Stella Meyerhoff (7:07)
And so I spoke to people who previously worked at the field site, and I asked for their advice. And generally, I just tried to prepare as much as humanly possible for how hard field work was going to be. And I quickly learned that just getting to the field site was an adventure all on its own. After two days of traveling just to make it to Kinshasa, I rode in a tiny little propeller plane that landed in a field on purpose. And that's where I met the field site manager, Simon, who was a Swiss man who had disheveled hair and also just seemed entirely unshakable. And he also had the most contagious smile. I learned through walking with Simon through the forest that he was unshakeable. We trekked through dense forests, and these were parts of the forest that required a lot of attention and care. Every footstep, you had to pay attention to where you were walking. And we would then also walk through these open savannas that felt never ending in the incredible heat. And the sun really made us feel like we were being pushed to our limits because of how hot it was in those savannas. And we crossed rivers, we would hold our belongings above our head as we walked, and then we also would travel a bit by dugout canoe. And after six hours of a combination of all these things, we finally made it to camp. So Simon arrived happy and energized, as if he had just been, you know, walking around the block or woke up from a nap. And I arrived exhausted and seriously contemplating my life choices. And when we were at camp, there were usually around a dozen people or so staying at camp at a given time. Most of them were international researchers and field assistants from places like Russia and France and Germany and Mexico. And then there were also locals who work for the project in two weeks rotations, and they would help us keep track of the bonobos or help catch fish for our meals. And all of us lived in tents. And each tent was situated underneath a hut like structure that had a roof made of leaves. And our only source of water was the river. And our equipment was powered by the lone, somewhat functioning solar panel that we had. And once a day we could send or receive text only emails through our radio satellite system. The weather had to be pretty good for that to happen, though. So the field site was kind of like a social pressure cooker, for better or for worse. On the one hand, I became instant best friends with people like t, a research assistant who was around my age and looked effortlessly cool in the field and shared my stupid sense of humor. And the two of us would laugh so hard together that we would end up crying, and then we would start laughing because we were crying. And then there was also Toko. And Toko was a local man who was about my height, which is not very tall, and he was always, always happy. And Toko loved to poke fun at me for how clumsy I am, especially in the forest. And so every time I even kind of stumbled, Toko would yell tombe, which is the French word for to fall. And he would have a huge grin on his face. And it eventually happened so often that he just started calling me Tombe. Tombe, that became my name. And so this was all lovely and wonderful, but the reality was that the social pressure cooker environment also made things incredibly difficult, especially when personalities clashed. So, for example, there was Moke. Now, I can tell you all about how Moke was this strong, tall Congolese man with a glistening bulb head. But what you really need to know about Mokke is that what Mokue loved the most was Moke. So, aside from mentioning his son, Mokay only spoke about himself pretty much. And I had never met someone so unabashedly arrogant. He absolutely loved to hear the sound of his own voice and had this incredible, incredible gift for dismissing anything I said without even hearing it in the first place. At one point, I was tasked with trying to teach some of the locals how to use the gps. And while many of them tried very hard to learn, and some did, Moke despised the fact that a woman, especially a young woman, was giving him any sort of instructions. So he just outright refused to try to use the gps. And I quickly learned that there was no winning with him. And his presence essentially became this perpetual thorn in my side. On a good day, he would ignore me, and on a bad day, he would scream directly into my face. His Face, like inches away from my face and mock me. I know this forest better than you and I don't need the gps. I can make it through the forest by myself. So even if some of the social dynamics made things difficult, my job wasn't to live at camp. My job was to study the bonobos that I had longed to see in the wild. And that was also hard. So we would wake up long before the sun came up. We would walk for over an hour on most days through the forest with our headlamp lighting the way just to reach the bonobos before the day even really started. And then once the bonobos woke up, they would start moving, and each day we would follow them as they made their way through the forest, recording data on what they did and ate. Throughout the day, we would collect urine samples and fecal samples, all so that we could better understand how female bonobos maintain their relationships and how that serves as the backbone of their female dominance as well, society. And so life in the field was certainly brutal and the forest was nothing short of