StapleEquatorial Guinea
Malanga con Pescado
Boiled malanga cocoyam with fish in tomato sauce, the everyday plate on Bioko and the mainland. The root is the starch and the fish is whatever the boats brought.
Serves 6 · 50 minutes
Benga of Corisco
A small maritime people of the Corisco Bay islands who traded between the Gabon estuary and the sea for three centuries, gave their language to the region's first missionary printing, and now number a few thousand on islands claimed by two countries.
Identity
Population: A few thousand across Corisco, Elobey and the mainland coast
Location: Corisco, Great and Little Elobey islands, and the adjacent Río Muni and Gabonese coast
Language: Benga, a coastal Bantu language; Spanish and French
Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (A30, Ndowe group)
Traditional governance: Lineage heads and, historically, kings recognised by Spanish and French agents alike; today Equatoguinean administration, with the maritime boundary disputed with Gabon.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Corisco islanders
The main community, on an island of some fourteen square kilometres.
Elobey communities
Great and Little Elobey, the latter once the administrative capital of Spanish Guinea.
Mainland Benga
Coastal settlements on the Río Muni and northern Gabonese shore.
Culture
Clothing: Contemporary dress; the older tradition of imported cloth acquired through the coastal trade, which was itself a marker of the middleman's position.
Food: Fish in every form, cassava, plantain and palm oil; the sea provides nearly everything and the islands grow the rest.
Ceremonies: The ivanga and other Ndowe dances; funerals with drumming; Catholic feasts, since Spanish missions worked here from the 1850s; the launching of canoes.
Marriage customs: Bridewealth in goods and cash; lineage exogamy; historic intermarriage with Fang, Mpongwe and European traders was how the middleman position was maintained.
Initiation rites: Instruction in navigation, the reefs and the tides; entry into the men's societies where these survive.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, at national rather than community level — 19 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.
Equatorial Guinea
9 dishes
National dishEquatorial Guinea
Pepesup
A fiery broth of goat or fish with chilli and bush spices, drunk as much as eaten. Equatorial Guinea's most-cited dish and reputed to settle any stomach.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
National dishEquatorial Guinea
Arroz con Pescado
also Rice with fish
Rice cooked in a fish and tomato base with palm oil, the mainland Equatoguinean weekday meal and a clear inheritance from Spanish rule.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
Street foodEquatorial Guinea
Akwadu
Banana baked with coconut, butter and lime, served warm as a sweet. Simple, cheap and made from what grows within a few metres of most kitchens.
Serves 6 · 35 minutes
Festival & feastEquatorial Guinea
Sopa de Cacahuete
Groundnut soup with chicken or smoked fish, thickened and served with rice. Made for family Sundays and celebrations, and shared with the whole Gulf of Guinea.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Regional specialityEquatorial Guinea
Bubi Banana Soup
Green banana cooked with palm oil, fish and greens in the Bubi manner on Bioko, where the island's volcanic soil grows bananas that are the community's mainstay.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
Regional specialityEquatorial Guinea
Bilola
also Sea snails in sauce, Caracoles de mar
Sea snails simmered in palm oil with chilli and greens, a Bioko island dish eaten from the shell with a pin, and a Malabo bar staple.
Serves 4 · 1 hour
Drink & sweetEquatorial Guinea
Malamba
Sugarcane spirit distilled locally and drunk neat or with lime, poured at celebrations and offered to guests on arrival.
Serves Serves as a spirit · Distilled traditionally
Drink & sweetEquatorial Guinea
Topé
also Palm wine, Vino de palma
Palm sap tapped from the standing tree and drunk the same day, sweet in the morning and sharply alcoholic by evening. Bioko's social drink.
Serves Varies · Tapping takes days; the wine is drunk within 24 hours
Gabon
10 dishes
StapleGabon
Bâton de Manioc
also Chikwangue
Fermented cassava paste wrapped in leaves and steamed into a dense sour stick, kept for days and eaten with every sauce. The Congo basin's bread.
Serves 6 · 2 hours, plus 3 days fermenting
StapleGabon
Nkumu
also Gnetum leaves, Koko gabonais
Gnetum forest leaves shredded to threads and cooked with palm oil, groundnut and smoked fish. The green that appears on Gabonese plates more than any other.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
National dishGabon
Poulet Nyembwe
Chicken in palm nut sauce, Gabon's national dish, cooked with the pulp of the oil palm rather than its oil. Served with bâton de manioc or rice.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Street foodGabon
Brochettes de Poisson
Fish skewers grilled at roadside braziers in Libreville and Port-Gentil, served with fried plantain and a chilli sauce.
