Le dernier peuple à survivre dans la forêt du Congo ⎮Documentaire Pygmées⎮

The Ecuadorian African forest is a bit like a dream. It has fascinated generations of researchers, adventurers and expeditionaries in search of mysteries or secrets. One of the best-kept is still that of the people it shelters, the incredible people of the Pygmies. Their history is fascinating, perhaps because their origin is still unknown. We only know that it dates back to the dawn of humanity, and that the first specimen of Homo sapiens sapiens is 130,000 years old. The Pygmies consider the forest as a mother, and maintain a very intimate relationship with it. They know all the trees, all the plants, and worship Zangoa, the great spirit, to whom they address their quest in the form of a polyphonic chant. Eyoka, where Ngonjo and his people live, is a camp of about thirty Pygmies. They are now only semi-nomads, and must evolve in contact with the Congolese population, the Bantu. But they want to preserve an ancestral way of life. It was my father who decided to set up our community in a camp, and he himself decided to set it up in this region. At that time, I worked quite far away, in the village of Cabo. But my friend Isongo was there with my father. Later, after my father's death, Isongo decided to transfer the village near the main road to improve the living conditions of the camp. But people attribute to me the paternity of this camp, attesting that I have it from my father. At the end of my years of work in the village, I did not want and could not abandon this heritage left by my father. I had to take care of mine and their children, so that they could take care of this heritage left by my father. So it is true that this heritage was first kept by Isongo. But less than six years after my retirement, I decided to give my house in Cabo to my children, and I came back to live in the forest. We are now doing a bit of agriculture, we harvest regularly, and what I can say is that it is all together that we have relaunched the life of the camp, as my father had done in his time. The Pygmies, in the Republic of Congo, form a minority whose main characteristic is to have a very different way of life from that of the Bantu, which constitutes the vast majority of the population. The Pygmies were nomads, but modern times have restricted the practice of hunting and fishing. So, in order to survive, they are more and more dependent on the Bantu populations. But as soon as they return to the forest, they become masters again, and are able to find everything they need there. Their knowledge is limitless. Yet their very existence has become a battle, whose first battle is that of recognition. At the time of our ancestors, the Bantu called us the Baaka, and we called them the Bilo. And very recently, the call of the indigenous people came, which we had to accept as such. But today, we can no longer refuse it. We were called the Mwaka. The superior Mwaka was called Mwabala Mwaka. The children were called Ngudo. We have accepted the name of the indigenous people, and we are proud of it, because today this name is beginning to be known all over the world. The exploitation of the Ecuadorian forests is a threat to the future of this fragile people of hunter-gatherers. But in the Republic of Congo, the head of state wants to give hope to the Pilme, and since February 25, 2011, a law ensures the protection of the rights of indigenous peoples. Many ethnic groups are in fact called Pilme, but the term is often used in a pejorative and discriminatory way. If the text takes into account the sociocultural particularities, its first article aims precisely to forbid it, by denouncing it as a real insult, which gives full measure of the difficulty of integration of this people. But the name does not do everything. It is much more delicate to change the look that is worn on the Pilme. When they lived exclusively in the forest, they had no contact with other ethnic groups, and today we do not know them, or very badly, which is undoubtedly the main obstacle to their integration. Protecting this people is above all respecting its history, and the name of Pilme is one of them. The small men of the forest did not feel offended by what defined them most precisely after their tribal name. But the term indigenous population still gives them a somewhat peculiar status. Their presence is confused with that of the forest. It is God who created the forest. We do not know how it all started, and even our ancestors never knew how the forest was born. In the forest, we harvest the coconuts, the tubers that we sell to improve our daily life a little. Women also sell in the forest to make the harvest in order to buy cassava flour, salt, palm oil to prepare and serve the meal to the whole family. It is in this way that we subsist today, thanks to the forest, and every day we do the same thing again. There are many realities of the forest. For example, you can meet fierce animals there. When we are picking coconuts, you can often find yourself in front of a snake, so you run away, and it actually runs away as much. It's like the gorilla, you shout, and from there you just have to follow your path. It is not their only difficulty in obtaining food resources that question the very existence of the Pilme, but the permanent contact they maintain with the city, where everything seems much simpler than the rules of life imposed by the forest. The locality of Pokhola, in the Sangar department, borders the traditional territories of the Pilme. This situation has allowed the Congolese government to experiment with its recent laws in favor of indigenous populations. Since its independence in 1960, the country has seen a strong growth. The work of modernizing infrastructure is going well, and now, in this state of 4.5 million inhabitants, we are living better and better. The Pilme benefit from this program. Pokhola, at the heart of the forest, is a model locality for its leaders, who do not miss an opportunity to call it. Pokhola has 12,010 inhabitants, and of these 12,010, the 12 departments of the Congo have about 23 nationalities in Pokhola. 