New Jersey Native Is a Pygmy in Heart, Spirit

Friends affectionately call him “King of the Pygmies.” But Louis Sarno, a 6-foot-tall white American and a self-described lousy hunter, doesn’t quite fit the mold. Nor does he want the title.

What Sarno craves is the opportunity to live freely among a people he has come to love and respect.

For the last 14 years, the New Jersey native has lived among the BaAka Pygmies in the southwestern corner of this country, documenting their customs, studying their language and recording their music.

Although some academics dismiss Sarno as an amateur and social misfit, others consider him an unrivaled authority on the life and ways of the BaAka, and he has won the acceptance and admiration of the Pygmies. Miles away from modernity, Sarno, 45, has found his niche in this roadside camp.

“I feel more at home here than I do when I go to the States,” said the balding American with brown-stained teeth and dark, bushy eyebrows.

Despite his obvious physical differences with the BaAka, those who know Sarno marvel at his ability to assimilate.

“He’s become a Pygmy,” said Andrea Turkalo, an American elephant research scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society who has been based for 10 years in nearby Dzanga-Ndoki National Park. “Even his mentality is Pygmy-like. They love him. And Louis knows [the BaAka]. He’s really interested in them. It’s his passion.”

A love for the high-pitched, polyphonic compositions of BaAka music is what initially spurred Sarno to head to Africa. He first heard the sounds on a radio show while living in the Netherlands with his wife at the time, who was Dutch.

“I became obsessed with it,” recalled Sarno, who studied comparative literature at graduate school in Iowa and left the U.S. for the Netherlands in 1979. “I just had to come and make my own recordings.”

He arrived in the Central African Republic in 1985 and, as he put it, “was received the same as any white man.” The attitude was “let’s get as much out of him as we can before he leaves.”

But Sarno was there to stay.

A book he wrote on Pygmy music, called “Song From the Forest,” was published in 1993; a compact disc featuring tracks that he recorded followed shortly.

Today, Sarno’s home is a mud-and-thatch hut. He uses a kerosene lamp for light, cooks with wood and charcoal and has grown used to a traditional BaAka diet of leaves of the cassava (a yam-like vegetable), cocoa vines, palm nuts and bush meat. Local delicacies include steaks of duiker--a small antelope--and porcupine stew.

There are no phones in Batali, no television, no running water, no electricity.

But Sarno says he doesn’t miss much. “I might occasionally crave a pizza or some ice cream,” he said. “But these are not serious lacks.”

One of four children born to two high school teachers, Sarno says he considers the BaAka his adopted family. He helped raise a Pygmy boy whose mother had died and whose father was an alcoholic. He speaks the BaAka language fluently and has proved his mettle by surviving several diseases, including hepatitis B, malaria and leprosy.

He was married to a Pygmy for more than two years, a union that ended when illness forced him to leave the country for a while.

Leon Bouanga, echoing the sentiments of many of the other villagers, said, “I consider him one of the BaAka . . . our chief.”

“He tries to show us that we are equal to everybody else,” said Andre Lalie, noting the discrimination Pygmies typically face from other Central Africans.

Sarno, who lives off financial support from friends, relatives and well-wishers, says he doubts that he could ever again live permanently in the United States. “When I go to America, I see a lot of energy and money wasted on what I see as triviality,” he said.

He is writing another book about his life among the BaAka and wants to move to a different Pygmy village deep in a swamp forest of neighboring Congo--even farther from the influences of modern life.

He recently returned from a fact-finding and recording mission there. His aim, once again, is to archive the community’s traditional music.

But his Batali neighbors say they would be reluctant to let him go.

“I could not accept Louis going away,” said Antoinette Yeto, who has known him for several years. “He has been with us for so long. He is one of us.”