May 2008 - Literacy for Congo Pygmies

A literacy programme for a neglected group of pygmy people in Congo (DRC) is proving so successful that, only 6 months after it started, there are already demands that it be expanded.

Over two hundred students have been attending classes in 'Centres' in seven villages in the Bikoro Region of Equateur Sud, between twenty and forty students at each Centre. The Centres were chosen to allow 'local teaching and minimise travelling time through the forest for those responsible for families. Students are between the ages of ten and eighteen (pictured) - children under ten years of age who can still benefit from normal schooling are not included.

Operation Agri gave a grant of £4900, 90% of the cost, the balance being met locally.

The teachers have been recruited from a small group of intellectuals amongst the local pygmies - outsiders would have been unacceptable. Although unqualified as teachers, they received training before the project started last October and have been given additional training as the project has continued. Only one teacher proved incapable of carrying out the work and has been given special help. The local people are now requesting that Centres be established in nine more villages.

The project is being directed by 'Cercle pour la Défense de l'Environnement' (CEDEN), a Congolese NGO (non-governmental organisation) which is a partner of CBFC (Baptist Community of the River Congo). The CBFC churches in the region are helping raise awareness of the programme locally, as well as the ‘Mission Evangelique de Pygmie en Afrique’ and the Catholic Church. Kevin Jones, a BMS World Mission worker, helped CBFC prepare the project proposal for submission to Operation Agri.

The literacy training includes Bible study. This approach is designed to show the pygmies that they are created in God’s image and must therefore assume their responsibilities to take care of creation. They must also not accept that they are inferior or intended by God to be subject to others because they are pygmies.

According to the Congolese Ministry of Social Affairs there are about 900,000 pygmies, making up 1.5% of the nation’s 60 million population. Traditionally the pygmy people have lived by hunting animals in the forest, harvesting natural foods, and working as casual labourers in the fields of the ethnic majority Bantus. Pygmy children understand the need for self-sufficiency and food for daily living so they are often sent out to search for food and to learn to survive in the forest.

The project proposal explained, "The pygmies are subject to discrimination and oppressed and treated as inhuman fashion by their neighbours, the Bantus. They are subject to injustice and marginalised in many ways, simply by being pygmies.

"Many of the pygmy people do not appreciate the need to invest for the future but live only for today. It has therefore been necessary first to promote the importance of education and to wake up the pygmy population to the benefits of a programme such as this so they can free themselves from the discrimination and marginalisation imposed on them by the Bantus."

The importance of this project has become more urgent because of the prevalence of illegal logging in the Bikoro area. Being illiterate, the pygmy people cannot defend their own interests when management of natural resources is discussed.

For more information see:

Congo’s pygmies (from IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs).
Illegal Loggers Mutilating Forests (from the NGO 'Vanishing Earth')