Baka from Ngoyla, near Cameroon’s Nki National Park, hold up a map of the forest. The dark red areas are those they have been restricted from entering which are of social, economic and cultural interest to them. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Sarah Tucker
WASHINGTON, Jan 15 2014 (IPS)

A recent article by IPS journalist Ngala Killian Chimtom described the struggle of the Baka of Cameroon to maintain their indigenous culture and livelihoods while coping with the rapidly-changing environment around them.

The Baka are hunter-gatherers indigenous to Cameroon’s southeastern forests. They are masters of the forest in every way, experts in the medicinal, spiritual, and nutritional qualities of the plants and animals around them. However, as Chimtom explains, the Baka today are threatened on multiple fronts, and “consumed with questions about their future.”

The Baka are trying to manage an unprecedented and complex set of challenges, unlike anyone else in their peoples’ history. Logging, mining, and poaching have greatly reduced the forest’s richness by driving away animals and reducing biodiversity. Conservation efforts have made once fruitful forest land off-limits to human activity. Although they legally have the right to carry out some subsistence activities in certain protected areas, the Baka often fall victim to brutal intimidation, arrest, and even torture at the hands of those charged with enforcing environmental protection.

With the forest jeopardised and the outside world quickly approaching, this generation of Baka children faces a more ambiguous and threatening future than their ancestors ever knew. The term “marginalisation” fits the Baka exceedingly well – they find themselves pushed to the margins in almost every way imaginable. They are forced to subsist on the outer edges of rich forests they once knew as their own. Their rights seem to be penciled in as an afterthought in key legislation affecting their ancestral lands and lifestyle.

But the biggest travesty is their marginalisation in our minds. Their story of struggle is written as a footnote to the narrative of Cameroon’s push to develop. In pursuit of economic growth, the government has prioritised exploitation of forest resources and urban expansion at the expense of its striking cultural and ecological diversity. As a result, the culture and environment that form the foundation of Baka identity are under threat.

Sarah Tucker, a researcher and Baka education specialist, says Cameroon’s Baka are trying to manage an unprecedented and complex set of challenges, unlike anyone else in their peoples’ history. Courtesy: Stephen Cashmere

We often describe the loss of the forest and Baka culture in the past tense. News media, nonprofit organisations, and researchers decry the degradation of the Baka way of life, but often speak as if it has already happened, and there is nothing to be done to stop it.

The truth is that this assault is happening before our eyes. We have a unique opportunity to take action to stop the forces in motion from repeating the same destruction that has played out in countless indigenous contexts worldwide.

This battle starts with education.

Contrary to popular belief, there is high demand for schooling among Baka communities. The fact that so many Baka parents choose to send their children to school is a testament to the fact that they are wary of what the future holds. It shows that they are deeply concerned that traditional forest education will not be enough to prepare their children for the challenges ahead.

Developing approaches that truly incorporate and validate Baka culture is the most challenging and exciting opportunity before us. Many view education as a “civilising” tool, used to transition the Baka into the “modern” world. But this perception over-simplifies their aspirations, and fails to acknowledge that it is possible to educate youth in a way that reinforces their traditions while also preparing them for their encounters with “modernity.”

The Baka have been changing and adapting to the world around them for millennia, as with all people on earth: they are just as “modern” as any city or town dweller could claim to be. A truly adapted education system will enable Baka children to make informed and empowered decisions about their own future.

We must understand that all education systems – kindergarten classrooms, prestigious universities, and Baka traditional education included – consist of a set of cultural priorities and assumptions about the future. Inclusive and adapted education strategies will enable the Baka to gain the skills they need to thrive in their forest home, as well as adapt to the rapidly encroaching outside world.

Done well, this will instill pride in Baka youth about their indigenous identity and heritage, empower them to defend their rights and interests, and help them choose their own path in life.

Sarah Tucker is a researcher and Baka education specialist. She is the co-founder of Chasing Two Rabbits at Once, a Baka education and empowerment organisation in Cameroon. Her work has been recognised by World Learning and Opportunity Africa.

Baka children in Cameroon sit in front of a hut called a 'mongolou'. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
MINDOUROU, Cameroon, Dec 30 2013 (IPS)

Essomba Dominique, a Baka man from Mindourou in Cameroon’s East Region, sits dulled-eyed in front of his hut, known in the Baka language as the ‘mongoulou’.

