Bye Bye Bayaka
Central African Republic
But soft! What light through yonder jungle breaks?
It’s the end of our time with the Bayaka and tomorrow we’ll be heading off to Cameroon and then home sweet home to the UK, but before I go I thought I’d leave you with one more picture from our Bayaka jungle home. That’s Mongonjay with his wife and child standing outside their hut, safe and sound after our honey gathering adventure.
The next destination on our journey will be Brazil where we’ll be meeting some local fisherman who have an amazing way of landing their prey. Also, I am pleased to announce that we have a new photographer on board our team. Abbie Trayler-Smith will be spending the next 4 weeks in the deserts of Mali covering two fantastic stories for Human Planet and she’ll be posting her own blog entries here so look out for those in the not too distant future.
Até encontrar novamente no Brasil!
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Interested in more stories from the Central African Republic? Try HERE
TASEARCHCAR
Honey Honey, How You Thrill Me
Central African Republic
When sugar cravings get out of control
When I was a child I spent quite a lot of time up a certain willow tree in our family’s back garden. There’s a particular kind of comforting solitude that can only be found up a tree. I think it has something to do with the fact that as you sit there, you can’t help feeling like you are being cradled in the arms of an immense and loving creature.
Today, unfortunately, the reassuring support of a solid branch under my backside was somewhat lacking as I found myself hanging, for the second consecutive day, from a rope 30 metres up in a tree waiting for a man to collect some honey from a bees’ nest. Learning to trust a rope has been a slow and thus far incomplete process for me. A few months ago I had my first experience of canopy rope work during a week long course with my BBC colleagues at Westonbirt Arboretum in Gloucestershire, UK during which I was reminded once again of the fundamental truth that I am afraid of heights. This vertigo is something that has for me revealed itself in later life along with an emergent fear of flying, something which when analysed statistically, is completely irrational. During that course, I asked climbing expert Ben, one of our instructors, whether he got nervous high in the trees and to my surprise he said that he did. Especially if he hadn’t been climbing for a little while.
So it seems that a fear of heights is both healthy and normal. In the jungle today, however, I’m not so sure my fear was of the height per se, but rather just another manifestation of my distrust of ropes, something that completely baffles me since I know for a fact that I stand more chance of being struck by lightning twice in the same day than of falling foul to a breaking climbing rope. Well, our Bayaka honey gatherer Mongonjay put my worries swiftly into context when he arrived beneath me on the trunk presenting me with a rather startling reality check. His relaxed demeanour defied the small fact that he was perched there supported by only a length of liana about an inch and a half in diameter. On top of that, said liana was actually fraying from the friction burns it had received on his slow journey up the trunk.
Health & safety officers... look away now
If climbing a very tall tree to get your sugar fix wasn’t enough in itself, then battling with angry bees hell bent on stopping you from achieving your goal might tip the balance for most of us mere mortals. Not so for our Bayaka friends. A smokey fire is set alight at the bottom of the tree, and upon nearing the ambrosial bounty, the fire is wrapped in wet leaves and couriered up to the top of the tree by attaching it to the end of the liana wrapped around the climber’s waist.
Imagine the scenario if you will… You are 100 ft up a tree surrounded by angry bees. Your only means of support is a solid foothold and an organic harness wrapped around yourself and the tree. Now a bundle of burning leaves has been attached to the end of the one thing keeping you from plummeting to earth and certain death.
Spare a thought for Mongonjay the next time you pull a jar of honey from the supermarket shelf.
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Interested in more stories from the Central African Republic? Try HERE
TASEARCHCAR
Amongst the Forest Spirits
Central African Republic
Welcome to my world
Often, when people seek out jungle dwelling tribes to photograph, the reality of their experience in the field doesn’t quite live up to the expectation they may have initially brought with them en route to their destination. It’s 2009 after all, and the heyday of those kind of cultural expeditions has passed with the changing times, the images now most commonly to be found residing in the pages of old National Geographic magazines piled up on dusty shelves in second hand shops.
This fact of 20th century tribal life is something I’m quite accustomed to encountering on my travels. When recording visual records of indigenous cultures and traditions it is very often necessary to rely on a rather less veritable version of events, as a tourist would when, say taking a picture of a Beefeater at the Tower of London – a pretty photo opportunity no doubt, but which nevertheless bears little or no relationship to the reality of contemporary London culture.
In this respect, the Bayaka have been a veritable breath of fresh air. As a few of our crew have already mentioned, this community we are now sharing the forest with are like the tribe you would probably imagine if you were asked to describe the archetypal jungle people. There’s no doubt we’ve all very much fallen under their enchanting spell in a setting where not a day goes by without something extremely unusual happening. This is the place where a simple trip to the river to wash turns into an incredible water drumming concert, where leaf spirits randomly jump out of the forest in broad daylight to drop off a dead deer in the village as a gift and where every evening, bar only one so far, after the women call with their enchanting yodelling, a plethora of luminescent forest beings come and dance amongst us in the pitch black of night, making psychedelic shapes and sending will-o-the-wisp balls of light flying over our heads.
Welcome to Bayaka world… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We have come here to film men who scale 40m trees with just a short length of liana as a makeshift harness. They do so in order to collect the prized jungle honey found in the nests of stinging bees way up in the canopy. Tomorrow will be our first day up in the trees to see how they do it. To say I’m a little apprehensive is an understatement. Everyone in our team is already getting stung between 10 and 20 times a day by the bees in camp, and we haven’t even approached a nest yet.
Pass the soap when you're done
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Interested in more stories from the Central African Republic? Try HERE
TASEARCHCAR
Welcome to the Jungle
Central African Republic
Rachael catches some shut-eye on the flight into C.A.R.
Arriving in the 30 degree heat of Cameroon yesterday was a sensational change from the biting winds of Mongolia. In fact, if you’d have asked me last week to describe the complete antithesis of Gobi desert calm, then the heaving sweaty crowds of Douala airport baggage reclaim would have borne an uncanny similarity to my forthcoming suggestion. Add to that an untimely electricity blackout the precise moment our 46 bags began emerging on the baggage conveyor belt and you have yet another fantastic welcome to the next country in Human Planet’s relentless agenda.
Cameroon was to be but a brief encounter. We travelled here in order to connect with a Dornier 228 fixed wing plane that we chartered to fly into the Central African Republic this morning. It all seems like a dream to me now as I sit typing this, accompanied by the gentle honk of a nearby hornbill and a cool breeze on my face. After flying over continuous jungle for 2 hours we are now finally in its midst. Staying one night here in a lodge by the banks of the river Sangha before moving onto our jungle camp tomorrow and an exciting chance to spend a couple of weeks with the pygmy Bayaka tribe.
I've heard the spiders are THIS big !
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Interested in more stories from the Central African Republic? Try HERE
