Baka Pygmy village
1. Mud huts in a
semi-sedentary village.
African Pygmies   > Baka Pygmies   > The Forest People

Semi-Sedentary Villages

(Baka Pygmies of Cameroon,
Gabon and Congo)
Photos, texts and audio recordings
by Luis Devin
.Luis Devin - Ai confini del gusto.
Soundscape: tropical rainforest sounds (Central Africa).
Baka Pygmy bark huts
2. Camp of huts with bark walls.
Pygmy house with mud walls
3. Mud hut with a large front shelter.
Today, along the main rainforest tracks and near Bantu villages, the Baka also built less temporary camps, often consisting of huts larger and more solid than the traditional móngulu huts of the forest camps. These new homes have a rectangular plan and walls made of mud, bark or leaves, and they are mostly based on architectural models of the sedentary (Bantu) peoples living in the same areas, on the rainforest edge.
Old Pygmy woman in front of a mud hut
4. Elderly woman with woven fiber pannier, returning
from the gathering. Behind her, a large mud house
with a rectangular plan, built by the Baka using
Bantu architectural models, near a large track in
the rainforest of Cameroon.
Go to the page: Food gathering in the rainforest
Go to the page: The weaving of baskets for the gathering
Go to the page: Huts based on traditional architectural models
Pygmy huts
Internal environment of a Baka Pygmy mud hut
5. Skeleton of a leaves hut
in a semi-sedentary camp.
6. Interior of a mud hut.
Baka Pygmy mud house
7. Entrance of a mud hut with
a rectangular plan, with pot
lids and other objects, in a
semi-sedentary village in
the Gabonese rainforest.
Go to the page: Food preparation
Baka Pygmy children along a forest road
8. Children in a village along a track.
Go to the page: Baka children
Thematic links and insights:
The author:
Music anthropologist and writer, he has carried out field research in central Africa, where he lived with the Baka Pygmies and other forest peoples, whose music, rituals and survival strategies he has been studying for more than a decade.

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Baka Pygmy semi-sedentary villages and huts, with photos and ethnographic notes (Baka Pygmies of Cameroon, Gabon and Congo).

Photos, texts and audio recordings by Luis Devin.
Page URL: http://www.pygmies.org/baka/villages.php

Photos, videos and sounds are available for licensing, both for multimedia use and paper publications. For the terms and conditions, contact the author from the Contact page.


The time in the tropical rainforests of the Western Congo Basin, where the Baka Pygmy people live, is 19:05. Every minute, at least 25 hectares (250.000 m²) of forest are destroyed around the world (source: WWF).

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