A wood-transporting truck rumbles by, raising billows of dust in its wake. As he watches his seven children play in the courtyard, Essomba’s mind seems consumed with questions about their future."The forest is our pharmacy, our food market, our source of oxygen and the cradle of the one who guides us all." -- Clement Nzito

“These passing trucks mean these children are going to suffer,” he tells IPS.

As if to illustrate his point, Essomba grasps his spear and whistles to a nearby dog. The animal wags its tail obediently and follows its master into the surrounding forest. After three hours of hunting, Essomba comes back, with just one miserable monkey strung on his shoulder.

“Five years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to carry the day’s catch all by myself,” he says. “I would have found it easy killing gorillas, monkeys and even elephants. Now, the animals have all fled.”

In the distance, sawmills are busy, and bulldozers as well, opening up access roads to logging and mining sites.

“Just look at the way they are destroying this forest,” Essomba says.

For the Baka, the forest represents the beginning and the end of life.

The chief of the Baka village of Mayos in the country’s East Region, Clement Nzito, tells IPS that “the forest is our pharmacy, our food market, our source of oxygen and the cradle of the one who guides us all, the Supreme God which we call ‘Jengi’.”

All this has come under threat as Cameroon gets closer to living its dream of becoming an emerging economy by 2035.

Samuel Nnah Ndobe, who directs Pygmy programmes for the Yaoundé-based non-governmental Centre for Environment and Development (CED), recalls that in 1994, Cameroon passed forestry laws “that had the effect of forcing the Baka from primary forests, and these were turned into national parks where they are not allowed to hunt.”

The Baka are allowed to hunt in secondary forests, “but that precisely is where timber companies are also allowed free rein to log, and that’s destroying the forests,” Ndobe says.

He regrets that the fauna-rich parts of the forests where the Baka used to hunt game have now been protected and guarded. “Logging areas are also guarded, and the Pygmies are now found on the fringes,” he says.

Conservation groups have been working with the government to find middle ground between conservation efforts, the rights of the Bakas and the exigencies of development.

One way of integrating the Baka in the development agenda is through education. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is working with the government to develop educational strategies. The challenge is getting the Baka into formal school settings while at the same time safeguarding their culture.

“The Baka have strong cultural ties to the forest, and an incredible traditional education: as they grow up, young children learn the nutritional, medicinal, and spiritual qualities of the plants and animals all around them,” Sarah Tucker, senior international consultant for WWF, tells IPS.

“Innovative education approaches must engage Baka children and communities in a way that welcomes their culture.  School must enable them to build skills necessary to flourish in their forest home as well as in the outside world,” she says.

Xenophobic tendencies among Bantu neighbours also keep the Bakas on the fringes.

“Bantu consider Baka as sub-human. They claim Baka kids stink in class,” Alexis Tadokem, head teacher of a government primary school in Ntam Carrefour, a village on Cameroon’s borders with Congo Brazzaville, tells IPS.

“Baka are used as servants to Bantu. They are tortured and sometimes killed in the forest by the Bantu,” he says.

“When our children go to school, they are beaten by the Bantus,” confirms Yana Nicolas, a Baka man in Moloundou.

These constraints have been worsened by the influx of logging and mining companies, as well as the creation of national parks which limit Baka access to the forests they have traditionally considered their natural home.

A research team from the WWF has issued a series of innovative proposals, including adapting the educational calendar to the seasonal movement of Baka, use of the Baka language as co-medium for teaching in school, involving the Baka community in the educational process, and streamlining the content of education programmes to the socio-cultural context of Baka.

“We believe these innovations could help restore the eroding dignity of the Baka, and enhance Cameroon’s drive towards attaining the millennium development goal on universal access to primary education,” Zame Obame, pedagogic inspector in charge of nursery and orimary education at the ministry of basic education, tells IPS.

Baka woman and child in the tropical forests of southeast Cameroon. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDÉ, Sep 26 2013 (IPS)

When Daniel Mgwape, a Baka man in Mindourou of the East Region of Cameroon, felt like drinking local liquor commonly called ‘kitoko’, he simply took his biometric voter ID card to the village bar tender.

