A Christmas Feast of Meat and Banana Beer
She opened her two-room tin hut doors to dozens of camp workers and contacts for a feast of meat and urwagwa, the local banana beer. On her door was a wreath and a sign that read “Howdy.” She made lamb for a 34-year-old American graduate student named Wayne McGuire, who was also studying the gorillas, and for Joseph Munyaneza, a Rwandan zoology student.
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Two days later, just before 6 a.m. on December 27, screams in Swahili from the guards and trackers woke the camp. McGuire was pulled out of his bed by Fossey’s panicked house servant. They ran the 100 yards to Fossey’s cabin at the other end of the camp.