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The Efé are a group of part-time
hunter-gatherer A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fung ...
people living in the
Ituri Rainforest The Ituri Rainforest is a rainforest located in the Ituri Province of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The forest's name derives from the nearby Ituri River which flows through the rainforest, connecting firstly to the Aruwimi Ri ...
of the
Democratic Republic of Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
. In the depths of the forest they do not wear much clothing, using only leaf huts as shelter for their bodies in the intense heat. The Efé are Pygmies, and one of the shortest peoples in the world. The men grow to an average height of 142 cm (4 ft. 8 in.), and women tend to be about 5 cm (2 in.) shorter. Dr. Jean-Pierre Hallet was very involved with the Efé, from raising awareness to the plight of the tribe, to the introduction of new foods and methods previously unknown (such as a
legume A legume () is a plant in the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), or the fruit or seed of such a plant. When used as a dry grain, the seed is also called a pulse. Legumes are grown agriculturally, primarily for human consumption, for livestock for ...
called the "winged bean" of
New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torres ...
). He also introduced new methods of farming to the Efé, who likely had been a hunter-gatherer society for many thousands of years.


Origins

The Efé (and other Western pygmy groups) show genetic evidence of an early genetic divergence from neighboring groups. The Semliki harpoon, 90,000 years old, is one of the oldest known human tools and was found in the current range of the Efé pygmies. This suggests an initial aquatic civilisation based on fishing. Jean-Pierre Hallet promoted the establishment of a sanctuary for the Efé along the
Semliki River Semliki River is a major river, long, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda in Central and East Africa. It flows north from Lake Edward in Beni Territory, Nord-Kivu, D.R.C avoiding the Rwenzori Mountains on its Right (East), emp ...
near
Virunga National Park , iucn_category = II , iucn_ref = , location = Democratic Republic of the Congo , map = Democratic Republic of the Congo , relief = 1 , coordinates = , area = , established = , nearest_city = Goma , photo =Virunga National Park-107997 ...
, and also lobbied heavily for the rights of the semi-nomadic pygmies to continue living in the protected Okapi Wildlife Reserve in the Ituri Forest.


Location and overview

The Efe are one of three groups of pygmies, collectively named BaMbuti, of the
Ituri Ituri is one of the 21 new provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo created in the 2015 repartitioning. Ituri, Bas-Uele, Haut-Uele, and Tshopo provinces are the result of the dismemberment of the former Orientale province. Ituri was ...
forest of the
Democratic Republic of Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
. The other groups are the Sua, and the
Aka Aka, AKA or a.k.a. may refer to: * "Also known as", used to introduce an alternative name Languages * Aka language (Sudan) * Aka language, in the Central African Republic * Hruso language, in India, also referred to as Aka * a prefix in the n ...
. Of these, the Efé occupy the most land, from the north to the southeast of the forest. One of the main ways in which these groups are distinguished is by the neighbouring non-pygmy tribes with whom they cooperate. The Efé, who differ from other pygmy groups in that they hunt with bows and arrows instead of nets, are associated with the Lese people. The Efé language is related to that of the Lese, and is
Central Sudanic Central Sudanic is a family of about sixty languages that have been included in the proposed Nilo-Saharan language family. Central Sudanic languages are spoken in the Central African Republic, Chad, South Sudan, Uganda, Congo (DRC), Nigeria an ...
in origin. (The pygmy groups in the region generally speak the language of the tribes with whom they associate.)


