222 The Kasokwa Forest chimpanzees
past and at present, attitudes to the forest, chimpanzees and attitudes to them, and trapping.
Karujubu turned out to be a long-established village, whose population had, on average,
been there for 32 years. By contrast in Zebra this was 13 years and in Kihuura it was
7 years. The median age group of men was 25–29 years, and 69% of the sample lived
in grass-thatched houses while only 13% lived in the more desirable brick houses with
iron sheet roofs.
This study drew the interesting conclusion that attitudes towards conservation did not
necessarily correlate with attitudes to chimpanzees. For instance, whilst younger people
tended to give positive environmental reasons for forest preservation, they were also
more likely to give negative responses to chimpanzees. Gender too was important, with
women having more negative feelings towards chimpanzees than men.
Chase also states that ‘multiple attitudes’ about chimpanzees can be held at the same
time. She attributes this to the fact that chimpanzees cross a highly significant boundary:
the boundary between their forest home and the homes (fields, gardens) of people. As an
inhabitant of the forest, an environment where humans do not live, and one where
danger lurks, chimpanzees are thought of as essentially alien. But just by being alien they
are not hated: there was a respect for chimpanzees. There were people who valued them
for their ancestry, their behaviour, their cleverness and their looks. In economic terms
also, the chimpanzees were looked on positively, for their eco-tourism potential. And
then there were the frankly negative attitudes to them as pests, thieves and even rapists
and murderers (see also Naughton-Treves 1997), based in part on the competition
between chimpanzees and humans over space and food, resulting in the chimpanzees
being seen as a threat to the safety of women and children.
This, as Chase points out, marks a major difference between attitudes in Kasokwa and
attitudes in the Western world. Our fascination for chimpanzees because of their close-
ness to us is not extinguished by a negative attitude based on competition and distrust. We
in the West do not have chimpanzees taking our food and attacking our children. Thus,
when we come to Uganda and promote chimpanzee conservation we encounter a cultural
difference in attitudes based on a different life experience, and unless we take account of
this our conservation plans are bound to fail.
Chase ends her dissertation with a quotation, and I shall end this chapter with the
same one:
I like them! They are always around here and we try to see them, if we go to the garden they come
nearby us... they look like people, like living people, and they used to play there on the trees with
the children... sometimes they can do very bad things. Last year they killed somebody, a little
baby nearby us here. That is the badness of them. People hate them when they have done bad
things, for the moment they hate them. Then they love them after (Manase Oyamtao, 65-year-old
retired driver from the Kinyara Sugar Works; words recorded by Chase 2002: 39).