BL-24 - Flipbook - Page 142
A TIME TO REMEMBER
ME STANLEY,
YOU JANE
I not only had the pleasure of meeting Jane at Gombe
and elsewhere over the years, I also served as a trustee
of the Jane Goodall Institute which, I’m glad to say, is
continuing her good work not just with the chimpanzees in
Tanzania, but for good causes around the world.
By Stanley Johnson
Writer, environmentalist and former Conservative
MP with a long-standing interest in wildlife
conservation. He has written numerous books
on environmental and animal welfare issues,
including Where the Wild Things Were. A former
trustee of the Jane Goodall Institute, he has
travelled widely to document conservation efforts
around the world.
S
Stanley Johnson and Jane Goodall,
Gombe, Tanzania, January 2010
There are at least two good reasons for going to Kigoma, a
dusty Tanzanian town situated on the eastern side of Lake
Tanganyika, about 25 miles south of the Burundi border.
First, it was here, on November 10, 1871, that Henry
Morton Stanley famously met David Livingstone. A mudhut museum in nearby Ujiji contains a larger-than-life
plaster-of-Paris model of the two men and other 昀氀yblown
memorabilia.
ince the death of my friend Jane Goodall earlier
this year, much has been written about her
extraordinary and pioneering work. She was
someone I had known and admired for years.
I wanted to offer a personal tribute, based on my 2010
encounter with Jane and the chimpanzees in Gombe, as it
appeared in my 2012 book Where the Wild Things Were.
Second, Kigoma is the jumping-off point for the amazing
Gombe National Park, where, in 1960, at the age of 26,
Dr Jane Goodall 昀椀rst began to study the behaviour of
chimpanzees in the wild. She was sent there by Dr Louis
Leakey, the renowned palaeontologist, who spotted her
potential. “He watched me, he saw how I behaved with
animals, he realised that I didn’t care two hoots about the
things that lots of girls care about - clothes, hairdressing.
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