Free Lost Worlds by David Yeadon

markings, lines, crescents, and circles, similar in some ways to the markings I’d seen on the Choco tribes people in Panama’s Darien region. They carried three-foot-long bows and a few metal-tipped arrows stuck in their vine belts.
    “Jan. Pygmies. Are those pygmies?”
    “Ah.” He smiled. “Efe people. The old people of Africa. Pygmies.”
    “Where did they come from? Is there a village around here?”
    “No, no. No village. They come from forest.”
    I didn’t have much time to stare. Jan was revving hard on the engine and pushing the rear bumper of the splayed truck. Wheels spun, globs of mud flew everywhere. The spray from the other truck’s rear wheels smothered our windshield. Jan flicked the wipers on and we peered out through a miasma of smeared ocher earth.
    Slowly, very slowly, the truck ahead began to move and straighten out on the track. One of the blacks standing on the running board by the open passenger door of the truck was yelling and gyrating like a cheerleader. More gratings of gears, groans from transmissions, mud flying everywhere. But we were all moving slowly uphill in a slithery zigzag pattern. The yells and cheers got louder as we finally reached a level patch, where Jan paused to make sure the truck could pull itself, and then roared past it with great blasts on his horn. I looked for the pygmies, but they’d vanished, back into the forest.
    A half mile or so farther on, Jan stopped briefly to clean off the windshield; he stared down the track until the other truck finally came into view, and then roared off again.
    “Great stuff, Jan! You were kind to do that.”
    He gave me a surprised look. “Why? It is what we do. If we do not, nobody moves. All get stuck!”
    Well—okay—that’s true. There’s no emergency tow-truck system on this or any other rural highway in Zaire. It was obviously in everybody’s interest to help everybody. The thought left a pleasant, confident feeling in my gut—we’d get through. No matter what condition the roads, we’d get through because everyone else had to get through.
     
     
    “Do you know much about the pygmies, Jan?” I asked later.
    “Oh—a little.” He puffed happily on his cigarette for a while and then began a long, disjointed monologue about the people he called “Efe.”
    “In this place—in the Ituri Forest here—are old Bantu people. Different names now—BaBira, BaLese, other names. They live in villages near roads. They don’t like the forest. Too dark. But they like forest meats—monkeys, porcupine, hyrax—you see them. And duikers too—they like duikers—little deer, like small dogs. Very nice. Also small buffalo—red buffalo—smaller than pygmies. Very angry. You must hunt buffalo with much caring. And pygmy elephant—people say they live in high grasses, but I have never seen. So, pygmy—BaMbuti people—like forest. They wander about….”
    “They’re nomadic?”
    He seemed annoyed by the question.
    “I don’t know your word.”
    “Never mind.”
    “Okay. So pygmies wander about. Make huts like round hats with mangungu leaves and grass. Very quick. Two hours to make. And they get meat with arrows. Very good shots. And they find bee honey. Big pieces. Then they bring to BaLese villages and sell for other food—manioc, maize, other things which BaLese grow in gardens. So—everybody happy.”
    He paused to pry off another beer-bottle cap with his teeth.
    “Many pygmies live here in Ituri—maybe twenty thousand. No one can count. They always moving. But much—most—around Mount Hoyo near Beni. Very happy people. Always singing, dancing. Lots of smoke. Lots of eat. Food. Lots of food. Big mushrooms. Sometimes kill okapi—giraffe of the forest—but him is very difficult to shoot with arrows. Has big ears and walks very quiet. And now if they shoot they have trouble with government. Special animal now, the okapi.”
    He paused and seemed to be listening to the engine. Then he began again, “I like