History and external influences

There is some debate over how long the Efé have lived in their present state, with accounts of their having been in the Ituri forest for 20,000 years. Bailey states that the Ituri area has been inhabited since 40,700 BC, but that the region was most likely
savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland- grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground ...
h and
temperate forest A temperate forest is a forest found between the tropical and boreal regions, located in the temperate zone. It is the second largest biome on our planet, covering 25% of the world's forest area, only behind the boreal forest, which covers abou ...
(as opposed to
rainforest Rainforests are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforest can be classified as tropical rainforest or temperate rainfores ...
) until somewhere between 2900 and 720 BC. His analyses suggest that
hunter-gathering A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...
is not a sufficient source of caloric intake alone, so that some form of agricultural pursuits were likely and that the civilization probably developed at the border of the savannah and the rainforest, rather than in the forest itself. Net hunting by other pygmy tribes, however, seem to provide higher caloric intake than the bow and arrow hunting of the Efé. Some suggestions as to the evolutionary benefit of the pygmy short stature was the ability to navigate the dense jungle, with its low hanging branches, more easily. Small stature also confers a small advantage for body heat dissipation in equatorial (hot, humid) regions. (While there are pygmy peoples in colder climates as well, this may have occurred by migration.) Arab slave raids, especially from the 1850s until the 1890s, served to destabilise the region. Trade routes were opened up, and a common dialect called ''Kingwana'' (a Congo variant of
Kiswahili Swahili, also known by its local name , is the native language of the Swahili people, who are found primarily in Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique (along the East African coast and adjacent litoral islands). It is a Bantu language, though Swahili ...
, also known as Copperbelt Swahili) was introduced. New crops, firearms, and hut designs were also introduced during that time. The Efé assumed roles as watchmen for the Lese against the slavers.
Belgian Congo The Belgian Congo (french: Congo belge, ; nl, Belgisch-Congo) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in 1964. Colo ...
was established in 1908, and the Belgian colonial government played a role in shaping the lives of the Efé and Lese.
Chiefdom A chiefdom is a form of hierarchical political organization in non-industrial societies usually based on kinship, and in which formal leadership is monopolized by the legitimate senior members of select families or 'houses'. These elites form a ...
s among the Lese were formalised and police forces were created with Lese policemen. These supervised the work projects of the colonial administration: primarily the construction of three main roads in the Ituri region. Whole villages of Lese and Efé were relocated alongside these roads in these work projects, and new crops were planted for sale as well as for village use. The structure of these roadside villages and the resultant behaviour of the Efé differed significantly from their forest villages. When Congo became independent from Belgium on June 30, 1960, the Ituri region began to fall into decay. The dictatorship of
Mobutu Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga (; born Joseph-Désiré Mobutu; 14 October 1930 – 7 September 1997) was a Congolese politician and military officer who was the president of Zaire from 1965 to 1997 (known as the Democratic Republic o ...
that soon followed independence followed a practice of neglect for the region, allowing the roads to fall into disrepair. "...We have no roads, we have no insurrection" was one of his favourite sayings. In 1997 he died of
prostate cancer Prostate cancer is cancer of the prostate. Prostate cancer is the second most common cancerous tumor worldwide and is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related mortality among men. The prostate is a gland in the male reproductive system that su ...
and the rebel army of
Laurent Kabila Laurent may refer to: *Laurent (name), a French masculine given name and a surname **Saint Laurence (aka: Saint ''Laurent''), the martyr Laurent **Pierre Alphonse Laurent, mathematician **Joseph Jean Pierre Laurent, amateur astronomer, discoverer ...
took control of the country in the
First Congo War The First Congo War, group=lower-alpha (1996–1997), also nicknamed Africa's First World War, was a civil war and international military conflict which took place mostly in Zaire (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo), with major spillo ...
. This was soon followed by
Rwanda Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...
n and
Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The ...
n invasions of the Eastern Congo in the
Second Congo War The Second Congo War,, group=lower-alpha also known as the Great War of Africa or the Great African War and sometimes referred to as the African World War, began in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in August 1998, little more than a year a ...
. Congolese militias known as Mai Mai also sprang up and began fighting in this conflict, and the Ituri region was one of the areas most affected by this conflict, the largest in Africa.


Economic and cultural features

The Efé are primarily a
foraging Foraging is searching for wild food resources. It affects an animal's fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavi ...
society, but they do sometimes perform
wage labour Wage labour (also wage labor in American English), usually referred to as paid work, paid employment, or paid labour, refers to the socioeconomics, socioeconomic relationship between a workforce, worker and an employment, employer in which the w ...
for the Lese villagers. Efé men hunt and gather honey while the women gather food and also fish. Recently, the Ituri forest has been logged at a tremendous rate, and Efé have been hired to assist with the logging.


