Chimpanzees on Tiwai Island III

2006.

I met John DiMarco and Jeremy at Capitol, just as the energy of Saturday night in Kenema was making itself felt. Salay had walked with me towards the lights, across the gray mud puddled field of the police station and sat next to me while we waited for the Europeans to come.

"Funny, huh?" I said to her, "Seems like its the white people who are on Black man's time today!"

The beer was half-frozen, so waiting was not an issue. Several other Lebanese and Europeans and a table of Africans occupied the restaurant.

The conversation drifted around for a while after they first arrived.  The biodiversity survey of the Gola Forest which was about 60% complete was described in some detail, while Jeremy's guest, a small European nun acquainted me with the existence of a nursing school I had never heard of before.
Salay, indicated her knowledge of it by her body movements but was silent,  enjoying  her Maltina. She said after that she would never join such a conversation among men.

We eventually got to the business at hand, which concerned access to the National Herbarium at Njala over which I had charge.  I got some interesting information about its history and their interest to restock some of the specimens with the collections from this modern day collection exercise. Evidently, Kew Gardens in the UK was also interested to make a connection.

I don't remember how the topic arose, but I replied simply that I thought the best thing that could be done on Tiwai Island was to establish a Primate Academy.  Of course it met with immediate laughter, but I watched and listened as the small flame caught fire.  I fanned it with the parellel of JFK and the Moonshot; then with Michael Milkens statistics about how many different species of plants chimpanzees know how to eat (more than 3000). I mentioned Tacugama. John thought they might eventually want independence-- "Chimp Nation".

Jeremy exhibited the typical British academic skepticism-- especially when I pushed them both over the Darwinian ledge and into the free-fall of Europe's historical relationship to Africans.
" Well we all know that when the Europeans first came to Africa, they considered Africans to be sub-human. We were thought to have lesser intelligence. Our languages were-- and still are implicitly-- considered to be jibberish, incapable of supporting sophisticated intellectual ideas, and not even worthy of study.  This has of course turned out to be the opposite of the truth, as anyone might expect for systems of languages and cultures with roots as deep as those found in Africa."

The free-fall continued.

"Are you are aware that this area-- the Gola Forest is home to one of West Africa's written scripts? The village of Vaama, which is just one village away from Tiwai Island was the birthplace of Kissimi Kamara who invented the Ki Ka Ku script.  His descendants still live there and the adobe foundations of his house are still there.  He is believed to have derived it from the Vai syllabary which was also first encountered by Europeans right here in these same villages where we are doing our conservation work. Its still a mystery where Dualu Bukele, the Vai teenager who elaborated the script got his ideas from-- it has 220 characters, and systematically describes all the sounds that can be made in the Vai language -- ki ka ku, bi ba bu, di da du, etc.  --hence the name. So though we are here trying to preserve the last remnants of the Gola rain forest, of  "Darkest Africa", we are also wardens of the place from which much of our new world culture, know how, and intelligence sprang."

Then, in a gesture of conciliation, I pointed out the importance Europeans had attached to the responsibility of saving African souls:

"To their credit, the first thing the Europeans thought of doing after exploiting our natural resources was to tell us about God. If we believe as scientific research and African anecdotes tell us that our cousin primates are just as intelligent as we are, what is the first thing we should try to teach them about? God? Science? Peace?  Personally, I suspect that it is us that has something to learn from them."

"As environmentalists, we should be particularly sensitive to this issue. Any environment, any ecosystem  supports the most intelligent creatures. These species are found at the top of the food web, with the second, and the third, etc.  beneath them.  If we really want to protect the environment, don't we have an obligation to foster the progress of the second, third, etc. most intelligent creatures? Teach them about conservation? What if we humans were all wiped out by the bird flu? Who would take over the preservation of the forest? Or for that matter, who would worship God?"

"We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams."

Ralph Waldo Emerson "Self-Reliance"