Chapter 10
Celeste watched until the chopper was
out of sight. She was probably the more adventurous of the two women but it was
getting to be late afternoon and there was no saying that Roger and Patty would
even make it back tonight. The excitement over with, she walked to the food
tent and sat at a table with Mike. Christiana
was helping Madeleine with dinner which smelled delicious. They had decapitated,
plucked and gutted a chicken and boiled it in preparation for a new stew called
mwamba. Christiana had baked more fufu,
the African corn flour biscuits and chikwange, which is a starchy dish made from
manioc root.
“Would you like some banana beer?” Mike kept a stash of homemade banana beer at his
hut. There was no way to refrigerate it, but Madeleine always kept a bottle or
two on ice for him if she had any. He
poured Celeste a glass.
Mike raised his glass, “Good work out
there today. Thanks for helping out with William.”
Celeste smiled and clinked glasses with
him. He was a handsome man. “No problem.
He won’t be using that hand for a while.”
“That’s for sure. I will call for someone
to bring him back from Kinshasa after his surgery. He’s one of ours and we
always take care of our own. It’s part of our mission statement.”
“Well I respect that and I’m sure the
locals do too… If they are going to put their necks on the line to protect the bonobos,
they need to know they will be taken care of.”
“Absolutely. We are non-profit, but our
budgets aren’t so tight that we can’t take care of our apes or our people.” He
smiled.
“So, tell me…” he said, his words
dripping off his tongue as he flashed a very flirty smile, “How did a nice girl
like you end up studying primates anyhow?”
Celeste smiled. “I was interested in anthropology as a young
girl and I went to the University of Paris-Sorbonne for three years.”
He whistled patronizingly. Paris-Sorbonne
was a very prestigious university.
She smiled. “I know… I started out studying anthropology but
I got tired of learning about the past.
Death is such a morbid subject. I
decided that I needed to take what I had learned and apply it to the living. I transferred to the University of Wisconsin
and started again in Primatology, I am majoring in the greater apes.”
He laughed. “That’s quite the study.”
“What
about you?” she asked.
“I was born studying apes.” He joked. “My parents were missionaries here when I was
a child. My first girlfriend was a bonobo!” He told her about his life. He had
lived throughout the Congo as a child, travelling from village to village up
and down the river as his father saved the souls of lost Congolese. Mike felt very much at home in the jungles of
the Congo. When he was in his teens, he
was sent to a private school in Kinchasa and had studied primatology in the
U.S., Paris and in London. His greatest accomplishments
were less in the papers that he had published and more in the field work he had
done. Mike was the first bonobo researcher to sit among a group of bonobos,
eating what they ate and interacting with them. He was the first to document
intimate details of their day-to-day lives and behaviour. As an avid
conservationist, he was also the first to document the plight of the bonobo
against the backdrop of illegal logging and the bushmeat industry. He was also a
charismatic speaker and donations came easily to someone with his
convictions. He was able to start the Bonobo
Forest Sanctuary on a wing and a prayer but with the research papers he
published, the donations increased. “And the rest, as they say… is history.”
Celeste was impressed. Mike was a legend
in the world of bonobo research. Seldom did anyone give a lecture and not quote
from his work, and here he was sitting with her, drinking banana beer. “And so,
Dr. Cooper, what do your beloved bonobos have to teach us humans?”
Mike smiled. The question wasn’t new to
him and many was the time that he had sat around five star restaurants,
surrounded by wide eyed men and women asking him the same question. He dictated a well rehearsed lecture, pausing
here and there for the requisite ooohs and ahs.
“The Bonobo lives in contrast to his
cousin the chimpanzee on the north side of the Congo River. While chimps are patriarchal and violent in
nature, bonobo society is harmonious, peaceful, matriarchal and
egalitarian. Male and female bonobos
have “separate but equal roles” in their society but clearly it is the females
that carry the highest rank, with the sons of the highest ranking females
acting as the leaders among the males. A single female doesn’t lead; the
females lead as a group and form close bonds and alliances with each other which
is the key to their power, even over males who are larger and stronger. As our
closest living relatives, that may be the biggest thing they have to teach us.”
