by Dennis James
Chief of the Baka
The chief and the men who have been hunting and trapping return by midafternoon. Most tumble into their huts for hard-earned rest. The chief, a robust man in his late forties, smiles at us and is very pleased when our porters present to him the sacks of rice and salt, food they otherwise must trade for.
I question the chief about the band’s food sources. For the most part, he says, they live on “bush meat” plus fish; edible plants such as yams, taro root, and cassava; and wild fruit, mushrooms, bird eggs, and honey. Most of the meat comes from small animals caught in traps—mole rats, monkeys, and small antelope. They kill larger antelope with spears. They also spear “bush pigs.” I envision these as little piglets, but they turn out to be dagger-tusked wild boar weighing up to three hundred pounds.
The chief volunteers that they don’t have firearms and don’t kill protected animals, like chimpanzees, lowland gorillas, or elephants. But for occasional trade of bush meat for grain with the Bantu, the Baka are among the world’s last pure hunters and gatherers.
The Baka culture is one of the oldest on earth. They are seminomadic, moving their small camps when threatened by natural forces or outsiders, such as farmers, mining developers, logging companies, and hostile Bantu. They also leave when an area becomes overhunted—this band last moved when their camp was flooded.
Their religion is a simple belief in benevolent forest spirits who provide for them. Their economy is communal. They share the forest’s provender and care for one another. They are peaceful. Yet Pygmies throughout Central Africa suffer discrimination and often violence at the hands of the majority Bantu-speaking Africans. The Pygmies are regarded as less than human, with malevolent supernatural powers that enable them to live in the fearful rain forest and that can be used against the Bantu. Pygmies have been hunted and killed like animals by belligerents in the civil war raging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Attempts to settle in Bantu villages often lead to unhappy results for the Pygmies, who are exploited and marginalized.
Just as twilight filters through the forest roof, Mama Rose and two porters arrive with trays of chicken, fish, and manioc. She assumes, correctly, that we might hesitate to share a Baka dinner of boiled mole rat. Mama Rose and her porters will sleep in the camp to avoid nocturnal encounters with leopards on their return trip.
Night falls quickly under the dark-green forest canopy, the only illumination the flickering red dots of a dozen small cooking fires scattered across the slope of the camp. We finish our meal and sit in the dark, waiting for the Baka to finish theirs.
Then, someone in the darkness takes a few warm-up riffs on a drum. Jones says the chief has deemed the arrival of the salt and rice a cause for celebration. About fifteen women, ranging in age from midteens to midsixties, and two young boys, about age seven or eight, all in grass skirts, shuffle into the square where we sit. Three drums begin a complicated rhythm, and the women begin to sing.
Baka singing is unique, featuring polyphonic and contrapuntal complexity combined with improvised lyrics. It is mesmerizing. The singers dance in a circle, but in the dark I can barely discern their movement. I chance switching on my headlamp, expecting a loud protest from the celebrants. But they give no notice to the light and continue without pause. They perform a quick, shuffling two-step while their hips shake double time. Now and then, a young woman initiates a call-and-answer sequence, interjecting an ad lib that evokes raucous laughter. The chief joins the circle for a few minutes, slowing the pace with a deliberate circling port-a-bras movement, then retires from the scene.
After an hour, the laughing dancers pause, sweat glistening on their bare torsos, and re-form into two lines facing each other on either side of the hard-packed floor of the square. The drumming and singing resumes. The dancers play a game where one darts across the square and tags an opposite member, who runs back with the original dancer to tag a person of her choice, and so on. Their dancing, singing, and gaming goes on without a break for over two hours.
The complex rhythms of the drums, the haunting harmonics of the singers, and the bodies of the tireless dancers shining in the smoky half-light come together to create an overwhelming, unforgettable sensory feast. Finally, exhausted, we stand up to leave. The Baka sing a song wishing us pleasant dreams. They would have danced all night had we so desired, our local guide tells us the next morning.
