CHAPTER 9 — INTO THE FUTURE
For my final day in the Central African Republic, I tried to coax Louis Sarno to spend some time with me in the forest and booked a net hunt with the Ba’aka via the authorities at the National Park. The kind of excursions also arranged by Sarno and Rod Cassidy had proven a hit when tourists were plentiful in the area, and the net hunt found its way on to the list of activities offered by the WWF. Visitors were thrilled to witness life in the rainforest at its most urgent and authentic.
Over dinner at Sangha Lodge the night before, Sarno agreed to come on the trip and, when we arrived to Yandoumbe in the rangers’ dilapidated jeep, he was at the centre of a scrum of at least 60 Ba’aka scrambling to earn a part among the ten-strong crew we would take into the forest. But as the would-be hunters jostled for a space in the car, their nets and baskets slung over their shoulders and machetes in hand, Sarno told me that he was still too exhausted for hunting. Again, it seemed the prospect of a morning in his house with Agati, a fresh supply of weed and a journalist safely surrounded by villagers several miles into the jungle, was an opportunity too attractive to be passed up.
Sarno waved us off and retreated to his house, and we had barely turned on to the road before the hunting party broke into raucous song. Weapons were pounded off exposed metal-work, beating out a rhythm, as a pulsating call-and-response chant shook through the car. When we arrived to the hunting site, we bundled out of our vehicle and traipsed through the undergrowth. The Ba’aka scattered to spread their nets around the shrubbery, working to a well-practiced drill, and communicating via shouts and shrill cries. My personal guide hacked a branch from a tree, then squeezed fresh water from it; a trick well known among the locals. He also stripped bark from a different branch and began rolling it into the “string” from which Ba’aka fashioned their hunting nets and jewellery.
The hunters themselves were having a wretched time of it though. Despite their expertise and persistence, they caught nothing throughout our two-hour trip. Cassidy and Sarno said that a matter of five years ago, such an expedition would have a 90 per cent success rate; there were plentiful small mammals, at least one of which would become entangled in the Ba’aka’s nets. But these days, they put our chances at no better than 40 per cent, and we walked back to the car with empty baskets, and only a handful of mushrooms and forest garlic to show for the morning’s work. The hunters would receive at least 5,000 Francs each — their cut of the fee I paid — but there would be no supplementary benefits. They made their displeasure well known to the WWF ranger who had accompanied us. He expressed genuine sympathy but could offer little tangible consolation.
In the absence of meat, the lunch I had in Sarno’s kitchen (a separate hut, built since he began his relationship with Agati) was a bowl of roasted squash: vibrant orange, but starchy and tasty. We sat on mats on the floor with Mamalay and Yambi resting their head on Sarno’s lap, beside a speaker playing some recordings from northern Congo. We discussed occasions when he had met Lou Reed, Tom Waits and Iggy Pop, during his trips around Manhattan with Jim Jarmusch and Sara Driver. Sarno said he doubted that the music of the Ba’aka could have influenced any of those pioneers, but was happy that it had seeped into the work of Herbie Hancock and Madonna, among other western luminaries. Driver also told me later that the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu accompanied Akira Kurosawa to her apartment once, and pulled out one of Sarno’s compilations of Ba’aka music from among Jarmusch’s record collection. “Toru sat on our floor, with his eyes closed for 90 minutes, and afterwards he opened up and said, ‘Pygmy music is most elegant of all music,’” Driver says.
Sarno says that he misses some of his friends in the west, and particularly his mother who is now in her late 80s. He says that life in the rainforest can sometimes be lonely. “A lot of very dear friends of mine are gone,” he says. “I sometimes see them in dreams and things. I think about them a lot…It’s a different kind of feeling from when I first went there. When I first went it was all about discovery, discovering this music and getting to know these people who have this interesting culture, going to the forest with them. There’s not that mystery for me any more.”
He has traded the wonders of naïve exploration for the respect reserved only for the elders. Despite still lacking many of the basic skills of forest life, Sarno’s longevity is crucial: even the strongest men were not yet born when he arrived. “There’s not really that many old men around the village, so I’ve basically seen the very old generation when I arrived, they’re gone, and then the people that were my age or older, a lot of them have died as well. So Yandoumbe is kind of a young village.”
The political situation is still desperately uncertain in the Central African Republic. In September, the United States announced the resumption of operations at their embassy in Bangui, but in October issued another statement expressing “deep concern” about “ongoing incidents of violence”. A transitional government is in place, but is struggling to exert meaningful authority.
After an extended stay in the United States, Angela Turkalo returned to Dzanga Sangha in November to find her camp wrecked but with the intention to restart her unique research into the elephants of Dzanga bai. Meanwhile Makumba, the ageing silverback of Bai Hokou, is hanging on to a harem of females in the forest, but his watchers expect an imminent coup d’etat from one of his sons. It will be the first time a change of leadership among western lowland gorillas will ever have been observed in the wild.
Sangha Lodge, from which adventurous tourists can take excursions to witness all the charms of the rainforest, is open for business.
Sarno has reason for cautious optimism. The German film-makers have put in place a mechanism by which audience members are encouraged to donate to a fund for the Ba’aka. Proceeds from the soundtrack CD, comprising Sarno’s recordings, also go directly to him. He is hoping to raise funds to build a new house, and estimates the equivalent of €2,500 would be sufficient. He has already identified some of the materials and the Ba’aka builders who will help him with construction.
In Oxford, Nick Lunch and Richard Gayer met recently to discuss strategy for the Insight Share project, currently with a working title of Aka TV. Noel Lobley continues to contrive new ways to introduce the Sarno collection to the audience he believes it demands.
In Berlin, the doctor who treated Sarno’s varices said he was in as good shape as could be expected given the circumstances in which he lives, although cautioned that the chances of a second rupture occurring were significantly raised in a prior sufferer. Nonetheless, Sarno now insists that his days of excessive travel are over and will only leave Yandoumbe for $10,000 and guaranteed business class fare.
For all the health-scares, coups d’etat and warnings of the perils of jungle life, some time this year, Louis Sarno will celebrate his 30th anniversary in the forest with his family. The “indestructible” footballs he brought back from London lasted two days.
