The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times(7)

“It was all thanks to Louis suggesting that Hugo would be the ideal person and the Geographic agreeing to send him,” Jane said, referring to the ensuing romance.

“So Louis was the matchmaker?”

“Yes, he was. I wasn’t actually looking for a ‘mate,’ but Hugo arrived in the middle of nowhere, and there we were. We were both reasonably attractive. We both loved animals. We both loved nature. So it was pretty obvious that it should have worked.”


Shows the heavy equipment Hugo lugged around, an old Bolex 16 mm camera. On Gombe beach. (ABC NEWS PUBLICITY PHOTO)



Jane recalled her first marriage with the equanimity of almost five decades since their eventual divorce in 1974. She would marry again, to Derek Bryceson, the Tanzanian parks director, but would lose him to cancer less than five years later, when she was just forty-six.

When Jane went into the forest with her own hopes and dreams, she had no idea that hope itself would ultimately become a central theme of her work.

“What was the role of hope during those early days?”

“If I hadn’t had hope that I could, given time, gain the chimps’ trust I would have given up.”

Jane paused and looked down. “Of course there was the nagging worry—did I have time? I suppose it’s a bit like climate change. We know we can slow it down—we’re just concerned as to whether we have sufficient time to effectively turn things around.”

We both sat in silence, feeling the weight of Jane’s question. Even before the climate crisis was well known, it was her concern for the chimpanzees and the environment that led her to leave Gombe.

“During my early days in Gombe I was in my own magical world, continually learning new things about the chimpanzees and the forest. But in 1986 everything changed. By then there were several other field sites across Africa and I helped to organize a conference to bring these scientists together.”

It was at this conference that Jane learned that in every place where chimps were being studied across their range their numbers were dropping and their forests were being destroyed. They were being hunted for bushmeat, caught in snares, and exposed to human diseases. Mothers were shot so their infants could be taken and sold as pets or to zoos, or trained for the circus, or used for medical research.

Jane told me how she secured funding to visit six different countries across the chimpanzee range in Africa. “I learned a great deal about the problems facing the chimps,” she said, “but I also learned about the problems facing human populations living in and around chimpanzee forests. The crippling poverty, lack of good education and health facilities, degradation of the land as their populations grew.

“When I went to Gombe in 1960,” Jane said, “it was part of the great equatorial forest belt that stretched across Africa. By 1990, it had become a tiny oasis of forest surrounded by completely bare hills. More people were living there than the land could support, too poor to buy food from elsewhere, struggling to survive. Trees had been cleared to grow food or make charcoal.

“I realized that if we couldn’t help people find a way of making a living without destroying the environment, there was no way we could try to save the chimpanzees.”

I knew that Jane had spent the last three decades fighting. Fighting for the rights of animals, people, and the environment, and I was sobered when she added, “Now the damage we have inflicted is undeniable.”

I finally gathered the courage to ask Jane the more personal question I had been hesitant to ask. “Have you ever lost hope?” I did not know if the world’s icon of hope would admit to having ever lost it.

She paused and reflected on the question. I knew her drive and her resilience made it unlikely, but I also knew that she was no stranger to crisis and heartbreak. Finally, she exhaled. “Maybe, for a time. When Derek died. Grief can make one feel hopeless.”


When we were in Dar es Salaam, Derek and I contacted Gombe every day on the radio telephone, seen on the table. The rescue dog is Wagga. (JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE/COURTESY OF THE GOODALL FAMILY)



I waited for Jane to go on as we explored difficult memories.

“I will never forget his last words. He said, ‘I didn’t know such pain was possible.’ I keep trying to forget what he said, but I can’t. Even though there were times when he wasn’t in pain, and he was okay, that doesn’t drown out those last anguished words. It’s horrible.”

I imagined the heartache of hearing your spouse in such excruciating pain. “How did you manage?”

“After his death, lots of people helped me. I returned to the sanctuary of my home in England, the Birches,” Jane said. “One of the dogs helped me a lot, too. She slept on my bed, providing the kind of comfort that I have always derived from the companionship of a loving dog. And then I went back to Africa and went to Gombe. It was the forest that helped most of all.”

“What did you get from the forest?”

“It gave me a sense of peace and timelessness, and reminded me of the cycle of life and death we all go through … and I kept busy. That helps.”

“I can only imagine how difficult that time must have been,” I said. I had not yet lost anyone as close as a spouse or parent, but I was moved by the heartbreak in her words that still echoed across decades.

Bugs yawned and jumped down from Jane’s lap, his nap done, ready for his next meal or his next adventure.