For Congo's Pygmies, fragile aspirations

MUGUNGA, Democratic Republic of Congo -- When he dreams, the Pygmy chief Byeragi Ngenderezi dreams of having basic things: a good plastic tarp, some decent fishing nets, perhaps a few garden hoes. When he dreams big, he envisions a life altogether different from the one his ancestors have lived for thousands of years in the equatorial forests of Congo.

He imagines trading up, moving out of his leaky banana-leaf hut and into something a bit roomier.

"First of all, I would like to have my own compound," the chief began one recent afternoon. "Second? A house like this one," he said, pointing to a 20-by-20-foot wood-plank house, the only one in sight. "Third? A motorbike. I would learn how to ride it and become a taxi driver."

For the moment, however, the chief and his people, about 160 Pygmy families accustomed to hunting and gathering in the tropical green mountains, are stuck in Mugunga, a flat and treeless limbo of gravelly, gray earth at the foot of a dormant volcano.

Like so many millions of Congolese, they fled their homes because of the militia fighting that has consumed this mineral-rich eastern region over the past decade.

Unlike other refugees, this particular group of Pygmies had their own personal benefactor, or so it seemed: a woman they initially knew only as Ma Jacqui, who brought them here promising help, then left them with little more than a desire to join the modern world.

As this decrepit country awaits results in the first democratic elections in 40 years, Ngenderezi and his group, among an estimated 600,000 Pygmies considered to be the aboriginal people of Congo, are perhaps as good a barometer as any of the fragile aspirations of its people.

After all, the Pygmies, the marginal among the marginal, voted recently, walking a mile from their dilapidated huts in Mugunga to cast ballots for the first time ever.

"We are human beings," said Ngenderezi, his thumb still stained with the black ink that showed he had voted. "And we'd like to live like other human beings live."

Perhaps more so than any of the 400 other ethnic groups in Congo, Pygmies have historically been ostracized or romanticized for their traditions, and cut off from education, healthcare, and any legal means of securing land they have inhabited for centuries in the forests.

In recent decades, a relatively small number have managed to attend school and join the life of Congo's villages and cities, but most have remained in the forests, with some communities made nearly extinct by various diseases, including AIDS.

A decade of fighting among militias in the east has been even more devastating, with Pygmies being singled out for particularly sordid and psychotic forms of violence, according to human rights groups.

Ngenderezi simply said that soldiers "were killing us like flies."

When Ma Jacqui encouraged them to leave the forest for Mugunga, they followed her, exchanging their usual clothing of bark strings for donated Levi's and permanent-press slacks, Celine Dion T-shirts, and San Jose Sharks sweaters. They built their traditional huts on the volcanic rock. And Ma Jacqui, who Ngenderezi later learned worked with a Catholic relief organization in the nearby city of Goma, began teaching them to farm and to fish in the nearby lake.

Then, the chief said, she simply vanished.

"The last time we saw her was maybe four years ago," said Ngenderezi, who has since become suspicious that some aid groups are using the plight of the storied African Pygmies simply to raise money. "So many local NGOs have come to visit and promised to build houses. But so far, nothing."

An aid group dropped off some rehydration packets, which were quickly used up. A group called Solidarité passed out some plastic tarps now worn with holes. A campaign entourage for Joseph Kabila , one of the two candidates vying for the presidency, breezed by, handing out yellow caps and buttons. And more recently, a group called CIDOPY , which receives funding from the Netherlands and has an annual budget of $200,000 to help several Pygmy camps in the area, gave some cabbage seeds.

Its field director, Achille Biffumbu , said the owners of the land where the Pygmies are living recently sold it. He is now cutting off aid to encourage the group to leave, because, in his estimation, they would be better off back in the forest.

"You have to understand the cultural parameters," Biffumbu said, sitting in an office in Goma full of artsy photo books of Pygmies and articles with titles such as "Central African Hunter-Gatherers in a Multidisciplinary Perspective." "We can't solve all their problems."

So far, 15 members of the group have died from hunger or exposure, including three children in recent months, according to the chief, who thinks they have been here four years in all, or maybe six. He is certain, however, that he does not want to go back to the forest, where life was difficult even before the fighting began.

"I'd like having a house and knowing I could leave my child in that house," he said. "I would like to see my brother Pygmies owning businesses like other people. We can't go back to the bush."