African Women Writing Resistance: An Anthology of Contemporary Voices

Interview with Kaya a Mbaya (Congo), a Babongo Woman

Kaya a Mbaya, a Babongo woman of approximately forty years of age, was born in the forest of Tele in the district of Sibiti. She now lives in the forests around the village of Missama, also in the district of Sibiti, in the Republic of the Congo. Kaya a Mbaya is married and mother of several children and grandchildren. The minority people called Pygmies by the colonizers are called Babongo in the local language (singular: Mubongo). Physically, they do not correspond anymore to the portrait of them painted by the early European explorers: today the Babongo people are taller than they used to be (1.2 to 1.5 m) because their morphology has changed through sexual contact with larger people. Most Babongo people live in or near the forests, where they carry on their traditional activities of hunting and gathering. They reside in more or less sedentary villages, together with the other major ethnic group in the Congo, the Bantus. 27 Interview with Kaya a Mbaya, a Babongo Woman Pierre Piya-Bouanga 28 Part One. Engaging with Tradition This interview took place in January 2006.* Because of the widespread suspicion between the Pygmies and the Bantu communities, it was difficult to gain the trust of Madame Kaya a Mbaya. My mother first approached the Pygmy community with some gifts that I sent, and after visiting the village two or three times, she was able to begin to forge some lines of communication, if not of actual friendship, with Kaya a Mbaya. The path thus smoothed for me, I approached the village myself to conduct the interview, leaving my motorcycle at the edge of the forest and walking half an hour further into the forest to arrive at my destination. The interview was rather long, between eight and fourteen hours, including the time that was needed to overcome her distrust, as well as the time it took me to write down her responses, since I did not have a tape recorder . I spoke in Kiyaka, a language that the Pygmies in this area understand quite well, and she responded in the Pygmy language, which my mother and I understand fairly well. What are your current relations with Bantus? Bantus consider the Babongo as subhuman, second-class people. Very rare are those among them who consider us as human beings. Take, for example, the case of marriages between Bantus and Pygmies: they are almost nonexistent. You can count them on the fingers of one hand. In those marriages, it is the Bantu man who marries the Pygmy woman, whereas no Pygmy man is allowed to marry a Bantu woman. Bantus say that we are swine, that we smell bad, that our woman emit bad odors, that we do not wash ourselves. Moreover, they accuse us of being lazy, liars; in short, good-for-nothings. In fact, the laziness they attribute to us is due to the fact that we easily find our livelihood in the forest that is our home. In the forest, a Mubongo finds all that is necessary: honey, mushrooms, game, fruits, fish, wild vegetables, and even medicine. But now, you see, our forest is being destroyed. Where will we live? Where will we go to find our food? Even the animals, to whom we were very close, are running away from us and becoming very rare. But let me go back to my subject: a Bantu man is ashamed to show publicly that he carries on an intimate relationship with a Pygmy woman, and yet they are secretly crazy about us—especially at the time of our dances, when they come to admire us. A Mubongo does not have the right to look a Bantu straight in the eyes. When a Bantu and a Mubongo meet on a road, the Mubongo must give way *This interview was commissioned by Pauline Dongala. It was translated into French by Pierre Piya-Bouanga, then into English by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez. and let his “Master” Bantu pass. They do not eat the food prepared by us; they say we do not know how to cook. Are there cases of rape in your society? The women of my generation and certainly our ancestors did not know this phenomenon. But today, the young Bantu people, because of the loosening of moral standards, will wait for our girls when they go to the river or the fields and make advances to...