StapleDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Fufu
Cassava and maize flour beaten into a firm dough, the daily food of most of the Congo. Rolled in the fingers, dented with the thumb, and used to scoop.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
Tabwa
People of the Marungu highlands and the south-western shore of Lake Tanganyika, whose scarification and sculpture worked a visual language of balanced opposites, and whose nineteenth century was defined by the ivory trade and the warlord Nsama.
Identity
Population: Estimated 200,000 to 300,000 across the DR Congo and Zambia
Location: Tanganyika province, DR Congo, around Moba and the Marungu plateau, and northern Zambia around Lake Mweru
Language: Kitabwa, closely related to Bemba and Luba
Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (M41)
Traditional governance: Chiefdoms of varying size, historically fluid and often contested; Congolese and Zambian territorial administration today.
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.
Tabwa of Marungu
The highland communities above the lake.
Tabwa of the lakeshore
Fishing and trading communities around Moba.
Tabwa of Mweru
Zambian communities toward Lake Mweru and the Luapula.
Culture
Clothing: Contemporary dress; the elaborate body scarification of the older tradition, in patterns of paired triangles and lines, now largely ended; chiefly regalia of skins and beads.
Food: Cassava and maize, beans, groundnuts, lake fish in quantity, game from the plateau, and the maize and sorghum beers of the region.
Ceremonies: Chiefly installations; ancestral offerings; the butwa association's initiations, historically important; funerals; fishing rites.
Marriage customs: Matrilineal descent with patrilocal residence in many communities, an arrangement that generates the tensions Tabwa proverbs dwell on; bridewealth modest.
Initiation rites: Butwa association initiation for both men and women, with graded knowledge; scarification historically applied at puberty in patterns that stated a person's lineage and standing.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia, 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.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
12 dishes
StapleDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Madesu
also Congolese beans, Haricots
Red beans stewed with onion, tomato and palm oil until thick, the cheapest and most eaten dish in Kinshasa. Served with fufu or rice and a spoon of chilli.
Serves 6 · 2 hours, plus overnight soaking
National dishDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Poulet à la Moambé
also Moambe chicken, Nsusu na mwambe
Chicken cooked in palm nut pulp with chilli and garlic, the national dish of both Congos. The palm oil rising orange to the surface is the sign it is ready.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
National dishDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Ntaba
also Grilled goat, Chèvre braisée
Goat marinated in mustard, garlic and lemon then grilled slowly over charcoal, the Kinshasa nganda dish, eaten late with plantain and beer.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus 4 hours marinating
Street foodDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Mikate
also Beignets
Fried dough balls sold from basins by women at every Kinshasa junction, eaten hot at breakfast or as a snack with sweet coffee.
Serves Makes 24 · 2 hours 15 minutes
Street foodDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Makemba
also Grilled plantain, Banane braisée
Plantain grilled over charcoal until blistered and served with a fierce pili-pili, sold outside every Kinshasa bar and bus stop.
Serves 4 · 25 minutes
Festival & feastDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Liboke ya Mbisi
Fish steamed in a banana leaf parcel with onion, chilli and lime, the Congo river's signature method. Opened at the table so the steam and smell arrive together.
Serves 4 · 1 hour
Festival & feastDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Mbika
also Egusi in leaves, Pumpkin seed parcels
Ground melon seed mixed with fish or meat, wrapped in leaves and steamed until it sets into a savoury cake. A Congolese celebration dish and a market food.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Regional specialityDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Pondu
also Saka saka
Pounded cassava leaves cooked long with palm oil, smoked fish and aubergine. Eaten across the Congo basin and cooked for hours, since cassava leaves demand it.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes
Regional specialityDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Sombe ya Kivu
also Kivu cassava leaves, Sombe
Cassava leaves pounded and cooked long with palm oil and smoked fish, the daily dish of the Kivu hills. Bitter, dark and cooked until it no longer is.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
Drink & sweetDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Malafu ya Ngasi
also Palm wine
Palm wine tapped from the oil palm and drunk the same day, sweet in the morning and sharp by evening. Poured for the ancestors before anyone else drinks.
Serves Varies · Tapped daily
Drink & sweetDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Lotoko
also Congolese maize spirit
Distilled maize or cassava spirit, made in the villages and drunk everywhere. Clear, strong and entirely unregulated — this is a description of a tradition rather than a recommendation.
Serves Varies · 5 to 7 days fermenting, plus distilling
Zambia
8 dishes
StapleZambia
Nshima
Maize meal cooked stiff and served in smooth rounds with relish. Zambians eat it twice a day and a meal without it is not counted as one.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
StapleZambia
Delele
also Okra relish, Slippery relish
Okra cooked with bicarbonate of soda until deliberately slippery, a Zambian relish that people either love or refuse outright.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
National dishZambia
Ifisashi
Greens cooked in groundnut paste, served with nshima. Meatless, cheap and eaten across the country, and the dish Zambians most often name as their own.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes
Street foodZambia
Vitumbuwa
Rice or maize flour fritters, fried and sold at markets and roadsides with tea, eaten at breakfast and by children on the way home.