relentless. And as we ran through the forest, these sandpaper textured vines would scratch our skin and leave behind this photosensitive chemical that made our skin feel like it was absolutely on fire when it was exposed to the sunlight. And then we were regularly attacked by driver ants that have jaws that are so strong that they're actually used as makeshift stitches in the villages because they'll clamp down and close a wound. So you can imagine it hurts a lot when you get bit by them and they bite you often. We also had other animals that were kind of scary to be around. Within two weeks, I had encountered an elephant that was flapping its ears at me, which is a sign that it was very, very much time for me to run as fast as possible. And then one morning while I was walking, long before the sun came up, I saw my headlamp reflect back to me in a pair of huge, beady cat eyes. And I watched as a leopard slipped away quietly into the forest. Another day, I narrowly missed stepping on a boomslang, which is one of the most venomous and dangerous snakes in the entire world. So a lot of really, really dangerous things that were in the forest. The bonobos also didn't exactly take routes that were convenient for humans. And so some days they would cross rivers or they would climb up and down cliffs all day long, leaving us frantically trying to catch up with them. And now I've said that the work was hard, but I think I should specify here that the work was Hard for the international researchers, the locals made this job look easy. So Toko, for example, was an expert at keeping up with the bonobos. And there were so many days when we'd go out into the forest together, Toko and I, and I'd fall behind as the bonobos suddenly took off into the forest through the trees, and I would be desperately trying to keep up with them, trudging through the brutal terrain and climbing over fallen trees and bushwhacking through the foliage that was so dense, sometimes I could only see a couple feet ahead of me. And if I was lucky, the bonobos would take a break from traveling to nap or to eat, and I would have the chance to finally catch up with them. And I would be panting and covered in leaves and covered in ant bites and who knows what else. Inevitably, there would be Toko sitting quietly at the bottom of a tree as if he'd been resting there all day. And so, despite these challenges, there were also countless moments that made it all absolutely worth it. Sometimes I would find myself sitting just a few feet away from my favorite bonobo, Iris. Iris was this older female with these really gentle eyes. She kind of reminded me of Grandmother Willow from Pocahontas. She kind of looked like as though at any moment she would offer some gentle wisdom that she'd gathered over her lifetime. That was kind of Iris as a whole. And there were also these days when the bonobos would take me to the most beautiful parts of the forest, and they would barely travel. And so I could actually pause for a moment and take everything in. And I'd set down my backpack and I would look up to see a group of baby bonobos playing with each other in the trees, fearlessly swinging from branch to branch and tackling each other and chasing each other. And I will never forget my favorite moment in Congo. I was following several bonobos as they slowly walked through the forest ahead of me. And all of a sudden, I heard this noise behind me. And I turned around and I realized that the rest of the group, which had kind of been straggling and trailing behind us all day, had caught up with us. And so suddenly I was walking through the forest, completely surrounded in every direction by bonobos, just walking alongside me. I remember in that moment realizing that it was the closest I had ever experienced to real magic. And so one day at camp, someone that I didn't recognize showed up and said that he had news from the village. And this was very abnormal because the village was several hours walking away, and so it wasn't usual for someone to just show up at camp, Someone that didn't work for the project. And so the visitor told me that I needed to find moke. And all I knew was that moke was somewhere in the forest looking for the bonobos. I knew the general direction that he'd gone, but really nothing beyond that. And so I filled up my water bottle, I packed up my backpack, and I set off a tali to find moke. And as we walked, we would stop periodically to make calls into the forest. And these were calls that we would use so that we could locate each other from far distances. So we would walk a little bit, and we'd let out one of these calls, so it kind of sounded like this, but we didn't hear anything in return. And we'd walk a little farther, and we'd let out another call. We didn't hear anything return. And then finally, after nearly two hours of searching for moke, we heard a callback. And so tali and I bushwhacked our way through the forest until we found moke. And moke saw the concern on my face, and I realized that he processed it, because for the first time, I could tell that he was actually waiting to hear what I had to say. And so I told him the news. Votre babee etre malade. Vous devez retuner au villages. Your baby is very sick, and you need to go back to the village immediately. But that was a lie. The truth was that moke's baby boy had already died from malaria. I had been told by the man from the village to only tell moke that his son was