ABSTRACT
In the Ituri rain forest of Zaire, there lived the Mbuti pygmies, a people marvellously adapted spiritually and organizationally to the nomadic hunting and gathering existence appropriate to the tropical forest. The Mbuti, we are told, had a highly refined idea of peace, ekimi, which incorporated the notions of oneness with nature, of social harmony, of egalitarianism, of what might be regarded as a Platonic sense of place and duty. Around them lived Bira villagers: sedentary cultivators, hierarchical, superstitious, fearful of the gods and of the malign forest, argumentative, dependent, credulous – repositories of disharmony, of noise and crisis, akami. The Mbuti and the Bira farmers are thus presented as opposite in almost every respect. The Mbuti seek the perfect equilibrium of life at the idealized centre of their sphere; the villagers, by contrast, have no such sense of perfection. Their sphere is biased, wobbling out of control, waziwazi. (See Turnbull, 1961, 1983.)
