Agriculture and the Role of the Efe

Lese agriculture is described in detail elsewhere (Wilkie 1987), but it is necessary here to mention some aspects of agriculture that relate to the integration of the Lese and the Efe in a joint productive activity at the level of the house. The Lese practice long-term current cultivation of yams, manioc, maize, beans, rice, plantains, and peanuts. According to G. P. Murdock, the Lese fitted within the Sudanic complex, a complex that included "growing ambary, cow peas, earth peas, gourds, okra, roselle, sesame, water melons, and in the south oil palm, in addition to sorghum and millet" (1959:227), but there is little indication that the Lese of Malembi cultivated any of these crops, other than sesame. Following relocation, the Lese began to produce some rice, peanuts, and coffee as cash crops, and most men grow some coffee today in the hope that they can sell it for cash. But the Lese seldom grow more than a few different kinds of crops. Gardens are extremely small and produce barely enough to feed a single house (Bailey and Peacock 1989). Greater attention is thus paid to manioc and plantains, which can be planted and harvested at any time during the year, require little labor, and can be abandoned after a year or two without the feeling that a great investment has been lost.^[4] Few Lese cultivate the palm oil trees (Elaeis guineesis ), despite the fact that they are the major source of oil used for cooking meat and preparing the staple of cassava leaves (odu-pi ). These trees take up to seven years to mature, and most Lese, by experience and habit, do not expect to remain in one village for more than a few years. The Efe, however, travel to the forest areas to look for wild palm nuts, and these may be processed and distributed in the kitchen of the Lese partners. According to oral history, the Lese before resettlement obtained the majority of their palm oil from Budu traders and also acquired oil from siya trees found growing wild. The Lese have little contact with the Budu today, and so they are continually searching for oil, either at the new Dingbo market or from their economic partners, the Efe. Domesticated animals are rare; the Lese keep no cattle, and only a few have goats (Bailey and Peacock [1989] note that only a handful of 200 houses sampled owned even a single goat); however, most people own at least one chicken.

[4] In a 1916 report on plantain cultivation in the northeast Belgian Congo, Commandant Delhaise wrote of banana cultivation among the Rega who live to the north of the Lese: "They [the Rega] are content to stir the earth a little around the spot where the plant is to be planted. Most often, once planting is finished, no further attention is paid to the field. Sometimes one or two weedings are given if weeds develop too much" (Lacomblez 1916:127–128; also quoted in Miracle 1967:46).

The Efe often take an active role in the production of crops. Together, the Lese men and their Efe partners will clear gardens at a distance of between a few hundred meters and one kilometer from the village. They may clear up to two hectares, leaving one hectare fallow and seeding the other, but the average is about half a hectare of secondary forest each year. The same garden can be used for two years, after which time it is usually abandoned.

Lese plan their gardens in accordance with the rainfall cycle. Clearing is normally done in December and January, at the end of the rainy season, so that unwanted vegetation can dry and be burned in February during the dry season.^[5] During this time of the year, the Efe frequently make hunting trips from forest camps, but they can return to the villages periodically to help the Lese cut back the forest since most of these camps are within a day's walk from the Lese villages and rarely more than an eight-hour walk from the villages of the Lese-Dese. During other times of the year, the Efe camps are constructed closer to the road, sometimes within fifty meters, but rarely further than nine hundred meters, of a Lese village (Fisher 1986). Even in December and January, the best hunting season, the Efe rarely use more than about twenty kilometers of a given trail, beginning near a village, or village garden, leading through old garden growth to the camps from which the Efe begin honey collecting and hunting expeditions.

In most cases, Lese and Efe men clear the gardens and Lese women and Efe men and women plant the crops. This is done in March and April, although bananas and cassava are sometimes planted as early as November or December; the harvest begins in late June and continues

[5] The Lese classify their gardens into several types. The general term for garden, opu , describes an area in which food is currently being cultivated outside the village area; thus, banana and coffee plants cultivated within the village plaza do not constitute an opu . One is either in the village (ubo-ke ), or in the garden (opu-ke ), and there is no overlapping; in the event that someone lives in their garden they are said to be without a village. A garden area that has been hoed but in which no trees have been felled is called an ube (from the verb ube , to cut) a term that implies that cutting is required. The ubenatanga (from the verb ube , to cut, and the verb itanga , to uproot or weed) is a burned garden that requires weeding. Four terms describe gardens not currently under cultivation: (1) Ngoi , or opungoi , is secondary forest that has grown over a previously cultivated garden; (2) opukogbe is an area that has been hoed but left untended or uncut for one to two years; (3) gbakba is a general term that refers to any piece of land that at some point in the past was cultivated by one's fellow clan members; and (4) chacha refers in general to any old and abandoned garden that is open to use by anyone looking for a piece of land on which to cultivate food. The word chacha signifies that the prior holders of usufructuary rights over that land are not known. These classifications become very important in the allocation of usufructuary rights to land.

through December. The work of Lese men in the garden diminishes after clearing, and after peanut planting, but Lese women and Efe men and women, especially, continue to work in the gardens throughout the summer and autumn weeding, harvesting, planting rice (before the beginning of the heavy rains in August), and searching for potatoes or cassava for each day's meal (Wilkie 1987:116). At this time, an Efe woman's subsistence activities are, in large part, oriented toward the garden of her husband's Lese partner (if she is married) or her father's Lese partner (if she is unmarried), where she weeds and plants, and from which she receives cultivated foods. Efe men, meanwhile, if they are not hunting, spend considerable time caring for children, and preparing and cooking the food that their wives or sisters help to cultivate in the Lese gardens.

Once the foods are harvested, the distribution of foods between the Lese and the Efe begins. Despite the intricacy of Lese and Efe relations, food distribution is not marked by ritual or ceremonial activity. Transactions are usually made in Lese villages, but they may take place anywhere, at almost any time. Following the term oki , this is strictly a "division" or distribution of food, but in fact the transfers imply some recognition of reciprocal obligation. The distribution of foods consistently sustains debt and obligation between the parties, and there is a certain understanding of commitments, though vague and indeterminate, to continue distributing foods. These future distributions are not fixed according to time or to the quantity or quality of goods (see Sahlins 1972:194). This generalized and indeterminate reciprocity is made easier by the fact that the Lese and the Efe are transferring different kinds of goods—the Lese giving their garden produce and the Efe their meat and honey. By and large, the items given do not have any fixed or definite equivalence, but there are a few exceptions: honey, for example, should be reciprocated with cloth. There are no fixed amounts of honey or cloth, but the Efe expect that when they give pots of honey to their Lese partners, they will be given cloth. In general, the most important part of any transaction between Lese and Efe partners is an evaluation of the transfer as a social interaction, rather than an evaluation of the quantities of goods transferred. My Lese informants stressed the point that what was crucial to the structure and continuity of their relations was not so much the quantity of goods given as it was the act itself

of dividing up specific kinds of goods as an expression of loyalty and relationship. The same feeling was not so true of my Efe informants: they appeared to demand frequent and substantial amounts of cultivated foods, and they were quite aware of how much they gave and received.