The Pygmies

I had expressed some interest in seeing the Pygmies (or more technically “Pygmoids” because the average height of the Gyele people is slightly above 150 cm) to Florence. I was really hoping to be able to go out into the forest and view an intact hunter gatherer society. This had more to do with my own curiosity as an amateur anthropologist than with anything related to my Peace Corps work. I was given a date that we would go to Florence's “village natal” in order to make this happen. There is a band of Pygmies that lives close to said village, and Florence knows how to speak the padtwa so I was pretty excited about the whole thing even though the date ended up falling on my return from a rather strenuous trip. I got back to village in the early afternoon and took a long nap before the hour long moto ride. The nap turned out to be quite a good idea.

After the ride out to Ngonvoyan I realized the whole “Pygmy experience” would not be exactly what I had anticipated. It happened that the reason that everyone was gathering together was for a funeral. As I have mentioned before funerals in Cameroon are several years after the burial (deuil), and are more of a celebration than a mourning. This was the funeral for Florence's father, who had been quite close with the Pygmy bands that live near the village (the reason Florence knows the padtwa I suppose), and because of that the Chief of the Pygmies , and many others came to the celebration in order to do a traditional dance. This all lead to the rather awkward scene of Auguste introducing me to several Chiefs and Notables, all of them dressed in their finest, and me fitted out for a hike out en bruse. Even if I was horribly under dressed I of course enjoyed the food, palm wine, and merrymaking that is a Cameroonian funeral.  Unfortunately the Chief took one look at me and started demanding that I pay money before they would dance.  After Florence explained that I wasn't a tourist, and I was working and living in a village close by he decided I didn't have to pay, although I think that Florence might have given him a little money.  

Far too late in the evening for my liking (1 or 2 in the morning) the Pygmies started singing. Eight women lined up on a long piece of wood they used as a drum and played some sort or crazy rhythm that I couldn't quite ever understand, all the while singing songs with weird dissonant sounding harmonies. While they played the men danced, and as the night went on the women and the dancers became more and more inebriated the and signing and dancing became increasingly boisterous. At some point the singing and dancing stopped, and after a few minutes a single dancer appeared costumed in leaves that covered his face and hands, and the singing and dancing continued, louder and more uninhibited than ever. At some point not long before dawn I decided it was time to sleep. I got one or two hours or sleep listening to the raucous singing and drumming that continued after dawn and well into the morning. After a breakfast of papaya I rode back to the village in the morning and slept most of the day, and while it was not at all what I expected I was glad I went, and I am hoping to actually make it out to their village at some point soon.

These are the women that played and sang.  There are also some other bigger drums that some of the men played when they where not dancing.

It was really hard to get a picture of this guy because the shutter speed was so low that all the pictures I took ended up being just a blur.  This was one of the few moments he was actually standing still.

After IST

When I returned from IST the amount of work to be done unfortunately dropped off precipitously. Most of the farmers had already planted, already burned their fields, already done everything the way they have been doing it for centuries, and here I was back in village after almost a month gone and more than a little bit late to say anything, let alone convince anyone to change. At this point there was no longer introductory meetings to take up my time; I had already met everyone, and the work was supposed to commence yet somehow it didn't. Even if there was little else to do I had my experimental plot to work on, really just a little garden behind my house. It had become completely overgrown with weeds and still needed to be planted, so as I solitarily lamented taking too long to get back to village at least I had something to keep my hands busy.

I did however have hope that I would be able to get some soy in the ground before it was too late. I had talked to my Program Manager during IST (3 weeks prior to getting back) about getting soy seeds to my village as soon as possible because the rain had already started. While it took almost a week after I had been back in village, he finally came through. It wasn’t too big a deal actually, because in the South you can plant soy through mid April, but it was a little frustrating waiting to be able to start what small amount of work I did have. I got a lot of soy planted myself, and got a lot of seed to people who wanted it in time to be planted. I hope to do some demonstrations on cooking with soy come the time to harvest, and I already have some one lined up that will come help with presenting to the woman’s group that planted a lot of the soy. I guess I can count that as a small victory, but I do have to admit that the health volunteer Amanda, who has been here for a year already, has done so much soy sensitization that convincing people to grow it was relatively easy.

Planting some Soy

At some point in the week or so after I got back there was a celebration at Auguste's place. A first communion for a kid on Easter Sunday. Of course the reception was at Auguste's, being the nicest house in the immediate vicinity it hosts more than its fair share of parties. Because it was at Auguste's I was invited to attend. It was nice to see some people I knew from around the community, and feel like I was doing an alright job integrating, even if I wasn't getting too much Agro work done.

The party was because the little girl in white had her first communion.  August took this picture, and he is not a fan of holding the camera still.

In the first week or two after IST I was having a rather rough time of it to be completely honest. I was missing home, missing all my friends, and feeling the awful absence of anticipation for a summer that I knew in Michigan was just about to slowly come to life. For me summer had never ended. I was as close as makes no difference to the equator, and still wishing for one night I might have to cover up with a blanket instead of sweating and suffering the incessant heat and humidity. All the while I knew everyone back home was able to if not appreciate, at least experience the start to starkly different and optimistically new season after season. Maybe that is why so many people have described Africa as “timeless,” time just doesn’t ever seem to pass here. The rain comes and goes, and people don't work one day in seven, but you never have the feeling that anything really changes.

All that melancholy had no doubt a lot to do with the fact that I found myself a dog. It wasn’t too hard, I just decided one morning to ask about getting a puppy (chiot en Fraçais), and while I sat there drinking coffee on Auguste's porch one was delivered to me. I named her “Peanut,” a name that made a lot of sense to me given my brother's use of it as a nick name for any cute little kid, and the fact that they grow a lot of peanuts in Bibondi, although the call them “arachides”, or “ground nuts” here. I have never been too much of a dog person, but I have to say Peanut is growing on me. This is probably in no small part because I have easily cleaned concrete floors in my house, but at least taking care of a puppy gives me something else to fill the hours.

Peanut likes to hide under my coffee table when she isn't busy peeing on my floor.

Next time will be a more exciting post I think, Pygmies, the pépinière, and Le Fête du Travaille.