Pygmy camp with leaf and bark huts
1. Forest camp with
leaf and bark huts.
African Pygmies   > Baka Pygmies   > The Forest People

Forest Camps

(Baka Pygmies of Cameroon,
Gabon and Congo)
Photos, texts and audio recordings
by Luis Devin
.Luis Devin - Ai confini del gusto.
Soundscape: rainforest insect calls and Southern
Tree Hyrax (Dendrohyrax arboreus) vocalizations.
Baka Pygmy camp in the African rainforest
2. Overview of a Baka forest camp, with leaf huts.
Go to the page: Semi-sedentary villages along the tracks, near Bantu villages
Pygmy huts and fire
3. Lighting the fire between large leaf huts.
Go to the page: Gathering of leaves, lianas, firewood and other forest materials
Traditional Baka huts are called móngulu. They are typically shaped one-family houses made of branches and leaves and predominantly built by women.

After a hemispheric framework of flexible, thin branches is prepared, big recently-gathered leaves of Marantaceae plants fit in the structure. Once the work is done, other vegetable material is sometimes added to the dome in order to make the structure more compact and waterproof.
Traditional hut in a forest camp
4. Child in front of a hut made
of leaves and branches, with
a bark panel used as a door.
Go to the page: Baka children
Baka Pygmy temporary house
Forest camp
5. Hut made of leaves and branches in a temporary camp.
6. Baka camp in the Cameroonian rainforest.
Go to the page: The forest of the Baka
Hemispheric hut of the Baka Pygmies
7. Children beside a hemispheric hut
with banana leaves used as a door.
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 forest camps 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/camps.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 18:48. Every minute, at least 25 hectares (250.000 m²) of forest are destroyed around the world (source: WWF).

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