Congo Tales tells the stories and myths of the inhabitants of the Congo basin, the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest, after the Amazon. Tales of Us has been working on Congo Tales in this region of Africa for the past five years. “Tales of Us” invited Dutch portrait photographer Pieter Henket to collaborate on the project. Working with local inhabitants, the team has created a large series of photographs which they are now using to draw attention to this largely unknown rainforest and those who call it home. Henket’s filmic and surrealistic portraits bring to life the magic and mysteries of this region, which is so important to the planet.
Congolese people who live in the Mbomo District of the Congo basin present their myths, which have never before been recorded, as photographed by Pieter Henket. The Congolese, their myths and the rainforest are the stars of Henket’s photographs. Dozens of children forming the shape of an Mbomo (or Boa Constrictor); over a hundred Congolese women assembled at the border of the forest; Congolese men on the hunt for a mythical bird – these images tell the story of supernatural forces that control life and death, of ritualistic initiations, of the laws of nature that lie outside human laws, bringing to life the magic and mystery of this little understood place, and its incalculable value to the planet.
Henket is not a photographer who ‘captures’ reality. He carefully builds his compositions, stylising his subjects and mixing light and co- lour in the manner of a painter. He subtly refers to the Dutch masters of the 17th century, which as a Dutchman he knows through and through. For his images created in the rainforest, for example, he used a powerful stroboscope powered by a battery to create Rembrand- tesque lighting, evoking an atmosphere in the photographs that ties in perfectly with the myths of the Congolese.
Tales of us worked on this extraordinary Congo Tales series for five years. Congolese artist and philosopher Steve Regis ‘Kovo’ N’Sondé and award-winning author Wilfried N’Sondé committed 24 selected stories to paper, which have been published in a book of the same name. Channelling the primal heartbeat of one of the world’s most powerful ecosystems and the people who call it home, the mythological tales of the Congolese are revealed as a treasure trove of universal wisdom that is both existential and pragmatic, with the unspoiled Odzala Kokoua National Park as stage and actor.
The groundbreaking Tales of Us project is a captivating work of art and photography, and Congo Tales is a feat of innovative environmental messaging and cross-cultural and cross-continental collaboration intended both to prevent the loss of this all-important bastion of nature, and to reveal its priceless value to the world and our communal future in it.
Tales of Us aims to create social awareness through the cultures of local population groups. It is an ongoing multimedia project that hopes to introduce a new perspective on the urgency of protecting the world’s mightiest yet most vulnerable ecosystems and the people for whom they are home. Tales of Us categorically rejects the common, fear-based environmental message about preserving regions that are critical for the global environment, preferring instead to tell the stories of the people who live there in a completely new way. The local mythology, legends and lore which form the basis of cultures that existed long before our modern civilisation are portrayed by the world’s most celebrated portrait photographers, in staged images set in the natural, ecologically vital setting from which they originate.
The show at Museum de Fundatie is the exhibition’s fourth stop. It was first shown in Mbomo and Brazzaville (Congo), followed by the Barberini Museum in Potsdam. Besides 43 photographs by Pieter Henket the exhibition also includes the film The Little Fish and the Crocodile and soundscapes of the Mbomo rainforest by sound artist David Kamp. Congo Tales has already helped change how the Congo basin and the people who live there are seen in the rest of the world. The project made the front page of the international New York Times and the front page of the art section of the national edition. PBS News Hour, National Public Radio, Public Radio International and BBC World News have all carried items on Congo Tales.
Rijksmuseum
Six photographs from the series were recently acquired by the Rijksmuseum. Photographer Pieter Henket donated three, and the others were purchased with the help of the Stefanie Georgina Alexa Nühn Fund/Rijksmuseum Fund. The Rijksmuseum has agreed to loan these photographs to Museum de Fundatie for the exhibition.
In friendship or love, he who demands the impossible will always encounter resentment.
Once upon a time, Mole and Ya Sun were good friends. The animal lived as much underground as on the surface. They spent hours chatting: “What’s the news? What are people talking about?” Mole told Sun stories of the world beyond, and Sun told Mole what went on during her absences underground.
