Pygmy: Where an 8-year-old girl became a woman

Pygmy dwarfs living in central Africa only have a lifespan of 30-40 years, so perhaps the girls here married and gave birth from the age of 8.

In the equatorial forest in Central Africa, there is a small group of intimate residents who have settled for a long time, claiming to be " children of the forest " and calling the forest " mother " or " supreme deity ", they It is Pygmy dwarfs.

Pygmy dwarfs were the first residents in Central Africa, who were prehistoric Sanga civilizations. Pygmy people are mainly distributed in the forests of Congo (DRC), Congo (Brazzaville), Republic of Central Africa, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and other countries. Adults are about 1.2 to 1.3 m tall, the highest Pygmy people do not reach 1.4 m and weigh no more than 50 kg.

Pygmy people have small bodies, big heads with short legs, flat nose, big belly, protruding navel, not black skin like black people with lighter color, curly hair like other black people so Pygmy people often suffer discrimination. To this day, the Congolese (DRC) still use the word Man buti (meaning Pygmy) to laugh at people who act stupidly.

Although " underweight ", the Pygmy people are really excellent hunters. Their hearing and sense of smell are extremely sharp even when someone even says that only one bee flies 10 meters away, the Pygmy hunters can still correctly judge whether it is a male or a bee. While men go hunting, Pygmy women stay at wild fruits, roots and cook. They know how to produce an anesthetic, just see the animal run out, can be attached to anesthesia on the arrow and catch the animal easily.

From 8-9 years of age, Pygmy's physiological function has matured and they start having sex, giving birth to children. The Pygmy people perform a 1-wife, 1-husband, about 10 families living in a small tribe, the hard work will be divided by the head of the clan and live in the form of a clan society. Pygmy people eat cooked food, they have long used fire, but do not know how to keep the fire, so keep the fire becomes Pygmy women's most important task.

Pygmy dwarves have their own language but they do not have written words, they also have no concept of numbers and time, so they do not know their age.Estimated, their life expectancy is 30-40 years old . They call the green forest a great subsample so they do not allow anyone to cut down the forest to eat, only when the trees die naturally and the leaves are dry, do they take it to make firewood.

Pygmy dwarves use banana leaves, palm leaves to make clothes, use elephant bones, beetle bark and antelope horns, turtle shells to make jewelry. Now that there are so many tourists visiting, they are just starting to wear clothes. However, the clothes they wear are donated by tourists, but they cannot produce them themselves.

Pygmy women choose fruits together, squeeze water to make cosmetics. Because fruits have different colors, their cosmetics look really colorful. Pygmy women love make-up, they often paint multicolored lines to scare away demons and add beauty.

They do not use bricks and sand to build houses but use banana leaves or palm leaves to roof tents, each oval hut is about 1.5 m high. Pygmy's architecture is very neat and tidy, each independent household lives in a circle, the elderly will live in the middle of the circle. Each circle is only about 5-6 square meters wide, in each hut there is a stone and on the stone is a burning fire, there is a clay pot above. Every night when going to bed, they often use weeds and animal skins to cover them as cushions. Although life is simple, Pygmy people love music very much, they live separately from the noisy cities and build their own "paradise".

However, their lives met many dangers, even at risk of perdition. Due to the unstable situation in Central Africa, war, genocide, deforestation . threatens the habitat of Pygmy people.

Some rebels operating in the forest often send good hunters to the forest to hunt for food, but if nothing is found, these hunters will become a dish on the rebel menu. In addition, local people also admit that Pygmy meat consumption will increase physical fitness as well as sexual desire. So that created the Pygmy hunter hunters of rebel hunters. Before the genocide occurred, in Rwanda there were about 29,000 Pygmy people but now only about 20,000 people. According to incomplete statistics, there are only about 600,000 Pygmy people in the world.