The Ba’Aka Adventure – Part 2
So the second day involved us moving to a new site for a more permanent camp. The Ba’Aka took us to a nice area that they had camped at in the past near a small stream. While the men cut down the new saplings to clear an area, we started to construct our tents and the women started to build their Ba’Aka huts or forest igloos as I call them. Each family had their own little area including our mzungu area and the Ba’Aka bachelor area – all forming a circle of sorts around a large open area. Each family area included living accommodations (except the bachelors who slept in the open) as well as an open fire. Some of the Ba’Aka chose not to build complete igloos outfitted fully with marontesa (sp?) leaves because it is dry season in January while others did a full complement of leaves and still others used modern tarps for roofing. I thought the igloos with no leaves were quite interesting since they served no climate-protection, privacy or other purpose than to delineate their household area. Actually, it seems there is nothing in the Ba’Aka world that is private.
We soon went on another net hunt with most of the participants except the children and some of the adults that stayed at the camp to protect it and care for the children. All of the infants come on the hunting and gathering expeditions since they are strapped to their mothers backs or fronts when feeding. This hunt started off badly with few animals seen. At one point, one of the leaders had the nets gathered and he did some kind of ceremony to rid the nets of bad spirits. Apparently, they had placed blame for missed animals and the lack of animals on the nets. If I have it right, at the end of the week one net was retired because it had failed to capture anything and it was deemed as bad luck. During this same net hunt when the hunt was still not going well one of the leaders consulted his spear – an oracle or some such thing that Louis does not understand. I know I watched what he was doing with the spear – basically tapping it with a stick while it was horizontal on the ground – and I do not even begin to understand what use this would provide. But they seemed to get some information for changing the location of the hunt and they were suddenly seeing and capturing a number of blue duiker – a 5-10 kilo antelope about the size of a small dog.
There is a lot of hocus pocus in Africa which I discount immediately due to my Western mindset, but I also know that the peoples of this continent know how to survive and there is probably some validity to many of their practices so I try to contain my dismissal of their practices. Before we went on the camping trip, while at Ndoli Lodge eating dinner and overlooking the Sangha River (a setting so beautiful that it is permanently etched into my mind), I brought up the issue of owls in Africa. Mzungu found it interesting that Africans would fear owls and I think they saw the irony of Farmer Bob in Uganda telling me about his mole problem and a minute later telling me that he, too, would kill any owl on his property. Jean Pierre, a fully modern Cameroonian, then went into a diatribe about how things like magic are real and one should be very careful about this stuff in Africa. I wish I could remember everything he had to say on the matter, but I was much more focused on the feelings it had stirred up in him and what I perceived to be astonishment by mzungu about what he was saying. It was such a great moment for the clash of two worlds’ views. I’m quite agnostic about religion and beliefs and generally just happy that people have some faith in something. I definitely do not belong to the growing group that feels religion is evil, etc. which is something I find often in Northern Europeans such as the Dutch. So for me just seeing how fired up this topic made JP was fantastic. I very much respect his insight into these matters. Just don’t go killing the owls. Please!
So the day ended with a good number of duikers being caught and that was good for making a happy group of Ba’Aka back at the camp. By the way, I guess I should cover the issue about what you do with a duiker once caught. It’s not real pretty, but it has to happen. The duiker instinctually tries to hide in the brush when human noises are heard. This is good because it allows the Ba’Aka to make all their noise and not have the forest around them empty of small game as it does of the big and dangerous stuff. So the duiker hides until humans are too close and then it tries to run a bit and hide again. Once the Ba’Aka see it, they coordinate the effort to keep it on the run into the net. If the duiker sees the net then it jumps it or changes direction and will usually be lost. But if it hits the net then it is likely ensnared. Ba’Aka on the outside of the net then jump it to make sure it cannot free itself. Finally, they either twist its head or smash the back of the head with a machete or other object. The duiker is totally freaked and it is not the most efficient and clean way to terminate its life, but I believe their life in the forest followed by this death is probably a better existence overall than much of the packaged meat lives that exist in the West so I really was not affected by the whole process. Tali is a vegetarian and I wondered what she was going to think of this activity. She seemed to accept it quite well.
We settled right into a routine when we got back to the camp after this second hunt. Basically, the Ba’Aka worked all day, prepared dinner at night, played music, sang and danced late into the night, never seemed to sleep, did more songs in the morning often with visits from forest spirits, prepared breakfast and then repeated it all again. Mzungu watched the Ba’Aka all day, washed and cooled off in the stream, ate our dehydrated food (I brought products from Mountain House and they were quite good) supplemented with rice or couscous, listened to the Ba’Aka and then fell asleep lightly being awoken throughout the night by the Ba’Aka and the harp-zither, drinking coffee and tea with a light breakfast in the morning and watching the Ba’Aka ceremonies and then repeating all of it again. I think one issue we had was how much to get involved in the Ba’Aka activities. We started out as casual observers and we started to find a rhythm later in the week involving us more. Tali brought a recorder and she played some of the Ba’Aka tunes back to them with it and they would howl loving to hear her nice twist on their sounds. Rod being the class clown danced with the Ba’Aka and they also loved that. He also had a laser beam pointer used for birding and the Ba’Aka as well as we enjoyed his little light shows and games he played with pointing at the Ba’Aka. Everyone was comfortable with the photo-taking and the Ba’Aka liked seeing their photos and posing for them more as the week went on. Heath brought bubbles and the kids and some of the adults acting like kids loved watching them and trying to pop them. By the end of the week, Katharina (taxidermist) was salting and preparing skulls and skins to take home and Katharina and Tali were pounding cassava with the women. I’m not sure we ever figured out what level of involvement we were suppose to have, but I do believe this was the greatest uncontrived tourist-meets-native encounter that one can experience and so maybe it is appropriate that things just play out with no script or agreed upon rules of engagement.
Plus, there are things that happen in the forest that you just cannot script. Rod emphasized that none of us could be allergic to bees. Bees – shmees, I thought. I was way more concerned about the ants. I can tell you that t
Tags: Africa, central african republic
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