Tag: GCC

In her book, she describes it as “terrifying times for us all, as Amin’s reputation as ‘the Butcher of Uganda’ grew”. She says his children attended the same school she did, and the headmaster warned the pupils not to get into conflict with them.

The only way she coped with this terror was through her love for animals. Her first pet was a stray pygmy cat called Pili, and she regularly recruited children to participate in pet funerals, even though she grew up in a culture that believed animals did not have souls. She writes: “Something deep inside me knew that they had as much soul as any human, and I mourned them in the same way.”

A defining moment came when the Cuban ambassador to Uganda and his wife moved into the house opposite hers. Their pet vervet monkey, Poncho, was fascinating because his fingers and nails looked exactly like hers. One day while she was practising the piano Poncho watched intently. Knowing how playful and intelligent he was, she left the room to see if he would imitate her.

“Sure enough, Poncho climbed onto the stool and played one note with one finger. He was my first venture into studying primates,” she wrote.

By the age of 12, she had already decided to become a vet because she hated to see animals suffer and she was determined to dedicate her life to making them better.

“Most people in Uganda don’t consider veterinary medicine a worthwhile career because people don’t place much value on pets in a developing country with so much human suffering. In spite of this, I was fortunate enough to have a mother who understood my passion and encouraged me to follow my dreams,” she writes.

She said the 1970s were devastating for Uganda’s wildlife, particularly elephants and rhinos which were hunted for ivory and horn.

“Conservation was of little concern to Idi Amin who himself started killing animals in the national parks where hunting was not permitted and encouraged people to enrich themselves from the Ivory trade.”

In 1991 she went to London to study at the Royal Veterinary College. A talk on the mountain gorillas of Rwanda by Dr. Barkley Hastings, the first vet to work with mountain gorillas, and Dr. Ian Redmond, the first research assistant of the late Dr. Dian Fossey, fuelled her desire to work with these shy, gentle giants.

In January 1996 she started her first job at Uganda National Park. Even though it was her dream job, there weren’t any funds to support it and she spent a lot of time explaining to others who worked for the park why she was hired, and how vets could support conservation efforts. She also had to explain why it was necessary to intervene when the wildlife was affected by an issue that was human-related, or life-threatening in a species that was critically endangered like the mountain gorillas who only numbered 650 at the time.

“At the time that I was recruited, conservationists believed that wild animals should not be interfered with and natural selection should always take its course.”

From dealing with threats posed by The Lord’s Resistance Army and its leader Joseph Kony to poachers and a scabies outbreak in the wild, her career has been fraught with danger.

The book is peppered with nuggets of humor and kindness, from how her mom climbed the mountains to meet the gorillas in a skirt, and how she was approached for help by the wife of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni when two elephants ate the bananas in her cousin’s plantation.

A recurring theme has been that “much like humans, chimpanzees (and other primates) that are treated well as infants are more confident and rise faster in the ranks to become alpha males”.

Her One Health approach to ensuring the survival of gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is what she is most recognized for. Dr. Gladys realized that people who live near the gorillas must be healthy because their diseases would inevitably affect the animals. She also realized they would not kill the gorillas for bush meat if they had other sources of income and could provide for their families. Through a multidisciplinary approach, she has made them custodians of gorilla welfare.

Through gorilla tourism, people earn an income and ensure that the animals are safe, even tolerating them when they raid their crops.

Dr Gladys and her husband, Lawrence Zikusoka, have also helped the coffee farmers find international buyers, securing their income.

She taught communities about hygiene after a scabies outbreak infected the animals and it was during the Covid-19 outbreak that she pioneered health workshops with rangers to ensure the gorillas and people were protected. Through her NGO, Conservation Through Public Health, Dr. Gladys has shown the world that the lives of people and gorillas are intertwined and that one cannot be successful without the other.

“Walking With Gorillas: The Journey of an African Wildlife Vet”, will make you laugh, make you cry, but most of all it will leave you with a deep respect for a woman who triumphed over the odds to become one of Africa’s most respected leaders.