UPDATE: 17 January 2006
Jane
Goodall:
The Queen of Extreme
Spring/Summer 2004
EARTHROAMING
CAREERS
Unless you a born into great wealth, being an earthroamer poses several
challenges. You need a lot of money and a lot of time if you really want to see
the world…. However, there is one way to get around those barriers without
robbing a bank or winning the lottery: business travel. I wanted to be a
psychologist until an epiphany at 22 helped me see that psychologists as a
general rule are not called to Sao Paolo for meetings. I quickly applied for a
masters program in International Business and have since traveled on 4 continents
compliments of a very large technology services company. A quick survey of my
friends yielded some interesting statistics: More than half of them travel
internationally as part of their work – at least occasionally. They have
careers running the gamut from documentary film producer to Olympic swim coach,
although there were quite a few engineers, academics, and international business
people like me. Of those in international business, their backgrounds are mostly
in Finance/Accounting but some are in Marketing/Sales.
Only three of my friends have what I would call “extreme earthroaming careers”. Susan is a surgeon who has lived in Tanzania for 10 years where she works as a medical missionary. Todd has lived in Kyrgyzstan since 1994, originally there as a Peace Corps volunteer and now as country director for the American Councils for International Education. Jeroen is a legal advisor and Major in the Dutch military. He lives out of a suitcase as a volunteer on NATO peace keeping forces in the most violent corners of the world. Very few people are willing to take significant risks such as these. Their spirit reminds me of my favorite extreme earthroamer: Jane Goodall.
JANE
GOODALL: THE
QUEEN OF EXTREME
Growing up in the 1930’s and 40’s, Jane Goodall was a very normal little
girl living a relatively unremarkable life in the south of England – yet she
dreamed of Africa and a life working with animals and seeing the world. She fantasized
about life in the African jungle, often imaging herself as a better
Jane to Tarzan than the one in the book.
"I was incredibly jealous of Tarzan's Jane and I thought she was a real wimp, and I'd have made a much better mate for Tarzan myself," Goodall once said in an interview. "That was when I had this dream of going to Africa." Her mother encouraged these dreams and suggested that Jane study to be a secretary since those skills are needed everywhere in the world and this would allow her to travel.
In
1957, Jane left for Africa at the invitation of a high school friend whose
family was living on a farm in Kenya. She was 23. Upon arriving, Jane began
hearing about an anthropologist and paleontologist named Louis Leakey, then the
director of Kenya's National Museum of Natural History. His study of human
origins intrigued her, so she went to meet him and was hired as his secretary.
Leakey wanted to launch a long-term study of chimpanzees in their natural
habitat. (No one had done this before.) Impressed with Jane’s knowledge of
animals and seeing her patience and persistence, he determined she was well
suited for the job. The study would take her to the jungles of what we now call
Tanzania; but the idea of a young woman living alone in the wilds of central
Africa was untenable to the Tanzanian government. They insisted that she bring
along a chaperone. It took Jane 8 months to save enough money for her mother to
come join her, but in 1960, they set off for the shores of Lake Tanganyika and
began ground-breaking research into chimpanzees in their natural habitat.
Jane’s
discoveries were the first of their kind and yielded unexpected results.
Recognizing that her findings would not be respected among the scientific
community because of her lack of training, Leakey urged her to return to England
to continue her education. In 1965, she received a Ph.D. in Ethology from
Cambridge University and returned to Tanzania to establish the Gombe Stream
Research Center.
Jane has spent nearly 50 years in Africa. She is now the world’s pre-eminent scholar on chimpanzees, animals that share 98.6% of their DNA with humans, yet 50 years ago were believed to be simple-minded creatures. Jane’s research has shown us how to communicate with chimpanzees – how to understand their logic and emotions. We’ve learned that they engage in war with neighboring tribes – and yet are capable of showing great compassion. They form bonds, both weak and strong, with their family members – and demonstrate unexpected behaviors such as adopting orphaned baby chimps. Jane’s research has allowed us to gain a deeper compassion for these creatures as her family of chimps (Flo, Flint, Fifi, Pom and Passion) became household names around the world. (So much so, that when Flo died in 1972, The Times of London ran an obituary.)
Jane
maintains her home in Gombe on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, but spends much of
her time traveling around the world as a self-described “ambassador for chimps
and the natural world.” There are only 200,000 chimpanzees living in the
wild today – down from more than two million a century ago. Hunting and
illegal trade have taken their toll. Yet Jane’s message remains optimistic:
"There are a lot of environmentalists who think it's too late, but I have
found four reasons for hope," she said: "The human brain, the
resilience of nature, the enthusiasm of the young and the indomitable human
spirit."
Jane Goodall was an ordinary child who went on to lead an extraordinary life because she was willing to dream – and no one told her that little girls from Bournemouth do not move off to the jungles of Africa to live like Tarzan’s girlfriend. Makes me believe many things are possible in life.
Kim Price, editor-in-chief