My Life with the Chimpanzees

At 23, Goodall left London for Mombasa, Kenya, sailing along the West Coast of Africa and rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Stopping in South Africa, she recalls seeing apartheid and expresses her opposition to the practice. After 21 days, Goodall arrived in Mombasa and took a train to Nairobi, where she was met by her friend, Clo. On the way to Clo’s farm, Goodall saw her first giraffe up close and knew she had finally arrived in the Africa of her dreams.

Goodall spent three weeks at Clo’s farm in the White Highlands of Kenya before moving to Nairobi to start a temporary job. After two months working in Nairobi, she met the man who would make her dreams come true: Dr. Louis Leakey, a renowned anthropologist and paleontologist. Leakey offered Goodall a job as his secretary, impressed by how much she knew about African animals.

In 1957, before starting her job, Leakey and his wife took Goodall on an expedition to Olduvai Gorge in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). Goodall recalls this as one of the most exciting adventures of her life. At the time, Olduvai Gorge was not well known among foreigners. Goodall spent three months there digging for fossils, and she recounts an experience she’ll never forget: holding the fossils of a creature that walked the Earth millions of years ago.