Attaining necessities

Hunting is a primary way in which Efé men contribute to the food supply of the tribe, which they were observed doing 21.1% of the time during 12-hour observation days. They hunt either alone or in groups, using either
spear A spear is a pole weapon consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with fire hardened spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastene ...
s or
bows and arrows The bow and arrow is a ranged weapon system consisting of an elastic launching device (bow) and long-shafted projectiles (arrows). Humans used bows and arrows for hunting and aggression long before recorded history, and the practice was commo ...
(the arrows may be iron-tipped or poison-tipped, depending on the type of prey).
Monkey Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as the simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes, which constitutes an incomple ...
s are hunted alone using poison-tipped arrows, which is done by solitary hunters who locate groups of monkeys feeding in trees and stand where they think the monkeys will move. Once they are within , an Efé archer fires several arrows and, if he hits one of the monkeys, he will either try to follow it up to through the forest (waiting for the poison to set in), or he will return later (the same day or the next morning) in order to bring it back to camp. Poison-tipped arrows are labour-intensive to make (the poisonous roots and vines have to be gathered and then crushed up to turn them into a juice that can be used to coat the arrow tip), and are made in batches of about 75, with about 5.9 minutes spent on each arrow.
Duiker A duiker is a small to medium-sized brown antelope native to sub-Saharan Africa, found in heavily wooded areas. The 22 extant species, including three sometimes considered to be subspecies of the other species, form the subfamily Cephalophinae ...
s (a type of
antelope The term antelope is used to refer to many species of even-toed ruminant that are indigenous to various regions in Africa and Eurasia. Antelope comprise a wastebasket taxon defined as any of numerous Old World grazing and browsing hoofed mamm ...
) are hunted either in groups or ambushed alone from trees with iron-tipped arrows. The ambush hunts are called ''ebaka'', and they are performed by building perches in fruit trees from which the duikers eat dropped fruits and waiting there during feeding hours, which are early morning and late afternoon. If the hunter hits a duiker, he will jump out of the 2.5- to 3-metre perch and chase it, and call the dogs to join him. Sometimes, though, the animal gets away, since they can run the distance of several football fields away in the dense forest, even wounded. Group hunts, which are called ''mota'', take place with between 4 and 30 men who use either spears for large animals (like forest buffalo and
elephant Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantida ...
s) or iron-tipped arrows for duikers, other species of antelope, and water
chevrotain Chevrotains, or mouse-deer, are small even-toed ungulates that make up the family Tragulidae, the only extant members of the infraorder Tragulina. The 10 extant species are placed in three genera, but several species also are known only f ...
. They also use their dogs to drive game out of their hiding and/or sleeping places and to chase down wounded animals. Another exclusively male task is to gather
honey Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of plants (primar ...
, which takes place from June through September. Honey season, however, can last until November if it is a particularly plentiful season. Women perform most tasks unrelated to hunting and honey-gathering. These include gathering firewood and water, which women do about 5 percent of the time. Generally, they do this with at least one other person, very occasionally a man. Gathering forest foods, namely
fruits In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in partic ...
, nuts,
tubers Tubers are a type of enlarged structure used as storage organs for nutrients in some plants. They are used for the plant's perennation (survival of the winter or dry months), to provide energy and nutrients for regrowth during the next growing s ...
,
mushroom A mushroom or toadstool is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground, on soil, or on its food source. ''Toadstool'' generally denotes one poisonous to humans. The standard for the name "mushroom" is ...
s,
caterpillars Caterpillars ( ) are the larval stage of members of the order Lepidoptera (the insect order comprising butterflies and moths). As with most common names, the application of the word is arbitrary, since the larvae of sawflies (suborder Symp ...
, and
termites Termites are small insects that live in colonies and have distinct castes ( eusocial) and feed on wood or other dead plant matter. Termites comprise the infraorder Isoptera, or alternatively the epifamily Termitoidae, within the order Blat ...
takes up a lot of their time, as does labouring in the villages. Women also spend 17% of their time preparing food, and are almost solely responsible for maintaining the camp.


