Baka people (Congo and South Sudan)

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The Baka is an ethnic group found in both South Sudan and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The majority the Baka people are found in Western and Central Equatoria Regions in South Sudan. In South Sudan, the Baka people are mainly Christians and number about 65,000 people (1993).^[1]

The Baka are of the Central Sudanic group and they inhabit the land mass stretching from the Suuwe Stream to Logo around Yei. The majority of them have inhabited the areas of Maridi for thousands of years. Between 1926 and 1930, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, while conducting fieldwork in the Southern Sudan referred to the Baka people as the Central Sudanic group (not the Baka Pygmies of Congo and elsewhere) and they inhabit the areas of Maridi and Yei and they form the largest ethnic group in Maridi. Evans Pritchard further stated that the Baka people are linguistically akin to the Morokodo, Bongo, Nyamusa and ‘Beli of Southern Sudan.^[2]

Richard Buchta was an Austrian explorer in East Africa.^[3] A translation from his personal diary said: "I have visited the Baka people and tracked for months throughout their land of Maridi, southern part of the Sudan, and I experienced the wrath of the humidity from under the canopied forests, the freshness of the air from the mountains, the cooling drops from the rains, the soothing sounds from the flow of the streams from the highlands and the lulling sounds from the Baka songs. The Baka people of Sudan are truly masters of their forests, rivers, wild plants and mountains, and they are hunters and gatherers mixed with the practices of subsistence farming in patches of lands here and there in the deep forests. Above all they are excellent songsters of their jungles, and their songs are often interwoven with the echoes from the rolling mountains, responsive to the flowing rivers and bounces back from the flapping leaves of the trees of their lands. Even the birds and insects of the jungles sing back to the Baka songsters".^[4]