Rose and Raymond on the tarmac on the way to Inongo
blog entry from Miriam Noyes
In February, Rose Mayala, Raymond Mafuta and I packed up for a 10-day trip to Inongo, a medium-sized town on the northeastern shore of Lake Mai-Ndombe. The lake is 500kms northeast of Kinshasa. People in western Congo know it for dried fish. The regional fishing industry exports tons of dried fish every month. Inongo is also the home of many groups of the Twa, originally hunter gatherers who call themselves the Original People, or "O.P." (though even that is a name borrowed from outsiders and it has a distinctly bureaucratic ring to it.) [Note 1] They have largely abandoned hunting and gathering in the equatorial forest for settled agriculture and town life like that of the dominant Bantu [Note 2] people in the region.
Our literacy group has been working with the Twa in Inongo since 2007, when UNESCO paid for our first outreach. This was my first trip to see the work myself. I wanted to see what progress they have made in literacy, but we had a wide-ranging agenda: agricultural help, discussion with Twa leaders about community life and aspirations, the growth in Christ of Twa believers.
Ten Twa communities ran literacy classes and French classes for all their people, under our leadership. But many had run out of steam since the literacy team’s last visit. Two factors seem to have contributed to this decline. First, irregular supervision makes it hard to help groups in Inongo maintain focus and enthusiasm. We can't afford frequent trips and had lost phone contact. Second, as literacy groups advance, they need to begin using reading and writing skills in some practical way to satisfy their needs and interests. The Inongo person who was to help did nothing. Many of the groups lost interest, floundered and gave up.
This visit was the literacy team’s first foray into addressing the practical needs of the community. The Inongo Twa groups had asked for machetes and hoes, and “help” to plant fields and vegetable gardens. But it is knowledge used strategically, that really helps, not one-time gifts of a few tools. We brought with us seed cuttings of the best-producing manioc variety from Lusekele, garden seeds, chaya seed cuttings and Moringa seed. We spent much our time with them planning manioc multiplication and distribution to all their communities, sharing knowledge about the new plants, and teaching how to plant more effectively. We talked about the changes this could bring to Twa communities. For example, chaya3 and moringa4 trees provide lots of high-value protein in a very limited space – a boon to under-nourished people with little land. Manioc and its nutritious leaves, can be harvested year around, unlike crops they depend on now.
Paul Bokola Nkanda, one the Twa literacy teachers, divvying up the garden seeds
One of the Twa literacy teachers had continued his studies and become an experienced agricultural technician. He helped with the teaching and agreed to follow-up the manioc and garden multiplication plots after we left. He was hungry for literature on the new plants. This created the opening for functional literacy which we are always looking for.
Now that I know what they need, we can send them useful agricultural information to be read and disseminated through literacy classes. We, of course, encouraged them to restart their literacy classes. In terms of goals, we asked the teachers to send us lists of their most advanced students, and prepare them for graduation. Rose thinks she can get back there this summer to hold the graduations. This should encourage them immensely.
We also had two immediate recommendations for further programming for literacy classes. First, use public health education materials for reading and class discussion. The materials are very good. They are adapted to several levels – from simple to more advanced, often in the regional language or in French. Many times they are barely used by health workers. Health and nutrition education will help their communities in big way.
Second, in the advanced French literacy class, use the devotional lectionary from the Bible Reading League (Scripture Union). Our French program doesn't have a Bible component built in; this would add it. The Bible reading, reflection, and application exercises will help students grow spiritually. They will also help their reading fluency, French understanding, and build comprehension and analytic skills for texts of all kinds. The lectionary will also help their church leadership.
Rose gave the church a Lingala hymnal, and teachers are looking forward to copying off its hymns to teach in their Lingala classes and for worship. The students should love that. Then, when we finish producing the functional literacy program we're making for our teachers this spring, we will send them copies, to help them get and use even more relevant material for their students' lives.
