THE FOREST VOICES TOUR
diary

March 19th 2014, Mindoulou

The last concert of the Forest Voices Tour was in Mindoulou. We had decided to play here as it was where Chantal Bier, the President's wife, had built a Baka Cultural Centre a few years before. We had heard that it had been taken over by the Bantu and the Baka no longer used it. It was a good opportunity to get them using it again.

When we arrived the hall was being used as a medical centre and people were giving blood at a table in front of the stage. There were a lot of people, both Baka and Bantu, around. It looked like it would be a good night.

I had been told that there would be electricity. I looked for a socket, but all I could find were 2 wires poking out of the wall and about 6 phone chargers all attached by bare wires wound around the plugs on the chargers. I decided to use our little generator and battery amps.

The concert went well, but after 15 minutes of showing films a very angry man started trying to make us stop. Apparently he was mayor of the village or something, and he claimed that we hadn't authorisation to show films. He really didn't like the portrayal of the Baka on film - normal intelligent people with views about what's going on with their forest.

This proved to us that this pilot tour had been a success and that we must start fund-raising now for a longer tour at the end of the year.

We stopped the films and decided to go back to Abong Mbang to sleep in Leonard's garden.

Martin