JANE GOODALL

LISTENING B2.1-B2

Transcript

I think, when I look back over, you know, what I've learned it’s not so much a scientific discovery that was important it was helping science to come out of its little box in which they thought that we, humans were the only beings with personality, mind and above all, emotions. When I look back over my life I'm completely amazed thinking how I began, you know, in an ordinary kind of family going through World War II very, very little money but having a supportive mother that's the most important thing so when I dreamed of Africa when I was ten and everybody laughed at me she, she just said: “If you really want this, you're going to have to work really hard and take advantage of opportunity and never give up”.

 I wasn't scared but I … when we went along by boat, you know, mom and me and this boat. Gumby is along the shore of Lake Tanganyika and I was looking up and there’s all these valleys coming down to the lake quite steep, thick valleys…I look…How on earth am I going to find the chimpanzees? But it was my dream, I was not scared in the forest.

Weeks turned into months. I learned about what they were feeding on, I learned about how they make nests at night, learned something about their calls… all of those things. I think it was the fifth month of this six-month study and I was walking back, I was rather wet and cold and looking through my binoculars I saw this chimpanzee on a termite mound breaking off pieces of grass, pushing them into the holes peeking the termites off then picking leafy twigs and stripping them making a tool.

 And at that time, it was thought that we and only we used and made tools. So, it was that observation that brought in the National Geographic to continue funding and they send a photographer, filmmaker Hugo van Lawick whose footage was in the recent documentary ‘Jane’ His footage that went in the early Geographic documentary that took the story of Jane and the chimps around America and then around the world. “Determined to uncover the secrets of the chimps in 1960 Jane Goodall arrives in Tanzania, her discoveries here will startle a scientific world and lead to the possible redefinition of the word: Man”

I think of Flo and Goliath and David Greybeard very often, you know, they were almost like part of my family. It was thanks to the chimpanzees who are so like us biologically that finally they began to realize that, you know. We are not the only being with personality, mind and feeling that chimpanzees then opened the door for a better understanding of other animals, the other Apes, the monkeys, elephants, the lions and you can go on right down. It's a very exciting time for students today because highly intellectual behaviours have been found in various birds, in the octopus, even in some insects and now we know that trees can communicate. There’s a whole new world out there and it's going to open eyes to the fact that we’re not as special and different as people used to think and most important of all, we need to respect other life- forms and stop thinking that they’re there for our convenience and treat them with respect.

Particularly the women, they say that reading about my, you know, my life has helped them understand that they too can make a difference. Often people will write or say “I want to thank you because you taught me that because you did it, I can do it too”. Every single one of us makes a difference every day and we have a choice as to what kind of difference we’re going to make. What we will eat, buy, wear…where did it come from?, how was it made? Whether this involved cruelty to animals, burning masses of fossil fuel?… is it cheap because of child slave labour?…all those kinds of things, you know. If we want all our hard work to be perpetrated or to put into a future, we better start educating young people. And they're going to be the ones to take over the world and if they're not better stewards than we’ve been there’s not much point.