Rose noticed that everyone's health had declined. They told us there had been a lot of deaths recently. She also noticed that latrines, adopted after our advocacy, were disappearing, and that there were children with bellies full of intestinal parasites. Leaders were pessimistic that the health system would send them a de-worming team without Bantu advocacy. Fortunately Rose's son, a doctor due to visit Inongo this month, can investigate, instigate a de-worming campaign in their communities (which reminds them to build and use latrines more), and get the health literature we want for them.
Our Twa friends have also had a setback in formal schooling. A local politician promised them free schooling if he got elected. So when he got elected, they stopped paying school fees. Their students were kicked out of school, their primary school classes shut down. Obviously he was not able to make good on his promise. So we've encouraged them to pay again and get their primary school classes going again.
We discovered a curious fact: most Inongo Twa high school students are in the teacher-training or French literature tracks, despite the facts that no one will hire them to teach and far more practical options (business skills, biology & chemistry, wood-working and agriculture) exist. Why? Teacher training and French lit are the cheapest options available to poor people. We suggested that more practical programs would help their communities more. Will they change? We don't know. A positive development was seeing married young mothers continuing their schooling.
Martin Ngonde, a young pastor in the Disciples of Christ community, is new to Inongo. He has close ties to the Twa community and agreed to mentor leaders of the Twa Baptist congregation.
To Rose's sorrow, the cooperation of Bantus and Twa achieved during their 2012 visit has not continued. In fact, Bantu who were previously friendly have soured. We don't know what has happened. However, by God's grace, Martin Ngonde (pictured above) arrived as a new Disciples of Christ pastor to Inongo. He says he has had Twa friends since childhood. His church is quite close to the main Twa community. He has agreed to help them, and oversee the development of the church they have started, despite it being in a different denomination. It is he that had the field ready to plant, where our manioc cuttings have been planted for multiplication, for distribution next planting season.
Jean Longomo, the Twa evangelist who leads the Baptist congregation in Inongo
Visiting gave us ideas for how we could help their new church grow as a community of Twa believers, even at a distance: with prayer, letters, like Paul, and some specific materials. It has a leader, Jean Longomo, leader of the Twa church of Inongo, a man who went through a week of Campus Crusade training, Bibles, and now a Lingala hymnal. That's a beginning. And they know what other CBCO churches do. Now it's a question of helping them to learn how to commit themselves to Christ, leaving all other allegiances behind, and follow him as only Twa can do, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Notes:
1 The original inhabitants of the Congo basin were identified by the early European explorers as "Pygmies" because many groups of forest people first encountered were short-statured. The Original People don't accept this label themselves, but it has come to be a useful term when talking in general about the original forest peoples of central Africa. The designation "Twa" is a Bantu word meaning "hunter-gatherer". In the Inongo area this is the term the Bantu use to designate the original inhabitants of the forest. (Other main Pygmy groups are identified as Mbuti, Cwa and Aka.)
2 The Bantu are the people you think of as ordinary Central Africans. Their ancestors immigrated into West and Central Africa, pushing the original inhabitants, the Pygmies, into the forests and taking over land rights. There are many tribes. Over the centuries Bantu and Pygmies have intermarried (though there are many traditional taboos against mixed liaisons.)
3 Chaya is a fast-growing vegetable bush from Central America whose leaves are tasty and rich in protein, vitamins and essential minerals. It is fast becoming popular everywhere it is introduced.
4 Moringa is the tree to have if protein-deficiency threatens or you're forced into a vegan diet. Its leaves are rich in rare meat-like protein, complementary to other vegetable proteins. Reportedly, severely protein-deficient children return to normal after two weeks of moringa leaf therapy. It is also rich in iron, calcium and vitamins. The immature pods cooked, are compared to asparagus, the flowers to mushrooms. It has many important medicinal properties as well. Moringa processing industries are springing up all over the developing world to serve a growing demand.
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