northeast of Kinshasa, the capital of the modern
Democratic Republic of Congo. Though the Democratic
Republic of Congo is poor compared with the rest of the
world, there have always been significant differences in the
prosperity of various groups within Congo. The Kasai is the
boundary between two of these. Soon after passing into
Congo along the western bank, you’ll find the Lele people;
on the eastern bank are the Bushong (Map 6, this page).
On the face of it there ought to be few differences between
these two groups with regard to their prosperity. They are
separated only by a river, which either can cross by boat.
The two different tribes have a common origin and related
languages. In addition, many of the things they build are
similar in style, including their houses, clothes, and crafts.
Yet when the anthropologist Mary Douglas and the
historian Jan Vansina studied these groups in the 1950s,
they discovered some startling differences between them.
As Douglas put it: “The Lele are poor, while the Bushong
are rich … Everything that the Lele have or can do, the
Bushong have more and can do better.” Simple
explanations for this inequality are easy to come by. One
difference, reminiscent of that between places in Peru that
were or were not subject to the Potosí mita , is that the Lele
produced for subsistence while the Bushong produced for
exchange in the market. Douglas and Vansina also noted
that the Lele used inferior technology. For instance, they did
not use nets for hunting, even though these greatly improve
productivity. Douglas argued, “[T]he absence of nets is
consistent with a general Lele tendency not to invest time
and labor in long-term equipment.”
There were also important distinctions in agricultural
technologies and organization. The Bushong practiced a
sophisticated form of mixed farming where five crops were
planted in succession in a two-year system of rotation. They
grew yams, sweet potatoes, manioc (cassava), and beans
and gathered two and sometimes three maize harvests a
year. The Lele had no such system and managed to reap
only one annual harvest of maize.
There were also striking differences in law and order.
The Lele were dispersed into fortified villages, which were
constantly in conflict. Anyone traveling between two or even
venturing into the forest to collect food was liable to be