We sleep soundly in our tent, thankful for its rain fly, which deflects a midnight downpour. It’s not called the rain forest for nothing. In the early morning, slipping and sliding in the red mud, we bid good-bye to the Baka, who smile and wave. Three women precede us down the path for about a hundred yards, singing a lovely cyclical, polyphonic song that wishes us a safe and happy journey. Their song is a perfect coda to an extraordinary experience.
Cameroon: Microcosm of Sub-Saharan Africa
Cameroon is a microcosm of the climatic and geographic diversity of sub-Saharan Africa. This diversity has led to the development of different cultures within Cameroon as people adapted to their particular surroundings. During our time there, we visit three geographic and cultural zones: the Southeast rain forest with its Baka Pygmy hunter-gatherers; the arid northern plateau with its pastoral nomads; and the fertile Southwest with its Bamileke agricultural kingdoms.
Aside from their grass skirts, the Baka forgo ornamentation. At the other end of the fashion spectrum, M’bororo and Dwayo women in northern Cameroon wear brightly colored clothes, beads, wire bracelets, anklets, and four or five watches with shiny metal bands on their arms. Whether or not the watches actually work is irrelevant. They also tattoo or scarify their faces, braid their hair, and shave their heads in elaborate designs.
Northern nomads decorate their utilitarian objects as well as their faces and bodies. The women create exquisite woven mats and etch calabash bowls with black geometric designs. Invited into a Dwayo hut, we see several mats and bowls. I make an offer for the mat with the most complex and interesting design. Demurring, the woman says, “It took a month to make that mat, and I have not finished looking at it.” We choose another, pay her, and she adds, “This is the first money I have seen in months.” Their transactions invariably involve cattle rather than coin.
Many other aspects of the lives, and even the deaths, of the members of the pastoral tribes revolve around cattle. When the cows run out of grass, the entire village picks up and moves to a better grazing area. Jones tells us that when a Dwayo is terminally ill and the community has to move to follow the herd, they leave him with shelter, food, and a cow. If he dies, whoever finds and buries him is entitled to take the cow. The village will never again return to that site. If someone finds him and he recovers, the person who helped is given three cows. In that case, the tribe will return. A M’bororo woman tells us, “The most important things in our lives, are cattle, family, and clan—in that order.”
Baka woman
Country does not make the short list. There are reasons for this. The European colonists drew national borders that had little to do with the traditional tribal areas. When the leaders of the anticolonial independence movement assumed power, they took care of their own family, clan, and tribe, handing out government positions, business opportunities, and other forms of largesse. They neglected the rest of the populace, especially those in remote villages. These isolated groups expect little from the government—and they’re not disappointed.
Left alone, these tribes cling to traditional systems of justice, independent of the central government. In the far northern town of Poli, we are invited to attend the trial of a domestic civil case presided over by the local chief. Court, held every Tuesday between four and six in the afternoon, convenes in a clearing shaded by tall trees. Litigants, witnesses, and the public sit on blankets forming a semicircle facing the chief, who sits on an upright chair. We sit on a bench near the chief.
The case involves a love triangle. A young woman has taken her infant daughter and left her husband to be with a young
er man she loves. The chief hears testimony from both sides. The woman, in a bright pink shirt, red skirt, and blue headscarf, tells the chief that she will not go back to her husband. The husband, looking grim, says that he would like his wife and child to return. The chief rules that the woman does not have to live with her husband, but that the young man must reimburse the husband for all the gifts the husband had brought to the woman’s parents to gain their consent to the marriage. Unfortunately, the young man has nothing. He will be confined in the village until his parents bring the bovine or cash (unlikely) equivalent of the verdict. The court’s business is done in an orderly manner, and there are no emotional displays. The husband and the paramour accept the verdict.
Much of the western highlands of Cameroon is divided into small hereditary kingdoms. We have the opportunity to stay for a few days with the king (or Fon) of one of them, a robust, intelligent forty-two-year-old man with a permanently furrowed brow. He and his four wives, nineteen children, countless grandchildren, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, and his father’s widows live in the same compound. As the eldest son of the deceased chief, he is responsible for the support of all of them. His duties also include resolving property and domestic relations disputes in his entire village. He has also established a school at the edge of the compound for the village’s children. Although he receives a stipend from the government for performing his royal duties, he is constantly driven by the needs of his extended family. For additional income, he has had to resort to providing accommodations for travelers such as us.
Over beers on his front porch, the king and I have several pleasant conversations about his duties, about the Grand Fon, who lives in a palace and to whom he reports, and about his garden, the dialogue animated by gestures in aid of his halting English and my halting French. Visibly proud, he shows me that his accommodations are listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook. In a large, dusty courtyard at the center of the compound, Barbara wanders around in the midafternoon heat, watching small children running and playing with makeshift toys and women attending to each other’s hair, combing, braiding, and twisting.
Our farewell dinner is fresh vegetables from the king’s extensive gardens and fish from the royal fish pond. Barbara and I insist on helping the four wives in the preparation of the meal. Under the critical supervision of Wife Number One, I chop vegetables until an enormous free-range white hen with a beak like a needle-nose plier pecks one of my toes. Unhappy with Barbara’s chopping techniques and defensive about her hen, Wife Number One shoos us out of her courtyard kitchen.
There is vintage Scotch after the fine multicourse feast and traditional Bamileke music from a well-stocked stereo.
All in all, it’s good to be king.
But only a few get to be king. The rest get by on little more than a subsistence-level economy. But they know how to party. We attend several celebrations for the millet harvest, and each involves dancing, chanting, and drumming—with the women leading the dances and the men on drums. Everyone is laughing, joking, drinking, and feasting as if they didn’t have a worry in the world, when in fact there is always the specter of drought, famine, and disease. I ask a woman in Poli whether this year’s harvest is exceptional. She says, “We are celebrating for two reasons: for the good harvest and for our children reaching adulthood.”
I walk away with a renewed grasp of the essence of life.
Cuba:
STATE OF THE ARTS
In Cuba, a lot of things don’t work as well as they should. A six-lane superhighway ends abruptly amid cane fields. Early-fifties Cadillacs, Chevies, Fords, DeSotos, Studebakers, and countless Ladas belch black smoke as they continue to transport Cubans. Overproduction of sugar cane depleted the country’s fertile soil, and now Cuba must spend scarce hard currency to import food.
However, some things work quite well. Cuba has:
• the longest life expectancy of any country in Latin America,
• the best free medical care of any country in the Western hemisphere,
• a lower infant mortality rate than the United States,
• the most comprehensive free educational system in Latin America,
• almost 100 percent literacy,
• and nearly 100 percent electrification.
These are achievements of the 1959 Revolution. They help account for the massive public support for the Revolutionary government despite its mistakes, occasional corruption, and political heavy-handedness. But there is another seldom-examined achievement directly attributable to Cuban Socialism and the Revolution. Cuba has the most original, diverse, and thriving visual and performing arts of any country its size in the world.
It is this phenomenon that we, twelve American travelers, visit the island to observe in 2013. Barbara and I are last-minute additions, having been in Cameroon when the trip was first scheduled. Then Hurricane Sandy ravaged Cuba, and the trip was postponed, making it possible for us to sign up.
We embark on an Art and Architecture Tour, which qualifies as part of the “people-to-people” exception to the travel embargo. The tour is led by Sandra Levinson, Executive Director of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York. Sandy has made many trips to the island, speaks fluent Spanish, and has been a long-time supporter of Cuban artists. Her numerous contacts give us an inside track on Cuban art and politics. During the tour, we learn about not only Cuba’s leading artists but also the art of leading Cuba.
Our group consists of twelve old and new friends. Four of us had been law partners and the others have a personal tie with one or another of us. We all share progressive political values.
