#jengi

The Baka people, known in the Congo as Bayaka (Bebayaka, Bebayaga, Bibaya), are an ethnic group inhabiting the southeastern rain forests of Cameroon, northern Republic of the Congo, northern Gabon, and southwestern Central African Republic. They are sometimes called a subgroup of the Twa, but the two peoples are not closely related. Likewise, the name "Baka" is sometimes mistakenly applied to other peoples of the area who, like the Baka and Twa, have been historically called pygmies, a term that is no longer considered respectful.

Baka people are all hunter-gatherers, formerly called Pygmies, located in the Central African rain forest. Having average heights of 1.52 meters (5 feet) in average as well as a semi-nomadic lifestyles, the Baka are often discriminated against and marginalized from society.

The tropical rain forest in Gabon, Central Africa where some of the Baka reside

They reside in southeastern Cameroon, northern Gabon and in the northern part of the Republic of Congo. In Congo, the Baka people are otherwise known as the Bayaka.Some Baka are also found in southwestern Central African Republic.Although the Baka people are located throughout the Central African rain forest, they are mainly concentrated in Cameroon as the Baka community of Cameroon represents roughly 30 000 individuals.

The Baka are a semi-nomadic people, like other hunter-gatherers such as the Bagyeli and the Twa. However, they are slowly becoming a more sedentary people due to the intensive deforestation of the Central African Rainforest.[6] Pressures from their taller and more dominant neighbors, the Bantu, have also slowed the Baka people’s mobility.

The Baka have successfully maintained their language, also called Baka. Unlike their neighbors’ languages (Koozime, Bakoum and Bangandou) which have Bantu roots, Baka comes from a different language family, Ubangian.

The oldest reference to "pygmies" dates back to 2276 B.C when Pharaoh Pepi II described seeing a "dancing dwarf of the god from the land of spirits", in a letter to a slave trade expedition leader.In the Iliad, Homer described the "pygmies" as dark skinned men in warfare with cranes. They were as tall as a "pygme" which meant that they measured the length of an elbow to a knuckle, or about one and a half feet long. About three centuries later (500 B.C), the Greek Herodotus reported that an explorer had seen, while travelling along the West African Coast, "dwarfish people, who used clothing made from the palm tree".

In 1995, Joan Mark wrote The King of the World in the Land of the Pygmies, an interpretive biography of Patrick Tracy Lowell Putnam, the anthropologist who spent 25 years living among the Bambuti "pygmies" in Zaire. Mark writes that Aristotle, in 340 B.C, was the first to relate, in his Historia Animalium, the small men Homer accounted for in the Iliad, to those seen previously on the African coast. He goes on to explain that, due to the chasm that existed between Europe and Africa after the collapse of the Roman Empire, most Europeans living in the 18th century believed "pygmies" to be mythical creatures.

In 1890, the Welsh journalist Henry Stanley gave, according to anthropologist Paul Raffaele, the first modern account of the existence of "pygmies". In his book, In Darkest Africa, Stanley described meeting a "pygmy" couple. Stanley writes of them: "In him was a mimicked dignity, as of Adam; in her the womanliness of a miniature Eve".

In 1906, a Congolese "pygmy" Ota Benga, was exhibited, among apes, at the Bronx Zoo in New York City. According to The New York Times, Ota was 4 feet and 11 inches. This episode is still extremely controversial today as a The New York Times article was written about Ota more than 100 years later. According to the Times, black clergyman and superintendent of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn, Reverend James H. Gordon, deemed the exhibit to be racist and demeaning. "Our race, we think, is depressed enough, without exhibiting one of us with the apes," Mr. Gordon said. "We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls.

The Baka worship the forest spirit called Jengi (also known as Djengui or Ejengi).The spirit plays the role of the mediator between the supreme being, Komba, and the Baka people.The Baka thus compare Jengi to a protecting father or guardian. They strongly believe and revere Jengi as they believe that he is the only way to Komba. The Baka people believe Jengi to be omnipresent within the forest allowing him to punish transgressors within the confines of the forest. Ultimately, the Baka worship nature as it is Komba, not Jengi, that resides in it.

After hunting successfully, the Baka worship Jengi with songs of thanksgiving and dancing in a ritual called Luma.These rituals are necessary for Jengi to appear before the Baka, as they believe that he only shows himself when harmony reigns among the villagers.Jengi also appears during the important ceremony, Jengi, where a young man goes from being a boy to a man.During these ceremonies, young Baka men volunteer to be initiated by Jengi. Once they are initiated, they have the right to live and walk freely within the sacred forest.This secret ceremony was studied by anthropologist, Mauro Campagnoli, who claims having been able to partake.Journalist Paul Raffaele describes his experience with Jengi:

"Emerging from the shadows were half a dozen Baka men accompanying a creature swathed from top to bottom in strips of russet-hued raffia. It had no features, no limbs, no face. "It's Ejengi," said Wasse, his voice trembling. At first I was sure it was a Pygmy camouflaged in foliage, but as Ejengi glided across the darkened clearing, the drums beat louder and faster, and as the Pygmies' chanting grew more frenzied, I began to doubt my own eyes."

Death is considered to be a misfortune for the Baka. They deem the death of one of their own to be a representation of spiritual discord. Each tribe, having witnessed the death of one of their own, is required to pray to Jengi and dance around the debris covered corpse for an entire night. The dance performed during the death rituals is called the Mbouamboua. After a long night of dancing, the villagers depart from where they were stationed, leaving the corpse behind, and set out to move somewhere else in order to flee the curse

Traditional Baka medicine mainly involves herbal remedies. Various plants may be brewed or mashed into a pulp to treat various illnesses or infertility. These remedies are often used on children, as the areas where they are most used have high child mortality rates. While the efficacy of these remedies has not been proven, this traditional medicine is so renowned that even non-Baka seek out their healers for treatment.

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