Serves Makes 12 · 40 minutes, plus 1 hour marinating
Street foodGabon
Atanga
also African pear, Safou
The purple African pear, softened in hot water or over embers until it turns buttery, salted and eaten with bread or roast maize. Gabon's seasonal obsession.
Serves 4 · 15 minutes
Festival & feastGabon
Odika
also Chocolat indigène
Wild mango kernels ground and pressed into dark blocks, melted into a rich sauce with fish or meat. Gabonese call it indigenous chocolate for its colour and its keeping.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Regional specialityGabon
Feuilles de Manioc
Pounded cassava leaves with palm oil, smoked fish and groundnut, cooked long. The Congo basin's most-eaten green, and Gabon's version leans on the groundnut.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes
Regional specialityGabon
Poisson au Nyembwe
also Fish in palm nut sauce
Fish cooked in the thick orange pulp of the palm nut, the sauce that defines Gabonese cooking and gives the national chicken dish its name.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
Regional specialityGabon
Folong
also Amaranth greens
Amaranth leaves stewed with tomato, onion and smoked fish, the simplest and commonest Gabonese green dish.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes
Drink & sweetGabon
Vin de Palme
Palm wine tapped from raffia or oil palms, drunk fresh or fermented, and central to Bwiti ceremony as well as ordinary sociability.
Serves Varies · Tapped daily
Stories & Oral Literature
The Middlemen of the BayTrade history
The Benga sat between the interior peoples who produced ivory, dyewood and slaves and the European ships that would not go up the rivers. It was a lucrative position and a fragile one, and it lasted until steamships and colonial administration made the intermediary unnecessary. By 1900 the trade had gone around them.
The First Printed LanguageLanguage history
American Presbyterian missionaries arrived at Corisco in 1850 and set about reducing Benga to writing. Grammars, dictionaries and scriptural translations followed, making Benga among the first languages of the region committed to print. The language is now spoken by a few thousand people and classified as endangered, which is the ordinary fate of a small coastal tongue between Spanish and French.
Proverbs
“The one who holds the canoe sets the price.”
The middleman's whole position.
“The sea has no fences and many owners.”
A maritime boundary disputed between two states.
“A small island hears every ship.”
Awareness born of exposure.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: A creator god remote from affairs; water and ancestral powers immediate; the sea and its passages carrying their own prohibitions.
Beliefs: Catholicism from the Spanish missions and Presbyterianism from the American ones, layered over ancestral practice; the mevungu and bwiti traditions of the region present at the margins.
Ancestors: Lineage genealogies establish claims to landings and to trading rights; the island's cemeteries hold the merchant families who made its history.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Nzambi / Anyambe
The creator, distant from daily affairs
Sea and river spirits
Powers of the passages and reefs, addressed before crossings
Ancestors
Consulted in lineage matters and honoured at funerals
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Coastal villages of timber and sheet along the beach; the ruined Spanish administrative buildings on Little Elobey; the church at Corisco.
Building techniques: Timber and palm construction raised against damp; dugout and plank canoe building; Spanish colonial masonry in the abandoned administrative buildings.
Village layout: A line of houses facing the beach with canoes drawn up in front and gardens behind, the church and school at the centre.
Artifacts
Benga grammars and dictionaries
Manuscript
Nineteenth-century missionary works among the first printings of any language in the region.
Little Elobey ruins
Heritage site
Abandoned administrative buildings of the former capital of Spanish Guinea.
Plank canoes
Craft
Vessels of a people who lived by the crossings between island, estuary and sea.
Ivanga dance
Performance
Coastal Ndowe dance form performed at celebrations.
Historical Timeline
1600s–1700s
Benga communities establish themselves as intermediaries in the Corisco Bay trade.
1843
Spain formally claims Corisco and the Elobey islands.
1850
American Presbyterian missionaries arrive; Benga is reduced to writing and printed.
1900s
Steamships and colonial administration end the middleman trade; Little Elobey is abandoned as capital.
1972–present
Equatorial Guinea and Gabon dispute sovereignty over the bay's islands and its offshore resources.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Ethnologue: BengaSIL International
- Britannica: Equatorial GuineaEncyclopaedia Britannica
Premium & scholarly sources