Ann Vander Stoep had been in Tanzania for four months when she contracted malaria.
The 20-year-old Chehalis local fell unconscious for nearly two weeks, thousands of miles from home, in a place far different than the small Washington town she had grown up in.
Slowly, perhaps miraculously, she recovered, in a hut on the beach of Lake Tanganyika — home to none other than esteemed primatologist Jane Goodall.
After all, Goodall was her mentor. She cared for Vander Stoep, and brought her back to health.
“And I think that may have … solidified our personal relationship," Vander Stoep told The Chronicle Tuesday, over 50 years after she embarked on the journey of a lifetime to study alongside Goodall at the Gombe Stream Research Center in Tanzania.
The story begins at Stanford University, where Goodall — already renowned for her groundbreaking studies on chimpanzee behavior — had taken a job as a visiting professor.
Vander Stoep, meanwhile, was studying human biology — a new program at the time — and had recently learned of an exciting opportunity to conduct hands-on research in Africa.
“There was a primate behavior course that we could take, and if we took it we could put in an application to go to Tanzania to study chimpanzees with Jane,” Vander Stoep said.
Vander Stoep applied. She was selected.
In 1972, she took off for Tanzania with Goodall and, over the course of several weeks, made her way to the shores of Lake Tanganyika and the research center.
By then, Goodall had been studying the local community of chimpanzees for about 12 years. Though it took time, according to Vander Stoep, the chimps were now far more comfortable around Goodall — and, by extension, her team of observers.
“That left the rest of us totally within that same contract with the chimps,” Vander Stoep said. “Amazingly enough, the chimps ignored us, which was exactly the situation that we wanted for the ability to study their behavior in the wild.”
Vander Stoep was tasked with studying a small group of infants and their mothers. That meant getting up early every day and going to the trees where the mothers had built their nests.
“They’d come down out of their nest at, let’s say, 7:30 (in the morning), and then spend their day doing this or that in the forest, always going from one food source to another, but of course the food sources changed by the season.”
Those seasons alternated between rainy and dry weather. Vander Stoep braved the elements, cataloguing the chimps’ activities on a minute-by-minute basis, noting how close the mother and infant were to each other, what they ate and what they did.
“The mothers and infants were a complete unit traveling together 100% of the time until they were about 6 years old,” Vander Stoep recalled.
The young student’s foray into primatology was formative, but ultimately didn’t turn into a career. Vander Stoep’s passion for research and data collection, however, remained strong.
After seven months at Gombe, Vander Stoep returned to the United States, where she earned a master’s degree in public health as an epidemiologist, researching the causes, risk factors and behaviors that lead to diseases in populations.
Her relationship with Goodall remained strong, too. They stayed close for about 10 years, and during that time she got to know Goodall’s mother in England, along with Goodall’s son.
She described Goodall’s care during those fateful weeks in that beach hut as “so lovingly,” and noted the close relationship Goodall shared with her mother, who practiced amateur nursing.
“Maybe it was Jane’s observation of the kindness of her mother,” Vander Stoep said.
Eight years after leaving Gombe, Vander Stoep returned to Tanzania to practice her new vocation, this time in Dar es Salaam — where Goodall happened to be living.
“So we had a year of very different connection, but a very strong one… spending holidays together, and doing a lot of laughing and just enjoying each other,” Vander Stoep said.
While in Dar es Salaam, Vander Stoep satisfied a desire to contribute her skills to the country and its citizens instead of just collecting data for research. She found balance in the role.
Vander Stoep later received her doctorate in epidemiology at the University of Washington, where she researched children’s mental health and taught for over 20 years.
Despite the different field, the child psychiatric epidemiologist drew immediate parallels to her former studies with chimpanzees, with the obvious “twist” of looking at human health.
“The fact that it was the mothers and infants, the fact that it was research — all that came from Gombe,” Vander Stoep said.
Vander Stoep has lived primarily in the Seattle area ever since returning from Tanzania the second time. But her work in Africa spanned beyond the country, including at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, where she taught public mental health research methods, as well as in Malawi, where she served as a program developer and researched child mental health.
“In my career, I have been completely and utterly happy and fortunate to work in East Africa as an epidemiologist,” Vander Stoep said.
And it started at Gombe. Vander Stoep believes if she hadn't observed a chimp become depressed after his mother died — despite being theoretically able to care for himself — she would not have fully understood the effect of circumstances on children’s mental health.
At that point, Goodall’s work was so famous that The London Times ran an obituary for the mother named Flo, who was known as the "Matriarch of Gombe.”
Flo’s son died just weeks later — apparently from grief, according to Goodall.
“So I don’t think I ever would’ve gone into children’s mental health had it not been for that,” Vander Stoep said.
The former Chehalis resident recalled another story that exemplified key similarities between humans and chimpanzees — specifically our social interactions and knowing displays of care.
Vander Stoep was sitting under a tree, watching her favorite chimp, a 3-year-old named Moeza, and Moeza’s mother, while they ate and groomed each other.
“All of a sudden, here’s Moeza at my ear, grooming my ear with her little hands and her little tongue,” Vander Stoep said with a laugh.
Vander Stoep wonders whether Moeza had noticed that she, a 20-year-old working and living in the rainforest without family or friends, had maybe felt a little lonely and isolated.
“And I didn’t even realize how that would feel,” Vander Stoep said, describing Moeza’s playful exchange with her. “But it was a wonderful moment.”
One of many at Gombe.
Vander Stoep retired from the University of Washington School of Public Health in 2020. Among her achievements, she is credited with helping launch UW’s Global Mental Health Program.
Goodall spent some six decades studying chimpanzees in the Gombe National Park.
She was regarded by many as the preeminent expert in the field.
Goodall died in her sleep on Oct. 1 at the age of 91.