23 nationalities in Pokhola. And in the 12 departments of the Congo, you have today the indigenous people, whose percentage can rise to 2-3% in the city of Pokhola. That is why, as a mayor, it is a concern for me, to make sure that today, you know that the vision of the mayor I am, is to make Pokhola an ecological city. An ecological city, given that CIB is here, the great forest society, and today we have to make sure that Pokhola is an ecological city. This is my vision, this is my perspective. A clean city, an ecological city. And in this, the presence of the indigenous people, for me, is capital. Capital for what? Because today, they are here as guardians of the forest, as those who hold the secret of ecology. And today, we have made arrangements to make sure that we can really integrate them with the Bantu population. Pokhola is in full expansion, and it must associate the implementation on its territory of the CIB, the Congolese Industrial Wood. After that of hydrocarbons, forestry in the Congo represents today an important part of the country's exports, whose surface is at nearly 60% covered with forest, for a total of more than 20 million hectares. The overall objective of the Republic of Congo is to ensure its development on the basis of the sustainable management of the forest and forest resources. From this will, the idea of applying to the mining type of the forest massif, as it had been conceived until then, an environmental standard that we call the sustainable development plan, which includes three areas, economic, social and ecological. The wood is not cut in any way. The wood is cut on the basis of particular criteria that are followed and respected. The development plan provides a minimum development diameter that says, beyond this diameter, we cannot cut. Why? Simply because the tree must be left standing at a certain level of diameter so that it can continue to regenerate and, through a phenology system, dispatch its seeds, which will ensure the regeneration and reconstitution of other essences of the same species, which will be able to grow in the forest. Regeneration is natural. Here, we do not necessarily need reforestation. We are not even a third of the potential of this forest to be exploited. Hence the reason for preserving it in the long term. In fact, we may be exploiting the forest, but in fact, somewhere, we are also, somewhere, landowners. We are sustainable managers of these forests of North Congo. In his certification approaches towards the international community, the Industrial Congolese of Woods also had to introduce a human dimension by imposing a certain respect towards the pygmy community. Today, these managers claim that they could hardly meet the current environmental requirements without their help. It is the pygmies, for example, who are in charge of certain essential tasks in the life of the company. Thus, their great science has naturally designated them to participate in the process of identifying the essences and forest management. The CIB also has an internal social vocation for its employees, doesn't it? And it also has an external social vocation for the local populations, especially the indigenous populations who live in our concessions. And through these commitments, there is a clear commitment to maintain a decent standard of living for these populations. A commitment to provide a certain number of collective services, notably medical services, to these populations so that they can live their daily lives. There is also a commitment to respect the rights of access of these populations to the forest, which is first of all their habitat, their area of residence, their place of subsistence, so that we can respect the key elements of subsistence in our exploitation system, through our social cartography system, which allows them to live, for example, certain trees, such as sapelia chenii, which are their key subsistence tools. They have a forestry know-how of mastering the essences, whether they are linear and non-linear essences, existing, which can allow us to better master our production process and the optimization and valorization of these essences. They have an unequalled knowledge of the forest to address other aspects, such as the management of fauna. Our forestry know-how is clear, indefinitely. The indigenous people have this right as inhabitants of the forest. They have this right. You take my city, Pokola, today, you will visit the people. Tomorrow, you will have the chance to go to Pokola, to visit the indigenous population. You will see, they are happy because today, even if the CIB, which is a forestry department here in Pokola, cuts down the trees, they respect their rights because before doing so, it is in consultation with this population. There are sacred trees. The CIB does not cut down the trees. You have trees that produce oak. The CIB today, you are in the forestry department, you have technicians who are indigenous people. The forestry department works with them. In the forestry department, there are trees that the indigenous people recognize. This is a sacred tree. This is a tree that produces honey. This is a tree that produces oak. These trees are not cut down by the CIB. Pygmies do not have their own language, even if some believe they have a common, ancient language or a secret language. It is more likely that throughout their history, they adopted the language of their neighbors. Today, in this region of North Congo, they practice that of the Bantu. To sustainably integrate this new world, the pygmies must now embark on new paths. They start from the principle that they are just as Congolese as the Bantu, accept the change imposed by modern life and