The Ba'Aka are the indigenous forest peoples whose knowledge of their environment is amazing. Hunting with the Ba'Aka is not everyone's cup of tea but I thought it was an incredible experience and have tried to capture the moment as follows:

On our last day we went hunting with the pygmies. I was a little cynical, wary of the fact that many 'experiences' with indigenous peoples are often mediated for public consumption, mediated for the west. I was worried that this was going to be a commercialised, touristy experience. It wasn't. It was remarkably genuine, quite disturbing, but very, very memorable.

The main forest pursuit of the Ba'Aka is hunting. It is also the most eagerly awaited and anticipated activity within each community and hence, as we set off on the hunt, there was a real singsong atmosphere. With Bokia nets draped over their shoulders, everyone was upbeat and full of optimism, full of banter and laughter. I waited with bated breath for one of them to break into song, "Hi ho Hi ho and off to work we go", but refreshingly Disney has not yet infiltrated the jungles of equatorial Africa.

Suddenly the Ba'Aka left the path and entered the forest, a tangle of roots, branches and lianas. But this did not deter the Ba'Aka who moved quickly and nimbly though the forest, their diminutive stature no evolutionary quirk. One woman, Essandja, turned around and uttered an onomatopoeic "Twock, twock, twock" in imitation of my clumsy progress. She smiled and laughed. Her laughter was natural and infectious. I laughed at her joke, enjoying the camaraderie of the hunt. That was until I became ensnared by another vine. I cursed as Essandja slipped ahead of me into the jungle, never once getting her net caught in the vines and never looking down at her feet.

The hunters began deploying their low nets length in a large semi-circle. Their work was quick and thorough, their fingers wonderfully skilful. Each hunter checking his or her net was strung out properly, cutting notches into trees in which to hang the net from, using vines and twigs to ensure that the net was firmly attached to the ground. Little was left to chance; no gaps were left, no opportunity given to their quarry to escape.

With the trap set, it was time to flush the duiker out of hiding. The Ba'Aka, shouting and screaming, pounded the undergrowth with branches and machetes to scare their quarry out of hiding and drive them into the waiting nets. As sweat dampened my shirt and insects buzzed incessantly, my heart raced in anticipation. As they moved towards us, the noise rose to a crescendo.

And then there was silence. I looked around, bemused, trying to ascertain what and happened, what was going on. Had they caught something? No; nothing, no success. The nets were dismantled, bundled onto shoulders and the hunters moved on.

The process was repeated several times until we heard a bleat of distress. Shrieking ecstatically with childlike euphoria everyone rushed to the spot, shouting, "Mboloko. Mboloko". A young blue duiker had been caught. It was struggling vainly in the net.

I recoiled from the sheer terror in the duiker's eyes and wanted to turn away from its impending death. But I didn't. The duiker's legs were broken in what to my sanitised western mind, conditioned by supermarkets and processed packages of meat, seemed like savage brutality. To the Ba'Aka it was a necessity - to lose the duiker at this stage would be a prodigal waste of time and energy. So as casually as one might snap a twig the hind legs of the small antelope were broken and it was dispatched with a heavy blow to the head.

A second duiker was caught. The hunt had been successful and it was time to divide the spoils. The hunter whose net the animal was caught in received the head and foreleg. The next person on the scene got the other foreleg and so on. The division of the spoils began without any fuss or discussion. Marantacae leaves were spread out on the ground and the two animals were laid out on them. The Ba'Aka worked swiftly and economically, leaving nothing to waste; even the blood, which is used for cooking, was shared out. The leaves were then folded together and bound with twine, each hunter departing with a neat package for the pot. The whole bloody process was over in a matter of minutes with little trace remaining.