Goodall's message of hope draws over 1,000 in Budapest

The world changed in 1960 when British 26-year-old Jane Goodall spent five months living a dream. She was conducting ethnographic research with chimpanzees in the Tanzanian-African jungle and her observations rocked the core of scientific belief of the time, namely the idea that humans are unique because they make tools; she showed that chimps do too. Her findings led to grave reconsiderations about what it means to be human. Now a household name around the world, Goodall spoke yesterday evening at Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem in Budapest to two overflowing auditoriums of more than 1,000 people. She urged audience members to use their brains, not give up on dreams, and preserve the environment for future generations.

Goodall, now 74 and a UN Messenger of Peace, spends 300 days a year traveling to give presentations about dreams, conservation, and animal rights; she last spoke in Budapest in 2004. The 700-person auditorium was unable to accommodate all of the people interested in hearing her, even though the university opened a smaller second room where a live video-screening was aired, dubbed into Hungarian.

The jam-packed audience sat mesmerized with latecomers still filtering an hour later as Goodall chronicled how she went from being a working-class young woman without the means to a college education to buying herself a ticket to Africa when she was 23.

"Never think that you cannot achieve something if you want it," she said passionately, with her mascot, a stuffed chimp (anatomically incorrect, though, since it had a tail) sitting nearby. "If there is something you really want, don't give up. I had wanted to work with animals, to talk to them and understand them, since I was a child. I wasn't going to give up."

With passion and perseverance, she found a position as an assistant researcher with noted anthropologist Louis Leakey in 1960, after working full time and living with her family to save money.

After publishing her groundbreaking discoveries, Goodall went back to earn a doctorate from Cambridge University. When she returned to England to study, she faced attack from established scientists for her methods and attitudes.

"I named my animals, I said they have emotions and personalities - and they did, they were frightened, happy, sad, they tickle and laugh, kiss and hug. This was wrong, for them, these were things only humans had."

For one audience member, her defiance against the academy struck a chord:

"She was young and she was told she was wrong and she had to stand up to that, it is inspiring," said Tova Katz, an American student studying abroad in Hungary who came to hear Goodall speak.

Only in 1982 did Goodall shift her focus from animal behavior to human behavior, after realizing the impact of human activity on animals.

Today, she travels to point out the impact of "uncomfortable realities" such as poverty, ecological degradation, poaching, inequality, and mass consumption on the very species she showed are so human. Goodall said she understands how it's easier to be apathetic, angry, or depressed than do something, but said it is not impossible to make a difference.

"Human beings have the most advanced intellectual reasoning skills of any animal that has ever walked on this planet. If we are so clever, how can we destroy our own home like this," she asked.

Her message resonated well with the audience, as some were already members of the Hungarian outpost of Roots & Shoots, Jane Goodall's youth-orientated community engagement program, which operates in over 100 countries world-wide and is always looking for new members and projects.

For Zach Tuohey-Mote, an American studying anthropology in Budapest, Goodall's presence was not only interesting but improved his opinion of this city.

"Budapest definitely has a lot more going on than I thought if Jane Goodall is here," he said. "She is an important world figure - an icon - and has seen so much."

For Goodall, every place in the world is a place of hope: "follow what you are passionate about," she offered as advice.

"She has been through a lot, she's seen the world change and she has changed the world, she's very inspiring," said Katz.

Goodall's opinion of the city improved as well, after visiting the new Budapest zoo chimp facility, writes MTI on February 11. She visited the new 1,500 sqm outdoor facility and run area for the zoo's chimpanzees, which is currently still under construction.

"It is good to be back [in Budapest] and see the new developments," she said.

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