are determined to assert their new rights. We are very different from our ancestors. For example, today, we have to send all our children to school because the Bantu make fun of us. They treat us like idiots because we can give your paycheck to someone else or steal your money without you knowing or understanding why. This situation has annoyed us and that is why we have decided to send our children to school. This way, we will no longer be deceived and in this way we will be better recognized in the future. The rate of schooling is excellent in Congo, which is the good student of Central Africa. But this rate, which was close to 100% a few years ago, has slightly declined, which results in the arrival of many pygmies who now populate the cities and villages of the country. With the support of the NGO, schools exclusively reserved for pygmies are emerging. But teachers must adapt to a sometimes surprising reality. In my class, I have children from 6 to 8 years old or even 10 years old. But when we come to school, my mother goes to the field and gives her baby so that she can come with the baby to school. So in the class, the child is in the class with the baby. So to work well, it was a bit difficult. Encouraging semi-nomadic pygmies to attend school is to offer them the opportunity to communicate effectively with the outside world and to enhance their knowledge of nature. To facilitate their learning, the classes provided by Bantu and Pygmy teachers to the children of the forest have been adapted to the world where they come from. We have our methods in relation to their culture. In French, we establish the dialogue with their culture of the forest. So that's why our methods are in relation to their culture. We have dialogues about huts, forests, huts, huts of caterpillars, huts of pigs, huts of what they do in the forest. So we work in relation to that. The state, satisfied with the results obtained by the volunteers and international volunteers, is still too far apart. The volunteer has his limits and the situation remains precarious. The risk of seeing the school structure put in place can collapse at any time. So, every year, teachers' application is addressed to the Ministry of Education. But access to this application is not easy, because these volunteers do not always meet all the conditions. The volunteerism and the imagination shown by these teachers force respect, but every human being has his limits. We only do the maximum. If we look at the child, we take his hand, the child does like this. If the fingers touch here, he is still six years old. Now, if he is seven, he can go further. So when it goes like this, we imagine that he can be seven, eight years old, and so on. Pygmies have their own rules and those of the outside world sometimes escape them. They have always lived at the rhythm of the natural cycles of the forest, and it is nature that has given them temporal landmarks that only they can understand. For the Congolese, this way of life has been a real shock of cultures. A ten-year-old boy is independent. A ten-year-old girl, a twelve-year-old girl, is independent. So when the mother comes back from the forest, the child must find something to eat by himself. So when he comes back when he asks for food, the mother says, you are already old enough, you can go and find something to eat. So years have passed, the children no longer come to school because of this. We asked, why don't you come to school? Oh, madam, if I come to school, what am I going to eat? My mother doesn't give me food, I have to go and find food myself. We had to go and talk to their mother. He is still a child. When you prepare, you give him something to eat so that he can go to school. But now the mothers give food to their children. Before, it was not like that. The activity of the Pygmy population is limited to solving the simple problem of their diet. They live day by day without thinking about the next day. In the forest, there is little or no supply since nature regularly meets the needs. In the same way, they are not used to accumulating resources that they know they can restore when necessary. A distribution according to the sex intervenes in the execution of the different tasks. But nothing is fixed. Hunting is said to be virile, while fishing and fishing are more the domain of women. But it is common that within a family, everyone participates in all activities to obtain a better harvest or a more abundant fishing. Parity is born from simple necessity. Pygmies consider rain as an ally. When it moves away, everything starts to bloom or grow, and it constitutes an essential element of life in the forest. This communion with the sky does not give it a sacred character, and no god reigns in the world of pygmies. The absence of religion is an additional reason to leave the forest without regret. Only men who live in this environment have the right to decide the place they wish to occupy. Today, our children do not think of returning to the forest one day. One day they discover another world, and then they grow in this new world. They are therefore no longer attached to traditions since they go to public school and thus they quickly lose control of the forest. Unless we, the elders, initiate them into our traditions. But for now, children imagine not having anything to do in the forest. The phenomenon is new, and in Ioka, it was not envisaged. Living in the forest requires much more than simple rules. It is an art of living, and if a link comes to let go, it is the very existence of the community that is affected. The departure of these young members puts the lives of those who remain in this hostile and constraining environment In the forest, fear exists, and therefore you cannot live alone in the forest. If everyone leaves the forest, you will have to leave it too. And if you can no longer return to this place, very soon it will become inviolable