Baka

The Baka are a forest hunter-gatherer people of the Mbenga, roaming the rainforests of south-eastern Cameroon and northern Gabon in small leaf-hut camps. Men hunt with poisoned arrows and spears while women fish, gather honey and tend plantain groves, each camp deciding its affairs by consensus under the protection of Jengi, the forest spirit mediating between the Baka and the supreme being Komba.

They descend from the rainforest's ancient foragers, absorbed or displaced by Ubangian and Central Sudanic farmers from about 3500 BCE and by Bantu villagers from about 1500 BCE.

They speak an Ubangian tongue close to the Ngbaka, though roughly a third of its words, mostly forest plant and honey names, survive from an older forager language. Beside Bantu clans such as the Bulu, they traded forest produce for iron and crops, which also exposed them to enslavement by stronger neighbours.