Lured Toward Modern Life, Pygmy Families Left in Limbo

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 Solidarite 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 them 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 arty 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, 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."

They were never exactly isolated, Ngenderezi explained. If their parents could gather money for tuition, some children attended school. Pygmies often traded their pottery in nearby villages, where they would see bicycles, cars, houses and, in general, what appeared to be a better life. When the time came, they embraced Mugunga as a way out.

Since their arrival, the chief and others have made a habit of walking the dirt road into Goma a few times a week to look for work.

There they find themselves amid thousands seeking jobs, with former soldiers hobbling on crutches in the dust and others competing in the daily carnival of selling used loafers, or bananas or bricks.

By some estimates, the unemployment rate in Goma is 90 percent. A few wealthy businessmen and politicians live behind barbed wire along the shores of blue Lake Kivu, where the notorious dictator Mobutu Sese Seko once had a palace. In a country of untold mineral wealth, Goma is a city without electricity most of the time, a place lit at night by roadside fires and lanterns.

Still, to the chief, the crowded streets of Goma seem better than Mugunga, which seemed better than the forest.