One day, Mole’s mother fell ill. None of the traditional herbal infusions and remedies could cure her. Mole wondered if the sickness was natural or the result of a curse. She was reluctant to consult a soothsayer who was suspected by many animals of being a charlatan or, even worse, of having evil intent. He only allowed visits at night. In less than four days, Mole’s mother’s health deteriorated. On the fourth day, Mole decided to take the risk and ask the opinion of the controversial soothsayer. The latter said in a solemn voice: “The only way to save your mother is if your friend Ya Sun agrees to orbit the Earth backwards. He must complete his journey in the opposite direction and agree to rise in the West and set in the East. Your mother’s survival depends on him.” After leaving the house, Mole went weeping to her old friend, Ya Sun. She arrived before the first cockcrow. With sobs in her throat, she called to him for many minutes as the first signs of dawn were appearing:
“Ya Sun! Yaya! Mother Mole is not getting better. In reality, her condition is getting worse. Please, Yaya, make your journey across the celestial vault in the opposite direction, otherwise she will die.”
“Mole, my friend, that is something that has never been seen since the world became the world. If I could I would, but I too have my limits. Going in the opposite direction is something I cannot do. There are mysteries in our vast universe, but nature has its own laws.”
Overwhelmed by his inability to help Mole, Ya Sun fulfilled his daily duty. One by one he marked every hour of the day. Soon it was dusk and then darkness. That night, when her mother died in the shadows, Mole swore never to cross Sun’s path again.
Walking through a forest is like looking into the eyes of a child.
Nature told a myriad of stories. They captivated people’s attention, and thanks to the way they have been handed down, they will never be consigned to oblivion. The stories create new worlds in which people can immerse themselves, beyond dreams and reality.
A little fish and a crocodile – you could not imagine two more different animals. This little fish was a warm and intrepid friend who took care of his little ones and made sure they were safe.
One very hot day, he found a surprising visitor outside his door: a curious and adventurous young crocodile who liked to explore. The two of them lived in the same river but had never seen each other before. Yet together, they hunted and explored their neighborhood.
Hungry after so many games, the little fish invited the crocodile to share in his meal, and in this way, they sealed their friendship. In the evening, replete, satisfied, and happy, they began dancing, and then went to bed. Nature became quiet, and the full moon shone down on them. Lulled by the song of the crickets, they entered the land of dreams. The little fish slept fitfully, and he had a nightmare. While sleepwalking, his new friend the crocodile unwittingly devoured all his eggs.
The laws of nature applied to everyone and everyone had to respect them. This is why the crocodile ate the fish’s eggs.
Sometimes everything changes except for those spirits who remain in the past. Although the length of a week has been established, the rhythm of the spirits is still measured in lengths of four days.
A group of women was washing clothes in the river, away from prying eyes. They remembered how, in times gone by, the month began with the first moon. Each one of the four days – odwua, okondzo, okia, and tsono – had its own function and brought rhythm to time. To go to the forest meant going to the fields or the clearing where food crops were grown as sustenance. A ban on work meant the day when it was forbidden to go to the forest.
One of the women said that there were now seven days in a week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But everyone was careful not to work on Thursdays.
“Why not on that day?” another woman asked loudly. They all wondered why they had ended up with this ban.
One of them said that in their grandmothers’ day a woman had been reported missing on a Thursday. This woman had not properly prepared the day before, on Wednesday, and the children did not have enough to eat. Therefore, she had decided to go to the fields on a Thursday without telling her husband who could have accompanied her. After she left, when noontime struck, she had still not returned, nor at three o’clock. At four o’clock, her husband was worried.
He asked the children: “Where is mother?”
“She went to the fields.”
He became more and more worried, and his fear turned to terror. He asked his relatives and neighbors, but they knew nothing. His wife did not return, neither in that evening nor on the following days. Fear seized the village, then the whole region. What could have happened? A few weeks later, villagers claimed to have seen her with her basket on her back, a prisoner of the diaphanous light of the moon.
Unless it’s given in a show of generosity, a taste of honey can fuel a quarrel.
