visiting a village

Finishing lunch on Saturday under a cloudy sky, but with rain not appearing to be imminent, seemed to be a good opportunity to go out for the long walk along the Lodge access road and on along the main road to the nearest village, Mossapoula – perhaps even beyond the village to see if there were still any elephants around near the road.

The access road is some 3km, and another 2km beyond that to the village, but it was a nice walk, with hundreds of pretty orange day-flying moths around as well as a number of beautiful locusts – in addition to the usual troops of monkeys in the trees and the accompanying sounds of African Grey Parrots and the heavy wing-beats of White-thighed Hornbills flying overhead.  & on the ground the giant millipedes, which I can never resist picking up as I love the feel of all those little feet on my hands.  Thankfully I’m not yet so used to all this as to take it for granted!

On this day though, as I walked through the first part of the village, someone called out to me.  I’m used to the local Ba’aka (pygmy) children waving at me excitedly but the adults looking down shyly until I say hello to them – at which point they smile and wave at me – but I’m not used to people initiating a conversation.  But this guy called out, asking me if I spoke French.  I responded positively and he beckoned me over, proceeding to show me around some parts of the village away from the road.

He was not a Ba’aka, but from the capital, in the village to oversee the building of a health clinic and it seemed he was just happy to be able to have a conversation with someone outside of the Ba’aka culture and to be able to share some of what he’d seen.  He asked the owner of this hut to let me see inside it, for example.  He was also keen to show me the tattoos on many of the ladies’ faces – something I’ve seen before, but nice to be able to openly stare at them, and ask questions (learning that they are purely decorative, with no meaning to the different designs, and that many people ask to get the first lines on their cheeks whilst still young children).  I then asked about tooth filing – less common these days, but still done, especially to women as they consider it makes them more attractive to the men.

So we walked over to a little shelter where a number of women were gathered with their young children, and he introduced me to them.  With a token payment, I was able to take a few photos, and to ask them about the procedure.  Apparently the patient lies on his/her back, with a thick stick between the lips to keep the mouth open. The filer then places a knife on one of the upper front teeth and strikes the top edge of the knife with a hammer, to remove the edges of the tooth and leave it in a pointed shape.  It takes around 45 minutes for one tooth, and is then repeated on the other front teeth (both incisors and canines).

They confirmed that it is as painful as it sounds – one said she couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks afterwards as the pain was so great.  Two of the ladies present said that they hadn’t been able to stand the pain, and had asked to have the teeth removed.