he was the only one making any noise. Esau was light on his feet, and totally at home. As we walked down into the forest, I was watching him. His eyes and face had changed. He was completely alert to every sound and movement. And he looked happy. Valencia was watching him too, following the line of his sight, then pointing out whatever Esau had spotted. First it was a white-spotted flufftail, a tiny bird, then a cardinal woodpecker. He had the successful hunter's ability to see things before they saw you.
When we reached the small river at the foot of the gorge, we stopped. Esau spent a moment listening, then indicated that we should head upstream. We hadn't done more than half a mile when it happened.
From behind me came a sudden deafening scream. I span round to see the bushes explode in movement and a tall powerful creature on two legs came hurtling towards us, brandishing a hefty section of broken branch. At the last second it sheared away towards a giant tree and, swinging the branch over its head, delivered a shattering blow to the buttress roots. There was an almighty BOOM, then silence.
Esau was gazing up into the tree, eyes shining. "Kazinga!" I looked up and saw, to my surprise, that our unexpected visitor had somehow managed to climb sixty feet up the tree in total silence in about five seconds. Then Esau pointed ahead, into the undergrowth. A female chimpanzee was secluded in there, searching delicately through the fur of a tiny infant. The grooming seemed to relax the baby whose face expressed utter bliss.
Valencia had been behind us. He came up and whispered. "I want to find Moya."
Esau gestured ahead and we set off again, following the path up a slope to a place where we could observe the tree canopy. Now Esau started looking for other members of the chimpanzee clan. It wasn't long before he spotted a movement. A large male that was peeping sheepishly from behind a distant tree. "That's Lumumba," said Valencia, "He used to be the boss, but he was chucked out."
"I thought that chimpanzees killed the boss when they changed leader?"
Valencia discussed this with Esau before replying. "Not here. Lumumba is 36 years old. He was a baby when Esau first came to watch the group. Then he deposed the leader and was the boss for many years. Last year three younger males: Kazinga, Kihango and Moya chased him away."
Esau was smiling at Lumumba who looked very woebegone. "He has lost all his confidence,” said Valencia. “He spent some weeks outside the troop, but now he's crept back in. The leaders just ignore him. Sometimes he tries to be useful, help with the babies or find food."
I thought poor Lumumba looked a bit like Stan Laurel when in disgrace. There was something of the silent cinema in his exaggerated expressions designed to elicit sympathy.
Esau squatted down on his haunches and, translated via Valencia, began to talk. "When I first came here, I would sleep under the trees where the chimpanzees were sleeping. The females go up high and make nests, then the males do the same a little lower down - to protect them from leopards. Some mornings they would all come down and greet each other with hugs and even shake hands."
I asked about the reports of violence, even cannibalism and war among chimpanzee groups. Esau thought about this. "They do eat meat, but I haven't seen those other things. Maybe they happen in other places." I liked this careful reply.
At that moment a shower of urine came rattling down through the leaves and we jumped to avoid it. Moya and his pal, Ekbiri, had arrived. They swung down convenient trees and strolling among us, lay down. It was just as if they wanted to hear what we were saying about them. We all lay down and carried on chatting. "They are very clever," said Esau, "Sometimes they seek out particular leaves, ones that we humans use for medicine. There is one leaf they roll up and swallow whole. Then inside their stomachs, any worms crawl inside the leaf. I don't know why, but they defecate out all the worms. The funny thing is that the villagers here do exactly the same thing - if they cannot get pills."
We must have lain there on the ground, almost close enough to touch the chimpanzees, for half an hour before the animals got up and ambled away.
The issue of how closely we compare to chimpanzees has always been a tricky, even contentious, subject. The Victorian scientist Sir Richard Owen spent a large part of his career valiantly attempting to prove that there was no connection between humans and the great apes, for which God's reward was to make the elderly Owen resemble a colobus monkey.
Spending time with the chimpanzees is a salutary experience. Our evolutionary lines may have separated six million years ago, but at close quarters the gap does not seem so wide.
At Kibale national park I walked with a guide, Richard and three other tourists, a French couple and a well-dressed woman from North Carolina who said she ran a wedding planning business. The park is about the size of the West Midlands, or three times New York, and has around 1500 chimpanzees in 15 different bands only two of which are at all habituated to humans. Richard confirmed everything Esau had told me, and added some spicy details of his own. "They especially like to eat colobus moneys," he said, "The females make all the noise to frighten the colobus and the males divide into chasers, ambushers and killers. They kill with a single bite, or beat them to death. Then when the females arrive, the ones who are in season exchange sex for meat."
The wedding planner lady gave a tiny gasp of disgust, but the French couple were intrigued and this inspired Richard to further revelations. "Low-ranking males can signal to a female that they want sex by biting their little finger, but high-ranking males just slap her on the arse and go for it."
This delighted the French and further alienated the wedding planner. She moved away slightly, sat down on a log and began delving in her rucksack.
Richard had moved on to the subject of power struggles. "Big males teach the younger males a lot, like where to find particular foods. The people here use a certain leaf as a cough medicine, an idea they got by watching chimpanzees use it when they had a cough. The younger males grow up and one day there is a fight for the presidency. The loser of the first round withdraws from the group for a while, but there is always a second fight and that one is decisive."
I asked if they ever kill the loser.
"Maybe it happens, but I never saw it. I know that the transfer of power can be completely peaceful."
Does a once-dominant male ever make a comeback?
"I never heard of that. He loses confidence and the other males ignore him after that."
Confidence, that intangible pre-linguistic quality, based on looks, talent and bluster. When it's gone, you don't recover.
The wedding planner lady was holding up a tiny hand mirror and applying lipstick. The ritual of self-grooming seemed to relax her. Reflected in the mirror, her face expressed blissful absorption. As I watched, I noticed a movement up in the trees. A chimpanzee was staring down at her in fascination. At that moment those six million years just fell away.
Thirty years before this visit to Uganda, I was cycling through Zaīre when I stopped at a remote market and saw dried chimpanzee hands stacked up. I remember examining their fingertips, each with its own unique print. The hands, I was told, were a local delicacy. Understandably all my efforts to see a live, wild chimpanzee failed: they were far too frightened of humans. The Ugandan efforts should be supported. Habituating a troop to allow humans close enough for a photo is a protracted skillful business. If you get chance, go and see. Personally I think chimpanzees should be protected by the kind of stringent laws that protect humans. Killing one should be murder. Keeping one in a cage could be ‘kidnapping and false imprisonment’. What do you think? I’m not sure how to classify lending a lipstick - a favour? (…she didn’t, by the way, I found the photo - no photoshop - and it made me chuckle to imagine the exchange)
brilliant! loved reading it especially the bit about 'gods reward' ;)