Njambé created the world, organizing it so that each species to be given the sense of sight received it. He tasked Mr. Mbwuele with distributing eyes. The latter, armed with a bag full of the ocular organs, began. To each creature, he gave two eyes, thus carrying out the plan of the almighty creator.
Arriving at Odzala, the last village before the end of his mission, there was just one eye left in his bag. Yet in front of him stood two claimants, eager to discover the universe.
“What shall I do with the last eye?” Mr. Mbwuele wondered. He was at a loss. Finally, he had an idea, and said to the two creatures: “There is only one eye left in my bag, but you two are still eyeless. I will give the eye to you; it will belong to you both; and you can use it in rotation.
Mr. Mbwuélé took the eye out of the bag and placed it on the face of the first of the two.
“Oh, how beautiful the world is!”
He gazed at the sky, the vegetation, and the birds in flight.
“Can you give me the eye so that I, too, can see, since it belongs to us both?” asked the one who was still blind.
“Of course, brother.”
He removed the eye and put it in the hand of his neighbor who placed it in his eye socket. He cried out in joy and elation, striking the ground and jumping.
Satisfied, Mr. Mbwuélé gave them some advice on how to use their shared eye properly, and then he left. The two “one eyes” built a shared hut by helping each other. For them, vision became a shared sense. In the twinkling of an eye, the one who had the eye could distinguish tchihé, the termite mound above, from itwutwuha, the one below. When, for example, they wanted to clear undergrowth from a field, one led the other, holding him by the hand. They took turns working. If one was tired, he rested and the other one took over. When out hunting, if the first brought back some game, the one left behind took the eye and cooked. One did the woodcutting, while the other carried the firewood. At the river, the two held hands
Sometimes a tradition must come to an end lest it bring death to those who are expected to uphold it.
In a village called Nzalangoyi, there lived Chief Mbwangoyi with his wives and their many children. He owned vast expanses of fertile, game-filled land, savannas, and areas of forest inherited from his grandparents. The land under his control included other villages as well as Nzalangoyi.
Chief Mbwangoyi was appropriately named. Known and respected throughout the region, his name reflected the powerful resonance of his voice. “Mbwa” sounded like the floods of rain that accompany rumblings in the sky, and “Ngoyi” was the leopard with its black or speckled coat. Noble and sly as a cat, Mbwangoyi knew how to settle arguments with passion and skill. He ruled over his family and oversaw, with justice and understanding, those men and women who lived on his land.
But one day, something happened that would change the course of destiny. According to tradition, anyone who hunted on another person’s land was obliged to offer a leg of game to the owner in return. On that day, a group of men from a neighboring village no longer wanted the landowners, with their established privileges, to benefit from the efforts of others. Inside a dimly lit hut, they plotted their crime; atop a cold table, they stretched out the carcass of Séri, the blue antelope, which they had caught during their last hunt. They disemboweled her and smeared her flesh with the sinister sap of a poisonous vine.
“Chief Mbwangoyi will get more than a leg of meat this time. We’ll give him death served up on a dish of garnished leaves!”
Two hours earlier, as they swore an oath to carry out their deadly plan, one of them had already decided against it. He would have been unable to live with himself if he was complicit in such an act. Surrounded by his family, Chief Mbwangoyi would not have been the only one to die. All the inhabitants in the village of Nzalangoyi would have been wiped out. That same night, he made a plan to get to the chief before the antelope was delivered. He lit a torch girded with tree bark at the end of his village, He then made his way through the dark expanse to deliver his auspicious message: “Old Mbwangoyi, tomorrow you will be given an antelope, but do not try to eat the meat. It is poisoned.”
The next day, as predicted, someone came to the village, announcing, “Here is your package.” Mbwangoyi, forewarned but wise, accepted the gift with thanks and put it on the leaf roof of his house. After a while, the blue skin of Séri, the antelope, turned black from the effects of the poison.
Mbwangoyi left Nzalangoyi and went off to establish his final home, the village called Ilombolapendo. He decided to put an end to this tradition for everyone’s safety; no longer would he or his descendants accept even the smallest amount of game as a hunting right.
Happiness or sadness in the present must not make us forget the past. The fruit must not conceal the roots. This is fertilizer for the seeds of the future.
