Cameroon

It was like walking through an impenetrable green mist. The narrow path wound this way and that, skirting round fronds and branches and vegetation of all shapes and shades. It was stiflingly hot even though the thick forest canopy was shading us from the direct rays of the sun.

Something screeched high up in the trees. My guide, Boukou, flapped his arms in imitation of a bird and named it in his own language, then in French, for my benefit. It was, I learned, an African grey parrot. Away in the distance we could hear chimps chattering. The sound rose to a deafening, angst-ridden crescendo of squawks and cries that put the forest on edge and sent a shiver down my spine. Eventually the cacophony shrunk to a muffled clucking.

Boukou's head was for ever turning this way and that, reading the signs of teeming life that crowded in on us. His easy, lolling walk had taken him down countless paths like this throughout the 40-odd years of his hunting and gathering existence. I was being taken on a trek through the equatorial rainforest of Cameroon. Boukou was a Baka pygmy, an elder in one of the few remaining clans that still manage - just - to eke out a sustainable living in a symbiotic relationship with the land.

Boukou tore a trailing vine from an overhanging branch and wound it round his middle. It was eru, the ubiquitous forest plant that tastes of spinach and forms a vital part of the Baka diet. He stopped to examine some tracks in the wet mud, prodding the earth with his bony fingers. "Duiker," he said, filing away the information, "one hour ago."

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