Tag Archives: Central African Republic

Gorillas

Today I went to see gorillas at Bai Hokou, which is called Bayoku. I say going to see gorillas like going to the movies or to the zoo, but it has its process, and here they surround it with a mystique that, the truth is, it deserves it. I have left my offspring, with a shrinking heart and three Hail Marys, with my bosses, and I have gone with the driver and a very nice tall blond Belgian guy who works here. Don’t worry, woman, it’s only four hours, the guy tells me. Four, sure, the first hours, and after those another five. Twenty minutes on the road and we find the first tree blocking the road (wet season has it), back to the village to get the machine saw and a man to handle it, with parsimony, haste kills. Back to the road, machete,machine saw, 30 m more and another tree, and so on about 7 times. It took us three hours to get to the camp, and when we arrived everyone had left and gone to the forest and there was only one lame baaka who, poor thing, took the tall guy and me and a huge walkie talkie and came to the forest, very slowly, on tiptoe and quietly, but first let’s wash hands and boots, after all we’re getting into a virgin forest. Every ten steps he had to stop to reposition his flip-flop and foot scarf, and we were all tense, because when the baaka stops you stop too, lest he has seen an elephant or something. At every intersection he would stop to yell at the walkie something that sounded like where the fuck are you, come and get these tourists, I can’t walk. After a while I was limping with empathy too. In the end he couldn’t take it anymore, so we stopped at the foot of a giant half rotten tree and waited. The ground covered with leaves and big and small mushrooms, huge trees and saplings growing in its shade, and the sound, I thought the jungle entered through the nose, but no way, it enters through the ears. And underneath, red sand like in the desert, it’s only normal that tomatoes here taste of nothing at all. After half an hour another baaka arrived to take over from the lame one, and it took us on an hour long run through the forest, crossing streams, mudflats covered with elephant footprints and yellow flowers, a clearing with elephant bathtubs, forest and more forest covered with leaf litter, with twisted vines thicker than a tire and huge trees. And, when I had already forgotten what we were looking for, so amazing was the forest, so novel-like, so movie-like, he took us off the path and we continued among lianas and trees until we found one of the gorilla rangers. Surgical mask so as not to infect anything to our cousins, because Macumba the patriarch is already over 40, and tiptoeing away the branches, and there they were. Doing nothing, eating, farting and sometimes playing. Macumba, the silverback giant, sitting down, from time to time stretched out his arm to grab something, an arm as big as a child, a hand like ours but huge. One of the two cubs there came up to us and sat less than a meter away staring at us, looking like a small child. Its mother, eating nearby. Another female with her baby on her back, carried it between some small trees and started playing the same games I play with my baby. A couple of juveniles were hanging around. The two youngsters played among branches and vines, and when the adults got nervous their keepers clicked their tongues to calm them down. We must have spent an hour with them, I don’t know, I didn’t even notice. Pure peace and silence and golden light and shadow. We returned almost running, same as before, but I do not remember anything of that journey, because I have seen gorillas and I have said goodbye to them and I will not see them again in this life, but now I know they are there, and that has to be worth something.
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Ndima-Kali

Ndima-Kali is an association that seeks the oral transmission of Baaka traditions from the elders to the children: songs, dances, making baskets and mats, medicinal plants, making huts in the forest and so on. It is organized by Marcial, who is brilliant and a sweetheart. I had been wanting to meet them for a long time, and yesterday at noon we finally went to Kanza, a Baaka village 1 hour from here, where they had gathered this weekend. A bumpy red dirt track, through clouds of dark butterflies and villages with adobe houses, swept dirt floors, chickens and goats. When we arrived they let us set up our tent inside the school building, and we spent the whole afternoon watching the grandmothers teach the children how to weave using a kind of green reed with which they make rope. My toddler found a woven ring and spent the whole afternoon putting it on the heads of all the children who would let him do it. Immediately one wove him a cap, others imitated him, and today quite a few children wore their baskets on their heads as hats. Baby influencer. At 6 o’clock the sun set, as usual, and the sky, totally clear for the first time, was full of stars. And after the mosquitos’ hour came the fireflies’ hour. They flew everywhere, and flickered on the ground, and there seemed to be stars everywhere. They lit a bonfire and little by little the children, some adults, and the three grandmothers who came to teach gathered. The session of singing, dancing and drumming lasted until midnight, long enough for my toddler to fall asleep in my arms and to see the stars move in the sky. When he woke up, how could he not, what a racket, it was my turn to dance with the rest, and with the wiggling he would calm down again. I’m exhausted, and if I have to describe the dance I can only say geriatric twerking. The highlight was undoubtedly when an old woman made an optimistic sized erect penis out of the fabric of her skirt and went after another old woman, who sometimes wouldn’t let her and sometimes would. Four people came over, including two young girls, to explain me what the joke was about, in case I hadn’t gotten it. Just in case I asked Marcial if the size was realistic, he who knows the baaka so well, and so on, but he said no, hahaha, no way. It seems to be the traditional wedding night dance. The kids laughed so much that they repeated it two more times. I held my son in my arms until 11 o’clock, and from then on I continued the party happily lying on hard concrete. This morning, after giving the children a piece of bread and a plate of watery coffee for breakfast, and after roll call, and after sharpening the machetes… we finally went to the forest, singing all the way. That way no one gets lost and you won’t catch an elephant by surprise. There they taught them how to make the typical Baaka huts, which are igloo-shaped and covered with leaves, and they explained the medicinal uses of the trees we were passing by, ranging from a remedy for indigestion to a cure for epilepsy. We got back by noon, and between one thing and another we got back to the house after 3:30. I am so exhausted, but I love these people.

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