Bambuti Pygmies

The most important god of the Bambuti pantheon is Khonvoum, a god of the hunt who wields a bow made from two snakes that together appear to humans as a rainbow. After sunset every day, Khonvoum gathers fragments of the stars and throws them into the sun to revitalize it for the next day. He occasionally contacts mortals through Gor or a chameleon. Khonvoum created mankind from clay. Black people were made from black clay, white people came from white clay, and the Pygmies themselves came from red clay. He also creates the animals that are needed by hunters. Arebati is a lunar deity and Sky Father. In some sources, he was said to have created humanity from clay, instead of Khonvoum. Tore is a god of the forests who supplies animals to hunters. He is also a thunder god who appears as a storm and hides in rainbows. Most importantly, Tore appears as a leopard in the initiation rites. The first Pygmies stole fire from Tore he chased them but could not catch them, and when he returned home, his mother had died. As punishment, he decreed that humans would also die, and he thus became the death god. Pygmy peoples see their rainforest homes threatened by logging, and are driven out by settlers. In some places they have been evicted and their land has been designated as national parks. They are routinely deprived of their rights by governments, which do not see these forest-dwellers as equal citizens. In Cameroon, the life of the Bagyeli is being disrupted by a World Bank-sponsored oil pipeline which is to be built through their land. The Batwa of eastern DRC, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda have seen nearly all their forest destroyed, and barely survive as laborers and beggars.