DENISE ROWE OF BAKA BEYOND SHARES HER EXPERIENCES AMONG CAMEROON'S BAKA PEOPLE

After three flights and eight hours of bumpy bus rides, I finally began the actual two-day drive into the rainforest. With only the moon lighting the way, the Baka in our pick-up sang their return to the forest, As we arrived in Banana, in the southeastern tip of Cameroon, my mind was distracted by fears of wild animals, unfamiliar people and having no way out for the next four weeks.

I had come to stay with the Baka -the semi-nomadic, hunter-gatherer forest people often known as "Pygmies." They live in family groups of 15 to 60 in the Congo basin rainforest, the world's second largest green lung after the Amazon, currently threatened by logging, poaching and slash-and-burn farming techniques of sedentary Bantu farmers, Though I arrived in March 2003, my journey actually began several years earlier at an African arts festival in England; there I sang 'round the campfire with Su Hart of Baka Beyond –a worldbeat collaboration of European and Baka musicians-and she asked me to join the group!As a singer and dancer.

Three years later, here I was, standing in an overwhelming sea of small people -a sea of open hearts,- receiving a heartbreakingly warm welcome with warnings about biting ants, and feeling frankly terrified.

For Su and band co-founder Martin  Cradick, this trip was the culmination of 12 years spent working with the Baka, raising royalties through record sales, setting up the charity One Heart and regularly visiting the forest. On previous trips the organization has provided the Baka with cooking pots, tools and musical instruments, and has begun the process of setting up a legal association to protect their rights. Now we were there at the request of the Baka to build a music performance sace for them, the first of its kind in the Cameroonian rainforest.

Martin had gone ahead of us with timber-frame specialist And Main.  The local Bantu chief had allocated some land for the music house a mile from the village of Banana that was famous for…bananas.  When Martin and I first arrived at the site, they found a seemingly impenetrable, overgrown plantation.  By the time we got there, the Baka had cleared the ground and, from a single sapelli, a native tree, laid the foundations for the house and built a 200 person village.

But that first night, with people to meet and music to be played, there was no talk of house-building.  Two hundred dark faces appeared out of the even darker night, introducing themselves and their families. Through rising panic I saw the beaming smile of Wieto, who took my hand saying, "It's Wieto here, it's Wieto here," and who would later look after me when I was upset. There was Loni -beautiful, strong Loni -who cried for her mother when she was sad, who healed me with singing when I was ill, whose voice lapped like a river on the shores of the forest night. My fears began to ebb as I met Bounaka, who came to me saying, "You are my sister, come home from far away." And from then on it was true. Even though we barely spoke, that family tie was always there, an open channel, so special, so simple. And there was Mbosi, the steady one, the tireless musician, who slept with a bandit's girlfriend on his first visit to the big city, and who fought like a dog with his wife one minute and played like a childwith her the next.

Didier, the dancer who one full-moon night, claimed to take on the spirit of a gorilla. Mbeh, a fantastic guitarist, the cool dude with two wives and a heart aching for his recently dead brother. The children, shy and joyful. And Pelembir, the singer who brought the forest to me-a big man, a hunter, but so& and playful.  Pelembir was my way in, across all the supposed barriers, to the sheer humanity of us all.

Over the next two weeks, each morning hummed with activity from six to midday, before the heat of the sun had its way. With tools donated by Tools for Self-Reliance, Andi taught a crew of Baka and Bantu the basics of timber-frame building using wooden pegs. As joints were chiseled and beams were hoisted by the men who would normally be off hunting, the women built the Baka houses called mongolus out of special bendy sticks and waterproof leaves. The forest provides all the Baka need to live, and the women would disappear for hours, returning with plantains, koko leaves, fish and chilies. They cooked delicious forest food for us, and after a while I felt myself replenished with plantains and fish and clear forest air. 

The music house grew at a phenomenal rate through the enthusiasm of the Baka and Bana workers. In no time, floorboards were being laid for the balcony. The children had their own little clan, collecting plantains, trapping mice, cooking, singing and playing, or walking silently in line, swiftly through the forest, patient and aware -the next generation observing, mimicking, preparing itself for adulthood. 

The Baka are natural people, spiritual people, living intimately with their environment.  When I was ill with high fever, the women carne  with forest remedies, tree bark, seeds, leaf brews and vines to wrap around my waist.  But the most powerful healing was from Loni, who sang, clapped and danced for me in my small hut, aggravating my pounding head until I shout at her to stop and leave me alone, and stil she sang with her voice like honey, drawing out bad spirits.

When there was no mote work to be done, there was rhythmic, delicate and joyful music traditional forest instruments, guitars and voices.  Music plays a central role in the life of the Baka; as soon as a baby is able to clap, it is encouraged to participate in all the community's music-making.  There is music fot rituals,  music for passing on knowledge, stories and the history of the Baka people, and music for pure enjoyment. Every night, people came from miles around to party to the infectious polyrhythmic feast.

The music holds the people together. It often felt like the music played them instead of them playing the music. Pelembir describes himself as a channel for the forest to sing through, and you can feel how the songs shake themselves out of him. When I danced, late into the night, exhausted, it was the music dancing through me, so that I became a puppet, carried on waves of soaring voices, reflecting back whatI heard. In the music there is strength, and strength is needed because although life is good, it's not easy. When your children have a one in three chance of surviving until their fifth birthday, when those who have survived are usually hungry, and when you all have had friends die because of the inability to pay for basic, relatively inexpensive medicine, strength is needed.

Two weeks after I arrived, it was time for Andi to leave. With the basic structure of the music house complete and a tin roof in place, we held a rousing send-off party. Late that night, it was just me and the Baka, singing, dancing like never before, until I was soaked in sweat and my muscles seized up. Then we danced more, the forest dancing through us all.  Voices filled the air with passion and power andgratitude. All I could do was be taken by them, heartbroken, heart-healed, the kind of night that living was made for.

The Baka know how to celebrate, and they also know how to be sad. After a few sad, disoriented days because of Andi's departure, we headed deeper into the forest. Here, the Baka are in their element. Being among them was like glimpsing a deer in the woods in England. For a moment, time stands still and you're meeting with beauty, alive and well. And suddenly you can see everything around you and hear all the sounds in the air. Nights were magical- full moon in the sky, far from the road, sharing my mongolu with some of the Baka girls. As I lay under my mozi net, on my roll mat with a sheet, I saw four of them in the same amount of space, sleeping peacefully together, intertwined. 
The Baka don't have many possessions.  Each family might have one cooking pot, one spoon. What little they have is shared by tope which simply means, "give me." If you're toped, you give, you can always tope back later. When Didye, the dancer who became a gorilla, lost his hunting torch, he was devastated. He cried all night because it was the only thing he had. Most Baka do not have enough money for more than one set of clothes, and in the forest you either get muddy or dusty, depending on the season.  In Cameroon, where how you dress is so important, ragged-looking people are not shown much respect. Prejudice is a big problem for the Baka. Because of their image and their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the Bantu often see them as "primitive," second-class citizens and treat them little better than animals. Andi had worked wonders to get Baka and Bantu working together under the hopeful beams of the music house. On my way out of the forest, a four-hour walk through mud and tangling vines, Pelembir stopped to show me where Bounaka's wife had been shot by a Bantu man for a bit of fun. The Baka have a stoic saying, "Tolo ko tolo" -"The earth is the earth." Sometimes bad things happen, but that's life. You accept, you wail out your sadness and you carry on living.

Back at Banana, work continued with stage-building, decorating and laying traditional raffia roofing under the tin roof. We had gone from plantation to a 12m x 13m two-story building in just four weeks. The music house is part of the grander Gbine (meaning "help") project, the association of the Baka at Banana. Funds can now go directly through Gbine toward providing much-needed health care, a working plantation to generate income and basic math skills for dealing with the Bantu traders. 

The Baka's traditional way of life is under threat now from ever-encroaching deforestation and poaching. Electricity supply to nearby Molundu has brought the outside world closer and eco-guard systems set up by the World Wildlife Fund are causing problems for the Baka when they attempt to hunt or gather deeper into the forest. But the music house is there, standing proudly at the entrance to the Forest world of the Baka, giving them not merely a platform for their music and dance, but the respect they deserve and a place that is their own. 

When I left Banana, heavily toped, with children running after the pickup, I left the most beautiful, sensitive and joyous people I have ever met.