Sounds kind of gross, but ask any scientist and they will tell you that monkeys are our genetic cousins, and even though I swore to my mother that I would never eat one, when it's the only thing on the table and you are the honoured guest of a Baka pygmy you have relatively little choice. Okay, so we returned to Bamba last Sunday to plant trees with the Baka pygmies we met a few weeks earlier. The same town where I got in trouble for taking the picture of a monkey. I guess it isn't so bad if you eat one, only if you take it's picture! We arrived Sunday night at the Baka village to find that in the two weeks since we had been there they had put up a house for us to stay in and they had high hopes that we had come to be 'their white people'. This, I learned, meant that they were hoping we had come to live with them, to give them jobs, to provide food and clothes and school for them until the end of eternity, just like the Catholics are doing over in Cameroon. I was immediately sadden by their request and though I could understand their desire for such a plan it also seemed to me like just another form of enslavement. We suggested, that instead of us employing them, they employ themselves. Why garden for me, I asked them, when you could garden for yourselves and then you would be the owner of both the garden and all that was in it. No, no, no. That wasn't a good idea at all they said.
The Baka pygmies are a people between cultures fighting to find a place in both; not a very easy thing to do. They have a natural fear of cities and the Bantu people in them and they are often taken advantage of. However, if they could get over that fear, they would make nice profits selling their own produce in the town of Bamba, along with the sale of bush-meat. One of the many problems is that even though they are currently selling meat in the Bamba market, they generally take that money and buy alcohol and cigarettes, not giving a thought to what they will eat next week. Working within a culture like this is very difficult and progress is very slow. There is a fine balance between helping out and causing dependency and I only know one or two missionaries who have succeeded at it. We have very little time left in CAR this time around so we are doing what we can. We planted 40 fruit trees in their village and started a small nursery with them. We also bought them 25 high quality oil palm trees that produce high amounts of the red palm oil that is high in Vitamin A. There is a severe shortage of oil palm in that area and it would make a good commercial product for the Baka. After spending the night on the floor of the mud house they constructed for us we spent the day eating fruit and planting trees before going back to Bamba, the mill town, where we spent the night in the church's guest room. Tuesday morning we went to visit another family of Baka on the West side of Bamba and were pleasantly surprised to see 2 simple mud houses surrounded by flowers planted all around and trees from the Bamba seminar. We again ate fruit and planted trees and visited in their garden that has a very rich and productive soil. They are very keen on planting a tree garden and are starting work on it tomorrow. Then we sat down and ate a meal of gozo and monkey. It is a very dark meat and tasted a lot like, well, meat. I am not a connoisseur of meat so that isn't saying much coming from me. I can't say I would want to eat it again but I was proud of myself for having tried it and feel initiated into the ranks of a 'real missionary'. Darren said it was pretty good tasting if not a bit oily, but he too wouldn't be bothered if he didn't eat it again!
On the garden side of things, everything is growing well with the rains in the nutrition garden. We are harvesting the Mung beans now, the first of the 17 plus varieties we have planted in the nutrition garden. From quite a small plot we have already harvested 3.765 kg and we will be picking one or two more times yet. It is turning out to be a very desirable bean for this area as it only took two months from planting to first harvest and total time from start to finish will only be 2 and a half months. It seems to tolerate wet and dry conditions and the bean itself requires very little cooking time which is essential here as everything is cooked over open fire. We are clearing space in the garden right now in order to plant a larger crop of mung beans to build up the number of seeds we have for distribution to all of the agroforestery cooperatives. We will also be giving a large amount to the nutrition centre to cook for the children there. The mung bean seeds are one of the 17 varieties of beans we brought back from Kenya last October for trials in the nutrition garden. It is very satisfying to find something that works here so quickly. We are also looking at replicating a red cow pea from Congo that I gave out to a group of women last Spring 2005, and received favourable reports about.
The nutrition garden is becoming quite a model of variety on a small piece of land. We have 5 different starch/root crops growing, beans, vegetables, bananas and peanuts on one hectare of land. In a year and half there will be lots of food available for the nutrition centre in terms of the root crops and bananas and this summer we will be able to give them a lot of beans. Things are happening and I am glad to be able to share the excitement with you all.
Till next time, Angela