Family life

One interesting feature of the family life of the Efé is the degree of cooperation involved in caring for children, particularly babies. Sometimes Efé infants will even be nursed by a woman other than the mother if the mother's milk has not come in yet. Other women help more in caretaking than the baby's father, and studies indicate that Efé babies spend just 40% of their time with their mothers and are switched around between caretakers 8.3 times per hour, with about 14 people looking after the infant on average in 8 hours of observation. Also notable is the fact that children constitute only a quarter to a third of the population, and nearly half of women have either no or one child during their lifetime. The Efé ideal is to marry by
sister exchange Sister exchange is a type of marriage agreement where two sets of siblings marry each other. In order to get married, a man needs to persuade his sister to marry the bride's brother. It is practised as a primary method of organising marriages in 3 ...
, but this happens for only 40 percent of men. There is no
bridewealth Bride price, bride-dowry ( Mahr in Islam), bride-wealth, or bride token, is money, property, or other form of wealth paid by a groom or his family to the woman or the family of the woman he will be married to or is just about to marry. Bride do ...
and very little
bride service Bride service has traditionally been portrayed in the anthropological literature as the service rendered by the bridegroom to a bride's family as a bride price or part of one (see dowry). Bride service and bride wealth models frame anthropologi ...
. The Efé are not allowed to marry anyone related to their grandfathers, and they trace their heritage patrilineally. Generally, residence is patrilocal and the composition of camps roughly follows that of a patriclan.


Relationship to the Lese

The Efé can be said to live in cooperation with the Lese, who live in villages of between fifteen and a hundred people and grow their food. The Efé make their camps on the outskirts of the forest near a Lese village for about seven months of the year (save for the best hunting season, January through March, and honey season), and are never more than eight hours away on foot from a village. The Efé generally trade the meat and honey they acquire in the forest for material goods or the
cassava ''Manihot esculenta'', commonly called cassava (), manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America. Although a perennial plant, cassava is extensively cultivated ...
,
bananas A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa''. In some countries, bananas used for cooking may be called "plantains", distinguis ...
,
peanut The peanut (''Arachis hypogaea''), also known as the groundnut, goober (US), pindar (US) or monkey nut (UK), is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics, important to both small an ...
s, and
rice Rice is the seed of the grass species '' Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima'' (African rice). The name wild rice is usually used for species of the genera '' Zizania'' and '' Porteresia'', both wild and domesticat ...
grown by the Lese, and the
meat Meat is animal flesh that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted, farmed, and scavenged animals for meat since prehistoric times. The establishment of settlements in the Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of animals such as chic ...
provided by the Efé accounts for over half of the meat eaten by the Lese. Important goods that the Lese villagers provide for the Efé are
tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...
and
marijuana Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various t ...
, which about half of men and a third of women smoke. In addition to trading meat and honey with the villagers, Efé men and women also provide their labour in exchange for foods, tobacco, marijuana, iron, cloth or other material goods. Women do this about 9.6% of their time, usually helping to plant, harvest, and prepare the food from Lese gardens in return for food from the garden. Efé men, on the other hand, mostly perform work related to clearing fields in December, and spend about 3.5% of their time doing it. They are usually paid with cooked food, some of which they eat right away and some of which they bring back to camp with them; but they are also occasionally paid with marijuana or tobacco. Men spend more time in the villages doing things other than working, like drinking
palm wine Palm wine, known by several local names, is an alcoholic beverage created from the sap of various species of palm tree such as the palmyra, date palms, and coconut palms. It is known by various names in different regions and is common in va ...
with the villagers and generally socializing. Lese and Efé men even establish partnerships, which can be inherited and constitute a special bond between a Lese and an Efé man. However, these partnerships can be dissolved when an Efé man returns borrowed items to his Lese partner. One aspect of the Lese–Efé relationship that is less than cooperative is the way in which they view each other. Efé often steal from Lese gardens, particularly around April and May when there is little food and the Lese are ungenerous about payment for Efé labor. The Lese, on the other hand, view the Efé with something of a condescending attitude and see themselves as entirely separate entities. Efé are viewed by Lese men and women alike as being female. The Lese also see strict dichotomies between themselves and the Efé – they characterize the Efé as uneducated savages and see themselves as more civilized since they go to school and live in villages. Another interesting image they create is that of red versus white – the Efé and the meat and honey they provide are described as red, and the goods the Lese provide (dried corn, cassava, etc.) are closer to white in colour. However, Lese men describe Efé men as "devoted friends and protectors" and also find Efé women "stronger, more sexually attractive, and more fertile than Lese women". The Lese also believe that the Efé can hunt witches and protect the village from them.


