LOUIS SARNO (1954–2017)
(See bottom of this post for links to full ebook about Louis Sarno.)
Louis Sarno died on April 1 and it was in some way an appropriate date. In addition to being a pioneering sound recorder, an adventurer and explorer, a father, a husband and one of a kind, Sarno was a funny guy.
Towards the end of the four-day journey I took with him in 2014 — the very last part, as our car defied the odds to make it from the Sangha River to Yandoumbé, in the jungle of the Central African Republic — Sarno was goofing it up. His girlfriend Agati had come to meet him in Libongo, just over the river in Cameroon, and she then piled into the 4x4 as it creaked us for three more hours along what just about passed for a track.
Our party swelled to six: me beside the driver in the front, Sarno between Agati and their son Samedi in the back and a family friend from Bayanga, who had hopped into the boot with a great pile of provisions. The car’s headlights conked out every time the car lurched into puddles, and often its engine sputtered silent too. But I seemed to be the only person fearing we would never escape this jungle-dark night. The family that bridged all cultural, racial and continental divides apparently knew that somehow we would be spirited home. Not only that, they were in hysterics.
Sarno was rejuvenated by his reunion with Agati. After a three-week absence, capped by a miserable drive through Cameroon, the family was back together and Sarno led them through some old routines. They spoke in Yaka — Sarno was one of very few white people who knew the language of the pygmies — but every now and then they quoted lines from films they had watched together. Agati and Samedi screeched with laughter as Sarno became the Dude from The Big Lebowski. Trees whipped the side of the car and our driver seemed to be learning the skill as he went along. But the noise from the back seat was of nothing but glee.
One always recalls the most vivid evidence of life when someone has died and this was the moment for Sarno and I. With a couple of exceptions, I felt I only really got to know weary Louis, ill Louis, in-demand Louis and fatalistic Louis during the time I spent with him. I only heard from others — including his younger self in his memoir and previous interviews — about the life-loving wanderer seeking and finding his nirvana. Life had become tough in the jungle by 2014. Thirty years there had taken an obvious toll.
Sarno thought often of death. We spoke of mortality several times. The couplet he had chalked on the beam of his house — “Here I lie in house of earth/Waiting for an upper berth” — made it to the New York Times obituary, and he told me during a low point of our Cameroon odyssey: “I don’t feel that I have very long to live, so my time is valuable.” He didn’t want to be spending time in a car, nor being hassled by gendarmes at check-points, dusting him down for money he didn’t have.
Generations of old friends had died in the forest and Sarno had often witnessed their entire lives. Furthermore, some of the Ba’aka’s traditions and musical expertise had moved towards the point of extinction during his lifetime too. He said, “I’ve basically seen the very old generation when I arrived, they’re gone, and then the people that were my age or older, a lot of them have died as well. So Yandoumbé is kind of a young village in terms of the people living there. For me it is sometimes a little lonely.”
But Yandoumbé was his home and Agati and Samedi his closest family. There was never any question of him jacking it in over there and going back to the United States out of personal choice. That’s why the New York Times obituary erred when it wrote that he “went home to New Jersey last fall” and when it neglected to list Sarno’s Ba’aka family among those who have survived him. He held no ill will towards his American brothers and sister, and was endlessly fond of his mother, but he was far closer to the family he left in the Central African Republic. Although his relationship with Agati would not stand muster as a marriage in western terms, he was officially Samedi’s father. Sarno’s name is on the birth certificate, and I wish the Times had not made such casual reference to those who will miss him most.
I’m told that Sarno’s ashes are on their way back to Yandoumbé, finally fulfilling his desire to be left for eternity in the forest. According to Andrea Turkalo, one of Sarno’s friends who also lives in the Central African Republic, he will now become part of the Ba’aka’s oral culture — “This man who lived here for years, recorded our music, went into the forest, slept in the forest with us.”
It is also crucial that so much of the music Sarno recorded is digitised and stored forever at the Pitt Rivers Museum. The Ba’aka’s very existence is still threatened by poachers, loggers and disease, and the sustained interest in this music will, I hope, increase the chances of funds trickling slowly to its source. Sarno battled for due recognition for the Ba’aka, and there are good people intending to carry on the fight.
I also hope that some of Sarno’s unpublished writing now sees the light of day, and that any profit from its publication also makes its way to Yandoumbé. What I have read of Sarno’s work is exceptional, and his friends Jim Jarmusch and Sara Driver are among those hoping that it can finally be released.
Finally, it is worth noting that Sarno did not regret for a minute his decision to live in the jungle despite the illnesses he contracted there eventually causing his death.
“It’s just the price I pay for the life I lead,” he told me. “Everyone else gets cancer from car exhaust in the city, or you get in an accident. It’s just what happens where you live. Each place you live has its own risks. Those are just the ones from here. I wish it wasn’t like that, but that’s just the way it is. You can’t regret it. It’s just how it is.”
The full ebook I wrote about Louis Sarno is available via the links below. I was lucky to know him.
WHITE PYGMY
Chapter 1 — House of Earth
Chapter 2 — The Heart of Africa
Chapter 3 — The Road to the Jungle
Chapter 4 — The Forest People
Chapter 5 — All About the Music
Chapter 6 — A Life Under Threat
Chapter 7 — Louis Sarno
Chapter 8 — Crisis
Chapter 9 — Into the Future
