First ColumnAuthor(s): NTUSource: Africa Today, Vol. 12, No. 7 (Aug. - Sep., 1965), p. 2Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4184645 .

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first column.*.

ANTHROPOLOGISTS STUDY other people's cultures, but who is going to study theirs? What of their rituals and symbols, their kinship structure, hunting habits?

We are prompted to ask the question by a series of excellent studies, the latest of which ("Wayward Servants: The Two Worlds of the African Pygmies" by Colin Turnbull) has just arrived on our desk. And we predict that Mr. Turn- bull's book, like those of Elizabeth Marshall Thomas on the Bushmen ("The Harmless People") and, more recently, on the Dodoth of Uganda ("Warrior Herdsmen"), will be owned-and most likely read-by many not remotely inter- ested in anthropology, much less Pygmies . . . not at first, anyway. But, having read the book, many a suburbanite will become a fierce partisan of the little people of the Ituri Forest.

What are those qualities in Mr. Turnbull and Mrs. Thomas that lift them from the rank of pedestrian anthropologists to that of best-seller? It is cer- tainly not a gift for popularization; on this score Mr. Turnbull gives no quarter.

We recall hearing, a couple of years ago, Colin Turnbull and Laurens van der Post discussing, on the radio, the ways of the Pygmies and of the Bushmen (van der Post had written a book on the Kalahari). The discussion was extraor- dinary, for each man, while a highly-cultured and sophisticated Caucasian, undertook to defend his little people with partisan pride. "Oh, my people are not afraid of mice," said one proudly. "Mine are terrified of them," said the other, his voice dropping in shame.

In his introduction to "Wayward Servants," Turnbull tells how, in arriving in the Ituri area, he was forced to take sides with the Epulu net-hunter band of Mbuti (Epulu is the village to which they pay nominal allegiance, net-hunter indicates their difference from bow-and-arrow hunters, and Mbuti is what they call themselves as a people) against the Bantu villagers who live in forest clearings: both had invited him to take part in a burial ceremony. In choosing to join the Mbuti in digging the hole, he immediately lost status among the villagers; he had become unclean, was forced to wash ritually with the other grave diggers. Thus started a rapid identification of this six-foot anthropologist with the four-foot forest dwellers.

The Mbuti stay in Bantu villages as long as it pleases them to do so. In exchange for food and domestic articles, they contribute labor and the illusion that they are the villagers' servants. But they belong to no one, save the deep and dense forest which they call "father" and "mother."

In joining the band Turnbull had to aba-ndon one personality and world- view and create another. For one thing, he had to travel as lightly as they, so his possessions were reduced to a blanket, a typewriter, and one change of clothes. For another, he became dependent on the band for protection and food. Being incapable, at first, of hunting or cooking, he was adopted by a woman whose husband was away. Perfectly tolerant of his incompetence, the band made room for him as an institutional buffoon. Later acquiring a hunting net and proving that he was indeed capable of contributing to the common economy, he was accepted as an equal.

Colin Turnbull, after all, is a Curator of the American Museum of Natural History, a sombre and cavernous fortress of science on Central Park West. What sets him apart from other anthropologists was his ability to let go this environment, identify with the Mbuti, trust the forest, and then tell the story in a quite straightforward style, one perfectly acceptable in suburban living rooms.

NTU

AFRC

TODAlY August/September 1965-Vol. XII, No. 7

Editor: Collin Gonze Assistant Editor: Catharine Raymond Contributing Editors: Robert Browne, Mary Benson, Mark Cohen, Stanley Diamond, Elizabeth Landis, Sheldon Weeks, Peter Weiss.

The Green Fruits of Uhuru ................ 5 Godfrey MWuriuki

Rosy but not Red ...................... 8 George Wv. Shepherd, Jr.

They're Working on the Railroad ........ 11 Thomas Land

BOOKS 'Tenshun in the Tropics .................... 13

Martin Legassick

Too Pretty a Picture ..................... 14 Peter Schwab

Lesson From Israel ..................... 14 Samuel Abrahams

Digging Into Swahili ..................... 15 Kim Bu-sh

LETTERS C. A. Hacking, Allen J. Rawick ..... 16

The cover, titled "South African Striptease," originally appeared in

the African Review (Accra).

Published monthly except July and August by the American Committee on Africa, Inc. Subscriptions: One year, $5.00; two years, $9.50; three years, $13.50. Students: one year $2.00. Foreign (except Canada and Pan Amer- ica) add $1.00 per year. Sterling zone checks accepted. Advertising: Rates on request. Change of Address: Notify four weeks in advance, advising old and new address. Un- solicited manuscripts will not be returned un- less requested and accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Second class postage paid at New York, NY. Copyright ? 1965 by American Committee on Africa, Inc., 211 East 43rd Street, New York 17. N. Y. TN 7-8733

2 AFRICA TODAY

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