Religion

It is rather difficult to accurately describe the Efé religion, as there is not a great deal of information that deals specifically with the Efé. The main source used was a collection of Bambuti legends, i.e. legends that the author felt belonged to some extent to all of the pygmy groups of the Ituri forest, but the tribe from whom the legends were gathered were one of the net-hunting groups, not the Efé. Because of the lack of information, it seems imprudent to relay any of the specific legends. The legends, though, tend to fall into three categories: “creation myths; legends of origin and tradition, legends dealing with social relations, and legends dealing with relations with the supernatural". Another interesting aspect of Efé religion is that it is also shared with the Lese. Many of pygmy legends deal with their larger partners, and the associated tribes have myths dealing with the pygmies. Even some religious ceremonies are held in common, such as the ''ima'' celebration in which girls who have reached
menarche Menarche ( ; ) is the first menstrual cycle, or first menstrual bleeding, in female humans. From both social and medical perspectives, it is often considered the central event of female puberty, as it signals the possibility of fertility. Gir ...
and been secluded in a hut together are carried back out into the village. Bailey describes the period of seclusion as being three months, but Grinker states that it is more like six months to a year and that the girls’ feet are not allowed to touch the ground without being wrapped in palm leaves and that whenever they have to use the bathroom, they must be carried to an outhouse wrapped in palm leaves so that the sun does not touch them. This period is also supposed to make the girls fat, and they are supposed to consume a lot of
palm oil Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp (reddish pulp) of the fruit of the oil palms. The oil is used in food manufacturing, in beauty products, and as biofuel. Palm oil accounted for about 33% of global oils produced fr ...
and meat while they are being sequestered.


Language

The Efé speak Lese without any dialectical distinction from the Lese themselves. They also have a relationship with other farming peoples in the region: the Mamvu and Mvuba (close relatives of Lese) and the Bantu
Bira Bira may refer to: Places Greece * Boura (Achaea) (alternatively spelled Bira or Bura), an ancient city of Achaea, Greece India *Bira, North 24 Parganas, a census town in West Bengal, India ** Bira railway station Lebanon *Bireh, Akkar * Al-Bireh ...
,
Nyali Nyali is a residential area and Sub-County within Mombasa City, located on the mainland north of Mombasa County. It is connected to Mombasa Island by the New Nyali Bridge. Nyali is known for its many high-class hotels and residential houses, m ...
, and
Nande Nande is a village in Mulshi taluka of Pune District in the state of Maharashtra, India.Talukas surrounding the village are Karjat taluka, Talegaon Dabhade Taluka, Mawal taluka and by Khalapur taluka. Districts closest to the village are Raigad ...
.


Footnotes


External links


African Pygmies
Culture, music and rites
Pygmy Fund: Dr Jean-Pierre HalletThe Pygmies of the Ituri Forest (Sound Recording -- Music) Kumuka 1993 – Efé Pygmy Visit, Zaire (DR Congo) (Video Recording – 49 minutes)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Efe Ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo African Pygmies