Bashi (Shi)

Population: Estimated 3 to 4 million, among the DR Congo's larger communities

Location: South Kivu province, the hills west of Lake Kivu around Bukavu, Kabare, Walungu and Ngweshe

Language: Mashi (Shi)

Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (JD53)

Traditional governance: A set of kingdoms — Kabare, Ngweshe, Kaziba, Burhinyi, Luhwinja and others — each under a mwami with a court and notables; Congolese territorial administration alongside.

Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.

Clothing: Contemporary dress; the mwami's regalia of hide, iron and beadwork; the woven and barkcloth items of the older court tradition.

Food: Beans and cassava, sweet potato, plantain, sombe cassava leaf, milk and cheese from the Kivu herds, and the sorghum and banana beers of the highlands.

Ceremonies: Installation of a mwami with the royal drums and regalia; ancestral offerings at royal tombs; harvest rites; funerals; the muganda communal work parties.

Marriage customs: Patrilineal and clan-exogamous; bridewealth in cattle, which in a land-scarce highland economy is a substantial transfer; the negotiation is staged and formal.

Initiation rites: No circumcision traditionally; adulthood is marked by marriage, a plot and a herd, and by entry into the age and work groupings of the hill.

Every dish the Atlas publishes for Democratic Republic of the Congo, at national rather than community level — 12 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.

“The hill has an owner even where no fence stands.”

On customary land tenure.

“The mwami's word is not law and everyone obeys it.”

On customary authority under a republic.

“A field divided among four sons feeds none of them.”

On fragmentation.

Creation: Nnamahanga as the creator; Lyangombe as the hero-spirit of the possession cult shared across the interlacustrine world; royal ancestors venerated at their tombs.

Beliefs: The Lyangombe (kubandwa) cult, historically central and still practised; royal ancestral observance; Catholic Christianity dominant since the early twentieth century, with the Bukavu archdiocese a major institution; Pentecostal expansion since the 1990s.

Ancestors: Royal tombs are tended and the mwami's genealogy is recited at installation; lineage ancestors are addressed at the homestead in matters of land and health.

Traditional settlements: Homesteads packed along ridges and slopes among banana and bean plots; the mwami's compound larger, with the drum house, court space and enclosures.

Building techniques: Pole and mud with grass thatch, now brick and iron sheet; woven granaries; the royal enclosure with reed fencing and specific gate arrangements; hand-built terracing on the steepest ground.

Village layout: Houses along contour paths with plots above and below; the royal compound on a commanding hill with its assembly ground and drums.

1. 1500s–1700s

   Bashi kingdoms form in the hills west of Lake Kivu under mwami with royal drums.

2. 1890s–1960

   Belgian administration governs through the mwami; Bukavu is founded as Costermansville.

3. 1973–1990s

   Mobutu's policies weaken customary authority formally without displacing it in practice.

4. 1994–2003

   The Rwandan refugee influx and the two Congo wars devastate South Kivu; Bukavu changes hands repeatedly.

5. 2004–present

   Armed-group activity continues in the hills; Panzi Hospital's work brings international attention to sexual violence as a weapon of war.