sick, because moke still had to walk the whole way back to the village, where his wife would tell him the truth. And so we walked back to camp in complete silence. And deep down, I think that moke knew. There was something about the way that he just stared at me without responding to what I had just told him, and then abruptly took off toward camp. And he walked so quickly that I could barely keep up with him. And I was grateful for that, because if I had to focus on just putting one foot in front of the other as fast as I possibly could, I couldn't think about what had just happened. And it occurred to me at the time that maybe moke was doing the same. So we got back to camp, and moke remained silent. He packed up his bags, and he left for the village. And the moment that he was out of sight, I had tears streaming down my face. That night, I wrote home today. I had to Lie to a father so that a false sliver of hope could get him to walk for hours back to the village, only so that he could be told that his baby boy was dead. Looking at my watch, I realize that he knows by now he's made it back to the village, and his whole world has completely crumbled. I thought back to the words that my professor had told me. It will be hard in ways you could never imagine. And she was right. I had imagined running from elephants and living in the psychological pressure cooker that is field work. I'd imagined needing to use all of the first aid supplies that I'd packed. I had imagined being so tired and sore from climbing up cliffs and crossing rivers that I could barely walk. But I never could have imagined what happened that day. Not long after, a new international research assistant made his way to Congo. And since we normally couldn't get mail in such an isolated environment, my loved ones back home took the opportunity to send a package with this new field researcher. And he graciously agreed to bring it to camp. And among the snacks and replacement shoes that they'd sent me was a USB drive. And fortunately, the computer we used to compile our data had some battery left. And so I opened the USB drive and found that it was filled with videos from my friends and family that they'd recorded for me. And they shared how much they loved me and miss me. And while watching them, I thought about Moke. And I realized that while I was sharing joy with my loved ones, even from afar, he was sharing complete sorrow with his. And I thought about how lucky I was to know that I would be seeing my friends and family in a few weeks. So in my remaining time in Congo, I made a conscious effort to savor every detail. I listened closely to the sounds of the forest, the rustle of the leaves, the distant calls of birds, the soft footfalls of bonobos moving through the underbrush. And I studied every bonobo's face. I studied their mannerisms, the way that they interacted with each other, all desperately trying to etch their images so deep in my mind that I could recall them long after I'd left. And as much as I could, I wanted to capture the magic to take home with me. Eventually, Moke returned to camp, and he was unrecognizable, but not in his physical appearance, although I remember thinking that I had never seen him look so exhausted. But he was unrecognizable in his presence. This was a man who used to walk into camp like a storm and he now looked as if somehow grief had, like, reached inside of him and just taken out all that was within him and left behind something that somewhat resembled him. Suddenly, I found myself wishing that he'd be the self obsessed, arrogant man that I had disliked for months. And I had spent weeks thinking about him. And I wanted to tell him how sorry I was. But I knew that I was not the person to offer him comfort. He had never been particularly fond of me, to say the least. And I was now the person who had told him the most painful lie of his life. So I gave him space. And then, on my final day in Congo, some of the locals offered me these beautiful handmade gifts. One of the fishermen gave me a wooden carving of a bonobo. Toko gave me a set of arrows. And I made my way around camp, saying goodbye to each person one by one. And eventually, it was time for me to say goodbye to Moke. And to my surprise, he handed me two gifts, both carved out of wood. One was a small ring etched with the name Moke in huge letters. And the second was a sculpture that he'd made of himself. I knew in that moment that he wasn't the loud, brash man that I had first met. But in the hollowness of who he'd become, there was this small glimmer that was unmistakably Mokay. So it's now been seven years since I left Congo. And to this day, when someone asks me what it was like, I have no idea how to answer. But what I do know is what it taught me. That even through hardship and the most unfathomable moments of heartbreak, there are these moments of magic. And I'm now in my final year of my doctoral program studying primate behavior. And it, too, has been hard in ways that I never could have imagined. But I know now to look around for those small traces of wonder. And when I do, I see that I am once again surrounded by things that I love. I see it in the quiet moments that I spend watching the primates that I study. I see it in the curiosity of my students. And I see it in the unexpected way that a man named Moke made my heart a little softer. And it is wonderful in ways I never could have imagined. We'll be right back.
