The Lese "Chiefdoms"

More by name than by actual political organization, the farmers living at Malembi today are, officially, members of a "chiefdom." They call themselves the Lese-Dese and make up one of five Lese chiefdoms in northeastern Zaire, the others being the Lese-Karo, living from Nzaro to Mambasa, the Lese-Abfunkotu, living from Komanda to Mount Hoyo, the Lese-Otsodo, living from Watsa to Djungu, and the Lese-Mvuba, living in the vicinity of Beni, near the Ugandan border. H. Van Geluwe (1957) treats all the Lese as if they were one unified group, and the Mvuba as if they were another. G. Schweinfurth (1874), one of the first explorers to encounter the Lese, recognizes an additional group called the Lese-Obi, and P. Schebesta (1952) lumps the Mvuba, Lese, and Mamvu together as the Bvuba-Balese-Mamvu based on their lin-

guistic similarity. To my knowledge, however, those people who call themselves Lese-Obi identify themselves as a subgroup of the Lese-Abfunkotu. The Lese-Otsodo also present some confusion, since many Otsodo identify themselves as Lese-Mangutu. The Mamvu, today considered by Zairians to be a non-Lese group, live north of Malembi and Dingbo. The Lese-Dese, with whom we are concerned here, is the smallest of all the groups. They live in the Collectivité Lese-Dese , a Zairian administrative unit that includes approximately twenty-three hundred farmers, about nineteen hundred of whom are Lese-Dese, about four hundred of whom are Mamvu, Lese-Karo, or Azande, and about a thousand Efe who live close to the Lese-Dese villages.

Following Geluwe (1957), A. Merriam (1959) considers the "Mamvu-Lese" as a "culture cluster" either within itself or as a subcluster of the Mangbetu-Azande cluster (based primarily on similarities in material culture). Although the customs and the language of the Mamvu are considerably different from those of the Lese-Dese and the Lese-Karo, their proximity has resulted in extensive intermarriage with the Lese, as well as the mutual exchange of language and ideas. Vansina (1990a), using A. Vorbichler's figure of a 93 percent correspondence between the Mamvu and Lese-Abfunkotu languages (Vorbichler 1971), suggests that the split between the Mamvu and the Lese groups occurred as recently as A.D. 1720. He points out that in the first centuries A.D. , several diverse groups of farmers and herders made their way into the rain forest from nearly every direction (Vansina 1990a:169). However, historians and linguists who have looked into the question of dating the arrival of the Lese distinguish the Lese from the early wave of immigrants. The immigrants included speakers of three main language families: Bantu, central Sudanic, and Ubangian; the Lese most likely derive from, or were associated with, the Sudanic speakers.

I refer to the Sudanic Lese language as "Lese," and the language as spoken by the Efe, "Efe." I have purposely dropped the prefix "Ki-," used by many scholars (e.g., Schebesta 1933; Turnbull 1965b; Bailey 1985) to refer to the languages of northeastern Zaire because "Ki-" is a prefix for Bantu rather than Sudanic languages and should therefore not appear with "Lese" or "Efe."^[1]

According to the historian and administrator M. Baltus (1949), the various Lese groups before colonization classified themselves into four

[1] Readers interested in the morphology of Lese and related languages can refer to Harries 1956 and Vorbichler 1971.

divisions: the Lese-Karo, the Maro, the Masa, and the Lese-Dese. Baltus believed that, as early as the seventeenth century, the Lese were situated north of their present location, in the Uele and Bomokande River area, and that, in the nineteenth century, as a result of Zande and Mangbetu expansion, they were pushed further south. Whether or not the Lese were actually affected by Zande and Mangbetu invasions, we do know that the Lese were living with the Efe, and living within or near the Ituri rain forest, at that time (Keim 1979). The Lese themselves say that they come from a large mountain called Menda, from which all the "black people" of Africa originated. After arguments over sharing fruit, each group went its own way, the Budu traveling to Wamba, and the Mamvu and the various Lese groups traveling southeast toward the Nepoko River.

We do not know where Mount Menda is located; we cannot even be sure that such a mountain exists outside of legend. Most Lese I interviewed, however, are confident that their ancestors emigrated from the north, and Mount Menda may therefore be a metaphoric representation of north. Paul Joset (1949), another historian and administrator, thought the Lese could have traveled south to the Ituri from the Uele/ Bomokande region, or, just as possibly, could have come from the Ruwenzori mountain area far to the east and gradually moved west across the Semliki River, from what is now western Uganda.

There is some support for this latter theory. For one thing, the Lese-Mvuba (they appear as "Mbuba" or "Bambuba" in Joset 1949) live today not far from the Semliki, the town of Beni (close to the Uganda-Zaire border), and Lake Mobutu (formerly Lake Edward, on the Uganda-Zaire border) and form part of a larger ethnic group called the Amba. Also, some elderly Lese-Dese informants told me that despite the many people who believe Mount Menda is in the north, it is actually located in the savanna to the southeast of the Ituri forest. Furthermore, Baltus (1949) says that his Lese-Mvuba informants talked of migrating from a great lake (there are no great lakes in the Uele region), following the Mamvu and Lese-Dese across the savanna. There is also support for the Lese legend of migration from a mountain in the fact that, whereas there are few mountains in the Uele or Ituri regions, the area around the Semliki is quite mountainous. In addition, the Lese-Dese language contains words for birds and mammals that live only outside the rain forest, such as hippopotami and lions, large populations of which live in the valley of the Semliki River. Joset writes:

The Bambuba [Mvuba] are blood brothers of the Walese, and of the Mamvu. They seem to have been the rear-guard of the migration; the

Mamvu, followed by the Walese, preceded them. . . . According to the commissioner of the Absil district, the Bambuba came from Kitara, in Uganda, by way of Mukeve, to the north of Ruwenzori. In the course of their migrations, they settled in MUHULUNI [sic; Uganda], near the border, then settled in the Abwanza region (currently inhabited by the Watalinga). Under the pressure of the Watalinga, who also came from the east, the Bambuba crossed the Semliki River and settled on its banks.

Sharing the same ethnic and racial characteristics, the Mamvu-Walese-Bambuba also share the same linguistic characteristics. (1949:5, my translation)

The linguistic evidence may be quite unreliable, of course. If the Lese came from the north and traveled through the forest south to the Semliki, and then moved back into the forest, they could have been familiar with mammals in a transitory way. Many Lese groups who live near the forest-savanna ecotone have had contact with a variety of savanna populations, so that words of savanna origin were introduced into the vocabulary at various points in history. Joset, on the other hand, says that the various Lese groups, "the warriors of the forest," as he calls them, did not like the savanna and searched for forest land. He says that the Lese, after living for some time at the edge of a series of mountains, were afflicted with severe hunger. They dispersed and looked for hospitable territory.

The Walese left Mount Ami, stopped for a short time at Mount Sawa, and settled on Mount Mulabu, in the middle of the forest. They planted bananas there, proof of a prolonged stay.

Several years later there was a great famine that dispersed the Walese. Each family split off from the group, going its separate way, seeking hospitable soil; this would be the last stage of their migration. (Joset 1949:5, my translation)