A people of hunters and gatherers, Baka Pygmies live in the rainforest of Cameroon, together with various ethnic groups of bantu farmers, with whom they exchange goods and have a symbiotic relationship from time immemorial.

Like the other groups of African Pygmies (BaKola, Aka, BaBongo, BaMbuti, etc.), the Baka are traditionally nomadic, even though they are undergoing a process of sedentariness under the influence of multiple factors. The first of these factors is massive deforestation, which deprives the Pygmies of the natural and symbolic resources essential for their biological and cultural survival.

My field researches among Baka Pygmies began some years ago in a small camp, in the heart of the equatorial forest, where I put up my tent and stayed for several months, sharing many aspects of Baka's life, like the gathering of the food, the hunt, the fishing, the traditional songs and the night dances of the forest spirits.

There I could strike up a close friendship with various members of the camp, among whom the elderly progenitor (a woman expert on natural medicine and traditional songs) and her children, some fortysomething charismatic pygmy hunters who are known and respected in all the region..

Once I had learnt the rudiments of the language and studied the main aspects of Baka music, I began crossing the forest with some Pygmies, looking for the traditional dances and musical instruments of the other areas.

During one of those searches I managed to strengthen my integration in the Pygmies' society the moment I was given the approval to participate in the secret ritual of men's initation, a ritual that decrees the passage to adulthood, gives special powers to the initiates and lets pygmean boys into some of the crucial secrets of their own culture.

In the periods of the year when the Pygmies live near the bantu villages, they are exploited and despised by their farmer neighbours, who look upon the Baka more or less as goods belonging to them.

Victims of racism and exploited in the plantations as very cheap labour, with inadequate diet and various health problems, many Baka groups manage to live a surprisingly quiet life, keeping a very strong cultural identity and marking the boundaries between their form of culture and humanity and that of the other ethnic groups of the forest. But how long will they succeed in doing so?