by David Yeadon
After what must have been quite a long period of watching the cigarette smoke patterns, I decided to stand up and stroll around. Then I sat down again. Quickly. Well, actually I sort of slithered back down. My legs didn’t seem to want to stand at all. Nothing of me felt like moving. My head was dizzy in a rather peculiar way. It wasn’t nausea or anything. It was just that my body seemed to be sinking gently into the ground while my head was off by itself, floating, spiraling upward, watching butterflies, watching the smoke again, enjoying the edges of the dark leaves gilded in golden sunlight, tracing the snakelike outlines of vines and strangler figs as they coiled up the trunks of trees high above before disappearing into the cathedral-roofed canopy over the track.
A head trip!
I heard the words aloud in my brain—“Your head’s taking a head trip and leaving your body behind”—and burst out laughing. More like giggles—childish giggles. The three pygmies were giggling too and puffing away on their cigarettes.
I couldn’t stop the giggles. My whole body was tickled by them—my feet, my hands, even my stomach—all tickling with these ridiculous giggles…. Time rolled on and the giggles still kept coming. My world was a harmonic whole of laughter and smoke curlicues….”
“Bangi!”
Someone was speaking. A long way away. I looked up and there was a face. A tall man with Rastalike hair standing over me holding something at his side. A strange metal thing with shiny horns sticking out the front. A bicycle! Of course. Well here’s a happy how d’you do—a stranger with a bicycle who keeps saying things at me in a loud voice.
“You smoke bangi!”
There were more giggles at the side of me. I turned and my three pygmies were still sitting contentedly by the track, sipping their beers and nodding—“Bangi—oui—bangi.” What the hell is bangi? I thought. I must have actually said it too because the tall man with the bicycle started up again.
“Bangi is Zaire marijuana. They give you marijuana. You gone!”
Really? But I’d only taken a few casual puffs of their cigarette, spurred by politeness rather than intent. It must have been a powerful concoction indeed. One I could do without in the future.
“I make coffee. You be better.”
The man was being very considerate. Who was he?
“Where Jan put coffee?”
Oh, Jan’s friend. That’s right. The man from the village coming to look after the truck.
My head had rejoined my body and my mind seemed to be focusing better on the situation at hand.
“Behind his seat. In the canvas bag. I think.”
Soon I smelled the coffee bubbling in a battered pan on Jan’s tiny kerosene stove.
The man’s name was Amit or something that sounded like Amit. He brought my coffee in a chipped enamel mug. It was black, thick, and very strong.
“So—you like Zaire bangi?”
“Er—no, not exactly. I thought it was some kind of jungle cigarette.”
He laughed, exposing a huge mouth of bright white teeth. “Well—you right. Bangi is Efe tobacco. They smoke all the time. They say it makes them good hunters—I think it just makes them happy. All the time.”
“Well, they certainly seem happy.”
I turned and smiled at my three conspirator-companions. They smiled, giggled, and nodded. Then one of them spoke to Amit. Amit listened and translated.
“They would like to take you to their houses. In the forest. Would you like to go? Do you feel okay?”
“Another cup of this coffee and I could walk to Beni.”
He poured another cup out of the battered pan.
“So—would you like to go with them?”
“How will I get back to the road?”
“They will bring you back.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
“Right here?”
“Yes.”
“Is it a long journey?”
“Not so far. Maybe a few kilometers. Not far.”
“It’ll be dark in a few hours.”
“So—you can stay with them tonight. Come back in morning.”
“You’ll be here?”
“Of course. Jan has go to Mambasa and then come all way back. He will be long time. I will be here all night.”
“Are these good men? I don’t want any more of their bangi.”
“They good men. They are Efe. Efe are good people. They are forest people.”
I couldn’t think of any more questions to ask. I stood up, this time without falling down. The coffee had given me new energy—and sanity. I groped in my backpack for some chocolate I’d bought in Kisangani, offered it around, and gobbled the remnants myself.
“Okay, Amit. I’ll go.”
The pygmies seemed delighted and did a little bouncy jig by the side of the track, stirring up the red dust.
“Ah,” said Amit, “if you can see them when they dance…”
“Yes, Jan told me they love dancing.”
“It very big thing for them. Very important. Most Zaire people, we have forgotten the dances. But Efe live in deep places. They remember.”
I said good-bye to Amit and promised to be back early in the morning. I had no idea where I was, where I was going, or what would happen, but somehow I trusted the three little men who hopped around me and then led me off through the high grass and stands of whispering bamboo at the roadside and into the forest. Their forest.
It is difficult to explain what happened during the next few hours. Maybe it was the aftereffects of the bangi, maybe I was confused by the zip-zap sequencing of events, or maybe there’s real magic in the forest that doesn’t take kindly to crude revelations in written words.
There are stories that metaphorize the Ituri Forest as Eden, the first paradise on earth. Of course every nationality values, even reveres, its own country. The Balinese, the Nepalese, the Mongols, the Navajo, the Tuaregs of the Sahara, the Sri Lankans—each believe their land to be the most beautiful of places, the place where the earth, as we know it, began. And—being of a flexible and a generous nature—I usually agree with all of them. Beauty understood through the eyes of its beholder, and shared with that beholder, is beauty indeed. I have seen many places where the earth began and fell in love with each one of them.
But the Ituri Forest was something I’d never experienced before. There was something utterly overwhelming about its silence, its space, and its majesty. Enormous trees, with roots that eased out of the earth like the smooth backs of dolphins, rose scores of branchless feet into twilit canopies, where they exploded in soft profusions of sun-dappled leaves and vine flowers of purple, yellow, and scarlet. Hundreds of air plants (epiphytes) drooped over the topmost branches like shaggy-haired kittens. Vines hung down like hairy ropes, inviting me to climb into the uppermost reaches and explore the busy territories of the white-nose and blue monkeys, the hornbills, and dozens of other species who rarely if ever visit the open forest floor.
I hadn’t expected such openness. In other rain forests I’d explored, particularly in South America, the layering of the plant species was far more intense and frenzied. Here I walked through the equivalent of an English beech forest, bouncing on the moist, mulchy earth, admiring its rich range of bronzes, ochers, and golds. There was no need for panga knives to cut through the brush. There was hardly any brush. No stinging plants, no vicious thorns, no sticky fly-catchers, no razor-edged leaves. Only a few smaller trees and occasional flurries of fat-leaved bushes, but mostly space and cool air that seemed to fill my body with sweetness and wonderful calming silences in the green half-light.
How different this was from the tangle of Panama’s Darien jungle and the impenetrable tumult of Tasmania’s rain forests. I walked as if floating—effortlessly, easily through the quietude—following my three guides, who strolled barefoot across the soft surface, barely making a sound.
Two lines from Baudelaire that Paul had shown me on the boat seemed to capture both the magic and the mystery of the forest:
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Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words.
Man approaches it through a forest of symbols which observe him with familiar glances.
(I particularly like the “familiar glances.” Sometimes I sense that.)
It was evening when we arrived in a slight hollow on the forest floor. The cicadas were off again, making their ritual, ear-scratching racket. Fires were burning in the soft half-light and I could see five domed huts in an arc around a larger fire. Shadows flickered across the hollow and on the bushes and tree trunks. Figures moved about—children, young girls with faces painted in red and black lines, and older women, all naked except for loincloths made from a thin bark.
My three companions were greeted with broad smiles and laughter. Some of the women began singing quiet simple songs, more like mantras, as they pounded manioc with heavy wooden pestles.
We all sat down by the large fire and a boy, thin and coyly shy, carried a three-foot-long tube of bamboo and placed it in the hands of one of the men. It was a communal pipe with a small bowl already filled with compressed bangi leaves. The man reached out to the fire, scooped up a few glowing embers, placed them on top of the bangi, and inhaled deeply. Blue smoke rose again in those now-familiar curlicues. I decided not to stare at the ever-changing shapes in fear of starting up the whole hallucinatory process again. And, as politely as I could, I declined to participate as the pipe was passed around the circle. I needed no stimulants that night. It was enough just to be here, deep in the forest with its night cries and curious sighing sounds. (Breezes in the canopy? Or the soft breathing of the forest gods that the pygmies revered and their Bantu cousins feared?) I was happy to listen to the sleepy chirps and coos of invisible flycatchers, warblers, sunbirds, and pigeons high in the canopy; I was content just to be here with these friendly people, the last authentic hunter-gatherers on earth, who seemed to accept me so openly, without undue curiosity or the banter of bad-English questions that had bombarded me elsewhere in Zaire.
Other men joined us by the big fire. The women, still humming softly, sat with their pots by the fires preparing food or weaving intricate nets of liana rope, which, I learned later, the pygmies used for hunting duikers and other species of miniature antelope.
The pipe was refilled and continued its way, mouth to mouth, around the main fire. One of the men began a low, guttural chant, his chest reverberating like a taught drumskin. Others joined in, imitating the sounds of forest birds. They swayed together to the slow rhythm in a haze of bangi smoke.
Someone—another young boy—began a delicate dance in the flickering shadows beyond the fire, stirring up little clouds of dust. He seemed to be playing two roles, first as a hunter in the forest, carefully stalking on tiptoe; then he became the prey, possibly a small antelope, low to the ground, moving, then pausing, sniffing the air, then moving on again. The men turned to watch, emitting the long sad cries of an antelope. The boy hesitated, depicting the confusion of the animal. The cries continued. The boy imitated the long, leaping run of the antelope, darting in and out of the shadows. The men began to clap quietly—the antelope became more alarmed, leaping harder and faster, whirling through the dust clouds. The clapping increased—the antelope ran—the clapping got louder—the boy suddenly did a somersault and thrashed his legs and arms about, depicting the animal’s entanglement presumably in one of the hunting nets the women were weaving by the huts. The men suddenly leapt up from the fire, surrounded the boy captured in the imaginary net, and began a rapid circular dance around his writhing form. Six, seven, eight times they danced around him, clapping and laughing. Then they stopped as suddenly as they’d begun. One man knelt down and with an imaginary panga knife slit the throat of the boy-antelope. The boy gave a rather too realistic shudder and lay still among the settling dust.
