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.