By Pegue Manga
Gwapaleke is a small Baka pygmy settlement near Boumba Bek National Park in the Southeast of Cameroon. As we made it to the settlement, we were greeted with ululations and the mellifluous voices of Baka women whose rendition rippled through the forest that surrounds them.
Baka traditional dance
At the near end a boy, stripped to the waist, struck the cords of a wooden banjo while three lasses did the jig. With strings of raffia straws about their waists, the three danced in harmony as the sound emitted by the banjo, combined with tambourine, built up to a crescendo.
Like their Bantu counterparts in the Southeast of Cameroon, singing and dancing are central to Baka pygmy’s culture and world view. What makes it outstanding, however, is the rhapsody with which they sing and dance. “We eat, drink and sleep dance,” enthused Mobouem Jacques, a Baka pygmy game ranger from Yenga village, some 820km away from
Yaounde. “We have different dances that express different aspects of our culture and tradition.” Foremost amongst them is the Jengi dance.
Jengi is Baka pygmies’ god or spirit of the forest. Jengi, the Bakas believe, provides guidance and protection. Jengi appears in times of sorrow as well as in times of joy.
“You just need to call his name and he will answer your pleas,” says Daniel Njanga of Gwapaleke. Jengi is often masked with straws and keeps a distance of between 10 to 15 metres from the crowd. It intervenes through an intermediary, even when providing herbs and roots to cure the sick,” explained Njanga.
According to Olivier Tegomo, a Sociologists working for WWF in Southeast Cameroon, “A day or two before Jengi appears, it covers the forest around the village with a curtain. A unique path is opened up for this purpose,” revealed Tegomo. Women, who possess strong mystical powers, do not participate directly or physically in the Jengi dance.
Then there is the Yeli dance, performed mostly by women to prepare the men for hunting. “Through this dance we attract animals in the forest that will be target for our husbands,” says Pauline Siembe, a Baka pygmy in Gwapaleke. “It is only after Yeli that we give the signal to our husbands to march into the forest. Yeli contributes to the
protection of the hunter,” she explained.
If Yeli provides protection for hunters, Bouma, another dance, is purely for pleasure. It showcases Baka pygmies dancing skills with a concentration on swinging of the waists and dexterous movement of the arms.
Radio Cassettes
If the ambiance at Gwapaleke translates Baka pygmies love for music and dancing, this élan does not becloud the recent phenomenon now taking hold in Baka communities: listening and dancing with the radio.
Your correspondent had a whiff of this while driving on the road leading to the camp. We saw plenty of Bakas carrying radios, some on their shoulders others held them down to the waists. Some occasionally stopped to cut the carper, while others carried on through the
equatorial evergreen forest, nodding in appreciation of their favorite Makossa or Zaiko (music that originated from the Democratic Republic of Congo) A Baka pygmy will sacrifice his year’s earnings to buy a radio cassette. “We buy radios from Moslem traders in the village.
Some cost FCFA 25,000,” explained Mobouem. He sees the use of radio an invasion of modernism that threatens Bakas traditional way of dancing. “This is not good,” he gushed. “The radio is an instrument of the white man that can impact negatively on our dance.” His views notwithstanding, Mobouem says he now owns an eight battery radio which he uses strictly to listen to the news.
Sharing
Though timid, Baka pygmies have a strong culture of sharing with strangers after a dance. “No! No! You can’t leave without eating something,” one of them, sweat streaking down his face, pleaded. We obliged.The meal, pounded plantain and groundnut soup, was small for the six of us, but delicious.
As we left the settlement, one thing kept resonating in our minds: in spite of the challenges around them, the over 30,000 Bakas that live in the Southeast of Cameroon remain unflinchingly enamored of music and dancing. This has a direct link with the forest in which they live.
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