Cameroon bakka Pymies culture and traditions

A race of hunters and gatherers, the Baka Pygmies, found in Cameroon, live together with various ethnic groups of Bantu farmers, with whom they exchange goods.With an average height of 1.5 metres, the Baka are, strictly speaking, pygmoids rather than pygmies. Nevertheless, in everyday usage, the term "pygmy" is employed.The exact numbers is difficult to determine, as a semi-nomadic group, they roam the rain-forest taking up temporal residence in specific areas that offers rich games and natural resources, but estimates range from 5,000 to 28,000 individuals.They occupy forest ecology and they exploit the gifts of nature or the ecosystem. Over the years important exchange relations have developed between the hunter-gatherer Baka and the neighbouring Bantu cultivators. However, this relation has been one of tolerance and characterized by hostility. The situation has been caused by the condescending attitude and derogatory comments with which the Bantu describe their Pygmy neighbours, looking upon the Baka as goods belonging to them, they are victims of racism and exploited in plantations as cheap labour.One of the most important differences between the Baka pygmies and their Bantu associates is the fact that they owe their total existence to the natural resources which nature has endowed on their habitat, the rain forest.Like other pygmies the Baka are culturally, linguistically and physically different from their Bantu neighbours.They live in huts they call mongulu which are one-family houses made of branches and leaves and nearly always built by the women. After a frame of very flexible, thin branches is prepared, recently-gathered leaves are fit in the structure. After the work is complete, other vegetable materials is sometimes added to the dome in order to make the structure more compact and waterproof. Besides the mongulus the Baka also build rectangular huts made of leaves or bark, just like the other ethnic groups do, only they use mud and wood.

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Cameroon bakka Pymies culture and traditions

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