Batwa–Luba Clashes

DR Congo · 2013–2018

“Listen well: this telling travelled far to reach our circle.”

The Batwa were the forest's first people, long held at the bottom of every ladder in Tanganyika province — landless, mocked, and by some accounts enslaved by their Luba neighbours. The spark was political: when the Congolese army recruited Batwa to spy on the Luba secessionists of Bakata Katanga, Luba fighters took revenge on Batwa villages, and from 2013 the Batwa rose into militias of their own — among them the feared 'Perci.'

Jelikan · Ìtàn · A story is told at night

Sit by the fire.
The griot remembers.

244 tellings from the African Conflict Atlas, every one carried in the griot's own voice — empires and uprisings, taxes and stools, gold roads and broken promises. Told the way a griot tells them: by voice, by lesson, by question.

“A story, a story!”

32 fires burn through the year →

Choose a thread

What shall the fire hear tonight?

Tonight

All time

1200 CEToday

— and the circle answers: “Let it come, let it go.”

Sit by the fire.The griot remembers.

What shall the fire hear tonight?

Sit by the fire.
The griot remembers.