From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Wed Aug 09 2006 - 17:50:18 EDT
KRIBI, Cameroon (ILO Online) - With no telephone connection to the outside world, and a single access road that is little more than a forest trail, the pygmy village situated two hours away from Cameroon's seaside resort Kribi might as well be placed on the other side of the earth as far as many Cameroonians are concerned. For the pygmies, however, the position of their settlement is more ambiguous: too accessible for loggers, but too remote for the benefits of modern life to make themselves felt. For the about 40,000 indigenous pygmies living in the forests of south and east Cameroon, life is becoming more and more difficult because they predominantly live on resources from the forest. "God has made us the guardians of this forest. It is our soul and without it, we have no life, we disappear. When we are taken out of the forest and forced to settle along the roads, next to the villages, everything changes in our community", explains a 26 year-old Bagyéli woman. She does not like to be referred to as a "pygmy" and considers this term derogatory. Members of the "pygmy" communities prefer to be referred to by their tribal names, i.e. Baka, Bagyéli and Bedzang. These communities are among the poorest in the country, living in isolated and sometimes inaccessible areas. They suffer from discrimination insofar as they are falsely considered as being "less developed" and "less advanced" than the other more dominant groups of society. The tropical rain forest is increasingly being exploited by foresters and the State is establishing national parks and reserves, which means that it no longer provides enough food and medicinal plants for the pygmies. The game disappears when heavy machinery is introduced in the rain forests. Poverty ensues and the pygmies have to become farmers, facing serious problems because of the scarcity of land. "Our neighbours have all the land. Everything is difficult for us", explains the pygmy woman. "There isn't enough food for everybody. But we are a sharing community, so we try to share everything we find." Besides lack of suitable land and primary health care services, pygmies face a 95 per cent illiteracy rate as schools are far away from their traditional settlements and the curricula are not adapted to their way of life. The traditional way of life of hunter-gatherers known as pygmies is threatened not only by the presence of loggers but by the failure to identify them as a part of the forest ecosystem. (...) Rest of the story at: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inf/features/06/pygmies_cameroon.htm
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