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
Mbeti
Farmers and hunters of the Congo's north-western plateaux around Owando and the Gabonese border, carvers of small standing figures with rounded heads, and neighbours to the forest that holds the world's largest surviving western lowland gorilla population.
Identity
Population: Estimated 50,000 to 100,000 across the Congo and Gabon
Location: Cuvette-Ouest and Cuvette departments of the Republic of the Congo around Ewo and Okoyo, and adjacent eastern Gabon
Language: Mbete (Mbere), with related varieties
Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (B61, Mbete group)
Traditional governance: Lineage and village authority; Congolese and Gabonese departmental administration.
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.
Mbeti of Ewo
The Cuvette-Ouest heartland.
Mbeti of Okoyo
Communities on the Gabonese border.
Mbaamba and Obamba
Closely related Gabonese communities of the same cluster.
Culture
Clothing: Contemporary dress; raffia and barkcloth in the older record; ceremonial regalia at funerals and initiations.
Food: Cassava and plantain, forest game, river fish, palm oil, groundnuts, caterpillars and mushrooms in season, and palm wine.
Ceremonies: Ancestral offerings before reliquary figures; funerals with drumming; hunting rites; the ngoye and related associations.
Marriage customs: Patrilineal with bridewealth in goods and iron; the negotiation runs through lineage elders.
Initiation rites: Boys' circumcision with instruction in seclusion; entry into the men's associations conferred standing.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Republic of the Congo and Gabon, at national rather than community level — 20 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.
Republic of the Congo
10 dishes
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
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
Figures That Hold BonesArt and religion
Mbeti and the related Obamba and Kota peoples made reliquary figures — carved wooden bodies with a cavity, or metal-covered guardian faces, associated with baskets holding the bones of lineage ancestors. The relics were the lineage's charter and its protection; the figure guarded and marked them. Missions destroyed many of the reliquaries and the figures were sold; the objects in collections are therefore usually separated from what gave them their meaning.
The Odzala ForestNatural heritage
Odzala-Kokoua National Park, on the Mbeti's northern edge, is among the oldest protected areas in Africa and holds one of the largest remaining populations of western lowland gorillas and forest elephants. Ebola outbreaks in 2002 and 2003 killed thousands of gorillas in the wider region and several people in villages that had handled infected carcasses. The park's baïs — mineral-rich forest clearings where elephants and gorillas gather — are among the few places these animals can be observed at all.
The Plateaux Between Two CapitalsContemporary condition
Mbeti country sits on the Congo-Gabon border in a region of low population, dense forest and few roads, where the two states' presence is thin and cross-border movement for hunting, trade and family is constant. Logging concessions cover most of the forest outside the parks, and the roads they cut are what brings bushmeat traders in and what carries young people out to Owando, Brazzaville and Franceville.
Proverbs
“The bones of the fathers hold the land.”
On reliquaries as a charter.
“The clearing shows what the forest hides.”
On the baïs, and on occasions when things become visible.
“A road brings the buyer and takes the son.”
On logging roads.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Nzambi as the high god; lineage ancestors present in the reliquary bundles; forest spirits with prohibitions attached to named places.
Beliefs: Reliquary veneration; ancestral offerings; the bwiti and related initiatory religions in the Gabonese-influenced communities; Catholic and Protestant Christianity now widespread.
Ancestors: The bones of lineage founders, kept in guarded baskets, were the community's most consequential objects and the basis of its land claims.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Nzambi
The high god
Lineage ancestors
Present in the reliquary bundles and addressed there
Forest powers
Presences of named clearings, trees and streams
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of rectangular houses along a cleared street in the forest, with the reliquary house or the lineage head's house at the centre.
Building techniques: Pole and raffia or mud walling with leaf and thatch roofing; wood carving in the reliquary tradition; brass and copper sheeting on guardian figures; raffia weaving.
Village layout: Two lines of houses along a swept street with the dance ground at one end, gardens behind, and the forest immediately beyond.
Artifacts
Reliquary guardian figures
Sculpture
Carved and sometimes metal-covered figures set over baskets of ancestral bones.
Odzala-Kokoua National Park
Natural heritage
Forest park holding major western lowland gorilla and forest elephant populations.
Slit drums
Instrument
Signal drums of the northern Congo forest.
Crossbow and hunting nets
Craft
Forest hunting equipment of the Congo-Gabon plateaux.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1800
Mbete-group communities settle the plateaux between the Congo basin and the Ogooué.
1880s–1900s
French concession companies reach the region; rubber and ivory exactions follow.
1930s–1960
Missions destroy or displace reliquaries; the figures enter European collections.
1935–present
Odzala is protected from 1935 and expanded as a national park; logging concessions cover most of the forest around it.
2002–2005
Ebola outbreaks kill thousands of gorillas in the region and reach human communities.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale — Mbete and Kota collectionsRoyal Museum for Central Africa
Premium & scholarly sources
- Bermejo and others, Ebola outbreak killed 5000 gorillasScience
- Ethnologue: MbereSIL International