Other days, Ngenderezi just sits in his hut and thinks.
He imagines himself in a dry house, he said. He imagines driving a motorcycle taxi like the ones he sees in Goma. By now, though, those notions are tempered by a mild sense of the absurd.
“I have children here being sent home from school because we can’t afford tuition,” he said. “I don’t understand how I can adapt to normal life if I don’t have children studying like others do. Thanks to learning history, we’ve learned that the only man lost today is the Pygmy.”
Last Sunday, those who were eligible cast ballots in Congo’s first presidential election in four decades, and the other day, some in the group were still wearing buttons that Kabila’s camp had handed out. A woman was using a Kabila scarf as a blanket in her banana-leaf hut. The camp’s co-chief, Mutembwa Ngenderezi, attended to the cabbages in a bright yellow Kabila hat.
“I went to meet with them so I could tell them how we are getting kicked out of here,” he said. “And they gave us this hat.”
Lured Toward Modern Life, Pygmy Families Left in Limbo (Washington Post)
Traditional Central African Pygmy music is almost unbearable in its beauty. I wonder if they’ve got anything left to sing about. I really hope so. Here’s a sample from 1958, with a surprise ending:
From Echoes of the Forest: Music of the Central African Pygmies
More on pygmies here. Very sad situation.