Celeste spoke, “Okay, so I’m very
curious about this. Are the males
submissive to the females?”
“No no.” Mike continued, “They don’t
have to be. Bonobo females are naturally
affectionate. They show care and
compassion for each other and for the males.
I’m sure you have heard that they have a lot of sex, and it’s true. Sex in a bonobo society transcends
reproduction just like it does with humans, but at it’s grass roots, sex serves
to diffuse tension between individuals, and as a way of bonding, exchanging
energy and sharing pleasure. You’ll see.
Sex permeates the very fabric of Bonobo society… they weave it through
all aspects of their daily lives. The females keep the males so busy having sex
that they don’t have any reason to disagree about anything.”
“That’s fascinating” said Celeste with a
smile. “I will confess that I am most intrigued about their sexual behaviour. But
you, Dr. Cooper… surely you are not suggesting that humans need to settle all
of their problems with sex?”
Mike smiled. He paused while he thought
about how to answer her question. “Call me Mike.
Look. We are the most recent adaptation in a long line of apes. No one knows that better than you who has
studied baboons, gibbons, orangutans, gorillas and chimps. Bonobos are just one evolutionary step behind
the latest of the great apes; us. It’s just that we have convoluted the meaning
of sex and its origins. Over the last ten
thousand years, we have created religious and social taboos, moral restrictions
that obscure the true meaning and need for sex in our society. It’s one of our most simple basic human needs
and also one of our most complicated ones.
And so, because we don’t understand it, we hide it away in the darkness
of our bedrooms and our hotel rooms and by the light of day, we pretend that it’s
all well and good. Modern humans live in
constant denial.”
Mike continued, “You tell me how well
our conventional notion of pair bonding is working for us. I mean, are there
any truly successful monogamous, till death-do-us-part relationships? Why do we
repress our most basic human need and at what cost? Marriage and the notion of monogamy in humans
is a sham. While we try to keep up the illusion, the true nature of our
sexuality destroys most of our marriages.
Humans are experiencing a pandemic of sexual frustration. You only have to look at the sales of Viagra
or Internet porn to see there is something going on just below the
surface. But do we learn from the
betrayal, dysfunction, shame and confusion going on around us? No, men and
women instinctively return again and again to unsuccessful pair bonds as they
go from relationship to relationship looking for something that doesn’t exist
and never really has.”
“But maybe its just males that are fucked
up?” Celeste suggested. “Our prisons aren’t full of women, and it’s not females
that are raping men or molesting children.”
“Touché, or..” And Mike smiled, enjoying
the debate which was shaping up. “Or maybe… since we parted company with bonobos
a million years ago… just maybe, prehistoric cave women went from promoting
free love to rationing sex in exchange for food and protection. Maybe that’s
where it all went wrong?”
Celeste smiled as she thought about it.
“Oh, I see… Typical male response. Blame
it on the women.” She laughed.
“No, but I challenge you to consider it.
If the distance I am holding my arms apart…” and he stretched his arms as wide
as he could, “…represents the evolution of humans since we parted company with bonobos,
then we spent all of this time…” and he moved one hand slightly closer to his
other hand, “…living in caves. Our
brains are hard wired for a whole different reality than we are experiencing today. It’s only been in the last hundred years…“
and he held up one hand pinching his thumb and finger a few millimetres apart,
“…that women experienced rights of equality. For the first time ever, women
don’t need men to protect them or provide for them anymore. I say it’s almost time
to ease our tensions again.” He smiled
ear to ear.
“That, Dr. Cooper, has to be the most
eloquent and pathetic pick-up line I have ever heard.” Celeste smiled.
Mike smiled back.
