The Mbuti of the Ituri Rain Forest

The Mbuti people of Zaire, Africa make their homes in the Ituri Rain Forest, living confidentially among its paths, valleys, and rivers. Skilled as silent, shrewd hunters, animals and birds provide the protein adequate for their diets. As astute gatherers of mushrooms, roots, and other plants, they know which poisonous vegetation is to be not to be considered food-worthy. This resourceful race doesn't limited their food sources to the apparent however, as they often include termites, honey, and sometimes plantains they're able to obtain via trade with Bantu villagers.

It's speculated that these pygmy hunter-gatherers may be the initial African inhabitants. Around 2500 B.C., the Egyptians recorded the first known story of an expedition to the rain forest calling the Mbuti the "people of the trees". The Egyptian story journaled the unique nature of these happy people, telling of their singing and dancing.

The nomadic Mbuti family groups live in small camp-sites consisting of little round huts built from flexible saplings covered with great leaves which shed rain. They abandon their temporary villages as soon as the group decides to move on to a region with more plentiful game and vegetation. Every new Mbuti camp site is near the edge of the forest, however it also affords easy access to the Bantu village each unique group has a trade relationship with.

The forest is vital to the Mbuti's traditions and spiritual beliefs, and sustenance flows with the life of the Ituri. Often referring to the forest as mother or father, they revere it as the very source of their necessities for survival. This devotion is much more than it just being a resource for supplies however. To the Mbuti, Mother/Father Ituri is a divine, sacred, living force. Through their rituals and ceremonies they ask for help, give thanks, and acknowledge its blessings. "The Ituri Rain Forest is their 'place to return to for safety'".

With food and firewood in abundance, there isn't a full day's work to be done around the Mbuti camps, so these good natured, happy people spend a lot of time singing and storytelling. Though outsiders view the Mbuti as a peaceful light hearted people, the climate among the families is sometimes quite different at home in the camps. They don't have just one figure of authority so all decision making is in the hands of the entire group. Problem solving is a major endeavor and often involves arguing themselves through to mutual cooperation.

Through years of contact with the displaced Bantu villagers (the result of European colonization and exploitation of the Bantu), the two cultures have developed rather interdependent relationships. Since the Bantu are afraid of the forest, the Mbuti's well honed hunting skills make them the Bantu's only source for "prestige foods" such as fresh meat and honey". Being a nomadic people, "starch foods from villagers' gardens make up a significant part of Mbuti diet "year-round." "Mbuti also provide diverse forest products such as thatching and construction materials, firewood, medicinal plants and edible mushrooms."

Each viewing the other as inferior; the villagers see the Mbuti as heathens and often try to appear authoritative toward them. However regardless of any commitment the Mbuti may agree to with the Bantu (be it cultivation, harvest, or fishing expeditions), when their needs are met, their purposes served, the pigmies retreat to the sanctuary of the forest feeling no further obligation to the Bantu.

Though relationships are sometimes strained, these two groups share a give-and-take existence despite their mutual lowly view of each other. "Cultural reciprocity" is evident as some circumstances lead the Mbuti use the more hierarchical and formalized social structure of villager societies, whereas on other occasions the villagers use Mbuti to act as spiritual intermediaries with the forest. Bantu villagers often organize wedding feasts and assign the tasks at funerals. No matter how far away a death happens, the body will be brought back to the village for burial. Likewise, any crime occurring in the forest, particularly involving blood-letting, is brought by Mbuti to a village tribunal. Villagers recognize the Mbuti's spiritual unity with the forest, something they feel inadequate to achieve themselves. They enlist the participation of the Mbuti at major ceremonies aimed at calling forth the fruitfulness of their gardens and even their clans.

Events following the Simba Rebellion, 1964-1970 demonstrates not only the flexibility of the Mbuti's interactions with outside groups, but also their vulnerability and limited influence over the political future of the region. We find that in the end, the Mbuti, like the forest itself, are vulnerable. They have no legal rights to the forest, yet they do not live completely isolated in the forest either; perhaps they never have. Money has become more valued than the things the forest provides the Mbuti for trade. Agribusiness and large-scale logging evidences the goals for short term exploitation and conversion of the Ituri Rain Forest, making the Mbuti forest specialists less and less significant to the regional society.

Though they've survived political rebellions, mass slaughter by political forces seeking to control the agricultural and forested areas of the region and stop the them from helping the Bantu seek refuge in the forest, the erosion of the Mbuti way of life is now evident. Their political exploitation and use as cheap labor has brought the Mbuti closer to the ways of the outside world. It is not unusual, for example, to find Mbuti hired by local timber concessions to identify and cut trees, or for Mbuti to deplete local wildlife populations in the interest of commercial traders. It is Mbuti who guide and scout for illicit prospectors and elephant hunters, and it is the same Mbuti who may guide government soldiers and police on raids of such operations. It's no small wonder alcoholism has become a major problem among this happy, peaceful people as they abandon their old ways.

An Associated Press team hiked into the Congo's Okapi Wildlife Reserve, intending to serve as a fortification against the thriving bushmeat trade and commercial hunting. However upon their arrival they joined a band of Pygmy hunters working daily to meet the demands of the Bantu traders.

The rain forest is home to Africa's estimated 250,000 to 500,000 Pygmies. But every year, it grows smaller. According to the United Nations, Africa annually loses 10 million acres of trees - an area the size of Switzerland - because of uncontrolled logging, mining and waves of migrants desperate for land.

Conrad Aveling, a British environmental consultant, said, "the forest just doesn't produce enough to meet the demand." And by depleting their most precious resource for short-term gain, he said, the Pygmies "are sawing off the branch on which they're sitting."

Or, as Congo expert Terese Hart said, "They're overexploiting the forest in a way that's making their own way of living impossible."

Zaire Njikali, an elderly Pygmy clan leader doesn't want to talk about the change sweeping the continent, or the dangers of over-hunting. "The forest will always be there," he says. "For the forest to disappear, for the animals to disappear, the world would have to end first."

Yet even today, in the face of the encroachment of civilization, deep in the Congo's fierce and beautiful Ituri Rain Forest, the major ceremonial molimo ritual may still be witnessed. In the evening hours, Mbuti men gather round a fire dancing and singing through the molimo trumpet, "making animal sounds and beautiful music" that are part of the ritual. When the ceremonial molimo is brought to the festivity by the young men, they circle the fringe of the camp, making sure the singing and dancing around the innermost fire is most intense, good enough, and ready for the entrance of the trumpet. Whether celebrated to give thanks to the forest itself as all that is good in their lives, to cure noise, or even cure a bad incident such as death, the molimo is a joyous undertaking. Lasting from one day to a month or more, through this ancient ritual the Mbuti seek to become more "centered", balanced, and ordered as they celebrate.

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