Listen, Here Is a Story: Ethnographic Life Narratives from Aka and Ngandu Women of the Congo Basin

Bonnie L. Hewlett Listen, Here Is a Story: Ethnographic Life Narratives from Aka and Ngandu Women of the Congo Basin. Ithaca, NY: Oxford University Press (2012). 272 pages, ISBN 978-0199764235.An anthropologist engaged in participant observation, Bonnie L. Hewlett's text raises questions about the interdependence and shifting emphases among the Aka and Ngandu peoples in the Congo Basin of the Central African Republic. Her study show how global economics and materialism impact traditional ways of life. In Listen, Here Is a Story: Ethnographic Life Narratives from Aka and Ngandu Women of the Congo Basin, Aka-referred to as Pygmies in many venues, although the term, in my opinion, strikes a pejorative, diminutive note that devalues the culture-and Ngandu women identify themselves and life within their community. explain distinctive interactions. Their stories are practical and profound. The commentaries re-enforce that knowledge of the past-particularly the values of shared production and respect-helps to facilitate a necessary mix of old and new approaches to stave-off critical environmental and social challenges: deforestation, mining gold, the replacement of net-hunting with automatic weaponry-i.e., guns-and relocation from forest to villages.First, two Aka and two Ngandu women, Nali-age not listed, but has a son named to honor Hewlett-and Konga (age 70 or older) as well as Blondine (age 43) and Therese (age 70-75) yrs.) respectively, provide a glimpse of life in the village of Nambele. That the women approached Hewlett and enter into an exchange that teaches the researcher on levels that cannot be ascertained by observations of the two ethnic groups, represents a striking starting point of the text: This story begins one hot afternoon with a knock on my door. Standing in my yard was a group of about eight Ngandu women and Adoxi, my research assistant. They want to talk to you, she said to me, They want you to stop talking to the children and start talking to them(l). Hence, Listen, Here Is a Story, an ethnographic study of Aka and Ngandu women, began.The honesty and forthrightness of the four speakers is notable. Although the brief insertions by the researcher offer anthropological context with respect to terms and seminal work in the field, the technical language jars the reader, after having experienced the direct, frank, conversational style of the informants. Nevertheless, Hewlett presents a necessary overview of the differences between foragers, the Aka and sedentary farmers, the Ngandu as well as how their foci support diverse family structures. Gender divisions among the Ngandu, whose female constituency engages in difficult, backbreaking agricultural labor, are fairly rigid and fixed. In contrast, among the Aka, gender roles are flexible and net-hunting, foraging and even child care are shared in a traditional matrix. …

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