Through trickery and deception, they allow the villagers to believe they are controlling more than they do. The villagers also manage a lot of rituals and ceremonies (such as funerals and weddings, coming of age for male and female, etc) which the pygmies mostly put up with, rather than fully participate in.įor the BaMbuti, they engage in the minimum amount of contact they can in order to still gain maximum benefit of the gifts they receive. In return the villagers provide them with farmed produce. They adopt the pygmies, treating them almost as servants, and they rely on them to hunt and bring them meat from the forest. This is heavily influenced by their spiritual beliefs. The villagers are terrified of the forest, and will seldom venture into it, and never go far in. The individual villagers form a bond with an individual pygmy, and thereafter consider them almost their property. This is a particularly interesting aspect, as Turnbull is able to explain the relationship from each side and how far these differ, while it still remains mutually beneficial. In most detail, it examines the interrelationship of the BaMbuti with the African villagers - who are really farmers.
The book in general describes the BaMbuti way of life, their culture and their understanding (or lack thereof) of the wider world. He returned later to spend a considerable amount of time with them, publishing this book in 1961. Turnbull made an initial visit in 1951 before returning to the USA and studying anthropology. The BaMbuti are one of the oldest indigenous peoples, living my hunter-gathering deep in the forest, who refer to themselves as people of the forest. The Forest People eloquently shows us a people who have found in the forest something that makes their life more than just living - a life that, with all its hardships and problems and tragedies, is a wonderful thing of happiness and joy.Īs others have noted, Colin Turnbull's book expresses all of the positives of the time he spent with the BaMbuti of Congo, known to most of us as pygmies. We witness their hunting parties and nomadic camps their love affairs and ancient ceremonies - the molimo, in which they praise the forest as provider, protector, and deity the elima, in which the young girls come of age and the nkumbi circumcision rites, in which the villagers of the surrounding non-Pygmy tribes attempt to impose their culture on the Pygmies, whose forest home they dare not enter.
Turnbull conveys the lives and feelings of the BaMbuti whose existence centers on their intense love for their forest world, which, in return for their affection and trust, provides their every need. Turnbull's best-selling, classic work - describes the author's experiences while living with the BaMbuti Pygmies, not as a clinical observer, but as their friend learning their customs and sharing their daily life.
0 kommentar(er)
