The Forest People

The Forest People—Colin M. Turnbull’s best selling, classic work—describes the author’s experiences while living with the BaMbuti Pygmies, not as a clinical observer, but as their friend learning their customs and sharing their daily life.

Turnbull conveys the lives and feelings of the BaMbuti whose existence centers on their intense love for their forest world, which, in return for their affection and trust, provides their every need. We witness their hunting parties and nomadic camps; their love affairs and ancient ceremonies—the molimo, in which they praise the forest as provider, protector, and deity; the elima, in which the young girls come of age; and the nkumbi circumcision rites, in which the villagers of the surrounding non-Pygmy tribes attempt to impose their culture on the Pygmies, whose forest home they dare not enter.

The Forest People eloquently shows us a people who have found in the forest something that makes their life more than just living—a life that, with all its hardships and problems and tragedies, is a wonderful thing of happiness and joy.