THE FOREST VOICES TOUR
diary

March 7th 2014

Today we did some interviews behind the teachers' house before retreating under cover of the porch - to wait for our ride. It was a rainy day and we all got soaked on the way to the Saw Mill (apart from the lucky few inside the the two pickups) but the sky cleared for the evening and the band were on top form performing to a excited crowd with a relatively small but lively Baka contingent.

Many villages and towns in this area feel a lot like the "Wild West" - One road goes through and everything crowds around it. At Kika the feeling was overwhelming. The wooden shack village with its muddy tangled streets where the workers live is in stark contrast to the white picket fences and open lawns of the sawmill itself. The track that connects them has a concrete mosque and a graveyard - each grave marked with 15ft wooden pole crosses.

Lorries laden with wood are a common sight on the roads of Cameroon, but to see the quantity piled up around the sawmill was quite a shock to the system. It's hard to imagine how the forest can survive under the pressure of such a sustained and efficient force.

Jonny