again. The major problem facing the Pygmies now lies in their limited access to the hunting grounds. The troubles of this people, who wandered freely in the forest, began with poaching, which deprived them of an important part of the prey they used to hunt. The fauna does not escape the ravages of poaching, to which the forest is now subjected. The forests of North Congo house a multitude of animal species. Their geographical location and the humid climate they benefit from, provide abundance and contribute to the variety of this fauna. In the current state of knowledge of the biological potential, these forests account for 280 mammal species, 183 reptile species out of the 275 that exist in Africa, 850 bird species, and 542 fish species, 96 of which are endemic. Many animal species ensure the dissemination and fructification of many plant species, some of which can only germinate after passing through the stomach of certain animals. Poaching has broken the balance. The placement of certain forests in national natural parks, the only way to fight against it, has pushed the pygmies out of their territory and provoked the exodus that precipitated them in the streets of the city when no one was prepared. Yesterday they were far away. Today they are part of the city. They are in a neighborhood called Peté. They are in a neighborhood and we have arranged certain conditions so that they are not frustrated. Today there is this synergy. We started by integrating them in the working environment with the CIB. All those who work at the CIB have the same conditions as the Bantu. They live in the popular neighborhoods. As soon as they arrive in town, the ritual of the young pygmies changes. For the young girls, the morning gathering is over, replaced by two hours of hairdressing. In the neighborhoods of Pocola, where the Bantu and Pygmy cohabit, for the time being, we observe each other. The children are in the majority since they have to go to school. The adults, they leave the forest in turn to ensure a permanence with their children. This new organization is not simple in a community in deep mutation. For a pygmy, the world of the city is very strange and the rules it imposes are difficult to define. The simplest things become real obstacles that only time can overcome. One of the priorities we have taken is to ensure that we can help the people of Torton because it concerns the civil state. Even before the government took measures on the gratuity of the administrative acts, the first thing we did here in Pocola was to ensure that we could deliver birth certificates to the people of Torton in compliance with the law. Today, we go to them and we sensitize them. They give us their references and we approach the mayor of the city, to obtain the requisitions. We have gone very far. For all those who work at the CIB, today, the majority have already registered to the CNCS to benefit from their pension tomorrow. The pygmies of the Congo would be about 50,000 if we include the last national census which dates from 2007 and which worries when compared to older figures. The pygmies would have been more than 300,000 on the same territory. In many regions, they still live too often in an advanced state of poverty that the authorities themselves have been able to recognize, which is a first step towards improvement. The pygmies appreciate the efforts made by the country and the city of Pocola, which they consider welcoming and where a future seems possible. The forest is growing little by little and dreams are replacing it. The youngest have now entered the sinewy path of integration. My family found themselves here in Pocola thanks to my grandfather. He came to look for work in this city and gave birth to my father. I was born and I grew up in the region. We all come from the forest and we have walked all the paths of this forest. Our grandfather thought it wiser to come and look for work at the CIB where he was held as a worker. And today, we all live here in Pocola. We went to school thanks to the Frédéric Foundation. There, we were trained until we are now at the public school, the primary school. Today, I am in the second grade and next year, I plan to go to college. At the age of 22, Paul goes to primary school And today, it is he, the young piglet, who leads the daily colour-raising ceremony. A situation that seemed unimaginable a few years ago. All these young people live a profound change in the history of their country. And everyone knows, here, that the integration of the piglet population is an essential process on the path of the future. At the beginning, when we integrated the village, we encountered a lot of difficulties, mainly food-related difficulties. Here, we had to have money to buy food. Today, it's a little better. We now have more means and the family, everyone is able to buy what they need. But before, money was difficult to earn because to have it, we had to work hard. The road is still long. The first piglets who settled near the cities were victims of the population's contempt and mockery, as is always the case in many regions of Central Africa. The law decreed in the Congo is still unique and represents a glimmer of hope for the whole community. Piglets can now claim their right to work, education and care. The Bontous have understood that piglets are not inferior to their small size and that cohabitation is possible and even useful. Piglets have the science of the forest to share. Now, I can say that life is easier because today, I can go and look for food from the forest because it is and will remain the reservoir for all of us. I can go and look for food from the forest and come and exchange them here in the village and buy other food with the money I will earn. The forest and the city are really two different worlds. The streets of Pokhola are a bit like a tense bridge between the two worlds of the piglets. Bissau-Nabissau, which is translated