The Book of the Jungle of the Baka Pygmies
The Baka have lived for 250,000 years in the equatorial forest, on the banks of the Congo River. They are the oldest human group in the world. More than living in the jungle, they are the jungle. They take care of her like they take care of their body. Everything they need they get from her, but they don't take anything that is not necessary. The forest has been created by Komba, the Elder, so that the Baka have everything they need, but they can only enjoy it on the condition that they take care of it and share it with those who live in it because only those things that are shared are deserved.
This way of conceiving how to be in the world has allowed them to survive for thousands of years, but now the greed of the first world has expelled them from the jungle. The only thing left to them is the stories, the likanó, or advice with which they learned what is needed to survive: listening, caring, sharing and being together.
Here is a likanó that they told us when we arrived at the community of the Baka pygmies:
Written by Ana C. Herreros
Illustrated by Daniel Tornero
Collection: Black series
Size: 24x33 cm
Pages: 32
Binding: cardboard
ISBN: 978.84.123027.0.7
(Price without VAT €23.56)
RRP €24.50
Our trip to Cameroon
In November 2019, Ana C. Herreros, Daniel Tornero and Kike Carbajal travelled with Zerca and Lejos to the Baka Pygmy communities of Assok, Bemba II and Doum, which are located in southern Cameroon. There they learned about the educational project with which we collaborated with this book, Daniel Tornero carried out illustration workshops, Ana C. Herreros listened to the likanós and Kike Carbajal immortalized it all in these Photos:
Ana C. Herreros
She was born in León and her grandmother kept quiet stories. So she soon learned to listen to the silence and to love those who have no voice, those who don't tell tales.
So much so that, years later and already an emigrant in Madrid, she began to write a doctoral thesis on the literature of those who neither write nor read. And so, researching the oral tradition, in 1992 she came across oral narration. She started telling stories, and for more than twenty years, she has not been silent. Then her voice filled with ink and she started writing. Her work has been translated to Catalan, French and Mexican. She has made an autistic man speak, a princess sit down to listen to her lecture and 16 6-month-old babies preferred listening to her stories to taking a bottle. Oh, if her grandmother raised her head...
With Libros de las Malas Compañías she has also published the following titles:
Daniel Tornero
He is an illustrator, narrator and teacher, but above all, he is a narrator. He has been with the Jamacuco stage group since the last century, and he likes telling stories so much that he has gone from voice to paper. Now he also paints the parallel universe of the stories using coloured pencils and a brush made of the hair of a child. Whether as a narrator or as a cartoonist, the important thing is that it continues telling.
As an illustrator, he has been working since January 2012 at the Ipad Magazine DON, and since May 2014 he has been the art director, designer and illustrator of the publishing house Libros de las Malas Compañías. He has already published a book, The Skeleton Woman, which has been a finalist for the Extraordinary Prizes for Plastic Arts and Design of the Autonomous Community of Madrid. It has also received the Honorable Mention at the XII Audiovisual Awards of the Directorate General for Equality.
With Libros de las Malas Compañías he has also illustrated the following titles:
