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“The Interahamwe? They were there yesterday?!”

She nods. “On Monday. Five houses. They still live in the park.”

They shake their heads in disapproval. Sifa claps her hands together again as she says, “When they get in the house, they take dishes, clothes, they even sleep on somebody.”

“How many Pygmy women have had the problem of Interahamwe ‘sleeping on them?’” I ask.

“They go for Zairians. Only one of us was raped and she caught it. She was infected with HIV. Then her husband died from HIV.”

“Have they ever killed anyone in the village?” I say.

“They have never killed any of us, but when they kill your neighbor, you can be sure one day they will reach you and kill you. They’ve never killed any of us . . . so far.”

“Do you remember the very first time you met Adrien?”

They argue with each other before Sifa answers. “He came just like a guest. He was hunting birds. When he went back to Europe, he came back the second time with a weapon. He started shooting elephants. The white man was killing elephants and gave us meat, so we had to go in the village to Zairians, to exchange it for a cluster of bananas so we can also eat food like common people. Then he said the park had become his own property. He told us there was a potential war. That we would escape or we would be killed.

“He said he would look for another big piece of land where we would stay, so we would leave him the park. We left in 1972. Cecile already had two children. We crossed two big mountains to join the other people. Our grand-fathers and fathers died. They didn’t see the land as promised.

“We came here. The Zairians refused for us to squeeze them. They wanted us to stay in the bushes. We were given this place to live.

“We beg you to help us so our voices can be heard by other people. Your presence helps us think we are remembered, that other people care about us. It raises our hope.”

I turn off the camera. I tell them about my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, George Harkins, who was chief of the Native American Choctaw tribe in 1831. At the time of the Trail of Tears, the so-called “Five Civilized Tribes” abandoned their homelands and walked more than a hundred miles to newly formed reservations. My ancestor wrote a famous letter of protest. I describe it to Sifa and Cecile from memory in paraphrased shreds.

“We, as Choctaws, rather chose to suffer and be free than live under the degrading influence of laws, which our voice could not be heard in their formation. . . . We found ourselves like a benighted stranger, following false guides, until he was surrounded on every side, with fire and water. The fire was certain destruction, and a feeble hope was left him of escaping by water. A distant view of the opposite shore encourages the hope; to remain would be inevitable annihilation. Who would hesitate, or who would say that his plunging into the water was his own voluntary act? Painful in the extreme is the mandate of our expulsion. We regret that it should proceed from the mouth of our professed friend. . . . The man who said that he would plant a stake and draw a line around us . . . was the first to say he could not guard the lines, and drew up the stake and wiped out all traces of the line. . . . Let us alone—we will not harm you, we want rest . . . and, when the hand of oppression is stretched against us, let me hope that a warning voice may be heard from every part of the United States, filling the mountains and valleys . . . and say stop, you have no power, we are the sovereign people, and our friends shall no more be disturbed.”

I can see their minds churning: This has happened before, they are thinking, in other places, to other people. They’re curious. Trying to digest the new information, Sifa asks, “Were there Pygmies on this walk?”

“No.” I find a photo of a Tibetan woman that’s saved on my camera and tell her, “Native Americans look a little more like her than like you or me. It’s just that white people have behaved the same way all over the world. But then my great-great-great-great-great