There was a brief silence followed by soft laughter from the women and wild leaps from the men. The boy rose up, smiled, and vanished into the shadows. The men continued their leaping and laughing and then, one by one, returned to sit by the fire and resume their bangi smoking.
The whole event lasted only a few minutes. It had been so impromptu, so casually introduced and ended, that for a while I wondered if I’d imagined it all, swept away again in a hallucinatory haze from all that bangi smoke. But then the boy joined us by the fire and the men slapped his back and thighs, congratulating him on a fine performance. A small intense ritual deep in the forest, not for me, but for themselves. A reaffirmation of their own lives and their links with the life of the forest itself. A part of their daily rhythm, as natural as sleeping or eating.
And eating is what we did next. The women carried chunks of hot meat and wild yams from their cooking pots on large green leaves and handed each of us a hefty portion. I suddenly realized how hungry I was. I hadn’t eaten anything except half a bar of melted chocolate since my breakfast of coffee and cheese with Jan.
The meat was delicious—sweet, tender, and full of juice. The men seemed to be speaking the lingala language, of which I understood almost nothing. But they knew I was curious about the animal origins of our dinner and pointed, with gales of laughter, to the boy, the dancer, who was eating with us. I understood and laughed with them. I was eating antelope or duiker, the creature imitated in the boy’s dance. I praised the meal so profusely that the women brought me two more enormous helpings and stood grinning behind the men, watching me eat every mouthful, washed down with a communal bowl of what I think was home-brewed palm wine. It was a sweet, seemingly innocuous concoction, but after four long gulps I felt wonderfully light-headed and sleepy.
Maybe I even dozed off. Perhaps I was more tired than I realized. Later on I was vaguely aware of hands lifting me and helping me across the clearing toward one of the huts. I think I tried to protest. I felt like staying where I was, lying under the high canopy of dark forest trees, but a hut seemed to have been requisitioned for my use and the last I remember was slipping down onto hard-packed earth and fading off into sleep with the soft cooing of voices all around me….
Dawn sounds and smells awoke me. The screech of Columbus monkeys, birds declaring territorial boundaries in the treetops, the aroma of rekindled fires, the hum of women’s voices, the click and patter of falling leaves and pods from the buo trees. I peeped out of my small domed hut through which light trickled in thin shafts between the dried leaves of the thatch. On the fringe of the clearing I saw profusions of flowers—tiny pink blossoms like impatiens, gloriosa lilies, streams of mauve hibiscus blossoms, and what looked like a substantial patch of six-foot-high marijuana plants.
Two little girls saw my bearded white face emerge and ran away screaming in a combination of terror and delight.
One of my friends of yesterday came over and smilingly indicated that it was time to return through the forest to the truck.
I nodded and smiled back. How could I explain that I really didn’t want to leave? That I’d like to stay a few more days and see more of the dancing and learn more about their lives, their hunting, their customs. But I knew that it wouldn’t be fair to Jan. Even though he was a self-contained man and used to long periods alone on the road, we had established an amicable bond and I knew that if I didn’t return he’d more than likely come looking for me.
So—I had to leave. But not before I’d been invited to share a bounteous pygmy breakfast of honeycomb chunks dripping with sweet nectar gathered the previous day from a nearby bee colony. The sugar surged through me like a drug, filling me with energy and eradicating all the sloth and weariness of last night.
I thanked the women for their kindnesses, the young man for his dance, and the children for their morning smiles. Then I was off again with my three friends, back through the green-blue light of the cool forest, back to the road, back to my Beni-bound schedule.
Although I could discern no actual trail through the forest, we arrived a couple of hours later at exactly the same spot where I’d been introduced to bangi the day before. There was th
e truck and there was Jan finishing off the repairs.
He greeted me as if nothing peculiar had happened. As if my stroll into the hidden forest world of the Ituri pygmies was the most obvious way for me to spend my time while he was gone.
I found a few gifts in my backpack for my friends—a metal comb, a pack of cigars, and a Swiss army-style knife. They offered me a wad of bangi wrapped in green leaves. Jan nodded that I should accept, so I did and later, much to his delight, gave it to him. We said brief farewells. I turned to see if I could find some more chocolate for them, but they vanished. Zap. They were gone. I peered into the dark forest and listened for the sound of departing feet. Nothing. They disappeared as quickly and quietly as they had come.
Much as I loved the forest and its deep silences, I was ready for open spaces again. And colder air; how I longed to breathe long, heady lungfuls of cold air. It seemed weeks since I had actually enjoyed the pleasures and the brain-calming effect of long inhalations and exhalations. On the river particularly, the air had often seemed old, used, stagnant. The slight breezes of morning and evening were always so short-lived. In the torpid heat of the day and night I always seemed to be out of breath. The air had felt far too thick to reach deep into the tissues of my lungs and tickle my capillaries. My brain had felt oxygen-starved and sluggish. My body had felt sluggish and old.
But we were definitely climbing now and the road was better. Still terrible, of course—cracked, potholed, and corrugated, but free of those huge mud holes which, in the rainy season, can hold up convoys of trucks for weeks and even, as Jan had told me, swallow up smaller vehicles into their pernicious bogs.