Trade amongst the Baka – historically called pygmies – is basically by barter rather than financial exchange. Mgwape exchanged his voter ID card for two “sachets” of the liquor, worth a paltry CFA 200 – less than half a dollar. The cards are reportedly purchased from the Baka for purposes of electoral fraud.

“Of what use is that piece of paper compared to a drink that keeps me funky?” Mgwape quipped when asked why he swapped his voter card for liquor. He said the Baka have their own social and political organisation, adding that he believed “the so-called modern elections are just another way by which the Bantu want to exploit us.”

Bantu refers to the 300-600 ethnic groups in Africa who speak Bantu languages, distributed from Cameroon across Central and East Africa to Southern Africa.

Slightly over five million registered voters in this west-central African country of 22 million people are eligible to cast ballots in the Sept. 30 legislative and municipal elections. But it now seems that the Baka people may not be part of the process.

“Elections have never given us anything – not hospitals, not food, nothing. We still have to trek long distances to get game, gather fruits, honey and tubers as well as fish,” he told IPS before gulping down the strong liquor and heading into the forest, spear in hand.

It is a rising trend among the Baka people, and the national elections governing body, ELECAM, is concerned.

On a recent visit to the area, ELECAM board member Reverend Dieudonné Massi Gams told the Baka that a single vote lost could be disastrous for the welfare of the country and the Baka themselves.

The indigenous Baka are a hunter-gatherer people who live in the tropical forests of southeast Cameroon. They number roughly 45,000 in the region, and depend on wild fruits, game and tubers for their survival.

With little access to healthcare services, education and potable water, the Baka have frequently found themselves on the fringes.

The bar tender, James Chika, said the cards were being bought by politicians hoping to hand them over to supporters who would vote in their favour.

“I get the cards from the Baka in exchange for ‘kitoko’ and then I sell them to politicians who say they will distribute them to their supporters to enable them to vote several times in the Sept. 30 legislative and municipal elections,” Chika told IPS.

The country’s main opposition party, the Social Democratic Front, has petitioned ELECAM about what it calls the “falsification of voter ID cards,” pointing to Kumba town in Cameroon’s Southwest Region where over 1,000 falsified voter cards were uncovered.

John Fru Ndi , the leader of the Social Democratic Front, alleged that government officials were involved in the scam.

“Ministers have come from Yaounde and are buying voter cards from people. We are saying that we will not tolerate any rough games again. We are doing this because we want justice before, during and after the elections. And justice will bring peace,” he told IPS.

But Professor Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, a member of the central committee of the ruling CPDM, in power since 1985, told IPS that his party did not need to use unorthodox means to win the elections.

Pointing to what he called “the wise leadership of President Paul Biya,” Ngolle Ngolle said the ruling party had made Cameroon the envy of its neighbours, and a safe harbour for investors.

“Voters see a lot of development going on and their votes for the CPDM do not need to be bought,” he explained.

Both men expressed regret, however, that the Baka in particular don’t seem to understand why they should vote in the first place.

“It’s regrettable that instead of educating these people on the importance of the vote, CPDM officials are exploiting their ignorance to rig elections,” Fru Ndi said.

Thaddeus Menang, director of electoral operations at ELECAM, admitted that attempts by people to get possession of more than one voter ID card had been detected across the country.

“We have come across cases, where the same voters go around with several ID cards, and who on the basis of these several ID cards register in several places. And when initially you see a case like that it is difficult to determine that it is duplicate,” Menang told reporters.

“But that is what biometry is trying to help us deal with. With the [new] biometric voter registration system, those cases have been reduced to a minimum.”

Describing the whole idea of people selling their voter’s cards as “crazy,” Menang said “it is unlikely to find a voter with two, three or four voter cards, because we have been particularly careful about that.”

He also explained that the voter rolls “have the pictures of all registered voters, and the pictures also appear on the voter cards.”

He further warned that perpetrators of electoral fraud could be prosecuted.

Political analyst Professor Assonganyi predicts that the ruling party is set for a landslide victory on Sep. 30, likely to win at least 150 of the 180 seats in parliament and 250 of the 360 councils.