StapleRepublic of the Congo
Chikwangue
Fermented cassava steamed in leaves into a dense sour loaf, sliced and eaten with every sauce. Keeps for days without refrigeration, which is the point.
Serves 6 · 2 hours, plus 3 days fermenting
Lari
Kongo-speaking farmers of the Pool region behind Brazzaville, whose Matsouanist movement made a martyr of a clerk who died in a French prison, and whose region has been the ground of every Congolese civil conflict since 1959.
Identity
Population: Estimated 800,000 to 1.2 million
Location: Pool department and the southern districts of Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo
Language: Kilari (Laari), a Kikongo variety
Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (H16f, Kongo)
Traditional governance: Lineage and clan authority historically without centralised chiefship; Congolese departmental administration; Matsouanist and church structures with real social weight.
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.
Lari of Kinkala and Boko
The Pool heartland communities.
Lari of Brazzaville
The urban community in Bacongo and Makélékélé.
Sundi and Kongo neighbours
Closely related Kikongo-speaking groups of the Pool and the Niari.
Culture
Clothing: Contemporary dress; the raffia cloth of the older Kongo tradition; and, in Brazzaville, the sapeur tradition of extravagant tailoring that the Bacongo quarter made internationally famous.
Food: Cassava as saka-saka and foufou, plantain, groundnuts, palm oil, river fish, bushmeat, and the palm wine of the Pool.
Ceremonies: Funerals with several days of mourning and matanga commemoration; ancestral remembrance; Matsouanist observances; church services; the nkumbi and other older initiations, now much reduced.
Marriage customs: Matrilineal descent in the Kongo pattern with the mother's brother significant; bridewealth negotiated in cash and goods; church marriage now general.
Initiation rites: Boys' circumcision in the older tradition with instruction; adulthood otherwise marked by work, marriage and household.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Republic of the Congo, at national rather than community level — 10 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.
StapleRepublic of the Congo
Saka Madesu
also Beans with cassava leaves
Beans and cassava leaves cooked together with palm oil, the cheapest full meal in the Congo and among the most nutritionally complete.
Serves 6 · 2 hours 15 minutes, plus soaking
National dishRepublic of the Congo
Poulet à la Moambé
Chicken in palm nut sauce, claimed as national dish on both banks of the river. In Brazzaville it is served with chikwangue and a bowl of pili pili.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
National dishRepublic of the Congo
Poulet aux Feuilles de Manioc
also Chicken with cassava leaves
Chicken cooked into pounded cassava leaves with palm oil until the leaves darken and the meat falls apart, the Brazzaville Sunday dish.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
Street foodRepublic of the Congo
Makayabu
Salt cod soaked, fried and served in tomato sauce with plantain, sold from lunch stalls in Brazzaville. Imported salt fish became a Congolese staple a century ago.
Serves 6 · 45 minutes, plus 24 hours soaking
Street foodRepublic of the Congo
Mbala Pinda
also Peanut sticks, Pinda
Ground peanuts and maize flour steamed in leaf into firm sticks, sold at Brazzaville markets and eaten as a snack or a light meal.
Serves Makes about 12 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Festival & feastRepublic of the Congo
Liboke ya Ntaba
Goat steamed in banana leaf parcels with onion, chilli and herbs, made for celebrations and opened at the table.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
Regional specialityRepublic of the Congo
Saka Saka
Pounded cassava leaves cooked with palm oil and smoked fish, eaten several times a week across the country. The pounding is done in a tall wooden mortar.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes
Regional specialityRepublic of the Congo
Maboke
also Fish in leaves, Liboke ya mbisi
River fish seasoned and wrapped in marantaceae leaves and steamed or grilled in the parcel, so the fish cooks in its own juice. The purest Congo basin cooking there is.
Serves 4 · 50 minutes
Drink & sweetRepublic of the Congo
Malafu
Palm wine, drunk fresh from the gourd or left to sour, and the drink poured at every gathering and libation on both banks of the Congo.
Serves Varies · Tapped daily
Stories & Oral Literature
MatsouaReligious and political history
André Grenard Matsoua, a Lari clerk and First World War veteran, founded a mutual-aid association among Congolese in Paris in 1926 and used it to press for French citizenship and against forced labour. The French arrested him, and he died in detention at Mayama in 1942. His followers refused to accept the death, treated him as a returning saviour, boycotted colonial taxation and elections, and wrote his name on ballot papers for decades. Matsouanism became a religious movement, a political refusal and a permanent element of Lari identity.
The PoolConflict history
The Pool region has been the base of Congolese opposition since independence and the ground of its wars: the militias of the 1990s, the 1997 to 1999 civil war in which Brazzaville's southern quarters were destroyed and hundreds of thousands displaced, and the renewed fighting of 2016 to 2017 around Pasteur Ntumi's Ninja movement. Each round has emptied the Pool's villages, cut the railway to Pointe-Noire and driven people into Brazzaville, and each has been followed by an amnesty and a return.
The SapeursCultural movement
La Sape — the Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes — grew in Brazzaville's Bacongo quarter and Kinshasa across the river, and turned the wearing of expensive European tailoring into a competitive art with its own etiquette, hierarchy and vocabulary. It began as a colonial-era appropriation of the coloniser's clothes and became something else: a refusal of poverty's authority to dictate appearance, practised most rigorously by men with the least money. It survived two civil wars in the quarters where the fighting was worst.
Proverbs
“A man may have one suit and it will be pressed.”
The sapeur principle.
“The one they buried is still expected.”
On Matsoua and his followers.
“The Pool empties into the city and the city sends it back.”
On displacement and return.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Nzambi a Mpungu as the high god of the Kongo tradition; ancestral spirits (bakulu); the nkisi tradition of charged medicine objects, historically central.
Beliefs: Catholic and Protestant Christianity long established; Matsouanism as a distinct movement; Kimbanguist influence from across the river; nkisi and healing practices continuing beneath.
Ancestors: Matrilineal ancestors are addressed at graves; funerals and matanga commemorations are the largest gatherings a Lari family holds.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Nzambi a Mpungu
The high god of the Kongo peoples
Bakulu
The ancestral dead, addressed at graves and in matters of family and land
Simbi
Water and land spirits of the Kongo world, attached to named places
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of rectangular houses along tracks in the Pool's savannah and gallery forest; in Brazzaville, the dense compounds of Bacongo and Makélékélé.
Building techniques: Pole and mud with thatch, now cement block and iron sheet; the urban compound with rooms around a courtyard; raffia weaving in the older tradition.
Village layout: Village houses along a street with cassava gardens behind; in the city, plots subdivided among kin around a shared yard.
Artifacts
Matsouanist commemorations
Intangible heritage
Observances marking Matsoua's life and refusing the fact of his death.
Sapeur tailoring
Textile
The competitive dress tradition of Bacongo and Kinshasa's quarters.
Nkisi figures
Sculpture
Charged medicine objects of the Kongo tradition, largely destroyed by missions.
Congo-Ocean railway
Infrastructure
The line through the Pool, built with forced labour at enormous cost in lives, and cut in every subsequent conflict.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1800
Kikongo-speaking communities occupy the Pool region within the Kongo kingdom's northern sphere.
1921–1934
The Congo-Ocean railway is built through the Pool with forced labour; thousands die.
1926–1942
Matsoua's association, his arrest and his death in detention; Matsouanism takes hold.
1997–1999
Civil war destroys Brazzaville's southern quarters and empties the Pool.
2016–present
Renewed fighting in the Pool displaces over a hundred thousand; an amnesty follows in 2017.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
Premium & scholarly sources
- Ethnologue: Kongo (Laari)SIL International