into French as Between Us, is the way that brings them together. This community radio is the first of its kind in the region and 150 hours a month through the 200 elements it produces, it allows the local population, piglets and Bontous, to get to know each other better. All of these animators are community reporters of the region formed by the radio itself supported by the Industrial Congolese of the Woods. The broadcasts of Bissau-Nabissau reach thousands of people who live in the forest in a radius of a hundred kilometers around Pokhola. The CIB, which contributes to the good economic health of the region, turns out to be an effective tool for the integration and mixing of the two communities. Indigenous people also begin to have an important place within the CIB. There are more and more of them working there. In my case, for example, I work for the CIB, I manipulate the computer, but there are many who work at the sawmill, and they work at the sawmill alongside the Bontous. What the CIB does here is not what the CIB wants to do. I see the CIB as a citizen enterprise, because it is an enterprise that truly respects the law. There are the establishment agreements, the forestry code, the conventions, and the government's orientations within the social framework. The CIB is now moving towards an FEC certification, and the CIB respects the commitments made to the population, to the government. Today, we can say that the CIB is a citizen enterprise, but it is not the CIB that works in place of the state, but it is the state. The CIB is for us like a partner, but a correct partner because it respects the law, it respects the commitments, it respects the convention, it respects the forestry code, it respects everything that the FEC certification requires. The future of the people of the Pygmies is closely linked to the practices of the large companies that exploit their forests, and they go through the measures taken to preserve them. The Congolese government is conducting a vast program of forestry concessions as part of the implementation of a sustainable management policy. In Pokhola, the industrial Congolese of the woods plays the game and strives to integrate the socio-economic aspects into the reality of commerce. Here, the objective is not only the good management of resources, the fate of the Pygmies is at stake. While the Congo plays its economic future from its forest, the small men strive to stay there and to take advantage of what it can still offer them. The objective is to say that we respect the principles of the Forest Stewardship Council in the daily management of our forests. And our certificates are validated and sanctioned by an audit process that is in place every year since this process began. We have just completed the last audit that has still sanctioned positively our certificates for Cabo Pokhola and for the forestry unit of Nolungu for three years. Through this process and through the development plans, we have procedures for the traceability and wood tracking, from cutting in the forest to the finished product, as you will see in the series. By force of will, the Congolese government, the control bodies and the forestry operators can now produce the first signs of positive change resulting from the awareness of the problem of the pygmies. The protected forest, a real education system in place, a better knowledge of the traditions of this shy people allow us to envisage their future, even if their situation remains worrying in many regions of Africa where they begin to claim a real recognition of their rights. In Pokhola, the youngest know how to read, write and count, enough to fight the exclusion and abuse of which they have long been victims. It will take time for them to reach the level of life of the Congolese, but hope exists and the most optimistic even hope that pygmy representatives will soon be able to sit in the parliament. For the vast majority of them, the simple fact of being able to come and sell forest products on the market would already be a great victory. The money earned would allow to overcome a few more obstacles, even though in the fields many of them continue to work against a crop or a liter of palm wine. Here in the Congo, the law to hire us by the head of state summarizes everything. The Tonton people have their place, but let's not take the Tonton people as an elephant, as a gorilla. He is a human person. He also has the right to many things. Today, when we integrate him, why do we say he has to stay in the forest? Is he an animal? He is a human being. Today, he can't say he has to stay in the wild. He has the right to vote, he has the right to take care of himself, he has the right to be educated. We think that treating them like gorillas or chimpanzees in the forest is not normal. People like us have the right to benefit from the same benefits. But today, in the Congo, they have their traditions that we have not put aside. And today, it would be abnormal to think that the Tonton people should be at the end of the forest like a chimpanzee. I don't think so. He is a human person and the human person is sacred. The first writings attesting to the existence of the Pygmies date from 5,000 years ago and a few decades have been enough for the fear of seeing this living testimony of the history of humanity disappear. The Pygmies continue their back and forth between worlds. I am still here. Today, there are great personalities who come here regularly. The camp has been known for a long time but we still need food like rice. So today, when great people come to visit us, we are happy because we know that the State is valuing our environment. The evening falls. A procession of little men returns to the forest. Under their protection, they have nothing to fear and they don't care if the trees are giant. A Pygmy poem says Pygmy. Yes, I am Pygmy. Born in Central Africa. Born in Africa. Yes, I am Pygmy.