In a village, a man named Njambé, who had several wives, decided to marry one final woman; she was the most beloved. She became pregnant and nine months later gave birth to a beautiful, plump boy. The husband pampered his wife all the more, loving her with an unsatiated hunger.
One morning, this young woman went basket-fishing and caught many fish. As she was returning home, she heard some chimpanzees chattering. Intrigued, she moved closer, cautiously, to see what they were doing. They were collecting honey, bwoyi.
Shamelessly she told them: “You there, Asehwu, chimpanzees, give me some honey and you can have this child.
“Do you want to trade?” they asked.
“Yes!” she responded.
“Well then, give us the child!”
And so she gave them the child, took the honey, and went home. But as she approached the village, she first broke off a termite mound, itwutwuha, and wrapped it in a cloth. Back in the house, she put the bundle in the cradle and went to bed.
Her husband asked: “What’s wrong?”
She answered that she felt sick, so he asked her to bring him the child. Yet, as she did not do so quickly, he glanced over his shoulder and instead of the child he saw a termite mound!
“Where is the child? Give me my son!”
Angrily, he struck his wife, injuring her. The next morning, she went to the forest, all the way back to where she had traded with the chimpanzees. There, she heard the primates enjoying themselves. As they moved off, she followed them, singing: “Ah, you chimpanzees, Bakwula, njié! Give me back my child!
And they answered with the same song: “Ah, mother of the child, njié! Keep your honey! Njié! Ah, gluttony, njié! You’re reduced to begging the akola, njié! The honey is yours. We’re keeping the child!”
They kept moving further and further away. She followed on, relentlessly, singing, and they answered in the same manner.
Though lost in the middle of the forest, she continued her pursuit. Arriving at the bwuando, the place where the cassavas turn the water red, there was silence. She could no longer hear the chimpanzees but noticed the clearly defined tracks. She followed them and arrived at a big village. Tired and thin, she sat down in the kandza, the meeting place. A woman came up to her.
In the marriage covenant, the ties between woman, man, and totem animal are an umbilical symbol.
The “chicken legs,” as the capital’s taxis were called, were speeding past the crossroads in front of the entrance to the former ORSTOM building and its botanical gardens. It was one of the last green oases in Brazza-Mfoa. In a car, the young woman and her elderly guide were driving down the avenue leading to the main entrance of CERVE, the Center for Studies on Plant Resources. From Pointe-Noire to Maya-Maya Airport, they had been accompanied by the same music, a compilation of hits by Les Bantous of Brazzaville. A melodious voice sang: “Meno nkumbi nzila ya kolela tsiindu.”
“Ah, the old Congolese rumba… That was when songs reminded us about traditions,” sighed the driver.
“Nkumbi – that’s the Gambian pouched rat, the palm kernel rat known as kolo in the north. What does it mean?”
“My path suffers the pounding of human footsteps like the path of the Gambian pouched rat!” he sang.
This confirmed what she had noticed. Many observers – the men and women who had created the many different Congolese tales and legends – had idealized the weakest animals. It was true of insects, snails, a number of plants, and of animals. She remembered a statue in a Paris museum titled Woman with a Big Cat. The female panther – or the male leopard – was the sovereign among totem animals from the north to the south of the country. In the popular imagination she was master of the forest, and she symbolized power. Although, in stories, the cunning little antelope often made fun of her.
“I saw a statue in Paris where a naked woman is sitting on a leopard,” she said, “a gift given by our ancestors to Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza. What does it represent?”
The driver thought about this: dignity and feminine intelligence enhanced by the poise, nobility, and beauty of the spotted feline coat.
“A woman sitting on a leopard’s back? Perhaps the mystery of this alliance evokes political power, whether of a clan or of justice. Often justice is represented by a female figure. I am from the Béémbé clan, for example, and the totem animal of my clan is the leopard. I have a friend from the Ngandu clan – ngandu means the caiman – and he is not allowed to eat caimans. That’s how it works!”
They had left the car and were about to enter the building.
“If I’ve understood correctly,” she said, “when two people love each other and marry, their totem animals marry, too!”