THE HABITAT OF THE BAKÁ PEOPLE
The Baká people have a strong bond with their environment hence the Baká believe that the forest, the hills and the rivers are alive and communicate with them. The Baka therefore have a deep sense of believe to live in harmony with nature. As a result, the forests provide to them food, herbal medicine, shelter, clothing, inspirations for art and music and also home for apparition of their ancestors. There has been a strong believe that because of their deep connection to their environment, the Baká people can transmigrate (Ndábá in Baka language) into specific natural objects of the forests through the help of their ancestors’ apparition.
The majority the á people are found in Western and Central Equatoria Regions in South Sudan 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, while conducting fieldwork in the Southern Sudan, E. E. Evans-Pritchard referred to the Baká people as the Central Sudanic group (not the Baká 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 Baká people are linguistically akin to the Morokodo, Bongo, Nyamusa and ‘Beli of Southern Sudan.
A translation from his personal diary of Richard Buchta who was an Austrian explorer in East Africa. said: "I have visited the Baká 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 Baká songs. The Baká 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 Baká songsters".