Serves Makes 20 · 2 hours
Street foodZambia
Chikanda
also African polony, Wild orchid cake
Wild orchid tubers pounded with groundnut and chilli and set into a firm pink cake, sliced and sold at Zambian markets. Sought after enough that the orchids are now threatened.
Serves 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Festival & feastZambia
Village Chicken with Nshima
Free-range chicken stewed slowly with onion and tomato, cooked when guests arrive. Village chicken takes far longer than the frozen kind and is worth every minute.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
Regional specialityZambia
Kapenta
Tiny dried lake sardines fried with tomato and onion, from Lake Tanganyika and Lake Kariba. Cheap protein, eaten with nshima across the country.
Serves 6 · 35 minutes
Drink & sweetZambia
Munkoyo
Maize porridge fermented with the root of the munkoyo shrub into a sweet-sour drink, made in villages and sold in bottles in Lusaka.
Serves Makes 3 litres · 1 to 2 days
Stories & Oral Literature
Balanced OppositesArt and thought
Tabwa scarification, sculpture and design worked through paired opposition: the balumbu pattern of joined triangles, the ideas of light and dark, of the new moon and the full, of the ordered village and the wild. Allen Roberts, working with Tabwa communities from the 1970s, argued that this was a coherent visual philosophy rather than decoration, and that the figures and the bodies carried the same argument. The scarification has ended within living memory; the sculpture is in museums.
Nsama and the Ivory RoadNineteenth-century history
The Tabwa chief Nsama controlled a territory rich in ivory on the route between Katanga's copper and the Swahili coast, and in 1867 he was defeated by the Zanzibari trader Tippu Tip, an event Livingstone recorded. The defeat opened the region to the coastal traders, broke Tabwa political unity into competing chiefdoms, and set the pattern of the following decades: ivory out, guns in, and a fragmentation the Free State then completed.
The Plateau's IsolationContemporary condition
The Marungu plateau rises steeply from Lake Tanganyika to over 2,000 metres, and Moba is reachable from the rest of Congo essentially only by lake or air. That isolation spared the area some of the eastern wars' intensity and has left it among the least served parts of the country: no through roads, intermittent health services, and a lake fishery that is the economy. Mai-Mai groups have operated on the plateau throughout, and displacement between the highlands and the shore is chronic.
Proverbs
“The new moon is the old moon's other half.”
The paired-opposites principle, in its commonest form.
“A man lives in his father's village and is buried in his mother's.”
On matrilineal descent with patrilocal residence.
“Ivory brought the stranger and the stranger stayed.”
On the nineteenth century.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Leza as the high god; ancestral spirits; the moon and its phases as the organising image of Tabwa cosmology; named hills and pools with prohibitions.
Beliefs: The butwa association's graded knowledge; ancestral offerings; divination and healing; Catholic mission Christianity long established at Moba and Baudouinville, now dominant.
Ancestors: Ancestors are addressed at lineage sites; chiefly genealogies are recited at installations and were the basis of the nineteenth-century succession disputes.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Leza
The high god of the central African plateau peoples
Ancestral spirits
Addressed at lineage sites for health, fishing and harvest
The moon
Not a deity but the central image of the cosmology of balanced opposites
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of rectangular houses on the plateau and along the lakeshore, with fishing landings below and gardens on the slopes.
Building techniques: Pole and mud with thatch and iron sheet; dugout and plank canoes; wood carving in figures and staffs; scarification as a body technique with its own specialists.
Village layout: Houses along a street with gardens behind; the chief's compound distinguished; the shore villages facing the water with canoes drawn up.
Artifacts
Tabwa figures
Sculpture
Standing ancestor figures carrying the paired-triangle scarification patterns.
Balumbu scarification patterns
Bodyart
Joined-triangle designs stating lineage and standing, now no longer applied.
Marungu plateau
Natural heritage
High grassland and forest above Lake Tanganyika, largely roadless.
Chiefly staffs and stools
Regalia
Carved insignia of Tabwa chiefship.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1800
Tabwa communities settle the Marungu plateau and the lake's south-western shore.
1867
Tippu Tip defeats the chief Nsama; the region opens to Zanzibari ivory trading.
1880s–1900s
White Fathers missions establish; the Free State consolidates control and fragments the chiefdoms.
1970s–1980s
Roberts's fieldwork documents Tabwa visual thought as scarification ends.
1996–present
The Congo wars and Mai-Mai activity on the plateau; Moba remains reachable mainly by lake and air.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Roberts and Maurer, Tabwa: The Rising of a New MoonWorldCat
- Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale — Tabwa collectionsRoyal Museum for Central Africa
Premium & scholarly sources
- Ethnologue: TaabwaSIL International