Lured Toward Modern Life, Pygmy Families Left in Limbo

He sees bustling markets and roads buzzing with motorcycle taxis. He sees the vast blue and white United Nations compound, and one local aid organization after another lining the streets, including some with names containing the word "Pygmy," he noted.

Once, he visited the CIDOPY offices to ask for a job, which he thought would be of more help than the cabbage seeds they offered.

"I told them I could write, but they said I cannot work with them," he said. "There are NGOs that claim to work on behalf of Pygmies, but I can't even work in their office, because they are afraid I'll learn their secrets."

And so Ngenderezi, who was educated through the sixth grade, returns to Mugunga, where the skills that were useful in the forest are of little help. He and his people used to hunt animals, for instance, but there are none to hunt around here. They used to make pottery from the soil and sell it, but the dirt in Mugunga is unsuitable. The thick forest used to help shelter their huts from heavy rains, but now they are vulnerable to the wide-open sky.

They pass the time tending to a few rows of vegetables, gathering firewood or fetching water from the lake. Sometimes, local farmers hire a few people, but that is sporadic at best, especially because they do not have good tools.

Other times, for fun, they kick around a homemade soccer ball, having learned a bit about the sport from Ma Jacqui.

And other days, Ngenderezi just sits in his hut and thinks.

He imagines himself in a dry house, he said. He imagines driving a motorcycle taxi like the ones he sees in Goma. By now, though, those notions are tempered by a mild sense of the absurd.

"I have children here being sent home from school because we can't afford tuition," he said. "I don't understand how I can adapt to normal life if I don't have children studying like others do. Thanks to learning history, we've learned that the only man lost today is the Pygmy."

Last Sunday, those who were eligible cast ballots in Congo's first presidential election in four decades, and the other day, some in the group were still wearing buttons that Kabila's camp had handed out. A woman was using a Kabila scarf as a blanket in her banana-leaf hut. The camp's co-chief, Mutembwa Ngenderezi, attended to the cabbages in a bright yellow Kabila hat.

"I went to meet with them so I could tell them how we are getting kicked out of here," he said. "And they gave us this hat."