Coming from as far away as New York, Michigan, and Hawaii, the group assembles in Miami on March 14, the day before our flight to Havana. We get up early the next day, anticipating a long line at the security check prior to boarding our two thirty p.m. flight. The wait is for our protection. I try not to think of Cubana Airlines Flight 455, blown up in 1976 by right-wing Cuban exiles.
The flight is uneventful. Everyone cheers as we touch down safely in Havana. A man sitting in front of Barbara weeps; he is visiting his family in Cuba for the first time in sixteen years.
Meeting us at the terminal is our in-country guide, Jesus Noguera, a cheerful, fit young man in his forties who speaks excellent English. We board a small tour bus and are driven along the Malecón, Havana’s seaside jetty. It is lined with what appear to be deserted luxury apartments and mansions. A closer examination, however, reveals empty window frames draped with the clothes lines of squatters, less glamorous than the brocaded drapes of the buildings’ prior, affluent residents. We pass the Nacional, one of a handful of old, classy hotels the government has allowed foreign investors to refurbish and manage. According to Jesus, Fidel welcomed tourists but eschewed heavy investment in tourism, regarding it as demeaning and a source of corruption, prostitution, and narcotics trafficking. Today, Raúl Castro sees it otherwise and is taking steps to upgrade tourist facilities and capture sorely needed hard currency. The Nacional itself was formerly part of the archipelago of hotels, showbars, casinos, and brothels controlled by Santos Trafficante Jr., Meyer Lansky, and others until 1959. These gangsters have long since been arrested and expelled from Cuba, and their property confiscated. The Nacional is still open, sans casino, but with Desi Arnaz–style floor shows called tropicanas for the tourists. We finally reach our accommodation, Hotel Saratoga, another elegant, old institution run by foreign investors.
On first impression, Havana seems to be a curious mix of the preserved and the neglected, the occupied and the abandoned. Almost all of the facades are painted in pastel colors—blue, green, yellow, orange, and pink—which glow in the afternoon sun. There are graceful neighborhoods with boulevards, lovely colonial homes, and well-tended parks. Havana has a funky Centro comprised of half-deserted Spanish-era public buildings (including the Capitol), some fortifications, and a few pedestrian streets with shops and bars. Some of the bars have signs claiming they were Hemingway hangouts. We
soon learn that many of the “deserted” buildings in the Centro contain bustling studios, galleries, restaurants, night clubs, and bookstores.
Art is everywhere. It is in the day-glo colors of the lovingly maintained ancient cars on the roads. It is in parks, which are dotted with sculpture. It is found in formal venues like galleries and museums, or on signs and billboards. It is in the political graffiti on walls and music and dance in the streets. Here, art is an organic part of life. It is humorous as well—for instance, every morning, a man our age approaches a sculpture of John Lennon sitting on a park bench and puts a pair of round-framed glasses on Lennon’s nose. He returns in the evening to remove them.
In our exploration of Cuban art, we notice that the shape of the island is a common motif. Other symbols or icons include the pattern and colors of the Cuban flag; the unmistakable likeness of the national hero, José Martí, with his waxed mustache; portraits of the revolutionary leaders Fidel, Raúl, and Che; Catholic and Santerian images; and themes of sexuality and gender.
Concentrating on Havana, Santiago, and surrounding areas, we visit the studios of a wide variety of artists. A one-hour bus ride from Havana brings us to the community of Las Terrazos, where farmers once sowed their crops on terraces in the hilly terrain. This idyllic, forested setting on a river in the San Rosario Hills is designated as an environmentally protected “biosphere” where only original residents and artists can live. Other Cubans may visit and picnic. It is no surprise that the artists in this community concentrate on pastoral settings and depictions of the flora and fauna around them. Lester Campa, a painter and printmaker, works with bark and driftwood. Jorge Duporte, a self-taught artist, specializes in precise Audubon-like paintings and drawings of plants and birds. Many of his botanicals relate to the novels of one of Cuba’s most distinguished authors, Alejo Carpentier.